Only Children (28 page)

Brandon answered, but he spoke to Nina. “Old Puffer died last year—”

“He did?” Nina sounded puzzled.

“Cancer. Father doesn’t like the man they turned him over to. Anyway, Puffer was awful. Obvious stuff. ‘Good solid returns,’ ” Brandon imitated, his chin thrust forward, his teeth clenched. “In fact, old conservative Puffer lost tons of Father’s dough. This six million is the lion’s share of what’s left of our inheritance. I’d like to make sure Father doesn’t blow it. That’s why I told him to talk to Eric. If he doesn’t, you should bring it up.” Brandon finished this by leaning forward and tapping Eric’s knee, the first time he had looked at Eric during the speech.

“He can’t,” Nina answered, pushing Luke off her breast. His little face was slack, the mouth open, his limbs collapsed. “Daddy has to bring it up.”

“I’ll remind him,” Brandon said.

Luke startled awake and immediately wailed. He was angry, inconsolable, his stomach tight, his legs pulled up to his belly, his mouth screeching with complaint.

“I’ll take him.” Eric was furious. Everything had been messed up. “You should go to sleep,” he said to Nina while gathering Luke.

“All right!” she snapped.

Eric carried his unhappy son back to the small dark nursery, chilled by the damp Maine night. The treads of the rocker squealed at Eric’s weight and the floor groaned when he began the motion. Luke sighed and nestled into Eric’s chest. He sucked on the pacifier with desperate insistence.

Eric watched him. This nervous, fragile baby—could Luke stand the fight to make money? With that six million, Eric knew he could make a fortune for his son. He felt the stock market growling, ready to awaken. It had been monotonously ticking up and down, a timid metronome, without a decisive move either way for almost a decade, but interest rates were falling, foreign money was pouring in, average volume on the exchange had doubled in the last two years. Even with fairly conservative buys, if the trend kept on (and he knew it would, knew it as if he were in spiritual contact with the gods of money), Eric could double the six million. Then play with the winnings, play looser, and maybe triple that.

He rocked his baby in the night and watched his numbers, incandescent, glow about his head. Bright, bright numbers—fireflies enchanting the gloom with magic. He kissed Luke’s sweet, soft forehead.

The staring eyes closed.

He kissed their lids.

Eric Gold, the Wizard of Wall Street, rich beyond fear, held his heir with hope, eager for his in-laws’ arrival.

T
WO THINGS
belonged to Nina: Eric and Luke. They were all she possessed of her own making. All her other attempts, her painting, her photography, all her aborted careers, had ended in her boredom or worldly failure. She felt this keenly on her parents’ arrival. Her pride pushed her forward, holding Luke in her arms, serving a spectacular platter, and heard in her head, thumping in rhythm, See what I’ve made, Mom and Dad. She looked at her husband’s tall, powerful body, striding ahead of Brandon, shrinking him by contrast, and felt her accomplishment. See my husband, see my baby, see what I’ve made. She knew her mom had never expected this success. At their wedding, Nina had felt her mother’s unexpressed skepticism of her marriage, her mother’s doubt that it would last and produce. Nina’s older sister had disappointed thoroughly, living with a series of radicals, never marrying, and had aborted three “accidents,” not only without guilt but with political pride. Her younger sister had satisfied, for a time, wedding a Harvard classmate, moving to Ohio, joining the country club, but that had ended in divorce, and hints of drink and beatings. Quiet Nina, never first at anything, married to a Jew (not even a particularly successful Jew at that), had managed to find happiness and provide the first heir.

Nina felt all this, but didn’t think it. She would have been embarrassed to discover competition in her love. She had been dazzled by her sisters, had felt puny beside them, an indecisive flickering yellow in between the elder’s fierce red and the younger’s warm green. As her mother and father and Brandon and Wendy gathered around the mute, watchful Luke, Nina, for the very first time, was at the center of her family. That was all she knew of her pleasure.

“Hello, beautiful,” her father, a man who usually didn’t bestow adjectives on his children, said to Nina.

Her mother took Luke. Joan didn’t even ask for her grandchild. She opened her arms and Luke seemed to float into them. Luke’s brilliant blue eyes beamed light, cracking the frozen surface of his grandmother’s thin face and rejuvenating her pale eyes. Joan closed her hands on the little body and brought her face close to the new skin, to the puffed and open red lips.

