Cutting Teeth: A Novel (5 page)

woo-hoo! we’ll bring the tequila. body shots!!

Here they were, Allie thought, moving closer and closer to a destination where the talk would be of what viruses had recently ravaged the children’s immune systems, of the preschool drama that never ceased to bring a sparkle of urgency to Susanna’s eye, and the minutiae of day-to-day child-rearing that made Allie feel as if life were running out. That by the time they woke from the monotonous half slumber of parenthood, they’d be old, probably get cancer or something, have just a little time left to be Allie and Susanna, to live the life they had shared before.

Susanna pointed toward the glove compartment.

“Get me one of those candy bars, Al?”

Allie couldn’t stop herself.

She said, “I thought Dr. Patka told you no sweets. That chocolate made heartburn worse?”

“
What
did you just say?”

Allie shrank back, the way she had as a girl each time her father confronted her after she’d been caught in a lie or gotten detention (again) for doodling in her textbook. He had used the same words when she tried to lie her way out of punishment, usually a few licks on her bare legs with his belt.
What did you just say?
As he bent to peer in her eyes.

“You know,” Allie said, “that you have to be careful of what you eat?”

“Do you want me to puke?” Susanna asked quietly.

“No.”

“Then give me the goddamn Snickers bar.”

*   *   *

The sea cottage was shabby, bordering on decrepit: piles of junk near the front door, along with a tangle of driftwood and half a buoy. Allie practiced her smile as Susanna rang the doorbell.

“Lay-dies,” sang the woman who answered the door, clad in a white tube top that showed off her bronzed skin.

Tiffany, thought Allie. The oversexed, self-righteous mommy Susanna always crabbed about.

“It’s so exciting to have you here!” Tiffany said.

The woman, Allie thought, might as well have said,
Well lookee here, if it isn’t those darn lesbians? How interesting!

Awkward introductions followed—and reintroductions; one could never remember whom you had or hadn’t met in the hazy, sleep-deprived early parenting years. There was Michael, Tiffany’s baby daddy, a greasy-haired hipster dude. Then Nicole, whose parents owned the beach house; Rip, the sole daddy in the playgroup—springy with nervous energy—and finally Rip’s wife, Grace, a boxy Asian woman, whose firm handshake made Allie wonder if she wasn’t just a tad butch.

Allie looked out onto the living room full of kids. The light streaming in from the seaside windows turned the scene into a tableau. A twisted moral. Titled
Life After Children,
Allie thought. The twins were in a tussle certain to turn violent. A plump Asian boy (Rip and Grace’s kid, Allie guessed) stood in the corner, his hand sunk into a bowl of M&Ms. There was just the one little girl, a long-limbed beauty whose scabbed knees peeked out from under her flowered sundress. Allie knew this was Harper, daughter of Tiffany—a child Susanna loathed almost as much as the girl’s mother. Harper had just won a tug-of-war over a jump rope, and the loser, a flaxen-haired boy with an upturned nose, wailed.
Oh yes,
Allie thought, the crier must be Chase. She had heard Susanna speak of Chase’s “behavioral issues” in a whisper, as if the boy had an unspeakable disease.

But it was the mommies that frightened Allie the most.
The mommies.
Must she really use that word, she had asked Susanna on the drive. Their sugary smiles, their kisses like pats on each other’s cheeks, the exaggerated rolls of their eyes at their children. The daddies seemed harmless enough, shoulder shrugs punctuating most everything they said, as if they were embarrassed at the “crazy” situation they’d gotten themselves into.
Aw, shucks, parenthood.

And where did Allie fit in?

With the mommies? Oh no, she thought, she was too much of a dyke, too part-time mommy for them.

With the daddies? Nah, a woman could never join those ranks.

She belonged to neither. And that was exactly the way she liked it.

out of sight, out of mind

Leigh

Leigh closed her eyes and
sank into the wicker chair, into the coppery sun that streamed through salt-streaked windows. Four-month-old Charlotte sucked sleepily on her nipple.

It was just as Nicole had promised. A lovely end-of-summer getaway filled with the scent of sunscreen and BBQ.

Maybe the last, Leigh thought with a shiver. Before autumn bore down, before everything withered in anticipation of the imprisonment of winter—every parent’s cross to bear.

