Only Children (16 page)

“Here we go,” Eric said, approaching with Luke.

She glanced at her watch to note the time of the feeding.

They had been home ten minutes.

P
ETER ANSWERED
the phone eagerly. He grabbed the receiver—reaching for salvation. Rescue, anyway, from the tedium of home. At nine o’clock Diane was already asleep, exhausted by her solo care of Byron. This was the final week of her housebound status. She still had no assurance of a nanny. However, she claimed she was close to hiring away a terrific woman for the amazing fee of three hundred a week. Three hundred a week! The amount wasn’t a problem. Between them, Diane and Peter earned one hundred and sixty thousand a year, and his trust fund yielded him an additional after-tax income of fifty thousand. But Peter thought of their resources as exceptional. How in God’s name were all those other people paying for it? And there were so many! Since the birth of Byron, he had noticed the streets of New York were abundant with children: well-dressed, alert toddlers overseen by black, brown, and coffee-skinned women. Everywhere he saw little white boys and girls pulled reluctantly by large dark hands, their pale, smudged tear-stained faces wiped and kissed by thick lips, or their limp, exhausted bodies carried by plump, sweaty peasant arms. Children of the rich raised by the poor.

It gave him pause. Why?

Peter’s childhood—after the divorce—had been the same, although his caretakers had been white: a fat, affectionate Polish woman, a dour young Swedish graduate student, a cheerful middle-aged English nanny dressed in starched white. Weren’t they merely versions of the current phenomenon? He had grown up intelligent, well educated, socialized. He was no finger-licking, drug-taking street tough. He had no urges to have a few beers and go bowling.

He began to laugh. All these thoughts were so deliciously unliberal, unprogressive, bigoted. And as he laughed, the sleeping silence of his tedious home was broken by the ringing phone.

“Hello?”

A pause. Not a broken connection. There was someone there. Rachel? He hoped.

“Hello,” he repeated, gently, to encourage her.

“Uh … hello, this is Pearl. Is this the Hummel residence?”

The black southern accent told him this was Diane’s hope. “Yes, it is.”

“I met your wife in the park. I take care—”

“Yes, yes,” he said eagerly. “She told me.”

“Is she there?”

“She’s asleep. I can have her call you tomorrow, or—”

“She said you needed a baby-sitter for your boy. He’s so beautiful! A strong head. I think he’s gonna be a big boy.”

That pipsqueak? My son? Peter was five-seven, Diane five-five. The chances Byron would be big were small. “Thank you,” he said.

“I can’t leave my girl right now. Wouldn’t be fair to her parents. But my friend—I don’t know whether you need to hear about other people—but my friend Francine is looking for work. She’s taken care of many children. I never recommend people, you understand? I would be ashamed to recommend somebody who wasn’t any good, who might not be good. Oh, I would die if something bad happened because people had trusted me and I had to recommend someone who wasn’t good. My friend, I’ve known her since I was young, she’s taken care of many, many children—”

Peter had opened his mouth several times to answer, but she kept on, her pauses unexpected.

“—she knows what she’s doing. And she’s ready right now, just like your wife needs. But you don’t even have to see her or talk to her. I just felt obliged to help out, you understand?”

“Yes—”

“And my friend, she’s good, just as good as me. Although I like to think I’m the best, you understand; we all think we’re special in some ways. I may not be much—I didn’t get much schooling, I’m no good handling doctors or Con Edison, but I knows children. I love them and take good care. My friend’s the same. But let me tell you something, you can never tell my friend I said so, but there’s no need to be paying her three hundred dollars. She’ll be happy with two hundred and fifty.”

“Oh?” Peter said, at last with something firm to grasp.

“Oh, my, three hundred! You don’t need to be paying nobody that much. But now don’t you be telling Francine I said so. She’d kill me! But really there’s no need to be paying anybody that much.”

“I see. How do I—how do we get in touch—how do we call—”

“I can give you Francine’s telephone number. She knows all about the job. Hope you don’t mind my talking. Course, I didn’t tell her nothing about money. I don’t be talking money with my friends. That’s not something I do. Her number is—”

“Hold on.” He got a pad and pen and wrote down the digits. She repeated her speech again about how rarely she recommended anyone because of her fear that she would feel ashamed later. And once again she referred to the money, asking for an assurance that Peter and Diane wouldn’t tell Francine how much they might have offered if she, Pearl, hadn’t told them otherwise.