Luke screamed. He shut his eyes, opened his mouth, and complained from his soul with all his might. His disorganized arms reached out for rescue, his legs went stiff with resistance, and his mouth blared protest.

Nina took Luke from Joan quickly, too quickly, she realized when she glanced at her mother. Joan seemed disappointed and offended. “You frightened him,” Joan said.

“Other way around, I think,” Brandon said with a laugh.

“He had a bad night,” Eric mumbled. Nina noticed he looked mortified.

“Is he colicky?” Joan asked.

“No!” Nina said. Eric had begun to nod yes and got stuck in mid-motion by Nina’s vehement denial. Meanwhile, at the energy of Nina’s answer, Luke cried louder, his legs kicking, his beautiful features demolished by the elastic expansion of his toothless well of sorrow.

“Let’s get the bags,” her father said, and walked away. Eric hustled after him (like a bellboy, Nina couldn’t help thinking), Brandon grinned as if it were all a practical joke, Wendy stared at Luke, and her mother frowned at her.

“Maybe he’s hungry,” Joan said, with no love in the word “he.” The pronoun was said coolly; she might have used “it” for all the warmth in her tone. Luke had failed to please her, so Joan’s love had retracted behind her country-club leathery face, lost to view.

Nina cringed for a moment, ready to apologize or resist sullenly. The instincts were familiar, although Nina couldn’t place them. But she resisted the reactions they urged. “How was your trip?”

“After forty years, it’s pretty boring,” Joan said. She was again drawn to the beautiful form of her grandson. Luke sat stolidly in Nina’s arms, his great blue eyes evaluating Joan, the trees, Wendy, the men unloading the luggage, each scanned with a deliberate scrutiny that seemed masterful and dispassionate.

“Unnn,” Luke commented, and made a gesture with his hand at Joan.

“That’s Grandmother Joan,” Nina said.

“Hello, Luke,” Joan said cheerfully. He had gotten a reprieve. “Hello, baby.” She put her hand on his curled foot and squeezed gently. He watched her closely, his body still, like a cat studying prey.

Joan, encouraged nevertheless, moved closer. Again Luke seemed to gesture at her, his hand reaching out in a spasm. Joan opened her hands to him. He arched in her direction. Nina offered and Joan took him.

Eric came toward them, carrying two suitcases. Her father had only a small overnight bag. “Hey, hey,” Eric said to Joan. “He looks good on you, Grandma.”

“Grandma!” Brandon said to the trees, with a sarcastic tone.

Joan nodded self-consciously at Eric. Luke glanced at his father. Nina moved away from Joan and Luke to open the door. At this, Luke wailed, his arms out to Nina.

Joan stiffened, held him away from her, and said, “He wants you,” to Nina.

“He doesn’t like you, Joan,” Nina’s father, Tom, said casually as he passed on his way to the house. Brandon laughed, with energetic malice, and followed Tom.

“No, no,” Eric argued even though Tom and Brandon went on inside without listening. “He just doesn’t know her.”

Nina felt stuck at the door as she watched Luke’s distress become hysterical. Joan didn’t hug him, or rock him, or distract him. She held Luke in the air like a squealing pig, her mouth closed, her eyes startled and wary.

“Get him!” Eric said in a whisper, but with urgent emphasis.

“She’s here.” Joan finally spoke. She took a few steps toward Nina and held Luke out, his legs kicking, his face red. “He needs to be fed,” she repeated as Nina at last broke her paralysis and accepted Luke.

“No, he doesn’t,” Nina heard herself say in a wondering tone. “He doesn’t know you.”

“Well, I only saw him once before. Why would he know me?”

“That’s right,” Eric said. “He needs time.” He carried the bags in.

“Maybe he’s cold,” Wendy said.

“Hello, Wendy,” Joan said. “I haven’t greeted you.”

“I’m fine,” Wendy answered.

Joan nodded as if this were very gratifying news. “Good.” With that she went inside the house.

Luke’s screams had become muffled moans and whimpers. He nuzzled his face into Nina’s breasts. His tears had primed them. But it was an hour before his next feeding, and what’s more, Nina felt her pride was at stake. She had said to Joan that Luke wasn’t hungry.

“Are you going to feed him?” Wendy asked. She was the only one left outside.

Nina’s breasts dripped. Luke squirmed and moaned. He could probably smell their sour residue. Her left nipple throbbed. She gave in, opened her shirt, and lowered the flap that covered her left nipple. Luke latched on.

“Can I touch them?” Wendy asked.

