Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“Look at the stars,” she said to Luke, and her words were scattered by the outside. Luke seemed to study them anyway, his body absolutely still, awed by the earth’s vast ceiling. She felt sure that he also wanted to be away, apart from people and their crowding, their nagging, their criticisms.

“Nina!” Eric called, in a whine despite the volume.

She walked around the corner toward the shore, away from Eric. It was silly — he would be sure to follow.

“Nina?” She heard him and then his feet cracking branches, stamping the grass like an outsized creature, a brontosaur of a man. “Here you are!” he said, running up to her. “It’s cold. Is he—”

“He’s covered with a blanket!” she snapped.

“Okay. Okay. Okay.” Eric faced the shore, took a deep breath, and gazed at the bay. “Looks so beautiful. Almost makes me wish I could swim in it.”

“Why don’t you?”

“At night?” Eric squeaked. “I’d hit my head on a rock and die.”

“I guess you’d better not,” she answered.

He looked at her. She couldn’t make out his expression, he was half in the shadow of the house. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you. It’s a secret. You’re not supposed to tell your brother and sisters. Your father has given me money to invest.”

“Do you get anything out of it?”

“Of course,” Eric answered with a laugh.

Nina’s experience with her father and money wouldn’t make that answer automatic. Tom seemed to regard himself as a good-works opportunity for his children.

“It was weird. He did it today right after—” Eric stopped himself.

“My fit?” Nina supplied the description for him. “That makes sense.”

“It does?”

“Just Father’s way of apologizing to you.”

“Apologizing?”

“Yeah,” Nina said, and began to walk. When she glanced at Luke, she was surprised to see he was asleep.

Eric hustled beside her. “For what? I thought he was giving me the money because he thought—”

“That too, of course. He wouldn’t take a chance otherwise. I mean, the timing.” Shut up, Nina, she told herself. But she couldn’t. It was a bitter fact, and who else could share the sour taste but Eric?

“Wait,” he said to stop her from entering the house. “This is important. I have to know about this. Don’t be mysterious. If he gave me the money for some personal reason, he might take it away suddenly. I have to know.”

“He gave you the money to apologize for being stuck with Luke and me,” she said, popping the cork on her bottle of sorrow. With the plug out, she felt her strength leak as well. She wanted to cry.

“Oh, no,” Eric said, his voice soft, hurt, like a boy’s. “No, you’re wrong. Maybe he did it because of Luke, because I’m more a part of the family. Not ’cause he thinks badly of you.”

“Your parents love you, Eric. You can’t understand what I’m talking about. It’s like a sin to you, a taboo.”

“No! It’s his way of being closer. He talks with his money. He’s saying he’s on your side.”

She leaned her head onto Eric’s shoulder and closed her eyes to squeeze the tears back.

“Believe me,” Eric pleaded. “Your father loves you. So does your mom. And your brother and sisters are just jealous. That’s part of love too.”

He was so foolish, so naïve, so loving. It made her want to cry all the more. And now she was crying. Dammit. When she went inside, they would see. The tears were loose. Her brain shook from the pain, and rained its aches.

“Believe me,” he kept repeating, a little boy consoling his mom, frightened by her emotion. “Believe me,” he begged.

“I do,” she lied. Anyway, Eric loved her. And he loved his son. If only she could be alone with them and leave the rest of the world out. If only Luke was happier. If only she could fix her baby. She was crying again.

“What is it?” Eric mumbled into her weeping face. “What is it?”

“He doesn’t smile,” she said.

“He’s not even three months!” Eric shouted. Nina shushed him. “He’ll smile,” Eric whispered. “Don’t worry.”

Luke stayed asleep. Her arms hurt from his dead weight. She told Eric to go in ahead of her, tell the others she was coming in with an unconscious Luke, and turn the lights off while she passed through. That way they wouldn’t see her red eyes.

It worked all the way around. They couldn’t see her face, and Luke, other than sighing and retracting his legs, stayed asleep after the transfer to the crib. Nina sneaked off to their bedroom and undressed. She turned out the light, not wanting to squander a minute of the precious hours of Luke’s rest — his record for consecutive hours of sleep was two and a half — but she couldn’t rest.

She opened a window, despite the blocks of cold it let in, and listened to the night earth, the watery, leafy dark earth. Her muscles ached and her brain couldn’t make order out of things. She hadn’t been in the comfortable rewarding embrace of sleep for so long that the real world seemed like a dream, a half-awake world, something she imagined while dozing off on a train ride.

She was almost afraid of real rest, of deep, warm sleep, afraid of the regret and rage she would feel when Luke interrupted it. Better never to have another taste, to forget that delicious fruit existed, than to have it yanked away after a few bites.

Eric entered. He always waited awhile to make sure Luke had settled in, if two hours could be called settled. “Whew,” he said, on feeling the cold.

“You can shut it,” she said, and he did.

She lost the world. The room’s human air corrupted the clean, cool atmosphere of nature. She again heard the sounds of things, the hum of appliances, the clink of a glass; someone’s tread.

Eric took off his clothes. The last three months he hadn’t exercised or slept much more than she, but his body was still smooth, the long ropes of his muscles taut, his chest expansive, decorated by a small patch of curls, his narrow hips without an ounce of fat, the cheeks of his ass like chunks of smooth marble. Clothed, with his frizzy hair and open face, he could almost seem meek; but when he was nude, the graceful power of his six-foot-six frame, upholstered by two hundred pounds of muscle, made Eric a warrior, a young chief ready to lead his tribe.

They hadn’t made love since Luke’s birth.

Her body felt dead, not passionless, but flattened by exhaustion. It took thought to rise, to sit; it hurt even to lie still. An embrace only made her sleepy.

But in the dark of the country night, watching the only man who had loved her tenderly, the shimmering stars and faint moon glowing on his strong body, she felt her skin awaken, the surface tingling, covering the fatigue of her bones, dispelling the despair of her muscles.

She beckoned to him. He came over and she pulled him on top, pressing his wood-hard back to her, her hands touching the hump of his thighs, the smooth of his neck, the span of his underarms. He tried to get to her body, but she urged his head up, not interested in knowing herself. She didn’t want to sense her own decay and weariness, she wanted to feel his vigor.

She fell asleep after he had spent.

She fell into the dark, the absolute rest. In her dreams Eric and she made love on the lawn under the sun. She played in the backyard at Brookline. She rode on Brandy’s shoulders. She made cookies with her mother. She kissed the head of Eric’s red penis and drank wine. She laughed. And she slept deep. She watched her father walk through the woods. She saw him steer the car, the length of his face quiescent, in command.

Her eyes opened. It was day.

Her body was still and warm and relaxed.

It was day? She looked at the clock. Seven-thirty. Eric, his face buried into a pillow, had his mouth open, his eyes blanked by the closed lids.