Only Children

by Rafael Yglesias

  He suspected this feeling was transference. Because he knew both too much and too little of analytic theory to be sure if he was right to prefer her to the psychiatrist, he ignored his doubts and let the abrupt suffusion of protection and warmth he felt afterward flow into his chilled, timid arteries.

  Peter went to the next few sessions eager to be a good patient, his mouth yawning words, emptying himself of all the evil, yes, evil in him. I hate my wife. I hate my son. I’m getting bored with Rachel. I want my mother to beg my forgiveness. I liked Larry playing with me. I hated Larry playing with me. I want to know why I let him. I let him because I liked it. I let him because my father left me. I want to leave New York, and live alone in another city, sleeping with lots of pretty girls, who aren’t smart and mature like Diane, or funny and loving and wise like Rachel, but silly with big tits and fatless hips. I wish I were an artist. I’m glad I’m not. I love Diane. I love Byron. If they were dead, I could be happy.

  Gradually, Peter became aware that the sessions were making his time at home with Byron and Diane easier. Diane asked only perfunctory questions about the process, her interrogation atypically brief and vague. Presumably she was afraid of what Peter might discover. Rachel, on the other hand, was nosy. Eager, too. And she got increasingly frustrated by Peter’s answers.

  “You know, I’m at exactly the age my father was when he left my mother,” Peter commented to Rachel a month into his therapy.

  “Does Dr. Kot think that’s significant?” Rachel asked, with a worried brow and concentrated frown.

  “Kotkin, her name is Kotkin.”

  “I know, honey! I think it’s funny to call her Dr. Kot. I like to think of you on Dr. Kot’s couch.”

  “Making up cute names about authority figures strikes me as a way of making them even more intimidating, rather than less so.”

  “Peter, you’re being defensive.”

  “Darling, there’s one thing I’ve definitely learned from my therapy—I’m defensive about everything. I’m defensive when I’m on the offensive. I’m afraid that inanimate objects are going to leap at me—”

  “Me too.” Rachel laughed, leaning toward him, touching his arm, trying to move in closer. “Me too,” she kept saying, unloading her furniture into his emotional apartment, claiming the drapes, the rug were just like hers. “Me too,” she said. Peter had talked about Rachel’s claims of duplication in therapy.

  (“She wants to be close to you in every way,” Kotkin said.

  (“Yeah, but it’s so adolescent, like teenage love, or even teenage friendship,” Peter answered, expressing a judgment he hadn’t known he felt.

  (“You prefer distance,” Kotkin said.

  (“Give me a break. I prefer difference. Isn’t that what the relationship between men and women is about? Difference?”

  (“I hope so,” Kotkin said with a mock sigh of despair.

  (That was funny. Was therapy supposed to be funny?)

  “You’re not defensive,” Peter argued to Rachel. “You’re insecure.”

  “It’s the same thing,” Rachel complained, hurt, grabbing her furniture protectively.

  “Yeah, the cause, I guess. But mostly you want approval. I want to hide.”

  “What does she say about me?” Rachel asked.

  “Nothing. She doesn’t say things. She asks questions.”

  “I love you. Have you told her I love you?”

  “Now you want approval from my shrink.”

  This degenerated into a fight. Rachel ended up crying. “I can’t go on seeing you until you straighten out whether you’re going to stay married or not.”

  Peter agreed. That made Rachel angry. He had seen her act resentful, dented, her head drooping, her arms closed, hiding her chest, but this was different. Her shoulders, usually slumped, got square, her arm gestures strong—she looked unpleasantly masculine. “Diane’s your mommy. You’re scared to leave her because she takes care of your life. Keeps everything in order. I’m your bohemian fling.”

  Peter understood now that Rachel hoped for marriage or a commitment like it, that she had expected his therapy to make him feel that his marriage to Diane was an illness, or a symptom of an illness. This discovery had none of the shock of revelation; rather, it was like noticing a color in familiar wallpaper, seeing something close by, always there, but previously ignored. He was offended by Rachel’s presumption.

  (“Aren’t you flattered?” Dr. Kotkin asked.

