Only Children

by Rafael Yglesias

  Tonight, however, everything was in order or, at least, in the order it would appear for a social evening. The couch was a couch, the butcher-block table was set for two, and both the television and typewriter were put away on the white shelving that framed either side of the fireplace. Even the last was dressed for the occasion; several small, gray pieces of wood were stacked, unlit, inside. The results might have seemed pathetic to most, but knowing Rachel, knowing what it cost her to admit she wanted his good opinion, to masquerade as domestically female in any way, Peter was impressed with her bravery, no matter how small the tangible results.

  “Do you want wine or scotch?” she asked.

  “Wine.”

  “How’s Diane?” Rachel asked after his wife’s health with a remarkable absence of tension, hostility, or curiosity.

  “Ugh.” The memory of that scene in the hospital room weighed him down onto the couch. “She’s got post-postpartum blues. Raging hormones.”

  “Who doesn’t these days?” Rachel said, her quick comic timing running smoothly. “God, I’m horrible. I can’t open this,” she added, bringing the bottle of red wine to Peter with the cork only slightly lifted out by her primitive opener. Peter had to hold the bottle between his feet and pull with both hands before succeeding in an almost explosive release. He looked absurd right afterward, hanging on to the corkscrew for dear life, the bottle still between his feet, a monkey botching a man’s job.

  “Cheers,” Rachel said. “Let’s see if you can get it to your mouth like that.”

  “Why don’t you get a decent corkscrew? This is a joke.”

  She held out a glass for him to fill. “What should we drink to—your newborn baby? Or maybe to a second child?” She looked at him coldly, her black, black eyes challenging him.“Isn’t this fun?”

  He started to pour. “It’s going to be.”

  ERIC FELT like a murderer, a poisoner who has administered a dose strong enough to kill, but not kill quickly, and is forced to watch his victim’s death agony, the killer’s remorse and terror mounting even as he knows he cannot undo the deed. Nina had fallen apart in front of him, an exhausted, cursing, delusional wreck, and he was reduced to a wide-eyed child, speechless with fright.

  Eric’s duties as a coach had been superseded hours before, first by one of the nurses and then by Dr. Ephron. Nina had shown absolutely no respect for Eric’s instructions. At one point, she answered him, “Fuck off. You breathe!” Not that she spoke to Ephron any differently. “Get your hands off me, asshole!” Nina had screamed during one of the internal examinations. My God, she was a tough lady underneath all that dreamy contemplativeness and girlish yearning for cuddles and hugs.

  During transition Eric changed his evaluation. Nina wasn’t tough. The cursing, the wildness of her desire to be free of the pain showed a remarkable lack of endurance. Although he understood that she was going through the worst kind of delivery, over twenty hours of severe back labor, nevertheless her endless requests for painkillers (that had eventually provoked Ephron, he suspected, into overdosing Nina, since she was way too sleepy, passing out in between contractions) seemed cowardly and immature to him. Although Eric hated to think that—to criticize someone who is dying horribly of a poison you’ve injected didn’t strike Eric as polite—still, along with his awe at Nina’s free expression of rage, he was disappointed by her lack of guts.

  Eric had another preoccupation while he waited in the trench for the next round of shelling—namely, whether Gomez was back asleep in his chair or lying dead in a pool of blood on Ninth Street. Along with that came the humiliating memory of his own cowardice and passivity. He had been impressed with Nina’s behavior on the street, until, in a discussion while they waited for the nurse to give her an enema, he discovered that Nina had never seen the switchblade; indeed, she argued vehemently that it didn’t exist. Until then, because Nina and the cabdriver had been so casual at the scene, Eric assumed he had exaggerated Gomez’s jeopardy. But if Nina didn’t know about the knife, then perhaps they had made a fatal error. Eric didn’t want to bring his child into the world already owing God one life.

