Cutting Teeth: A Novel

by Julia Fierro

  “Allie!” Susanna shouted. “You watching the boys? I can’t see them.”

  Allie’s view swung away, and for a second, she panicked, the movement of the waves beyond the sandbar making her dizzy.

  The boys were standing at the foot of a massive black boulder that had appeared gradually in the last few hours as the tide went out, and the ripple-streaked sandbar revealed itself, creating a perfect playspace. Atop the rock was the long-limbed Harper, her wind-teased hair a red-gold crown glinting in the sun.

  “Boys!” Allie yelled through cupped hands. “Stay close.”

  Harper shouted, “Come here! I said … Come! Here!”

  Allie shielded her eyes. All the boys stood in front of the rock, peering up at Harper worshipfully. Allie wanted to make a joke about a sea witch and her minions, but Michael was just a few feet away. For once, she thought proudly, she would hold her tongue.

  Susanna waved Allie over to help her up. Allie had to lift Susanna from behind and, finally, after a grunt or two, Susanna climbed to her feet. The pebbles had pocked the backs of Susanna’s fleshy thighs. Cellulite gone viral, Allie thought, embarrassed for Susanna, and for herself.

  A few minutes later, they, along with Tiffany, Michael, Rip, and Josh, had joined the boys at the rock.

  It was clear to Allie that Harper was calling the shots.

  “You!” Harper commanded haughtily, pointing a finger at the boys. “You are my subjects. And I am Queen Priscilla, ruler of all the seas in the universe.”

  “You go, girl!” Tiffany whooped, and the adults laughed, flinging words like precocious and advanced into the sea breeze.

  Harper shot them a glare. “Don’t laugh at me!”

  Allie was relieved when Michael chimed in, “Now, Harper, that’s no way to talk,” but she heard hesitation in his voice.

  They were afraid of the little girl. Just like the mommies were afraid of Tiffany.

  Queen of the Universe, my ass, Allie thought. More like a budding sociopath. She wished she and Susanna were standing closer, so she could whisper in Susanna’s ear. They would laugh together the way they once had. When it had been Allie and Susanna vs. the rest of the world.

  Harper clapped her hands. Like a coach gathering the team for a pep talk. All that was missing, Allie thought, was the whistle.

  “Listen up, everybody!” Harper shouted.

  The crowd fell silent. There was only the lapping of the waves and the complaints of seagulls.

  “You got your buckets?” Harper asked the boys, who stared up at her mutely.

  “Answer me,” Harper ordered. In a remarkably authentic fed-up-mommy tone, Allie thought. “You got to answer me by saying, Your Royal Highness!”

  The boys parroted Your Royal Highness! before scattering across the sandbar in search of containers. Wyatt, Levi, Dash, and Chase returned with plastic buckets in hand. Hank with an empty plastic water bottle.

  “Make me a royal feast,” Harper commanded. “Go for” (Allie assumed she meant forth) “and collect crabs and snails for my delish lunch!”

  Harper opened her arms wide and tipped her head skyward. For a moment, Allie saw an exquisite photo. Scarlet hair and knobby knees, long limbs dotted with bruises, ribs pressing through browned skin. A warrior child staring up at the heavens as if testing God himself. Damn, that girl was fierce.

  The children scattered, away from their queen and toward the Sound, and when they reached the water, their shoulders hunched and their heads bowed as they studied the sand that lay under a few inches of clear, sun-dappled sea. Their focus reminded Allie of search parties on crime shows. Even Levi, usually distracted, walked slowly—heel-toe, heel-toe—looking for a bit of sea life to serve up to his queen. A squeal of delight erupted here and there with each find, as the boys plucked tiny brown or black barnacle-speckled shells from the sand, the miniature claws and antennae creeping out, flailing before the crab went plunk! into the bucket with its kin.

  Allie dipped her hand into the cool water and scooped up a shell, resting it in the center of her palm. She waited, breath held, and miniscule claws appeared, then two glistening eyes.

  For the first time in a long time, she remembered how nature trumped art and how easy it was to forget this in the city, where all beauty seemed man-made. She thought of her baby and looked to Susanna, who stood with her round face turned to the sun, her eyes closed.

  I should be more grateful for her, Allie thought.

