Only Children (17 page)

Eric looked toward the hallway, wondering if Nina had been disturbed by the wails. She was wrecked. They had been home twelve hours and Luke was still up. Other than momentary lulls, unless he was being fed or rocked, he had cried—horrible, protesting screeches. Like a soldier back from a ghastly war, Luke seemed to be reliving some horror, pained by unseen hurts. They had tried everything. Changed him, fed him, rocked him, played music, walked with him clutched to their bosoms, kissed him, pleaded—nothing really soothed him. Movement made Luke quiet, but not relaxed, or asleep. He couldn’t be set down in the carriage unless they pushed it; he couldn’t be put on the couch or the rug or their bed; he couldn’t even be held in a chair. Unless there was movement, he screamed. And even when there was motion, his mouth still worked on the pacifier, and at the bottom of his heavy-lidded eyes, open slits remained, peep-holes, filled by suspicion, ready to protest any change.

By nightfall Nina couldn’t hold out. She went to bed with instructions to be roused in four hours if Luke was awake. She said Luke could be given two ounces of distilled water in two hours.

Eric stayed on his feet, rocking Luke back and forth for those two hours, sure that his son would fall asleep any minute. Many, many times Luke’s eyes had closed (completely, no hermit peeping out) and his body had lain still. But the moment Eric let go of the carriage handle, the head would bang, the legs kick out, the mouth open, the pacifier sliding away, and a cry—screeching at the world, enraged, betrayed, inconsolable—would splice the silence, tearing Eric in two.

Twice he let Luke bawl for a minute, a minute that cost Eric years from his heart, from his soul. A minute that damned him: passive monster, voyeur of suffering. He accepted the purgatory, thinking that would work (Luke’ll cry for a minute and collapse), but all that strategy accomplished was utter chaos. Luke’s body thrashed, his mouth yawned with complaint, and it would take much longer, much faster rocking to restore the uneasy quiet and suspicious rest of the back-and-forth motion.

Eric got angry. He felt stupid. Incompetent. This tiny thing, this insignificant creature, had only two needs, hunger and rest, to satisfy. Eric could do nothing for him. No effort was enough.

At last the two hours were up. He maneuvered the carriage to where he had put the bottle of distilled water. (He daren’t let go or stop the motion.) It was packed with a metal top, like a hat, no doubt to accommodate the nipple inside. Nina, while passing out on the bed, had said, “You pull off the top, it already has a nipple.” He tried to wedge the bottle under the arm he used to rock the carriage, but of course, the push movement meant it would fall. He tried to think of some way to open the bottle without letting go of the carriage.

With despair, he realized there wasn’t one.

He readied himself. He let go. The bottle was already in his idle hand. The free one grabbed the metal top. Luke screeched. Eric pulled.

Nothing.

Luke banged, kicked, squawked. If he got much louder, Nina might wake up.

Eric pulled. Nothing. He grabbed the top and twisted. He grasped so hard his fingers went white, using enough strength, he knew from experience, to open the stubbornest of jars, with sufficient pressure and strength to bend thin metal. The thick muscles of his arm rippled, tangling under his skin.

Luke screamed, the pacifier loose in his gaping speaker of complaint.

Eric pulled. Nothing. Eric twisted. Nothing.

“Goddammit! Goddammit!” the room yelled. He heard a repeated noise, an object smashing.

“Eric! Eric! Eric!” Nina’s hoarse voice called out.

Eric became aware of himself: he was shouting at the bottle, smashing its metal top against the wall. Even that accomplished little, merely denting the cover. He stopped and took a deep breath. Luke’s cries were out of control again, a relentless staccato of high-pitched meows: a cat being squeezed to death.

“Eric!” Nina called out. “What’s going on?”

“I can’t open the fucking bottle!” he yelled, but there was hopelessness in the volume. He had wanted so badly to take over, to relieve her of the burden. To be beaten by this silly bottle top, to have his altruism turned into buffoonery humiliated him.

“Don’t try to pull the whole top off!” Nina shouted from her bed. “Just the tip. It’s serrated.”

Luke wailed, gasping for air in between his raging sorrow. Eric stared at the beaten-up metal top. He had been grasping the larger lip where it met the glass. Now he could see the serration where the stove top widened out. Slowly, in disbelief that this would work, he gently pulled the tip to one side.

Magically, it came off in his hand, revealing the translucent brown of the nipple.

Eric gave the water to Luke who accepted the liquid ungraciously. Luke moaned and squealed from time to time, nagging Eric about his long delay in providing decent service. I’m not giving
you
a tip, Luke seemed to be saying.

