Only Children

by Rafael Yglesias

  When she tried to move her bowels, the beginning of the effort frightened her. She worried that it might provoke a contraction. She started to laugh at herself, but the release of tension in her face loosened a sob instead.

  “Honey?” Eric called out nervously. “Are you okay?”

  She pressed her forehead with her fingers to hold back more; her whole body was engaged in an effort to restrain nature, fighting the overwhelming uncivilized elements with thin weather stripping and tattered insulation. Nothing could stop this hurricane; it would blow through her, the swirling force blasting her open to take what it wanted.

  Suddenly she was peeing. She had no memory of receiving a request from, or of sending an order to, her bladder. Already the mutiny had succeeded: the ship’s course was in the hands of the crew; she had become a bystander—locked below—forced to guess at what was going on.

  Wiping herself was a joke. She caught a glimpse of the ridiculous maneuver in the mirror and winced.

  Eric greeted her the moment she opened the door: “Soup’s ready. Did you have any luck?”

  So now every body function was going to become an item on the news. Why should she tell him if she had crapped or not? She shook her head no.

  Her disgust at having to answer was then misunderstood for upset at the failure. “They give you an enema at the hospital,” Mr. Information said with an encouraging smile. “Remember? They told us—”

  “Thanks for reminding me,” she said, not concealing her sarcasm.

  Eric laughed good-naturedly. He hovered beside her, walking awkwardly, matching her slow steps with halting ones of his own. Nina scowled at him. He scrunched his big face up: expectant, eager, ready to fulfill any request. The sight was charming and broke her irritation. She smiled at him and touched his chin with her hand. Eric caught it in his own and kissed it. “Mmmm. Warm,” he commented. He led her to the kitchen table, where a bowl of chicken broth sat forlornly—no napkin, no plate underneath. She sipped it, tasting nothing. Eric disappeared for a few minutes.

  When Eric reappeared at the doorway, she stared in disbelief; he had the video camera to his face, the carrying case strapped to his back. The flashing light above the lens warned her he was taping, so she didn’t say the various obscenities that occurred to her. Eric wouldn’t edit them, and years later her child would be doomed to watch the spectacle of his mother cursing out Dad only hours before the moment of joyous birth.

  “Well?” Eric prompted, his voice muffled by the camera.

  “It’s a fabulous bowl of soup,” she said in a flat voice.

  He laughed. “That’s great,” he commented. “This is the big day. How do you feel?” he continued.

  The red light flashed at her impishly. “I feel like Greta Garbo.”

  “What?” he mumbled. The zoom lens hummed as he came in for a close-up.

  “I vant to be alone!” she snapped, unable to conceal that there was real anger in the joke.

  Instantly he shut off the camera.

  “You’re not taking that to the hospital,” she said in an ominous tone.

  “Okay, okay.”

  “Put it away and keep me company.”

  “Okay,” he said in a humble voice. He carried his equipment out meekly. He reappeared moments later and seated himself opposite, rocking back on the kitchen chair, staring at her, his knees bouncing nervously.

  “A watched pot never boils,” she said, raising a spoonful of soup to her lips. She smiled and then sipped cautiously.

  AT TEN O’CLOCK in the morning Peter and Diane Hummel surveyed their preparations. The baby’s room—they would be having a boy—was in a ghostly state of perfection. Objects were placed in neat rows, obviously unsullied by use: the gaily colored hanging animals were still; the crib sheets were taut; the baby carriage’s rubber wheels were white and shiny, its chrome frame glistened, and the hood yawned its emptiness.

  Diane stood at the changing table and pulled at the small mattress to make sure it was securely strapped. She had a frightening thought: what if something happens and the baby is born dead? Then this sleeping room, awaiting the life to waken it, would remain in a coma—a tomb for their expectations, its perfection mocking their arrogant preparations.

