Only Children

by Rafael Yglesias

  Luke doesn’t want to go to the bathroom, she admitted to herself. Luke’s not constipated. He doesn’t like the sensation, and so he holds it in and then becomes constipated.

  “Don’t make an issue of going to the bathroom,” the doctor had told Nina. “If you make it a test of wills, things will get worse.”

  “It will make it softer,” she told Luke, and offered him a reward if he took it.

  Luke took the chocolate pudding softener and, for several months, it helped. He would move his bowels every three or four days with a lot of complaining and straining, but he’d manage it at last. Afterward he was so happy, racing everywhere, hungry for activity and very hungry for food. But by the next day, she could see him occasionally flex his buttocks tight, pushing it in, stopping his actions, his mood changing. …

  She hadn’t told Eric her observation. He would argue. Because Nina had once confided to Eric that she was constipated as a child, he was convinced Luke’s problem was genetic. Her fault, more to the point.

  “How long has it been?” Eric asked.

  The intervals were lengthening, and so were the stools. “Five days,” she said.

  “We have to take him back to the doctor.”

  “I’m not taking him back to the doctor,” Nina said instantly. “He’s examined him and there’s nothing organically wrong.”

  “There has to be!” Eric pleaded. He got up from the chair and removed his suit jacket, ready to get to the dirty work. “How could he be holding it in?”

  “He just holds it in!” Nina said.

  “But how?”

  “Don’t you ever hold it in?”

  “No,” Eric inhaled, his chest puffing. “Why would I?”

  “You’re not near a bathroom! You have to hold it in. What would you do, go in your pants? Of course, you can hold it in.”

  “I go every morning, right after my coffee. Unless my stomach’s upset.”

  “Terrific. Let’s get your mother to toilet-train Luke. She did a great job with you.”

  “I’m not saying it’s your fault.”

  “I know you’re not. But you could try and think of what Luke is feeling and can do, rather than what you feel and you do. You and Luke are different people.”

  “Look.” Eric sighed, and glanced toward the hall, as if he were being summoned away. After a moment, Eric turned back, stared at Nina out of the dark hollows of his exhausted face, and sighed again.

  “What is it? Say what’s on your mind.”

  “You understand it better because you had the same problem—”

  “I did not have the same problem!” Nina slapped the couch. He was impossibly stupid, a clumsy city car spinning its wheels in the mud of real life. “I was a little constipated. This is different.”

  “There has to be something wrong with him.”

  “He doesn’t like doing it!” Exasperation forced the truth out of her. “I can see him holding it in. So it gets harder and hurts more, so he holds it in more! And on and on, worse and worse.”

  Eric frowned. He said timidly, “You’ve seen him hold it in?”

  Nina stood and imitated Luke’s flexed buttocks squeezing closed the hole in his dam. “That’s what he does! Even Pearl sees him do it. He does it in front of you.”

  “Jesus,” Eric said, and sagged back down into the chair. He looked shot, his arms limp, his head forward on his chest, his face still and solemn. “Jesus,” he mumbled again. “What are we going to do?”

  “I’m not doing anything about it, Eric,” Nina said. “Everything I’ve tried makes it worse. I’ve talked to him, explained to him, but he won’t let go. I’ve taken him to the doctor—I’ve done everything. It’s up to Luke. He’s suffering. It’s up to him to get out of it.”

  Absorbing this news, Eric looked a little bit like the Lincoln Memorial. His great body was squared by the chair, his legs and arms massive, his head quiescent, his eyes mournful, seeing ahead to the future.

  “He’ll be fine,” she tried to reassure Lincoln.

  “You can’t leave it up to him,” Eric intoned. A house divided against itself cannot stand. “He can’t deal with it. He’s a three-year-old baby.” Deep and grave. A severe judgment of history.

  “There are some things people learn on their own. It’s his body. He has to be comfortable with it—”

  “That’s the goy in you,” Abe Lincoln said.

  “Goddammit!” Nina thought him so ridiculous she gave up being gentle. “How would you like it if every time something didn’t go perfectly with Luke, I called you a kike?”

  “Oh, come on!” Eric complained. At least that broke his marble pose.

