Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

“Harper,” Leigh whispered. “That little…”

She readied herself to go down, tucking the edges of the blanket around Charlotte so it wouldn’t fly away, but then Chase was in the air, laughing, landing on Tiffany’s shoulders. Leigh felt relief spread through her limbs, like a drug taking effect, warm and fluid.

Could Tiffany really be so bad? No one made Chase smile that broadly. Definitely not Leigh herself though she tried, she was sure of it.

Tiffany was devoted to her, wasn’t she? Not a day went by without a text from Tiffany. An expression of adoration. miss you buddy! or luv ya lots!!

Leigh had woken that morning to her phone vibrating on the dresser. Texts from Tiffany.

The first had read:

Cool if I book Tenzie for Thurs afternoons? Can you let her go at noon, so she’s w me at 12:15? Thx again! U r the bestest!!

Another text had arrived only ten minutes later:

Did u get my text? Let me know! Thx xoxo

Followed by:

Everything ok? Need to confirm thursdays asap

Leigh had been changing Charlotte and trying to coax Chase out of bed where he lay puffy-faced and snoring. Then she had dashed into the bathroom after Rip had finished (the air freshener barely disguising the smell of his bowel movement) to shave her bikini line.

She had decided to ignore the texts, hoping Tiffany got the hint. Thursday afternoon Leigh was free. Free to sit on the Brooklyn Heights Promenade while Charlotte took her nap. Free to browse for curtain fabric on Etsy, to share photos of the kids on Facebook, and to strategize on how to get out of this goddamn fundraising-committee mess. She was Chase-free. Didn’t she deserve one afternoon of me time ? Wasn’t Tiffany always urging Leigh to do something nice for herself? And there was no one else to ask for help. The weekend sitter, a college student studying education, had admitted to feeling overwhelmed by watching both Chase and Charlotte, or at least when Chase was awake. The few times Nicole had asked her mother to come into the city to sit, her mother had left harried, her meticulously quaffed perm misshapen.

There was only Tenzin.

Tiffany’s final text that morning read:

Ok! Confirmed with Shabbat Tots so it’s all set. Thx a million my mommy bff (;

Leigh felt she’d been slapped across the face. Tiffany taking Tenzin from her, as casually as one child might pluck a toy train from the hand of another. Leigh’s single peaceful afternoon, undone by her so-called friend.

A huge loss, Leigh thought, when you had so little time left to lose.

Monday was coming. Her meeting with Kat Richards scheduled for eleven o’clock.

Rip watched asMichael chased Harper around the sandbar, a dollop of sunscreen on his outstretched hand. The little girl flitted around like one of the dragonflies skimming the dried seaweed on the beach. She shrieked when her father neared her and giggled as she took off again. Finally, Michael caught her and dabbed gobs of white goo across her forehead and cheeks.

“Stop! It!” Harper screamed.

Hank clamped a hand over each of his ears, looked at Rip, and moaned, “Too loud, Hah-per. Make her quiet, Daddy.”

Hank had been sitting alone on the sand, hiding from the sun under the floral umbrella whose fringe was dotted with dead ladybugs. Hank had folded what Rip guessed was at least twenty origami bunnies. Hank had learned origami at Green Hill , an elite gifted and talented program Grace had bent over backward to secure. Hank’s origami skills were a source of pride for Rip (clearly, the boy was beyond G&T), but who wanted twenty paper bunnies?

“Get! Off! Me!” Harper screeched, as Michael struggled to complete the sunscreen-application challenge. She flung her head from side to side, and Rip wondered if brain damage was in order.

Tiffany stood ten feet away, facing the water, silent, unmoving, not even glancing over her shoulder. Tiffany’s blind approach to parenting riled the other mommies to no end, but Rip believed in having a personal philosophy. And what were they going to do about it anyway? Tell Tiffany to give Harper a time-out? As if.

“Harper, please,” Michael begged.

Rip jogged over.

“Hiya, sweetie,” he said to Harper, crouching next to the little girl. Her wiry muscles tensed in defiance.

She stopped writhing for a moment, just long enough for him to scoop a glob of lotion from her cheek.

“What’s this?” Rip asked. “Mmm. Vanilla frosting.”

He pretended to eat it with one hand while the other rubbed in the lotion streaked across her cheeks.

“Noooo, Daddy Rip.” Harper giggled. “Ew. Don’t eat it!”

“Yum-yum.”

He continued his charade as he rubbed the lotion along her hairline and down her nose.

Harper’s face turned serious. “Your tummy will get sick. And then you’ll have to go to the doctor. And get one hundred shots. And maybe even”—her catlike eyes squinted—“get dead.”

Rip stood and pulled the bottle of organic sunscreen spray from his back pocket.

“Thought you might need this,” Rip said, and tossed the bottle to Michael. “Single best invention ever. A gift from the parenting gods.”

Michael sat back on the sand and leaned his forearms on his knees.

“You sure you don’t need it?”

Michael looked up at Rip, one eye squinting Marlboro-Man style.

“Dude,” Rip said shrugging. “Take it.”

“Thanks, man,” Michael said. “Wow, I was without a paddle there.”

Rip grabbed two beers from the cooler, opened one with his car key, and handed it to Michael. With a quick wink. Their fingers touched as the icy beer passed, and Rip almost flinched, remembering, with a sharpness that felt like a hallucination, the citrusy tang of Tiffany’s sweat the day before in the kitchen. Suddenly, he was there again, but this time grinding into her, lifting her skirt up, and — he stopped there, the wild cry of the kids chasing seagulls like an alarm sounding.

Rip slapped Michael on the back, in the way only dudes do, when he spotted Harper peeling off from the group and skipping toward the end of the sandbar, where the waves resumed.

“She’s on the run,” Rip said, and pointed toward the little girl — a speck of pale skin topped with flame red, like a birthday candle.

Michael stood and ran toward the sea. “Catch you later.”

The next chance he got, Rip decided, he’d invite Michael for a kayak trip out to the marsh. A man-to-man excursion. Maybe he’d even ask Michael for his opinion on Grace and the whole convincing-her-to-have-another-kid dilemma.

Rip glanced over at Josh, whose face was reddening as Wyatt and Dash tackled him, tugging on his arms, his legs, his swimsuit, trying to pull him into the water.

“Okay, guys.” Josh laughed. “Let’s take it easy now.”

Even Tiffany was more of a man than Josh, Rip thought. He had seen her wrench the cap off a beer with her back teeth.

Fuck it, he thought.

“Hey, man,” he called to Michael, who was lifting Harper onto a large, barnacle-coated rock.

Michael gave an up-nod, as in yeah ?

“Want to take the kayak out later? We can head over to the marsh. Nicole says it’s awesome back there.”

“Hell yeah,” said Michael with a pleased look. One of those uh-huh looks Rip had seen pass between jamming musicians locked in on a groove.

“Cool,” Rip said, as nonchalant as possible because inside he was a-titter with a thrill he hadn’t felt in years, like the rush after a shot of whiskey, like before he stepped onstage for an improv show. And he wasn’t going to ruin it by asking Michael if he’d ever kayaked before, or by admitting this would be his own first kayaking trip. They were two grown men. They’d figure it out.