Only Son (3 page)

When he looked back at the couple, the father-to-be had discovered the spilt beer. He was cursing, but the Marco Polo game had gotten loud again, and Carl couldn't hear exactly what he was saying.

Her head still tipped back, the wife dismissed his anger with a wave of her hand. But the guy took off his sunglasses, and seemingly out for blood, he sat forward in the lawn chair and scouted the area for that poor dumb little kid. He didn't see the boy coming up from behind him—not until it was too late. He made a grab for his skinny arm, but the boy unwittingly escaped.

The wife must have nodded off, because she didn't seem to notice. Carl wanted to get to the kid and tell him to keep away from that man in the lawn chair, but he lost sight of him in the crowd. The boy was about eight years old, simply having fun at the neighborhood pool. How was he to know that he'd made somebody so furious at him?

Carl heard his by-now-familiar giggle. So did the husband. He set down a new can of beer he'd just opened and watched the kid play by the foot shower. The boy started running again, weaving around towels and sunbathers, toward the man and his sleeping pregnant wife.

The children were screaming again: “MARCO POLO! MARCO POLO!”

Helplessly, Carl watched as the kid sprinted along the grass. The father-to-be inched forward in his chair, and he stuck his foot out.

“Oh, Jesus,” Carl whispered.

The kid tripped, and that skinny little body hit the ground hard. He let out a sharp cry. No one saw who had tripped him. The husband quickly grabbed his newspaper just as the wife sat up to see what all the crying was about. There was a tiny smirk on the guy's face.

Creeps like that shouldn't even be allowed to have children
.

The kid was crying and at the same time, trying to catch his breath. Somebody helped him to his feet. The boy glanced back toward the couple, apparently looking for what had made him stumble. There was a grass stain all up and down his leg. He wiped away his tears and limped toward the pool house.

Carl wanted to confront the man, maybe even beat the crap out of him for picking on that pathetic skinny kid in the baggy trunks. Instead, he didn't move—and said nothing. He followed the young couple as they left the pool that afternoon. They had a bumper sticker on the back of their VW: a leering cartoon billy goat, and the slogan, “HONK IF YOU'RE HORNY!” Probably the husband's idea. They seemed like a couple of greasers. He imagined a pair of fuzzy dice dangling from their rearview mirror as well.

Carl parked in front of their town house and sat in his car for two hours. He was in no hurry to return to his empty apartment. Later, the couple came out again and got into the VW. Carl followed them to a movie theater. He went inside, sitting two rows behind them.

The guy had a way of eating popcorn that was really annoying. From the bucket he'd scoop out a handful, shake it like loose change, then shove the entire fistful into his mouth, crunching loudly. Only God knew how the wife put up with him.

The movie was pretty good, and Carl started getting interested in it; but then, the young couple suddenly got up. They whispered back and forth until someone in the row behind them asked them to be quiet. “
Can't you see my wife's in labor?
” the creep of a husband snarled.

Carl kept a safe distance behind them in his car. His heart beat faster and faster as he watched them pull into the hospital's emergency entrance. He had to go inside and see.

Of course, three hours later, when he finally set eyes on the baby boy that could have been his, Carl was miserable.

He didn't want to talk to the father. Then the guy asked him his name, and Carl lied. He lied, too, about having a son of his own in that roomful of infants. Why should this McMurray guy think he had something over him? But he did. He possessed something Carl had wanted for a long, long time.

 

The warm spray from the showerhead felt wonderful, as if it were washing away his troubles and heartaches. Some people he knew drank to ward off depression, but Carl took showers—long, leisurely showers. He was sitting down, his head tipped back against the tiled wall. He'd put the plug in the drain, and the shower made a poor man's whirlpool in the rapidly filling tub. For the first time that day, Carl smiled. He rubbed a bar of Irish Spring over his broad, hairy chest, then down the rippled stomach. He soaped up his flaccid penis with hygienic apathy. It hadn't seen any action in almost two weeks—not even from his own hand. He'd sort of lost interest in sex, because it only reminded him of Eve.

