Cutting Teeth: A Novel

by Julia Fierro

  “Fuck,” Tiffany said into her thick, smoky exhale. “It’s freezing. This is totally messing up my postorgasm high.” She laughed before a gale picked up her giggles and flung them into the sea.

  “I thought there was something different about you,” Nicole said, not mentioning it was the musky scent of skin and come and sweat that now seemed so foreign to her own life. “You’re glowing.”

  “Isn’t that what they tell pregnant women?”

  Nicole tucked her head between her knees, her legs shielding the roach, and took a drag.

  “Things must be great between you two,” Nicole said, trying to remember the last time she and Josh had sex somewhere other than their bedroom.

  “Well,” Tiffany started, and Nicole could hear the calculating note in her voice, “I asked Michael which of the lesbian mommies he’d like to fuck. That set him off.”

  “Jesus, Tiff.” Nicole laughed, although she had often admired and envied Tiffany’s damn-the-world attitude.

  With a whine of impatience, Tiffany said, “Listen! So that led to which one I’d fuck.” She paused to take a hit off the joint. “In front of him, of course.”

  “And?” Nicole asked.

  “Who do you think?” she asked. “Allie, of course.”

  “And Michael?”

  “Susanna,” Tiffany said, with a tut-tutting headshake that made Nicole suspect Tiffany was hiding something. A bit of jealousy? Sometimes, Tiffany couldn’t stomach her own little mind games when it was her turn to be the underdog.

  “I hope I wasn’t too loud,” Tiffany said, a new energy lifting her voice. “It’s a good thing Harper was pooped. Out like a light.”

  Tiffany gripped Nicole’s arm. Her eyes widened.

  “Do you think anyone heard?” she asked.

  Nicole knew Tiffany by now, and she knew Tiffany hoped the whole house had heard.

  “It wasn’t actual sex,” Tiffany said, “Just oral. But it’s really doing it for me lately. You know?”

  Tiffany’s matter-of-fact tone threw Nicole off-balance. What could she say? Yes, she wished Josh were doing anything for her lately. Yes, she wished her libido hadn’t been flattened by antidepressants for the past three years.

  “Ugh,” she groaned. “It’s been ages for me.”

  Another reason not go back on her meds, she thought. As a girl, she’d masturbated daily, sometimes multiple times a day, and when she and Josh were first together, she’d been filled with a churning desire, which had only just now, almost three months meds-free, begun its shy return.

  A clang of metal rang out from the side of the deck, and Nicole jumped.

  “You’d think I’d be a bit more chill,” she said. “Under the stoned circumstances.”

  Tiffany took a hit, and, holding her breath, squeaked, “Who, you?”

  “Who me?” Nicole sang in tune to the “Cookie Jar” song Tiffany had performed in many a Tiff’s Riffs class.

  “Yes you!”

  Nicole finished, “Couldn’t be!”

  Smoke trickled out with Tiffany’s laughter.

  “I hate that song,” Tiffany said as she poked at the spit-flattened base of the joint with a nail polished green. “It’s all about guilt and shame.” She took another hit. “It’s enough to give some poor kid an eating disorder. I mean, who cares who took the cookie from the cookie jar?”

  “You crack me up,” Nicole said. “Have you ever thought about writing? Or blogging? I bet you’d be great at it.”

  “Maybe,” Tiffany said. She pulled the sweatshirt over her knees until only her toes, also painted in green polish, peeked out. Her silver toenail winked as she wiggled her toes. She wore a dreamy look, Nicole thought as she followed Tiffany’s stare across the Sound to the blur of industrial Connecticut that had always reminded Nicole of the lights of a distant carnival. But then she caught a befuddled look masking Tiffany’s face. It was the look Tiffany wore when the playgroup parents talked about books or films or politics, topics Tiffany dismissed with a wave of her hand, and, “You guys are too smart for me!”

  Nicole thought it strange the way Tiffany played the ditz card when it suited her. When everyone knew Tiffany was smart in the ways that mattered most. Nicole remembered the ugly scene a few weeks back at the Jakewalk bar, on the group’s Girls’ Night Out. It was the kind of intelligence that snuck up on you when you least expected it.

