Only Children

by Rafael Yglesias

  BIG BOY. Big boy. Big boy.

  Byron sucked on his soft thumb, washing it with his saliva. He ironed the liquids back into the mushy skin, pressing them out with his tongue and the roof of his mouth. Up and down, trailing his teeth on the knuckle’s hard bump. First cool, then hotter inside, soft on top, hard on bottom.

  Big boy!

  Mommy pulled him through the lobby. He swung on her hand, felt himself bottomless, heavy, but loose anyway, free in the world tied to the mommy swing.

  “Are you tired?” Mommy’s dark, dark face stopped the easy, loose world.

  “Tire?”

  “Tired. You’re sucking your thumb. Do you need a nap?”

  “No!” Angry Mommy wants me away. Look—behind the leaves. A man.

  “Hello, Beerun!”

  It was Jesus, the doorman. Peeking through the leaves.

  “Hello, Beerun!”

  Byron scurried across the forest floor to catch the lion Jesus.

  “Can’t catch me, Beerun!” Jesus hopped back and forth around the plant, the gold buttons of his blue suit rattling, his feet dancing on the grass floor.

  So funny! The green world shook, tables, chairs, all hopping around the lion Jesus. He pawed the air and meowed. “I kratch you, Beerun. I kratch you,” Jesus said as Byron dived for his silky pants. “Oh, no!” Jesus said. Big boy had caught him. Big boy had won.

  “Byron, the elevator’s here.”

  “Okay. Up now, Beerun. You big boy,” Jesus said, lifting him up from the green rug. “Go catch your mommy.”

  “Rrrrr,” Byron said, and grabbed Jesus’s legs again.

  “No, no, big boy Beerun. Your mommy’s waiting.” Jesus’s hands pushed him gently toward Mommy. Byron paused and looked at Mommy’s body, tilted sideways, holding up the elevator switch.

  “Can’t catch me!” Byron sang and ran, his hair floating, big boy on the fly. “Can’t catch me! Can’t catch me!” He ran into the gold box and looked up at the lighted numbers. Home was six. He jumped at the buttons. Press the button—see the light.

  “What are you doing?”

  “Want to press, want to press, want to press.”

  “I told you. You only have to say things once!”

  Big boy jump. Couldn’t. Mommy hands could. “Lift me, lift—” only once, say only once.

  “Okay, okay.”

  Press and light. “Six!” he called to the light. “We’re home!” he called to Mommy. “Can we play?”

  “We’re in the elevator.”

  “I know, I know—”

  “Byron!”

  “I know,” he mumbled. “Can we play in my room?”

  “I have to go to work. Francine will play with you.”

  “I hate Francine.”

  “You do not!”

  “Francine fat!”

  “Bryon! Don’t you dare say that to her! That hurts people’s feelings.”

  “Fat, fat, fat.” The elevator doors opened. Byron ran out. “Francine fat!” he shouted at the tall wall door with the symbol of home—6A.

  Diane grabbed him by the elbow. The floor fell away. “Stop it!” she yelled.

  Home—6A—jumped. “I’m not bad!” he answered, once the 6A stayed still.

  “Stop it! I can’t stand it when you’re like this!”

  “You don’t love me,” big boy called up to her, to the dark face.

  “I don’t love you when you act like a brat!”

  Brat is bad. Not bad. “I’m not!”

  “You are! I don’t love a brat. I love a boy who is good.”

  The 6A dripped, the floor got big. Mommy’s hand felt hard. Not bad. Too big for the bad. His face got squeezed and hurt. He cried.

  “Oh, no,” Francine’s voice said. She was fat and big in the home door. “What’s all the crying? You hurt yourself?”

  “I have to go, Francine,” Mommy said. “He needs a nap.”

  “Don’t! Don’t need!” The squeezing face hurt more. Mommy don’t love me.

  “Now, Byron,” Fat Francine said. “Don’t cry. Babies cry. Big boys don’t.”

  Big boy. Big boy. Big boy not bad.

  “Good-bye,” Mommy said. The dark face came at him, a shadow sun darkening the squeezed hurt.

  “No!” he cried, and turned into Francine’s big warm fat.

  “Byron! You bad boy. Give your mommy a kiss.”

  “Forget it,” Mommy said, and the shadow went away.

