Only Children

by Rafael Yglesias

  “And unto us a son is given … ”

  Yes, he had almost died. He was a gift snatched from death.

  “And He shall reign forever and ever … ”

  Beyond their deaths. Beyond their love. He would go on forever.

  “For unto us a child is born.”

  He had survived to be theirs, to be the perfect product of their union.

  “For unto us a son is given.”

  A gift from the heavens, from the pure universe. A chance to be perfect. He held his invisible son in his arms, the music cascading in the apartment, his eyes shut, seeing the little bruised face, and exulted: his son was born and the world would be changed forever and forever.

  3

  THEY NAMED him Luke Thomas Gold.

  Nina had wanted to honor her uncle Lawrence, Eric his grandmother Tessie. Eric’s religion, although he didn’t practice it, forbade Nina from using the actual name, so she settled for the same initial (choosing Luke from the New Testament), and Eric didn’t object. That was typical of his erratic obeisance to Judaism. “Luke was a Jew, wasn’t he?” Eric said. “All the early Christians were Jews.” Eric chose Thomas for Tessie—the connection seemed dim to Nina—and Luke won out as the first name because he was a son after all and was going to bear his father’s surname forever. Eric himself made that point. All in all she was pleased.

  When Nina came out of the anesthesia, she phoned everyone she felt safe disturbing at midnight. They all said, “You must be tired,” and she agreed, she was, but she had no desire to sleep.

  She told the nurse to bring Luke in—he wasn’t called that yet; he was known as the “Gold baby,” summoning an image of a statuette—but she was told that he was under the incubating lamps as a precaution, given his traumatic birth, and was supposed to remain there until 6:00 A.M. Did she want to be disturbed then or left alone until 10:00?

  Surely she would be asleep by 6:00. She spoke with Eric. They settled on the name. He sounded dead. His voice was empty, bereft. He kept asking, “Are you all right? You sound fine,” sounding disappointed by her answers. She tried to explain. Her muscles hurt, she dared not move, touch, or even think about her vagina (when the nurse changed the bandage, a glimpse of the blood-soaked wad made Nina queasy), and Nina worried about Luke, replaying the doctor’s assurances, yet fussing over the fact that he had to be under an incubating lamp. Nevertheless, in spite of it all, she felt free, young, alive again. The mass was out of her stomach, she had had a boy (something about that was a relief, she couldn’t say what), and she knew, for the first time really, that it was going to be all right, that she had made it through, succeeded in the only things that really counted, the production of a child and the preservation of her life.

  She tried to sleep; but the room was hot, and her sore body needed coolness. The air conditioning, Nina discovered, wasn’t working. She summoned a nurse, who impatiently said, “They’ll fix it in the morning. You should sleep.”

  “I can’t! It’s too hot. That’s why I want the air conditioning fixed.” Nina let out a noise of nervous laughter, a habitual punctuation mark to any expression of anger.

  “We’ll open the window,” the nurse said, moving to it.

  “It doesn’t open,” Nina said.

  The nurse worked at it anyway, pulling and groaning at the narrow metal handle. No one believes me about anything, Nina thought. I have no authority in my voice, that’s what it is. If it was deeper, they’d believe me.

  “It doesn’t open,” the nurse said.

  Nina’s snort of laughter pushed the words out: “That’s what I said.”

  “Do you want a pill to sleep?”

  “No! I want the air conditioning to work.”

  “I’ll call maintenance, but they won’t get to it until the morning.”

  “Fine,” she said, hard on the n, as though it weren’t.

  The exchange had been unlike her. Not unlike how she wished to behave, but different from her usual suppression of any challenge, or demand of authority; knowing the hopelessness of requests, Nina generally didn’t bother to make them. But she had lived through hell, through a test of endurance and terror that now made disapproval from a nurse seem as trivial as it in fact always had been.

  She lay in bed, hot, her skin chafed by coarse thin sheets, the bed too pliable, its height in the small room disturbing. She felt like a suitcase shoved onto the back shelf of a closet.

  And her mind was awake—a lingering head cold decongested. She could breathe straight to the back of her skull, to places in her brain that had been dark and musty for months.

