Only Children

by Rafael Yglesias

  Diane was already exhausted by her. Diane knew Lily’s enthusiasm would be set on high for Diane to scale, or otherwise Diane would be left behind, watching her mother enjoy an exhilaration that, by rights, belonged only to herself. Diane tried to beam a smile, but it must have looked queasy.

  “How are you, darling?” Lily asked, lowering her tone sympathetically. She moved toward the bed, took Diane’s cheeks in her hands, squeezed, and made a whooshing sound of pleasure and possession. “You look pale.”

  “I’ve just had a baby.”

  “That was yesterday. You shouldn’t be in pain now. What do the doctors say?”

  “Ma, I’ve had a C section! That’s abdominal surgery. You don’t recover from that in a day.” Already Diane was whining like a teenager. Barely thirty seconds gone and fifteen years had been lopped off; if her mother stayed for longer than two minutes, they might be wheeling Diane into the nursery. Where was Peter? He had promised to be there as a buffer.

  “My friend Harriet’s daughter had a C section—she was on her feet in three days. Maybe you should get another doctor. Doctors aren’t perfect, you know. They make mistakes.”

  Diane closed her eyes. Why did she have a cartoon mother? It was hard to have nightmares as bad as the reality of Lily.

  “Hello!” Peter entered, looking disgustingly fit. He was dressed in his festive Waspy summer clothes, ready to board the yacht at the Cape. “Hello, Lily! You look lovely”

  “Your son is beautiful!” Lily said, also grabbing Peter by the cheeks and smacking her lips on his. That was a remarkable expression of warmth from Lily to Peter; she had never accepted him into her heart either publicly or privately, presumably because he wasn’t Jewish. “What difference does it make?” Diane had once asked her, exasperated. “Really, Ma? What difference does it make?” “It makes a difference,” Lily had said, nodding to herself, her tone heavy with accepted sorrow, going to the ovens bravely.

  “You too, huh?” Peter said cheerfully.

  “Don’t you think he’s beautiful?” Lily pleaded.

  Peter laughed good-naturedly. He strolled over to Diane and kissed her. “You really are mother and daughter.”

  “What are you talking about!” Diane snapped at him. Peter couldn’t have come up with a more infuriating remark if he’d worked on it all night.

  Peter turned to Lily. “Exactly what Diane kept saying right after the birth. ‘He’s beautiful, he’s beautiful,’ ” he imitated, with a hint of a Yiddish accent.

  “But he is!” Lily mocked a protest. “I’m not prejudiced just because I’m his grandmother. I’m very objective.”

  “What do you mean?” Diane insisted to Peter. “When did I keep saying to you, ‘He’s beautiful, he’s beautiful’?”

  “At the very instant of his birth.” Peter seemed full of himself, enunciating his words like a preening actor, his eyes darting from Diane to Lily to measure his effect. “You were madly in love with him the moment you saw him. I was green with envy—knew I was finished. Hopeless. I’ll be lucky if you remember to set a place for me at dinner.”

  “Don’t be jealous of your own son,” Lily said, now perfectly serious.

  How stupid, Diane thought. I don’t even know that baby. I’m scared of it, and he’s concocted the reverse to portray himself as a victim. I lie here with my head broken, my stomach split, my thighs lumpy, my breasts swollen—and he plays the jilted lover, no doubt anticipating excuses for his future indifference and neglect.

  Had she made a ghastly mistake? Peter had told her no to the idea of having a baby, in his mild but utterly resolved manner, over and over, never wavering, never, in even the most hypothetical discussion, conceding that one day he might change his mind. But time was passing, faster and faster as she left thirty behind. She had wasted several years after college, trying to decide what to do (really it had been an attempt to find something besides the obvious, anything other than the law), so that she was, in general, three years behind everyone. Four in some cases, since she had gone to private schools that didn’t believe in skipping, no matter how bright the student. And she had been bright—effortlessly, democratically achieving A’s, without regard to the area. School had been the theater in which she always got the leading part, resounding applause, and rave reviews. She missed it.