  Big boy run, big boy sleep. Big boy bad.

  I AM DADDY’S head. I am his hair. His eyes. His ears. His nose. His mouth. I walk on Daddy’s head. Walk through the sky. Walk through signs.

  “Don’t pull on my hair, Luke.” Daddy’s forehead rolled up and under his hand.

  “Okay.” Luke made his hand flat and felt the rumpled skin.

  “Duck,” Daddy said.

  The building cover moved at his eyes. He felt himself lowered; he put his head next to Daddy’s. The sun went dark for a moment and then he was going up again, up again to the windows, above the grown-up heads, big and bigger in the world.

  “That was a low awning,” Daddy said.

  “Why?”

  “Didn’t you see how low it was?”

  “Why low?”

  “Compared to the others, it was low.”

  “No, no.” Luke wanted to burst out of words, to yell. “Why make it low?”

  “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t understand.”

  Luke felt the inside jail open and laughed away the worry. “You didn’t!”

  “No, I didn’t.” Daddy’s hand went around crazily to pat Luke’s back. “I don’t know why they made that one so low. Maybe the only place to attach it—do you know what ‘attach’ means?”

  “No.”

  “Like glue. Sticking something to something.”

  Daddy was happy. Luke patted the hard ball of Daddy’s head to feel his happiness.

  “Anyway, maybe the only place to attach it was low.”

  “I see.” He felt the wet air and the dry light. The song played in his ear: “I like you just the way you are. Not the clothes you wear.”

  “Is this your neighborhood, Luke?” Daddy said with happiness in his voice.

  “What?”

  “Welcome to your neighborhood, right?” Daddy said with laughter in his happiness. “This is your neighborhood. Mr. Rogers has his neighborhood and this is yours.”

  The worry was back, confused sound and dark light. “What?”

  “Do you know what ‘neighborhood’ means?”

  He put his hand on Daddy’s fur and grasped it to hold on, hold on to the big and bigger world. “No,” he said, and wished he could pull the hair.

  “It means the place right around where you live, the stores, the park, these streets. And ‘neighbor’ is someone who lives right around where you live. In the same building, or one nearby.”

  The air was wet again on his face, the light dry and warm. “I see,” he said, and then watched the people, the stores, and, ahead, the wonderful and terrible prospect of the trees and grass of the park. They belonged to Luke now, like his toys, his room, his bed. “This is my neighborhood,” Luke sang. “Welcome to my neighborhood.” He laughed.

  Daddy’s happy head bucked under his hand. “That’s right, Luke.”

  AS ERIC approached the playground gate, he felt more in control than usual, because he had been so clever at wooing Luke to the park. When Eric first made the suggestion they go to Washington Square Park—he wanted Nina to sleep late, undisturbed by their noise in the living room—Luke had lowered his head, his bright blue eyes darkening as if the source of their energy were on the blink. Eric said, “We’ll go to the park, I’ll put you on the swing until you’re tired of that, then I’ll catch you going down the slide—”

  “I don’t want to slide,” Luke mumbled, afraid of both the slide and of Eric’s attempts to get him over the fear.

  “Okay, we’ll build a sand castle together. Then we’ll come home for lunch w
ith Mommy.”

  It had worked. For the first time in a month since an incident with a brat who took Luke’s shovel, Luke agreed to go to the park with Eric. Eric knew now he had been wrong to lecture Luke to make a more vigorous defense of his possessions, that his speech had backfired, increasing Luke’s fear of the random world. Luke didn’t want to order the mess himself; he wanted it made safe.

  Eric forced himself to talk in a cheerful, hearty voice while he carried Luke to the park on his shoulders, obliged to push the stroller with only one hand, the other grasping Luke’s plump, dangling leg. The sharp edge of Luke’s heels bruised Eric’s chest, Eric’s hand cramped from the tight grip he had to maintain on the stroller handle in order to steer straight, and his neck felt permanently dented by the relentless weight of Luke’s behind. But it had been worth it. When Luke began to sing the theme song of his favorite television show, Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood, Eric hit upon the idea of explaining to Luke that the park and the streets and the strange people around them were Luke’s neighbors. This worked too. Luke arrived at the playground singing. He moved eagerly toward the swing area and, once on, asked to be pushed faster.

  “How fast?” Eric asked.