Eric thought: this is the first night home. It won’t be this way forever. Luke’s eyes closed while he sucked. The rigid board became flesh again. Eric leaned his head back on the rocker. He was so tall it provided little support. Eric moved his ass forward so he could catch wood for his head to rest on. Luke started and moaned during Eric’s shift, and then relaxed again. At that, Eric allowed his own eyes to close.

The numbers of the ticker rolled by. The symbols were magic: they marched the world to poverty or wealth, executing dreams and tiring reality. Eric knew this wasn’t his life. In time, when he was stuffed with money, his body calm, his boy grown, his wife respectful, his name would roll by on the ticker with the equanimity of the numbers, the assurance of place. “One million,” he mumbled. “One point six million,” he whispered, a lullaby. “Two million five hundred thousand. Annual income. Net assets, forty to fifty million. The Wizard of Wall Street.” He would be picked up each morning at the door of their town house by a sleek limousine, its smoky glass revealing to the curious only their own ignorance and, inside, him, invulnerable, pampered, envied, his ideas (conceived in the quiet of his graceful life) assuaging panics and igniting booms.

A weight fell into Eric’s lap, startling him. The bottle had slid out of his hands. Luke was asleep, his mouth open, his body flat with relaxation. Success had come at last and Eric had missed the moment of its achievement.

But what had Eric achieved? If he got out of the chair, to place Luke in the carriage, wouldn’t the movement waken Luke?

I could stay here, holding him in my arms, lean my head back and sleep. He tried that. But Luke, despite his smallness, weighed in the crook of his arm. And keeping still was a distraction; the doing of nothing became an effort. He decided to risk moving Luke. He started to sit up.

The initial motion forward, the tightening of his stomach muscles produced an immediate reaction. Luke moaned, his head twitched, and his lips pursed. Eric froze in position, his back no longer leaning against the chair, and held his breath. Luke quieted, settled in; only now Eric had lost even the relative comfort of his former posture. He had begun the process of rising from the chair, and to give up, sagging back, would be as much of a jolt as continuing.

If I do this fast, with confidence, sure of myself, sure of my control of him, he will stay asleep. Eric committed himself to this notion and after a pause to ready himself, rose in one quick movement.

Although Luke’s head rolled in his arms and Eric tightened his grip around the body, there was no reaction. Luke remained passed out, his toothless mouth open, his neck retracted, the lids of his eyes shut, tiny blue veins made distinct by the translucence of his freshly made skin.

Luke sighed.

Eric stood in front of the carriage. How could he put Luke into it smoothly? Nina had said Luke must be put on his stomach—so as not to choke from spitting up—and that meant flipping him, like a pancake. Surely the splat of contact would rouse him.

But if Eric simply laid him down as he was, faceup, removing the mattress of his arms only a second before the real one, the transition would be less felt.

Could Luke really choke if he slept on his back? Eric had asked Nina that before, and she’d answered, irritated, “I don’t know! At the hospital they put them on their back sometimes, but the book said they should be on their stomachs. Just do it that way.”

He was exhausted. He couldn’t face another round of back and forth, back and forth. He leaned over the carriage, his arms extending, lowering Luke. Eric released Luke’s bottom and paused. No reaction. With his free hand he supported Luke’s head and slipped the other arm out. Luke’s eyes twitched, then were still. Gradually Eric allowed the head to rest and Luke was asleep in the carriage. Faceup. But asleep.

Eric covered him with the blanket and turned out the lights in the hall and in Luke’s room. Then he carefully maneuvered the carriage from the living room to the nursery.

There was a blissful quiet. A rest in the household that had had no peace since they arrived.

Could he really choke, I mean, choke to death, because he’s on his back? To risk flipping him seemed insane. Luke was at peace, at last; why bother him?

Eric went to bed. Nina slept stretched out, sunning herself in the night, a position she had gotten used to while big from the pregnancy. She used to sleep curled up, shrinking into infancy. Now she lay like a continent, floating on the world. One leg crossed onto his side. He nudged it to get room. She stirred, angrily (that day everything from her was either angry or hysterical), and he turned on his side, hugging the pillow.

He listened. He would hear choking.

The ticker began.
ITT ANNOUNCES BUYBACK, TRADING CLOSED, ITT REOPENS AT
50. The options would be worth fifteen hundred each and he had paid two. They would be worth a hundred and fifty thousand dollars. Silly. A boy’s dream.

Nina woke him with a yell. “Eric! Eric!”

