Only Children (43 page)

It was so obvious to Diane, a truth glowing in the sky as big and bright and warm as the sun. How could Peter find shadows in this brilliant light?

“Peter’s like Tony,” Betty said. “He has the sensibility of a creative artist. They go through moods; they can’t stand to think that they’re married and have kids. Makes them feel ordinary—”

“They
are
ordinary,” Diane said, relishing the reassurance of common sense, of what she loved in the law, its ruthless disregard for the distortions of self-delusion, its insistence on fact.

“Well, they’re not your average men.”

“Feeling that having kids is a drag on your freedom ain’t exactly a sophisticated or unusual male reaction,” Diane said, enjoying her denigration of Peter and Tony, pleased to irritate Betty’s pride in her husband. Tony was worse than Peter, Diane thought. Tony not only ignored his children and, according to Peter, whined about them privately, but also put on a public display of loving them, waxing sentimental at parties on the joys of fatherhood, even exploiting the current rage for involved fatherhood in his recent play. The hero, a thinly disguised portrait of Tony, was shown as a brilliant and charming but adulterous and insecure man, who is finally redeemed when circumstances put him in sole charge of his child during a dangerous illness. “Unconvincing,” the
Times
had said about the play’s final scene. But the stupid thing ran for almost two years, flattering a city full of yuppie men and reassuring their maltreated, eager-to-be-fooled wives. Like me, Diane thought, suckers desperate to believe they had bested their mothers, had gotten their men to be different.

“You really feel bitter about Peter,” Betty said.

“Yeah, I do. I gave him all the room in the world. I got up with Byron every morning, even though my work is hard. Peter has a staff meeting a week, he has a lunch date. That’s his workday. The rest of it is going to openings, eating at Orso—some tough life. But I get up with Byron, I make sure there’s food in the house—” Diane damned the flow and swallowed the rest of her complaints.

“It’s too hard,” Betty said quietly. “There’s too much stress in your work—”

“My work isn’t stressful.”

“—Along with having a baby? Diane, it’s too hard.”

Betty, of course, had downgraded to part-time employment after her first child. With the birth of her second, she had quit altogether. People always believed, no matter what they said, that everyone should copy their life choices. Even if they were miserable. And whether Betty admitted it or not, Tony’s play was a public humiliation for Betty, an advertisement that he was consistently unfaithful to her, that he stayed in the marriage only because he loved his children. This point of view was a lie. Diane knew it was a lie. Tony would collapse without Betty; the stuffing would come out of his bright suit of clothing like a scarecrow rotting in an abandoned field. But Tony had manufactured this falsehood into a play, and everybody took it to be true and felt sorry for Betty. Diane wanted so badly to say this to Betty, to make her know the fucking truth. “I’ve been thinking of quitting,” Diane said instead.

“You have.” Betty nodded with an obnoxious, knowing air. “You can afford to, right?”

“Peter’s rich.” That was another thing wrong with Peter, another free pass he’d been given that had made him spoiled and selfish. “Maybe I should do what he’s probably doing. Go out and get myself a lover.”

Betty, to Diane’s surprise, laughed. She looked off musingly. “I’d do it too. But aren’t you scared of AIDS? God, when I read those articles, when Tony tells me about—you know Raul Sabas has it?”

“Really?” That was sad. Even in her rage at theater people, Diane got an image of Sabas dancing across the stage and singing of love, his face happy, looking to the sky. “Poor man,” she said.

“Yeah, they’re saying it’s lymphoma, but it’s AIDS.”

“Well, I might get it anyway,” Diane said, determined to be hard, to be truthful. “How the hell do I know who Peter’s screwing?”

“Diane, stop it. That’s horrible.” Betty fussed with her napkin and then tossed it on the table. She picked up her purse and opened it nervously, then stopped. She looked puzzled. “I don’t smoke anymore. Can you believe that? I was going for a cigarette.”

“Maybe he’s gay,” Diane said, bored by Betty, especially by her quitting smoking.

“Tony gay!” Betty arched in a funny, cartoon leap, cat on a stove, paws in the air, voice screeching.

“I don’t know, but I was talking about Peter. Be just like him— being in the closet. He’s in the closet about everything else, every other feeling. Christ, he’s got the biggest closet in New York. He lives his whole life in the dark.”

“Calm down,” Betty ordered, obviously made uncalm herself by Diane. “Have you thought about seeing a therapist—”

“Not you too!”

