Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

He heard the screen door squeak open behind them and when he turned he saw Michael, Tiffany’s fiancé, step onto the deck. He wore a scuffed black motorcycle jacket, and the sun made the silver studs wink a fiery light. Harper ran out from behind him.

Hank shouted with breathy excitement, “Hah-per! We saw magic silver fish. Jumping and flipping.”

Harper was Hank’s only real playmate in the group, and Rip knew this friendship was born from necessity. Only Harper had the focus to sit for the passive activities Hank loved, like drawing, painting, or making necklaces from Cheerios and uncooked elbow macaroni. And only Hank would do whatever Harper commanded when the other boys abandoned her for a game of you-can’t-catch-me or superheroes.

As if she could read Rip’s mind, Harper ordered, “Come on, Hank,” and pointed to the corner of the deck where they had secreted their hoard of seashells, pebbles, and a few pieces of blanched driftwood.

“Okay!” Hank said.

Rip lifted Hank off the seawall and then Harper took Hank’s hand, tugging him to the corner.

Rip had heard Tiffany brag about her baby’s father at many a Friday afternoon playgroup. Michael had knit Harper’s stroller blanket, white sheep on a green pasture. With wool he had spun and dyed himself! Michael had his yoga certification. Michael had been a potter in an earlier life. There’s nothing sexier than a man who can throw his own vase, Tiffany had said with a smoky laugh, then her voice had fallen to a conspiratorial hush, forcing Rip and the other mommies to lean even closer. Michael always pleased her first in bed, she had whispered before breaking into a deluge of drunken giggling.

Rip had imagined a mild, maybe even effeminate man, but it was true what Nicole had said one Friday, on a day Tiffany and Harper were absent from the playgroup. Michael had looks. Like indie-film-star looks. Even Rip could see that. The punkish tangle of brown-black curls, short in back, long on top. Just enough grease to claim hipsterhood. Thick sideburns that accented his chiseled jawbone. Cool in the most casual way.

Of course, the topic of Michael, especially as Tiffany’s wineglass emptied, had also opened the gates to a flood of complaints, all delivered Tiffany-style; big gestures, exaggerated expressions, a choreographed performance. But didn’t they all gripe about their significant others on Friday afternoons?

Michael gave Rip a slight nod of recognition and walked toward him with a disinterested saunter. Rip was certain Michael had been that guy, the aloof bad boy all the girls had swooned over in high school.

“What’s up, man?” Rip said, holding out his hand.

Michael clasped his hand, and Rip caught a whiff of something both sweet and heavy, like pipe tobacco.

“Yeah,” Michael said slowly, “sure. I know you. You make the balloon animals at the park, right?” Michael continued, “Hank’s dad. Sorry, I suck with names.”

“Rip,” he said, hiding his displeasure. Was he so forgettable?

“Cool. Yeah. Rip. Of course! Tiff’s wild about you.”

There was something in the way he said that, the escalation of recognition, that made Rip think of Tiffany and Michael in bed, their lithe, naked bodies like two serpents writhing. He shook the scene from his head with a slug from his beer.

Michael bowed his head to light a cigarette that seemed to have magically appeared. He cupped his hand around the flame, but the wind had picked up, and it took the two of them to get it lit, their hands cupped together.

“Hey, man,” Michael said, and thumbed over his shoulder at the door. “Shhh.” He winked at Rip as he lifted his cigarette.

Rip knew that if he had tried to wink at someone, especially another man, he’d look like a fool.

“Got you, dude,” Rip said and plunged his hand into the cooler’s icy water, retrieving two Coronas. He handed one to Michael.

“Thanks,” Michael said. “I’m down to just a few smokes a day. And treasure every single drag. If you know what I mean.”

Michael held the cigarette between his thumb and forefinger. Like the Marlboro Man, Rip thought. The way Michael’s eyes squinted with pleasure when he took a drag made Rip hunger for a smoke, but he knew if Grace caught him, it would give her yet another excuse to put off trying to get pregnant the old-fashioned way. Your body is full of toxins, she’d say.

“Yeah, I hear you,” Rip said. “Grace made me quit when she got pregnant.” He found himself wanting to say something clever. “I used to sneak them out on the fire escape. But one night I was drunk and almost fell off.”

This wasn’t necessarily a lie but also wasn’t necessarily the truth, and Rip was surprised by how much he enjoyed Michael’s response. A knowing smile. Like they were cut from the same cloth. Or the same piece of badass vintage leather, Rip thought.

Then Rip realized, with a jolt, that his eyes had been off Hank for too long. He imagined Hank’s head dashed against the seaweed-strewn rocks, his little boy’s body floating facedown. He whirled around and there were the two kids sitting quietly in the corner of the deck, a mound of sand between them. Hank was removing each wave-washed pebble with great precision and dropping it in the bucket. Ping, ping. Delicate and fastidious as always. Like a detective on one of those CSI cop shows, Rip thought. Harper sifted through the sand with her toes, her skirt hitched at her waist, panties bared, shins dotted with bruises.

“Whoa,” Rip said, taking a breath and slapping his chest as if he’d choked on something, “Sorry. I just freaked out. I never forget him like that.” Just in case Michael might think he was one of those dads, the kind that left their kid dangling from the monkey bars while they updated their Facebook status on their iPhone.

“Don’t sweat it,” Michael said, “I’ve had plenty of moments like that. Where it’s like Harp has vanished from the playground.”

Rip felt a decline in their conversation, a momentary pause, like a record skipping, a common side effect in the sleep-deprived and distraction-rich early years of parenthood.

“Look at these guys,” Rip said, nodding at Hank and Harper’s pebble-sorting project. “Some sand. A few rocks. And they’re in heaven.”

“They’re pretty awesome,” Michael said. “They know what’s up.”

“What do you do for work again?” Rip asked, sheepish as usual. He loathed asking the question since he’d been asked it so often, forced to admit he was doing his job right then and there. His J-O-B was watching his kid.

Michael shook his head. “Meaningless crap. I edit videos for infomercials. Internal films for corporations. Like,” Michael altered his voice so he sounded like the Moviefone guy. “There are five points in the star of teamwork!”

Harper and Hank looked up. Harper shouted, “You’re silly, Daddy!”

Michael smiled and gave them a comical bow. Still, there was something unintentionally graceful and James Dean-esque about it, Rip thought.

“It’s a paycheck,” Rip said.

“Yeah,” Michael said, a smile lifting his stubbled jaw. “You got it.”

He likes me, Rip thought, and felt his cheeks flush. What was he? Some kid in freakin’ grade school?

“But like I was saying,” Michael said. “Kids have got their S-H-I-T together, if you know what I mean. They got, like, perspective. We don’t give them enough credit.”

“Totally,” Rip said, nodding in agreement, thinking this was exactly what he’d said many times at the playgroup, where it seemed the mommies demanded too much from the kids. The mommies expected the kids to have the self-control of adults. No one wants to be friends with a nose-picker. Only babies suck their thumbs. Cookies are for good boys only. Why would you want a child to feel shame when you knew adult life was chock-full of it?