Only Children

by Rafael Yglesias

  “I mean, I was living at Gary’s, you were there a lot.” With Peter’s eyes closed, the past was now. Larry’s slightly raspy voice, a hard whisper, sneaked into the ear, through the unlocked basement door of his brain. Yesterday was still here.

  “And”—this came out with a sigh, weary and bored—“you were lonely. Your parents were splitting up. You needed love. You look like you still do.”

  Peter opened his eyes. Larry was an old man. His skin was pulled too tight—a face-lift. He was artificially tanned, even the dome on top; that’s why the leg skin seemed so white. “I wanted it. Is that your excuse?” Peter said. He could say that easily. He had guessed that Larry would try to convince Peter he had been willing.

  You like this, don’t you?

  “I don’t know what you wanted,” Larry said. “I didn’t think about what you wanted.” Larry shifted his chair forward. He flipped open a thick black leather appointment book. Does he own anything that has color? “I have to go in ten minutes—”

  “What did my parents’ divorce have to do with it?” Peter felt sure of himself now. This man had no scruples. He wasn’t pathetic, trapped by neurosis; he was a villain, a theatrical evil man, the kind Peter so often watched onstage and never believed in.

  “Well, I knew all about it. Your mother even confided in me one day. When she thanked me for taking you to the theater.” He smirked again.

  He can’t mean to be this naked about it. I can destroy him. I can ruin him.

  “She was quite a woman. Still alive?”

  “I don’t believe she confided in you. I don’t believe she thanked you.” Yesterday was here again. Peter stared at the black glass desk, its sharp edge cold and treacherous. His heart was pounding. Even now, he couldn’t look Larry in the face. Even now, taller, full-grown, strong enough to twist Larry’s perverted hand until he fell to his knees, even now Peter couldn’t contradict Larry without wild terror beating in his chest.

  “Oh?” Larry was pleased with himself. “She met your now stepfather at some fund raiser and they started meeting in the afternoons. After two months, he asked her to leave your father. And she did. Just like that. Amazing woman.”

  But that’s wrong. Dad had an affair. Mother found out about it and left him. Tell him.

  “I was impressed. And I felt sorry for you. She said all the right things about what it might do to you—but she didn’t mean them. Just politeness. Mothers should love their sons. Mine did. She adored me. You were lonely. I was lonely. And after all, all I did was masturbate you. Nowadays we call it safe sex. You shouldn’t worry about it. Doesn’t mean you’re a fag if that’s what you want to know.”

  Tell him he’s wrong. He’s wrong about everything. How could he get everything so wrong?

  “Or—” Larry put on a new look, thoughtful and soft. “Or—are you? Is that why you’re here?”

  I’m not here. Shut the eyes and disappear. I’m not here.

  “That’s not why my parents split up.” Peter answered with his eyes shut tight against the bad dream. His chest hurt. It was tight, a drawstring pulled across his heart, strangling him. He cried.

  “Hey!” The raspy voice. “Hey, come on. It’s all right.” Go away, monster. Mommy and Daddy will come back. Go away, monster, and my mommy and daddy will come back.

  THE DOCTOR told Diane the operation had been a success. Lily’s heart had become somewhat enlarged, compensating for the valve leak, but not dangerously so. The description made Diane think of car engines. She was told she could see Lily briefly in the intensive care unit, but that she should be prepared for Lily to look bad.

  “She’ll be on a respirator and she’ll be heavily medicated.” Diane waited more than an hour before a nurse appeared to tell her she could go in briefly.

  The moment Diane entered the swinging doors to ICU she couldn’t get enough air to breathe through her terror. There were ghastly sights in every bed.

  The nurse pointed her to Lily. The first look at her mother wobbled the floor; Diane reached for something to hold on to, but there was nothing. She was adrift in the middle of the white room of wreckage.

  Lights flashed on monitors; something beeped repeatedly. Diane forced her eyes to focus on Lily.