  Peter had no such morbid fantasies. He had praised the existence of amniocentesis: knowing the sex, they could buy clothes in advance; with the assurance that the child was healthy, anxiety was minimized; and they didn’t have to go to the fuss of picking a girl’s name. Peter also maintained he was happy about the fact that their doctor, once Diane was two weeks late, decided to schedule a Caesarean. He regretted that their natural-childbirth training would be wasted—they had put a lot of effort into it—but after all, there would be no pain, no exhausting vigil, only a neat scar, cleverly placed so that even if Diane wore a bikini, it would be hidden. The process would be sensible and orderly. They weren’t hippies anymore—actually, they weren’t when everybody else was—and this procedure seemed civilized, coordinated, and convenient. Peter had been a reluctant father (she bullied me into it, was the way he described it to himself) and had agreed only on the condition that Diane guarantee him his work and their social life wouldn’t suffer. Many of their friends, when Peter told them of the conditions he had set before he agreed to have a child, had said that his vision of fatherhood, besides being coldhearted, was impossible; this scheduled birth reassured Peter that raising a child could be neat and organized.

  From the window, Peter watched for the car while Diane had her premonition of disaster at the changing table. Peter remembered what his mother-in-law had said a few months ago when he confessed his worries. “When you see that beautiful angel’s face,” Diane’s mother told him, “you won’t mind giving up a little sleep.” The hell I won’t, he thought. He saw the limousine pull up beside the dull green awning. “It’s here,” he said.

  They went downstairs. Peter smiled at the obsequious doorman, who made a big show of rushing to the door to open it for them. “Good luck,” the doorman said in his Spanish accent. Peter smiled confidently.

  Diane kept her head down and watched her big body move. She put a hand on her belly when she felt the air rush over her face. Poor thing, she thought about her child, you don’t want to come out. The chauffeur had already opened the black limousine’s door. Lights glowed from the interior, darkened by its green tinted windows. The chauffeur offered his hand to help her in. “Watch your step, ma’am,” he said. She looked at his face. He was young, no sign of a beard on his clear skin. That, and his attitude toward her, made her feel ancient or, worse, finished as a sexually desirable woman. Not merely for now, in the full state of pregnancy, but forever.

  Peter doesn’t look at me anymore, she thought to herself as they got under way. She stared at her husband’s profile, intent on the view ahead, and tried to remember the last time they had sustained eye contact. Whenever Peter glanced at her, his eyes immediately trailed down to her belly and then, guiltily, away from her altogether, as though he had been caught staring at a cripple. Diane hadn’t expected Peter to remain sexually interested once she began to show, but to avoid even looking at her suggested a deep loathing and disgust. And right now he wasn’t solicitous or tender. On the brink of this fateful event, just when she imagined Peter would hold her hand or put a reassuring arm around her shoulder, instead he sat a foot away, his body held rigidly, as though he feared she might touch him.

  She did. She reached for Peter’s hand, resting on the leather next to his leg, and covered it, her fingers arching over his knuckles—a crab climbing a rock. To her surprise, he turned his palm up and grasped her firmly. Peter’s cold hand squeezed desperately as though he were drifting toward a waterfall and she were a rope to the safety of shore. But the rest of him remained aloof. He’s scared, not disgusted, she thought with relief.

  Peter hated hospitals. He had had an appendectomy in the middle of his sophomore year at Harvard, and all his dealings with doctors, nurses, orderlies, admissions an
d billing bureaucrats had been infuriating. Throughout Peter’s life he had had great success dealing with institutions—indeed, he worked for a large organization—but hospitals were the exception. Because one was ill, there was no way to bargain successfully with the medical establishment. Going into a hospital was to be stripped of all civil rights, Peter often said, and having lost battle after battle in the past, he was now shy of the simplest encounter. He fully expected them not to have Diane’s operation scheduled, to have no idea of who she or her doctor was, in short, to find everything in a mess. This pessimism wasn’t alleviated by the precautions he had taken—namely, getting to know the chief of medicine at New York Hospital through his boss at the Stillman Foundation as well as using the top obstetrician (Dr. Stein) despite the fact that Diane didn’t like Stein’s manner. One of the good things about the Caesarean was that it guaranteed the presence of this hotshot. Stein’s associate might have ended up doing the procedure if Diane went into labor at an inopportune time, which, in the case of Dr. Stein, seemed to be any hours after six at night and before nine in the morning on weekdays. Weekends were totally out of the question. Peter didn’t say so to Diane, but he suspected Dr. Stein ordered the Caesarean because Peter, using his cultivated acquaintance with the chief of medicine as a lever, kept tilting Stein toward an agreement that he would be on call outside his normal hours.