  They passed the joint back and forth until it was a brown-stained nub of wet paper. Nicole let it slip through her fingers into the black night.

  “Lookie what I have,” Tiffany sang, and pulled a cigarette from behind her ear. “And I’ve got more.” She tapped the pocket of Michael’s jacket.

  “Nice,” Nicole said.

  “So,” Tiffany said, hugging herself, the lit cigarette dangling from her lips. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on, Nic?”

  The emphasis on really, the questioning trill, made Nicole flinch, and she wondered if she’d heard Tiffany right, if the wind hadn’t mutated her words.

  “What do you mean?” she said, when what she meant was, how on earth could you know? She had been so careful on urbanmama.com, not to use any details that would give her identity away, a choice that had made her think, Well, how crazy can I be, if I’m covering my tracks so well?

  “Sweetie,” Tiffany said, “it’s obvious.”

  “What?” Nicole laughed, hoping she sounded genuinely clueless.

  “You were so doom-and-gloom all afternoon,” Tiffany said, “I mean, that whole thing with Josh and his bag on the sofa?”

  Tiffany lifted her eyebrows, an expression that reminded Nicole of her own mother; disapproving.

  “Maybe,” Tiffany continued, passing the cigarette to Nicole, “if you share, you’ll feel better. So, what’s up?”

  “I don’t know,” Nicole said.

  “You do know.”

  “It’s embarrassing.”

  “Worse than your thing about swine flu? Worse than when you thought the city was being attacked by terrorists and texted Josh, like, twenty times?”

  “Fuck,” Nicole said. “I’m a freak.” She squeezed out a small laugh.

  “Just tell me, dammit. I’m not going anywhere until you do.” Tiffany pulled the lit cigarette from Nicole’s hand. “No judging, promise.” She took a drag, squinting against the smoke as the tip blazed red.

  “I’m happy,” Nicole started. “I mean, I know.” She nodded somberly. “I seem miserable. Josh reminds me that every day. But I swear. In many ways, this is the happiest I’ve ever felt.”

  “But are they the ways that matter?” Tiffany asked as she reached over and patted Nicole’s wind-chilled hand. “Look, Nic, if there’s anyone out here that understands, it’s me? I’m broken, too. Remember? I should be on a ton of drugs!”

  How did Tiffany know she had stopped taking her meds, Nicole thought. What if Tiffany outed her to Josh, motivated by what Tiffany would call friendly concern? Nicole imagined Tiffany’s slinking next to him, hooking her arm in his, whispering, You know, Josh, her hot breath in his ear, I’m worried about Nic.

  Tiffany, Nicole thought, was not the frenemy any mom in her right mind would take on.

  “I’m sorry,” Nicole blurted.

  “What’s there to be sorry about?”

  Tiffany pulled the crushed pack of American Spirits from the jacket pocket. She tapped two cigarettes out, tucked one between her puffy lips, gave the other to Nicole, and tossed the empty pack over the seawall.

  Nicole stopped herself from mentioning pollution.

  “I’ve been meaning to text you about last week,” Nicole said. “You know.” She paused. “The thing at the bar. With Susanna.”

  “Pregnant women,” Tiffany said with a huff. “They’re certifiable.”

  “Susanna was just”—Nicole paused—“so upset. You know how she is. Always mommying everyone.”

  Tiffany mumbled something Nicole couldn’t hear.

  Nicole continued, “She thought t
hat—maybe—you were drunk. Vulnerable. That the guy was going to take advantage of you. And I got caught in the middle.”

  What Nicole didn’t say was that they’d all been on Susanna’s side. Susanna had been the only one brave enough to tell Tiffany she’d had too many Cosmos, she was being loud, she was embarrassing them on this one night they’d all managed to get sitters or secure husbands to watch the kids, after they had squeezed into their before children clothes and straightened their hair and tweezed their eyebrows and shaved their legs in anticipation of Girls’ Night Out.

  Nicole was anxious to change the subject now that she’d performed her apology, and she felt that shivering sense that time was both slowing down and speeding up, a precursor to her panic attacks.