  (“Flattered?”

  (“That a bright, successful, attractive woman wants you?”

  (“She’s not that attractive,” Peter said, and laughed sheepishly at his cruel joke.

  (“If she were more attractive, would you be flattered?” Dr. Kotkin asked, suddenly stripped of her sense of humor.

  (“No. Of course not. I’m just not flattered.”)

  He was bored. Rachel believed she was very important in his life. Obviously that was her problem. Unless Peter gave her absolute confirmation, she would forever be unloading her things into his soul, matching her fabric to his, lighting the same areas, completing his set of china. If she couldn’t possess the thing of him— marriage—she wanted to own his feelings.

  Rachel yelled at him. She told him she couldn’t see him for a while. Peter looked downcast, but was secretly thrilled. One less cloying person.

  (“I want you to get rid of them.”

  (“Get rid of who?”

  (“In our first session you asked what I wanted from you. I want you to get rid of all of them. My mother, my father, my stepmother, my stepfather, Larry, Diane, Byron, Rachel. Get rid of them.”

  (“And then what will happen?”

  (“Then I’ll be happy. I’ll buy a Winnebago and drive to Wyoming and live free and wild.”

  (“How can I get rid of them?”

  (He took that one seriously. His legs felt stuck to Kotkin’s couch. His head sank into the pillow. He closed his eyes and the lids burned. “Make me not care about them. About what they say. Or what they want. Or what I owe them.”

  (“And if you didn’t care about all that, then you’d be free of them?”

  (“Wouldn’t I?”

  (“I don’t know. Is that what you’re saying?”

  (“What do you think? Or will you really never tell me what you think?”

  (“I think all of this talk about getting rid of them are made-up feelings.”

  (Peter tried to raise his head, but the weight of his soul held him down, vulnerable to her omniscient voice. “You do!”

  (“I don’t think you want to be free of them. I think you make that up. You bring it to me because you think it’s naughty, and that’s fine. You can come here and say naughty things. You want your wife and son dead. You don’t want to see Rachel. Maybe some of these things you do want. But that’s not why you’re saying it.”)

  That was thrilling. Therapy was more fun than life. He was glad not to have to see Rachel for a while. He could see Kotkin instead.

  NINA TOLD Luke the truth. She explained that she had to go to school to learn how to make designs, that she wanted to do something, the way Daddy did something.

  “But you take care of me,” Luke said.

  She didn’t tiptoe. She said she had to do something besides be a mommy. She contradicted Eric’s halting, guilty speech of the previous night. Eric had told Luke that Mommy had to work, that people worked to make money, and money was needed to live. That wasn’t the truth. Nina couldn’t bear to hurt Luke—and pretend the hurt wasn’t intended. She didn’t bother to explain her logic to Eric; it wouldn’t be logic to him.

  Luke’s blue jewels, shimmering with emotion, bravely held her in their light, wanting to know more. “What kind of designs?” he asked.

  She showed him the dresses in her closet to illustrate. Luke made a game of it. He ran into the ocean of hanging fabrics, their hems washing over his head, waves of silk and wool and cotton. “Soft,” he said for the silk.

  “Right, that’s silk.”
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br />   “Scratchy!”

  “That’s wool.”

  Luke paused under the cotton dress. His head popped inside, then appeared again. “Soft and scratchy. Like a towel.”

  “Right! Very good description, Luke. That’s cotton. Towels are made of cotton.”

  Luke ran into her legs and hugged her knees. “Mommy,” he said in his sweet, high trill, singing to her. “Mommy.”

  “You want to see where I’ll be going?”

  Luke looked shocked, as if she had offered something forbidden. He nodded cautiously, afraid of the admission. She took him to FIT and pointed to the featureless, undesigned buildings where her classes would be. After that, they ate in a coffee shop, a room of trapped air that had been heated and reheated. Its only color was a dull red—the vinyl booths, the pointless glass-colored panels, even the waiter’s jackets. Nina thought it funny that this masterpiece of ugliness was so near the Fashion Institute.