  Such thoughts were driven from his mind by the increased pace of Nina’s agony. He had a mounting dread of the end result. Ephron seemed nervous now. At first, her reaction to Nina’s pain had been impatient and stern. Ephron pushed Eric out of the way and took over coaching Nina, shouting at her, holding her head so she’d make eye contact, even scolding her. Eric got angry at Ephron, wanted to fire her on the spot, but of course, that was impractical. For a while Ephron’s brutality worked. Nina did the breathing, and it seemed to distract her from the pain. But when the internal heart monitor (a clear disk smeared with a sticky ointment) was inserted inside Nina onto the baby’s head—the thin multicolored wires running out of Nina to the beeping machine made it seem as though she had a phone inside—Nina had to lie flat on her back to avoid disconnection. The pain then overwhelmed everything, and Ephron started administering drugs.

  They’d been warned repeatedly that hospital procedures such as the internal heart monitor made back labor worse, that painkillers didn’t really stop the hurt; they simply disoriented the patient, making the memory less vivid in time, but not soothing it at the moment. Ultimately, what they had learned merely made it clear that with back labor everything would conspire against them. Eric told himself to insist to Ephron that they disconnect the machine and let Nina get on her feet so the pressure on her spine would be lessened, but he knew that the counterargument would be the danger of not tracking the fetus’s heart—that if something did go wrong, and the baby died, Eric would have to live with the responsibility for a lifetime.

  This situation, which made all the childbirth advice and training useless, reminded Eric of his work as an investment counselor. What was Nina’s pain worth? It seemed like a stock decision in the midst of a panic. If you hang on, you can come out a big winner most of the time, but there is always the once-in-a-lifetime catastrophe to fear, the slight chance whose consequences are so grave that no victory is worth the risk.

  So he let events topple on him, not wanting the burden of decision to fall on him, preferring someone else to take the responsibility of disaster. But he hated himself for this, knew that it was his worst fault, that it had been his father’s weakness, that it was what held him back from being a great man.

  And reliance on anyone else was always wrong. He could see Ephron’s confidence and resolve weaken. Nina’s wild thrashing and incoherent pleas got stronger and more urgent, rather than diminishing, and Ephron’s predictions of when the end would come, when Nina could begin to push, kept being wrong. It was over an hour longer than Ephron had originally guessed, and Nina hardly seemed human. Her skin was like translucent china; her pupils were huge, filled with terror and confusion; her rich brown hair was soaked, a colorless wet mop stuck to her skull. She seemed so weak, barely able to lift her head, that to expect her to have enough strength to push out the baby was absurd. Always, always, it had been Eric’s assumption that Nina’s giving birth was safe, that there were no real risks—he hadn’t even really considered that the baby might be brain-damaged or malformed—and he had certainly never worried that a nineteenth-century event such as Nina’s death might occur.

  But now Ephron’s nervousness, the sudden appearance of a resident, and two other nurses opened an abyss he had never looked into or guessed might be in his path. He saw Nina dead and him alone.

  Now, at last, Nina had been told to push. He tried to brace her as he was supposed to, but she had no muscularity to buck up, she seemed made of clammy, boneless flesh. Her attempt to push was pathetic, all of it coming from her neck and face, rather than from below as it should.

  Out of the corner of his eye, he saw a red light flash on the monitor, followed by rapid beeping. Ephron and the resident exchanged looks, but what they said to each other was lost because Nina was hoarsely begging him, “Is it out? Is it coming out?”

  “You’re doing great,
honey,” he said, and let her slip back into a delirious sleep. I’ve killed her, he realized. To have a stupid replica of myself, I’ve killed this good woman.

  DIANE THOUGHT: they’ve left a scalpel inside me. Maybe a clamp. There is something large, mobile, and sharp in my intestines. In the night of the hospital—hushed talk from the nurses’ station, occasional laughter, the whisper of a patient’s slippers en route to the lounge for a cigarette, the soft flop of an orderly’s mop—she became certain that the rippling movements in her belly and the stabbing jolts in her bowels couldn’t simply be gas built up by an inactive system.

  They asked, “Any flatulence yet?” every time she complained, but their persistence didn’t persuade her. Farting couldn’t possibly relieve this. Her headache was gone now—evaporated by a sweaty afternoon nap—but this was worse, pressure building inside, a thick rope twisting against raw skin, pushing on her sore incision, appearing in her dreams as a snake she had swallowed, weakening her legs, and dismaying her appetite.

