Cutting Teeth: A Novel (30 page)

She was on him, grabbing him, whirling him around so he faced her.

“You are being so bad, Dash!”

“
You’re
bad,” he shouted, his voice small and weak after her roar. “Harper said so.”

Her vision shuddered as the ethereal light of dusk settled.

“What are you talking about?”

“You’re not our real mommy. Mama is.”

He bowed his head and drove his upper teeth into the top of her hand. She howled and pulled away, trying to shake him off, but he wouldn’t let go. His teeth drove in harder, and she swung back and slapped him across one cheek. Hard enough to turn his head so he was looking at the ground. She saw the spot at the nape of his neck where hair never grew. His beauty mark, Susanna called it. She felt the wetness of his saliva on her palm as she drew her hand back, cradling it against her chest.

There was only the sound of nature, and the silence—after so much noise all day—was a relief. The snapping of branches. The distant waves like a sleeping child’s heavy breathing. Dash looked up at her, his head shaking as if he were cold. His tiny nostrils were pulsating, in-out, in-out. No one had ever looked at her with such ferocity. Like he could devour her whole.

“I just wanted to play a game,” he said, and his voice broke, the little boy returning. “Pirate treasure.”

She waited for him to cry. She knew she had slapped him hard, as hard as she had once slapped her own brother when they were kids because their father only hit Allie when he lost his temper, when he drank, when he was worried about money, and she had wanted someone else to know how it felt.

*   *   *

Allie helped Susanna into the car, the long grocery list fluttering in Susanna’s hand.

“We’ll be right back!” Allie said, and waved to the twins, who stood at the steps of the front door. Levi whimpered from the gentle prison of Nicole’s arms. Dash kicked at a rust-streaked sign staked into the earth by the withered azalea bushes. Refusing to even look in Allie’s direction since she’d slapped him.

WELCOME TO EDEN
the sign read in hand-painted letters.

After she’d hit him, Dash hadn’t cried a tear. Only gone quiet, like a wounded lover, and walked stoically back to the house, where he resumed playing with his toy car on the deck.

As if it hadn’t happened.

She would have a talk with him, Allie promised herself, the minute she and Susanna returned from shopping. She’d figure out just what to say.

“Don’t worry about the boys,” Susanna said brightly once Allie was in the car. “They always cry for the first few minutes when I leave them. They’ll be happy again soon.”

Allie thought of how some people who met them for the first time—at the park, at a family wedding—asked who the twins’ real mother was. Susanna reacted defensively,
we both are.
But Allie was speechless in those moments, desperate to avoid the attention. And her doubt.

Dash was right, she thought as she pulled out of the sea-pebbled driveway and onto the sand-dusted road. That little conniver Harper was right. Allie was not a real mother. Not like Susanna.

She decided the next time someone—a mom in music class, the receptionist at the pediatrician’s office, some kid’s grandma at the playground—asked them who the real mother was, she’d tell them to fuck off.

don’t rock the boat

Rip

Rip sat in the kayak
with the paddle resting on his knees and Michael’s broad muscled back facing him. They had lugged the two-seated kayak from the cobweb-filled shack at the side of the house, then searched for the paddles in the piles of Nicole’s father’s crap, everything from badminton racquets to moldy deck cushions.

Now, finally, the beach house at their backs and the open sea stretching limitless in front of them, they waited to start their journey. As the cool breeze ruffled his hair, Rip felt almost at ease. If only the kayak didn’t feel as if it were sinking, then maybe he’d feel even better. He hadn’t realized the boat operated half-submerged. Water was already spilling into his seat and he was about to ask Michael if this was normal. Then he heard his name being called from the deck behind them, a punch of urgency in Grace’s voice.

She was standing behind the seawall, Hank’s head peeping over the concrete. Rip saw, despite the distance, the red in Hank’s face, and knew his son was crying.

“Fuck,” he groaned.

“Daddy,” Hank wailed. “I waaant you!”

Michael turned to face Rip. “Could you just tell him no?”

Behind Michael’s casual grin, Rip sensed that Michael was annoyed.