Eric stumbled on his way out of bed, his hand on his soft penis. He usually wore his underpants to sleep.

“Eric! Come in here!” She was screeching in a high pitch.

“What?” he asked, coming into Luke’s room. The sunlight glowed in Nina’s hair. She was crying.

“I can’t wake him!” she screamed, tears streaming down her face.

And there in the carriage was Luke. Dead.

Eric woke up.

He woke up gasping for air, his head thrust forward.

It was still night. Outside he heard a car alarm wailing for its owner. His heart pounded in his chest, rapping out its criticisms: put Luke on his stomach, you selfish pig.

There would be no rest anyway, he realized, lying there, his ear aching to hear sounds from Luke.

He got up, went inside, and stared at the motionless body. For a moment he thought the nightmare had come true: the chest was still. But he finally saw a slight rise and fall.

He pulled the blanket off.

He put his hands under the little arms.

He turned Luke. The legs curled; the head nosed into the mattress. For a moment Luke rubbed his face sideways, settling in.

Then the little empty mouth opened. A silent yell.

Eric nodded to himself with dismay.

Now came the scream.

Luke was up again.

5

N
INA ACHED
for bed. she begged her body for more energy. She peered past the nursing head of Luke to look at her thighs, studying the flab squashed out by the hard wood of the kitchen chair, and wondered if all her muscles were gone. She closed her eyes, her hot eyes, watering to relieve the harsh sandpaper lids, and felt her neck go liquid, her weighted chin sag. One deep breath and she would be asleep.

Sleep.

Dark.

Warm.

The dance of dreams. The storytelling of memory and desire.

Luke’s hard gums slid down onto the nipple and pressed together, pressed together with slow cunning.

“No!” She was awake again, her poor boneless body in retreat from her baby’s evil intent. She pushed a finger into the corner of Luke’s mouth. The hard, mean little gums were closing. “No!” She forced him off with her finger. He wailed immediately. “Don’t bite!” she said to the senseless creature, its face nothing but a gaping mouth. “Goddammit!” She got to her feet. Luke’s head flopped back, screaming. The thing had no understanding: it yelled with the conviction that it was entitled to all her energy, to all her milk, to all her love. It had no inkling that her servitude was voluntary.

She paced, letting Luke screech in her arms. She paced, cursing the walls. “Shut up, shut up, shut up!” She passed her reflection in a little mirror, seeing a flash of her own face. Her eyes stared with rage and hopelessness; her jaw was slack, her mouth open, her hair dull and disarranged. She looked wild.

“Okay, okay, okay,” she said to the screams of her son. Calm down, she told herself. She walked rapidly to the couch, sat, and offered her breast again, holding his head fast against her so he wouldn’t clamp on her red and tender nipple.

Sighing, hiccuping, farting, jawing, Luke settled in. His rage ebbed, his eyes closed, he relaxed. She did not. Her head pounded from the suppression of the pulsing blood of her anger. She tried to fix herself in time, to remember where she was by a logical procession of events. But the disjointed sleeping schedule made her stupid.

Luke never slept. Her mind fought to understand how that could be. How could an infant sleep only four hours out of every twenty-four? How could this baby stand to be awake, fussing, crying the second his body wasn’t being rocked or moved? She had read explanations: he had colic, he was in pain, an almost continual pain that kept him awake; the motion soothed him, reminded him of the womb, calmed him. He did need sleep, but his digestion wasn’t permitting him the rest. The book said he couldn’t wake himself up any more than he could prevent himself from falling asleep; those perverse abilities came around eight months. This was out of his control. It was not Luke’s fault; he was an innocent in pain and all her patience was required.

“Let him cry if you can’t take it,” her pediatrician had advised over the phone. She had called the doctor a few hours ago, in a desperate state, exhausted by five hours of walking Luke in the Snugli. The Snugli was a womb made of fabric, a carrying pouch which put Luke’s face into her chest, and curled him up against her stomach. Inside it, Luke was quiet and even got snatches of sleep. But the Snugli gave her no rest; on the contrary, its cross straps bit across her back and strained muscles which had escaped the ravages of pregnancy. “I feel like I’m losing my mind,” she had said to the doctor. This was the first week Eric had gone to work and left her alone with the baby. Today she had broken down and called Eric to ask if he could come home early. Eric said no, the market was very active, and suggested she phone his parents, but she declined. This was the first goddamned week. She couldn’t ask for their help so soon. “I feel like I’m going crazy,” she repeated to the pediatrician. “Isn’t there some medicine you can give him?”