“You have a wonderful physique,” Eve had told him after the first time they'd made love.

The memory of her nude body—so taut and tan—was still painfully fresh in his mind. Just seeing her naked had never ceased to fascinate and arouse him. He enjoyed giving her massages as a postlude to sex. The feel of her body always made him hard again. There was one spot, at the small of her back, where he loved to rest his head. He'd stare at the upward curve of her buttocks and lazily caress the soft flesh. She said she liked his foot rubs the most, and he saved them for last, often nibbling and sucking on her toes.

He'd met her on a blind date. A teacher friend at the grade school where Carl taught physical education had set it up. Friends at work were constantly trying to fix him up. They seemed more anxious to see him in a relationship than he ever was. Some of the dates were abysmal; and some were abysmal—but with sex. But most of these attempted matchups just left him feeling awkward and sad. The women had a certain desperation to them. They'd laugh hysterically at his mediocre jokes, quiver at his casual touch, and worst of all, they'd want to know all about him. Carl had always been well liked, but no one ever really knew him; and he wanted it that way. There were certain things about himself that he didn't want people to know. When these women expressed interest in seeing him again, Carl ran in the other direction.

But Eve was different. She was more beautiful than any of the others, more confident, with a dry sense of humor. But there was also a haughtiness to her that proved challenging. He actually had to chase after her. When they made love, Carl wanted to stay with her for the rest of the night—maybe even remain in bed with her forever, holding her in his arms, whispering, kissing. He was thirty-five years old, and for the first time, Carl felt really
intimate
with another human being.

Eve had also come along at a time when Carl felt ready to settle down and start a family. This was the woman he wanted to have children with. Even her name meant mother.

But Eve was in no hurry to get married or fulfill the origin of her name. She was very wrapped up in her work as a tennis instructor, and played in minor pro tournaments. Sometimes, she criticized Carl for his lack of career drive. There were better jobs with higher salaries than he made as a grade school P.E. coach. It was a waste of his college degree. After eight years with the job, wasn't he ready for something more challenging?

Not really. He loved acting as a father figure to all those kids, guiding the young athletes and building up confidence in the weak, underdeveloped ones. His only complaint about the coaching job was that the kids weren't his own.

But for Eve, he reluctantly hung up his coach's whistle, then worked like hell to climb into a management position at an insurance corporation. The job was a yawn, but his reward came when Eve finally agreed to marry him.

Then came the blow: “Maybe in a few years down the line,” she said. “I'm twenty-nine. There's no need to rush into starting a family. I want you all to myself for a while.”

It seemed the real reason she didn't want a child was because she always had some tennis tournament coming up.

At least
one
of them liked their work. Carl began to resent her for driving him into the insurance game. He'd done it for her. Why couldn't she make a career sacrifice for him—and a temporary one at that? Sure, she didn't have to worry about the clock ticking away, but he'd be forty in a year, and he wanted to start a family
now
. He loathed the sight of that slim, fashionable box which contained her birth control pills—the only thing standing between him and his dream of fatherhood.

One spring morning, Eve bolted out of bed before the alarm went off. Carl followed her to the bathroom, and found her hovered over the toilet, throwing up. She thought it was a bad stomach flu. But Carl had an idea what it really was—divine intervention. He didn't want to think that she was just ill. All day long, she was tired, and the following morning, she threw up again. Carl hid his enthusiasm in the face of her misery. Eve would be all right, he told himself. As soon as she realized it was their child growing inside her, she'd accept it, embrace it.

“Oh, Christ, of all the shitty things to happen!” she cried over the phone. Carl was at work. “I just got back from the doctor's, and guess what? I'm pregnant, he says.”

“Well, that's wonderful, honey!” Now he could bring home the rattle he'd bought three days ago.

