Only Children (40 page)

“What’s dream?” Byron asked.

“While you were sleeping,” Daddy said.

“Did you think something bad was happening?” Mommy said.

“Monsters. Tigers want to eat me.” There were big cats, everything. Look in the kitchen! Yellow monster cat! “I’m scared.” He screamed to chase it away.

“There’s nothing there,” Mommy said, and kissed his hand, the hand he had pointed at the kitchen darkness.

“In the kitchen?” Daddy said, and turned, Byron turning with him. “I’ll show you.”

“No! No!” Byron squeezed Daddy to make him stop.

“That’s all right,” Daddy said. “I won’t let go of you. Turn on the light, Diane.”

The hall blew up white and orange. It shrank. Nothing but the dumb hall. Mommy lit the kitchen. The same. Nothing but the things, the cooking things.

“You took your diaper off?” Mommy said.

Mommy’s eyes had cried; her mouth was down. “You cry?” Byron said.

Mommy closed her face on his, shutting out light. Her cheeks were slippery like ice, but warm like pillows. “Do you want me to lie down with you?”

“Yes,” Byron said, and leaped from Daddy to Mommy. She put him in a new diaper and new fur, red now, like the picture of Daddy’s burning tiger. Mommy carried him to bed.

“I’m the baby,” Byron said.

“Yes.” Mommy laughed.

“Only babies cry,” Byron said.

Mommy got under the sheets with him. He put his feet on her stomach and dove his head into the hot cave of her arms. “I’m in the mommy cave,” he told her.

“Go to sleep now,” Mommy said.

Don’t want to. But the hot lowered his eyes, only the top of his head was cool and not sleeping. Deep in the mommy cave, everything clean and dry, he was a baby and safe. Safe. And a baby.

“I
THINK
we should”—mommy said more things to Pearl Luke couldn’t hear—“the park.” Luke took his pacifier from the table and pushed it in. That made his mouth feel happy and full, but his body was too big. He climbed on the couch and snuggled into the corner. He pulled his blankey up to his chin and rubbed against the smooth. Mommy would go away, really away, today.

His eyes hurt.

“Luke.” Mommy’s voice was too fast and too high. “Luke, we’re going to get dressed—”

“No!” he said, and then hid behind the blanket, frightened by his own angry voice.

“To go to the park,” Mommy said. She wouldn’t let him say no. “I have to go to school today. I thought you’d walk me to the bus and then you and Pearl can go on to the park.”

“No,” he said softly this time, and hid, thinking: If I stay home, then Mommy can’t go.

“Really?” Mommy was dressed like a going-out night, a grown-up night. “I have to go soon. I thought you’d like to walk me to the bus.”

Luke stared at Mr. Rogers. He was painting his swing yellow. Daddy had made the tape. Luke could remember Daddy pointing to the recorder button: this is how you turn it on in case Pearl doesn’t know. Why wouldn’t she know? What’s wrong with her?

“Luke?” Mommy was over him now. Her knees were dark from the nets stretched over them. “It’s beautiful out. I don’t want you to stay here all day watching television.”

He held on to the TV with his eyes. Don’t look. Her smell covered him. Soft lips kissed his head. Don’t look.

“Luke?” she whispered. “Let’s get dressed.”

Mr. Rogers was showing a film. A film of how they make yellow paint. “Look,” Luke said,

“What’s that?” came Mommy’s voice, like the rain, everywhere and above.

“Making yellow.”

“What? I can’t hear you with your pacifier.”

No. Keep it.

“Oh, I see. Yellow. So that’s how they do it. I’ll bring your clothes and get you dressed while you watch.”

He kept his eyes on the TV. He got the Feeling and moved his bottom to rub it in and away. You press the power and it pops up. The tape goes in—which way? Which way? Pearl won’t know. Remember which way the tape goes, Luke. Pearl won’t know. Why not?

He saw something at the living-room doorway. Pearl stood there with her jacket on.

No no no no no no no no no no.

The color was dust; the paint was milk. Together they make yellow.

Mommy carried his clothes in. She flipped him back on the couch. Luke held on to the TV with his eyes and didn’t look, not at her, not at Pearl.

No no no no no no no no.

Mr. Rogers talked about yellow. Yellow flashing lights, yellow crayons, yellow curtains. Yellow blankey. Smooth on his cheek.

