Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

Wyatt’s head had been turned to look at her as he ran, leaping over clumps of seaweed, as effortless as a gazelle, a smile dimpling his cheeks. Pure glee in the chase.

They had reached the boulders before her and, like two lithe lizards, scurried to the top with little effort. The boys stood tall, their hands shielding their eyes as they looked to the horizon. Two arrogant explorers, Nicole thought, as her need to get them off the jagged rocks grew more desperate.

They raised their arms high in triumph, and Wyatt laughed, and said, “Look, Mommy, we didn’t fall. Toldya!”

“You might. And if you do, you’ll hit your head. Hard!”

“I see a seal. A whale!” Dash said.

“Me too!” said Wyatt.

“If you two fall.” She paused. “There’ll be blood. A big big boo-boo!”

Then, calming herself, she looked over her shoulder at the staring faces of the other parents down the beach. She begged, “Please, sweetie. Please. Do you want there to be no more Wyatt? No more Mommy?”

Wyatt looked down at her and studied her face.

“If I fall and get a boo-boo, I have to go to the doctor and get a shot?”

Without thinking, she answered, “No, the doctor won’t be able to fix you.”

His face clouded with confusion. “Like Humpty Dumpty?”

“Yes,” Nicole said. “Just like Humpty Dumpty.”

* * *

Don’t go in the water alone. You could drown.

Don’t put so many grapes in your mouth at once. You’ll choke.

Don’t touch that knife. You’ll cut your finger off!

The day had been filled with warnings, Nicole thought, and it was only midafternoon. A chorus of don’t! and watch-out! As the mommies’ and daddies’ exhaustion had surged, the routine parental reprimands had morphed into ominous threats and prophecies.

Nicole had always feared the unexpected. Disliked surprises. Even the roller-rink birthday party her mother had sprung on her when she was nine, and the surprise tea-party baby shower her sister-in-law had thrown her. It was embarrassing to be caught unaware. To be fooled.

It was that feeling of not knowing what would happen that made her, now, in the kitchen, amidst fruit-bar wrappers and crumpled Dixie cups dripping apple juice, reach for the knife some careless parent had left on the cutting board. In reach of a child! She washed it, dried it, and returned it to the wooden knife block. She knocked on the block five times, her lucky number, chanting quietly— knock on wood knock on wood knock on wood knock on wood knock on wood.

The children cheered from the living room. It was afternoon snacktime. What joy they could feel at the drop of a pin. The pop of a straw into a juice box. The crackle of a package of bunny-shaped pretzels.

She was about to join them when she caught the glimmer of metal by the sink. The parer. She pushed it against the wall. Definitely far enough, she thought, and was about to walk into the living room, when she realized one of the taller kids — Wyatt, Chase — might reach the parer with a stool. So she gathered the parer, as well as the meat and fish knives that gleamed menacingly on the magnetic strip over the stove. The thwack each knife made as she pulled it from the strip made her feel nauseous. She could, she thought, slice through her skin with one quick flick of her hand. Plunge the sharpest knife — the one her father used to flay fish — into her soft belly. She didn’t want to, but the fantasy of the event flashed through her mind so vividly that she could almost smell the metallic scent of blood. See the red-black pools of her own insides spreading out across the kitchen floor.

She gathered the knives — a dozen or so — into a pile on the kitchen counter. Each with its unique purpose — filleting, carving, bread slicing, butchering — verbs that induced fantasies of her own skin being flayed in thick pale sheets. She added the parer, the apple corer, and a bottle opener whose hook, she thought, was definitely sharp enough to gouge out an eye. She had to stop and knock five times on each wooden knife handle, whispering knock on wood knock on wood knock on wood knock on wood knock on wood as fast as she could until the words melted into each other, and there was only the soft clicking of her tongue against the roof of her mouth. She was running out of time. Someone could walk into the kitchen at any moment. Maybe even Josh, she thought as she searched for a hiding place, turning in a slow circle until she found the cabinets above the stove. Empty.

She heard Rip call to the children in the living room with his signature gather together, gang!

He began the round of that dreadful song, “Who Stole the Cookie from the Cookie Jar?” in a hushed stage whisper, and the children joined him, taking turns reciting the chorus, their voices amplifying, and by the time they reached the last child ( Harper took the cookie from the cookie jar!) , Nicole had found the stepstool.

Who me? Yes you! Couldn’t be? Then who?

She was clutching several of the knives in her hands and preparing to step onto the stool when the parents applauded. The boning knife slipped and stuck her finger.

“Fuck.” She pinched her finger, and a small dome of blood rose. She sucked on it, her mouth filling with that hot, tinny taste that was like nothing else, when she felt the kitchen door swing closed.

“You said a bad word.”

Harper. The little girl’s hands were on her hips. One knobby Band-Aided knee jutting forward. Nicole followed Harper’s sharp blue eyes to the pile of knives on the counter. Nicole stepped forward, dropping to a crouch at Harper’s feet. Smiling.

“Harper, sweetie…”

The girl was gone. The breeze from the swinging doors rolled over Nicole, and she thought she might fall to her knees on the cold linoleum. Instead, she stood, climbed onto the step stool and slid each knife, as well as the parer, the apple cutter, even the blades from the Cuisinart, and finally the knife block ( knockonwood knockonwood …) into the cupboard above the oven.

She knew Josh would notice. He knew the signs that she was approaching an episode. He would find her and ask if she was doing it again. Was she having bad thoughts? Shortly after Wyatt was born — fucking baby blues, Nicole thought — Josh had to hide the knife block because every time she walked in the kitchen, the thought of slashing herself had popped into her mind, like an unwelcome squatter.

Josh still brought up the knives in their couples’ therapy. As if he were outing her insanity to their therapist, Nicole thought. He knew it was the humiliation she wanted most to forget. Who, in their right mind, obsessed over household objects? The washing machine she feared would overflow, checking five times each cycle. Or faucets in the bathrooms, which she tightened and retightened before bed, in case one dripped, drop after drop accumulating until water cascaded through the ceiling of the room below.

Are you having your thoughts ? Josh would ask, as if their code could protect Wyatt from the obvious.

Nicole stood by the kitchen door and listened.

The children were silent. They must be eating. The only quiet moments she’d had in the last three and a half years were when Wyatt was eating or sleeping.

She thought of the cache of Go Bags in the trunk of the car and wondered if she should visit. A dose of security. A little something to get her through the night. Instead, she poured herself some Prosecco and swallowed a whole Xanax.

She returned to the living room, where Tenzin was leading the children in a merry game of Ring Around the Rosie. Nicole sat in her favorite chair, a high-backed midcentury piece of red-and-gold brocade that had belonged to Grandma Lois. The single soul in generations who’d possessed an inkling of taste, Nicole thought. She had loved that chair as a girl, crowning it the princess chair, and spent hours there, scribbling in her notebooks as stories unspooled — of unicorns, goblins, and fair-haired maidens stalked by hook-nosed witches. Stories of lost children in dark forests.