  There was a tickle on Allie’s palm as the shell scuttled across her hand. She shrieked and dropped the crab.

  Then there was a hand on her shoulder. It was Tiffany, an arm outstretched, the brown dot of a shell crawling up her arm.

  “Don’t be scared, silly,” Tiffany said with the hint of an intentional lisp, as though the tip of her tongue were caught between her teeth.

  Tiffany moved her arm to accommodate the crab’s path, an undulating dance that reminded Allie of the curvaceous Odissi dancers she and Susanna had seen perform in India on one of their preparenthood trips. Although it was a religious dance, Allie had felt there was something delightfully impure about their wide, painted eyes and come-hither looks, their bare midriffs and gyrating hips, the way they cocked their heads left and right, beckoning, come closer. And wasn’t that what Tiffany was saying now as she let the crab crawl across the sand-dusted hills of her breasts? As she giggled like a schoolgirl?

  The children returned to the rock Harper had claimed as her throne and emptied their buckets onto the smooth shelf at the base of the boulder. Josh pointed out hermit crabs, humped sand crabs, sea snails, and even an orange-speckled Lady Crab. It was a pile of flailing legs, searching antennae, and twitching, googly eyes. Allie pitied the slow-moving sea snails, their slimy tongues stretching out into the sunlight to see what the fuck was going on.

  The children whooped and jumped and did a little dance around the rock, kicking mud-dark sand in the air. Harper watched with a satisfied smile stretched across sun-rouged cheeks.

  “Now what?” Allie asked, looking to Josh and Rip, who stood in a daze, eyes trained on the wiggling mass.

  Josh shrugged. Rip took a swig of beer.

  “Okay,” Susanna sang. “Time to put the creatures back in the sea.”

  “No way!” Harper shouted. “Now we make soup for our big feast.”

  Tiffany laughed. “Harper loves playing pretend. Should we have a picnic? That’s one of our favorite play activities at home. Right, hon?”

  “Soup!” The boys shouted, in a perfect unison that creeped Allie out.

  “Rocks! We need rocks for our stew!” Harper commanded, and the boys scattered again, each returning with an armful of stones. Poor Hank’s short arms shook under the weight of the rock he chose, one almost as big as his head.

  “Not that big, Hank,” Harper said. “You’ll get a boo-boo. And we don’t like to hear you cry.” She rolled her eyes. In perfect mommy replication, Allie thought.

  “Now,” Harper instructed calmly, “when I count to three, use the rock to mash my food.”

  “Harper,” Susanna warned, tottering forward to the base of the rock, an arm stretched up toward the little girl. For a moment, Allie thought Susanna might pull the girl-queen off her throne.

  Harper counted slowly, “One…”

  “Harper, sweetie,” Tiffany said. As if, Allie thought, she were calling the girl to the dinner table. “We don’t hurt animals, now, do we?”

  The dads, Allie noticed—even Michael—had stepped back, as if they feared the residual spray of mashed sea life.

  Harper continued, a smile skipping across her lips, “Two…”

  “Tiffany!” Susanna screamed, a strangled plea that made the hair on Allie’s arms tingle. “Do something!”

  The little girl looked the happiest Allie had seen her that weekend. Like she’d eaten something mouthwatering. Like she’d won the biggest prize at the fair.

  Harper chirped, almost cutely, “Three!”

  The massacre com
menced. The children fell upon the sea animals with raised rocks, and there was crunching and cracking and the echo of rock hitting rock and Susanna was screaming—Stop! No!—pulling one and then another boy away, tearing scum-covered rocks from their hands and flinging them to the sand, and Allie heard herself say something dumb, like “Okay, I guess they’ve gone a little Lord of the Flies on us,” but no one was laughing.

  It was as if they’d landed on some foreign planet and were surrounded by a clan of small, bloodthirsty aliens.

  She hurried to Susanna, who stared at her hands flecked with brown-and-black goo. Susanna gagged, her chin jutting forward in the prevomit, chickenlike movement Allie knew so well.

  “Come on, baby,” Allie soothed, nudging Susanna toward the open sea, a hand on Susanna’s lower back.

  “The smell,” Susanna croaked between heaves.

  “Let’s wash off in the water,” Allie said.

  Puke was coming. Better to get Susanna as far from the others as possible.

