The second morning after Joan arrived, she walked into the nursery ahead of Nina, thinking she could give Eric and Nina extra sleep. At the sight of Joan, Luke let out screams of horror that shot Eric from the lowest level of sleep to total consciousness with the G force of a rocket blast into space. “I scared him,” Joan confessed as Eric and Nina rushed past her into the nursery. “I’m sorry,” she mumbled, and left them to clutch the trembling baby to their bosom.
The household was heavy from Luke’s rejections. Nina’s sisters arrived and got the same treatment. The family began to look at Eric strangely, he thought. They blame my genes, Eric believed. The little Jew in Luke, like a Satanic strain, was what made Luke hate them — Eric fancied he could see those thoughts in their eyes, their cold blue eyes.
But those eyes were in Luke’s head, those same evaluating terrible eyes. And Luke’s distance from them — was it any different from their own estrangements? These are your genes, Eric wanted to scream at the polite breakfasts and dinners. He’s yours! This unloving child comes from you!
Was he unloving? Not to Eric or Nina. Luke had taken to stroking his father’s chin while he sucked on his juice bottle, the hot fingertips dotting Eric’s face with tenderness and wonderment. When Eric got him from his crib, Luke’s body adhered to his, curving with the shape of Eric’s pectorals. He rested his heavy head on the shelf of Eric’s shoulder, sighing into his neck. And those eyes, those large blue eyes of Luke, they considered Eric, the huge guardian, at leisure, scanned the big face carefully, making sure nothing had been altered, that it wasn’t a phony, but the same patient giant of yesterday.
“Has he ever smiled?” asked Emily, Nina’s youngest sister. Emily the bitch, Eric called her.
“They don’t smile at this age,” Nina lied. “It’s just gas.”
“Oh, no,” Joan said. “They have real smiles.” And an argument — a disagreement, rather; no voices were raised — ensued. The real point of it was that Luke was an unhappy, miserable exception to the usual joyful cherubim that the rest of the world gave birth to. Nina was restrained for a while, chatting casually, as if the subject had nothing to do with her child. But finally she responded to the subtext — and blew up at her mother and sisters. Tears streamed down Nina’s face. She yelled that they were egomaniacs, people who only wanted to be loved and had no patience for loving others. That was exactly the conclusion Eric had come to about Nina’s behavior in New York, that her unreasonable fury at Luke was for not adoring her immediately.
Joan and her sisters at first stared through Nina’s tirade; then Emily got up and left the room, not in a huffy attitude — she walked past Nina like a pedestrian avoiding a madwoman. Joan began to clean. Luke made it all into an embarrassing farce by wailing in Nina’s arms. Nina, her charges unanswered, carried Luke into the nursery and began to rock him violently. Eric followed her in.
“Shut up, shut up, shut up!” she said into her son’s melted face in a whisper of rage.
“Okay, okay, give him to me,” Eric said.
“Get out of here!” she snapped.
“Don’t talk—”
“Get out of here!”
“You’re upset.” He began, he thought, in a reasonable, reassuring tone.
“He belongs to me! Stop trying to take him away! I know what I’m doing! Get out!”
“Belongs to you?” Eric was collapsed by her remark, his understanding of her, of Luke, of the world, deflated into shapelessness.
“Goddammit! Are you ever going to listen to me?” Nina’s face trembled from the force of her shouts. Eric backed out of the room, although he wanted to punch her, although he feared for Luke’s safety, because he feared more for her; she seemed ready to explode, not figuratively, but actually blow open — skin, eyes, bones ready to fly off.
He stumbled out backwards and bumped into someone waiting just beyond the door. “Excuse me,” Tom said, catching Eric and turning him slightly.
“I’m sorry,” Eric said, horrified that Nina’s father had overheard. But she had yelled so loudly that probably they had all been able to listen in. Now I’ll never get the money, Eric knew, and felt despair and rage at Nina. He knew, and Nina knew, that her brother and sisters were envious that she had had Luke. All she had to do was be as much of a Wasp as they, and keep a good face on Luke’s condition, but she had failed, failed as miserably as a Jewish wife would have.
“I need some help with the wood in the barn,” Tom said easily, free from self-consciousness.
“Sure,” Eric mumbled. He felt as if he were being called to the principal’s office. He followed Tom to the barn. There was a stormy wind coming off the bay, the late August air thinned by the hint of fall, and its chill bowed Eric beside Tom’s rigid, unaffected body. Eric felt smaller, younger with each step.
Tom got busy once inside. He didn’t talk or explain what he wanted. Tom carried several large birch logs from the pile. Eric hurried and took most of them and set the biggest on the chopping block. “Hurt my hand on the boat yesterday,” Tom said. “Could you split these?”
Eric had been schooled by Brandon to split wood, but he wasn’t nearly as skilled as his brother-in-law. Clearly this was an excuse to talk. Eric wielded the ax. He hesitated before taking his first chop. He suddenly felt his ability to split the birch straight through was at issue, that he had to do it to win back Tom’s confidence.
Tom watched him casually, one hand resting on a smooth worn beam.
Eric kept his eyes on the break in the wood. He raised the ax, brought it down hard, but steady. The blade passed right through, thudding into the block below, the now split halves of birch fainting away from each other.
Without skipping a beat, Tom said, “I wanted to discuss some business with you.”
“Un-huh,” Eric said, and put another log on the block. He pretended to study its surface for a good fissure.
“I’ve sold some land recently—”
“Brandon told me,” Eric said. Tom might be accustomed to circumspection when it came to money, but Eric believed Wall Streeters were supposed to have the blunt intimacy of doctors about a client’s financial condition. “Six million, he said.”
Tom frowned. “Go ahead,” he said, nodding at the log.
This time, Eric’s ax got caught halfway through. He split it on the second blow. Brandon would have thought that a failure.
“Actually, it’s closer to ten million. Brandy overheard only part of the sale. I wish he hadn’t heard anything. I’d like you to keep this to yourself. I would rather, given how much the children talk among themselves, that even Nina not know.”
“Fine with me,” Eric said, and meant it.
“Usually my cash assets are managed by First Boston. But my man there died and I’m not happy with the new people. I wondered if you had any suggestions?”
What was this? A way of saying he didn’t want Eric to handle it? Or an opening, to see if Eric was bold enough to go through? Fuck it, he didn’t care. “Yeah. I’d like to handle it. I doubt you’d get anyone who would take care of you better. After all, in the long term, it’s in my interest to make sure your capital grows. Churning your money is gonna hurt me. Other managers might not care.”
“Exactly my thought,” Tom said, and seemed relieved. He moved away from the beam, approached Eric, and looked him in the eye. Eric felt the compulsion to glance away, to be faced down by those curious, judging eyes. But he understood those eyes now, now that they also belonged to Luke. Eric knew they masked pain and fear. Eric stared back and this time Tom lowered his eyes. “But that isn’t all I have to consider,” Tom mumbled.