Only Children (68 page)

(“She wanted Kyle. Nothing would have stopped that. She was in love with him. That mattered more to her than what I wanted. She’s just an ordinary person.”

(“Does that bother you? To find out your mother is ordinary?”

(“Yes. I believed she was extraordinary.”

(“And now you know she’s not.”

(“How banal, eh?”

(“No,” Kotkin said softly. “No.”

(“And Larry. Him too. He was just an ordinary person.”

(“Do you forgive him?” Kotkin whispered.

(“No. I don’t forgive anyone.”)

“Remember that?” Diane said, gesturing to the parents who had forced their child into the stroller and were hurrying away from the scene of their cruelty. Their child’s cries went with them. “Remember that phase? Byron never wanted to leave. Never wanted to stop playing.”

“He still doesn’t,” Peter said. “He’s just more polite now.”

“Mmmm,” Diane said. “You’re right.”

“If Luke doesn’t come, I’ll take him up to Gail’s.”

Diane looked her surprise. She squeezed his hand. “I’ll go with you.”

“Okay.”

She gave him another squeeze and returned to watching Byron. “He’s a good boy,” she said. “He’s survived us.”

Peter nodded. He sat and watched. He was an audience again; he was satisfied.

(“You know, Kotkin. I’m going to tell you something I thought I’d never say.”

(He waited for her to ask. She didn’t.

(“I’m a happy man.”

(“I’m glad,” Kotkin said.)

Indeed, I am a happy man.

W
ELL, IF I
show Byron I brought my microscope, he won’t like it. He’ll tell me it’s boring. I know it’s not boring. But I don’t want to argue.

We can play a game. We can play Ghostbusters on the slides.

I wish he was interested in nature things. That tree has something on it. Daddy says it’s a fungus. But he must be wrong. The fungus is too big for the tree to still be alive.

If I made the universe, I wouldn’t make it with a big bang. I would let it start that way. Very compressed. Lots of it, jammed together. But I wouldn’t release in a bang. It could spread out, like when a pebble hits the water, spread out slow—what’s the word?— gradually. That means slow but regular. That’s how I would make the universe. I’ll tell Byron.

No. He’ll argue. He thinks the universe is the sky anyway. That’s all right.

“Mommy!”

“Yes, Luke?”

“I don’t want my microscope.”

“Okay. Give it to me.”

“Well, we should go back and leave it home.”

“What!” Daddy laughed.

“I’ll just put it away. Give it to me,” Mommy said.

Can I tell her? “Okay,” Luke said. “But put it so no one can see it.”

“You mean so Byron can’t see it,” Mommy said. “You know why he doesn’t like it? It’s because he doesn’t know—”

“I know that!” She didn’t like Byron. He was okay. He could play good games if you talked to him the right way. You had to slip into him, make him think what you want is what he wants. “Anyway, I can find things and look at them at home. Byron will be interested when we’re home. I told you I want the play date to be at my house, right?”

“Yes. If that’s okay with Byron’s parents.”

They won’t say no. Byron will want to come with me. There are fewer rules at my house. No cleaning up at the end. Byron hates to clean up. Me too. What’s the point? You only mess it up again the next day.

Look at that squirrel.

“Luke! Luke!”

There’s Byron.

“I’m Slimer, Luke! I’m gonna slime those bad boys!” Byron pointed to some boys Luke knew from other times in the park.

Well, I’ll play Ghostbusters for a while. Then I’ll change the game to the tree with fungus. If I tell Byron the fungus is a ghost and we have to get it off the tree, then I can do some experiments.

If you spread out gradually, you can have the whole universe— without even a bang.

G
OOD! LUKE
didn’t bring his boring microscope.

There’s nothing as blue as Luke’s eyes. Like the blue in that painting Mommy and Daddy like. Not a real blue.

“We’re going to slime them?” Luke asked.

“We’re gonna have a long play date, right Luke? I told my mommy and daddy that we had to have a long play date.”

“Well—okay, but I want to go back to my place.”

Good. “That’s good, see? We can make chemicals in the bathroom.”

“No, I don’t want to do that, Byron. Those aren’t real chemicals. That’s just soap and water.”

“Okay.” Can’t argue. Luke will play with those stupid boys if I argue. When we get to his house, I’ll do it anyway. “We’ll always be friends, right, Luke?”