  “Mama?” Levi whimpered behind them. “Mommy?”

  Allie looked over her shoulder. Levi’s nostrils flared. Dash’s hands were balled at his side. What was he so angry about?

  “Don’t worry, guys,” Susanna said, her voice wavering. “Mama’s okay.” She turned to Allie, “Tell them.”

  “Tell them what?”

  “Tell them I’m okay!” Susanna commanded. “Comfort them, dammit. Comfort them!”

  “Everything’s fine, boys,” Allie said. “Mommy and Mama are cool.”

  They didn’t make it to the water. Ten feet from the rock, Susanna leaned over and puked into the sea snail–dotted sand. A foul fountain of half-digested eggs. Allie stroked Susanna’s shuddering back as the mother of her children heaved again and again.

  knife in the back

  Leigh

  Leigh woke in the deck chair, her mouth dry and face sweaty from the blazing sun overhead. She had indulged in a rare Charlotte-free nap, since Tenzin had offered to put the baby down for a nap in the house.

  Tiffany stood at the foot of Leigh’s chaise, toweling her trim legs. Her tan breasts were dusted with flecks of sand, and seawater dripped from the curled ends of her hair.

  “Why, hello there, Sleeping Beauty,” Tiffany said. “Oopsy, did I get you wet?”

  Leigh looked up, shielding her eyes, but all she could see were the curves of Tiffany’s silhouette, black against the dazzling blue sky.

  “Don’t you wear sunblock?” Tiffany asked. “You’ll be one of those wrinkly old ladies playing bridge at the country club.”

  “Very funny,” Leigh said.

  “Oh my God, Susanna just puked her guts out on the beach.”

  “Oh no,” Leigh said. “Is she okay?”

  “Yeah. She just got worked up over the kids. You know how she is,” Tiffany said, one eyebrow raised.

  Tiffany plucked a beer from the cooler by the seawall. She wrenched the cap off with her back teeth, her purplish lips spread wide, big square teeth bared.

  “Jeez!” Leigh said, forcing a laugh. “You’re going to break a tooth.”

  “That’s what they teach you at community college,” Tiffany said. “Here, live a little.”

  She pushed the beer toward Leigh in a gesture that implied a command, and although Leigh didn’t want it, she took it, figuring she could dump it out later.

  She leaned forward and playfully slapped Tiffany’s leg.

  “Michael’s such a cutie! That’s awesome that he came out this weekend. I think Nicole’s got a crush,” Leigh said, and lifted her beer in a toast, knowing Tiffany would like the idea of someone’s desiring her man.

  Tiffany’s cocktail glass clinked against Leigh’s bottle, and beer splashed onto Leigh’s white shorts.

  “Sorry about that, babe,” Tiffany said, easing down on the end of Leigh’s lounge chair, and leaning in toward her. “You didn’t hear us last night, did you?”

  “Hear what?”

  “Liar!” Tiffany’s eyes danced as she tried to suppress her grin. “Shit. I knew it. The whole house must’ve heard.” She bounced on the chair and its rusted springs groaned.

  “Careful,” Leigh said. “This patio furniture might be older than Nicole’s parents.”

  “Well, honestly, I don’t care if Michael and I pissed everyone off. It was totally worth it.”

  “Good,” Leigh said, as matter-of-factly as she could.

  Tiffany lowered her voice. “It was hot, Leigh-Leigh,” she said. “I mean, it’s always hotter in someone else’s bed, right? But that mattress Nic put us on is about a thousand years old and disgusting. I was thinking I’d never sleep on the thing, let alone fuck around on it, but Michael wanted a BJ the second we turned off the light. We didn’t have sex-sex. Just oral. But he wouldn’t quit! It was like he was on E or something. I think spending all day with mommies in bathing suits worked him up. He hardly ever goes down on me like that, but—”

  “You can’t get me!” Tenzin’s melodic voice rang out from the beach below. “I’m too fast!”

  Tiffany paused, and Leigh took the opportunity to escape from Tiffany’s porny story, hopping up from the chaise and striding over to the seawall.

  “Hey, Tenzin!” Leigh called out, marveling at her nanny’s typical perfect timing. Just when she’d been prickling with discomfort from Tiffany’s oversharing.

  “Hel-LO, Leigh!” Tenzin sang back.

