Only Children (50 page)

And Eric liked the numbers on Morris’s wrist—an 8 on the end undulated as the skin flexed to lower the food.

Eric was seven when his father told him what the numbers meant. Their color was uneven, faded here, greenish there, their shapes twisted—a consequence of attempts to erase them. Before Eric knew better, he thought they were a spy’s secret code.

Once Eric knew the truth, the next time he got a frank, Eric’s hand trembled when he took it from Morris.

“Enjoy.”

“I’m sorry,” the little confused Eric answered.

What a schmuck, Eric thought, throwing out what was left of the Asian’s hot dog. Morris didn’t need my pity.

Were the Quotron’s numbers going to betray him also?

Why can’t Luke move his bowels?

Luke screamed and screamed while huge, impossible turds came out, usually only halfway. Pearl had told Eric and Nina that sometimes she had to pull them out—

Ugh. It was disgusting. Three o’clock. The last hour. Eric went back to the room with no privacy, to the endless scoreboard.

Joe was happy. His stupid, obvious Dow stocks were soaring— look at them go, the owl seemed to say, blinking at his Quotron. Big multiple point gains, setting new highs.

“Your positions are down,” Aram said dispassionately.

Eric stared at the sheet. How could they be down? The fucking Dow was up forty points! How could he have found withering trees in a forest of winners? Eric stared at the black numbers, tattooed on the page, and instead saw Luke scream at nature’s release. Eric didn’t look up, afraid lest the others see on his face the fear he felt.

Make a decision, for God’s sakes. Don’t be like your father. Dad stayed in that bad location with his little shoe store, sat there while his business dwindled. Move, Mother told him. He didn’t. And Dad went under, ended up as a clerk at a rival’s store, bankrupt in the midst of the go-go sixties.

“Sell,” Eric said.

“Sell what?” Sammy asked.

“Let’s start clearing out the lowest gainers. Bottom half of this.” Eric stabbed the page with a pen, drawing a line to show what should go. “I’ll take this group.” Another stab. “You do them.”

“Don’t panic,” Sammy said.

“Don’t tell me what to do,” Eric said. He looked around. Everyone’s head was down except for Joe’s, the owl head still and huge on its shrinking torso.

“Those OTC stocks,” Joe said. “They lag the blue chips sometimes. Maybe you should hold a day or two. Get better prices.”

“I’m just clearing out half, taking some profits. We’ll reposition on the next sell-off.”

Joe nodded. “Don’t panic. That’s beneath you.”

Sammy looked at Eric, a hand ready to pick up the phone.

“We’ll wait,” Eric said.

P
ETER HELD
Byron’s hand. byron repeatedly withdrew his fingers from Peter’s grip, corks popping free. Byron ran up to a store window; or to chase stray, magically fluttering garbage; or to pretend he was some horrible cartoon character who could fly or run very fast. But Peter always recaptured the little hand, smooth and warm, partly for the pleasure of holding Byron’s energy close, but mostly to hang on. Peter worried that on one of these trips to the violin lessons he would somehow, through an insane random event, lose Byron forever.

Peter had never expected Diane to agree when he offered to take Byron to the violin lessons. It was the first and only task of Byron’s rearing at which Diane admitted she was incompetent and Peter might not be. Diane had conceded defeat for the first time.

Since then, she seemed to do nothing else besides surrendering to every challenge, living a perpetual Appomattox. Peter understood that this meant Diane was very unhappy; sometimes he wondered if she was breaking down. But he didn’t press an investigation because Peter discovered that Diane’s collapse, although irritating and inconvenient in practical ways, was an emotional relief for Byron, as well as for him.

Peter’s first task, when he took over the music lessons, was to inform the school about the destroyed violin and replace it. That was easy. It cost a fortune, but it was only money.

Taking Byron to the lesson was another matter. Peter was nervous the first time. He would have been fearful anyway, left in charge of his son; the fact that it was an activity Diane hadn’t been able to handle scared Peter all the more. But the dreaded event had turned out to be almost boring. Byron’s teacher was a young thing, no more than twenty. And Byron wasn’t rebellious. Although Byron did everything incorrectly, he worked hard to impress Peter. “See, Daddy?” he kept saying.