Rip knew Grace wouldn’t relent, and even if he argued with her, right there, in front of everyone, Hank would cry until Rip took him along. And he had traumatized the boy earlier with his insane reaction to the princess dress, hadn’t he? He owed it to Hank. He tried to find satisfaction in the fact that Hank felt safest when he was with him, his dad, but right now, it felt like a burden.

“No, wait. We
can
go. We can take the canoe instead of the kayak!” Rip said, cringing at the desperate ring in his voice.

“With Hank?” Michael said. His upper lip twitched enough that Rip could see the disgust. “Won’t he just cry?”

A small flame of anger flared in Rip’s chest.

Sensing his screwup, Michael added, “Cool. Let’s bring Harper, too.”

After another twenty minutes of complications; searching for the kids’ life jackets, pulling the canoe out from under the deck, last-minute potty trips, and last-minute commands from the mommies—mostly Grace, who Rip could see was terrified with the idea of the kids going along—Harper and Hank took their seats, and Michael shoved the canoe into the water, the base grinding against the pebbles.

Rip had wanted to be the one who shoved out, the one who the mommies would watch from the seawall, their delicate, manicured hands shielding their eyes, checking out his tanned leg muscles as they flexed with the effort. Instead, he walked behind Michael. They climbed in the boat once the water was chest high, and amidst Harper and Hank’s squeals, they set off.

“And we are on our way!” Michael sang out.

Harper whooped from the head of the boat.

It wasn’t fair she got to sit in the very front, Rip thought as he rubbed Hank’s goose-pimpled arm. He wanted Hank to prove to Michael he could do more than just whine and cry. For Rip’s sake and for Hank’s own.
Please, for the love of God, Hank, stay calm,
Rip thought.

The last time Rip had been in a canoe was at sleepaway camp as a kid, one of those Jewish camps where all the kids wept at the end of the session during the good-bye ceremony. Not Rip. He’d wanted to get back to his air-conditioned house, his Game Boy, and the privacy of his room, where he could masturbate when inspired.

Paddling was not how Rip had remembered it. This was hard work, and the current made it feel as if they were pushing their way through pudding. He had imagined that he and Michael would have time to chat, to get to know each other a bit more, and he was hoping he’d get a chance to ask Michael for advice. Maybe another male perspective would help Rip find
the
way that would convince Grace to have another baby. Like a magic spell to transform her into a procreative believer.

Rip’s palms stung by the time they’d made it out to the buoys where the Island residents docked their boats. The white cottages, squeezed side by side, stared at them from the shore with their sea-weathered faces. He spotted people lounging on the decks under striped umbrellas and wished he were there instead of here. Then he focused on the twitching muscles in Michael’s arms, and it gave him the strength, the competitive boost, to paddle faster.

“Slow your roll back there, man,” Michael said without looking back. “Or you’ll be pooped before we make it around the bend.”

Harper giggled. “Daddy said pooped!”

“Poop. Poop,” Hank echoed, looking up at Rip with a grin.

Rip smiled back although he felt a rising dread this trip had been a mistake.

“Sure, boss,” Rip said with just enough attitude (he hoped) to send Michael a message.

Nicole had suggested they paddle to the estuary. Rip was vaguely familiar with the term but had no idea what an estuary actually was. All they had to do, Nicole had explained, was paddle around the tip of the island. There, she had promised, they’d spot the families of swans that had made the secluded cove their home for generations.

Michael led, directing Rip in a way that reminded him of Grace, and he wondered if the world wasn’t chock-full of micromanagers.

“Don’t lean so hard to the left, partner,” Michael said. “Let’s try to paddle in sync,” and finally, what Rip felt was totally unacceptable, especially in front of the kids, “Can you pick up the pace a little? You’re paddling like a girl.”

Michael followed the dig with a bark of a laugh before adding, “Just kidding, man.”

Rip concentrated on the tip of the paddle polished white with wear, commanding himself to play it cool, brush it off; this was just how guys bonded. Through humiliation.

“A girl?” Hank sang, smiling and shaking his head as if he was in on the joke. “Dad’s not a girl.”

“Michael’s just being silly,” Rip said, when what he wanted to say was
Michael’s just being an asshole.

“Girls are cool,” Harper said.

“They sure are, sweetie,” Michael said. “And boys and girls can be friends.”

“You are my friend, Hah-per,” Hank said quietly.