  Luke adored the coffee shop. He smacked his lips with each sip of his chocolate milk shake, and exclaimed about each glass horror, each phony wood panel, and was delighted by the plastic container of artificial maple syrup made in the shape of a bear.

  They took a taxi home. Luke’s energy waned, and with it, the props for his courage collapsed. The blue jewels’ glint was dulled by water, he leaned his head against her soft breasts, no longer hard with his sustenance, no longer able to soothe every hurt. He cried softly into her lap. She stroked his head and said nothing. Nothing she could say would be true.

  Her head throbbed. She loved him, but she wished he would stop. Each tear burned her skin. Each sob punctured her heart.

  And was it worth it? Was she really going to make something of her attempt at a career? The chances she would land any kind of job were probably slight. She had never really finished anything. Except for Luke, what crop had she sown and harvested?

  And now I’m abandoning him, she thought, sighing as Luke stopped crying and fell into coma, his mouth open, his pacifier falling out. He was still such a baby: still in diapers, still with a plug in his mouth, still clutching his favorite stuffed animal in his crib.

  If only Eric’s lie had been true. If only they needed the money. What a good, solid excuse for leaving.

  Anyway, the value of a mother staying home, that was in the heads of men, magazines, talk-show-segment producers, and the women who wanted to stay home anyway. From the park she knew plenty of children whose mothers worked, and with lousy nannies as caretakers to boot. Still, those children functioned. They had problems. But Luke has problems. Maybe he’s got them because I stay home, she thought. A few weeks ago, Eric had come back from the park raving about Byron’s gregariousness. Nina admired Byron’s boldness too. Byron’s mother, whom Nina had never seen with Byron, worked. What harm had that done Byron? Apparently none. It was all blather. The mothers who left their children to work, and the mothers who left work for children—both groups claimed reasons beyond their own interests, as though nothing in life were done for the self.

  I have to work. We need the money.

  It’s better for my child, during these formative years, to have my full attention.

  We’re having another child because I think it’s better not to be a precious only child. Studies have shown that—

  The park was littered with women who talked like that. Nina held the limp soft pad of Luke’s hand in hers. It was still an exquisite miniature. Of course, sometimes, she wanted to make another baby, another finely worked masterpiece from the forge of her womb. Nothing she had ever done was like it. To repeat the triumph, why, it was pure ego, pure power. It’s better not to be an only child, indeed. She kissed the sleeping Luke’s hand. No, in this great big greedy world, it was impossible to find people who did things to satisfy their own desires.

  Luke was a dead weight as Nina carried him out of the cab and into the building lobby.

  “Ah, sleeping,” the old ladies of the lobby said. At the sound of their voices, Luke nestled against Nina’s breasts. They were smaller now than before she got pregnant, a percentage evaporated forever into his mouth. Another kid, and someone might consider her small-breasted. Three or four, and she’d be almost flat. Maybe not. Maybe there was some irreducible size, an invulnerable core. Luke stayed asleep all the way into his crib.

  She hurried to clean the apartment. Pearl was due to come at noon. She hoped Luke would still be asleep. Pearl was supposed to start today, spend the next two weeks while Nina could stay at home, and let the transition to full care proceed gradually. Pearl arrived ten minutes early.

  “He asleep?” she said right away.

  “Yes,” Nina said.

  “Well, I’d better start cleaning up,” Pearl said with an eager look at the living room Nina had just straightened, as if it were going to be a formidable task.

  When Luke woke, he was, as usual, reluctant to embrace consciousness; his eyes rolled unmoored in his head, his body felt hot and boneless. Nina carried him past Pearl without making anything of her presence. Luke startled immediately. His back stiffened, his eyes docked on Pearl, and his fingers took hold of Nina with an insistent, and somewhat desperate, grip.

  The truth, the truth. “I’m not going anywhere,” she whispered.

  “Mommy,” he answered.

  Pearl was so smart. She waved a mute and gentle hello to Luke and then went on cleaning.