It hurt when Mommy turned off the TV. The world got quiet and small and sad. His eyes closed against the pain, the weakness. Mommy picked him up. Pearl had the stroller waiting.

No no no no no no.

He pressed his face into her, but felt only the rough clothes, not Mommy. “I want to go with you,” he said to her.

“I have to go,” she said, soft, but angry.

“I want! To go with you.”

“You want me to go?”

The stroller was going, he was going.

“No no no no.”

“I want to!” he yelled, and lost his pacifier.

No no.

He let the crying come out.

All the noes were crying out.

“I’m sorry, honey.” Mommy was everywhere and above.

The elevator sank through the floor. She gave him his pacifier back. He felt it fill his mouth, wet inside, outside.

The wall door popped him out into the lobby. There were all those legs and clothes. Voices: “What’s the matter, baby?”

Ramon bothered him. “Watch you cry.”

He hid his face. Don’t watch.

“Watch matter? Big boy don’t cry.”

“Yes, they do,” Mommy said. “Everybody cries sometimes.”

The yellow covered him, hot and smooth and rough.

No.

P
ETER THOUGHT
: I’ve become a character in a poorly written play. Recently, he had seen several with scenes just like the one he was suddenly playing himself. Diane had called out to him when he came home. He had been at a late dinner with a lively group after an Uptown Theater premiere. They had been at Orso, a delightful place, jammed with his favorite celebrities, theater people, and he was smashed. What a good word for it. Smashed, all the little fearful repressions repressed, the opaque partition between outward and inward self smashed by gin. He came home feeling young, relieved the affair with Rachel was over, looking forward to tomorrow’s session, and to a weekend of interesting theater and ballet—and then Diane called to him.

He went into the bedroom, bobbing happily on his sea of alcohol. Diane was in a long nightshirt from L. L. Bean, surrounded by papers, the room filled with cigarette smoke. Maybe she’ll die of lung cancer, he thought with disinterest, wondering, not hoping.

“Peter,” she said in the fake formal tone people adopt when they’re about to speechify. And she went on about her worries. Incredibly obvious worries. Horrible clichés that should be cut from any good drama. She was aging. Byron was becoming precious. He could use a sibling. A sibling? That set off his alarms.

He watched her talk on; he stopped hearing. Her head levitated in his slowed vision. “You want to have another child,” Peter interrupted.

She paused before she answered. “I wanted to know what you think about it.”

He laughed, he couldn’t stop himself, there was no repressing the nonrepression. “Bullshit. You want me to say yes, you don’t want me to think about it.”

“Does that mean no?”

“I don’t want to have another child.”

Diane seemed surprised. How could she be surprised? He had never wanted to have a child. Had he made any speeches that having a kid was great? How could she be surprised? Diane glanced down at her papers, intent on them for a moment. “Has being a father been that bad?” she asked with a sudden look at him.

“No,” he said with a groan, although why he was positively negative was a mystery.

“Would you rather we hadn’t had Byron? Sometimes I think about you asking me to have an abortion—”

“Wait a minute!” He couldn’t stop himself; she was insane, she was out of touch, spinning in the solar system. “Are you saying if I don’t want to have another child, it means I want to kill my son?”

Diane pushed the papers off her lap and pulled her legs up in a crouch, like an aggressive animal, a cat poised. “Are you listening to
me
? Or are you talking to someone else?”

“What?” He felt drunk, stupid. Maybe he wasn’t understanding her.

“
I’m
in this room. Not your shrink.”

“Maybe we should talk about this in the morning.”

“No! That means we’ll never talk about it. Yes, I want to have another child. Not only that. I want you to be a father. Your son is suffering. Do you hear me?
He is suffering
.”

God, the words hurt. They could punish. He remembered noticing that when a scene becomes emotional, the words could be physical, hit you, even in your comfortable aisle seat, whack you in the chest, and knock your breath out. He thought suddenly of Byron, like himself, abandoned without acknowledgment of hurt, living with a ghostly parentage, seen but not felt. Her words transmitted that image.

“I can’t,” he heard himself mumble. “I can’t,” he pleaded.

“You can’t what?” Diane persisted.

Peter stared at her. She isn’t afraid of me.

“You can’t be a father to that wonderful boy? That’s too hard for you?”