“It's awful! How the hell could this happen? I've been taking the pill religiously for the last four years. I should sue our pharmacist…”

“Oh, you read in the papers all the time about women getting pregnant while on the pill. It's nobody's fault. Maybe it was just meant to be, honey. In fact, I'm really thrilled about it.”

Over the next two weeks, Carl gave her pep talks. There would be other tournaments to play after the baby was born. She wasn't the type to let herself get out of shape. Hell, she'd bounce right back. Maybe they should enroll in one of those natural childbirth classes. He'd help her along through the whole experience. Carl bought baby things and made plans to convert the spare bedroom into a nursery. He began watching pregnant women on the street, and they fascinated him. Bringing home books on childbirth and child development, he pored over them eagerly. But Eve refused to crack open a cover.

“Can't you get it through your thick skull that I don't want to have this baby?” she screamed.

“You wouldn't say that if you knew how much it means to me, honey. I swear, I'll be with you all the way through this—”

“Yeah, well, you don't have to have it.” She paused. “And I don't have to have it either.”

“Don't talk like that, Eve. I won't listen. I mean it.”

He chalked up her tantrums to the hormonal changes and nausea. Carl tried to be patient, and he pampered her.

One night he came home from work to find Eve sitting up in bed, half-awake. Her face was pale, and the long, black hair limply hung down past her shoulders. No, she didn't want him to fix her some dinner. She just needed to be left alone. Carl kissed her forehead and as he crept out of the bedroom, he heard her: “I feel so sick and miserable, I just want to die…”

God, what I'm putting her through
, he thought;
the poor, brave thing
. There had to be some way of making it easier for her. The next day, at the office, Carl asked the advice of every coworker who was a parent.

He returned to the house that night with a list of temporary remedies and recommendations. But he didn't need them. Eve looked incredibly healthy when she met him at the door. Dressed in jeans and a white knit top, she even seemed a bit more tan, and her hair was freshly washed. “God, honey, you look great,” he said. “You must be feeling better.”

“I do feel better, Carl. I—”

“In that case, wait a minute.” He ran back out to the car, pulled the cumbersome box from the trunk, then carried it inside. “I brought this yesterday,” he said, catching his breath. He ripped open the box. “But since you were so sick, I figured you weren't in the mood to see it then.” Getting down on his knees, he took out the parts, encased in plastic bags.

“What is it?” she asked listlessly.

“A bassinet. I'm going to assemble it tonight…”

Eve just stared at the box and bit her lip. Carl began to tear at the plastic. “
Don't
,” she said.

He looked up at her. “Why not?”

“Because you won't get your money back when you have to return it,” she murmured.

He laughed. “What does that mean?”

“I didn't want to tell you last night, because I was still recuperating, but I
miscarried
yesterday.”

“What?” The little headboard slipped out of his grasp. He gazed at her. “You're joking…”

Eve's hands wrapped around her forearms as if she were suddenly cold. “No, that's not right,” she whispered steadily. “The truth is, yesterday, I went in for an abortion.”

Carl only shook his head.

“I never wanted to have that baby,” she said. “I tried to tell you over and over again. The timing was all wrong. I wish you'd listened to me, Carl…”

She kept on talking. Carl's hand trembled as he rubbed his forehead. He reached for another plastic bag and ripped it open. “I want to put this together tonight,” he said loudly. “It'll take a while to assemble. I'll need my screwdriver…”

“—It doesn't mean we won't have children sometime later, but this one—”

“You know what I'll do tomorrow? At the place I got this, I saw a neat, little mobile with wooden giraffes, tigers, and monkeys. I'm gonna buy that tomorrow and fix it on the crib…”

“I know how much you wanted this baby, Carl. I just wish you knew how much I didn't want it.”

His hands shook terribly. He tried not to listen to her voice, so steady and controlled. Suddenly, he hurled the little wooden headboard across the living room. It smashed into a lamp and clattered to the floor. “
Goddamn you!
” he cried. He wanted to kill her, and the more he fought that impulse, the sicker he felt, so sick and miserable, he just wanted to die.