  “To the moon!” Luke answered.

  “That’s fast,” Eric said, and sighed with relief.

  Eric made his hand into a metronome and watched the back of his son loom and then recede. He listened to two mothers chat about their children’s moods and sleep habits as if their kids weren’t right there, swinging in the air. What do they think? Eric wondered. That the rush of wind in their children’s ears makes them deaf? He remembered his mother’s dismaying habit of discussing his school problems with her friends while he and his buddies played at their feet. Miriam insisted to Eric that he shouldn’t worry about his academic difficulties, but she talked of nothing else with her friends.

  Well, that was all part of the garbage of his past, mistakes that he wasn’t going to repeat.

  “Luke! Luke! Luke!” a sandy-haired two-year-old stood on a bench outside the swing area. He waved his fat little hands in the air, his broad mouth revealing a row of widely spaced teeth.

  “Who’s that?” Eric asked.

  “Oh,” Luke said, a touch of worry and excitement in his tone. “That’s Byerun.”

  “Brian?”

  “Bye! Run!” Luke’s voice was at once loud and restrained, like someone shouting through a closed door.

  “Oh, Byron.” That was Luke’s friend, Eric realized, introduced to Luke by his soon-to-be-baby-sitter Pearl.

  “Hello, Luke! Play with me! Luke! Play with me!” Byron jumped up and down on the bench joyfully. He looked so open, this kid with his tousled hair, big smile, and pug nose. Byron’s body, smaller and leaner than Luke’s, seemed to quake with energy. His presence was the ideal of boyhood: electric and sunny. Even the playground adults, battered daily by the happiness of children, took notice of Byron and smiled at his enthusiasm.

  All at once, Eric felt afraid of Byron, envious of his parents, and proud of the fact that Luke was the focus of his attentions. “Do you want to get out of the swing?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Luke mumbled, very low, ducking as he answered, as if he expected a refusal to be hurled at him.

  He’s never been refused anything. Why is he so timid? Eric punched himself with the question.

  “Play with me, Luke!” the happy Byron called. “Play with me!” Byron yearned.

  Behind him, a dark Jewish yuppie appeared. She was dressed in L. L. Bean clothes and, at first glance, looked nothing like her son. Her hair was black and straight, and her deep-set eyes hid in a cave made darker by wide black circles of fatigue. Her face was long and dour, her mouth closed, her body still and enervated. But she had Byron’s bold look as she took in Eric and Luke, and when she spoke, she had Byron’s loud, confident tone: “Are you Luke?”

  “That’s Luke!” Byron said. “Play with me, Luke! Play with me!”

  “Yes.” Eric answered Byron’s mother for Luke, afraid that Luke would never do so. Eric hurried to get Luke out of the swing, influenced by Byron’s repeated chants. “I’m his daddy.”

  “I’ve heard so much about Luke. My name is Diane.”

  “Hi, I’m Eric.” Eric’s hands encased the box of Luke’s chest to lift up Luke, out of the swing, over the fence, down next to his friend. Eric could feel his son’s heart beat with the excitement of this encounter. That was a terrible relief—to know there was someone else Luke wanted to be with, that he had not inherited his mother’s hermitlike disdain for friendship—but there was also loss, both of his son and of control. He was letting the fluttering bird go, but to what?

  Byron took Luke by the hand, like a lover, like a parent, and pulled him toward the sandbox. “We play, Luke,” Byron said.

  And Luke spoke instantly, clearly and confidently as he would at home.“I have a shovel. And a pail. Daddy, can I have my shovel and pail?”

  “Here they are,” Eric said.

  “You speak so well,” Diane said to Luke, her compliment aggressive, almost acquisitive.

  “I do too!” Byron said.

  Luke, of course, lowered his head, away from the blinding light of being addressed by a stranger. “Come on,” Luke said to Byron.

  Byron violently took Luke at his word. He grabbed Luke’s hand and hopped across the playground toward the sandbox. Byron pulled Luke so hard that he fell, nosing forward into sand like a helpless puppet.

  Eric jumped forward. “Byron!” Diane called. “Don’t pull him like that!”

  Eric reached Luke and lifted him to his feet. “Are you okay?”

  Luke nodded.

  “Play, Luke!” Byron called from the sandbox. Luke went toward him, in his slow, careful walk, distrustful of the earth.