  Her skin was alabaster. No red, no pink, no blue, no green, no depth, no looseness, no softness. The skin was hard white, drained of any shade or hue. A marble statue—sculptured death. Her mouth was raped—twisted open, jammed full by a plastic device. She looked murdered and destroyed, mocked, humiliated, and desecrated. Tubes ran from machines into her helpless arms or disappeared to horrors underneath the sheets. Bags hung from the sides, for urine, for the bowels, for God knows what else—Diane looked away from those sights. Her eyes were locked, anyway, on her mother’s dead skin and butchered mouth. The machine breathed and then forced Lily to.

  “Wake up! Your daughter’s here!” the nurse shouted.

  It was unbelievable. Diane summoned herself to stop the nurse. But there was no answer.

  The nurse shook the dead white body. “Your daughter’s here. And you’re sleeping. Say hello.”

  Absurd. As if you could communicate with the dead.

  But the eyes did open. Slow, not seeing.

  “Say hello,” the nurse ordered.

  And Diane obeyed, like a frightened child. “Hi, Ma,” said her voice. It sounded like her, like Diane.

  Lily’s eyes rolled; her stuffed ruined mouth couldn’t answer, of course. The death mask, the white plaster face tried to find life. Lily’s hand moved, like a puppet’s arm; the string of her fluids bounced in the air. Lily’s fingers went up and then, in a movement of terrible unknowable pain, gestured Diane away. Go, they seemed to say. Leave me. I am not here anymore. Leave me so I won’t have to exist.

  Tell her you love her. Tell her she was good.

  “Talk to her,” the nurse ordered. “She can hear you.”

  “I’m here, Ma,” Diane said.

  Go away, the fingers said. Leave me so I won’t exist.

  Diane told her brain to stay clear. Fear pressed on her mind.

  Go away, the fingers begged.

  Diane took hold of them. Cold sticks. Lily’s eyes were shut again. She’s dead.

  I have to leave. In the brilliant light of the room, Diane turned away, blind with terror. She had to find the wall with her hand, and feel her way out of the horror.

  NINA DIDN’T have the courage to call her father. She called Joan instead.

  “Hello, dear,” her mother answered with a plaintive lilt of surprise.

  “Hello. How are you?”

  “I’m fine. How’s Luke?”

  “He’s great.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. Uh, is Father there?”

  “No, he’s at the office. Do you need to speak to him?”

  “Do you know anything about this, uh, uh—” I’m a child. I can’t speak.

  “About what?”

  “Well, Eric told me—you know he works with this horrible man?”

  “I thought he works for someone.”

  “Yeah, I guess. They have some sort of arrangement.”

  “You said he’s horrible?”

  “Well, he’s always criticizing Eric. Apparently he called Father.”

  “That’s business, Nina. I don’t discuss your father’s business. Why don’t you call him?”

  “Well, I, uh—”

  “Yes?” her mother said, hissing the last letter, but moaning its interior.

  The phone felt hard. Nina gripped its narrow belly. The tips of her fingers met each other. She smelled the plastic of the receiver, the grease of other mouths. A few months and it would be summer. If Eric again insisted on staying in the city the whole season, she would take her vacation with Luke. “I can’t ask.” Nina sighed the rest of her plea.

  “Well.” Joan said this and then no more.

  “Could you—”

  “We haven’t seen Luke in a while,” Joan said quickly. “I’ll speak
to Tom. Maybe we can—no, not this weekend. Perhaps, yes, I’ll discuss it with him. We’ll try for next weekend. I have to go—”

  Nina didn’t have a chance to say good-bye, only a blurted thank-you. She hung up and returned to her desk: the ghostly dress half drawn, a skirt about to billow.

  What did I thank her for? Nina thought. Should I tell Eric? No. Father might refuse to visit.

  She despaired of being able to concentrate. She had to have these sketches done by Monday.

  If I call Father, it’ll be settled. One way or the other, it will clear my mind.

  She got up again. The walk to the phone was self-conscious. She heard her shoes on the oak floor, saw her hands wave up and down with her stride.

  She took hold of the hard receiver, leaned her head against the harder body of its mother, shut her eyes, and sighed. Breathed in. Then out. She had promised herself never to ask Tom for things. Asking darkened Tom’s lean, bright face; the pale blue eyes looked away, his thin lips vanished, and “Hmmmm” was hummed out.

  Eric doesn’t want me to do this. He would be furious. She imagined what Eric’s rage might be: “You humiliated me! I don’t want your father’s money as a favor.”