  “It’s the same thing!” Nina said. “Goy! That’s an insult. This isn’t my fault! It’s not because I’m a goy! Maybe it’s your fault! You never challenge Luke to do anything on his own. When you take him to the park, you still stand by the slide and catch him.”

  “He won’t go down unless—” Eric protested.

  “He goes down the slide with no one catching him all week. On the weekends, with you, he has to be caught. You’re a patsy for him. He knows you’ll do anything. So he asks. He’s manipulating you!”

  Eric was her boy again, sagging in his suit, his big face opened by pain and amazement. Help me, Nina, his eyes seemed to call out. She felt sorry for him. Unless he was puffed up, pursuing money, he really didn’t know anything about life.

  “You know, Eric,” she said, seeing her chance to get through. “You have to stop making everything ugly. Fag, goy. You’re really a sweet man.” She felt her love for Eric waken from its overtired sleep. Maybe she could restore him, restore them—

  “What are you talking about!” Eric said. “Is that what this is about? ’Cause I called your boss a fag?”

  “No,” she said sadly. He was slipping away; the connection was loose.

  “You’re not gonna help Luke ’cause I called your boss a fag?” Eric was a peacock again, still tired, but swelling, confident in his silly fan of colors. “Is that why you won’t ask him about his stock?”

  “I told you I would. You’re—”

  “You won’t. You were lying.”

  “I was not!” she lied. She had to get away. “I’m going to bed—”

  “No!” Eric reached for her. “No, don’t go to bed angry. Please. That’s the worst. I can’t sit here alone, worrying about Luke, with you pissed off at me.”

  If only she could stay and he would stop badgering, but he would never let go of his troubles, never let Luke work his own way out of something, never leave her alone to succeed or fail in the world, always wanting himself there, helping, bragging, nagging, like some massive overcoat, sweltering, tripping her, its heavy cloth blocking her mouth. “Don’t worry about Luke,” she said to him. “I’ll call, I’ll try to get another doctor—”

  “Who?”

  “Something. Let’s go to sleep now,” she said with motherly sternness.

  Little boy Eric turned away, his frame expanding in the chair, still and great, Lincoln again. His jaw set. “I had a bad day. I got to read some stuff. Pick new stocks.”

  So that was it. Money. He hadn’t made money today. So he had to fix her. Fix Luke. Fix something.

  “Good night,” she said, and put him out of her mind.

  DIANE CARRIED the envelopes to the mailbox.

  “Let me! Let me!” Byron barked up at her.

  She groaned at the effort of lifting Byron, her arms trembling from his weight while he lowered the lid and put the letters in. She had filled them out, the school applications for Byron to begin his life on the New York assembly line, so he could get a reservation at Orso, so he could pass the co-op board at the San Remo, so he would know which beach to lie on in the Hamptons, and finally so he would know to pretend that none of that knowledge mattered.

  I’m being unfair. She smiled into the sun. What a pretty day. This Saturday was made by a god in love. The city glowed. The air was mild. Beautiful pedestrians ambled on t
he concrete river in a gentle flow, passing the cliff walls of iridescent, sandblasted buildings capped by blue sky, occasionally fishing at the sidewalk stands of food, art, clothing, and incomprehensible souvenirs.

  Peter had done the job for her, written the page describing Byron’s abilities and accomplishments to send to Hunter. Diane understood Peter’s success as an arts funder from the fluent, quite convincing bullshit that he had streamed onto the page. She read it over several times and wished she had a son like the one Peter described. There wasn’t a lie in it, that was the amazing thing, not a single falsehood, and yet there wasn’t any truth in it, just facts garbed in sentimental adjectives—well, maybe it was true, after all. Bright children. Didn’t they always seem to be brats to anyone but their relatives? Weren’t men like Brian Stoppard really grown-up brats? What’s Peter if not a spoiled, articulate manipulator? Look at me, thousands spent on my education, and I sit at home, with a woman to clean and keep my child occupied, surrounded by services, dry cleaners, restaurants that deliver, taxis—

  “Hello!” It was Luke’s father, Eric.