“It’s helped Tony,” Betty stammered.

“Maybe instead of my quitting,” Diane answered, “you should get your old job back. Everything is in terms of Tony.” Betty stopped fidgeting, a deer frozen by headlights. Betty’s look of shock and hurt slowed Diane down, but Diane couldn’t prevent a furious mumbled afterthought: “Tony, Tony, Tony.”

Betty stared at Diane, her mouth tight. “Why are you so angry at me?” she asked in the tone of a judge challenging a defendant to express remorse about his crime.

Last chance for mercy, Diane thought. What the hell, I’ll make it. “I guess because you’re happy, because Tony is happy, you got two kids, you don’t feel any conflict about work.”

“Sure I do!” Betty said, at ease again. “I go out of my mind when Tony goes to L.A. for script conferences and I’m stuck with the kids for weeks. I don’t have anything to say when I’m at parties except that Gina is now talking, and Nicholas is starring in the Lower School Music Assembly. Maybe I should start working part-time again and you should cut back.”

“Betty.” Diane couldn’t help chuckling at her naïveté. “There’s no way to make partner and work part-time.”

“Is it really that important?” Betty asked gently.

“Making partner?”

“Yeah.”

“You’re just a clerk if you don’t make partner. You take orders.”

“I didn’t realize it was that important to you,” Betty said quietly. “Obviously, I knew you wanted to practice law, but—”

Betty was right, Diane decided later, making partner wasn’t that important. Diane went back to the office and ran into Didi, who was bursting with office gossip. One of the middle-aged partners had left his wife and shacked up with a first-year associate. Everybody was shocked at the partner’s many blunders: he hadn’t closed out the joint financial accounts; he hadn’t bothered to conceal that he’d moved in with the young associate; he hadn’t discussed it with Stoppard or the other powerful partners who might disapprove. And as for the first-year associate, well, her career was finished. “They’re both crazy,” Didi said.

But they were in love. Maybe they had flipped, but if not, if it was passion, then why should the senior partner care if he got screwed in the divorce settlement, if he got hassled by Stoppard, why should the first-year associate worry about a possible partnership seven or eight years hence? Why should a career block happiness?

Yes, Diane no longer believed that justice would prevail in the world, that blacks would ever be given equal opportunity, that there would be peace, that the rich would get poorer, and the poor richer, or that any of the dreams of her college days would come true—but to go to the other extreme, and decide that making partner in a law firm was more important than her own peace of mind, that was madness.

Diane said none of this to Didi. She merely nodded at the titillated Didi and thought: I don’t even need the money. Once alone in her office, Diane called Peter.

“Do you care,” she asked her husband without a preliminary, “if I look for other work?”

“Like what?” Peter said.

“I don’t know, teaching, maybe even public-interest law. No, that could be a heavy caseload. Anything that leaves me more time to be with Byron.”

Silence. What was he calculating? The cost to him?

“Are you worried about the money?” Diane asked.

“Of course not,” Peter snapped, with the true contemptuous dismissal of inherited money. She believed him. “Is this your way of preparing for a second child?” he asked.

“You don’t want another child,” Diane answered.

“You don’t always pay attention to what I want,” Peter said.

He’s prepared a final argument against me. For a moment, she couldn’t swallow or talk. He’s ready to divorce me, Diane thought so coldly that she chilled herself.

“I think it’s a good idea,” Peter said before she could answer. “I still don’t want to have another child. But I think it would be good for Byron if you were around more.”

“Fine,” Diane said, and hung up without a good-bye. She waited for Peter to call back. He would have in the past. Even if he didn’t mean it, Peter would call back and say, “Are you angry?” listen to her bill of indictments, and then say, “I’m sorry, I’ve been bad. My mother’s driving me crazy. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. I love you. I’d fall apart without you.” Even if the words slid out of him too fast, soda cans dispensed indiscriminately, sugar bombs for a little girl, that effort of insincerity showed he still cared.

Now he doesn’t even bother to lie, she thought coldly, and again shivered with dread.

I
T WAS GONE
! It was gone!

Luke’s belly was full of air again, his legs no longer heavy, and back there, though it stung and pinched, he was empty, he could breathe, he could move because it was all gone, pushed out—

But the eye. He couldn’t get rid of the eye. He tried not to move it. Look still, don’t go fast to see.

It hurt hot. It stabbed. Go away, please.