  Diane longed to be her former taut self, snapping awake, grabbing her books, her notebooks filled with her precise handwriting, to begin another long day, surrounded by friends eager to please and impress her, while she pleased and impressed her professors. She began to weep at the thought of its loss.

  “Diane,” Peter said.

  “Darling,” her mother said. Lily’s big face was in front of her, the eyes swimming in the glasses, fish grown too large to be contained by their bowl. “We’re all very proud of you,” Lily said, and hugged Diane, the small, thick hands squeezing hard.

  Diane heard herself sob. Peter stood still, his face distant and puzzled, a baffled stranger. The first year they were lovers, he liked to kiss her flat stomach, so smooth and tight that the hipbones made visible points in the air, fins gliding through her undulating sea. Peter would surround her navel with kisses and then run his tongue into it. Tickled, she’d suck her nonbelly in even more so that the bones of her ribs appeared, impressed by her olive skin. Finally he’d put his mouth to her sex, his hands grasping her thighs, his fingers almost able to touch his thumbs, so thin were the tightly packed sausages of her legs.

  All that was gone now. Gone forever. Her stomach had a tangled bulge in it, like a duffel bag sloppily stuffed with a few dirty towels, and the definition between her buttocks and her thighs had evaporated, the sausage skin made mushy by nature’s fierce boiling, the meat inside now a loose jelly, unevenly distributed, imminently threatening to ooze out.

  “My baby.” Her mother’s voice surrounded her, and her head was embraced, hidden from the world. Lily’s perfume was infiltrated by other odors—decay, disinfectant—and her own skin felt clammy against her mother’s roughened, hard cheeks.

  “I’ll be all right. I’m sorry,” Diane blubbered in the auditorium of Lily’s arms, still sobbing.

  She pushed her head out of her mother’s clutches and saw Peter again. Peter looked much younger than she felt. She seemed to be a middle-aged woman and he a teenager.

  It had been a terrible mistake. She liked schedules. They made sense of life, pushed you ahead to make decisions that otherwise would be stuck in place by the ultimate quagmire—the meaninglessness of everything. It had come time to have a child. And so she had done it, Peter’s reluctance notwithstanding. She’d left the diaphragm in its case, smearing some jelly on her fingers and vaguely on her vaginal lips to maintain olfactory consistency. These precautions were almost insufficient; after the great sex (she had really released into the pleasure, her head filled with images of the possible creation below) Peter suspiciously wondered why he hadn’t bumped against the diaphragm during her orgasm, like always. He had never before mentioned that that happened, just one of many intimacies that she believed he neglected to share. She shrugged her shoulders and he didn’t press the point. For two months she deceived him, and just as she regretted it and stopped, she felt the first soreness and subtle firming in her breasts.

  Peter had asked her to consider an abortion—yet another chance to avoid this disaster. They had terrible fights every night for a week, and then he had made his grand speech: “If you insist, then we’ll do it. But I’m not responsible for the care. Don’t expect me to sacrifice my work, or my social life. If you think I’m going to be a ‘new’ father, you’re wrong.” Diane had listened dutifully, with a sneer on her lips to show him she knew he didn’t really mean it.

  She looked at him now, quavering in her watery vision as her unstoppable sobs shook her: Peter was young, embarrassed, and pitying. It was a terrible mistake, she thought. I’ve destroyed my body and my marriage. And sooner or later I will destroy my baby.

  NINA LAY on the beach, nake
d, the water rising higher on her belly with each wave, the bright sun glowing through her eyelids, insisting on her consciousness. …

  “It’s starting,” Eric said. What was he doing here? He was supposed to be back at the summer house, making calls.

  The water was lapping at her mouth, insinuating at the corners, draining down into her throat. Move up, she told herself. But her body was paralyzed. And it was raging now, the gentle surf churning up her legs. She had to move. Soon the water would overwhelm her completely and she’d die.

  “Nina! Nina! Do your breathing!”

  But I’ll drown and die if I open my mouth.

  From the endless expanse loomed a huge iron hook, driving straight at her baby-full belly, sure to tear her apart—and she was awake, back in the tiny birthing room, machines beeping, Dr. Ephron’s cold black eyes staring at her. “Breathe, Nina!”