“What?”

Wendy put out her hand and held it only an inch or two from Nina’s right breast. “Can I touch it?”

“They’re sore,” Nina answered, too thrown to know what else to say.

“I’ll be gentle,” Wendy said with a hint of irritation that Nina might think otherwise. Wendy lowered the flap and cupped the breast, holding the thick knob of Nina’s nipple tenderly between her index finger and thumb. “What does it taste like?”

“I don’t know!” Nina said, wanting to pull away, but frightened to. What if Wendy didn’t let go?

“Come on,” Wendy said. “You must have tasted it. Eric must suck on it sometimes. Does he like the taste?”

“He does not!”

Wendy, her face only a few inches from Nina, smiled knowingly, and shook her head no, almost with pity, as if Nina’s attempt at lying were too foolish even to merit a contradiction. Then Wendy lowered her head—Nina watched unbelievingly, sure that Wendy would stop, couldn’t mean to—and put her lips around the nipple, licking its tip with her tongue. Luke moved his feet out of Wendy’s way, but was otherwise unperturbed, staring up at Nina with his serious blue eyes and sucking lazily.

Nina, panic in her throat, grunted to stop herself from screaming, and put her free hand on Wendy’s blond hair, gathering a bunch of it. Nina yanked hard.

Wendy screamed, backing away, her hands protecting the top of her skull. “Jesus! Are you crazy! That hurt.”

Eric opened the door violently. He looked agitated. “What was that! Is he all right?”

Wendy walked through the open door, and then glanced back, her look resentful. “You’re not very motherly.
I
don’t think. Maybe you don’t like people needing you.”

“You’re crazy,” Nina said without energy, merely stating a fact.

“What’s going on?” Eric pleaded.

“Maybe that’s why he cries all the time,” Wendy said, her face made small by vindictiveness, the eyes, nose, and mouth coming together in a blur of squints, twitches, and frowns. “He knows you don’t mean it.”

Nina instinctively turned Luke away from Wendy and her accusation. She wanted to cry, although she couldn’t bring the sorrow to precipitation. The unhappiness floated inside her chest like a heavy, heavy cloud—the dark swollen cloud of her lifelong failure to please or impress anyone.

T
HE CONCRETE
and insulation manufacturers filed for financial reorganization under Chapter 11, claiming that the outstanding lawsuits, if decided against them, would be an economic catastrophe and that since no insurance could be obtained to protect them, they had to go “out of the insulation business” because every day they continued manufacturing exposed them to more litigation. This shifted the issue from their culpability to their liability (what they would pay on all debt included future debt such as negligence judgments), even though their guilt was still not settled. The maneuver was Stoppard’s invention, but Diane was essential in finding a precedent to allow the bankruptcy filing to begin before a judgment was in existence. Threatened with the possibility of winning their suits, but having no one to pay them, the ex-employees agreed to settle en masse for a quarter of what Stoppard and Diane had thought a court would be likely to award. She knew making partner at Wilson, Pickering had become a certainty. Stoppard would sponsor her wholeheartedly and he was the firm’s brightest star.

Peter said, when she bragged of her achievement, that it was a swindle, no better than, after you’ve blinded a man, robbing him of his beggar’s cup of coins. Of course, that had been her reaction when she had been brought onto the case. But it
was
true that the company would have been destroyed by the ex-employees’ suit. Thousands would have been thrown out of work, work that was now safe anyway, or at least met federal safety standards. The villain, the owner who had buried the warnings of the medical data, was dead. The law would be punishing his grandson, who had watched his inheritance halved by a rapid decline of orders and an even faster increase in insurance payments, along with wage raises, legal fees, and general Wall Street dismay. Most of the lawsuits were not from the victims, but from their heirs. Was it justice to punish today for yesterday’s sins? Stoppard had asked the court. And the victims did get some money. Anyway, someone else would have contributed the legal know-how she had. The end result would have been the same.

They took Byron to the park the weekend of her triumph. She had persuaded Peter to spend Sunday afternoon with them. Although Byron had first walked only a week ago, he was already competent, striding pigeon-toed, his full melon belly forward, a miniature sumo wrestler, his mouth open, exclaiming at the pleasures of his mobility. “Ahhh! Ahhh! Ohhh? Da!” He pointed to the trees and yelled: “Zat!” He grabbed the black iron bars of the playground gate and shook it. Byron teetered from the recoil and then tried to get a footing on a low rung, intending to climb it.