“Don’t you feel better now?” Daddy said, coming with a new diaper.

Don’t say no. They put things in it. “Yes.”

“Did it hurt a lot?”

“Yes,” he said softly. No! He moved it. The hot. The poke. Hurt! Hurt!

“Do you have to go again? Do you want to go on the potty?”

“No, no.” He pushed all the things away with the word, with his body. The potty, pooping, his eye, looking at it, the hurt, the hurt, the hurt. Go away, please. The soft, smooth water came in his eyes. Sting around the thing, burning, but making it soft, the hard spot in the eye, get soft, go away, go away.

“All right, all right.” Daddy hugged him. “Forget the potty. Let me get your diaper on in case you have to do more.”

I don’t, I don’t, but up he went, a pillow in the air, little in Daddy’s big hands.

“Whee,” Daddy said, and made him fly. “Luke the jet, coming in for a landing.” Daddy’s face worked hard putting on the diaper. Then Daddy looked at Luke’s eyes, and woke up to Luke, smiling. “I love you, Luke,” Daddy said, and it was like walking out into the sunlight, everything bright and warm.

“Whoosh!” He-Man raised his arm, his jets firing him up and down, big legs on the ground. “I have—” The thing was back in his eye. Stand still, don’t look at fast things.

“Luke … ?” Daddy watched him.

No, no.

“You have to go again?”

“I want to watch television.”

Daddy sat quiet, a pigeon watching. His chest puffed and sank. His head lowered.

“I won’t,” Luke said, and the tears came again, soft on the burning hurt, melting it away, go away, go away.

“What’s bothering you?” Daddy said to the ground.

“My eye,” Luke said, and he covered it. Don’t touch, Daddy, don’t look.

“Okay, sit on the couch. I’ll put on the TV.” But Daddy carried him, gentle, and kissed him. Blankey covered the hurt eye. Dark and cool, he kept still. It’s okay. Don’t move.

Don’t look at the fast things. Go away. Go away.

“W
E’RE GOING
to go out,” Mommy said. Daddy too.

“To Grandma’s?”

“No, to a restaurant.”

“Yah! Yah! Yah!” Byron danced like they liked. Daddy smiled. Mommy rubbed his head.

“So you told Stoppard,” Daddy said; he kept talking all the time to Mommy. About the dumb work things. It was bright in the night. Only people’s faces were light. They flashed on and off. And greens and reds and yellows dripped and stretched on everything. Only big people were out, big boys like Byron, like Stupid poop head.

“Luke got hurt.”

“I’m amazed, Diane. I can’t believe you just went ahead.”

“Luke got hurt! Luke got hurt!” Bounce up, bounce ball up. Too see me! See me!

“What? Who got hurt? He-Man?”

Daddy don’t know. “No! Luke got hurt!”

“Shhh! Byron!” Mommy said hard. “We’re going into the restaurant now. Other people are eating. You have to be quiet. I want you to talk in a whisper.”

“Talk in a whisper?” Daddy said, and laughed.

“Ha! Ha! Ha!” Bounce up at Daddy. “Whisper! Whisper!”

“Shhh!” Mommy pulled him down. Like the elevator sinking, sinking. “Here we are. Now be quiet. Or we’ll go right home”

“I want go home!” Byron pushed, pushed at Mommy’s leg, fall on her, to give.

“Okay.” Mommy pulled away from the glass door, from the stretching lights.

“Diane—” Daddy called.

“No!” Byron pulled back to the door, to the fun. “No! No! I be quiet.”

“Byron’ll be a good boy and be quiet?”

“Yeeeesss.” The noise spun and tickled in his mouth. “Yeeeessss,” he sounded.

“Want to sit next to me, Byron?” Daddy had the glass door open. Balls of light bounced over the tables. There were men with doormen buttons.

“Who are you?” Byron asked a big one.

“Marry O—bats you name?”

The chairs had red behinds and black backs! There was a cake on the windowsill!

“What’s your name?” Mommy shouted in his ear.

“You know,” Byron said, and got his ear away from her hot noise.

Daddy laughed. He was happy. Daddy put him up, up over the black backs, and down on a red bottom. In a grown-up chair!

“Byron,” Mommy said to the big stomach man with buttons.

“Hat name?”

“Byron,” she said again.

“Surrey?” Stomach mumbled.

“Byron,” she kept saying.

“I’m Byron!” he shouted to stop them. “Me!”