Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

“Tenzin says she’s cool with it. She really wants the cash.”

Leigh felt a blush of humiliation at the thought of Tenzin and Tiffany conspiring behind her back.

“Other side,” Harper demanded, and swiveled around in her mother’s lap. Wordlessly, Tiffany tucked one breast back into her shirt and extracted the other.

“And Tenzin said she’s super happy to do a share,” Tiffany said, leaning close until Leigh could see the depression in the woman’s nostril where her nose had once been pierced. “Which would be great, Leigh. ’Cause it would save sooo much money.”

And, Leigh thought, I’d come home to Chase in hysterics after hours of Harper-abuse. No one riled Chase like Harper, and Tiffany’s laissez-faire discipline only made matters worse.

The lusty suck of Harper’s nursing deepened, and Leigh felt the girl’s shining eyes watching her, waiting for a reaction. As if Harper hoped Leigh would defy Tiffany, knowing it would make for entertainment. All the kids were drama junkies, their little noses in the air, sniffing out the slightest hint of blood drawn between the mommies. Especially Harper.

Leigh slid out of Tiffany’s grasp and stood. She sniffed at Charlotte and wrinkled her nose. “Oopsy! Got to change this baby girl’s diaper.”

“Just think about it, okay?” Tiffany tugged on the hem of Leigh’s seersucker skirt. “Okay? If I can’t promise Shabbat Tots Tuesdays and Thursdays they won’t give me either.”

“Okay,” Leigh said, hoping she could smooth this Tenzin business out later because suddenly she was exhausted. Her mouth was so dry that her lips stuck together when she tried to speak, to explain that she needed more time to think about it, but Tiffany interrupted her again.

“Oh my God, I love you!” Tiffany squealed and pounced on her, pulling Leigh into a hug, nearly jostling the baby out of Leigh’s arms and sending Harper tumbling to the floor.

Tiffany’s hot breath was in her ear. “You really are my best mommy friend. I’ll make this up to you. I fucking swear it.”

Leigh couldn’t tell Tiffany right then she’d meant okay, as in okay, I’ll think about it. Not okay, you can have the hours. You can have Tenzin. The throbbing behind her eyes sent a wave of nausea crashing over her, and Leigh thought she’d vomit right there, with the baby in her arms. Tiffany had pulled her knitting project from her tote bag, and her fingers were already dancing at the tips of the bamboo needles, the yarn trailing over Harper’s boob-absorbed face.

Leigh retreated to the darkest corner, by the fireplace, trying to avoid the sun that glinted off every surface in the white-walled room.

Nothing is permanent, she told herself, yet another Tenzin mantra. This pain is temporary.

She was no different from the other mommies, she thought. She was scared of Tiffany.

She remembered the night at Jakewalk a few weeks earlier, when Susanna, with Nicole’s assistance, had tried to coax Tiffany into leaving the bar with them. Tiffany was practically sitting in that guy’s lap, Leigh thought, remembering Tiffany’s eyes, which had grown impossibly wide with rage, the look of someone unhinged.

Harper, her cheeks flushed pink, climbed off Tiffany’s lap and joined Hank in threading yarn through tiny nature-made holes in the shells they had collected. A task Leigh knew Chase would never sit for.

Chase skipped over and planted a kiss on Harper’s cheek.

“That’s very sweet, Chase,” Leigh said, trying to mask the surprise in her voice.

Her son stepped back and chewed his lower lip in shy satisfaction.

Harper scoured her cheek with the heel of her hand. “Yuck!”

Leigh longed to yank the girl’s red-gold hair.

“But. I miss you, Harper,” Chase said.

Leigh knew this was his way — his only way — of saying I love you.

He was a good boy. He was. Despite what the city’s Early Intervention psychologist had said about Chase’s “social-emotional delays” preventing him from forming “purposeful relationships” with the other children, on and on until Leigh’s eyes had stung with contained tears.

Her boy loved people. Why couldn’t they see that?

Rip had just crackedopen another beer when the screen door opened again, and Hank appeared, squinting against the fiery orange globe that rested on the horizon. Grace stood behind Hank, her hand nudging him out the door.

“What’s up?” Rip asked.

“Go to Daddy,” Grace said.

The screen door slapped shut.

“Hey, buddy,” Rip said, taking one of Hank’s warm hands in his own, pulling him gently away from the door. “Mommy sounds frustrated.”

Mommy sounds effing pissed off, Rip thought.

“Are, are there buggies?” Hank asked as his fearful eyes scanned the deck.

“Hey, bud,” Rip said. “Come on over here and check out this awesome sunset.”

Hank shuffled forward like a timid baby penguin. “No ’squitos?”

“No mosquitoes,” Rip repeated, and wondered, for the hundredth time, how Hank was going to survive the big bad world.

“Daddy?”

“What’s wrong?” Rip asked when he saw Hank’s raised eyebrows and the tremor in his chin.

“I’m sad,” Hank said in a breathy whisper.

“Why, sweetheart?” Rip asked as he ruffled the boy’s hair, as thick and black as Grace’s and, Rip imagined, the generations of Chos before her.

“’Cause Mommy got mad at Mama Tiff.”

“Oh, I see,” Rip said, making a mental note to tell Grace to cool it. These were his friends, after all. “I’m sure Mommy was just being a silly old thing.”

“And ’cause I missed you, Daddy.”

Rip felt as if he’d been punched in the gut. He wanted to run into the house and drop to his knees in front of Grace, beg her to give him another baby so that this feeling of being needed could be prolonged, even if just for another few years.

He pulled Hank into his arms and squeezed, breathing in the apple-scented shampoo he ( he! ) had made for his little boy, until Hank squealed, “Ouchy, Daddy!”

He lifted Hank and slung the boy’s pudgy legs over the rail. Hank stiffened, scrambling for Rip’s neck.

“Don’t worry. Daddy’s got you.” He wrapped an arm around Hank’s waist. “See?”

Hank relaxed and looked down at his feet dangling over the massive boulders that formed a double seawall. The occasional wave splashed over the rocks, spritzing foam up onto Hank’s naked brown feet.

“Oooooh, Daddy,” Hank giggled. “It’s freezing.”

The pink light of the sunset magnified Hank’s delicate beauty. The cherubic face and rose-tinted cheeks. The puckered mouth, lips ever apart, and those thick lashes Rip both loved and despised because they made strangers on the street stop and exclaim, What a beautiful little girl! Those weren’t Grace’s lashes, and they certainly weren’t his, and he hated himself, as he always did when he ruined a moment full of love for Hank with that reminder. Hank wasn’t his. He was Grace + anonymous sperm donor #1332.

The still surface of the water rippled, and a slice of silver rose against the bruised sky. Rip’s breath caught in his throat. Then another flash rose and another, until the air just above the blue plain was slashed with tiny glimmering fish flipping in and out of the water.

“Daddy! Do you see? Do you see?”

“It’s a school of magical fish,” Rip said, and winked.

“Daddy, look! You missing it,” Hank cried, and laid one warm, cookie-scented hand on each of Rip’s unshaven cheeks, turning Rip’s head to the water.

“Okay, buddy, okay.” Rip laughed, certain the fish had been sent, their dance choreographed, just for him and his son.