  No. This was Eric’s problem. She hung up.

  ERIC WATCHED Barry listen to Luke. Barry was nervous in his attentiveness, his head tilted down, his body taut, every molecule magnetized toward Luke, to hear what his precious grandchild was saying.

  “You know, Grandpa, I think it’s not such a good idea to eat out a lot.”

  They were walking to Fort Tryon Park, the playground of Eric’s childhood, down the steep block from Broadway. Luke’s voice, at less than three feet tall, was more than three feet away from Barry’s ear. “Un-huh,” Barry said, but fast, so he wouldn’t miss Luke’s next syllable.

  “For example,” Luke said, hand out, palm up, to illustrate the common sense of his point, “I like hot dogs. They’re not good for you, if you have them in a deli. But Grandma put them in a soup! And that’s good for you, right? I mean, soup is good for you.”

  Eric laughed. He was sad. But he laughed anyway. His pleasure in Luke grew every day. He had never thought that would be possible. Eric had loved infant-Luke so much, kissed the sweet skin, gazed into the huge eyes, held the warm tiny body against his chest, next to his heart, and thought: I can never love anything more than this. But the growing and grown Luke, smarter and surer every day, his figure lengthening, the rounded fat of his cheeks evaporating, Nina’s strong chin emerging, the funny, clever, gentle boy-Luke cleaned a dusty corner of Eric’s heart and danced there in a brilliant and solitary light.

  They took Luke to the old swings and slide. Now the park was taken over by Puerto Ricans and blacks. Eric didn’t like them. He listened to the way they addressed their children: irritation, suspicion, and command in every word. Just like the parents of his childhood. Those Jews and Italians and Greeks and Poles were no different from these people. Immigrants. People without money. People who had to do the thousands of errands the rich never do. It wasn’t the benefit of beauty that wealth brought; it was the absence of ugliness. No carrying groceries in the snow, no roaches in the plates, no rides on subways, no vacations on smelly rush-hour beaches, no shared rooms, no classrooms of forty, no denials of gifts to commercial-bombed children, no incompetent doctors, no disrespectful city bureaucrats, no washing dishes, no making beds, no cleaning toilets, no ironing, no noes. Anything ugly, anything repetitive and dirty, could be done by someone else, some anonymous black face.

  I got out, Eric said to himself, watching them, their tired, harassed faces, hearing their loud, always angry or confused voices— even the laughter of the poor was unhappy: clanging bells, not happy peals. Their children fought over every toy, every activity, as if they already knew that there isn’t enough for everyone on this planet, and for those who don’t fight, there isn’t even sympathy, just lonely tears.

  “What you want?” a young mother, not more than twenty, shouted at a pathetic two-year-old. She was a light-skinned black, probably beautiful, Eric thought, but her hair was angrily out of place, her skin was glossy with sweat, her eyes vacant with exhaustion.

  The two-year-old cried out his answer. Eric thought he spoke in Spanish.

  “He took it? Miguel! Miguel!” she shouted at a boy of six.

  Also hers?

  She screamed at the six-year-old Miguel in Spanish. Miguel watched her rage as if it had nothing to do with him. When she was finished, Miguel walked away. He had a bright ball in his hands, the object the two-year-old wanted.

  That’s why I always take two of everything to the park, Eric thought. Then Eric realized she couldn’t afford two of everything, any more than he, as a child, had any recourse if he lost his pinkie early in the weekend and none of his friends had money for another. They would go to the park and hope to steal a ball or find a stray one. The fear of losing his pinkie meant that Eric never tried to hit a home run in stickball. One glorious moment of success brought all play to an end.

  The two-year-old burst out with a fresh squall of tears as he watched Miguel walk off still in possession of the ball. “That’s what you get for not watching your things,” she told him. “Stop that,” she ordered her two-year-old after a long, cold stare at his misery.

  He didn’t. He stood in front of her, his arms hopeless at his side, his features squeezed into formlessness.

  “Stop it!” she ordered again.

  Here it comes, Eric thought.

  And she slapped him across the face. He screamed at this. She picked him up and walked away, her lean young body twitching with fury. She yelled and yelled, not looking at her son, complaining to the trees, to the other parents, to the sky.