  Nevertheless, it turned out Peter’s preparations did work. Everything was in order. Diane’s private room was ready for after the procedure; the instructions to where they should proceed in the Gothic caverns were accurate; she was expected there; the forms he had filled out a week before were present; Dr. Stein arrived shortly after Diane was in her hospital gown and Peter had struggled into a smock and cap.

  Dr. Stein examined Diane with his long pink hands. Peter looked away when things got too intimate, thinking what an oddly disgusting profession gynecology must be: making the mysterious mundane.

  “Nothing happening,” Stein said cheerfully. “We could try to induce labor, but—” he shook his head sadly—“in the end, that rarely works.” He winked at Diane. “You’ll never see the scar.” She had complained to Peter about Stein’s tendency to wink. She said it always preceded the mention of anything bad: a good-humored father chuckling and joshing his weeping children over some disappointment.

  “That’s easy for you to say,” Peter answered Dr. Stein with a pleasant smile. Peter had learned, years ago at Harvard, to say the most challenging things with a bright smile. To show the handle of the knife, but not the blade. “Doctors are always doing that, aren’t they?” he went on to Diane, almost as if Dr. Stein weren’t in the room. “Being brave about their patient’s misfortunes.”

  “I was reassuring my patient,” Dr. Stein answered petulantly.

  “It’s fine, Doctor,” Diane said. “I’m not worried about the scar.”

  “Of course not,” Peter said with emphasis, appalled that he might have implied an unseemly vanity on her part.

  Stein said they would be moved into the operating room in a few minutes and then left them alone. “For God sakes, Peter,” Diane said. “He’s about to cut my body open. Don’t piss him off.”

  “He’s an arrogant little shit,” Peter mumbled, but he nodded penitently. “I’ll be good,” he added.

  They rolled Diane into the tiled room; it reminded Peter of the huge common showers in school gymnasiums. He walked beside her horizontal body, watching his feet move in the oversized blue plastic coverings. It was all so tacky and undignified. The only thing modern medicine had left to childbirth was the fear; its spiritual mystery, its grandeur were obscured as thoroughly as if a high-rise apartment had been built on top of a cathedral.

  Diane felt useless and stupid while the technicians worked around her. Dr. Stein explained what they were doing in a mumble. He was repeating information she already knew; the childbirth classes had included a long lecture and film on Caesarean sections. As promised, the spinal block didn’t hurt. They put a tentlike cover above her abdomen and a stool beside her head for Peter to sit on. Peter took his place, his face white, his hand, moist with terror, clenching hers. He stared at Diane, his eyes large and unfocused, unwilling even to glance in the direction of the activity.

  “Do you want to watch?” Stein asked. He nodded at a thick rectangular mirror on top of a long stainless-steel pole. Diane was reminded of the security mirrors placed on elevators and at the rear of stores. She could keep her eyes on the lower region and see if they mugged her uterus or shoplifted the baby.

  “I don’t think so,” she answered in a querulous voice. She rolled her head to the side and gazed into Peter’s eyes. “You agree?”

  Peter closed his eyes and then nodded his head up and down slowly. He opened his eyes. “Oh, yeah, I agree.”

  “We’re going to make the incision,” Stein said. “You might have a vague … very vague sensation. But if you feel anything clearly, sing out.”

  “I will,” she said. She tensed in anticipation. She imagined a patch of her skin slicing open—a tearing sound, blood gushing up all over Dr. Stein. But there was nothing, nothing at all. This is going to be easy, she thought, and felt glad.