What should Peter do? Criticize or encourage? He picked the latter. No matter how poorly Byron followed the instructions, Peter smiled, and said, “That’s great, Byron.” It seemed to work, not in the sense that Byron improved, but he continued to try. Later, Peter decided that must have been Diane’s mistake: she hadn’t encouraged Byron; she kept pushing relentlessly, like a mad Olympic coach. Poor Diane, she wanted perfection now. But even the teacher let Byron slide. She gave up correcting Byron’s improper positioning of his feet to concentrate on the violin grip. When Byron reacted testily to those instructions, his teacher gave up on that also and, as a last resort, merely insisted he play the correct two notes on the exercise.

“At home, I want you to practice your foot positioning and how you hold the violin.” The teacher spoke to Byron, but glanced at Peter, to signal it was really his duty.

Of course, Peter realized. They dump the mean part on the parents. That’s why poor Diane had worked so hard, responding to the violin lessons as if she were the student being tested. He felt sorry for her.

“They really expect the parents to do all the work,” Peter commented casually the evening after first taking Byron to a lesson. Peter introduced the topic, hoping to soothe Diane’s feelings, to let her forgive herself.

“Yep,” she said, and kept her eyes on yet another murder mystery. She read them constantly these days, a perpetual mask in front of her face, skulls and daggers, pistols and dark shadows.

“I didn’t do that when we practiced,” Peter said to Diane’s murder mystery. The teacher had suggested they practice right after the lesson when the instructions would still be fresh.

During the practice, Byron had again done everything improperly. But Peter didn’t harass Byron. Peter reminded Byron about his feet, about the proper hold of the violin, before Byron started to practice.

That was the first sign of revolt. “I know!” Byron shouted.

“Don’t shout at me,” Peter said gently. “I’m only going to tell you once. If you do it wrong, I won’t bother you about it. It’s up to you to remember.” For the first few notes, Byron was in order. Then he was chaos: changing positions, the violin sometimes under his chin, sometimes his cheek, sometimes almost floating in the air. When Byron asked to play with the bow—a no-no—Peter let him. Byron soon got bored and gave it back.

“I told him what he had to do at the start,” Peter reported to Diane, still trying to break through the spine of her paperback, to tell her it wasn’t her fault, “and then I let him make mistakes. When it was over, I told him what he had done incorrectly.”

“I’m sure that made it a lot easier.” Diane answered neutrally, and turned away, cuddling with her book.

Again, at being corrected, Byron had balked. “I know, I know,” he whined. “You don’t have to tell me.” He then asked for a cookie.

“It did make it easier,” Peter said, pleased Diane hadn’t argued. “He asked for a cookie when it was done.”

“Un-huh.” Diane read on.

“I told him he could have a cookie after dinner every day whether he practiced or not, whether he did it well or not.”

“Guess we’d better buy more cookies,” Diane said, and laughed. “I’m going to take a bath,” she added, and fled the room.

For months Peter had successfully taken Byron to the lessons and practiced with him every day. Diane never listened—she deliberately went away if they got the violin out in front of her—never asked about Byron’s progress, never responded when Peter raised the subject.

And Byron enjoys it so much, Peter complimented himself, while they walked to yet another lesson. Peter held the eager, twitching little hand and smiled back at a woman who, while passing them on the street, beamed at the sight of father and son and tiny violin case. Diane should feel that way, Peter thought. She should be proud.

She’s just jealous that I’m doing it so well, Peter decided, and squeezed Byron’s warm fingers. Well, to hell with her, Peter thought, his heart full of happiness.

T
HE WORK
was great. Nina was good at it. She knew, not simply because Tad, her teacher and part-time boss, told her so, but because she could feel her own mastery.

Of course, it was nothing, coloring the designs, making a suggestion here and there about hue—very, very gently, creeping through the lair of a sleeping monster. Tad never woke to roar at her. But he sure did yell at the others, especially the pretty young men. Tad would push the loose, bulky sleeves of his sweater up to his elbows for emphasis, and his reedy voice, ill suited for the sounding of anger, squealed up to the fourteen-foot tin ceiling. But never at her. “No, dear,” was the worst he would say.

Is Tad gentle with me because he’s gay? she wondered. Couldn’t the reverse be true just as easily? She mentioned this question once to Eric.