  She was awake when they brought a wailing Byron in for a 2:00 A.M. feeding. This time he clamped onto her nipple immediately, a fierce warm sucking engine for a few seconds, desperate, thirsting. Then he lapsed into sleep, his lids shutting as if weighted, his little nostrils resting on her swollen skin. She depressed the point of contact with her finger so he could breathe and nudged his cheek to rouse him. He sucked again a few times, but then his body shuddered into sleep, overwhelmed by pleasure. She cuddled his littleness in her arms. His mouth, open with exhaustion, slid partly off her. The sight of her expanded breast, the thick nipple projecting like a bullet at his little face made her feel big, potent, and full of affection.

  Byron started suddenly. His mouth closed to find succor. In that half-off position his hard little gums bit right onto the nipple. Diane screamed from the pain and yanked him away. Byron’s eyes and nose collapsed together, his mouth opened wide in silent agony, and then a piercing cry of betrayal and loss shattered the hospital hush, while his little arms yearned out clumsily, pleading for something to hold. She clutched him to her, frightened and humiliated.

  “Oh, baby, baby, Mommy loves you, Mommy loves you,” she begged him, embarrassed, convinced his cries had exposed her to the whole maternity wing, to every mother in Manhattan as incompetent and insensitive. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” she pleaded, filling his open, agonized mouth with her nipple to alert him that his desire was still there to be had. He finally got the message and gnawed away frantically for a while, before he sighed deeply and passed out again.

  She kept at it faithfully, rousing him, careful now to make sure her nipples weren’t in danger, tapping him on the back with a finger to keep him awake, and, as promised by the books, slowly, but surely, he seemed to get the idea, that persistence was rewarded with actual milk. After a while, her unused breast tingled, abruptly and uncomfortably alive, numbed nerves prickling to consciousness—and the leak of moisture that quickly followed proved she had at last succeeded.

  He was feeding! He was getting real milk; the transfer of her life, the illnesses she had fought off, every genetic asset, was flowing from her to him—she had succeeded. The heavy weight of dismay, discomfort, and despair lifted off; at last, her energy surged, lights and heat turning on in the family home after a long absence.

  She leaned forward and kissed his little brow—soft, raw with newness. His lids opened; his jaw stopped working; the wide, unfocused liquid eyes peered unknowingly at her. And then they came together; the pupils narrowed; he seemed to see her.

  “Hello, baby,” she said gently. “I’m your mommy.”

  His eyes shut and his mouth worked again, at a regular pace now, no longer wanting, but taking it in, taking from her, with the calm of trust and love.

  NINA WOKE UP cold beneath her bedroom window. Air blew on her uncovered legs. She had fallen out of bed. She heard them laugh downstairs, parents enjoying a mysterious life, unknown to her. She couldn’t move. She called out. She was freezing to death. Somehow she got up and started to run, run down the hallway to the staircase, but it receded with each step, the walls lengthening, the floor buckling. …

  “Okay, Nina, okay, Nina! Let’s try again. It’s starting.”

  I’m here in the hospital. I’m about to have a baby. She found Eric’s face, a nervous smile. “Breathe in, out.”

  “Push, Nina!” Ephron shouted. “Push hard!”

  I can do this! It felt so good to explode out, to finish.

  “Push from your rectum! Push hard! Okay, breathe in, breathe out. Here comes another.”

  I can do this, I can do this, I’ve made it, I’ve made it.

  “Big push now, Nina!”

  Come on out, baby, come out of my life, free me, free me.

  “All right, dear. Cleansing breath.” Ephron looked sorry. She said something. “We’re going to move into OR. We may have to do an emergency C section.”

  “Is it all right?” There was such sadness in Ephron’s voice, such loss and confusion on Eric’s face.

  “There’s some fetal stress. I don’t think we can wait for you to push baby out. You’ll sleep through it. Everything will be fine.”

  “Eric—” He grasped her hand. What was he saying? “They’re putting me to sleep?” What did he say?