  Luke, Luke, Luke, Luke, she recited, picturing boys, beautiful boys with hairless skin jumping into Walker Pond near her family’s summer home in Maine, their voices trilling in the rustling birches, dancing through the sun-splotched forest. She kept a hand on her deflated belly as if she could freeze it back into solidity, and saw herself slim again, dressed in a loose white blouse and worn jeans, walking hand in hand with an eager blue-eyed boy, her Luke, her creation, the living tissue of her pride and power.

  She still hadn’t seen Luke. She wanted him.

  What was she celebrating? Her ecstasy shuddered and crumbled like old plaster. She hadn’t held Luke to her breast, to welcome him to the world, soothing him for the squeezing horror of the birth canal. Luke’s first sensation had been cold steel, gloved hands, suction—Eric’s vague description of the scene allowed for endless nightmarish inventions.

  Newborns don’t remember anything, she reminded herself.

  But she didn’t believe that; she knew Luke’s body would remember, that inside him something would always flinch at the world, at a world not of warmth and love but of brutal technology and simple survival. What had she done to him? She wanted to hold him, to apologize for her clumsy work as an usher, hold him tight, press him with reassurance.

  She decided to go to the nursery and demand to see him. She lifted the sheet off and swung her legs over. The pain was searing! Hot. The skin pulsed, outraged. It stung right through her, in two lines running up her torso, the movement of her legs pulling her apart, ripping her skin like paper.

  She didn’t dare look. She must have torn the stitches; the blood would be flowing. “Nurse!” she tried to call out, but tears, tears of pain, exhaustion, and failure, drowned the cry. She pressed the call button. She shut her eyes against the pain that glowed below, radioactive with hurt.

  The nurse appeared, impatience in her stance, a hand on a hip, her body only halfway in the room. Nina raised her face, slack from hurt and tears.

  “You’re in pain?”

  Nina stared at the nurse with hatred and enough rage to incinerate her.

  “You’re due more painkiller,” the nurse said. “I’ll get it.”

  “I want my baby,” she said, blubbering like a kid about a lost toy. “I want to see him.”

  “Can’t now. He’s under the heating lamp. I’ll bring him in at six. Let me get you something for the pain.” She disappeared.

  Nina breathed. In sharply, and out slowly. She inched off the bed, easing into the descent. The white support socks the hospital had given her to wear made her feet look frail. She watched them slowly slide across the big squares of white linoleum, crippled enough by her wound that the tall, wide door of her room seemed an impossible goal.

  But she got there. From its half-open position Nina could see the nursery only ten feet away. The halls were empty, asleep. The nursery (divided into two sections, with a nurses’ station in between) had the shades drawn over the windows. Nina saw a different nurse walk across the station into one of the nursery rooms. Nina shuffled herself toward the open door of the station, moving faster, although her pelvis felt cut in two, tearing more with each step, and as she approached, Nina heard exhausted wailing: groaning squawks, high-pitched, easily recognizable as a deserted baby, abandoned, alone. She knew immediately it was her son.

  Nina moved into the nurses’ station. The nurse was inspecting some ch
arts in the quiet nursery. Nina shuffled to the other nursery, filled by the agonized cries, and looked in.

  That was Nina’s first look at her son: Luke baked under a big lamp, a chicken warming on a delicatessen counter, nude, his thin arms and legs clawing blindly for help, his face distorted, so that his toothless, open, agonized mouth seemed huge.

  Her mind closed against the cruelty and horror of the sight. She felt panic. She moved into the room—echoing with her son’s cries of outrage (what monster could ignore them?)—but hesitated to grab him. She had no doubt the baby was Luke. It was the technological setup that intimidated her. What if removing him from the lamp was dangerous?

  “Miss! You’re not allowed in here!”

  The nurse had spotted her.

  “He’s crying!” Nina pleaded.

  “You’re not allowed in here,” the nurse insisted, and took Nina’s arm.

  Nina looked down at the nurse’s hand and saw two circles of bright blood on the white floor. They came from her—leaked from her wounded heart.

  The nurse followed her eyes. “You shouldn’t be out of bed, Mrs. Gold. You might tear your stitches.”

  Nina looked at her gown and saw a dull ooze of red at the groin. Who is Mrs. Gold? she thought as the world swayed away from her and she fell after it—into the nurse’s arms.

