Only Children by Rafael Yglesias Read Free Book Online Page B

useless instead of crucial; she didn’t have the strength to get up and put him back in the Lucite cart the hospital used to wheel the babies from the nursery to the rooms, so instead of being the most trustworthy caretaker, she was the least reliable. His visits were an hour long at most, so she had yet to diaper him or rock him to sleep (he never seemed fully awake anyway), and although she made the effort to hold him up against her shoulder to burp him (it hurt some muscle below), nothing like a belch had ever been heard. She longed to feel maternal, for a rising tide of sentiment to overwhelm what she thought ought to be trivialities—her discomfort, her fatigue, her loneliness—but she was dead to Byron. He seemed utterly foreign, a misdelivered package.
    Her mother, Lily, appeared on the first day, looking radiant. In her old age, Lily’s jowls, her thick glasses, and her crumpling skin had made her rather gargoylish—Peter once said at a drunken dinner party that he reconsidered marrying Diane after seeing what time had done to Lily—but on this day the wrinkling of age was ironed by Lily’s joy in her grandchild.
    “He’s beautiful!” Lily exclaimed before she was halfway in the door. She had stopped off at the nursery and viewed Byron through the glass, swaddled in his blanket, his eyes closed, his mouth pursed, concentrated on rediscovering his former peace. Lily came into the room, stood still several feet away from Diane’s bed, clasped her little, pudgy hands together, and repeated: “He’s beautiful!”
    Diane was already exhausted by her. Diane knew Lily’s enthusiasm would be set on high for Diane to scale, or otherwise Diane would be left behind, watching her mother enjoy an exhilaration that, by rights, belonged only to herself. Diane tried to beam a smile, but it must have looked queasy.
    “How are you, darling?” Lily asked, lowering her tone sympathetically. She moved toward the bed, took Diane’s cheeks in her hands, squeezed, and made a whooshing sound of pleasure and possession. “You look pale.”
    “I’ve just had a baby.”
    “That was yesterday. You shouldn’t be in pain now. What do the doctors say?”
    “Ma, I’ve had a C section! That’s abdominal surgery. You don’t recover from that in a day.” Already Diane was whining like a teenager. Barely thirty seconds gone and fifteen years had been lopped off; if her mother stayed for longer than two minutes, they might be wheeling Diane into the nursery. Where was Peter? He had promised to be there as a buffer.
    “My friend Harriet’s daughter had a C section—she was on her feet in three days. Maybe you should get another doctor. Doctors aren’t perfect, you know. They make mistakes.”
    Diane closed her eyes. Why did she have a cartoon mother? It was hard to have nightmares as bad as the reality of Lily.
    “Hello!” Peter entered, looking disgustingly fit. He was dressed in his festive Waspy summer clothes, ready to board the yacht at the Cape. “Hello, Lily! You look lovely”
    “Your son is beautiful!” Lily said, also grabbing Peter by the cheeks and smacking her lips on his. That was a remarkable expression of warmth from Lily to Peter; she had never accepted him into her heart either publicly or privately, presumably because he wasn’t Jewish. “What difference does it make?” Diane had once asked her, exasperated. “Really, Ma? What difference does it make?” “It makes a difference,” Lily had said, nodding to herself, her tone heavy with accepted sorrow, going to the ovens bravely.
    “You too, huh?” Peter said cheerfully.
    “Don’t you think he’s beautiful?” Lily pleaded.
    Peter laughed good-naturedly. He strolled over to Diane and kissed her. “You really are mother and daughter.”
    “What are you talking about!” Diane snapped at him. Peter couldn’t have come up with a more infuriating remark if he’d worked on it all night.
    Peter turned to Lily. “Exactly what Diane kept saying