Only Children (12 page)

What is it about older women? Is crushing us their only chance at power? Mrs. Murphy had been insufferable during the past two weeks, silently correcting everything Diane did, by either changing her selection of outfit or taking Byron away, claiming Diane or he was tired. Mrs. Murphy gave Byron a bottle one night without discussing it in advance, and used the defense that Diane needed rest. Mrs. Murphy’s arrogance amazed Diane; after all, she was an employee, a servant. Peter didn’t seem surprised—and he was the one who had grown up with help, a string of nannies and mother’s helpers. Peter accepted Mrs. Murphy’s arrogation of authority over their son, taking Mrs. Murphy’s side whenever Diane had tried to argue.

“Mrs. Murphy, I’m taking my son outside.” Diane pulled the carriage back to free it of the woman’s grip and then began to move forward, determined, if necessary, to bowl her over.

Mrs. Murphy didn’t move. The carriage jerked to a halt on impact, the front end tipping up. Byron let out a protest.

“What are you doing?” Diane sounded like a teenager to herself, an angry, but ultimately helpless, adolescent.

“I cannot be responsible, I cannot work here if you don’t listen, if you don’t take my advice.”

Diane pulled the carriage back. Mrs. Murphy seemed to expand with pride at this apparent victory. Diane walked around the carriage and took hold of Mrs. Murphy’s fat arm, just under the elbow where the flesh was soft and loose. “Do you know who I am?” Diane said. “I’m a lawyer.” Mrs. Murphy blinked, puzzled. “At a top firm. I’m not some dumb rich housewife. I can sue your agency’s ass off. I can make life miserable for them at no cost to me except my time. I can make sure you never work again.”

“Take your hands off me!” Mrs. Murphy said, and yanked her arm free. “How dare you speak to me like that! What do you know about being a mother? Nothing. You don’t love that baby. You don’t know what loving is.”

Diane pushed Mrs. Murphy, her palms out flat, each one on a shoulder. “Get out!” Mrs. Murphy staggered back, blinking her narrow, wrinkled eyes. Diane slapped Mrs. Murphy’s shoulders again, her own legs trembling. “Get out of my house!” Mrs. Murphy grabbed at Diane’s hand, catching a pinkie. It twisted painfully. Diane pulled back. She was so angry she felt the narrow hall expand, Mrs. Murphy shrink, and lost any sense of her own body. “Get out of here, you ugly woman! You ugly, ugly, ugly thing! Get out!”

“Don’t you dare raise your hand to me.” Mrs. Murphy’s puffy cheeks wobbled with fury. “I could break you in two.”

“Oh, shut up!” Diane hated herself, felt ridiculous and incompetent. She should have been able to handle this woman without emotion, the way Brian Stoppard would, freeze her with a glance, a chilly word. Diane trembled while she walked back to the carriage and pushed it toward the door. Mrs. Murphy, this time, not only didn’t attempt to stop her, but held the front door open.

“I want you out—” Diane began.

“I’ll be gone! Don’t you worry.”

Diane’s legs were still uncertain, her knees liquid, when she reached the street.

Although Diane had ventured forth without Byron and had taken a brief stroll with a gang (Peter’s father, stepmother, Mrs. Murphy, Byron, and Peter), this was her first solo tour with Byron, her virgin appearance as mother and child. She was conscious that she looked right, a yuppie mother, walking down lower Fifth Avenue with the proper brand of baby carriage, her outfit durable but preppie-chic. She looked the part, but she was a fraud. Diane was a peasant: her skin dark, made for field labor, not office fluorescence; her features big, with the strong jaw and deep-set, mournful eyes of her dead father.

A pair of old women stopped Diane and Byron on Tenth Street. They placed their bodies in the way of the carriage and clucked like grandmothers even before they got a view of Byron. Byron looked at the old ladies with his staring, challenging eyes. Byron’s face was like Diane’s—humorless, strong, immobile. He wasn’t cute. Diane could hear in their exclamations a certain reserve. Byron wasn’t quite the pretty, fragile, soft thing they expected and wanted.

After the old women let her continue, Byron finally moved his head and made complaining sounds. Mrs. Murphy had been giving him a pacifier, he seemed dependent on it already, and Diane had forgotten to bring it. He groaned, moved his head from side to side. His arms reached out. I’d better go back, she thought, dreading an early return that would put her face-to-face with Mrs. Murphy.

