Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“Hello, Luke,” Joan said cheerfully. He had gotten a reprieve. “Hello, baby.” She put her hand on his curled foot and squeezed gently. He watched her closely, his body still, like a cat studying prey.

Joan, encouraged nevertheless, moved closer. Again Luke seemed to gesture at her, his hand reaching out in a spasm. Joan opened her hands to him. He arched in her direction. Nina offered and Joan took him.

Eric came toward them, carrying two suitcases. Her father had only a small overnight bag. “Hey, hey,” Eric said to Joan. “He looks good on you, Grandma.”

“Grandma!” Brandon said to the trees, with a sarcastic tone.

Joan nodded self-consciously at Eric. Luke glanced at his father. Nina moved away from Joan and Luke to open the door. At this, Luke wailed, his arms out to Nina.

Joan stiffened, held him away from her, and said, “He wants you,” to Nina.

“He doesn’t like you, Joan,” Nina’s father, Tom, said casually as he passed on his way to the house. Brandon laughed, with energetic malice, and followed Tom.

“No, no,” Eric argued even though Tom and Brandon went on inside without listening. “He just doesn’t know her.”

Nina felt stuck at the door as she watched Luke’s distress become hysterical. Joan didn’t hug him, or rock him, or distract him. She held Luke in the air like a squealing pig, her mouth closed, her eyes startled and wary.

“Get him!” Eric said in a whisper, but with urgent emphasis.

“She’s here.” Joan finally spoke. She took a few steps toward Nina and held Luke out, his legs kicking, his face red. “He needs to be fed,” she repeated as Nina at last broke her paralysis and accepted Luke.

“No, he doesn’t,” Nina heard herself say in a wondering tone. “He doesn’t know you.”

“Well, I only saw him once before. Why would he know me?”

“That’s right,” Eric said. “He needs time.” He carried the bags in.

“Maybe he’s cold,” Wendy said.

“Hello, Wendy,” Joan said. “I haven’t greeted you.”

“I’m fine,” Wendy answered.

Joan nodded as if this were very gratifying news. “Good.” With that she went inside the house.

Luke’s screams had become muffled moans and whimpers. He nuzzled his face into Nina’s breasts. His tears had primed them. But it was an hour before his next feeding, and what’s more, Nina felt her pride was at stake. She had said to Joan that Luke wasn’t hungry.

“Are you going to feed him?” Wendy asked. She was the only one left outside.

Nina’s breasts dripped. Luke squirmed and moaned. He could probably smell their sour residue. Her left nipple throbbed. She gave in, opened her shirt, and lowered the flap that covered her left nipple. Luke latched on.

“Can I touch them?” Wendy asked.

“What?”

Wendy put out her hand and held it only an inch or two from Nina’s right breast. “Can I touch it?”

“They’re sore,” Nina answered, too thrown to know what else to say.

“I’ll be gentle,” Wendy said with a hint of irritation that Nina might think otherwise. Wendy lowered the flap and cupped the breast, holding the thick knob of Nina’s nipple tenderly between her index finger and thumb. “What does it taste like?”

“I don’t know!” Nina said, wanting to pull away, but frightened to. What if Wendy didn’t let go?

“Come on,” Wendy said. “You must have tasted it. Eric must suck on it sometimes. Does he like the taste?”

“He does not!”

Wendy, her face only a few inches from Nina, smiled knowingly, and shook her head no, almost with pity, as if Nina’s attempt at lying were too foolish even to merit a contradiction. Then Wendy lowered her head — Nina watched unbelievingly, sure that Wendy would stop, couldn’t mean to — and put her lips around the nipple, licking its tip with her tongue. Luke moved his feet out of Wendy’s way, but was otherwise unperturbed, staring up at Nina with his serious blue eyes and sucking lazily.

Nina, panic in her throat, grunted to stop herself from screaming, and put her free hand on Wendy’s blond hair, gathering a bunch of it. Nina yanked hard.

Wendy screamed, backing away, her hands protecting the top of her skull. “Jesus! Are you crazy! That hurt.”

Eric opened the door violently. He looked agitated. “What was that! Is he all right?”

Wendy walked through the open door, and then glanced back, her look resentful. “You’re not very motherly. I don’t think. Maybe you don’t like people needing you.”

“You’re crazy,” Nina said without energy, merely stating a fact.

“What’s going on?” Eric pleaded.

“Maybe that’s why he cries all the time,” Wendy said, her face made small by vindictiveness, the eyes, nose, and mouth coming together in a blur of squints, twitches, and frowns. “He knows you don’t mean it.”

Nina instinctively turned Luke away from Wendy and her accusation. She wanted to cry, although she couldn’t bring the sorrow to precipitation. The unhappiness floated inside her chest like a heavy, heavy cloud — the dark swollen cloud of her lifelong failure to please or impress anyone.

THE CONCRETE and insulation manufacturers filed for financial reorganization under Chapter 11, claiming that the outstanding lawsuits, if decided against them, would be an economic catastrophe and that since no insurance could be obtained to protect them, they had to go “out of the insulation business” because every day they continued manufacturing exposed them to more litigation. This shifted the issue from their culpability to their liability (what they would pay on all debt included future debt such as negligence judgments), even though their guilt was still not settled. The maneuver was Stoppard’s invention, but Diane was essential in finding a precedent to allow the bankruptcy filing to begin before a judgment was in existence. Threatened with the possibility of winning their suits, but having no one to pay them, the ex-employees agreed to settle en masse for a quarter of what Stoppard and Diane had thought a court would be likely to award. She knew making partner at Wilson, Pickering had become a certainty. Stoppard would sponsor her wholeheartedly and he was the firm’s brightest star.

Peter said, when she bragged of her achievement, that it was a swindle, no better than, after you’ve blinded a man, robbing him of his beggar’s cup of coins. Of course, that had been her reaction when she had been brought onto the case. But it was true that the company would have been destroyed by the ex-employees’ suit. Thousands would have been thrown out of work, work that was now safe anyway, or at least met federal safety standards. The villain, the owner who had buried the warnings of the medical data, was dead. The law would be punishing his grandson, who had watched his inheritance halved by a rapid decline of orders and an even faster increase in insurance payments, along with wage raises, legal fees, and general Wall Street dismay. Most of the lawsuits were not from the victims, but from their heirs. Was it justice to punish today for yesterday’s sins? Stoppard had asked the court. And the victims did get some money. Anyway, someone else would have contributed the legal know-how she had. The end result would have been the same.

They took Byron to the park the weekend of her triumph. She had persuaded Peter to spend Sunday afternoon with them. Although Byron had first walked only a week ago, he was already competent, striding pigeon-toed, his full melon belly forward, a miniature sumo wrestler, his mouth open, exclaiming at the pleasures of his mobility. “Ahhh! Ahhh! Ohhh? Da!” He pointed to the trees and yelled: “Zat!” He grabbed the black iron bars of the playground gate and shook it. Byron teetered from the recoil and then tried to get a footing on a low rung, intending to climb it.