“Well.” Luke put out his hand and looked at the sky. Even the sky was not as blue as his eyes. “If we know each other.”

“But we’ll try to always know each other, right?”

Luke put his eyes on Byron; they got dark. “Okay. But we can’t fight all the time about what to play.”

“But sometimes I don’t want to play what you play.”

“When that happens, we’ll play different things. Then, when we want to play something together, we’ll do it. Okay?”

“But it gets boring waiting.”

“Well.” Luke lowered his head. His black hair showed the white underneath. How does the dark show the light? “That’s the only way I know how to be friends.”

“Okay,” Byron said.

It’s too hard to fight everybody.

“We’ll do what you want, Luke.”

E
ERIC, LUKE
, and Barry left the apartment to go to the park. It was early Sunday morning. The day before had been Luke’s fifth birthday. They carried with them Luke’s present from Nina and Eric. It was a bike, a two-wheeler, to replace his tricycle. Eric had prayed that Luke would ask Nina to teach him how to ride. Luke was still fearful of new physical adventures, a kind of instinctive cowardice that disturbed Eric and reminded him of his own indecisiveness. But Luke declined Nina’s tutorial offer and insisted that Daddy teach him. By chance, Eric’s parents had asked if they could come downtown for breakfast that morning, and Eric seized on this opportunity to invite his own father along, in the hope that if there were problems, Barry might be a help. After all, Barry had taught Eric how to ride. Of course, Eric was older when he had learned. Eight years old—it had taken Barry that long to afford a bike.

By now Eric understood that Luke was unusually smart. The response of the schools to the results of the IQ test made that clear. Despite Eric’s lack of connections, despite the horrendous surplus of applications, despite all the warnings that in order to get into a superior private school, a child had to be specially tutored from age zero, despite all that, Luke was accepted everywhere. Three schools called to urge Nina and Eric to select them. Their experience was so different from other parents that only one conclusion was possible.

Eric wanted to shout the news, to brag at every social function. He wanted every parent to know what they had been told at the nursery school by Luke’s teacher, a woman who had taught four-year-olds for thirty years. She said that Luke was the brightest child she had ever had. But Nina clamped down on Eric. Just say Luke is bright. That’s enough.

With the limitless choice of schools offered, they had a difficult time making their selection: they spent three weeks revisiting each school; they had meetings with headmasters and headmistresses eager to win them. Even Hunter was eager to get Luke. Eric wanted to pick Hunter, but Nina vetoed that. She thought the kids at Hunter were too grim, made into little adults, urged to acquire knowledge in order to gain applause. Luke loved learning; he wanted to know everything because he loved understanding. Nina wanted to preserve Luke’s unselfconscious love of knowledge. Eric could see that, so he went along with Nina, and they placed him in one of the better but not the hottest of New York private schools. “He’ll get bored,” Eric protested. “We’ll tell him what he needs to know,” she answered. By now, Eric had to read books on evolution, on biology, on the current developments in physics in order to keep up with Luke’s curiosity, his memory, and his ability to detect contradictions in the books they read to him. Luke worked with Nina on her designs, he listened with Eric to the business shows, Luke gobbled up all the scraps of information the world scattered about him, and then he played with his friends—there were so many of them—without displaying any of it. In kindergarten, Luke managed to keep his teachers in the dark for months, but by the end of the term, at the parent-teacher conference, Luke’s teacher said, “You have a remarkably intelligent child. Do you know that?” she asked, quite curious, apparently unsure.

“Yes,” Nina said. Eric nodded.

The teacher stared at them. “He knows things about geology, about space, about, well, about most things, that I don’t know. I sometimes ask him to answer the questions of the other kids. He used to refuse to answer. He’s getting over that. He’s more comfortable with his natural role as a leader.”

A leader. The word expanded Eric’s nostrils; he breathed in the air, electric with promise. He dared not hope his son would escape the generational curse of failure. The brains must come from Nina, Eric thought, so he prayed that self-destruction wouldn’t come from him.

