Nina inhaled, held her breath, and turned. She walked out purposefully (she heard Luke sit up and make a sound of protest) and did not look back.
Eric confronted her in the hall, his body worried and inquisitive. She shushed him before he could speak and made for the door.
“I didn’t say good—” Eric began.
Nina took his arm. “Just go,” she said. This wasn’t their first departure from Luke, but it was the first Luke knew of. Their other dates—they felt like dates, arranged in advance, dressing up, having a time limit—had been when Luke would fall asleep at six-thirty or seven. They would read him his bedtime stories, give him his bottle, rock him to sleep (Luke almost never woke up during the night, and when he did, it was in the early hours of the morning), and only then would the sitter arrive and Nina and Eric leave. In his infancy, when they were most confident Luke would stay asleep, they used a widow who lived in their building. The widow knew Luke only from encounters in the lobby or elevator, not from her vigils in their apartment. Luke had never stirred, had never known she was there. But finally, as he got older, his bedtime later, his consciousness of the world keener, Nina had decided the deception was too risky, even though they had begun to use Eric’s parents, whom Luke knew well. He might guess, he might delay going to bed just long enough to make them late for an eight o’clock show. He had a tendency to lie awake for up to an hour before falling asleep; if he called out (as he sometimes did) to ask for water, or tell some observation, and Grandma or Grandpa walked in … Well, it was a betrayal, a horrible betrayal, and Luke would be shocked, unforgiving, inconsolable. However difficult telling Luke in advance might be, that honest hurt would keep more important feelings unbruised.
Luke knew Eric’s parents, even had something of a relationship with them, especially with Eric’s father, Barry. How bad could it be for Luke? Leaving him with his grandparents, surely that was nothing, nothing, nothing. Everything was going to be fine.
They got outside, onto the lively Village street, full of students in their wild outfits, full of gays in their wild outfits, full of tourists looking at the wild outfits, full of yuppies in dull outfits not looking at anyone. There were so many people strolling, laughing, on their way to something, that the street had a party atmosphere, a late spring night in New York, too early for the desertion to the Hamptons, or the return to provincial homes after graduation. The Friday release made the gray week of law, banking, publishing, psychiatry into a memory. The black night changed the monochromatic day to fuzzy glowing reds and yellows, winking pinks and blues, bouncing lights everywhere, the city a torchlight parade of celebrants, some decayed, some naïve, some earnest, and some mad.
Nina was glad to be back among them, in the free world, released from the dress gray of motherhood.
“What should we do?” Eric asked. A group of college kids, in torn bulky rags, their young cheeks red with excitement, came bounding by, splitting Eric and Nina.
“Sorry—” one of the girls called back.
“What can we do?” Eric wondered.
They hadn’t made a plan in case Luke’s reaction caused a delay. Now it would be hard to get into a good restaurant without a reservation. “A movie?” Nina asked, thinking of the early days together (only three years ago in fact, but eons in memory) when a movie and late dinner were their coziest, happiest times.
Eric looked doubtful while they rushed around the corner to the stationery store (about to close its doors) and bought a paper to see what was showing. They were out of sync with the local theater’s starting times, but Nina figured out they could go to midtown, grab a bite, and get into a nine o’clock show of a movie they both wanted to see. “Let’s go,” she said, excited, pulling Eric’s large, thick warm hand to get him to the corner.
He hung back, his weight a dragging anchor. “I don’t think we should,” he said, after almost toppling them both.
“Why not?”
“Shouldn’t we stay close by?”
“It’s ten minutes by cab.”
“Should we be in a theater? We can’t call—”
“Sure we can! Eric, he’s with your parents.”
“Some recommendation. Look what they did to me.”
“What did they do to you?” Nina demanded. She thought his mother and father odd, but mostly in a good way, protective, concerned, loving.
“Made me a nervous wreck about my son.”
“Eric, I don’t want to spend our first night out in three months in the lobby of our building.”
