Rafael Yglesias - Only Children

“You work on Wall Street, right?”

“You can tell just by looking?”

“No.” Diane wasn’t amused. “I gossiped with Francine. She told me your wife has been at home, but she’s going back to work.”

“Well, to school first. She wants to design clothes, so she’s taking some courses at FIT.”

“Oh,” Diane said, her eyes doubtful. “Did she used to do that before?”

“No, she dabbled in photography. Did some work as a graphic designer. Flirted with acting when she first came to New York. You work?”

“I’m a lawyer.”

“Criminal?”

“Corporate.”

“And your husband?”

“He’s in charge of the Stillman Foundation’s funding to the lively arts.”

“Really? That’s interesting.” Diane named her and her husband’s jobs in a casual tone, as if they were unremarkable and ordinary. Since, in fact, they weren’t, her manner made Eric feel that she must believe herself and her husband to be very successful, perhaps too obviously successful, so that an open show of pride would be redundant. “Is he at work?”

“He’s asleep,” she said with a grunt. She poked her hands into her jacket, slumping down on the bench, like a benched ballplayer enviously eyeing his active peers. “And your wife?” she asked, turning her head for the first time to look directly into Eric’s eyes.

Reflexively, he couldn’t face them. “She’s asleep too.”

“Well, aren’t they lucky?” Diane said with another disgusted grunt.

“Yes, they are.”

“And how did we get to be such suckers?”

Eric laughed and with the laugh let go of his succession of worries — how can I get Luke to the park? how can I get him to be less shy? how can I get him to be less afraid? how can I make more money? how can I learn to make it on my own? How? How? How? He laughed them out and up, ugly pigeons on the wing, soaring into the open patch of the New York sky.

THAT MISERABLE day when Diane took Byron to the IQ test, expecting triumph and ending instead with hurling Byron into a cab, that miserable day, like so many others, found her happy to return to work. She had noticed long ago that the parents of young children were happy to be at the office on Monday mornings. That afternoon she was grateful for the obligation to get out of the house, away from her cranky two-year-old.

She settled at her desk, returned the accumulated phone calls, and finished the memo she had to prepare for Stoppard, all in record time, more than making up for her absence in the morning.

Then her mind wandered. She knew she should go home. Peter wouldn’t be there; he had a fund raiser and then a show. Peter had asked her to come along, she could call the baby-sitters, but the prospect of getting to bed at midnight or even later, only to be roused at three or four in the morning if she was unlucky (the nights they went out Byron tended to wake) or six-thirty if she was fortunate had defeated her. She should go home, deal with Byron. Maybe all the absences of parents had made him temperamental. She had to force Peter to develop a closer relationship with Byron. Maybe another child would help. Sure, Byron would be jealous, but he would have a companion.

Companion in misery?

It wasn’t that bad. She remembered last Saturday in the park, watching Byron play with that boy Luke. He was happy. And they were the two smartest kids there, she knew that. The parents around her and Luke’s father, Eric, stared openly when Byron and Luke returned from building their sand castle and went into a kind of elaborate duet of speech, their words fashioning the turrets their small awkward hands could not, their language sculpting details that the crude sand couldn’t define.

“How old are they?” one mother asked.

“Two,” Diane said.

The mother shook her head in unhappy confirmation and her eyes went to her own kid, a lummox, his eyes dull, his mouth hanging open moronically. He had pathetically tried to horn in on Byron and Luke’s creation. Luke had immediately backed off, Diane had noticed. She had felt Eric tense beside her, but her Byron had saved the situation.

“We’re building! Not you!” Byron had commanded and the dullard had stumbled back on his heels, as if pushed.

If only Byron had cooperated with the tester! What a show he would have put on! Diane had learned the various questions and tasks the IQ test put to the children and she knew Byron could manhandle them.

She liked Luke’s father. He was a huge man, well over six feet, with big, broad shoulders, his face wide and cheerful, his kinky hair glowing in the sun. His big, meaty hands were warm — he had touched her on the arm to emphasize some story — and he had a bearish love for his son. He gathered Luke into his thick arms when Luke finished gabbing about the castle and thus miniaturized Luke. Luke was swaddled like a newborn infant against Eric’s powerful chest. Eric’s full lips kissed Luke on the forehead unselfconsciously, with none of the shy affection Peter occasionally gave to Byron, with none of the false, presumably male heartiness of the typical American dad, but with a strong desire, fierce and desperate and comforting. “You’re great, Luke!” Eric had said, almost wildly, a stage character bursting into song.

She imagined going to bed with Eric, made small and warm and protected by his body, swamped by his wet lips, her hands on the tight engine of his ass. … “You’re great!” he might sing at the end.

She felt contempt for Peter.

Of course, Peter still shone bright; he was smooth, a polished precious gem, a jewel compared with other husbands. Eric might be good for a night, but probably the brain was oafish, his ability to understand her limited.

Yet she felt disdain for Peter. He was a jewel, but what use was it? What real value did she get out of his refinement? His wit? His charm? His impeccable taste? If Peter could take her to dinner and a show and then become a bear in bed, a hungry mammal, instead of a self-conscious civilized man, then …

That wasn’t it. It wasn’t sex. Peter didn’t feel passion, not for his child, not for her, not even for life. He felt only ironies. He understood when someone portrayed passion on the stage, but he’d flee from the roaring reality.

Byron had passion. He had energy and the love of doing, and his mind had the refinement to make something of life.

She missed Byron. Diane called home.

“The Hummel residence,” Francine’s obviously black accent answered.

How weird, Diane thought, at the picture of her life that was summoned by having a black servant answer with that antique phrase. “Hi, Francine, it’s Diane. How’s it going?”

Francine lowered her voice. “He’s playing in his room. Seems happy, but he keeps talking about”—she laughed, embarrassed—“keeps talking about how you don’t love him.”

“What?”

Francine whispered. “ ‘Mommy don’t love me, Mommy don’t love me,’ that’s what he keeps saying. I told him to stop.” She laughed again. “He told me I was fat.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I don’t mind, I just gave him a good hard pinch, told him he was too short to be telling me I was fat. That stopped him. He’s all right. Just likes to get his way. Who doesn’t?”

“I’m coming straight home,” Diane said.

“Not if you have work. He’s fine.”

“I’m done. That’s why I called. I’ll be home in twenty minutes.” She hung up and moved quickly, as if her house were burning down. I was wrong, I was wrong, she thought, clearing her desk.

Didi walked in just as Diane was ready to go. “Get your coat. We’re going for a drink with our mentors.”

“I can’t.” But she stopped still, waiting for permission to leave.