Only Children

by Rafael Yglesias

  He moved to his seat, entranced by Juliet’s answer. Does anyone have any choice about what they become? When a steelworker’s son becomes a steelworker, does anyone wonder if that’s bad? If I force Byron to become a musician, is that really so terrible? My mother never demanded I be anything; she let me drift, so long as I had the right opinions on politics, on culture, so long as I showed no interest in things she didn’t approve of. Sure, she made no demands of accomplishment, but was that good? I feel useless. Wouldn’t I prefer being pushed, oppressed into some kind of brilliance?

  He settled in his seat and thought of Mozart. Peter didn’t know the real story of Mozart’s life; he knew the play Amadeus, he knew snatches, enough to sound educated. If Byron were pushed, relentlessly, unforgivingly, made into a freak, an unsociable unhappy person—but someone who could create like Mozart—would that really be worse than a normal upbringing?

  But what if Byron isn’t talented? What if all I accomplished was to make Byron a neurotic, imprisoned by soulful despair, and without a key of genius to unlock the sorrow?

  Like me? The therapy had taught Peter one thing: there was no escape. He could understand, he could protect himself, he could learn to forgive, he could enjoy what he had; but there was no undoing the divorce, his father’s neglect, his mother’s rejection, or Larry—

  He hadn’t thought of Larry for a while, not after the sessions with Kotkin recalled more of the incidents, not after settling them— your parents weren’t around, you felt abandoned, and this man touched you, wanted you, and you liked the wanting, but not the touching, but you were scared to complain because no one had ever behaved as if your complaints mattered. Did your complaints stop your father from leaving your mother? Did your complaints make your mother stay with you, instead of her new man?

  Child molesters are clever; they have a keen scent for loneliness.

  And Larry’s still out there, still doing it, still twisting simple melodies of unhappiness into dissonant symphonies of pain.

  I have to deal with Byron, with Diane’s collapse. Kotkin was no help, said nothing. Why do you think anything has to be done? she asked. No answers; his questions were bounced back.

  Maybe I can’t deal with Diane and Byron until I deal with Larry.

  How many children has Larry hurt? Gary never did anything to save Peter, and denied and lied even to this day. I’m just as bad, aren’t I?

  But Larry’s an old man, he’s managed to survive his perversion, to escape, like some Nazi war criminal living in New Jersey, and now, Larry being old, wasn’t it merely cruel to—

  What? He chuckled at the thought of going to the police to report Larry, he chuckled out loud, right in the middle of a pas de deux that had everyone transfixed. The woman next to him turned her head to stare—what in the world could he be laughing at?

  It occurred to Peter that Larry might be in the audience. He scanned the rows from his position in the center ring, to the right, then to the left, studying the men in their sixties, trying to reconstruct Larry’s features and decay them appropriately. He might be bald now.

  Maybe he’ll die of AIDS, Peter thought with a mixture of revulsion and pleasure. The pleasure faded at the memory of his visit to Raul Sabas in the hospital. Paralyzed, bone-thin, wheezing—

  You’re disgusting, he told himself. And if Larry has AIDs, he might be giving it to young boys. Who knows what he does now, who knows how far he’s gone in twenty-five years of perversion? Maybe he does more than merely touch now, maybe he finds runaways, maybe he kills them—

  This is madness. The audience applauded. Peter staggered out with them, back into the intermission parade outside, people gawking from above, swirling groups plucking hellos from the air, quick opinions whispered to the floor—

  “Hello.” Juliet was at his elbow.

  “What did you mean?” Peter said.

  “Before?” She smiled at him sweetly. Does she ever get to meet any normal boys, or are they all freaks like her? “No one in the history of the world ever decided to be a musician,” she said. “Your parents have to decide for you. Otherwise, it’s too late. If you start as an adult, you can only be an amateur.”

  “How do you know you want to do it, then? When does it belong to you?”

  “It belongs to me,” she said, looking down at her shoes, mumbling, “because it’s all I’ve got.”

  “And if you had something else, would you give it up?”

  “Something else, like what?” She smiled now, looking off, enjoying this. “Husband and kids?” she offered, as if they were a wild possibility, flying to Mars or something.