  They sat together in a clinch for a long time and watched this big black woman work. Pearl disassembled the couch and vacuumed its naked bottom. Luke’s eyes got wide at the sight. Pearl found many lost pieces of his toys. She carried them to the sink, cleaned them, and then placed each one on the table in front of Luke, laid out in a line, evenly spaced, like jewels on Tiffany’s counter. Luke was delighted.

  “That’s He-Man’s sword!” Luke said, his voice soaring up, octave above octave.

  “That’s a sword!” Pearl said, shaking her head in wonder. “It’s not dangerous, is it?”

  “Noooo!” Luke laughed, although his eyes teared. “It’s made of plastic,” he said.

  “Plaster?” Pearl said, not used to Luke’s babyish pronunciations, sometimes chewing hard consonants into softness, sometimes stretching already long vowels into marathon journeys.

  “Plastic!” Luke shouted, but the volume didn’t make his enunciation clearer.

  “Plastic,” Nina said to help.

  “Plastic!” Pearl understood. “You know what that is?”

  Luke was still unaware that his vocabulary was precocious. He learned the words to understand and express himself, not to gain adult praise. Nina had done her best about that, shushing Eric, and Eric’s parents for that matter, when they began to exclaim at one of Luke’s sentences. Luke stared at Pearl with a puzzled frown. “Actually,” Luke said, although to anyone but Nina’s or Eric’s ears the word would sound Achtyewally, “it’s colored plastic.”

  “Of course he does,” Nina said to begin Pearl’s training— namely, that the acquisition of knowledge was to be taken for granted. “Luke knows about wood and metal and plastic and tile and cotton and wool and silk. Everybody knows about those things.”

  “And Formica,” Luke said.

  Pearl queried Nina with her brows. “Formica,” Nina translated.

  “My, my,” Pearl said, and looked into Nina’s eyes with a startled and impressed expression.

  “We saw fake Formica today,” Luke said. This sentence took awhile to produce and obviously baffled Pearl.

  “We went to a coffee shop where they had tables made of Formica, but the Formica was made to look like wood,” Nina said.

  “That was good,” Luke judged.

  “Uh-huh,” Pearl said. “Could you help me with something, Luke? I don’t know where you keep your toys, you know, where I should be putting all these things so you can find them. Would you show me?”

  “Mommy,” Luke said, and grabbed her.

  “Let’s go to your room and show Pearl where everything belongs.”

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nbsp; “Okay.” Luke relaxed at the assurance that Nina would also come.

  Pearl smiled at Nina over Luke’s head as they flanked him in his slow waddle to his room. Once they were there, Luke’s energy surged, happy in his role of guide. Pearl knelt beside him and listened earnestly. She missed every third word, but each time asked Luke to repeat it. Then Luke began to misunderstand Pearl’s southern accent, her abbreviated vowels and softened consonants. Pearl sounded like a soothing mellow saxophone; Luke trilled above her restful melody, his song faster and gayer as he gained confidence in Pearl. They had to repeat a lot to each other, but Pearl began to make fun of her own pronunciations and somehow convinced Luke that the reason she had trouble understanding him was that she spoke so poorly.

  Nina retired to the back of the room. At first, from time to time, Luke glanced in her direction or addressed his comment to her. Each time, Pearl answered before Nina could.

  Nina felt herself start to disappear. She could imagine a day when time would pass faster than the second-by-second creep of Luke’s infancy; she could imagine a time when Luke might not need her. He talked and talked to Pearl. Now Pearl let him go on without asking for clearer repronunciations; she let his talk streak, his comfort increasing as they built a huge wood-block castle for He-Man. Nina knew Pearl had his confidence entirely when Luke said that Pearl could pretend she was She-Ra.

  “Luke,” Nina said.

  He almost gasped. Luke swiveled on the cushion of his diaper and looked scared. “What!”

  “I’m going to take a nap. Do you want to take a nap with me?”

  “No,” he said, his face darkening.

  “Would you rather just keep playing with Pearl?”

  “I’d like that,” Pearl said.

  “Okay,” Luke said, reluctantly.

  Nina walked out. She held her breath as she went into her bedroom—my God, to be alone in her own bedroom in the middle of the afternoon—and lay down.