  ERIC BECAME aware of their bizarre positions. His whale of a wife knelt on all fours in front of the television, her great belly sagging only an inch from contact with the living-room rug while she made the strained huffing sounds of natural-childbirth breathing. Eric sat on the coffee table in order to be above her and pressed his clenched fist into the small of her back. Eric could picture how perverse the scene might look to an observer.

  Maintain steady pressure. Eric replayed the phrase of their instructor to encourage himself while his arm muscles cramped from the unrelieved exertion. Maintain steady pressure, Eric thought, watching Rock Hudson’s leering eyes. Nina had selected Pillow Talk from the television schedule to distract them while they waited for the labor pains to be only five minutes apart. Then they could head for the hospital.

  Nina moaned. In response, Eric pushed down on her back even harder. “Oh, that’s better,” she said, dismaying Eric, because he could never keep up this new level of effort. The blood in his arm seemed to have gelled, ready to burst through the skin.

  “I’d better write the time down,” he said. He had noted the time on the video recorder’s digital clock, and he knew without checking the sheet that the pains were still eight minutes apart. They had been stuck at this interval for over an hour. Nina already seemed worn-out, her face drawn, her eyes scared, her voice enervated. She’s not going to make it, he thought. What did that mean? She couldn’t quit. But by the look of her, a few more hours of this seemed unimaginable. He wanted to get to the hospital. There the medical people could take over, deal with it if she couldn’t finish. “Eight minutes,” he said.

  “I can’t believe it.” She sighed.

  “Should we call the doctor and tell—”

  “We’re not supposed to call until it’s five minutes!” Nina said furiously.

  “But—just to tell her that they’re not getting any closer—”

  “No!” She sounded as if she were training a dog. “I’m not going to keep bothering Ephron when she’s told me what to do.”

  “You mean, no matter how painful it is, no matter how long it goes on—”

  “If it gets too painful, I’ll call. God, Eric, don’t make this any harder than it already is.”

  Is it me? he wondered. Or is she irritable from the pain? Everything he said grated on her. I’m supposed to be strong, he criticized himself. Supply patience and confidence—not worry.

  Patience and confidence. That’s what it would take to be a father. What a colossal effort—to stand on the lonely hill of responsibility, the wind whipping his hair, and clench his jaw bravely for years and years. To conceal how frightened and inadequate he really was.

  He wanted to run from the room screaming. Hail a cab to the airport, board a plane to Las Vegas, and spend the rest of his days play
ing, whoring, and sleeping. Every time he met Nina’s glazed eyes, they focused on him and came to life, burning with mute requests. For reassurance, for efficiency, for solace. And soon there would be another pair, needing even more things. Security, love (unstinting, uncritical, and absolute), and … money.

  How could he—of all people—have entered into this enterprise without taking into account how much goddamn money was involved? If he had to cite one thing that was absent from his childhood, one gloomy cloud that darkened his parents’ windows, its dense atmosphere poisoning their lungs, lidding their eyes, that was the absence of money. Eric’s father, Barry, a floor manager in Gimbel’s shoe department, had tried one bold move to make money: he quit his steady paycheck, borrowed from relatives and friends, and opened a place of his own in Washington Heights. But it had failed, and although Barry was taken back by his old employers, there was debt, there was a cut in pay, there was gloom and shame and fear.

  Eric had sworn to himself that he would grow up to be rich, that nothing would prevent him from shooting through the black mist into the sunny life of the wealthy. And yet he had committed to the birth of his child, his heir, without knowing if he could sustain his income, if he could swell it into a mountain of capital to elevate his son effortlessly—the sweat, the climb, the danger of falling … all eliminated by Eric’s brilliance.

  What if it isn’t a son? Then Eric’s lack of a fortune would be even worse. After all, a daughter might inherit his features, and then it would take a trust fund of at least two million to attract a husband.

  “What are you smiling about?” Nina asked, letting her body descend on the floor.

  “I was hoping, if it’s a girl, that she doesn’t look like me. She’d need one hell of a dowry.”