Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

“Daddy’s my best buddy,” Wyatt said, pouting. “Now is the carousel weekend.”

“The carousel will be there when we get back, Wy,” Josh said. “It’ll be there all fall. And we’ll go for the whole day. And ride it twenty times. Okay?”

Nicole imagined the carousel in all its renovated glory, the wooden horses with their flowing manes and muscled bodies, and behind it, lower Manhattan in apocalyptic smolder.

She waited until Josh was busy brushing his cheek against the cheeks of each of the mommies in pretend kisses, then she went into the kitchen, and dug the sliver of Xanax from her pocket. It was only a half of a pill, she told herself. She downed it with a swig of flat root beer, the crumbling pill bitter on her tongue.

She snapped the rubber band on her wrist five times. The quick bite of the rubber catching her arm hairs refocused her.

Then she washed her hands.

Nicole had read and reread the CDC’s guidelines on how to wash to avoid disease. Hot water. As hot as she could stand. Wash top and bottom, between fingers, under nails, and up your wrists. Due to the overuse of sanitizers, the site had informed, the Supergerms’ favorite hiding place is the wrists. Finally, you wiped your hands with a towel, and then — this was the tricky part — used the towel to turn off the faucet.

Josh walked into the kitchen and stopped in front of her, his hands on his hips in a stance she had always disliked because it felt effeminate, and she wanted him to be manly. Rocklike. Unbreakable. She also expected him to banish her daily worries with maternal-style tenderness — a hypocrisy he had pointed out in their couples’ therapy. Since they’d met at college, so many years ago, Josh had been the first and only person who could put Nicole almost at ease, who made her feel almost safe, and despite his gentle voice that was just a note too high, he’d always had muscular forearms, with thick cords of vein that wriggled under his skin and indicated pumping blood and strength.

“Nic,” Josh said, his voice nearly a whisper. His chin was tucked to his chest, and his large brown eyes (Wyatt’s eyes, she thought) looked up at her — one part concern, one part inspection.

He stepped closer and took her in his arms and into the warmth of his body. Its solidity was a sudden comfort. His smell, which had always reminded her of cinnamon, made her feel as if she was home, made her realize how exhausted she was and how badly she wanted him to lift her, like a sleeping child, and carry her upstairs to the bedroom, where she would lie next to him, sleep comalike all night and through the next day. Dead to the mommies and daddies waiting below. Dead to the relentless forward momentum of the world. Oh, how she wished she could die and come back to life after the doomsday warning had expired. Because it wasn’t the end she feared, so much as the waiting for it not to happen.

Josh massaged her scalp with his fingertips, and said, “You’ve got to relax. This worrying isn’t good for you. Or for Wyatt.”

She closed her eyes and let her head rock back and forth with the sliding of his fingers.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

She knew what he really meant was, do we need to have a talk? Do I have to call Dr. Greenbaum to schedule an intervention where we can discuss upping your meds? Do I have to hide the dish sponge so you don’t scrub your hands raw, Nicole? Do I have to conceal the knife block behind the microwave so you don’t perseverate (a verb he’d gleaned from their couples’ therapy) about slicing yourself every time you walk into the kitchen?

“Aw, you are so sweet, honey,” Nicole said, in a voice she knew sounded both appreciative and condescending. “I’m fine.”

The Xanax spread through her like liquid calm, and as she blew on her hands that burned pink, she almost believed herself.

It had been overa year since Rip first began calling himself a mommy.

In the beginning, it had been a joke.

Now, they, the mommies, were the only ones who understood it was no longer a joke. Nicole, Susanna, and Tiffany.

Even Leigh. Although, Rip thought, the discomfort Leigh felt around him was obvious. Like that afternoon, when she’d turned her head as he kissed her hello.

Rip stood on the deck alone, the cool sea air lapping at the back of his sunburned neck. He looked out at the Long Island Sound, as dark and still as a lake, only the occasional hesitant wave kicked up by one of the motorboats in the distance. It saddened him, this sea without any waves, as if it had been rendered impotent by the land on each side, as if it were cowering between two bullies.

He was buzzed. Or maybe more than that, because he’d lost count of the beers he’d put back since he, Hank, and Grace had driven out that afternoon. Grace had insisted they listen to some peppy kids’ album instead of Rip’s music, claiming the mix of grunge and rock was far too mature, that it “terrified” Hank, an argument that had led them, somehow, to a revisiting of that past week’s most popular debate. To buy or not to buy Hank the princess dress set (gown, tiara, and plastic shoes included) their son had coveted for so long.

“Just like Harper’s,” Hank had lisped, a dreamy look sedating his features.

As if, Rip thought, Hank was envisioning himself in a faraway land, he and his friend Harper frolicking among singing animals and Technicolor toadstools, a fairy-tale castle sparkling in the distance.

Rip was pro princess dress. Grace, con. He urged Grace to be open-minded, to let Hank express his unique fantasies. This was 2010, after all, a boy could wear a princess dress.

By the time they had crossed the causeway, Rip had opened his window to let in the mix of tangy brine and aging honeysuckle, and to drown out Grace’s half of their argument, which had now graduated to what had been their #1 hit on the squabbling chart for the last six months. The debate over whether they should have another kid.

Once again: Rip, pro; Grace, con.

Now, as the sun slipped closer to the sea, Rip dug his elbows into the concrete seawall and ran his hands over his stubbled face. Yet another perk, he thought with a smile, of the stay-at-home-daddy life. Not having to shave every day.

His fingers still smelled like the coconut-scented sun lotion he had lathered on the kids. At playdates, the undesirable child-care tasks often fell to him, and soon after he and Hank and Grace had arrived at the beach house, he’d been silently elected sunscreen applicator and grappled with one squirming kid after another as he applied, and reapplied, the BabyGanics organic sunscreen.

He had invited Grace along that weekend with hopes that a few days among his mommies would inspire her, would pluck at her biological heartstrings. Maybe the sight of the kids on the beach — their sun-browned skin, their boundless enthusiasm, their wonder over every shell, crab, and minnow, would change her mind. His plan was already backfiring. Hank had loathed the beach, acting as if each grain of sand was a personal assault. And there was already tension between Grace and Tiffany. He could tell, as soon as he’d introduced them, that there’d be pecking between them before the weekend was over.

But, Rip thought — and there was always a but for Rip. He considered himself a believer. Not in God per se, but in man. In Rip. In self-actualization. When the doctors had told him and Grace that it might be difficult for Rip to have children, he had torn the reins from Fate’s gnarled hands and steered that chariot to fatherhood. With a little help from an anonymous sperm donor, of course. Still, the day Hank had been born, wrinkled and swollen, Rip knew the boy was his own. He had wanted to shout down the pale yellow corridors of the maternity ward. Fuck Fate! I have a son!