  DIANE STUDIED herself in the standing Victorian mirror beside her dresser. She was framed by its dark wood, like a portrait. Her apparel was inappropriately modern, however, dressed as she was, in L. L. Bean slacks and a green polo shirt that emphasized her enriched breasts. The pants belonged to Peter, an old pair she had borrowed earlier in the pregnancy. Diane’s body was now going in reverse, a much more reassuring process, and she followed the loss of weight, the tightening of skin, with minute fascination and satisfaction.

  She heard Mrs. Murphy’s voice, lilting, singsong—phony— talking at Byron outside in the hall. Diane walked there and she found Byron cradled by Mrs. Murphy’s meaty arms against her puffed, upholstered bosom. “Oh, the eyes are getting heavy now. You’ll be sleeping soon.”

  “I’m going to take him for a walk.”

  Mrs. Murphy stood in her tracks and tilted her head. “Now?”

  “I have to mail some letters, I—” Why am I explaining to her? she thought. “Here.” She broke off, holding her arms out. “I’ll take him.”

  “It’s windy today.”

  “He’ll be fine. He’ll be in the carriage.” Diane gathered Byron gingerly. Mrs. Murphy had swaddled Byron in a thin cotton blanket and one arm shot out as Diane took him. Diane kissed the tiny wrinkled fingers, sucking on the soft buttery skin for a moment. Byron’s big bald head flopped against Diane’s chest, and immediately his mouth opened, jawing at the cotton of her shirt.

  “He might be getting hungry,” Mrs. Murphy said. “He’s due for a feeding.”

  “In a half hour. I’ll be back by then.” Diane hated this, loathed accounting for her every move and decision. It was just like being with her mother. Lily always demanded constant justifications for every action, laying the groundwork for a cross-examination that would devastate the opposition’s rationale.

  Mrs. Murphy held out her arms. “He needs to be changed. I’ll get him ready.”

  “No, thank you,” Diane said, and walked past her into the nursery. Behind her, she heard Mrs. Murphy make a noise. Diane ignored her, found the white cap in the carriage, and put it on Byron. Byron opened his large gray-blue eyes wide, staring fixedly at some point in between him and her, observing the approach of an astonishing spectacle. Diane put him on his back, tucking in the thin blanket on the sides of the mattress, and raised the hood. Byron started at that; his eyes blinked twice, and then he again fell into a profound stare. Diane covered his exposed lower half with a heavy plaid blanket, deferring whether to protect him totally until she got outdoors. It was mid-June, after all, and although not hot, already muggy; the slivers of sky she could see from Byron’s window were yellow with haze.

  “Here we go,” she said to Byron—still, frozen Byron, gaping at the world. Maneuvering the bulky carriage out his door required care, so Diane’s vision was concentrated on clearing the sides. Diane didn’t see Mrs. Murphy standing in her way, a matronly blockade, arms folded, eyes narrowed in disapproval. She only felt the motion stop.

  “You can’t take a newborn out like that, ma’am,” she heard Mrs. Murphy say, without her pleasant lilt, without the insinuation of command. Her authority rang clear, undiffused.

  “Excuse me, Mrs. Murphy. I didn’t see you.”

  “That’s all right. Let me dress him for you.”

  Mrs. Murphy hadn’t moved from her position. “No!” Diane said, and gently butted her with the carriage.

  “I’m here till the end of the week, my dear,” Mrs. Murphy said, her hand on the hood to prevent a repetition. “Then you can do things your way. I’ve taken care of hundreds of infants. I think I know what I’m doing.”

  What is it about older women? Is crushing us their only chance at power? Mrs. Murphy had been insufferable during the past two weeks, silently correcting everything Diane did, by either changing her selection of outfit or taking Byron away, claiming Diane or he was tired. Mrs. Murphy gave Byron a bottle one night without discussing it in advance, and used the defense that Diane needed rest. Mrs. Murphy’s arrogance amazed Diane; after all, she was an employee, a servant. Peter didn’t seem surprised—and he was the one who had grown up with help, a string of nannies and mother’s helpers. Peter accepted Mrs. Murphy’s arrogation of authority over their son, taking Mrs. Murphy’s side whenever Diane had tried to argue.