The call left him laughing. The intrigue this black woman had gone in for, on the one hand getting a job for her friend, on the other making sure she wasn’t paid more than herself, reminded him of New York theater people, allies who pulled for each other as long as none of their separate boats got too far in front. When Ted Bishop, head of the Harlequin Theater, had lobbied Peter to get the Stillman Foundation to put up money to help relocate the Uptown Theater (in theory a rival of Harlequin), Peter had done so and reported back to Ted his success: a hundred thousand for the move. Peter had forgotten to calculate that that was twice the foundation’s contribution to Harlequin for the past two seasons. Consequently, for the next six months he had to listen to Ted slight the Uptown Theater (now in midtown) until Peter convinced the foundation to liberate additional funds to give Ted one hundred thousand to refurbish Harlequin. Indeed, he reflected, this ignorant southern black had, unlike Ted Bishop, known in advance she would be jealous if her friend was paid more. What a thought. What if education and a privileged rearing only resulted in more self-deception rather than extra generosity?

And who had taught Peter his lessons? His mother, with her pretense of artistic talent? Or sad-eyed Swedish Gertrude, too shy to look his stepfather in the face, but able to read bedtime stories with such passion and fervor that Peter fell in love with being an audience? Or was it his English nanny, Betty? Betty had a taste for the theater and talked his parents, or at least his pretentious mother, into permitting her to bring Peter along for her weekly excursions to Shakespeare in the Park, Broadway matinees, and even several baffling Off-Broadway works.

But that was different from these black women caretakers. Surely they wouldn’t be taking Byron to see Kevin Kline at the Public or hear Mandy Patinkin sing Sondheim. Maybe
Dreamgirls
, he thought, and broke up again.

Shouldn’t I be horrified? Allowing my son to be raised by ignorant, overweight women? Spending forty, fifty hours a week in their care—that must have an effect.

He tried to remember his mother, Gail, caring for him—young, embracing him, taking him to the park, bathing him, holding him, reading a story at night.

But there were few memories.

Gail
had
held Peter’s head over the toilet one ill night, sick with dreams of grotesque creatures, wakened by vomiting. Later her elegant hand had tilted a crystal glass of ginger ale to his lips. He remembered the pale bubbles dancing on her wedding diamond.

It must have been a Sunday. The nanny’s day off.

Otherwise the images were of Gertrude’s thin, straight blond hair, so stiff the edge of her ear split through it; or the Pole’s sauerkraut lunches; or the little heaves of Betty’s shelf of a bosom, sighing over romantic lyrics, swelling with the brassy Broadway overtures.

Then, later, in real childhood, in the limber elasticity before the voice changed, Peter’s life was school and visiting his friend Gary. Dinner after dinner with Gary. Summer camp with Gary, overhearing fights between Gary’s parents, sleeping in Gary’s upper bunk on weekends.

Peter must have spent time at his own home.

But he couldn’t remember it.

“Do you remember that awful woman Paula?” his mother said idly at one interminable Thanksgiving dinner.

“Gary’s mother? Of course.”

“She liked to tell people that we dumped you on them. That you were constantly at their house.”

“I
did
spend a lot of time there.”

“Because you wanted to! And because Gary refused to stay over with you. Remember? He was too sensitive.”

Peter thought about it, tried to recall. He just naturally seemed to end up staying for dinner at Gary’s. Adding him wasn’t hard. After all, Gary’s parents almost never cooked. Mostly it was a diet of pizza, deli, Chinese food.

“They didn’t seem to mind,” he had answered.

“No! She loved it. Kept Gary out of her hair. And she could brag we were neglectful parents.”

But you were, Mother. Children didn’t interest you.

“Peter! Peter!” Diane’s voice, hoarse and angry, called out. Behind it, a background noise: he heard a siren wail. Not a siren. His son, crying.

Peter got up from his desk, opened the study door. “What is it?”

“Give him a bottle!”

“What!” he said, shouting to be heard above Byron’s siren.

“There’s a bottle of formula on the counter!” she shouted from the dark of their bedroom. “Give it to him!”

Peter had heard the first time. He considered reminding Diane that he had warned her—he wouldn’t help take care of Byron. He listened to Byron’s wail, rising to a pitch, fading out, rising again. It didn’t bother him.

“Hurry up!” she said.

Why not? Peter walked into the kitchen. A bottle—it looked like a missile to him—stood on the counter. He took it into Byron’s room.