  “You know,” she said, “when I was a kid, I didn’t really appreciate this place.” She nodded to the thick woods at the end of the beach that led to acres of tangled and marshy nature preserve. “The woods—especially at night—creeped me out. I had two cats go in there and never come back. Oliver and Casper.”

  “Probably coons,” Tiffany said.

  “The ocean scared me, too,” Nicole said. “It’s not like in a pool. You can’t see what’s under you.”

  “I don’t know. I was a big-time skinny-dipper growing up out east,” Tiffany said, as she arched her back in a stretch. The black leather creaked. “So, I guess you weren’t?”

  “Nope.” Nicole felt her urge to confess rising. Instead of washing her hands two dozen times a day, or obsessively organizing—habits she’d learned to kick—sometimes, reciting her fears momentarily freed her from them. “It started, maybe around when I was nine. On summer nights when the tide was highest, I’d come out here after my parents were asleep. And I’d dare myself to jump off the wall into the water.”

  “You?” Tiffany said. “I’m impressed.”

  The you stung Nicole, though she knew it shouldn’t be a surprise. She was scared of everything. Just as Josh had said in countless arguments. Your life is one giant fucking phobia.

  As if she needed to be reminded.

  “Yep,” she lied. “I jumped in. And I made myself stay out there ’til I counted to a hundred. I treaded water with my heart pounding so fast I thought I’d drown.”

  Details came to her, the way they once had when she was writing fiction.

  “And there was this green stuff. Phosphorescence, I think it’s called. This green, glowy stuff that kind of, like, sparkles in the water at night. When you wave your arms around.”

  Tiffany stood. She peeled off Michael’s jacket and let it fall to the deck with a leathery thud. “That’s all just lovely, Nic,” she said. “But if you’re going to keep avoiding my question, I think I’ll go for a swim.”

  “What?”

  Tiffany wriggled out of her sweatpants. Then she pulled off her shirt and stepped out of her underwear. “Obviously, you’re not going to tell me why you’ve been acting like such a freak all weekend. So I’m going to let you keep fretting, and I’ll keep enjoying myself.”

  “Tiffany, seriously, what are you doing?”

  Tiffany stepped toward the seawall. She was all pale curves except where her pubic hair formed a shadowy triangle. Tiffany was the only mom in the playgroup who’d had a vaginal birth. No pouch of hardened flab hanging like a shallow shelf over her vagina like the rest of them had, a vestige of their C-sections that no amount of exercise would banish.

  “What are you doing? It’s freezing out here.” Nicole realized she was whispering, as if they were teenagers trespassing, pool hopping in a neighbor’s backyard.

  “Your challenge,” Tiffany explained. “I’m supposed to count to a hundred, right?”

  Nicole nodded, unable to speak.

  The rocks.

  “Don’t!” Nicole yelled as Tiffany climbed onto the seawall, her breasts swinging with the effort. “The rocks. You’ll kill yourself.”

  Tiffany looked down at her. The wind whipped her dark hair.

  She rose to her toes, her body a luminescent column, and dove into the black water.

  Nicole ran to the seawall.

  Tiffany’s face was a white oval bobbing in the black water.

  Nicole flooded with relief.

  “You’re the crazy one!” she yelled.

  This time, when Nicole laughed, she meant it.

  She tried to hold on to what was she was feeling. To make it last. The openness in her chest, like a door unlocked. The lift at her heels, as if she were standing taller, as if she, too, could climb onto the wall, strip away her layers, leap out over the water, and never land.

  Fly to the moon.

  Part 2

  Saturday

  * * *

  Ok that’s it. I’m keeping my kids home today. No park, no playground.

  Posted 9/4/2010 8:38am

  (14 replies)

  * * *

  —where do you live? i feel like I should pack up the car and leave town 8:38am

  —huh???? what are you talking about? 8:39am

  —Anything new happen? 8:40am

  —all this discussion is making me nervous. WHAT is going on? 8:41am

  —because of the Webbot prediction? 8:41am

  —yes 8:41am

  —The market fell below 10000 two weeks ago. *IT* ALREADY HAPPENED. 8:42am

  —but today will be horrible. 8:42am

  —why? 8:43am

  —cause that’s when it’s supposed to happen. 8:43am

  —what’s supposed to happen? 8:44am

  —THE END. 8:46am

  —^^^just kidding 8:47am

  —Oh. My. GOD!! 8:48am

  golden handcuffs

  Leigh

  Leigh had always been a good liar. Most of the lies leapt from her lips without thought or planning. Uninvited and, sometimes, unwanted, but she had always escaped detection. Who would suspect such a pleasant person—ever-smiling, neatly dressed, polite, and agreeable? She wasn’t one of those contrarian women, like Nicole or Susanna, who felt it their duty to have the last word, particularly if a man was involved. She had even changed her name to Marshall to appease Brad, a choice she knew the other mommies disapproved of.