  “Luke!” Byron shouted into Luke’s face, pulling at his hand. “Come to the park with me!”

  “We’re going to the park,” Diane said.

  “So are we,” Eric said.

  Diane felt self-conscious. She brushed a stray hair off her forehead. I look crazy, she thought, regretting that she hadn’t put on makeup, or dressed in something interesting. She had a closet full of clothes! She tried to smile (remember how ugly you look when you’re serious) to hide the fatigue, the sluggish despair. Eric seemed so energetic, especially for ten in the morning. He had a copy of Barron’s, already wrinkled, under his arm. He asked if she wanted a cup of coffee. She said yes. They stopped and got the boys chocolate doughnuts—Byron couldn’t believe his luck, but Luke seemed to take it as a matter of course—and Eric convinced Diane to get a Linzer torte.

  “Used to get them in my old neighborhood,” Eric said. “I love them!” She asked him what his old neighborhood was. Washington Heights, he said gravely, and then went on and on about the place, interpolating apologies for its being (what did he call it?) lower middle class, whatever the hell that was. He talked about delis and bakeries and grandmothers who lived with their children and spent their days leaning on windowsills to supervise the grandchildren playing games below on the sidewalks—the memories brought a smile to his face. He talked about delivering papers, going to the movies on Saturday, being chased by gangs, and chasing others with his own gang, smoking his first cigarette under the lobby stairs because on the streets there were too many grandmothers, too many uncles, too many friends of his parents who might see.

  “You sound like you wish you were a kid again,” she said. By then they were settled on the park bench, the torte gone, their coffees almost drained.

  “I hated it,” he said with a big smile.

  The surprise got her to laugh. She forgot her unwashed hair, her boring clothes, and leaned her shoulder against him. “Come on,” she said.

  “I did!” Eric was so pleased by the admission. “The whole universe was seven people. They made up their mind about me before I was walking and that was it: I was strong Eric, not too bright, always to be relied on for doing errands or helping out—I don’t know. They loved me, my family, my friends, their parents— but they didn’t respect me.”

  “There’s a difference,” Diane asked, thinking it over, “between love and respect?”

  “Very feminine to think they’re the same. Girls looked at me and they saw a husband. When they respect a man, they look at a man and see a lover.”

  “Really?” He was so open, so unafraid of saying something offensive or stupid, so uncalculated. What a relief to talk to him. “I think you’re wrong. It’s the other way around. Women respect the men they think make good husbands.”

  “They don’t love them?” Eric’s big face, his wide-set eyes innocent as a deer’s, scanned her. Eric’s eyes weren’t blue, but they were the sweet, wondering eyes of his son.

  “They love them too, but they respect them a lot, much more than the irresponsible bad boy.”

  “Maybe Jewish women,” Eric said wistfully.

  Is he having problems with his wife? She’s not Jewish. Diane had forgotten their shoulders were still touching until his comment made her self-conscious. I’d rather be in bed with him than watching Byron bully his son, Diane thought.

  “Come on, Luke! You’re Ram Man—”

  “I don’t want to be—”

  “You have to be Ram Man! He helps He-Man.”

  Eric saw. He didn’t like it. His lips were tight, holding his displeasure in.

  Go ahead, tell my kid he’s a tyrant. Go ahead.

  “How’s your work?” he asked instead.

  “I quit my job.”

  “You did!” She had gotten his mind off his son. He was openly astounded.

  His amazement brought a smile to her face. “You don’t approve?”

  “I’m sorry—”

  “Don’t apologize. Tell me. You don’t approve?”

  “Weren’t you at some fancy law firm?”

  Fancy law firm. Eric was like an uncle at Passover, but made young, made her own age. So comfortable to be with. “Yeah, it was pretty damn fancy.”

  “They were being too tough?”

  She shook her head. She could say this to him. “I was good. That wasn’t the problem.” Eric nodded encouragement, so she went on, “I was going to make partner. I was a real prize.”

  “I bet you were. So why did you quit? Not for Byron’s sake?” Eric wondered aloud. “He was already past two—you’re pregnant!” Eric was inspired. He snapped his fingers and pointed at her, happy at his guess.