“Okay, but.” He sighed. Eric turned his back to her and looked downtown. The World Trade towers could be seen standing alone in the distance, two fat boxes of dotted lights. “Let’s just have dinner. I don’t want to rush uptown.”
“We have plenty of time,” she argued, but with a hopeless feeling. For a moment, among the other partygoers, she had felt young, abrupt, unscheduled.
“We can go to that new restaurant in SoHo.”
“We’ll never get in.”
“Come on,” he said, his big hand pulling her in tow.
She thought: we’ll end up eating crummy bar food, Eric’ll talk about Luke and the market, he’ll say we should get home early to make love, we will, his parents will stay for an hour raving over Luke, Eric will enter me and push in and out tediously until I come, and he’ll come, itching to get out of bed to watch his tapes of the business show, to read his research, fiddle with his numbers, and start that late-night mumble, the chant of dreams—“Low earnings multiple, half book value, possible takeover.”
Try to be cheerful, she ordered herself.
Nina tried. She put her arm through Eric’s, she talked about going back to school, she walked among the others, the ones with real parties to go to, trooping down Broadway past the winking, leering lights, and pretended it would go differently.
But it didn’t.
THE WOMAN came down, her round face came down, a balloon floating right into Byron’s eyes. “Hello, Byron. My name is Tracy. We’re going to go in here and play some games. Your mommy’ll wait for you out here.”
“Okay.” Big boy Byron, big feet forward! He marched on the shiny floor. Foot slaps.
The room was big. There were white hot dog lights way up. Like the big tunnel. Big tunnel to Grandma.
“How many eyes do you have, Byron?”
Big balloon head. One. Two. “Two. Like you.”
Smile. “How many ears do you have?”
“No ears,” Byron said. Cups on ears, his hands covered them. The hair tickled inside.
Bigger smile. “How many ears do you have?”
Dance, big boy. Tunnel sound. His hands were glue, his head a teacup. See my handle, see my spout. “No ears! No ears!”
“Sure you do, Byron. How many?”
Dance! He spun and spun and spun, covered ears, covered hair, hands stuck. “Can’t hear! No ears, no hears, no ears. No hair! Don’t have hair!”
“Let’s make a picture, Byron.” Balloon head floated down. “Draw a picture of your family. Here’s some paper. Want to pick out a crayon?”
She pushed him like a stroller. There was a yellow table. She smiles, but her voice frowns. He stood still. The crayon box was right in front. He looked at the balloon head.
Smile. “Pick out any color.”
“Draw!” he shouted. “Draw!” he shouted again. His voice came out like water from a faucet. Whoosh! He picked up a red crayon and danced it across. Broken red. Big X. “There!” he said, and pushed the paper, pushed the box, sliding off the table. “There!” he said.
The balloon head bobbed, up and down, no smile anymore. Just the frown.
“Where’s my mommy?” he asked. Balloon head was no fun.
THE DOOR closed. Night. Good night moon. Luke fell. Down on the blanket, yellow and soft.
Mommy and Daddy went out into the glowing night.
He sucked hard and smelled the bakery of sleep, warm and pungent.
Listen. Grandpa’s voice. Ru
mble, rumble. Like Daddy—underground.
I’m alone!
I’m alone!
The room was dark and empty. Out—out—out in the glowing night.
He wanted to grow up, grow up huge out of the crib, out of the dark, big and bigger, to be in the day, to be in the day with Mommy and Daddy.
I’m alone!
I’m alone!
He cried. He cried. And heard a baby cry. And screamed.
There was a crying baby in the dark.
The rumble, the feet came, and scared him.
Press into the blanket and hide. Hide from the crying baby and rumble feet.
“Luke?” Grandpa brought the light, the hot light in, and with him, Daddy’s voice. “Luke? Can I read to you?”
“Yessss!” It hurt to talk. Water was everywhere.
Grandpa caught him. Luke went up, big and up, out of the dark and the crib, into the warm light.
Luke squeezed into the hot body, fell against the pillow chest, and rested.
There was no crying baby.
There was Luke and Grandpa.
