Only Children (25 page)

No one asked about Peter’s health anymore. “How’s Byron?” his mother and his friends always wondered first. “Is he crawling? Is he eating solid food?” Last week, Peter had felt flush. When Gail, his mother, called about the museum’s cocktail party, Peter told her he was ill. “Stay away from Byron” was her response.

Diane had stopped accompanying Peter to theater or other functions. Peter spent four nights a week out alone. Although Peter had avoided Rachel, he had had four dalliances—a result, he believed, of Diane’s desertion. But the phenomenon of Peter’s sexual abstraction remained even with other women: he was unable to enjoy the intercourse; numbed from the waist down by memory, Peter screwed without a climax, a drama full of tension, but no release. Kissing, cuddling, wooing the woman’s body, he was excited and alive—but once his penis was involved, his mind lifted off and looked down dispassionately on him, the woman, and the activity. He was unable to feel pleasure. Somehow he blamed Diane and Byron, believed they had stolen his passion.

Peter had made up his mind to talk to Diane. He needed her back, he needed his wife. So tonight he had come home early from an Uptown Theater fund raiser, canceled his tickets to the new Fosse show, and bought a bottle of champagne to make things festive. Peter lifted the Moët out of its brown wrapper. “Would you like some?”

Diane squinted. “Champagne? Byron’s hot,” she said, frowning. She kissed Byron’s forehead. “Could you get the thermometer?”

“He’s got a fever?”

“He’s hot,” she repeated. “Feel.” She offered Byron to Peter. Byron’s eyelids were half lowered and had an extra crease. Peter put his hand on Byron’s forehead. Byron tried to shake it off and kicked Peter’s chest hard enough to hurt.

“He feels warm,” Peter agreed, and backed away. This nine-month-old was dangerous.

“Get the thermometer,” Diane said.

Peter obeyed, putting the champagne in the refrigerator first. They could drink it later, after Byron was asleep. When Peter returned from the bathroom, Diane frowned at the plastic case and shrieked, “This is an oral thermometer! What’s the matter with you?”

“Don’t talk to me like that,” Peter said. Diane sounded shrewish, the same tone Lily used with Diane.

“What do you think! A nine-month-old is gonna hold a thermometer under his tongue?”

“We don’t have any other thermometer!” Peter shouted, and instantly was ashamed that he had lost his temper. Byron, who had been twisting and squawking in Diane’s arms, began to cry again.

“I bought a rectal thermometer. It’s in the cabinet.”

Peter was disgusted. He remembered back to when he was left by his mother, Gail, to stay with his friend Gary for a weekend. They were eight or nine. Both of them had come down with fevers; they weren’t particularly high, but Gary’s mother had insisted on …He shook his head at the memory. Peter had wanted to object, to balk at Gary’s mother’s request. She wouldn’t have forced him, but Gary had somehow intimidated Peter, made him feel he had to. The humiliation of lowering his pants and allowing a stranger (Gary’s mother was a stranger to Peter, no matter how well he knew her) to put … He felt sick to his stomach thinking about it. Gail always let Peter use an oral thermometer. When Peter made that point, Gary’s mother had said disdainfully, “It’s not accurate.” Peter remembered the pleasure Gary’s mother seemed to take in their discomfort: “Don’t move around! Lie still. You’re such babies! ” Gail would never have done that to Peter. She never offended his dignity. Why didn’t I object, why didn’t I—

“Peter! Will you please get the thermometer?”

“No,” Peter said, backing away, her request a tangible menace stalking him.

Diane peered at Peter in amazement. Byron’s hand swiped across her mouth. Byron moaned and squawked. “Why not?”

“Okay,” he said, and walked to the bathroom quickly, found another plastic case (with that horrible word “rectal” written on it), and brought it to her, tossing the thing on the couch. He turned to leave.

“Where are you going? I need some Vaseline.”

He remembered that as well, the cold, slimy feel of it, the ooze afterward, and Gary’s continual talk about the residue of the sensation. In school, a few weeks later, Gary told their classmates. Why he exposed them both to ridicule Peter never understood. As he told the story to their classmates, Gary giggled with mean delight while he described the look on Peter’s face as the thermometer was inser—Peter closed his eyes, as again his mind was overcome by the clarity of the memory, Gary laughing, Gary’s mother saying, “You’re such babies,” the whole horrible—

“Peter, I’m going to need your help, all right? He’s getting hotter. Get some Vaseline and a towel.”

