Cutting Teeth: A Novel (39 page)

“Can
you
help me, ma’am?” Officer O’Donnell asked.

She? Help them? A spasm of doubt made her mumble, “Um?” and she felt that same net of anxiety fall over her, that which had stopped her short so often in the last few months. Can I really call the insurance company, the landlord, the washing-machine repairman—interactions that promised conflict, that demanded confidence, that made her feel like an agoraphobic freak trapped in a cage.

“This is just so unbelievable,” she managed to say.

“Ma’am?” O’Donnell said, as the radio in the car squawked. The grass rippled again, a wave of motion and stalks clacking, and Nicole looked to the path, to the woods lined with trees that seemed to be drowning in the sand and whose branches were so gnarled by sea wind and salt that they reminded her—as they had when she was a child—of witches’ claws.

Allie pulled out of Nicole’s embrace and gripped Nicole’s arm with what felt like the strength of a man. “Help them, Nicole!” Allie shouted as she shook her. “Snap the fuck out of it.”

This was what Nicole needed. It felt like a cup of cold water thrown in her face. She almost turned to Allie and said thank you, but instead she looked at the cop, and said, “Well, it’s a holiday, so the beach”—she pointed to the public beach, still strewn with bits of trash that reflected the headlights of the ranger vehicles—“it was busy like it always is on Labor Day weekend. There were some families, I think. And the usual couple of Hispanic—I mean, Latino men fishing. We spent most of the day on the beach right in front of the house. I just wasn’t paying attention.”

Allie interrupted. “But Dash ran into the woods. And I chased him.
This
is what I’m trying to tell you. He’s in there! I know he is. He’s pissed at me, and he went back in there!” Allie was pleading now, the tendons in her neck stretching as she rose on her toes and balled her fists at her side. Like a frustrated child ignored by the grownups, Nicole thought.

“Ma’am,” O’Donnell asked, looking again at Nicole with a sympathetic frown, “did you see a car?” He paused and motioned for Morello. “What was it, Tony? Yeah. A Honda. Green. With a bike rack? We had a report of someone loitering in the parking lot over here. We made it part of the Amber Alert that went out.”

“Oh my fucking God,” Allie said, and fell to her knees. Her head bent forward, and when she looked up, Nicole saw that her forehead was dusted with sand. Nicole knelt next to Allie, the sand cold under her bare ankles.

“It’s okay, Allie. It’s going to be okay. I swear it. They’ll find him.”

Nicole couldn’t make out what Allie was saying at first.

“Susanna will kill me. She’ll take them away. She’ll take them away forever.”

O’Donnell looked to the dark road, then at Morello, who had ducked into the car. He coughed and leaned over, resting one hand on Allie’s shoulder.

“She’s right, ma’am. Listen to your friend,” O’Donnell said. There was such gentle kindness in his voice. Nicole wanted to hug him, to cry into his muscled shoulder. “We’ll find your son. Now, ma’am”—he paused—“Allie, where is your husband? Can we get him here to help you? To help us?”

He peered over Nicole’s shoulder at Michael, now slumped on the sand half-asleep. “Is this him?”

“She doesn’t have a husband,” Nicole said, and she started to explain that Allie had a wife, but Allie’s bitter laugh interrupted her.

The ranger dug a hole in the sand with the toe of his boot.

Nicole tried to rub Allie’s back as she waved Josh over. They’d have to take Allie back to the house, convince her to take a pill to relax her, a glass of wine, something, but Allie shoved her away, and the girl-thin woman was running toward the woods, sand spraying out behind her heels, her pants a spot of pure white against the tangle of black branches.

The cop cursed under his breath. “Damn. Just what we need.”

A few minutes later, the parking lot blazed with the headlights of three vans. Nicole leaned into Josh, shielding her eyes. Two vans pulled onto the beach, sand spitting out through back tires. The rear double doors swung open and what seemed like a SWAT team of men piled out, each wearing a fluorescent orange vest. Ten, twelve, maybe more—too many to count. A siren blared and Nicole jumped, reaching again for Josh’s hand. His breath was hot in her ear. “It’s okay,” he whispered. “Be strong.”

O’Donnell turned to her, and said, with triumph in his voice, “They’ll take over from here, ma’am. You’re in good hands.”

