Only Children

by Rafael Yglesias

  The household was heavy from Luke’s rejections. Nina’s sisters arrived and got the same treatment. The family began to look at Eric strangely, he thought. They blame my genes, Eric believed. The little Jew in Luke, like a Satanic strain, was what made Luke hate them—Eric fancied he could see those thoughts in their eyes, their cold blue eyes.

  But those eyes were in Luke’s head, those same evaluating terrible eyes. And Luke’s distance from them—was it any different from their own estrangements? These are your genes, Eric wanted to scream at the polite breakfasts and dinners. He’s yours! This unloving child comes from you!

  Was he unloving? Not to Eric or Nina. Luke had taken to stroking his father’s chin while he sucked on his juice bottle, the hot fingertips dotting Eric’s face with tenderness and wonderment. When Eric got him from his crib, Luke’s body adhered to his, curving with the shape of Eric’s pectorals. He rested his heavy head on the shelf of Eric’s shoulder, sighing into his neck. And those eyes, those large blue eyes of Luke, they considered Eric, the huge guardian, at leisure, scanned the big face carefully, making sure nothing had been altered, that it wasn’t a phony, but the same patient giant of yesterday.

  “Has he ever smiled?” asked Emily, Nina’s youngest sister. Emily the bitch, Eric called her.

  “They don’t smile at this age,” Nina lied. “It’s just gas.”

  “Oh, no,” Joan said. “They have real smiles.” And an argument—a disagreement, rather; no voices were raised—ensued. The real point of it was that Luke was an unhappy, miserable exception to the usual joyful cherubim that the rest of the world gave birth to. Nina was restrained for a while, chatting casually, as if the subject had nothing to do with her child. But finally she responded to the subtext—and blew up at her mother and sisters. Tears streamed down Nina’s face. She yelled that they were egomaniacs, people who only wanted to be loved and had no patience for loving others. That was exactly the conclusion Eric had come to about Nina’s behavior in New York, that her unreasonable fury at Luke was for not adoring her immediately.

  Joan and her sisters at first stared through Nina’s tirade; then Emily got up and left the room, not in a huffy attitude—she walked past Nina like a pedestrian avoiding a madwoman. Joan began to clean. Luke made it all into an embarrassing farce by wailing in Nina’s arms. Nina, her charges unanswered, carried Luke into the nursery and began to rock him violently. Eric followed her in.

  “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” she said into her son’s melted face in a whisper of rage.

  “Okay, okay, give him to me,” Eric said.

  “Get out of here!” she snapped.

  “Don’t talk—”

  “Get out of here!”

  “You’re upset.” He began, he thought, in a reasonable, reassuring tone.

  “He belongs to me! Stop trying to take him away! I know what I’m doing! Get out!”

  “Belongs to you?” Eric was collapsed by her remark, his understanding of her, of Luke, of the world, deflated into shapelessness.

  “Goddammit! Are you ever going to listen to me?” Nina’s face trembled from the force of her shouts. Eric backed out of the room, although he wanted to punch her, although he feared for Luke’s safety, because he feared more for her; she seemed ready to explode, not figuratively, but actually blow open—skin, eyes, bones ready to fly off.

  He stumbled out backwards and bumped into someone waiting just beyond the door. “Excuse me,” Tom said, catching Eric and turning him slightly.

  “I’m sorry,” Eric said, horrified that Nina’s father had overheard. But she had yelled so loudly that probably they had all been able to listen in. Now I’ll never get the money, Eric knew, and felt despair and rage at Nina. He knew, and Nina knew, that her brother and sisters were envious that she had had Luke. All she had to do was be as much of a Wasp as they, and keep a good face on Luke’s condition, but she had failed, failed as miserably as a Jewish wife would have.

  “I need some help with the wood in the barn,” Tom said easily, free from self-consciousness.

  “Sure,” Eric mumbled. He felt as if he were being called to the principal’s office. He followed Tom to the barn. There was a stormy wind coming off the bay, the late August air thinned by the hint of fall, and its chill bowed Eric beside Tom’s rigid, unaffected body. Eric felt smaller, younger with each step.