“I’m not having any part of this,” Peter said firmly, and left the living room. He went to his study and closed the door. He sat at his desk. He was trembling.

I’m an adult. He’s my son. I must defend him. Women like to destroy our pride, to make us into babies.

Peter shook his head, physically trying to free his mind from the strange mesh that had captured his reason. Byron
is
a baby. He tried to cut through to common sense. He’s not an eight-year-old. Diane’s perfectly correct. What other choice does she have?

But I don’t have to participate. I told her. I won’t help.

But the issue here wasn’t help; it was intercession.

I can’t allow Diane to do anything she wants. He’s my son. One day, he will turn to me, grown to equality, and ask me why.

Will I pretend I didn’t hear?

Through the closed door, Peter heard wailing, dreadful wailing.

“Goddammit!” A faint version of Diane’s voice carried in.

Byron’s outrage, Diane’s frustration—they stood beside Peter, mocking sentinels. Aren’t you going to do something? they asked.

“Peter! Peter!” Diane’s shouts for help were both desperate and furious.

Peter covered his ears for a moment, but the raging voices of his wife and son reached him anyway. He surrendered, rose, opened his study door, and marched back to the living room.

Peter glanced briefly at the spectacle on the rug. Apparently Diane had been unable to keep Byron still enough to put the thermometer in. “Hold him!” Diane said. Peter maneuvered himself so he was beside Byron. Peter put his hands on the little shoulders, flexing to gain mobility, and held his son down.

For a second, Byron stopped fussing. Peter looked into his son’s brown eyes, warm and curious at Peter’s appearance; light glinted through them and their color shimmered from hue to hue.

A big smile reversed the angry sorrow. “Da, Da! Da, Da!” Byron claimed triumphantly.

“That’s right,” Peter said.

“Okay,” Diane said. “Here we go.”

Byron was about to reach for his father’s mouth, to play with the spectacle of his Da, Da. But the thing went in—and Byron s eyes shut, his head bucked forward, his shoulders fought to get up. Peter held him down. Byron screeched his complaints. Peter laid his head next to Byron’s and kissed his cheek.

“Only take a second,” he apologized.

Byron tried to fight again, but as he lost, his complaints became cries, cries of frustration, cries of defeat.

Afterward, Peter held Byron while Diane cleaned up and went to the bedroom to call the doctor. “A hundred and three,” she told Peter. Byron still tried to move, to play, but sighed and relaxed in Peter’s arms after a minute of Peter’s resistance. Byron’s body was hot. The soft, plump thighs radiated his body’s distress. The white skin took on a pink hue. The usually restless Byron leaned his sweaty head against his father’s shoulder and looked into Peter’s eyes with mournful contemplation. There seemed to be no memory of Peter’s collaboration in the outrage, no grudge borne.

Diane appeared, her coat on, with a sweater for Byron. “The doctor’s still in the office. He’ll see Byron if I take him right now.”

Byron peeped as Peter handed him over. Byron’s fantastic energy, evident only an hour ago, was gone.

He’s dying, Peter thought. The heat from Byron’s body had made a wet circle on his shirt. The hard candle of his life-force was melting.

“Are you coming?” Diane asked, finished with dressing Byron. He thought about that, remembering Diane’s description of taking Byron to the doctor—the wait in a room full of crying children, the pompous posturing of the doctor, the brutal need to restrain Byron for examination.

“Are you coming? I have to hurry.”

Peter shook his head no, scared, ready to give in if she insisted.

“Fine,” she said, and left, carrying Byron, who lay limply in her arms, his eyes almost closed, whimpering pitifully.

Peter sat for a long time after they were gone, not moving, unable really to think of what to do. He should be hungry. He wasn’t. He could use a drink. He considered opening the champagne. Took too much effort.

He felt sorry for Byron.

Peter tried to imagine what it would be like if Byron died.

Diane would mouth for a while. Would she want another?

Peter tried hard to convince himself Diane would not. The pain of one loss might make her shy of a second creation.

But he knew Diane would never accept defeat. She would go right back and do it again, even more determined.

Peter touched his cheek, where the feverish Byron had rested against him, gazing sadly, giving up the struggle, moaning and peeping from the hot ache. The wet of Byron’s sweat had dried; the warmth of his body had cooled. But touching there, Peter felt his son return.