  Because she’s poor. Because she doesn’t have another ball. Because she has to do every little thing, change every diaper, wash every dish, make every bit of food, clean every piece of clothing—

  “It’s horrible here now,” Barry said. “Remember how it was? With all the families? You knew everybody. All the kids knew each other … ” and he went on.

  It was the same, Dad. The people were white. But it was the same.

  LARRY WAS in his ear: “Look, I have to go. Please stop crying.”

  The sweet perfume hugged Peter’s cheeks, hot and foggy in his nostrils. Peter put his hands between his legs and pressed. He pressed his eyes tight too. Get small. Get small.

  “Jesus,” he heard Larry complain.

  Calm down, he lectured. You’re all grown up now. You have your own apartment, you have a wife and child, you have credit cards. You have a job, you have a secretary. You can get up, go outside, and catch a cab. Maybe you need to nap.

  “Are you having some kind of breakdown?” Larry asked. Peter opened his eyes a little, squeezing a look. An old man dressed in a gray suit was there.

  That’s the horrible Larry, the gigantic man-penis, whispering, “You like this, don’t you?”

  “Are you all right?” Larry asked slowly, saying each word with emphasis. “I have to go now. I can’t leave you here on my couch, crying.”

  This is him? This is the monster?

  Larry sighed, exasperated by Peter’s silence. “I’m sorry I said that about your mother. I’m sure she loves you.”

  My mother? What did he say?

  You’re all grown up now. You can get up and go.

  “You look better. Do you want a drink? I’ve got some scotch here—” Larry moved toward a cabinet. “Jesus. Look at the time. Why don’t you have a drink? Relax. Take your time. You can leave when you want.”

  “What did you say?” Peter’s voice was a child’s, a weepy child’s voice.

  “Nothing. I shouldn’t have—”

  “You said mother had an affair. That’s wrong. That’s all backwards.” Peter brought his hands to his eyes. They were wet. He brushed at them.

  Larry didn’t want to answer. He tapped his foot and nodded. “It was a long time ago. Okay? I’m going to go.” He opene
d a cabinet. “The scotch is here. I’ll tell my—”

  “You said she met Kyle and then—” Peter couldn’t talk. Couldn’t think out the sentences.

  Who is this old man? Why am I asking about the divorce?

  “That’s what she told me—I don’ know. Look, I’m sorry.”

  Larry left. He walked fast. Opened the door with a quick jerk and disappeared.

  There’s no point to this. Peter took his hands and rubbed his legs from the thighs down. He pressed his fingers into the flesh as hard as he could. He wanted to stretch, to grow out again.

  He stood up. Tucked in his shirt. Cleared his throat.

  You are all grown up now. What’s done is done. All the clichés do apply. You are a fine human being.

  Your mother confided in a child abuser. And the child abuser thinks your curiosity is an irritation.

  There’s nothing wrong with you, Peter. It’s everybody else who’s crazy.

  THE NURSE took Diane by the arm right outside ICU’s swinging doors. “Feeling faint?” she asked.

  Diane shook her head, relieved at her escape. She never wanted to go back and see Lily again.

  It isn’t my mother in there. They killed my mother.

  “I know they look terrible right afterwards. But you’ll see, by tomorrow her color will return. She’s doing fine.”

  Diane got herself back to the waiting room. The internist had said he would meet her there. She lit a cigarette but was nauseated by her first drag and put it out. I have to quit, she decided, thinking of ICU, that human junkyard. My father died of a heart attack and Mom has this congenital problem. Diane had had the internist listen to her heart on his visit yesterday. He heard nothing but offered to run some tests. She had declined.

  She felt alone.

  Peter seemed to have nothing to do with her; she couldn’t really summon an image of his face. And Byron? He had been good with Lily, affectionate, not rambunctious, but somehow she didn’t feel he belonged to her.

  I’m an orphan with lousy genes.

  The parking lot outside was bright that day. For the catheterization, it had been rainy. Almost every space was occupied. The car roofs glittered in the sun, glowing to her, beckoning. She wished she could drive back to New York and get home. Get into the bath. Have some popcorn. Masturbate. Go to sleep.