“He’s a fag?” Eric said, chewing the word up in several tones of disgust. He sounded like a real New Yorker then; the word came out of his mouth unvarnished from the raw prejudices and fears of his adolescence. “Of course, he’s a fag,” Eric added. “He’s a dress designer. That’s a relief. I was worried you were having an affair with him.”

“You were?” Nina was amazed. Not at the idea that Eric would be jealous if she had an affair, but at the discovery that he had the imagination to think she might. “You were, really?”

“Yep.”

Nina was pleased for several hours, until it occurred to her that maybe Eric didn’t think any man would want her to work for him unless she was putting out.

“Why didn’t you tell me he was a fag?” Eric asked the next night.

She was angry by then. “Stop calling him a fag.”

Eric laughed, with the indulgent laugh of a parent. “Sorry. Why didn’t you tell me he’s gay?”

“Why should I?” Nina asked. I don’t like what he’s become, Nina thought. Eric was dressed in a suit because he had had to have drinks with a potential client. Eric’s kinky bush of hair was pressed flat, his eyes were circled by fatigue, he spoke loudly, probably from the alcohol—everything smelled of business and money and grown-up maleness. Nothing soft, nothing imaginative, nothing natural, nothing beautiful.

“I don’t know.” Eric flipped through a copy of
Forbes
—he always had some money publication in front of him. “Just gossip.” Eric peered at an article and then spoke abruptly. “Aren’t you worried about AIDS?”

Nina wondered where that came from. She stared.

He tossed the
Forbes
away. “You know, with all that sewing, if he’s gay, couldn’t there be some blood—”

She stared at him. He was kidding. He had to be.

Eric paused and looked nervous, aware he had said something stupid. “I just thought—you know there might be—”

“He doesn’t do any sewing!” Nina shouted. She chuckled at the thought. “You think I’m sitting in a room sewing?” She burst out laughing. Is Eric so out of it, so totally uninterested in me, that he thinks I’m sewing in a sweatshop?

“No, of course not,” Eric said, a grave mask lowering over his innocent bewilderment.

“He sketches designs. I help color them sometimes, draft variations on his instructions. He lets me try out a few little things. Tiny, tiny things—you wouldn’t even notice the changes.”

“Why does he need help coloring them?” Eric asked.

“He doesn’t.” Nina shook her head. She must have explained this before. “He doesn’t want to go through the tedious process of trying different shades. These are just for him to look at, rough sketches, and it’s a way of us learning about the unity of color and design—the whole creative process.”

“You mean, this is the school part?”

“No, not exactly.”

“Is his company publicly traded?” Eric said, and reached for a copy of the
Wall Street Journal
. He flipped to the stock listing noisily, an animal rustling through a bed of leaves.

“I don’t know,” Nina said.

“Could you ask him?”

“No.”

“No?” Eric raised his eyebrows. “Nothing to be embarrassed about. Tell him your husband manages fifty million dollars—he’ll be happy to tell you whether there’s stock for me to buy.”

“Un-huh,” Nina said, and tried to think of something to do or say that would end this. She couldn’t. She stared back at Eric and tried to smile pleasantly, but her chin felt tight, defensive.

Eric leaned forward and spoke with eager condescension. “Really. You see, if he has a publicly traded company, then he’ll own a lot of shares himself, and if I buy for my clients, that’ll send the price up, which increases his worth. Understand?”

“Yes,” she managed to get out. She willed herself to smile brightly, but her muscles rebelled and restrained that desire into a regretful pout.

“You’ll ask him?”

“Un-huh,” she mumbled, convinced that this evasion wasn’t as bad as a direct no.

Eric nodded. He glanced at the stock listings and let the newspaper drop to the floor. “Did Luke take a crap today?”

Nina shook her head. Not this again. What could she do about it? She followed the doctor’s impossible directions: get Luke to take this chocolate pudding stool softener, but don’t make a big deal about his constipation. How could she do both? Luke had never been told to do a particular thing and had the reason why withheld from him. “Just tell him it’s something to make him grow,” the pediatrician said, irritated, wanting to go on to the next patient, to give another quick answer to someone else. But that would be like Luke’s vitamins and she never made him take his vitamins. This laxative had to be administered every night or it wouldn’t work. So she told Luke what it was for and he was scared.