Only Children (21 page)

Peter was today’s commissioning Borgia, today’s Pope ordering Michelangelo to paint the Sistine Chapel, today’s Theo supporting Vincent. He stood, like a breaker wall, against the surf of mediocrity, the foam of vulgar nonsense. If Peter hadn’t funded
The Titan
, its brilliant score might never have been heard, certainly not on Broadway, and then there would have been no Pulitzer, no big-budget movie. That gem, that work of genius, would never have shone so bright without Peter’s quiet support. Quiet? Invisible, rather. Oh, to be sure, there was a little note in the program: the producers thank the Stillman Foundation for its help, blah, blah. But no Peter Hummel was identified as having talked the foundation into writing the check. Among his colleagues, Peter was credited. To the theater producers, to the major artists of today, Peter was known to be an angel, a true angel, his money not a lien against future success, nor an unthinking pretension of a rich widow. But of course—and recent cutbacks had made Peter feel this fact keenly—the money wasn’t Peter’s.

Diane had promised sex. Peter glanced at the clock. She had wanted to take a bath first. Time was up.

Peter had come home hungry for Diane. But now, after dinner, after Byron’s and Diane’s baths, Peter was hours away from the titillation of the Harlequin Theater’s cocktail party. There, along with the sour wine and dry cheese, were the female hors d’oeuvres that had whetted his appetite. Blond, brunette, black, and red-haired; full-breasted and languorous, small-breasted and energetic; long-limbed and shy, small-boned and bold; wide shoulders and long necks, tiny wrists and red nails; big eyes, warm browns, bright blues, glistening greens; dark skin, white skin, freckles, pimples, shaved armpits, downy arms, the menagerie of women, so various, each reinventing her sex so that they seemed unrelated, loose from their cages, free in the wild to dazzle men. Peter had come home horny, wanting to go out, to seduce Diane, to taste her long-haired vagina and the dark meat of her skin.

That appetite hadn’t survived the tepid pizza and the dinner conversation, an hour of Diane’s complaint that Byron hadn’t greeted her when she came home. The sexual hunger had cramped in his belly and been forgotten.

While they ate the thick-crusted and tasteless pizza, Byron ignored Diane’s sporadic and irritated “Hello, Byron!” to coo at Peter. Finally Peter held out his hand to quiet Byron. Byron gripped his father’s pinkie in his soft, padded fist and squeezed with an impressive but harmless might.

“He loves everybody but me,” Diane said.

“Nonsense,” Peter answered. “It’s just the opposite. Punishing you for deserting him proves how much he loves you.”

“He’s four months old! How could he know to single me out?”

“We learn early, my dear,” Peter said, and laughed, shaking his pinkie and, with it, Byron’s hand. “Right?” he asked his son. Byron opened his toothless mouth and chortled. The baby feet kicked with pleasure.

“Come here,” Diane said, and grabbed her laughing son. This time, held aloft, while Diane buried her face into Byron’s belly, kissing his chest and then the round pearl of his face, this time, this Byron giggled and smiled at Diane with pleasure. Relieved, Diane squeezed Byron to her, madly kissing his skull, his ear, his brow, his eyes, his dollop of a nose, and then she pursed her lips in front of his rounded, puffy lips and kissed him on the mouth.

The sight was obscene to Peter. “Okay, okay,” he said. “You’re gonna turn him into a fag.”

“Oh, that’s disgusting!” Diane said. Byron kicked, reached for her, pulling at the long black hair, latching onto her big nose, digging at the mystery of his mother. “You know, we’re very lucky with Byron.”

“We are?” Peter asked. Peter liked Byron, even loved him when they communed for a half hour each night before dinner, but he couldn’t quite feel that having any son, no matter how charming, meant he was lucky.

“He’s a very good baby.”

“Why? Are other babies his age stealing cars and dealing drugs?”

“No!” Diane barely smiled. “I know from talking to Betty, from Francine, from my mother, for God’s sake. He sleeps through the night, he doesn’t fuss—”

“Just like you,” Peter said.

Again she ignored his joke. “He’s an easy baby.”

“Well … we get the credit, don’t we? They’re our genes.”

“That’s right!” Diane agreed, and held Byron out, regarding him with the possessive self-satisfaction of a prizewinner enjoying her trophy. “We get the credit,” she said in a baby voice.

Byron chuckled, his feet paddled, his fingers stretched, and he answered: “Ooo! Ooo! Ooo!”