He wanted to cry. The feeling was unfamiliar—a slab of loss; incomprehensible, impossible to chop up into manageable pieces.

Of course, Byron was going to go on living. And growing. And of course, time and time again Peter would fail him, collaborate in his oppression, and have nothing but an apology as an explanation.

He was still in the chair when Diane and Byron returned. Byron was asleep in Diane’s arms, his head lolled back, his lips parted, breathing heavily. She put Byron in his crib and returned to say that the doctor had diagnosed Byron as having an ear infection. Peter was to go out and get a prescription for liquid penicillin filled and she thought they ought to have extra baby Tylenol.

Peter listened, saying nothing. When she finished, he got up. She peered at him for a moment and said, “What’s the matter with you?”

“I don’t know,” he said.

“Well, I think you’d better find out,” she snapped, so angry that she had to turn away and pretend to be interested in something on the rug.

He thought for a while about answering. What could he say? He hated her as a mother, wanted her as a wife? He loved and pitied Byron, but wished Byron didn’t exist at all? That something awful in the corner of his mind had come to life, some shadow had been cast, and now seemed animate—a terrible lurking monster which no night-light could dissipate?

“I think I’d better see a shrink,” he said finally.

“You’d better do something,” she said harshly, but cut herself off, interrupting a longer exposition of criticism. After a moment, she sighed, and spoke quietly. “You acted really weird. He was sick. I have to take his temperature.”

“I’m squeamish,” he said.

Diane squinted, puzzled, trying to bring him into focus. “Squeamish about taking his temperature?”

“Yes.”

Diane shook her head, her eyes wide, her mouth open. She sat down, collapsed by his incredible remark. “You’d better see a shrink,” she said, nodding. “You’re nuts all right.”

Peter swallowed. Her comment, presumably just the residue of her anger, hurt. He believed, suddenly, that if she really knew him, that would be her serious judgment, not a hostile remark, but a final conclusion.

He went to the drugstore. While waiting for the prescription to be filled, he decided to tell Diane that he couldn’t stand what had happened to their life. He didn’t want things to continue this way. They would have to get sleep-in help. She would have to accompany him in the evenings. Her centering on Byron had to be shifted. Either that, or he’d leave.

This decision calmed him. He went home with the medicine, cured of his anxieties.

Diane was on the phone with Betty Winters. Diane sounded happy, laughing, and she called out to Peter while still on the phone: “You’re not going to believe this! We didn’t have to do a rectal—”

Peter blanched at her shouting the word.

“—there’s a thing called a Fever Strip. You just hold it on their”— Diane listened to the phone—“hold it on their forehead for fifteen seconds. Can you believe it?”

Diane sent Peter out again to get this modem miracle. The Fever Strip was nothing more than a few inches of plastic with a color band to read the temperature; the druggist said it was just as good as any other method. When Peter returned, Diane kissed him enthusiastically and then eagerly opened the Fever Strip, testing it on Peter’s forehead and then her own.

Byron woke up, complaining. They cooled his body with washcloths, used the Fever Strip, gave him his dose of penicillin, and he fell back to sleep.

Peter opened the champagne. Diane had a little, he drank most of it. Before Peter got around to his speech, Diane said she was exhausted. He let her go to bed.

Thinking about his earlier upset, Peter thought it was just a case of bad nerves. There’s penicillin to cure the infection; there’s a Fever Strip, a thin plastic device, that makes parenting easy. It would all work out. He had to relax and be patient.

He loved them.

Presumably they loved him.

He would have to wait his turn.

7

D
IANE’S VISION
moved ahead of her, a camera tracking, divorced from her mind: the sight of the bedroom, the look of the hallway, the closed door of Byron’s room, loomed and then passed, seen through a stranger’s eyes.

But when Diane opened Byron’s door and saw her eleven-month-old baby, standing in his crib, hands on the bars, head cocked curiously, sandy hair in a wave across his brow, she woke up. Woke up with pleasure.

“Ma! Ma!” Byron shouted, crying Hosanna at the appearance of a miracle.

“Hello, baby!”

Byron bent his knees and then jerked up. He opened his mouth and showed the two miniatures of teeth on bottom and a stub of another on top. He grinned and chuckled. He hooted and squealed.