  “Mrs. Murphy, I’m taking my son outside.” Diane pulled the carriage back to free it of the woman’s grip and then began to move forward, determined, if necessary, to bowl her over.

  Mrs. Murphy didn’t move. The carriage jerked to a halt on impact, the front end tipping up. Byron let out a protest.

  “What are you doing?” Diane sounded like a teenager to herself, an angry, but ultimately helpless, adolescent.

  “I cannot be responsible, I cannot work here if you don’t listen, if you don’t take my advice.”

  Diane pulled the carriage back. Mrs. Murphy seemed to expand with pride at this apparent victory. Diane walked around the carriage and took hold of Mrs. Murphy’s fat arm, just under the elbow where the flesh was soft and loose. “Do you know who I am?” Diane said. “I’m a lawyer.” Mrs. Murphy blinked, puzzled. “At a top firm. I’m not some dumb rich housewife. I can sue your agency’s ass off. I can make life miserable for them at no cost to me except my time. I can make sure you never work again.”

  “Take your hands off me!” Mrs. Murphy said, and yanked her arm free. “How dare you speak to me like that! What do you know about being a mother? Nothing. You don’t love that baby. You don’t know what loving is.”

  Diane pushed Mrs. Murphy, her palms out flat, each one on a shoulder. “Get out!” Mrs. Murphy staggered back, blinking her narrow, wrinkled eyes. Diane slapped Mrs. Murphy’s shoulders again, her own legs trembling. “Get out of my house!” Mrs. Murphy grabbed at Diane’s hand, catching a pinkie. It twisted painfully. Diane pulled back. She was so angry she felt the narrow hall expand, Mrs. Murphy shrink, and lost any sense of her own body. “Get out of here, you ugly woman! You ugly, ugly, ugly thing! Get out!”

  “Don’t you dare raise your hand to me.” Mrs. Murphy’s puffy cheeks wobbled with fury. “I could break you in two.”

  “Oh, shut up!” Diane hated herself, felt ridiculous and incompetent. She should have been able to handle this woman without emotion, the way Brian Stoppard would, freeze her with a glance, a chilly word. Diane trembled while she walked back to the carriage and pushed it toward the door. Mrs. Murphy, this time, not only didn’t attempt to stop her, but held the front door open.

  “I want you out—” Diane began.

  “I’ll be gone! Don’t you worry.”

  Diane’s legs were still uncertain, her knees liqu
id, when she reached the street.

  Although Diane had ventured forth without Byron and had taken a brief stroll with a gang (Peter’s father, stepmother, Mrs. Murphy, Byron, and Peter), this was her first solo tour with Byron, her virgin appearance as mother and child. She was conscious that she looked right, a yuppie mother, walking down lower Fifth Avenue with the proper brand of baby carriage, her outfit durable but preppie-chic. She looked the part, but she was a fraud. Diane was a peasant: her skin dark, made for field labor, not office fluorescence; her features big, with the strong jaw and deep-set, mournful eyes of her dead father.

  A pair of old women stopped Diane and Byron on Tenth Street. They placed their bodies in the way of the carriage and clucked like grandmothers even before they got a view of Byron. Byron looked at the old ladies with his staring, challenging eyes. Byron’s face was like Diane’s—humorless, strong, immobile. He wasn’t cute. Diane could hear in their exclamations a certain reserve. Byron wasn’t quite the pretty, fragile, soft thing they expected and wanted.

  After the old women let her continue, Byron finally moved his head and made complaining sounds. Mrs. Murphy had been giving him a pacifier, he seemed dependent on it already, and Diane had forgotten to bring it. He groaned, moved his head from side to side. His arms reached out. I’d better go back, she thought, dreading an early return that would put her face-to-face with Mrs. Murphy.

  And then, almost by accident, Byron found his hand and practically punched himself in the mouth with his little fist. He sucked on the closed thumb and two fingers. His eyes shut contentedly.

  Soothe yourself, she thought with pride. You and I, we don’t need them. We can comfort ourselves with our strength.

  PETER STUDIED his mother’s thin, elegant body. Gail was dressed in a tight black turtleneck; her breasts made small, almost circular lumps against the material, whitish lumps, the hue presumably caused by a bra.