Later Peter watched Diane play games with Byron’s body on the living-room floor: astride him on her knees, she patted his feet together, rolling him from side to side, lifting him in the air, letting go for a moment, and catching him with an exclamation. Byron roared with delight at every maneuver, his excitement continuous, his pleasure in her attention absolute. When Diane would pause, he’d surrender himself to plead for more: arms and legs out, crucified on the carpet, his eyes wide, staring at her with awe.

She is his universe, Peter thought.

Peter remembered that envy while leaving his study to find Diane so they could make love per his request and her agreement prior to the pizza. Peter didn’t feel sexy anymore—his lust had boiled away hours ago—but these days to let a payment date pass could dangerously spoil his credibility for future collections.

Diane was at the pine desk in their bedroom she used for night and weekend work. She wore a huge terry-cloth bathrobe, regal in its proportions, but bourgeois in its thick, unrevealing comfort. She had a hand spearing her long, straight black hair, the fingers splitting its shape and pulling at her scalp. A cigarette burned in an ashtray (she had stopped smoking during her pregnancy, but had started again with her return to the law firm) and she stared angrily at several pages of yellow notepaper filled by her small perfect lines of writing.

“How’s it coming?” he asked.

She looked startled at his presence. “What! Oh. Okay. You want to make love,” she said, checking that off like a momentarily forgotten errand.

“Do you?” he asked.

“I need a back massage,” she said.

Good, he thought. That could mitigate the cold-start quality of this appointment. Diane got up, Peter kissed her, opening the robe’s belt, and pushed it gently off her shoulders. Her body looked soft from the bath, loosened by relaxation, fragrant from soaking in perfumed water. Her olive skin was still tanned, except for the white-striped reminder of her bathing suit, so that her sexual parts blared from the dark of their surroundings. With Byron weaned, the swollen breasts had shriveled some, the nipples even darker than before, almost brown. Now they sagged, sloping away gradually from her chest with a modesty and calmness Peter thought beautiful, especially in contrast with the terrible explosive look of the milk pouches.

Peter put his hands on her breasts and squeezed slightly to feel their give, new to him, the beginning of middle age for Diane.

Diane pulled away quickly. She shed the half-off robe and lay facedown on the bed.

I’ve embarrassed her, he thought. But he liked the age of her body. She wouldn’t believe that, so he didn’t bother to tell her. She was new to him again. The girl Diane, with her tight skin and fully inflated tits, was gone. But this softer, rounded, weathered Diane was just as good—better because she was unfamiliar.

He put his hands on her back and rubbed. She fidgeted at his touch, her undulating spine like hard pebbles twisting under the walk of his hands. When he wandered below to her ass, he felt some decay at the underside of the buttocks, soft pockets remaining from the pregnancy. He liked them too. She tightened while he touched there, again obviously embarrassed at their condition, so he moved off.

I don’t need you to be young, Peter wanted to say to Diane. We grew up together. If you are still a child, then so am I.

Young women are for affairs. Peter smiled to himself.

He was erect from the look and feel of her body. By now she had sighed with relaxation; her eyes were closed; the hard board of her back had buckled into soft flesh. He stopped the massage and undressed. Diane’s eyes were closed. Peter lay next to her. He was taut; his muscles echoed with the tension and desire of his penis.

Diane sighed and turned her head, resting it against his shoulder. She held his penis like a flute: her thumb propped up the instrument; the fingertips touched its thick vein to play the stops. She reached down with her free hand and gathered his sweaty cascading balls and repackaged the supply with its spout. She leaned forward and looked at the arrangement she had made, her head in a tilt of appraisal. “They get big when you boys grow up, don’t they?” she said.

Peter laughed. He felt both pride and triumph at her remark.

“I’m tired,” she said. “Do you mind just doing it?”

“Sure,” he said, but felt a twinge of disappointment. There was usually an obeisance to his genitals prior to intercourse—just as he courted her body before marrying it.

He moved on top of her. She guided his penis in. Her vagina felt less strange than the last time, when the interior seemed to have been rewallpapered with a sticky fabric. Diane claimed nursing had caused that; he had wondered if she was simply unexcited. But the sensation hadn’t been dryness, rather a stubborn lack of elasticity.

Some of that unyielding effect remained this time, even when she was thoroughly wet. The walls had become glacial, their previous living caress replaced by a smoothness that he fancied was indifference. Diane seemed almost asleep while he moved inside her. Maybe her cunt was asleep.