  “All right,” Ephron said. “Let’s try one more time, Nina. It’s happening again. Push hard, baby’s almost out, let’s push him out.”

  “Come on, Nina!” Eric said, so sadly, like a good-bye.

  She felt the horrible quaking below. I have to do this, I have to do this.

  “Push, Nina! Come on, push!”

  Finish! Finish! Finish! Finish!

  “Good, Nina! Push! Push hard!”

  I’m doing it. Come on, baby! Finish!

  It was over!

  She didn’t feel the awful pressure, the draining weight. She was so happy. She looked at them.

  Eric kissed her hand.

  “Let’s go,” Ephron said. “We’ll do a C section.”

  “It’s not out?” Nina pleaded. The room started to move. There were so many people around her and the light got bright.“It’s not over?”

  “Everything’s fine,” Eric said.

  I couldn’t do it. I never finish, she realized, and fell, fell down onto the cold floor, beneath an empty window. I never finish, she called out to the merry voices below. I can never finish.

  RACHEL GAVE him a dinner of unguine and pesto. While Peter mixed them together, dyeing the white pasta green, he talked of Byron and Diane, coloring his true feelings dark, not black, not melodramatically miserable, but the brighter tones were absent: pride in Byron’s existence, and respect for Diane’s competence, tinted with fear of responsibility and boredom with staid values.

  “Isn’t the baby going to hurt her chances for a partnership at Wilson, Pickering?” Rachel asked, focused, as always, on women’s careers.

  “I thought it might, but she says no, that’s old-fashioned, and anyway, she’s only taking six weeks’ leave.”

  “Does she like being a lawyer?”

  “Rachel, I don’t want to talk about my wife.”

  “Not talking about her seems to me like being in combat and not discussing the enemy.”

  He laughed, picked up his glass of wine, smiled at her over the rim, took a sip, pursing his pale lips slightly after the swallow. “You’re too clever for me.” He said this with conviction, no hint of irony or sarcasm.

  “That’s a nice way of saying—shut up.”

  “Hey!” He put the glass down hard and it wobbled uncertainly.

  “I mean it. You have the nicest way of deflecting anger. It’s amazing. Makes me angrier and angrier. More determined than ever to get a rise out of you.” She ducked her head, bit her lip, and mumbled to her plate, “No pun intended.”

  “I don’t have the right to get angry at you. Anyway, you’re not telling the truth. You’re angry at me.”

  “Oh, please! No messages fro
m Freud. God!” She shook her head, shaking off his irritating remark like a fly.

  “You deny you’re angry at me?”

  “Do you know what Ted Bishop said about me and men?”

  “He doesn’t strike me as an ideal expert on heterosexual relations.”

  “I don’t know. Sometimes I think the homos see this junk clearer than the rest of us. Anyway, he said all my relationships with men are a copy of me and my brother. I worship at the feet of smart men who only want to play with me occasionally. A heartbroken prepubescent girl chasing after her tolerant, but slightly bored, big brother.”

  “Well, well. That’s not a Freudian insight, is it?” Peter turned his head, frowning with disgust at the fireplace.

  “I thought it was very smart of him.”

  “Have you told him about us?” Peter peeked at her fast, an interrogating cop hoping to catch her in a lie.

  “No!” she insisted, but she lowered her head and brought an index finger to her mouth to chew on the nail.

  “You have,” he said quietly.

  “I haven’t!” she shouted. “I wouldn’t! I’d be humiliated to tell him. My God, I’m supposed to be a feminist writer. It’s a joke, a bad joke, written by a vicious male chauvinist satirist.”

  “No, it isn’t. Where does that come from? You’re a much better playwright than simply a feminist. And anyway, what’s that got to do with the price of fish? What’s so humiliating about it?”

  “I’m sleeping with another woman’s husband while she’s lying in the hospital having his baby. Somehow I don’t think Simone de Beauvoir would approve.”

  “No, but she’s probably done it.”

  Rachel burst out laughing, raucously, almost sexually delighted by his cynicism. She couldn’t stop and she covered her mouth to dam up the flood.