Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

“I hope I wasn’t too loud,” Tiffany said, a new energy lifting her voice. “It’s a good thing Harper was pooped. Out like a light.”

Tiffany gripped Nicole’s arm. Her eyes widened.

“Do you think anyone heard?” she asked.

Nicole knew Tiffany by now, and she knew Tiffany hoped the whole house had heard.

“It wasn’t actual sex, ” Tiffany said, “Just oral. But it’s really doing it for me lately. You know?”

Tiffany’s matter-of-fact tone threw Nicole off-balance. What could she say? Yes, she wished Josh were doing anything for her lately. Yes, she wished her libido hadn’t been flattened by antidepressants for the past three years.

“Ugh,” she groaned. “It’s been ages for me.”

Another reason not go back on her meds, she thought. As a girl, she’d masturbated daily, sometimes multiple times a day, and when she and Josh were first together, she’d been filled with a churning desire, which had only just now, almost three months meds-free, begun its shy return.

A clang of metal rang out from the side of the deck, and Nicole jumped.

“You’d think I’d be a bit more chill,” she said. “Under the stoned circumstances.”

Tiffany took a hit, and, holding her breath, squeaked, “Who, you?”

“Who me?” Nicole sang in tune to the “Cookie Jar” song Tiffany had performed in many a Tiff’s Riffs class.

“Yes you!”

Nicole finished, “Couldn’t be!”

Smoke trickled out with Tiffany’s laughter.

“I hate that song,” Tiffany said as she poked at the spit-flattened base of the joint with a nail polished green. “It’s all about guilt and shame.” She took another hit. “It’s enough to give some poor kid an eating disorder. I mean, who cares who took the cookie from the cookie jar?”

“You crack me up,” Nicole said. “Have you ever thought about writing? Or blogging? I bet you’d be great at it.”

“Maybe,” Tiffany said. She pulled the sweatshirt over her knees until only her toes, also painted in green polish, peeked out. Her silver toenail winked as she wiggled her toes. She wore a dreamy look, Nicole thought as she followed Tiffany’s stare across the Sound to the blur of industrial Connecticut that had always reminded Nicole of the lights of a distant carnival. But then she caught a befuddled look masking Tiffany’s face. It was the look Tiffany wore when the playgroup parents talked about books or films or politics, topics Tiffany dismissed with a wave of her hand, and, “You guys are too smart for me!”

Nicole thought it strange the way Tiffany played the ditz card when it suited her. When everyone knew Tiffany was smart in the ways that mattered most. Nicole remembered the ugly scene a few weeks back at the Jakewalk bar, on the group’s Girls’ Night Out. It was the kind of intelligence that snuck up on you when you least expected it.

They passed the joint back and forth until it was a brown-stained nub of wet paper. Nicole let it slip through her fingers into the black night.

“Lookie what I have,” Tiffany sang, and pulled a cigarette from behind her ear. “And I’ve got more.” She tapped the pocket of Michael’s jacket.

“Nice,” Nicole said.

“So,” Tiffany said, hugging herself, the lit cigarette dangling from her lips. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on, Nic?”

The emphasis on really, the questioning trill, made Nicole flinch, and she wondered if she’d heard Tiffany right, if the wind hadn’t mutated her words.

“What do you mean?” she said, when what she meant was, how on earth could you know? She had been so careful on urbanmama.com, not to use any details that would give her identity away, a choice that had made her think, Well, how crazy can I be, if I’m covering my tracks so well?

“Sweetie,” Tiffany said, “it’s obvious.”

“What?” Nicole laughed, hoping she sounded genuinely clueless.

“You were so doom-and-gloom all afternoon,” Tiffany said, “I mean, that whole thing with Josh and his bag on the sofa?”

Tiffany lifted her eyebrows, an expression that reminded Nicole of her own mother; disapproving.

“Maybe,” Tiffany continued, passing the cigarette to Nicole, “if you share, you’ll feel better. So, what’s up?”

“I don’t know,” Nicole said.

“You do know.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“Worse than your thing about swine flu? Worse than when you thought the city was being attacked by terrorists and texted Josh, like, twenty times?”

“Fuck,” Nicole said. “I’m a freak.” She squeezed out a small laugh.

“Just tell me, dammit. I’m not going anywhere until you do.” Tiffany pulled the lit cigarette from Nicole’s hand. “No judging, promise.” She took a drag, squinting against the smoke as the tip blazed red.

“I’m happy,” Nicole started. “I mean, I know.” She nodded somberly. “I seem miserable. Josh reminds me that every day. But I swear. In many ways, this is the happiest I’ve ever felt.”

“But are they the ways that matter?” Tiffany asked as she reached over and patted Nicole’s wind-chilled hand. “Look, Nic, if there’s anyone out here that understands, it’s me? I’m broken, too. Remember? I should be on a ton of drugs!”

How did Tiffany know she had stopped taking her meds, Nicole thought. What if Tiffany outed her to Josh, motivated by what Tiffany would call friendly concern ? Nicole imagined Tiffany’s slinking next to him, hooking her arm in his, whispering, You know, Josh, her hot breath in his ear, I’m worried about Nic .

Tiffany, Nicole thought, was not the frenemy any mom in her right mind would take on.

“I’m sorry,” Nicole blurted.

“What’s there to be sorry about?”

Tiffany pulled the crushed pack of American Spirits from the jacket pocket. She tapped two cigarettes out, tucked one between her puffy lips, gave the other to Nicole, and tossed the empty pack over the seawall.

Nicole stopped herself from mentioning pollution.

“I’ve been meaning to text you about last week,” Nicole said. “You know.” She paused. “The thing at the bar. With Susanna.”

“Pregnant women,” Tiffany said with a huff. “They’re certifiable.”

“Susanna was just”—Nicole paused—“so upset. You know how she is. Always mommying everyone.”

Tiffany mumbled something Nicole couldn’t hear.

Nicole continued, “She thought that — maybe — you were drunk. Vulnerable. That the guy was going to take advantage of you. And I got caught in the middle.”

What Nicole didn’t say was that they’d all been on Susanna’s side. Susanna had been the only one brave enough to tell Tiffany she’d had too many Cosmos, she was being loud, she was embarrassing them on this one night they’d all managed to get sitters or secure husbands to watch the kids, after they had squeezed into their before children clothes and straightened their hair and tweezed their eyebrows and shaved their legs in anticipation of Girls’ Night Out.

Nicole was anxious to change the subject now that she’d performed her apology, and she felt that shivering sense that time was both slowing down and speeding up, a precursor to her panic attacks.

“You know,” she said, “when I was a kid, I didn’t really appreciate this place.” She nodded to the thick woods at the end of the beach that led to acres of tangled and marshy nature preserve. “The woods — especially at night — creeped me out. I had two cats go in there and never come back. Oliver and Casper.”

“Probably coons,” Tiffany said.

“The ocean scared me, too,” Nicole said. “It’s not like in a pool. You can’t see what’s under you.”