Grandpa opened the book and read.
“ ‘In the great green room,’ ” Grandpa rumbled, thundered inside, “ ‘there was a telephone. And a red balloon.’ ”
Balloon in room. Luke laughed.
Grandpa looked at Luke. His face, his bright white face, got so big. Luke squeezed into the hot. “I love you, Luke,” Grandpa sang.
Grandpa glowed in the night. Safe and hot and big. Glowing in the night.
“What’s going on?” Grandma said, and with her came more light.
“We’re reading,” Grandpa said.
“Can I listen?” Grandma asked.
“Sure,” Grandpa said. “That’s all right, isn’t it, Luke?”
He sneaked into the warm, against the rising, falling chest. Grandma took his hand and held it—smooth and cool she was, calm and gentle.
Grandpa rumbled like the outside: “ ‘Good night moon. Good night room. Good night cow jumping over the moon. Good night air. Good night nobody.’ ”
Grandma kissed Luke’s forehead. Soft and cool. She left.
But Grandpa stayed and rumbled on, rumbled on, rumbled on. Luke put his ear to the thunder and the heat. In Grandpa’s white bright glow, Luke baked to sleep.
9
THE TESTER looked at Diane with the dead eyes of a bureaucrat. Eyes without the possibility of appeal. “I don’t think he’s ready for this yet,” she said.
Byron hopped across the linoleum floor, slotting his feet in each black and white square as he moved, an unguided pawn in New York’s educational game.
“You should have him tested again in six months,” the tester continued, returning a form to Diane. The woman’s body was already half turned, ready to dismiss any complaint, or deflect any inquiry.
“What happened?” Diane asked anyway.
“He doesn’t want to answer any questions.”
“No! No! No!” Byron sang, hopping his way on the squares. “No, no, no!” he chanted.
This brought a smile to the tester’s face. “Don’t worry. That’s very common with bright two-year-olds. Give him another six months.” And now, having expended the full supply of her goodwill, the tester did show her back to Diane.
Diane would have liked to have the woman arrested. She wished she could say anything, anything at all, to disrupt the tester’s control and self-confidence. “I was thinking of enrolling him in Suzuki violin,” Diane said abruptly.
“I would wait on that too,” the woman said, and then gestured at another anxious parent.
“No!” Byron hopped on one square. “No!” Byron hopped on another square. Then back and forth, rocking and chanting. Diane noticed the stares of the other adults, followed quickly by averted eyes, and felt her red-hot rage at this humiliation. She had come to test Byron’s IQ early, just in case he needed tutoring. Obviously he would.
“Come on!” she yelled at Byron, and grabbed his squirmy hand. Byron’s body instantly went limp, the weight pulling down on her hand. “Stop it!” she yelled.
She felt her brain levitate and separate from her body, and she saw this foreign Diane’s behavior: a privileged, aggressive woman furious at her child for not being perfect.
But that wasn’t Diane, not the real Diane. She loved Byron. He was the embodiment of vigor and energy and courage, everything she admired and wanted. Byron was Diane at her best. There were times when she looked at his beautiful naked body, the perfect muscular miniature, legs flexing as he climbed on tables, chairs, beds, closet shelves, kitchen sinks, refrigerators (no mountain too high, no cliff too sheer), and she rushed to grab him and kiss the hard loaves of his buttocks, the soft swelling of his belly, the sweet wrinkles of his neck and felt she would be happy forever, permanently, invulnerably proud of the achievement of Byron’s existence.
It wasn’t that she wanted Byron to be the best: he was the best.
When Diane watched her brave son master things so easily— walking sooner than others, talking sooner, climbing sooner, becoming toilet-trained in a day, absorbing knowledge like a sponge, fearless of adults, shaking his mass of sandy curls, his wide mouth stretched in an impish smile, brown eyes glistening, hungry to swallow the world and make it his—and then looked at grown men— men like her husband, conservative, worried they wouldn’t please, lazy in the face of knowledge, unable to care for themselves, their hair crushed and dulled, their asses bloated, their eyes corrupted by fear, their mouths cautiously pursed—she wanted to know what had happened, and what terrible thing could happen to her Byron.