  “Okay.”

  “Could be.” She laughed. “Maybe that’s what’ll happen. I’ll marry some egomaniacal conductor—no, maybe pianist—and give it up to bear his children. Then I could teach my children, push them like Mother pushed me. It’s like a bad movie, isn’t it?” she said, and giggled.

  Peter smiled politely and agreed it was silly.

  But her scenario was just like real life, he thought.

  I’m stopping the lessons. If I force Byron to be something, it has to be something I know, something I can teach.

  DADDY SAID this was special. Not a regular thing. Special for me. No more violin lessons, but that’s okay. There’ll be special things like this.

  “Why?” Byron asked Peter.

  “Well, they’re showing these cartoons in a museum because, even though they still make Bugs Bunny cartoons, these, the ones we’re going to see in here, were made a long time ago, they were the first ones made. See the drawings? This is how they do it.”

  Up, up. Glass. They were small. I can do that.

  “You see they make lots of these drawings and then they use a movie camera to film the drawings one after the other. So it looks like they’re moving, just like when you flip the pages of your little book.”

  “Let me see!” Byron went down. Daddy handed him his special book with the little man, the little line man. Byron made the pages go, whoosh! And the stick man danced across, running at Byron’s thumb, right off the page! “Watch out!” But then he was on a horse!

  “Okay,” Daddy said. “Now stop and look at each page slowly. See? There’s one drawing for each page, just moving the man and the horse a little bit at a time. That’s how they make cartoons. There are thousands of drawings moving very quickly.”

  “I wanna make one!”

  “When we get home, we’ll make one, okay?”

  “I have a great idea! Make one about He-Man.”

  “It’s a great idea for you to make one. But you should make up your own story. Something you make up will be different than anything else in the world. Anybody can make up a He-Man story, but no one but you can make up a story that comes from here—”

  Daddy tapped on his head. Daddy looked so close, so happy. Daddy wants me to make up a story. “I can make up a great story!” Byron said.

  “I know you can,” Daddy said with a kiss and a hug.

  THE LITTLE Lego piece, hot red, smooth as ice, could go right on top, hold it there, hold it there—the Feeling! Pinching, growing inside, growing with a pain of metal, hard and sharp, twisting inside—

  “Luke.” Daddy’s voice was boxed, something from television, very important. “It’s time to go to the bathroom.”

  “Noooooooooooo!” Push him away.

  Daddy’s hand came low, swinging for him. “Let’s go.” His hand closed hard, squeezing, pinching, like inside, heavy pushing in and down, so big and metal, ready to cut him open. Go away—

  Daddy pulled him—

  “Noooooo!” What was Daddy doing? “It hurts! I can’t.”

  “Everybody has to go to the bathroom,” said the boxed voice, coming from someone else in Daddy.

  Daddy pulled Luke. Pulled away from the toys. Nothing could stop it, no strength could stop him, right to the toilet, to the great white bowl, flowing up from the floor—“Daddy! Daddy! I don’t have to! I don’t have to! Mommy! Mommy!” Where wa
s she? Where is the real Daddy!

  “Sit on the toilet and push it out,” Daddy said, and pulled Luke’s pants down.

  The cold air made his hole weak, the metal pushing, hurting him and everything collapsed, blocks crashing, his eyes falling out, tears everywhere—“I can’t! I can’t!”

  But Daddy left.

  I’m alone. Alone.

  “Daddy!” He tried to move out, but the pants hit him in his knees, tying his legs, and he fell on the cold floor. “Mommy! Mommy!”

  “Luke.” The boxed voice was back, harder, metal, and he was picked up, the pushing inside still there, twisting and burning in his stomach and penis. “It’s time to go to the bathroom.”

  “Nooooooo!” He was being put on the toilet, the hole spread, the feeling big and bigger coming down. He tried to get up and he did.

  Where was Daddy?

  I’m alone. He’s left. I’m still crying, but don’t cry, Daddy isn’t here, you don’t have to, just push it back. He squeezed, maybe it was too late, he squeezed hard, his stomach closed on it, eating it back, eat it up, go away, go away!