“
Do you like this?” Larry asked the little boy Peter
.

Peter stopped moving inside Diane at the memory.

“Something wrong?” Diane asked.

“Are you very tired?”

“No,” Diane said, and kissed him with warm, sleepy lips. “I’m relaxed. Don’t worry about me.”

“
Do you touch yourself there?” Larry asked. “Do you like it when you touch yourself there?
”

Peter squeezed his eyes, tried to squeeze out the husky, lascivious voice (mocking and insistent) from his brain. He kissed his wife’s neck, her lean, smooth dark neck, a part of her he loved, a favorite piece, sure to bring orgasm; but his lips felt numb, unable to taste. Peter pushed himself in hard and yanked out, hard in, hard out. He tried to force himself to pleasure. Diane moaned. Her arms came around his back and pulled at him.

Larry’s hand reached inside eight-year-old Peter’s pants and searched with his mealy fingers for the little penis
.

Forget it, forget it, forget it. Peter arched up and smashed inside. Diane sighed and moaned. She made a hissing sound with her teeth.

“
Do you do this?” Larry had asked. He rolled the little penis against Peter’s flat stomach, rolling it like dough on a board, back and forth, back and forth
.

Did I enjoy that the first time? Or was it later?

“Oh! Oh!” Diane’s legs hooked around Peter, feet binding his calves, and pressed him to her.

She’s coming, Peter realized, amazed. He had been shot with Novocain, dead from the waist down, not weak, but numbly hard. Might as well let her enjoy it, he thought. He dug at her, dug inside, reaching for her center. She bucked with joy, held him tight, and twisted her pelvis against his hard, dead sausage, yelling with release.

And then, over the top of the sound of her orgasm, Byron cried out, the siren on. Mother and son wailed together. I’m lifeless, Peter thought, and saw Larry’s cold eyes watching little Peter’s scared face.

Diane and Byron can cry and laugh, but I’m lifeless.

“My God!” Diane said, sweat covering her. “You think Byron heard us?”

Peter listened to Byron’s distress, unmoved. The wailing sounded like a car alarm.

“I’d better go to him,” Diane said. “Did you come?”

“Yes,” Peter lied.

“You’re still so hard.”

Peter pulled out. The base of his penis ached. It looked red and angry. Byron still wailed. Diane got into the robe and rushed to her son’s room.

Peter listened to Diane make soothing sounds at Byron. “Yes, baby. You go back to sleep. Mommy and Daddy are okay.”

Peter held his thick old hairy prick, hard and unfeeling, in his hand.
I’m lifeless
. He rubbed himself and it was like touching something that didn’t belong to him.

He got out of bed and dressed again in his clothes. Only the wet feel of his penis reminded him that he had had sex. He returned to his study and began his memo on why they should fund the Uptown Theater’s workshop of its next musical.

“
Do you like it when I touch you there?” Larry had asked, and little Peter couldn’t answer. His small throat had closed. He couldn’t speak, couldn’t defend himself. “Do you like it when I touch you there?” Larry had asked
.

Peter put the paper aside. Why am I thinking of this now? He hadn’t worried over his friend Gary’s cousin Larry for a decade, hadn’t worried about the minor incident (it
was
minor, he reminded himself) of sexual abuse.

Peter decided it was his nerves, the strangeness of sleeping with Diane after such a momentous event, even though this wasn’t their first postbaby intercourse, but the second. It’ll pass, he told himself.

What can I do about it now anyway?

Do you like it when I touch you there? Larry had asked the choked and mute child Peter
.

No, I don’t, the man Peter answered.

6

I
N MID-JULY
, Eric and Nina gave up any attempt to live normally while caring for Luke. Their son’s restlessness, the constant discomfort in his belly allowed them no relaxation, even during the brief times they slept. In the back of their minds, irritating and corrosive, was the worry that Luke would never be right, never easy.

Eric and Nina had conceived in hope, convinced that the creation of their child would give life meaning and beauty. By the fifth week after Luke’s birth, the treasured mutual joy of Nina’s pregnancy, the keen anticipation of birth had become a grim struggle with Luke’s unhappy nature. Nina had given up internal hope that day in Grace Church. She was now addicted to Eric’s repeated assertions that if they held on, Luke would be all right. In thrall to Eric’s assurance that their self-sacrifice would eventually heal Luke, Nina turned off her ego and became an automaton, feeding, cleaning, rocking, her mind a blank, a bulb burning bright, in a race to complete its task before the final blowout.