Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

The cool breeze sifting through the window screen made her skin ripple with a chill, and she leaned over Susanna’s belly ( Tell me if I hurt you, she said) and rubbed her hardened nipples against Susanna’s chest. But the way Susanna’s breasts fell to each side, the flat field of skin between a sickly white in the moonlight, made Allie close her eyes. As they slid together, Allie’s prickled skin warmed and she conjured another Susanna — a ponytailed Susanna, her breasts high and firm, a V of young cleavage resting between them as she sat atop another Allie in a hotel room in Philly, their pelvic bones grinding, their tongues twining, the bedsheet wet.

They tried, but Susanna’s belly was like an unscalable mountain, and Susanna let out a giggle ( Sorry, the baby kicked ), and Allie was certain Susanna’s moans were too even to be authentic. Finally, Susanna tapped, then slapped Allie on the shoulder, whispering, “Stop, stop. Help me up!”

Allie lifted her face from between Susanna’s legs, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and gripped Susanna’s forearm. Susanna slid off the bed and onto her knees, a blur of loose white flesh. She wrapped a towel around herself, a butt cheek exposed, and hurried into the hall.

A few minutes later, Allie heard retching in the bathroom next door. Then the sound of water running through pipes. Then more retching.

Should she go in there? What could she do, really? Susanna had thrown up so many times with this baby. My baby, Allie thought, and then, our baby. It was part of the day’s routine, Susanna running to the bathroom to puke.

Allie lay on the bed and listened for more of the moans she’d heard earlier from down the hall, hoping (she surprised herself) that Tiffany and her man had gone for another round. But there was only Susanna’s heaving, Levi’s snoring, and Dash’s even breathing. The sounds of family.

She rolled onto her stomach, slipped her hand under her hips, and touched herself, rubbing in circles, the way she had always liked it, her face pressed into a pillow. She imagined Tiffany, one breast loosed from a diaphanous gown, her stare coy but inviting. Like Drost’s Bathsheba, whose eyes, Allie had thought on her first trip to the Louvre, shone with desire. She held her breath when she came. Levi mumbled. Dash’s hand crawled around his head until he found his pacifier.

She cleaned her fingers with a diaper wipe and pulled on a tank top. As she rummaged in her duffel for a pair of leggings, she heard feminine laughter outside, drifting up from the deck below. Then a voice: “Don’t! The rocks. You’ll kill yourself.”

Allie moved to the window and parted the thin synthetic curtains.

On top of the seawall, illuminated by a bright moon, stood Tiffany. She was naked, her hair loose around her, black against the blue-white of her back. She gazed straight ahead, as if in a trance.

She’s going to jump, Allie thought with a wave of panic as Tiffany rose to her toes — the shift of muscle under skin catching the moonlight — and dove off the wall.

There was a soft splash, then the black water rippled.

Nicole huddled ona lounge chair on the deck, her sweater pulled over her knees.

She sucked hard to keep the joint lit against the whip of the wind. Each gust pulled a trail of sparks over the seawall.

The weed had done little to numb her dread. Under the vast starry dome, the unknowable dwarfed her, and she felt more mortal than ever. Insignificant. Impermanent.

“God, you are such a narcissistic self-pitying freak,” she whispered aloud to crack the chain of worrying.

She thought of her mother, who was always calling Nicole to tell her that she was praying for her and for Wyatt, and even for Josh (aka the Jew Nicole had married). When something good happened, like when her first book sold, or when Josh was promoted, her mother’s response was, “My prayers have been answered!” As if, Nicole thought, her mother was trying to take credit for Nicole’s life, for the never-ending pile of decisions she struggled to make.

She picked a piece of rolling paper from her lip and watched the yellow-tinged wisps of cloud hurry across black sky. She tried to imagine God, the white-bearded Father in flowing robes she had known as a child, who, she had imagined, hovered somewhere up there, his muscled arm reaching down toward his children on earth.

“Thunder’s just the angels bowling,” her mother had told a young Nicole when she’d been frightened during summer storms. What a comfort that had been. When Nicole had learned, in seventh grade Earth Science, the real cause, the clash of cold and hot air, she’d been ashamed, wondering how could she have been so stupid.

What she’d give to be a girl again, believing in prayers, sleeping under the simpatico eyes of a Jesus who hung above her bed in a gold plastic frame. Before her mother left for Florida that July, they’d had the same futile God conversation.

“I can’t make myself believe, Mom.”

“Well,” her mother had said, “you certainly could try a bit harder.”

Nicole flinched as a fantasy shot through her mind like a film. Couldn’ t it happen any minute now? Like in the movies? A flash of light that fills every inch of the sky with the purest white, then a vacuum suck and a huge expelling, a wind trampling the earth with the force of a billion rabid horses with plutonium hooves.

She heard movement behind her and spun around with a frightened sound, more animal than human.

A tittering Tiffany appeared in baggy sweatpants and Michael’s black motorcycle jacket.

“Shit,” Nicole whispered, rolling her eyes. “You scared me.”

“Don’t drop the joint, whatever you do,” Tiffany said with a smile.

Nicole laughed and raised the joint along with her eyebrows. An offering. A howl of wind carried off orange sparks.

Tiffany huddled next to her, each on one of two chaise lounges pulled side by side. They wrapped beach towels around their shoulders and tucked them over their legs. The thick black leather of Michael’s jacket creaked as Tiffany lifted the joint to her mouth. Nicole cupped her hands around the glowing ember and saw the smudged mascara ringing Tiffany’s eyes.

“Fuck,” Tiffany said into her thick, smoky exhale. “It’s freezing. This is totally messing up my postorgasm high.” She laughed before a gale picked up her giggles and flung them into the sea.

“I thought there was something different about you,” Nicole said, not mentioning it was the musky scent of skin and come and sweat that now seemed so foreign to her own life. “You’re glowing.”

“Isn’t that what they tell pregnant women?”

Nicole tucked her head between her knees, her legs shielding the roach, and took a drag.

“Things must be great between you two,” Nicole said, trying to remember the last time she and Josh had sex somewhere other than their bedroom.

“Well,” Tiffany started, and Nicole could hear the calculating note in her voice, “I asked Michael which of the lesbian mommies he’d like to fuck. That set him off.”

“Jesus, Tiff.” Nicole laughed, although she had often admired and envied Tiffany’s damn-the-world attitude.

With a whine of impatience, Tiffany said, “Listen! So that led to which one I’d fuck.” She paused to take a hit off the joint. “In front of him, of course.”

“And?” Nicole asked.

“Who do you think?” she asked. “Allie, of course.”

“And Michael?”

“Susanna,” Tiffany said, with a tut-tutting headshake that made Nicole suspect Tiffany was hiding something. A bit of jealousy? Sometimes, Tiffany couldn’t stomach her own little mind games when it was her turn to be the underdog.