She thought she knew: soft mothers, envious fathers, brain-dead teachers, lazy friends, a culture of television, status, and possessions.
She wanted Byron to get into Hunter, into a school of hungry kids, poor kids who not only wanted what the other fellow had but whose parents couldn’t buy it for them. She had persuaded Peter to move the television into his study, hidden by a cabinet, out of sight and access. She had disposed of the crib when Byron was fifteen months, and following her pediatrician’s advice, when Byron was two, she showed him that the shit in his diaper belonged in the toilet.
“See?” she said, holding the turd (in its diaper cocoon) above the bowl. “It goes in here.” He got the message right away and was trained. Except at night. He couldn’t hold his pee in that long. But during the day he would often just go off to the bathroom, lower his own pants, and do his business without fuss.
Of course, people would laugh if they knew she felt intense pride about such simple things. The articles in the Times and New York Magazine whined about children being pushed. It was fear, that’s all, Diane believed, fear by her generation that the sloppy educations, the diluted culture, the spoiled, dependent childhoods, the values of acquisition, all of it, if it were thrown out, would produce superior people, better than themselves, smarter, surer, and with an elegant, discerning taste. She wanted a son who was afraid of nothing and no one. She wanted a responsible, self-sufficient, educated, and strong man to flower in the corrupt soil of New York, to defy the tradition of neurotic, self-absorbed, veneer-educated, spoiled middle-class kids that, more or less, described herself, her husband, and all their friends.
So she was angry at Byron’s failure to take the IQ test. She tried not to be. She pulled him out onto the street, and reminded herself that she had taken him to it at the early age of two and two months precisely because she wanted him to have several cracks at it, that this fiasco was merely a preliminary hearing, not the trial.
“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” Byron said, speaking in triplicate, a maddening habit he often fell into. “Ice cream. My ice cream.”
She had promised him some before they went to the test, a simple reward for being good. “You’re going to meet a woman and play with her for a while. If you’re nice, you can have some ice cream afterwards.” That’s what she had said. It had never occurred to her that Byron might balk completely and thereby call into question whethe
r this treat should be granted. Even if he had done poorly, although Diane wouldn’t know that for many weeks until the test results were sent to Byron’s pre-nursery play group, she had meant to give him the treat, to suggest the fact, possibly untrue in this society, that good work was rewarded. But should she compensate him for utter failure? Was that something she wanted to encourage?
Keep your promises, advised one book.
If you make a reward conditional, keep to the conditions, admonished another.
Which had she made? And did Byron know the difference? What did “if you’re nice” mean? Maybe he thought he had been nice. But he hadn’t been. That much needed to be made clear.
“Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream,” Byron said.
“No,” she mumbled, not out of fear at his reaction but afraid of her anger.
“I want ice cream, I want ice cream, I want ice cream.”
“Don’t say that over and over. You only have to say things once.”
His face closed, like a door shutting out light and noise. His eyes dulled, his body went stiff, his mouth tightened, and he raised his shoulders, retracting his neck. “You said I have ice cream after.”
“If you were nice to the lady. I mean, to the woman. If you were nice to the woman, I would give you—”
“I was, I was, I—”
“Byron!”
“Oh!” he grumbled, and tossed her hand back, a gift refused. He stomped off, lifting his feet and slapping them down, a comical exaggeration of a manly huff. When he reached the curb, Byron turned back to her, put his chubby hands on his swaying, elastic hips, and compressed his fair eyebrows so that the subtle undergrowth of black hairs darkened his brow. Angry, he looked more like Diane. “I want ice cream!” he trumpeted.
A passing man laughed. “So do I,” he said, and moved on.
She felt the lava bubble below and push against her crust. Stay calm, she warned herself. She decided to ignore him for the moment, keep the refusal silent, fearful that articulation would become rage. Diane hailed a taxi and moved to its door. “Come on,” she said.
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