  Tom got busy once inside. He didn’t talk or explain what he wanted. Tom carried several large birch logs from the pile. Eric hurried and took most of them and set the biggest on the chopping block. “Hurt my hand on the boat yesterday,” Tom said. “Could you split these?”

  Eric had been schooled by Brandon to split wood, but he wasn’t nearly as skilled as his brother-in-law. Clearly this was an excuse to talk. Eric wielded the ax. He hesitated before taking his first chop. He suddenly felt his ability to split the birch straight through was at issue, that he had to do it to win back Tom’s confidence.

  Tom watched him casually, one hand resting on a smooth worn beam.

  Eric kept his eyes on the break in the wood. He raised the ax, brought it down hard, but steady. The blade passed right through, thudding into the block below, the now split halves of birch fainting away from each other.

  Without skipping a beat, Tom said, “I wanted to discuss some business with you.”

  “Un-huh,” Eric said, and put another log on the block. He pretended to study its surface for a good fissure.

  “I’ve sold some land recently—”

  “Brandon told me,” Eric said. Tom might be accustomed to circumspection when it came to money, but Eric believed Wall Streeters were supposed to have the blunt intimacy of doctors about a client’s financial condition. “Six million, he said.”

  Tom frowned. “Go ahead,” he said, nodding at the log.

  This time, Eric’s ax got caught halfway through. He split it on the second blow. Brandon would have thought that a failure.

  “Actually, it’s closer to ten million. Brandy overheard only part of the sale. I wish he hadn’t heard anything. I’d like you to keep this to yourself. I would rather, given how much the children talk among themselves, that even Nina not know.”

  “Fine with me,” Eric said, and meant it.

  “Usually my cash assets are managed by First Boston. But my man there died and I’m not happy with the new people. I wondered if you had any suggestions?”

  What was this? A way of saying he didn’t want Eric to handle it? Or an opening, to see if Eric was bold enough to go through? Fuck it, he didn’t care. “Yeah. I’d like to handle it. I doubt you’d get anyone who would take care of you better. After all, in the long term, it’s in my interest to make sure your capital grows. Churning your money is gonna hurt me. Other managers might not care.”

  “Exactly my thought,” Tom said, and seemed relieved. He moved away from the beam, approached Eric, and looked him in the eye. Eric felt the compulsion to glance away, to be faced down by those curious, judging eyes. But he understood those eyes now, now that they also belonged to Luke. Eric knew they masked pain and fear. Eric stared back and this time Tom lowered his eyes. “But that isn’t all I have to consider,” Tom mumbled.

  “You mean, how good am I? Treat me the way you’d treat any other broker. Give me some of it, see how I do, and then either give me more or take it away.”

  Tom nodded. “What do you think would be a fair start?”

  “It’s up to you. Give me at least six months before you make a judgment—unless I’m losing a ton. I won’t, though.”

  “How about two million?” Tom said.

  “Fine.” A tremble of reality shot through Eric. He was in the presence of his dream; it had become solid, food offered to his hungry mouth.

  “How do we handle this—this arrangement in terms of the children?”

  “Usually I would only tell Nina. I don’t gossip about my clients. But I don’t have to tell her.”

  Tom held his neck with his left hand, leaned his head back, and stretched, a
doctor feeling for tumors. “You should tell Nina if that’s what you would normally do. But ask her not to discuss it with the others.”

  Eric explained the mechanics of the transfer of the money, that his fee would be the industry standard of 1 percent annually of the two million, with a 20 percent performance incentive on any profits, and that for the time being he would only charge the commission that the floor broker takes, adding nothing for his own pocket. With that out of the way, he could speak confidently. Tom became almost childlike as Eric expounded his current view of the market, interrogated Tom about his tax situation, made gentle fun of Tom’s previous broker’s strategies (they would have been fine, actually, if the double-digit inflation and bond collapse of the mid-seventies had not followed hard upon the death of the go-go sixties’ stocks; it was the classic position of its time, the shoals that almost every financial adviser had crashed on), and recounted some of his own triumphs, musing on how much money Eric would have made for Tom if he had had the money then.