She wished she could lock herself in this moment forever. She and Charlotte. The warming sun and the shushing sea. A current of seaweed-scented air trickled through the window and the swaddle blanket draped over Charlotte rippled, tickling Leigh’s naked breast. She shivered and pulled her cashmere cardigan over her shoulders. The screen door thwacked gently in the breeze, and beyond it, Leigh heard Tiffany’s throaty laugh rise from the beach. Leigh had almost forgotten about the others, even about her own son Chase, who, Leigh thought with a guilty wince, was certain to disrupt this peace.

They would return soon.

It had been at least an hour since Tiffany had led the parade of children—like a voluptuous pied piper, Leigh thought—along with Nicole and the other parents down to the beach for what Tiffany had promised was
a seaside dance-a-thon
!

Tiffany’s voice, the elongated vowels that sashayed from her ever-pouty lips, had always seemed seductive to Leigh, even when Tiffany was being playful with Chase and the other boys in the Monday afternoon Tiff’s Riffs music classes. Especially, Leigh thought, when Tiffany’s attention focused on Rip, the playgroup’s token dad, whom Leigh found inauthentic and undergroomed.

Once a week, Leigh, with Chase and Charlotte, and the other playgroup parents and children, clapped, danced and even squirmed like caterpillars on the colorful mats at a local yoga studio in Tiffany’s Tiff’s Riffs classes. They sang songs about mermaids who drove taxicabs under the sea, about children who rode the F train to the moon—songs written by Tiffany herself. Songs that Leigh had, at first, disliked for their fantastical nature. She’d felt compelled to explain to Chase that cars couldn’t really drive under the ocean.

As the familiar melodies trickled through the screen, as she stroked baby Charlotte’s pale arm, memories of the day before crept in. The Olive Tree Preschool Fundraising Committee meeting. The sour heat of the rec room where the committee had met—just a few doors away from the classroom where Chase spent four mornings a week. The slither of queasy fear that had snaked through Leigh’s gut as she, committee treasurer, had presented the group with the latest account balances—numbers she had tweaked again and again in the week leading up to the meeting.

Stop,
she told herself, willing herself into the right now, into
mindful presence,
which is what Leigh’s nanny, Tenzin, a Tibetan Buddhist, had taught her.

“Too much worrying not good for mommies,” Leigh imagined Tenzin saying as she pressed her palms together—pleading or praying, Leigh wasn’t sure which. “And worrying not good for mommies’ babies either.”

Now, now, now,
Leigh chanted, in sync with the baby’s sucking.

She’s a Tibetan peace activist seeking U.S. asylum,
Leigh had told the mommies four months ago when she had first hired Tenzin.

Wow,
they had said,
how interesting.

As if it were Leigh who was special.

She was relieved that her husband Brad had gone away that weekend. Giving her the excuse to book Tenzin for the trip to the beach house. Brad had been a pill since the stock market slumped three weeks ago, and Leigh had urged him to get away. Finally, he had arranged a four-day “man-cation” golfing in North Carolina with his three older brothers. Brad had openly disapproved of the weekend at Nicole’s. Only because Tiffany was there, Leigh thought. He’d become suspicious—jealous even—of the time Leigh spent texting with Tiffany each night. He claimed to have a
feeling
about Tiffany.

“She’s a slut,” he’d said after a weekend playgroup brunch at their own brownstone, an event orchestrated to include the playgroup parents’ significant others.

Leigh hadn’t bothered to defend Tiffany. The woman did have a stripperesque name, and there was something overtly sensual in the way she swiveled her hips and puffed her lips out cutely. But Leigh was certain Brad was making room for sluts of his own that weekend. A ritual of the Marshall boys’ getaways was the mandatory visit to the local titty bar.

Since Tiffany had introduced Leigh to Tenzin over a year ago—Tenzin’s effortless smiles and girlish laugh filling Leigh’s life, she had needed Brad less and less, a sense of freedom she hadn’t felt in years, not since Chase’s birth almost four years ago.

Never had she imagined that she would rely on Brad as she had in the months after Chase’s birth. After the emergency C-section that had punctuated the failure of her dream birth plan, she had been grateful to Brad, who had taken a monthlong leave from his position at Manning & Lambert, the investment firm founded by Leigh’s father, August Lambert, III. They had strolled around the neighborhood on brisk spring mornings with their blue-eyed blond baby boy. The neighborhood grandmas in their polyester housedresses and slippers had climbed down their stoop steps to ooh and ah over cherubic Chase.
God bless him,
they said, and Brad had beamed.

