So she was angry at Byron’s failure to take the IQ test. She tried not to be. She pulled him out onto the street, and reminded herself that she had taken him to it at the early age of two and two months precisely because she wanted him to have several cracks at it, that this fiasco was merely a preliminary hearing, not the trial.
“Mommy, Mommy, Mommy,” Byron said, speaking in triplicate, a maddening habit he often fell into. “Ice cream. My ice cream.”
She had promised him some before they went to the test, a simple reward for being good. “You’re going to meet a woman and play with her for a while. If you’re nice, you can have some ice cream afterwards.” That’s what she had said. It had never occurred to her that Byron might balk completely and thereby call into question whether this treat should be granted. Even if he had done poorly, although Diane wouldn’t know that for many weeks until the test results were sent to Byron’s pre-nursery play group, she had meant to give him the treat, to suggest the fact, possibly untrue in this society, that good work was rewarded. But should she compensate him for utter failure? Was that something she wanted to encourage?
Keep your promises, advised one book.
If you make a reward conditional, keep to the conditions, admonished another.
Which had she made? And did Byron know the difference? What did “if you’re nice” mean? Maybe he thought he had been nice. But he hadn’t been. That much needed to be made clear.
“Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream,” Byron said.
“No,” she mumbled, not out of fear at his reaction but afraid of her anger.
“I want ice cream, I want ice cream, I want ice cream.”
“Don’t say that over and over. You only have to say things once.”
His face closed, like a door shutting out light and noise. His eyes dulled, his body went stiff, his mouth tightened, and he raised his shoulders, retracting his neck. “You said I have ice cream after.”
“If you were nice to the lady. I mean, to the woman. If you were nice to the woman, I would give you—”
“I was, I was, I—”
“Byron!”
“Oh!” he grumbled, and tossed her hand back, a gift refused. He stomped off, lifting his feet and slapping them down, a comical exaggeration of a manly huff. When he reached the curb, Byron turned back to her, put his chubby hands on his swaying, elastic hips, and compressed his fair eyebrows so that the subtle undergrowth of black hairs darkened his brow. Angry, he looked more like Diane. “I want ice cream!” he trumpeted.
A passing man laughed. “So do I,” he said, and moved on.
She felt the lava bubble below and push against her crust. Stay calm, she warned herself. She decided to ignore him for the moment, keep the refusal silent, fearful that articulation would become rage. Diane hailed a taxi and moved to its door. “Come on,” she said.
Byron looked at her, his head upturned. The curls of his sandy hair were innocent and beautiful. His lean torso — she could picture the washing board of his ribs ripple as he stretched — sat uncertainly on his bowed legs.
“He’s so adorable,” Diane could hear her mother, Lily, say.
“Come on!” she shouted, her hot core steaming through.
Byron sat down on the sidewalk. He crossed his legs underneath him, closed his eyes, and put his hands over his ears.
“What’s the story?” the cabdriver said.
“Start your meter,” Diane said. “I’ll get him.” As she moved toward her little Buddha, the crust cracked, nothing could stop the rage flowing up through the faults in her hardened pride. “Byron! Get up! Get up right now!”
He shook his head and made the curls dance. Everything was black for a moment, her head filled with the smoke. She found herself carrying Byron, a dangerous thrashing fish, in her arms. His feet, his hands, kicked and slapped her. There were blows to her face and stomach, and her ears were scraped by the coarse edge of his screams. They were right in front of the testing facility, around them people were watching, but she felt great relief at dropping the pretense of calm about her disappointment.
She hurled him into the taxi’s back seat, a final statement of her power, her strength. He landed awkwardly and bounced off the upholstery, falling to the car floor. She got in, told the driver the address, and left Byron hunched down there, holding the side of his face that had hit the floor. She ignored the cries, no longer willful yells, but pathetic and tearful. She left him alone, sitting rigidly. She left him to cry without her comforting arms — without her love.
ONCE ERIC was in his chair, sipping his hot coffee, surrounded by the sounds of Joe’s rustling newspaper, Sammy’s nervous leg flexing the leather of his seat, the secretaries sorting and carrying account statements and confirmation orders, once Eric could feel he had safely arrived at work, had made it through another weekend of being Daddy, he felt whole. His puffy eyes were mesmerized by the frozen numbers of Friday’s closing prices. He listened to the faint pillowed whoosh of distant cars. He sipped more of the coffee and nestled his tired back (he had carried Luke on his shoulders for hours over the weekend) into the crannies of the chair’s cushions, and felt at home.
For the first time in his life, he was at ease at work.
Two years ago, when Eric returned from those months of combat with Luke’s colic in Maine, he had found a rival in his chair. Joe, in his unsubtle way, had hired another broker, named Carlton, during Eric’s paternity leave.
“If you were going to be gone for a long time, I needed someone,” Joe explained. “Carlton was available, our business has been growing, I thought: why not? Be less pressure on you.” Joe went on to say that he thought there was room for Carlton to remain, and then hit Eric with news that Joe must have expected would be killing — namely, that almost half of Eric’s clients wanted Carlton to continue to handle their accounts even after Eric’s return.
Eric doubted that his clients had come to this decision without prodding. Joe’s message was clear: you are on probation. I’ve cut your salary in half, and if you pull anything else on me, you’re gone. Probably Joe expected Eric to react with terror, contrition, and a plea for restitution.
Instead, Eric told Joe that he would be handling two million dollars of Nina’s father’s money and that although he would pay the floor commission rate, Eric didn’t feel obliged to pay Joe a premium rate since Eric wouldn’t be using Joe’s investment advice. Up until Nina’s father, almost all the clients Eric worked with had been given to him by Joe. The few whom Eric had brought in were lured by Joe’s past performance record. Eric’s job, in essence, was to be there to answer the customers’ questions, keep them happy, and occasionally make a choice among several possibilities selected by Joe. Eric had, and could, submit stock selections of his own to Joe. He was permitted to pretend to the clients, and he had often enough, that many of the stock picks were his own. But Joe was in charge, he owned the firm, he could take the clients away, he could reduce Eric’s cut of the profits, he could fire Eric.
Tom’s two million gave Eric a weapon. Eric might be able to afford to quit. He didn’t want to. To continue with Joe, even if it meant staying on the phone all day with Joe’s clients, would save Eric thousands in commission costs. Besides, he needed the base income, since Eric couldn’t be sure he would succeed with Nina’s family money. Also, Eric knew that if he stayed, he wouldn’t be cut off from Joe’s ideas. Joe was too vain and pompous to stop himself from allowing Eric to pick his brain. Besides, if Eric continued to handle half the clients, he would know Joe’s movements anyway.