And then, almost by accident, Byron found his hand and practically punched himself in the mouth with his little fist. He sucked on the closed thumb and two fingers. His eyes shut contentedly.

Soothe yourself, she thought with pride. You and I, we don’t need them. We can comfort ourselves with our strength.

P
ETER STUDIED
his mother’s thin, elegant body. Gail was dressed in a tight black turtleneck; her breasts made small, almost circular lumps against the material, whitish lumps, the hue presumably caused by a bra.

“Did you breast-feed me?” he asked.

“Nobody did in those days. Are you hurt?” Gail teased Peter with the question, her thin, bloodless lips (pale even with red lipstick) pressed together, holding back a smile.

“Diane says, or, rather, the books say, that some chemical is transferred which helps brain development—”

Gail caught up to him quickly, as always. “So I’m at fault for your bad LSAT’s.”

“I guess
you
were breast-fed,” Peter parried. “You’re too clever.”

“I gave you good genes, Peter. It’s up to you to make something of them. And you have. I’m proud of you.” Gail turned her head, apparently to search for a waiter (she raised her unadorned hand in the air to attract attention), but Peter felt she meant to avoid intensifying her words by meeting his eyes. A waiter appeared. “I’d like some ice water please.” Gail loved cold water, was the first in the Hamptons to brave the spring ocean, kept a pitcher of fresh water, loaded with ice, to drink as a cocktail years before people gave up hard liquor, and liked, when sailing with her second husband, to stand with her face vulnerable to the spray, not wincing at its cool spit. The hand with which she had gotten the waiter’s attention went to her undyed hair, gray (although not stiff or yellowed) and brought back in a simple bun. Her hand smoothed hairs that were not out of place, arranging the arranged. “How’s Diane?”

“Fine. She’s bounced back from the C section.”

“Strong girl,” Gail said, with a nod to herself, confirming previous knowledge. “I admire her for planning to go back to work so soon. I should have.”

Peter closed his eyes and sighed. Since women’s liberation had made such talk fashionable, Gail spoke this way, in little phrases of sacrifice, about her now-defunct ambition to be a painter. Even the recent trend toward praising women for staying home, for the benefits of a nonworking mother, hadn’t discouraged the subtle complaints. Peter’s irritation made him provocative: “You’re chief fund raiser for the most important museum in New York. If you’d gone back to work earlier, you couldn’t have accomplished anything more. You merely would have done it sooner.”

Gail smiled to herself. “I meant my painting. You can’t not garden for ten years and expect to have fertile soil when you return.”

“What about Grandma Moses?”

“What are you saying, Peter?” Gail picked up her ice water and took a healthy gulp. There was nothing dainty about her physically; she might push her emotional food about with a reluctant appetite, but she swallowed the real meal with gusto.

“Since Diane fired Mrs. Murphy, I haven’t gotten a solid eight hours. I must be cranky.”

“You’re saying I’m a dilettante,” Gail commented.

“If you’re a dilettante, what does that make me? No, I’m saying, if you had wanted to paint, you would have. You didn’t sacrifice it for your children.”

“Well, thank you. I’m glad to find that out. Why did Diane fire Mrs. Murphy?” Gail moved on, but without rush, her tone not making a point of changing the subject—simply altering it.

Peter laughed. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”

“That’s nice of you. Did they have a fight? Was she a nuisance?”

“Diane likes things done her way.”

“Good for her. But she’s going to get some help?”

“She has to. To go back to work.”

“Trying to make partner means late hours,” Gail said. She squinted at the bright light coming from the restaurant’s windows. “I remember that much from being married to your father. Are you going to take the load?”

“No. Now that I’ve convinced the foundation to commit more money to theater,
I’II
have to go more often. We’re funding six theaters in the city and maybe one particular production. That means a lot of cocktail parties and openings.”

“When is my grandson going to see his parents then?” Gail asked without emotion, despite the accusation of neglect.

“On the weekends. You’re not making sense, Mother. You regret giving up your career, but attack—”

“There’s a difference between going to work from nine to five and never being there.”

“I’ve never done anything right in my whole life. You know that. Why should this be any different?” Peter smiled pleasantly, held his head still, his eyes returning her irritated glance evenly. The bluff seemed to work. She opened her mouth to speak, but then shut it, looked off, and frowned. Peter’s heart beat loudly while waiting to see if she would fold, but taking in the chips seemed a lonely victory after all.