  “No.” She couldn’t help smiling. His lips were moist, his forearms thick and firm, smooth on the underside, furry and undulating on top.

  “I don’t get it,” he said.

  “I couldn’t handle the stress. Going to work, coming home, taking care of Byron, no stopping—ever. The schedule was too relentless. I had to give up something. Couldn’t give up Byron. I didn’t like corporate law anyway. It’s just junk in the end. Glorified clerking and for what? You don’t accomplish anything.”

  “Except making money. A partner at a top New York law firm makes six, eight hundred thousand a year.”

  She thought of what she told others—money isn’t that important, there are other ways, blah, blah—but this man, like an uncle at Passover, would accept only one answer: “My husband’s rich.”

  Eric nodded. He understood. “That’s nice,” he said. She laughed. He looked baffled. She put a hand on his wonderful animal arm and squeezed to reassure him. His wide eyes took her in without judgment or expectation. They looked at her lips and then back to her eyes with a touch of shyness. So he’s thought it also. She smiled at him, a smile of years ago, a smile of acceptance and seduction.

  “I didn’t mean to—” he started.

  “You’re right,” she said. “It’s the only nice thing about my marriage.”

  That got the message across. He looked solemn. A little afraid.

  Well?

  He was considering whether to back off. He glanced away, to get some privacy. But he returned fast.

  “Sometimes,” he said with a heavy Passover sigh, “sometimes, I think money’s the only reason I’m married.”

  ERIC SAW Luke’s hand wander again and again to his ass, touching the narrow valley to push something invisible back inside. Sometimes Luke squeezed his legs together and pushed back, sealing the pee that might crack the other dam. He managed to fight the urges off by concentrating on Byron’s orders; but every few minutes, there was another call from nature, and his hand and legs worked quickly, furiously, to disconnect the frightening summons. Eric saw it all. He had before, he had to admit, but he’d looked through it. Nina had forced Eric to see. Luke was holding it in. But how?

  Why?

  Wasn’t this a sign of
some illness in Luke’s personality? What had they done wrong? Wasn’t there stuff about this in Freud? They hadn’t rushed toilet training; they hadn’t begun until Luke was two and three-quarters. Anyway, the constipation had started when Luke was still in diapers.

  Pearl. It must be Pearl. She must have done it.

  Or Nina. She said her constipation wasn’t as bad as Luke’s when she was a child, but that chocolate pudding softener had been given to her, she admitted that—

  It was genetic! Goddammit, it had to be. There was nothing psychologically wrong with Luke.

  While Eric made these observations, he kept talking to Byron’s mother about Washington Heights, hoping to get his mind off the subject. His babbling brought the old neighborhood back: Eric could see the bleached concrete sidewalks, the bright Saturday mornings with a long day of slug and running bases and war on the Danger Rocks in Fort Tryon Park; with Monopoly to play in the afternoon; with four quarters in his pocket to buy new pinkies if he hit home runs over the wall in stickball.

  The stocks he had kept two weeks ago had continued their slow decline into soft mud. The Dow stocks, Joe’s chickenshit Dow stocks, they were out of the earth’s orbit, spinning silently up and away. …

  I won’t make any more money if my son is fucked up, Eric thought, as he caught Luke doing it again, the hand quickly, guiltily, going back and pushing. If my son is screwed up, I won’t make any money.

  What have I done wrong? Why isn’t he okay?

  I think this woman likes me.

  Her eyes were awake with intelligence, twinkling with mischievous sarcasm, a pleasant change from the bold and clear, yet wondering and shy light in Nina’s eyes.

  Eric said whatever came into his head to Diane, confident she would accept him. This woman admitted money was important, instead of that Wasp horseshit of Nina’s. No matter that Tom was a cheapskate: Nina, her brothers, her sisters, they never lacked for anything. When they were kids, did they have to worry about getting into SP classes in public school, or whether they could get into Bronx Science? Going to an Ivy League college was the ultimate triumph in Eric’s neighborhood, the scholastic equivalent of making the major leagues. One kid, one kid in the whole fucking neighborhood, got into Harvard. One kid, one pale, friendless, unsmiling drone, got in.