  When Eric returned to the house, he felt okay, even though the Winningham summer house had taken on the aspect of a funeral home. They all talked in hushed voices, averted their eyes when Nina walked past like a widow out of her mind with grief, unapproachable and pitied, Luke still in her arms, his eyes watching everything, moaning from time to time, one little hand clutching his mother’s sweater. Even with all that, Eric was calm. What he’d lacked his whole life was a chance, a shot at the big time. At last, he’d landed a big fish, a client with real dough. And if Eric performed, there would be more, and the best part, the best part was that it would all one day come back to his son. He looked at the sisters and at Brandon.

  Let them make Nina miserable for now.

  Those weaklings would never create any grandchildren.

  The money would go to Luke.

  And swelled by Eric’s genius, his son would be rich.

  NINA COULDN’T bear the stuffy nursery room, the mumble of voices from various bedrooms, the shrill sound of her blood in her ears, the desperate moths thudding on the windows, and the squirming, restless movements of her baby.

  She bundled Luke in a heavy blanket and walked out of the nursery, through the living room, ignoring the startled looks of her family, and on out into the night.

  Here there was air and refreshment. The tall birches swayed against a bright sky jammed with stars. Luke was silent the instant the real world surrounded them. The bay, a gray presence behind the trees, swelled and contracted gradually, like a body breathing in sleep. She felt so much better away from the shelter of home, much more safe in the wild. She wished Eric and Luke and she could become pioneers, travel away from the prison of everything and into the free nothingness.

  “Look at the stars,” she said to Luke, and her words were scattered by the outside. Luke seemed to study them anyway, his body absolutely still, awed by the earth’s vast ceiling. She felt sure that he also wanted to be away, apart from people and their crowding, their nagging, their criticisms.

  “Nina!” Eric called, in a whine despite the volume.

  She walked around the corner toward the shore, away from Eric. It was silly—he would be sure to follow.

  “Nina?” She heard him and then his feet cracking branches, stamping the grass like an outsized creature, a brontosaur of a man. “Here you are!” he said, running up to her. “It’s cold. Is he—”

  “He’s covered with a blanket!” she snapped.

  “Okay. Okay. Okay.” Eric faced the shore, took a deep breath, and gazed at the bay. “Looks so beautiful. Almost makes me wish I could swim in it.”

  “Why don’t you?”

  “At night?” Eric squeaked. “I’d hit my head on a rock and die.”

  “I guess you’d better not,” she answered.

  He looked at her. She couldn’t make out his expression, he was half in the shadow of the house. “I haven’t had a chance to tell you. It’s a secret. You’re not supposed to tell your brother and sisters. Your father has given me money to invest.”

  “Do you get anything out of it?”

  “Of course,” Eric answered with a laugh.

  Nina’s experience with her father and money wouldn’t make that answer automatic. Tom seemed to regard himself as a good-works opportunity for his children.

  “It was weird. He did it today right after—” Eric stopped himself.

  “My fit?” Nina supplied the description for him. “That makes sense.”

  “It does?”

  “Just Father’s way of apologizing to you.”

  “Apologizing?”

  “Yeah,” Nina said, and began to walk. When she glanced at Luke, she was surprised to see he was asleep.

  Eric hustled beside her. “For what? I thought he was giving me the money because he thought—”

  “That too, of course. He wouldn’t take a chance otherwise. I mean, the timing.” Shut up, Nina, she told herself. But she couldn’t. It was a bitter fact, and who else could share the sour taste but Eric?

  “Wait,” he said to stop her from entering the house. “This is important. I have to know about this. Don’t be mysterious. If he gave me the money for some personal reason, he might take it away suddenly. I have to know.”

  “He gave you the money to apologize for being stuck with Luke and me,” she said, popping the cork on her bottle of sorrow. With the plug out, she felt her strength leak as well. She wanted to cry.