  Leigh turned back to Tiffany, who had stretched out completely in the chaise, like a sleek jungle cat basking in the sun.

  “God, I love Tenzin,” Leigh said, impulsively.

  “I love her, too,” Tiffany said, her eyes half-closed. “Though I wish she’d come down a dollar an hour. I keep asking, but she’s not budging.”

  “Really? I’d pay her twenty dollars an hour if I had to.”

  “Well,” Tiffany said, “you have money.” She paused to detangle her hair from the sunglasses atop her head, then lowered them over her eyes. She smiled up at the sky dreamily. “Hell, I’ll watch Chasey for twenty bucks an hour. I love that kid.”

  “You do?” Leigh said.

  “Of course I do,” Tiffany said, as if Leigh had asked an obvious question.

  Leigh felt teary with gratitude. Tiffany had never expressed affection for Chase so plainly. No one had. She took another small sip of the beer Tiffany had forced on her. Less than a third of the bottle was gone, but under the hot sun, it had gone straight to her head.

  Squeals from the children collided with screeches from the gulls.

  “Let’s get ’em!” a boy yelled.

  “Um, while we’re on the topic.” Leigh began, her pulse quickening, the way it did when she knew she was about to confess something to Tiffany. Usually, these confessions were via text. In person, she was blushing. “I wanted to ask you something about Chase. And school for next year.”

  “Shoot,” said Tiffany, crooking her elbow over her forehead. “Damn, it’s hot. I need another drink and half a cigarette.”

  “Well,” Leigh said, “you know I respect Chase’s therapists. They’ve changed our lives immeasurably. But”—she paused—“they’re saying he needs a closed classroom next year. One of the small ones for special-needs kids.”

  Tiffany nodded solemnly, “Okay. Well, there were twenty-nine in the gen-ed pre-K classes last year.”

  “Jesus,” Leigh whispered.

  “I know. It’s fucking tragic.”

  “I mean, I just thought he was doing so much better,” Leigh said. “There’s been more listening. Less hitting. He’s even telling stories. Like little fantasies he has in his head. It’s so sweet. And age-appropriate! It just seems”—she paused—“I mean, have you seen those kids? The kids in the closed classrooms? They’re just so delayed. I mean … there are kids with Down’s.”

  “You don’t have to whisper the word.” Tiffany laughed. “It’s not like they have cancer.”

  Before Leigh could defend herself, explain that she certainly did not mean th
at, Tiffany spoke again. “Chase has been regressing in music class.” She squinted, as if it hurt to be the bearer of bad news. “And he did bite Harper last week.”

  Leigh felt as if time had slowed. A shift occurred. Hadn’t Tiffany just said she adored Chase?

  “I guess,” Leigh said slowly. “But they were both bugging each other. You know how they are? Harper kind of nags at him.”

  She wanted to say, Harper incessantly criticizes him, picks at him. Tells him he’s too loud, too messy, too this, and too that.

  “She is going through a bit of a bossy phase,” Tiffany whispered, as if Harper were nearby.

  You mean an oppositional defiant phase, Leigh thought, plucking a term from Tiffany’s own early child development–speak.

  “It’s hard for Chase.” Leigh knew she was defending him. Worse, she was defending herself. “Harper is so”—she searched for a safe word—“attached to her toys.”

  Your little girl was breaking the cardinal rule of playgroups, Leigh thought. Harper wasn’t sharing. She was torturing Chase, taking away toy after toy, every single pony (and there were a dozen at least) and hiding them in her bedroom. Tiffany, as usual, had done nothing, ignoring Harper’s cruel game until Leigh had worried she couldn’t trust her own interpretation, that maybe she was just falling prey to her dislike of the little girl.

  “Like you say in music class,” Leigh forced herself to say, “sharing is caring.”

  Tiffany picked at the peeling green polish on her toenails.

  “I don’t know, Leigh. A contained class might be the best fit for Chase.”

  How could she say that? That Chase would be better off with the kids who had behavior issues so severe they were destined never to be mainstreamed? Her Chase didn’t even have a diagnosis. He was just a little slow at developing. Wasn’t it Tiffany herself who had reassured Leigh that most boys like Chase caught up by age four?

  “There’s a difference,” Leigh said, “between biting and being stuffed in a class with retarded children.”