Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

Chase’s therapists — the well-meaning young (and mostly childless) women who came into their home eight times a week and who insisted on calling Leigh and Brad “Mom” and “Dad”—told them Chase needed more “sensory feedback.” Deep bear hugs and pillow sandwiches and wrestling matches with Dad. They made it sound as if he needed a padded room.

Give him what he needs, they said, as if offering a cure. Couldn’t they see she had needs too? Leigh needed to be able to hug her son when he was awake. But the only touch Chase accepted was the tight pressure of his weighted therapy vest and the rough-and-tumble wrestling.

When her phone vibrated on the nightstand next to the rocking chair, Chase twitched and let out a whimper before his head fell back, openmouthed.

It was a text from Tiffany. She texted Leigh this time every night, after Harper went down, after the bottle of Malbec had been drained, after she’d snuck a cigarette on her balcony (only six blocks from Leigh’s brownstone) overlooking the oil-coated Gowanus Canal. They’d text back and forth for hours sometimes, until Leigh’s fingers ached from typing on her keypad.

Tiffany:

get down here and save me you biotch. nicole’s whining again. but she’s got good weed!

Leigh texted back, hoping Tiffany couldn’t tell she was lying, hoping the cringe she felt when Tiffany talked about sex and drugs hadn’t infected her tone.

ha! you are crazy. baby on my boob. rain check? xo

Tiffany:

um, ok. I guess. (; I need to talk to you 1st thing tom am about what time Tenzin can be w me on thursdays. k?

Leigh didn’t respond, hoping that if she avoided the topic long enough, Tiffany would give up. Tiffany had backed her into a corner, and as hard as Leigh tried, she could not ignore the tremor of anger she felt. She tried to chalk it up to Tiff’s being tipsy, or her native tactlessness. After all, the woman had grown up practically feral somewhere in the farm country of Long Island. Terrible, awful things had happened to her. Tiffany had revealed snippets of her dark backstory in their late-night texts. Her abandonment by her mother at the fragile age of nine, her father’s alcoholism, the rape at a party after she moved to NYC, the drugs, the sex, the abortions.

At first, Leigh had felt smothered under the weight of all that badness, but Tiff’s honesty about how utterly soiled and broken she was made Leigh feel safe. After Leigh had taken (at the time, she had thought of it as borrowing) the money from the fundraising-committee account, she began answering Tiffany’s texts more often. Leigh’s own crime paled a shade or two in the glaring light of poor messy foot-in-her-mouth Tiffany’s decades of error.

Every time Tiffany teased Leigh about her family’s wealth — all those country-club and debutante jokes, and quips about sorority girls wearing pearls with their letter sweatshirts — Leigh wanted to tell Tiffany the truth. Her family had been rich decades ago, but now they were rich in name only. The family firm had nosedived in the crash of 2008, after Leigh’s father had invested big in subprime mortgages. Leigh lost the three-thousand-dollar monthly allowance her father had been depositing in an account under Leigh’s name since she went off to college. Brad had to scramble for extra work, consulting jobs he hated, and his resentment of Leigh, of her family, had built a wall between them. The slightest mention of having another baby, the costs of the IVF, set Brad into a rage, ranting about their maxed-out credit cards and mortgage payments, insisting they get back on their feet before spending more money on “getting” (he always used this verb, as if they were purchasing a child, Leigh thought) a baby, usually ending with the front door slamming, Leigh alone with Chase for hours.

She had drained the remainder of her allowance account for the first visits to the fertility doctor, and then the Clomid treatments, and the artificial insemination attempts with Brad’s sperm. When Chase turned two and a half, they’d been trying for a second baby for twenty months. Her fortieth birthday loomed. She knew other women would have been patient, kept trying until they conceived naturally. Forty wasn’t that old, especially in Brooklyn. Twenty months wasn’t that long. But Leigh had never wanted anything so badly. Enough to steal. When Charlotte was finally conceived, Leigh felt certain that the risk she’d taken — the first of her life — had been worth it. She had sworn to herself that, when her new baby was born, she wouldn’t love Chase any less.

Now, rocking slowly in the chair, staring at the blue light of her phone screen, an anxious sweat coated Leigh’s upper lip as she remembered Tiffany’s grip on her arm that afternoon when Leigh had tried to walk away, tried to avoid surrendering Tenzin.

She had almost fallen asleep in the rocking chair, her chest sticky with Chase’s sweat, when her phone vibrated. Another text from Tiffany.

look out your window at exactly 12:35 don’t forget!!

When her phone read 12:32, Leigh rose from the rocking chair, Chase deadweight in her arms. Her back throbbed, but still she went to the window, Tiffany’s command like the call of a mythological siren luring her forward.

Allie set matchingsippy cups of water at the foot of the air mattress where both boys slept in that tangle of arms and legs that still amazed her. Levi’s sunburned cheek rested on Dash’s shoulder. Dash’s right arm was flung across Levi’s chest.

Susanna waddled into the room, looking depleted, her perfumed wrist tucked under her nose.

“You okay there?” Allie asked.

Susanna let out a gassy burp, and Allie laughed. It was so un-Susanna. Allie guessed Susanna had been on one of her secret fridge raids.

“It’s not funny,” Susanna said. “I just puked my brains out.”

“Well,” Allie said, “it’s a good thing I’m the smart one in the family.”

Allie was relieved — comedy was her personal ice-breaker — when Susanna smiled.

“I hope they’re best friends forever,” Allie said, nodding at the sleeping boys and thinking of her own brother, a banker (a Catholic, for fucksake) and how he and she couldn’t have been more different. “You know, so they can look out for each other. Levi might need Dash to take care of him.”

“Come on, Allie,” Susanna said, “we have to create positive expectations, so the boys can strive to meet them.”

When had Susanna turned into a walking, talking inspirational poster? Allie wondered.

Susanna struggled to reach her bra clasp, the globe of her belly swerving from side to side.

“This effing bra’s killing me. Can you help me get it off, please?”

“Not until you say the F-word properly,” Allie said.

“Fine. Fuck.” Susanna stamped her foot. “Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.”

The tops of Susanna’s heavy breasts jiggled, and Allie imagined kissing the milk white skin, using her tongue to trace the green veins that glowed so vividly in pregnancy, leading, like a map, to Susanna’s dark nipples.

“Good girl,” Allie said.

She slipped her hands inside Susanna’s maternity shirt, something shapeless and pastel from Old Navy or one of those stores that should be making uniforms instead of clothing.

Allie tried to remember Susanna’s flirtatious confidence, the self-righteous tilt of her head that had gripped Allie’s attention in the studio class she’d taught at Parsons years ago. Susanna the girl. Her dark hair in a ponytail that swung when she nodded during Allie’s lectures. Allie had gone home after each class with thoughts of that ponytail. Of winding it around her fist and pulling it so Susanna’s torso (unmarred by pregnancy) arched like a bow, Allie’s hand sliding into Susanna’s panties from behind. A living sculpture of taut curves.