  “How old is Luke?” Diane asked the moment Eric returned.

  “Two years two months.”

  “Six weeks younger than Byron. He speaks really well. Did he start talking early?”

  “About nine months.”

  “Really? I’ve heard a few girls speak that well at his age. But no boys. I thought Byron was the most precocious, but Luke makes real sentences.”

  Eric was pleased she had noticed, and surprised she had so quickly, from merely one exchange. “From what I heard Byron speaks well,” Eric said.

  “Yeah, I thought he was the best. But Francine had told me that Luke was amazing.”

  “Well, he likes to talk, although he’s shy. But his mother and he have long, long conversations. Even when he was a little infant, it would calm him if we talked to him.”

  “Byron won’t stand still long enough to have a conversation.”

  Eric sat down on the bench next to Diane. She didn’t have the small pillow of maternal belly; her thighs looked lean; even her posture, despite the exhaustion in her face, suggested girlish energy. “Look at them!” Eric said in a reflex of surprise when he glanced at the sandbox.

  Luke and Byron were digging a hole together. Their bowed, concentrated heads almost touched, and even from that distance, the music of their voices—Byron’s, piercing, upper register, Luke’s, low and sweet and melodious—could be heard as one song played harmoniously by two distinct instruments. “Isn’t that great?” Diane agreed. “Francine told me they were real friends, but—it’s very precocious of them. Usually, it’s parallel play at this age. They look like they’re cooperating.”

  Luke isn’t so frail, his wings are strong, Eric thought.

  “You work on Wall Street, right?”

  “You can tell just by looking?”

  “No.” Diane wasn’t amused. “I gossiped with Francine. She told me your wife has been at home, but she’s going back to work.”

  “Well, to school first. She wants to design clothes, so she’s taking some courses at FIT.”

  “Oh,” Diane said, her eyes doubtful. “Did she used to do that before?”

  “No, she dabbled in photography. Did some work as a graphic designe
r. Flirted with acting when she first came to New York. You work?”

  “I’m a lawyer.”

  “Criminal?”

  “Corporate.”

  “And your husband?”

  “He’s in charge of the Stillman Foundation’s funding to the lively arts.”

  “Really? That’s interesting.” Diane named her and her husband’s jobs in a casual tone, as if they were unremarkable and ordinary. Since, in fact, they weren’t, her manner made Eric feel that she must believe herself and her husband to be very successful, perhaps too obviously successful, so that an open show of pride would be redundant. “Is he at work?”

  “He’s asleep,” she said with a grunt. She poked her hands into her jacket, slumping down on the bench, like a benched ballplayer enviously eyeing his active peers. “And your wife?” she asked, turning her head for the first time to look directly into Eric’s eyes.

  Reflexively, he couldn’t face them. “She’s asleep too.”

  “Well, aren’t they lucky?” Diane said with another disgusted grunt.

  “Yes, they are.”

  “And how did we get to be such suckers?”

  Eric laughed and with the laugh let go of his succession of worries—how can I get Luke to the park? how can I get him to be less shy? how can I get him to be less afraid? how can I make more money? how can I learn to make it on my own? How? How? How? He laughed them out and up, ugly pigeons on the wing, soaring into the open patch of the New York sky.

  THAT MISERABLE day when Diane took Byron to the IQ test, expecting triumph and ending instead with hurling Byron into a cab, that miserable day, like so many others, found her happy to return to work. She had noticed long ago that the parents of young children were happy to be at the office on Monday mornings. That afternoon she was grateful for the obligation to get out of the house, away from her cranky two-year-old.

  She settled at her desk, returned the accumulated phone calls, and finished the memo she had to prepare for Stoppard, all in record time, more than making up for her absence in the morning.

  Then her mind wandered. She knew she should go home. Peter wouldn’t be there; he had a fund raiser and then a show. Peter had asked her to come along, she could call the baby-sitters, but the prospect of getting to bed at midnight or even later, only to be roused at three or four in the morning if she was unlucky (the nights they went out Byron tended to wake) or six-thirty if she was fortunate had defeated her. She should go home, deal with Byron. Maybe all the absences of parents had made him temperamental. She had to force Peter to develop a closer relationship with Byron. Maybe another child would help. Sure, Byron would be jealous, but he would have a companion.