He and Morello vanished into the headlights, and she felt a pang of loss as she called out, “Thank you!”

The strips of reflectors on the men’s vests caught the cop-car strobe as O’Donnell and Morello backed up onto the parking lot. They were leaving them, Nicole thought, and now they were in a swarm of strangers, of broad shoulders, black boots, and low, grumbling voices. It was as if she and Josh were invisible. The men shook hands with each other, mumbled greetings, and she even caught the sound of a laugh thrown up in the wind. She felt small and naked, like a child in her white cotton summer clothes and bare feet.

“Excuse me,” she said in the direction of a cluster of men, “Um, excuse me. The boy’s mother—she went into the woods.”

The back of the second van opened with a loud creak and the Labradors and German shepherds leapt onto the beach, lunging in all directions, straining against the chain-link leashes, and she flinched, backing away, almost stumbling onto the sand. Josh caught her and wrapped an arm around her waist. “I got you,” he said, and as the dogs tugged at the leashes, a jangling that felt like the stuff of children’s nightmares, she pressed her palms together and whispered the prayer she had said every night since she was a girl, five times in a row, sometimes with barely a breath between.
Dear God please keep us safe don’t let anyone or anything bad hurt us. Dear God please keep us safe don’t let anyone or anything bad hurt us. Dear God please keep us safe don’t let anyone or anything bad hurt us. Dear God please keep us safe don’t let anyone or anything bad hurt us. Dear God please keep us safe don’t let anyone or anything bad hurt us.

the whole nine yards

Allie

Allie ran through the woods
, branches whipping against her face, thorns tearing at her calves. She made deals with God, although she wasn’t sure if she believed in a damn God. She told who-the-fuck-ever that she’d do anything, everything, to bring Dash back. She’d be home for more family time instead of heading to her studio every weekend morning. She’d play Legos each and every time the boys asked her, no matter what. She’d give up smoking, she’d give up sleeping in, she’d give up her art, anything and everything, if whoever was in charge would make Dash appear right then and there.
Please.

She ran, dewy spiderwebs tearing against her face. The roar of the sea was like an engine at her heels, chasing her as she hurtled deeper into the woods. She felt the percussive tremor of the waves splitting against the rocks at the seawall. He had to be in the woods, he had to be in the thick blackness in front of her, which was so finite, so contained, so safe, compared to the vast shifting sea. No, she couldn’t think of her son in the water, his small body being tossed, hurled against the seafloor, his bluing skin torn by barnacles. He would have run to the woods—yes, yes, definitely—a pirate searching for buried treasure.

He would return to the scene of her crime, she promised herself as the cicadas filled her head with a mechanical drone, the spot where she had silenced him with her open palm after he had humiliated her by voicing what she knew to be true. She wasn’t his real mother. How could she be, when there wasn’t a natural fucking maternal bone in her body? She was like one of those animals who devoured their young. Like the gerbil in her third-grade classroom who had, overnight, eaten every last one of her squirming newborn gerbil babies, sending most of the children, and even Mrs. Sealander, their teacher, into tears the next morning when they arrived to find that the tiny, hairless, pink babies had vanished, as if they had never existed. But Allie hadn’t cried. For some reason, she hadn’t even been surprised.

The strap of one of her sandals snapped, and a twig sliced into the side of her foot. She stumbled over a root and went down, her hands sliding in front of her, her face knocking against a tree, warm blood filling her mouth.

She thought of that small patch of smooth skin at Dash’s hairline. His beauty mark. Why hadn’t she pulled him into her arms that afternoon, why hadn’t she bent over him, her lips finding that square of hairless skin that she had always imagined would remain smooth, infantlike, even when Dash grew to be a deep-voiced, barrel-chested, hair-covered brute of a man? They should have told the boys more fairy tales, she thought, scary stories about wolves and witches and terrible things that happen to children in the woods, stories invented to make children eat their veggies, go to bed on time, not talk to strangers, and fear the woods. But Susanna had wanted to protect them, to shelter them, preserve their innocence.
You’ll give them nightmares, Allie,
she’d said.

