Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“Just like you,” Peter said. “He has no sense of boundaries. No responsibility.”

She didn’t know what he meant. She didn’t think Peter knew either, except that he resented Byron’s joy, Byron’s vigor. She looked at the other parents, all fascinated by her son, some with smiles, others with worry. They were in the small park at Washington Square, full of immobile babies, and only a few toddlers under two. The other one-year-olds were still crawling, or able to walk only a few steps before they wobbled and then crashed with a whoosh on the puffed bottoms of their diapers. They cried at every obstacle, at every frustration.

Not her Byron.

He stood at the edge of the sandbox, arms out at his sides in an attitude of command, erect on his chubby legs, still and steady, the Captain of Babyland.

The other parents were forever having to pick up their children, encourage them to try again, to dig in the sand, to leave their side, to engage life.

Not Diane.

She could sit on the bench beside Peter. She had to get up only to stop Byron from walking off with the pails and shovels of two-year-olds, who, despite their size and age advantage, lost tugs-of-war with Byron. Byron had mastered the technique. He closed his fat fingers tight around the plastic treasures, held his balance, and yanked hard. His calm will to win gave him extra strength; the two-year-olds, made anxious by the possibility of defeat, already half looking for a parent to help them, had their attention divided and their power diluted.

“I’m sorry,” Diane would say to the scrunched, embarrassed, irritated face of the bawling two-year-old’s parent. “Give it back, Byron.”

“Ohh!” he’d say, and loosen his grip at Diane’s request, unperturbed by the loss of red shovel or yellow pail, ready for another conquest, a good grab of sand, a stamping, hopeless chase of the pigeons, another assault on the gate. Byron took defeat and victory as one.

Diane could breathe deeply and smell her satisfaction. She had the best baby in the park. She was a success.

PETER SLEPT with rachel again. and again. and again. for the past month they had had a regular date each week, going to the theater and retiring afterward to her apartment of convertible furniture.

Their lovemaking was sad. Done silently, quickly, the copulation seemed mostly to be an excuse to hold each other. He felt hopeless about life and the world. The foundation had cut its arts funding to a third of what it had been two years before. He saw Diane alone for a mere hour a day during the week and little more on the weekends. And during those few hours, she yawned, undressed, bathed, complained, and wanted nothing from him but casual chatter and a brotherly kiss.

He knew, he knew, he knew — he knew all the psychological clichés. He’d lost his mother again, he felt competitive with Byron, and on and on. The problem was that they were true. His son grows up while he grows down. Byron moves into the future, Peter into the past.

He called Gary. He hadn’t spoken to or seen Gary, the best friend of his childhood, for a decade. “Peter!” Gary exclaimed, and began to babble, asking questions and giving information before he even heard the answers.

They met for lunch. The ghost of Gary’s slightly goofy, pale, boyish face hovered in fat and manly features. Gary wasn’t married, although he lived with a woman.

“I can’t believe,” Gary said, “of the two of us, you’re the one with a wife and kid. ”

“Why?” Peter asked, worried, possibly even offended.

“I don’t know. I just thought you’d think it was bourgeois or something. I really expected you to be an actor.”

“’Cause of high school?”

“Yeah. You loved it! And you were good.”

Peter couldn’t concentrate on the conversation. He was lurking behind pleasantries, hidden in ambush with his real question. “Whatever happened to Larry?” he asked casually when the check came.

Gary answered with suspicious rapidity, as if he’d been waiting to. “He doesn’t talk to us anymore. Broke off completely with my mother five years ago.”

“How come?”

“You know we put him up for a year, when he was — when you knew him. He was a mess. Mom kept him together. And, I don’t know, I guess when he got to be a success again, he must have decided we were beneath him. He’s become rich, you know.”

“I always thought he was.”

“Well, he put it on. Got a big PR firm now, does work in Washington, Philly, L.A. I think they even have an office here.” Gary changed the subject, talking again about the old days, the games they played, what had happened to other friends. Obviously Gary didn’t want to discuss the child abuse and Peter let it go without a fight, although that was his only purpose in the meeting.

At the park with Diane and Byron, Peter listened to his memory’s recordings of everything he and Gary had said to each other, as children and teenagers, about Larry’s fondlings. There had been few. Gary always insisted Larry didn’t mean any harm, hadn’t meant it to go any further. The one time Peter challenged that point of view, Gary was flustered and upset. “Yeah, so he’s queer. Just ’cause we didn’t know to stop him doesn’t mean we are.”

Clichés, clichés, clichés.

Gary’s fear wasn’t what Peter had wanted to know. He wanted to know if Gary’s mother had suspected anything while it was going on, if she had in fact known. If not, hadn’t she thought it odd that a forty-year-old bachelor spent so much time in the children’s room? She had known Larry was homosexual; that much he had gotten out of Gary. Hadn’t she wondered about all the gifts he thought Gary and even Peter? Why hadn’t Gary told her what was going on? Why hadn’t Peter told his own mother?

It was so boring in the park. All these anxious middle-class parents, all these lawyers, professors, so-called painters, actors, writers, doctors, accountants, pretending they cared. All with the same MacLaren strollers, the same Nuk pacifiers, the Snuglis, the Fisher-Price toys, some kind of strange herd instinct, a weird consumer fascism.

Peter noticed a man wander into the playground area without a child or a baby. The stranger nodded at various parents. They nodded back, but obviously didn’t know him. He was dressed in a suit. That seemed odd. Peter wanted to point him out to Diane, but she was off somewhere saving some poor child from Byron’s imperialism. The stranger didn’t hook up with any of the mothers or kids already there. He had a long face, his complexion pale, small lips underneath a big nose, wide-set eyes, and a broad forehead. He settled on a bench and watched the children. He smiled benignly at their activities and laughed out loud at something.

Peter felt uneasy. He glanced at the park’s border to see if a police car was about. There was. Then Peter realized he couldn’t say anything to the cops. Or could he? The sign on the gate read: ONLY FOR CHILDREN AND THEIR PARENTS OR GUARDIANS. If the stranger was alone, the police could ask him to move on. Peter simply didn’t have the nerve to do something so presumptuous, so rude.

He got to his feet without thinking and looked for Diane. She would have the nerve. He couldn’t see her. He glanced at the bench to check on the stranger. He was gone. But he saw Diane, sitting right near where the stranger used to be, talking to a woman, intent on the conversation.

Peter walked over. Diane just glanced at him and continued talking. “Where’s Byron?” Peter asked, not because he missed him, but because he didn’t know how to bring up the question of the strange man.

“Here,” Diane said, and pointed to a sandy area near her feet. But her gesture froze. “Where is he?”

An elderly woman rocking an infant in a carriage called out, “Is this your husband?” and pointed to Peter. Diane nodded. “That man is—”