Eric had accepted his defeat a year ago. He continued to work for Joe under the old terms, salary and a cut of commissions. No management fees, no discretion over client’ money. Joe had developed heart trouble over the winter and left each day after lunch, putting Sammy in charge. Once Joe was out of the office, Sammy copied Joe’s manner toward Eric, slipping his feet into his father’s vacant shoes. Sammy treated Eric amiably, but with an undercurrent of contempt. It didn’t matter. Eric earned a hundred and fifty thousand a year, enough to pay the bills. Tom, perhaps out of guilt, had set up a trust fund for Luke. The money would be there for Luke to go through Harvard, or wherever it was that he would end up. As long as Eric’s genes didn’t interfere, Luke would be extraordinary.

Eric didn’t feel bad. He was Luke’s caretaker; he was there to guard the jewel until it went on display for the world to gasp at.

And best of all, Nina was eight months pregnant. Only a month and there would be another. Another chance. And this time Eric wouldn’t be nervous, he wouldn’t doubt it was worth the effort, he wouldn’t allow his own struggles to distract him from the pleasure of watching new life grow in his garden.

Luke was excited. He wanted to try the bike on the street.

“No, let’s get to the park,” Eric said.

“Why?” Luke asked.

“It’s easier to ride at the park,” Barry said. “The pavement is much smoother.”

“It is?” Luke said, and his brain clicked on. Eric saw it happen, knew it was coming. “No, it isn’t. Grandpa. It’s true this is cement and that’s tar, but it isn’t much smoother.”

Eric looked at his father and smiled.

“Well.” Barry tried desperately. “The park has wider streets—”

“No,” Luke began gently. He was forced to contradict grownups a lot and it pained him. It took Nina more than a year to persuade Luke that if he spoke politely, no one would mind being corrected. “No, Grandpa, actually—”

Eric interrupted. “The reason we should try in the park is because it’s your first time and there are people walking around here. If you have trouble controlling the bike, you’ll worry about hitting them. At this hour the park is usually empty and you can concentrate on balancing, you don’t have to worry about steering.”

“I have to worry a little about steering, right?” Luke said, and laughed. “I don’t want to crash into trees.”

“That’s true,” Eric said.

They moved on. Barry was quiet until they were almost at the park. Luke had danced ahead to the corner. Barry whispered in Eric’s ear: “Why did you tell him he might crash into people?”

“I didn’t.”

“That’s why I said it was smoother in the park,” Barry defended himself. “Now he may worry he’ll crash.”

“Dad, Luke knows he may crash. I’m trying to make it clear that’s nothing to worry about.”

“But it is smoother in the park.”

It wasn’t, but Eric let that point pass. Why fight?

When they reached the park, Luke immediately got on his new bike. Eric held it by the underside of the seat. Barry stood ten feet off, half bent over. “Just pedal fast,” he said.

“I’ll hold the bike, Luke,” Eric told him, “until you ask me to let go.”

“Okay,” Luke said, brave and firm and scared.

Eric pushed, keeping his eyes on the little head, aloft on the bike, ready to move on. “Pedal,” Eric prompted.

“Pedal fast,” Barry said.

“I don’t want to,” Luke mumbled.

“Pedal as fast or as slow as you want,” Eric said.

They moved. Luke stayed stiff on the bike, afraid to move, his arms bowed in the air, gripping the handles desperately.

“Just relax and enjoy the ride,” Eric said, huffing and running quickly.

They had passed Barry, who shouted: “Let go of him!”

“Don’t!” Luke begged.

“I won’t until you say I should.”

Eric had to run fast now; it was harder and harder to keep up with his son.

“This is fun,” Luke said. His arms relaxed.

“You can see so many things, can’t you?” Eric said, huffing. They were close to a turn.

“Yes. I’m higher up,” Luke said.

Eric couldn’t stay with Luke. They made the turn onto a downward slope and the bike gained speed. One hand came off the bike, briefly.

“Can I let go, Luke?”

“Sure,” said the happy voice.

But Eric didn’t. He had to run very fast to keep pace with Luke, but he didn’t want to let go, to lose the sight of his son’s open, joyful face.

“Let go, Daddy,” Luke said.

“Okay, I’m gonna let go.”

“Okay,” Luke sang back to him.

“Remember how to stop.”

“I know how to stop,” Luke said, impatient now. “Let go!”

Eric opened his hands and watched his son zoom away.

Eric’s soul went with Luke—released, fast into the world, the figure, erect and proud and little, getting smaller and smaller, farther and farther away.

I leave him in your care, world. He is the best I can do. Take care of him.

“I’m doing it, Daddy!” Luke called back. “Should I stop?”