Byron’s body was thrashing in the crib. He grunted and farted and then let his siren sound. There was something frightening in the activeness of his activity. Arms flailed. He bumped his face into the mattress repeatedly, trying to lift himself.

For a moment, Peter puzzled over how to pick up Byron
and
hold on to the bottle. He put it on a shelf beside the rocker. When he grabbed Byron, the siren was cut off. Peter lifted him by his bird’s chest, puffed with bone. Byron arched his back when Peter took him in his arms, his head thrusting for escape. But when Peter brought the bottle into Byron’s vision, the little boy went still. His eyes widened.

With delight at the sight.

With suspense at the pause.

His mouth opened in an O. Peter put the bottle nipple inside and the lips clamped, the cheeks puffed, his jaw worked.

“You like this,” Peter said, chuckling.

“What?” Diane called out.

Byron’s body started. “Shhh,” Peter said. “Nothing,” he called out.

“Is he okay?” she screamed.

“Yes, he’s fine.” Byron’s eyes closed, the lids wrinkled and tired. But his jaw worked and a stream of little bubbles running up the bottle showed he was drawing formula. Byron’s legs, emanating heat from the soft material of the stretchy, pushed out with pleasure at the onset of getting liquid. His body, taut with desire moments ago, sighed in Peter’s arms. The weight of Byron’s neck pressed against the crook of Peter’s elbow, and then Byron’s legs sagged at the knees and his plump arms dipped into the air, like idle oars. Peter envied Byron’s pleasure. He admired Byron’s passionate desire—wailing to be fed—and his equally fervent satisfaction—the tiny body absorbed, obsessed, by a single longing.

Once there must have been such lust in himself, an ache which, frustrated, caused rage and despair. Diane had taken to complaining that babies were so selfish, so completely unaware of everyone else’s feelings. How marvelous that very quality seemed to Peter.

Byron fell asleep. His mouth, that pink hole of suction, sagged open, the bottle nipple sliding out. Peter put it back on the shelf, half empty. Byron lay relaxed in his arms, romantically enervated, like Hamlet borne offstage. He touched the puffy jowl. Soft.

Peter carried Byron to the crib. Byron’s body started at being let go, but quickly loosened into unconsciousness again.

“Sometimes,” an exhausted Diane had said over dinner, “I think he looks at me and thinks: food.”

That’s right, Byron, Peter thought to the sleeping figure of his son. Fuck ’em. Get what you can.

E
RIC PUSHED
the carriage back and forth. Back and forth. A little less far away, then a little less back. Back and forth. He measured the distance by the darker edge of the floorboards at the living room’s doorsill. The white wheels had been crossing them, then they only touched, now they failed to reach.

Luke’s body was still, a hump underneath the baby blue cotton blanket. His head, covered by soft curls of black hair, was on its side, treating Eric to a view of his profile. The eyes were shut—at last. But his back still heaved rapidly, panting. Back and forth on the silent wheels, slower and slower. Eric let his eyes stray to the television, tuned to an idle cable television channel that ran that day’s closing stock market prices. ITT rolled by … 351/2. Fuck.

His options had five days to go. They were still in the money, but each day closer to expiration without a further move up meant an erosion of his profit. Bulls get rich, Bears get rich, Pigs get nothing. He should have taken his profit last week. Now he would barely clear 10 percent. If ITT were unchanged for three more days, even that would be gone. Why the fuck wasn’t there a confirmation on the buyback rumor? It would push the stock by five points. That would quadruple his options; he’d clear a hundred thousand. If something didn’t happen tomorrow morning, he’d have to sell. Couldn’t afford a loss now.

He had lost track of the motion of the carriage. The quiet rubber wheels had shifted, so the hood was pointed at the wall instead of the open doorway. Eric looked away from the television just as he gave a push forward. He saw, only a second before it happened, that he had aimed the carriage and its sleeping occupant into the wall.

“No!” he said, but it was too late. The carriage recoiled from the impact, its springs bouncing. Eric yanked the carriage back. A spasm went through Luke’s body—the legs kicked out, his head jerked. The mouth opened and the groaning squeaks began again. “Dammit.” He rolled the carriage back and forth quickly again. “Pay attention!” he lectured himself. Luke continued to complain, his body tense, fighting the motion. “Come on,” Eric said. “I’m sorry. Forget it happened.” Back—forth—back—forth, fast, the vibrations diminishing Luke’s squalling into musical moans, until finally they subsided into smacking sounds of desperate suction on his pacifier.