  Her back broke apart. She felt it for sure this time, the whole of her spine popping out, all of her draining to the floor. She grabbed at the nearest hand to hold on, to keep at least her head as part of this world. Eric took it and she saw his face, although knowing it was him had nothing to do with the way he appeared. He seemed to be a completely different person. A little boy she’d known in school, or passed in the streets.

  “I can’t stand it, I can’t, I can’t—”

  “Stay with it, Nina,” Ephron said. “This is the worst it will be.”

  “I need more stuff for the pain!”

  “I don’t want a sleepy baby! Breathe! Breathe!” Ephron grabbed her cheeks and forced Nina to look her in the eyes. She did the breathing for Nina to imitate and Nina found herself panting along stupidly.

  She was merely a head now, floating in space, carried about by Ephron and Eric. They’d lost the bottom of her forever. “I can’t do this anymore. We’ll go home and come back later,” she pleaded.

  “Okay,” Ephron said approvingly. “Rest now.”

  “It is over?” Nina asked, and she was back on the beach, baking in the sun. Her lips were so dry. But something cool slid over them. Sleeping was so beautiful, so simple, so gentle and warm. She was too close to the shore. The tide was rising again, lapping up over her belly, splashing on her mouth. Move up, move up, get away from it.

  “Nina!” Eric the little boy shouted. “Don’t push!”

  “Breathe, Nina! Breathe, Nina!” Ephron’s hand passed over her eyes, rubbing her forehead. “Breathe with me!”

  She huffed and huffed and huffed and huffed, thinking each moment was the last she could sustain life.

  Ephron said, “I’m going to take a look, Nina.”

  “No!” Nina tried to gain control of her body. Why couldn’t she get up and run? Why was she helpless? “No! No!” she begged. That bastard Eric was holding her down. Was he? Was he hugging her?

  “Oh, my God!” The doctor had pushed her insides like pressing a balloon. She was going to explode, pieces of her would be everywhere. …

  “Okay,” Ephron said. “I’m sorry.” She came in close, her face huge. “We’re going to push now. I want you to push out, push from your rectum, like you’re having the biggest bowel movement of your life. Don’t push from here”—she made a gesture—“push from your rectum.” She turned to Eric and spoke.

  The sky was black. Ice cream fell in the sand, breading it for broiling. She was inflated—grown big, big enough to fill a building, blot out a sun.

  “It’s starting!”

  Eric poked at her, his arms fussing with her. What was he doing? Was she beginning to float?

  The beeping, the room, Ephron slapped into her consciousness. “Breathe in, breathe out,” Ephron said, and the horrible surge of heat and force mushroomed inside. “Push!”

  She clenched herself. I am iron, I am iron, she thought.

  “Push, Nina! Push, Nina!”

  I am God come to create! I am steel!

  “Push, Nina! Push, Nina!”

  PETER STOPPED again at the nursery window before leaving the hospital. He couldn’t pick out Byron immediately; that distressed him, although he knew it wasn’t a fair test. Outside of visiting hours, the infants were almost totally covered in their Lucite bins (flattened really, by their fiercely tucked-in blankets), faces down, leaving only hair, ears, and a glimpse of nose to distinguish one from another. Byron’s head, bald but for a fine down, was similar to four others, and Peter could remember nothing unusual about his ears to look for.

  Peter squinted at the goofy blue- or pink-bordered labels, trying to pick out the B of Byron and the H of Hummel; the initials were all he could hope to spot through glass smudged by the anxious vanities of a dozen set of grandparents. He found Byron at last: at the far end, against a wall, next to a vacant incubator. Byron was still, the little form of his body visible against the taut cotton blanket. His big, slightly protruding eyes were shut; the lids had the lifeless dignity of cool marble.

  Peter stared at Byron, transfixed. His son was unmoving, except for an occasional worried pursing of his lips. Peter thought nothing. He felt a proud sadness, pleasure in Byron’s existence, but dismay at the expanse of his uncertain future. After many minutes, Peter found himself thinking it was hard on Byron to be in that big, bright room with all those other babies. One of them was screaming its head off, and although that didn’t seem to awaken the others, Peter couldn’t help imposing his adult sense of how frightened Byron must feel: to be thrust into the world and find it a place flooded with fluorescent light, crying creatures, and giant black women in stiff, rustling garb who, from time to time, would toss one about, removing things, wiping things, adding things. And soon someone would come and slice off part of his penis, probably while chatting about the stock market or the traffic on the FDR Drive.