She doesn’t want truth; she wants to be righteous. “I’m not interested in any of this,” his voice answered. He was banging inside his body, swelling up to the edges of the shell—hatching. “I don’t want to be married to you. I don’t want to be a father. I told you that. You didn’t listen. You never really listen to me. You think I’m someone to be manipulated, you think everyone is to be manipulated, so the world works the way you want it to work. I can’t be what you want. I can’t! I can’t!” His face had burst through, pressed out into cool world, hot and alive against the chill.

Diane sat still. She looked girlish. Her long nose and dark skin gave her face a tough edge, but her eyes got big, her mouth trembled. She looked ready to cry. “I don’t want to manipulate you—”

But Peter was out of the shell; he was born again, new-feathered and strutting in the sun. “Yes, you do. You think your desires are good and my desires are bad. So you ignore my desires, like I’m a two-year-old and you know better. It’s a vanity all middle-class women have. They live their lives with the unexpressed conviction they are more moral than men. That they care about real things and men don’t. All the men believe it too! But I don’t. You’re just as selfish as I am! You want to control Byron, you want to control me, you want us to meet your schedule. Well, I can’t! I can’t! No matter how much you badger me, I can’t! I can’t!”

She was crying. In a strange way: her head was still as stone, her forehead, her cheeks, her lips didn’t move, but a stream of water dripped straight down, a statue weeping.“I love you—” she started to say.

But he was free; he was born whole again; no matter how bad he was, he was real. “I don’t love you,” he said quite happily. “I don’t give a damn about you.”

Diane bent forward, wailing. Peter was surprised. He reached toward her, reached for the words, to put them back, put them back into his ugly mind. He hadn’t remembered that she was real too.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I don’t mean that.” She went on crying. “I just can’t be what you want. I can’t. I can’t. That’s all. I can’t.”

Diane cried. Peter watched. He tried to think of what he might say.

“I can’t,” he repeated.

From the next room, Byron screamed. Byron screamed the scream of innocence murdered. Byron screamed right into his father’s bones. A cold scream of murder that whistled through Peter. Peter ran to save him.

N
INA DIDN’T
like the feel of school at first. The buildings were too big. The people were too big also. She wasn’t used to being around such large people: competent, talky, able to do things, argue, have opinions, look her in the face, or down at her—everything oppressed her senses.

Each frustrating day at school began as a tragedy at home. Luke’s anxiety would start as soon as Pearl arrived. That first week, Luke saw Nina off with an utter collapse into bawling despair. Nina assumed the worst was over. But the second week, Luke took to grabbing Nina’s ankles and begging her to stay. It would have been comic if it weren’t so crazy. What was wrong? Nina came back home at the time she promised; Luke had no complaints about Pearl. There were many things Pearl didn’t get quite right, but they were trivial and soon corrected. Pearl reported Luke was basically happy. Nina stood in the hallway one morning after she left, and listened for fifteen minutes. The tears stopped after five. She heard laughter and shouts of play after ten. She came downtown at lunchtime one afternoon and watched Luke from a distance while he played with Byron in Washington Square Park—the kid was happy! So why was he clutching her shoes, screaming, “Don’t leave me, Mommy. Don’t leave me, Mommy”?

Maybe it was because of Luke’s gender, she thought one day as she eavesdropped on three students before the start of a color-design class. The trio was in their late teens, a boy and two girls. The young man was a handsome Italian. The girls called him Sal. Sal teased the girls. He complained that women were faithless. Sal’s long eyes were like Luke’s in their shape, and while he moaned that women always did him wrong, those eyes looked wise and clever and in control, the way Luke’s did now when he pulled on her ankles. Maybe it’s a genetic code in men, Nina thought. Shout your dependence on women, complain of separation, and have a ball while the women slink off miserable in their guilt.

Sal was so self-aware that he noticed Nina for the first time, because she was staring at him. “Look at her, she’s another one,” Sal said, his eyes making fun of himself. “She’s deciding right now if she’ll bother to break my heart.”

“No, I’m not,” Nina answered without thinking. She hadn’t spoken to any of the students yet, didn’t want to, wanted to stay outside, just learn, not become one of them.

“She was thinking you’re full of shit,” the stupider of the girls said, and then giggled hard, quickly ashamed of her blunt remark.