  Since Chase’s birth nearly four years ago, Leigh had felt as if the lies she had accumulated, stacked into a tower of infinite height, were teetering over her, and she had begun to fear she’d trip and fall, the lies smothering her.

  Lately, she doubted every choice she made. There wasn’t enough time in the busy-ness of motherhood to weigh every consequence, and she felt herself spilling like a leaky milk carton—a spurt here, a drip there.

  Two days earlier, Leigh, treasurer of the Fundraising Committee at Chase’s preschool, the Olive Tree Academy, had attended the first committee meeting of the year. Even before she’d conceived Chase, she had added their name to the waiting list for the co-operative school renowned for its donation drives and silent auctions that brought in close to a hundred thousand dollars a year.

  The chairwoman of the Fundraising Committee, Kat Richards, had approached Leigh before the meeting, while the members sipped herbal tea and nibbled homemade orange-scented scones in the recreation room of the preschool. Kat, a pleasant woman, whom Leigh had found a touch too flaky to vote for, had asked if she and Leigh could set up a meeting to go over the latest financials.

  “I keep making errors,” Kat said, “I just can’t get those numbers to fit.”

  The woman twittered on as that hateful blush crawled up Leigh’s neck. She was certain her ears glowed pink. Like an alarm sounding.

  “Of course, Kat,” she said. “How’s Monday work for you?”

  The rec room had once been a benign place, even cheerful, where Leigh had volunteered to run a monthly bake sale and assisted in setting up the Fall Festival. But that night at the meeting, in the fluorescent light, the air damp with late summer heat, sweat pooling between her milk-heavy breasts, the room was vibrating danger. She had gripped the arms of her assigned chair. The fund-raising treasurer
sat to the left of the chairwoman.

  When it was Leigh’s turn to speak, she found her voice, and to her relief, was able to train her eyes on the number-filled sheet in her hands and share the latest fundraising-account financials. Her voice quivered, and she stopped to wipe sweat from her upper lip, joking that the postpartum hormones were still kicking her butt, which received nods of empathy from the other mothers, many of whom knew how long she had tried for a second child. They had comforted her when she’d miscarried, and had congratulated her when her Charlie girl, just a twelve-week-old fetus, stuck.

  Leigh made it through the remainder of the meeting—Luisa Kaufman (mom to Leo and Lux) reminding the committee (again) of the harmful GMOs in their children’s food, quoting studies on the side effects of hormone-injected meat, such as boys growing breasts; Maggie Yun (mom to Izzie, Gus, and Anya) pleading for $5,000 to renovate the playground; Simon Clifton (dad to Posey), a stay-at-home dad active in the protests against idling ice-cream trucks at Carroll Park, suggesting a compost bin behind the school, to show the kids “green in action.” Leigh imagined rats the size of cats but applauded with the other parents.

  By the end of the meeting, her fingers were itching to pluck her eyebrows. The ritual had brought comfort to her as a girl. Pluck. Pluck. The sting of each root dislodging from her scalp was a blessed distraction. Each as innocuous as a white lie. Her mother had driven all the way to the Evenhill Academy for Girls in New Hampshire to usher Leigh to dermatologists, neurologists, and finally to a psychologist on the Upper West Side.

  At the end of the meeting, the committee secretary, Marian Ravensberg, read the minutes back slowly, until Leigh feared she would stand on her chair and scream something outrageous like, you fucking fools! There’s no money for your stupid compost bin! Or she might run up to the loft and jump from the window looking out onto the rec room so she was a splatter of blood and crooked limbs on the waxed blond wood.