  The last thought, of the circumcision, obsessed him. Everybody knew it was unnecessary. Diane, however, had been adamant. She had accepted his refusal to tolerate a bris, but the notion of an uncircumcised son actually caused her to laugh scornfully, as though Peter had proposed something pretentious and ludicrous, such as giving Byron a gold crown to wear at the playground.

  When Peter forced Diane to discuss it seriously, she had found several books on child rearing that maintained although there was no medical benefit to circumcision, father and son should be similarly outfitted, lest the difference cause anxiety in the child. It had been done to Peter, so—

  Yes, it was done to me, Peter thought, so how bad could it be?

  He wanted to wave good-bye or blow Byron a kiss (just walking away after such a long communion seemed almost rude), but he was made self-conscious by the sympathetic and slightly patronizing gaze of the nurse. Peter waited until the nurse turned her back before waving his farewell to Byron. Peter kept up the wave so long, however, that the nurse caught him at it anyway. In response, made mute by the glass partition, the nurse mouthed, “Good night, Daddy.” Peter was disgusted.

  He left humiliated and stood uncomfortably in the peculiar carton-shaped elevator (we are eggs, he thought) next to a lot of pale, puffy faces that housed enervated eyes. Peter held his breath, convinced the air must contain an infinity of deadly germs. With each stride across the marble lobby, Peter hurried toward life, through the swivel doors, and trotted out of New York Hospital’s cul-de-sac for First Avenue, where the cars rode a concrete conveyor belt in awkward starts and stops.

  Peter was late for his dinner at Rachel’s and these days it was a mistake for him to give her any cause for complaint. And he wasn’t lucky in catching a taxi, so that by the time he entered the somewhat dark vestibule of the town house and rang the buzzer for Rachel’s apartment, he suspected (as always seemed the case with him and women) that things would begin badly.

  Indeed, when he had finished trudging up the four flights, he found Rachel waiting at her door with a sad tilt of her head, biting her lower lip. She said immediately, despite the pretty green dress and heavy makeup, “I think we should have canceled.”

  “Nonsense,” he answered, and led her in,
shutting the door before embracing her. Her wide mouth remained closed and dry, although she arched her body into him pliantly. “I’ve missed you.”

  “Oh, God,” she answered, and buried her head in his chest.

  He looked down at her curly head of black hair, parted severely on one side. The white of her scalp gleamed in the tangle and reminded him of his son’s small head: both were fragile and in his care. He didn’t feel unhappy, disgusted by his desires and absurd immorality. He felt exuberant. “Cheer up,” he said, pulling her out from hiding against his body.

  She looked shyly into his eyes and her chin quivered. But she spoke sharply: “That’s a pretty hopeless request.”

  “No, it isn’t,” he insisted, and leaned forward, kissing her lightly, backing away, and going in again, this time pressing harder, staying longer, parting the lips slightly. “You’re sweet,” he whispered.

  “Yeah, yeah,” she whispered, and ducked her head down to avoid another kiss. “What do you want to drink?” she continued, and walked away from him, down the short, narrow hallway, into her one-room apartment.

  Once, presumably, the Chelsea town house had been a family residence and this small box of a room had belonged to the maid, the nanny or served as the nursery. The small brick fireplace still remained; but what must have been detailed moldings were now covered by featureless plasterboard, and the pretty lead-glass windows had become blank squares of Thermopane, their metal casings painted white in a futile effort to conceal their modernity. The first time Peter had seen the apartment it had been in a state of college-girl disarray. The sleeper couch was still open from the previous night (embarrassed, she had immediately closed it up, not bothering to straighten the sheets, so that one end continued to wink out even after the cushions were replaced), there were clothes everywhere, and a portable typewriter and a portable television were sharing space on the round butcher-block table. Beside them were an overflowing ashtray and several take-out coffees, one of them still half full.