“When you screw up with children,” Gail said, her head still turned away, the small diamond in her earlobe washed out by the strong light, “you mess up a person, not a project.” She looked at him. “And you’re faced with your failure for the rest of your life.”

“Are you—”

“No, I’m not,” again faster than he could be. “But I came close. I think it’s my duty to warn you. I’ve told you many times, there are no hidden meanings in what I say. If there’s something I don’t want to admit to, I say nothing. I don’t believe in lying. People always know, or can guess, or, worse, find out.”

She doesn’t have to lie, he thought. She can contradict herself with absolute conviction, sometimes within a sentence. “How old was I when you and Dad split up?”

“You don’t remember?”

“I don’t know how old I was.”

“You were five. Your fifth birthday was the last party we hosted together.”

“I presume that was when you came close.”

Gail blinked her eyes. “Came close to what? Are you done? Do you want more coffee?”

“Yes. I mean, no, I’m finished.”

She signaled to the waiter, again the hand up, assertive, but casual, and made a writing motion. She looked back at him, with cocktail cheerfulness. “Going back to the office?”

“Yes. Was it the divorce?” Peter asked.

“What are you talking about?”

“Was it the divorce that came close to screwing me up forever, is that what you meant?”

“What gave you that idea?” The waiter handed her a leather case with the check inside. She opened it and frowned. “Outrageous.”

“Let me put it on the foundation,” he offered.

She laid a platinum American Express card down. “Let your stepfather pay.”

“He has a platinum card!” Peter couldn’t suppress his horror at this foolish ostentation.

“He likes to remind himself he’s rich. I think he worries it’s all a dream and needs to pinch himself.”

“Never thought discounting electronics would bring Gimbel’s and Macy’s to their knees?”

“Exactly. He chuckles every time he sees one of their sales in the
Times
.”

“He
does
?” Peter was again unable to keep disdain out of his tone.

“Kyle had to struggle for everything he has—you wouldn’t understand.”

“I know, I know. I’m spoiled, privileged.”

“Well, you are privileged, Peter. You can’t deny it.”

“I was admitting it.” He felt the exhaustion of being with Gail; he had spent the lunch shoring himself up against the surf of her critical and whimsical tide, but erosion was inevitable. Time to move away from her ocean.

He put Gail in a cab and walked back to his office in the humid, smelly midtown streets. Only when standing above the central air conditioning vent under his office window, feeling the cool billow his shirt, did he remember that he never got an answer.

Was it the divorce, Mom? Did that almost crush me?

Why wouldn’t she answer? Habit?

She didn’t want to answer. She admitted that herself.

The cold air snaked up his arms and chilled their hollows. He shivered. I am crushed, crumpled in her pocketbook like a forgotten phone message. Your son called.

Like a recalcitrant city agency, she just never got back to him. So what? He inspected himself for damage. He didn’t feel a thing. His mother was a vain woman who took out his father’s desertion on him. She neglected Peter to cater to her new husband, making sure she didn’t lose another. So what?

Diane would never do that. She loved Byron. Couldn’t stand anyone, not even Mrs. Murphy, handling him. Diane was ferocious, a lioness. There was no danger. At least he’d done that one thing right: found a real mother to his son.

“I
’M GONNA
drive you home from the hospital,” Eric’s father had insisted on the phone that morning. “I don’t want some schmuck cabdriver killing my grandson.” Eric had tried to dissuade him, knowing that Nina would want their first experience at home with Luke to be private, but lost the battle.

Later he and Nina sat together, ashamed to look each other in the eyes, while they knew Dr. Ephron was doing the circumcision in the nursery next door. Nina’s mother, Joan, interrupted with a phone call. She wanted to fly in for the weekend, along with Nina’s youngest sister, and “help with the transition home,” as Joan put it.

“I can’t talk right now. But I think you should wait until the following weekend. Give us a chance to settle in.” Nina listened for a second and insisted, “I can’t talk right now,” and hung up. Faintly they heard a baby wailing. Eric looked at her. Nina dismissed his silent question. “Could be anyone. We should walk around. Do something.”

Eric swallowed. He felt so stupid. The picture of his son’s penis, that pinkie between curled frog’s legs, being cut—Eric shuddered at the image, at the ease with which castration could occur. They weren’t having a
bris
because of Nina, but Eric was glad for selfish reasons. He could never witness the event, much less celebrate it in a ritual.