  “Oh, no,” Eric said, his voice soft, hurt, like a boy’s. “No, you’re wrong. Maybe he did it because of Luke, because I’m more a part of the family. Not ’cause he thinks badly of you.”

  “Your parents love you, Eric. You can’t understand what I’m talking about. It’s like a sin to you, a taboo.”

  “No! It’s his way of being closer. He talks with his money. He’s saying he’s on your side.”

  She leaned her head onto Eric’s shoulder and closed her eyes to squeeze the tears back.

  “Believe me,” Eric pleaded. “Your father loves you. So does your mom. And your brother and sisters are just jealous. That’s part of love too.”

  He was so foolish, so naïve, so loving. It made her want to cry all the more. And now she was crying. Dammit. When she went inside, they would see. The tears were loose. Her brain shook from the pain, and rained its aches.

  “Believe me,” he kept repeating, a little boy consoling his mom, frightened by her emotion. “Believe me,” he begged.

  “I do,” she lied. Anyway, Eric loved her. And he loved his son. If only she could be alone with them and leave the rest of the world out. If only Luke was happier. If only she could fix her baby. She was crying again.

  “What is it?” Eric mumbled into her weeping face. “What is it?”

  “He doesn’t smile,” she said.

  “He’s not even three months!” Eric shouted. Nina shushed him. “He’ll smile,” Eric whispered. “Don’t worry.”

  Luke stayed asleep. Her arms hurt from his dead weight. She told Eric to go in ahead of her, tell the others she was coming in with an unconscious Luke, and turn the lights off while she passed through. That way they wouldn’t see her red eyes.

  It worked all the way around. They couldn’t see her face, and Luke, other than sighing and retracting his legs, stayed asleep after the transfer to the crib. Nina sneaked off to their bedroom and undressed. She turned out the light, not wanting to squander a minute of the precious hours of Luke’s rest—his record for consecutive hours of sleep was two and a half—but she couldn’t rest.

  She opened a window, despite the blocks of cold it let in, and listened to the night earth, the watery, leafy dark earth. Her muscles ached and her brain couldn’t make order out of things. She hadn’t been in the comfortable rewarding embrace of sleep for so long that the real world seemed like a dream, a half-awake world, something she imagined while dozing off on a train ride.

  She was almost afraid of real rest, of deep, warm sleep, afraid of the regret and rage she would feel when Luk
e interrupted it. Better never to have another taste, to forget that delicious fruit existed, than to have it yanked away after a few bites.

  Eric entered. He always waited awhile to make sure Luke had settled in, if two hours could be called settled. “Whew,” he said, on feeling the cold.

  “You can shut it,” she said, and he did.

  She lost the world. The room’s human air corrupted the clean, cool atmosphere of nature. She again heard the sounds of things, the hum of appliances, the clink of a glass; someone’s tread.

  Eric took off his clothes. The last three months he hadn’t exercised or slept much more than she, but his body was still smooth, the long ropes of his muscles taut, his chest expansive, decorated by a small patch of curls, his narrow hips without an ounce of fat, the cheeks of his ass like chunks of smooth marble. Clothed, with his frizzy hair and open face, he could almost seem meek; but when he was nude, the graceful power of his six-foot-six frame, upholstered by two hundred pounds of muscle, made Eric a warrior, a young chief ready to lead his tribe.

  They hadn’t made love since Luke’s birth.

  Her body felt dead, not passionless, but flattened by exhaustion. It took thought to rise, to sit; it hurt even to lie still. An embrace only made her sleepy.

  But in the dark of the country night, watching the only man who had loved her tenderly, the shimmering stars and faint moon glowing on his strong body, she felt her skin awaken, the surface tingling, covering the fatigue of her bones, dispelling the despair of her muscles.

  She beckoned to him. He came over and she pulled him on top, pressing his wood-hard back to her, her hands touching the hump of his thighs, the smooth of his neck, the span of his underarms. He tried to get to her body, but she urged his head up, not interested in knowing herself. She didn’t want to sense her own decay and weariness, she wanted to feel his vigor.

  She fell asleep after he had spent.