  The pain, the metal twisting up, twisting up, hurt, hurt his chest, his eyes—I have Legos red and white, and I build beautiful buildings, castles for He-Man, and spaceships to visit the stars in Maine because in New York there is so much light you can’t see the stars very well so I build my Legos to fly to the stars in Maine, and to Venus, away, away, away, away. …

  ERIC WOULDN’T wait. He insisted they repair Luke. So Nina called and called and called, first a fellow mother, then a friend of a fellow mother, and another, until she got the name of a behavioral child psychologist who dealt specifically with problems of sleeping, eating, and toilet training. The pediatricians had failed her with their medicines, all that had happened was that Luke was now on mineral oil, which greased the stuff out against his will, presumably to convince him it didn’t hurt, but he kept saying it did, and the doses of mineral oil had increased steadily, and she knew what Luke meant by hurting, he meant he didn’t like the sensation, and no matter how easy they made it feel he would still complain—

  She knew because watching him, listening to him, she realized that’s what she had done, that the legend of her constipation as a child was a myth. She had hated the feeling of letting go, of the stuff coming through, coming out, but she wasn’t her parent’s firstborn and no one wanted or expected her to be perfect, the way Eric wants Luke to be, so she was put on laxatives and left to suffer if she fought them, and to this day, she had to drink four cups of coffee each morning and try several times before relieving herself, grimacing throughout the whole unpleasantness. But Luke has to be perfect or Eric will go mad, so Nina called the psychologist and told him about Luke’s behavior.

  The psychologist’s deep, humorless voice stopped her before she got a few words out: “Has your pediatrician checked him for a physical problem?”

  “Yes, there’s—”

  “And you had no trouble training him about urinating?”

  “No. He doesn’t wet his bed. His problem is letting things out.”

  “Okay, I know exactly how to solve this. I need to see you and your husband once. The fee will be a hundred and fifty dollars.”

  “Do we bring Luke?”

  “No. I don’t need to see him. I just have to tell the two of you what to do, and if you’re consistent, within a few weeks, the problem will be solved.”

  “Really?” She breathed in his tone of confidence. It was like believing in God. Everything solved, made perfect. You love Jesus and you go to heaven.

  “Absolutely. I’ve dealt with hundreds of cases. All successful. Of the big three, sleeping problems, eating problems, and what I call obstipation, this is the easiest to deal with.”

  He made an appointment to see them that night.

  Of course, when she told Eric, he was so predictable. She had done what he wanted, and of course, he balked at the result. “A hundred and fifty dollars! Who is this guy? God?”

  If he can do what he promised, he’s God. “Eric, you wanted to deal with this. So we’re going. Otherwise, I don’t want to hear another word from you about it.”

  “All right.” He sighed, the fate of the Union resting on his shoulders—so many dead, so many lost for the sake of a free country.

  Why do I love Eric?

  Luke is so wonderful. So beautiful. Skin as sweet and smooth as vanilla ice cream. His eyes shone truth: his love, his fear, his dreams, his sorrows. He adores Eric. And me. He knows he’s loved and he loves us. Let him be constipated, Lincoln. Give up. A house divided against itself is the only kind that’s built.

  But they went and sat in a tiny waiting room, with paint peeling on the walls, while the psychologist met with another couple. When the couple emerged, they looked beat. They were middle-aged parents; they appeared to be in their forties. They averted their eyes, but shame glowed from the corners.

  Cheer up, Nina thought, we’re screwups too. Probably everyone is.

  The psychologist nodded. “That’s very interesting. That could be. You know, I don’t care about causes,” he said this to Eric. “I’m not that kind of therapist. I only care about solving the problem. In terms of the treatment, it makes no difference why it started. If you’re a Freudian, you won’t like that, but your son’ll have a better chance of getting to a Freudian psychiatrist if he’s not sitting at home, holding in his bowel movements.”

  Eric stared at the psychologist, held himself up, resistant, a stiff sail, for a moment. Then his chest sagged. He leaned back, his chair groaning for mercy. “You’ve got a point.”