“And Mommy Tiffany and Daddy Rip are friends,” Michael said. “Isn’t that right, Daddy Rip?”

“Sure we are,” Rip said, unnerved. “Our whole playgroup is pretty tight.”

Michael didn’t answer. Rip listened to the sound of the paddles cutting through the water and worried: what was Michael implying? Could Tiffany have told him something, about what happened in the kitchen yesterday? Rip’s interaction with her had been limited all day, but it seemed normal enough. As if they’d simply go on with the monotony of little kid life—naps and snacks and trips to the potty—as if nothing had happened. Sure, Tiffany was wild and loved to see how far she could push boundaries, but would she really tell her fiancé about what had happened in the kitchen? Or what had
almost
happened, Rip corrected, because nothing had happened, had it? Okay, something
had
happened, he thought. A line had been crossed. Their bodies had reached for each other, and he knew she’d been as wet as he’d been hard, and he was growing hard in the canoe now just thinking about how nothing had happened, goddamnit. Especially, he told himself (convinced himself, by squeezing his thighs together and pushing his weight into the paddling), when you thought about what
could
have happened.

In the twenty minutes it took to round the tip of the island, while Rip tried not to think about Tiffany and her breasts and the slight looseness in her bikini bottom where he had, earlier that day, on the deck while she lay on the lounger, glimpsed something inside, the children talked nonstop. They pointed out a school of silvery fish leaping into the air as the canoe glided past. They spotted an orange-and-black butterfly flitting over the dark blue water.

“Wow, a monarch!” Hank whispered with awe. “What if he falls in, Daddy?”

“He’ll be okay,” Rip said with a grunt. It was hard to talk and paddle at the same time without losing his breath. The wind had picked up, just enough to ruffle Hank’s hair a bit, but it felt as if they were pushing against a wall of water. Were they paddling against the current or what? Not like he would ask Michael and risk looking like a wuss.

“Man, that kid’s smart,” Michael said. “He’ll be like a science teacher. Or some kind of tech geek who invents something and makes a billion.”

Rip couldn’t help but feel it was a backhanded compliment. He knew all the hipsters were using the term
geek
like it was cool, but hadn’t those same hipsters just been geeks themselves back in the day, bullied and persecuted? Plus, it was killing him, the way Michael spoke, almost breezily, as if paddling were a piece of cake. Rip knew what the guys in their weight-lifting belts at Shitty Gym would think of him now, winded by a damn paddle.

The trip was anything but peaceful, despite the gorgeous orange orb of the sun sinking into the horizon, and the clouds that hung low and pink, as if dazed by the sun’s beauteous exit. But the children talked incessantly.
A bird! Look, a doggie on the beach! Are we almost there? When will we be there? Another bird! That’s onetwothreefourfive birds
.

“Hank. Harper,” Rip said finally. “Let’s have a little quiet time, okay?”

“They’re just being kids,” Michael said with a shrug.

“Sorry,” Rip said, embarrassed he’d let himself come close to losing it, a term he’d used himself to criticize so many parents on the playgrounds of Brooklyn, mocking them for succumbing to the strain of wrangling a child under five. What was wrong with him?

By the time they made it to the marshy estuary—really just a pond with a narrow link to the Sound—the sun had lost its fire. Under the canopy of the weeping willows that draped the pond’s shore, it felt as if night was much closer than he’d thought. What a relief it was to drop the paddle and massage his throbbing arms. The boat turned in a circle. So slowly, he didn’t realize the rotation until they were facing a different part of the woods ringing the pond. The air smelled damp and mossy, like the inside of a mushroom. Every minute or so, he had to swipe at a mosquito, bat it away from Hank, whose plump brown skin was a delicacy for the bloodsuckers.

Instead of satisfying the children, the end of the journey sparked a new host of questions.
Why are we stopping? What is this place? Where are the swans? You said there’d be swans. Where are the swan babies? Are there going to be swans, Daddy? Are we going back soon?

Rip and Michael shushed them gently, reassured them again and again. They lied the harmless white lies of parenthood, like
the swans are napping
and
maybe the swans are still on their summer vacations,
which birthed even more questions like,
Why do swans have to take naps? Where do swans go on vacation?