But as soon as Chase’s
behavior
(a term his therapists used) revealed itself before his first birthday, as soon as it became impossible to take him out of the house without an
episode
(more therapy-speak), Leigh had watched Brad retreat. Once they’d accepted that Chase was likely to have global delays that would affect the rest of his life (and theirs), Brad had emotionally disowned doe-eyed Chase.

Leigh knew Brad found it difficult to admire their son, even when Chase behaved. The first time Chase had sat at the table for an entire meal, instead of wandering around it (
Helen Keller–style,
Brad often joked aloud), Leigh had praised Chase, promised him they’d tell his therapists what a good boy he’d been, even served him a small scoop of ice cream for dessert—breaking the no-sugar commandment preached by those same therapists. Brad had sat there quietly, forcing a smile, and later suggested to Leigh that she was “handicapping” the boy by rewarding him for normal behavior. Brad had used the word most outlawed in the coded therapy-speak of the special-needs world.
Normal,
Leigh thought now as the sun warmed the crown of her head and she let herself drift into half-sleep.

Charlotte had finally surrendered Leigh’s breast, her blond-fuzzed head falling back, her lips parting, her sweet milky breath wafting upward.

And then they returned. A tsunami of whining and whimpering, the half-language/half-grunt speak of children between the ages of three and four.

There were demands of “juice, juice!”

Dimple-cheeked Wyatt and the twins—dark-haired Dash and honey-complexioned Levi—slid to their bellies, grasping for toy cars and trucks.

“Mine, mine!”

Leigh looked for Chase but did not see her son.

She did spot Rip’s son Hank standing a few feet from the door, already whining, “
I
want a car too.” Hank’s eyes were swollen with tears. Angry red splotches rouged his plump cheeks.

Hank was sensitive, which created a unique challenge for Leigh—mother of the rough kid, which was how she imagined the other playgroup parents might describe Chase, especially on one of his off days. Her mission was to keep sensory-seeking Chase, with his hug-tackles and impulsive grabbing, away from the sensory-avoidant Hank.

“Aaaaah,” Hank wailed, “I got sand in my eyeball!”

Chase appeared, galloping to where Leigh sat. His freckles seemed to glimmer over his sun-pinked skin.

He exclaimed breathily, “Mommy!” as he jumped in place—his long limbs swinging. Even with his jerky movements, he was stunning. Anyone would think so, Leigh thought. Other mothers, especially her friends on Facebook, where her status updates were all photos of Chase and Charlotte, commented on how Chase should be a model.
Get that kid an agent! He needs to be in a J. Crew catalogue! He would totally win that GAP cutest kid contest!
She smiled and nodded gratefully in person, or responded with
Thanks! We think he’s cute too!;
) on Facebook, not bothering to point out that models had to sit still and follow directions. Not pointing out that Chase could follow through on a
task
(therapy-speak) only if it was
self-directed
(more therapy-speak).

“Hi, sweetie,” Leigh said. “Did you have a fun time on the beach?”

Chase’s cheeks were flecked with grains of sand, and when Leigh’s fingers brushed his cheek, he recoiled like a stretched spring.

“Did you have fun at the beach, honey?” Leigh asked again, knowing she wouldn’t get a response. Chase was too excited to hear her. “What did you do? Did you go in the water?” She heard the sugarcoated strain in her voice.

He tugged at his wet swimsuit, and drops of cold water stung her naked calves.

“I can’t do it. I can’t do it,” he moaned.

“Oh-kay,” Leigh said in a slow voice. Chase’s therapists claimed speaking slowly had a calming effect. “Try not to get frustrated.”

She sang a song from his favorite television show as she searched the room for Tenzin.

“Keep trying, keep trying,” Leigh sang quietly. “Don’t give up. Never give up.”

“Don’t! Sing! That! Song!” Chase lifted to the balls of his feet, the tendons in his neck stretching.

“Peepee-making time!” Tenzin sang as she hurried over. She laid one large hand on his back and escorted him toward the bathroom.

If it wasn’t for Tenzin.
The thought of life without her nanny blew a bubble of anxiety in Leigh’s chest. Her Tibetan Mary Poppins.