  “These things happen because the parents are good parents, or are trying to do the right thing. Your son complains about something, you pay attention to it, and your concern becomes a way of having you. Do you have trouble with Luke about eating?”

  “No,” Eric said.

  “What do you do if he says he doesn’t want to eat?”

  “We say fine.”

  “Aren’t you worried that he’ll starve?”

  “No,” Nina said. “I read in a book that he won’t starve. He’ll eat.”

  “Exactly. You know he will, you don’t worry, so he doesn’t worry. He eats. Sleeping, eating, and going to the bathroom are things that human beings have to do. We’re animals, after all, we’ll do them, as long as there’s no reason not to. You have to act as though you expect him to go to the bathroom. And he will. Because he can. There’s nothing physically wrong with him. This is what you do: when you see Luke hold it in, and only then, only when you see, but every time you see him hold it in, you take him by the hand and say, ‘It’s time to go to the bathroom, Luke.’ And you take him into the bathroom. If he talks to you about it, argues or chats or whatever, and this is very important, don’t answer him, don’t get angry, don’t do anything. Just lead him into the bathroom and tell him to go and leave him there. If he comes out and hasn’t gone, don’t say anything, don’t answer him if he talks about it. Wait until you see him hold it in again, and then take him by the hand, say, ‘It’s time to go to the bathroom, Luke,’ and do it all over again. You may have to do it a hundred times. Now, if he starts to cry, walk away. Say, ‘I don’t talk to little boys that cry,’ and just walk away. Don’t get angry, don’t discuss it. Wait until he stops crying, then take him by the hand again and say, ‘It’s time to go to the bathroom, Luke.’ Eventually, he’ll go. When he does, give him a reward. M & M’s are good. Don’t give him a lot, just a few, don’t make a big deal about it. Say, ‘You were a big boy, Luke, so you get a reward,’ and you give him a few M & M’s. Eventually, after it’s been working for a while, don’t mention the M & M’s. If he does, give them to him. He’ll forget after a while. The important thing about all this is consistency. He will try anything to stop you from ignoring his problem. You have to be consistent. It’s hard, but it only takes a few weeks, and I’m telling you it will work. He wants anger, or protection, or talk, or anything, anything but to do it. That
’s what you have to insist on. That it’s just a normal thing that everybody does. You can say that if you like. ‘Everybody has to go to the bathroom, Luke,’ but that’s the only explanation he should ever hear. Don’t praise him any more than I’ve said when he does succeed. That’s just as bad as yelling at him for failing. It isn’t an accomplishment. It isn’t something to be praised or punished for; it isn’t something he does to please you. It’s a normal human function.”

  They both sat meek and silent in their chairs, mute children, punished by the truth, frightened by its demand. Nina went over it and over it in her mind. I can’t do this, she thought. To the psychologist, she complained, “I don’t want to say to him, ‘I don’t talk to boys who cry.’ ”

  “Okay,” the psychologist answered quickly. “Then say, ‘When you’re finished crying, I’ll come back,’ and leave him. This is also important, if he follows you, crying, you have to leave, don’t punish him for it, just leave him.”

  “I don’t like that,” Eric said.

  “I’m only talking about when he cries because you tell him to go to the bathroom. Not other kinds of crying.”

  “I don’t know,” Eric said.

  “If you want him to be free of this, this will work. Give him an opening and he’ll take it. It’s up to you.”

  Lincoln sat. His heavy head fell onto his chest. Nina didn’t blame him. This would be a burden. And it would be Eric’s burden. She knew everything now, knew that Luke’s problem was her fault, just as Eric had believed all along. She had had the same problem as a child and thus she could never insist to Luke that everybody goes to the bathroom, that it was expected of him, because to this day, somewhere, buried under the covers of adulthood, a frightened child continued to hope she would never have to go again.

  ERIC SHUT his eyes against the sound. But he could still hear.

  The wails soared in the apartment, flying wildly about the rooms, a frantic, terrified bird, beating its soft body against the hard prison.

  Eric opened to look. Nina sat stone still, but her face cracked from unhappiness.

  At least she had been honest: “I can’t do this, Eric. It’s up to you.”