Allie screamed
Dash! Dash! Mommy’s here!
and then,
please please,
begging, the sobs choking her now, along with the snot that dripped off her lip and into her mouth. She talked to him as she ran.
I’m sorry, babe,
she called into the trees, into the fog that hung like a shroud.
Mommy won’t be bad again. Never. I’ll be perfect. I’ll be a mommy. A good mommy. I promise. Just please, please, please come out.

She had to pee, desperately, so she stopped and yanked down her pants, hardly bothering to squat. Some of the piss dribbled down her legs, stinging the scratches and cuts on her legs, steaming in the chilly night air.

Her father had made her piss in her pants once. The day after her junior prom. She’d been one of the girls without a date, but she’d gone to the after-parties and sipped vodka-spiked fruit punch and made herself tongue-kiss Kyle Lucas. When she returned home late that night, she forgot to take her cigarettes out of her backpack.

She was watching TV the next day. A show about a teenage witch. She had seen the actress on glossy magazine covers at the supermarket and liked the blond waves that floated like wings around the actress’s face. She had thought of the actress’s strawberry-colored lips while touching herself at night, climaxing into her cupped hand.

On TV, the teenage witch was making a love potion. For the sandy-haired boy the witch was crushing on. But Allie pretended it was she the pretty witch dreamed of kissing.

When her father ran into the room, he was a blur that took shape and spread, melting into the room. He must have started running from the kitchen where he found the pack of Camels in her backpack. It felt like fast-forward and slow motion at the same time, and all she knew was the
thunk, thunk, thunk
, and the hollow echo of the flimsy metal broom. She didn’t know how many times he brought the broom down on her because sound drifted away until it was as dull as the tick of a watch drowned in cotton. When the metal head of the broom broke, it sliced through her hand.

Then he was gone. Her arms were raised above her face, but she didn’t remember bringing them there. For a moment, when there was still no pain, she noticed everything around her. The treads in the carpet where his work boots had stood. Dust streaming through the light of the lamp. Her breath wet and slow. She looked at her hand. The stretch of skin from thumb joint to wrist flapped open when she made a fist. Blood rose and dripped down her wrist and onto her jeans. With her right hand held steady, away from her body, she walked to the TV and shut it off. She picked the half-empty pack of Camels off the carpet and stuffed them into her back pocket.

She bandaged herself and changed her pee-soaked jeans, and when she found her father in the kitchen, he was weeping, his head cradled in his arms. She comforted him, told him she was okay. It was okay. She smoothed his hair with her bandaged hand and saw the blood blooming through the gauze.

Decades later, when Susanna asked her if she wanted babies, Allie said no. No way. Because when her dad had threatened to hang her by her ponytail from a nail in the wall, she had believed him. How could someone like her, who had believed her daddy could do such a thing, learn to love and be loved?

off the record

Rip

The living room
was empty.

Rip checked the deck.

Deserted.

He stood looking out at the moon-dappled water, Hank’s princess dress clutched to his body.

He returned to the driveway and saw the light on in the shed, the door open.

Somehow, he knew Tiffany was inside. And she was. Beautiful in her green dress.

“Oh,” she said. “It’s
you
. Come over here, mister. Look at the treasure I’ve found!”

He stepped farther into the shed.

“Shut the door!” she stage-whispered. “This is top secret.”

He pulled the door shut.

“There are toys everywhere!” Tiffany said, delight in her voice.

He followed her eyes up to the shelves. There were stuffed bears and satin unicorns and a bag of soccer balls and another of toy trucks, all wrapped in thick plastic. The walls were lined with dusty paint-by-number canvases. Puppies and sunflowers and a little girl holding a basket of kittens.

“Nicole’s dad must have kept every toy she ever had,” Tiffany said in breathy awe. “He must have loved her so much.”

She was crying. He’d never seen her cry. She looked softer to him now, like a little girl.

“Look,” he said, and held up the princess dress. “For Hank.”

She smiled at him through tears, shooing them away with her fingertips. “You, Daddy Rip, are the bestest daddy in the world.”

Her eye makeup was smudged, ringing one eye black, and she sounded drunk. But she meant what she’d said. He believed her.

He reached out to touch her in the dimness and felt a sharp stab in his right middle finger. He’d snagged it on something jutting out from one of the sagging wooden shelves.