Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

She waited for him to cry. She knew she had slapped him hard, as hard as she had once slapped her own brother when they were kids because their father only hit Allie when he lost his temper, when he drank, when he was worried about money, and she had wanted someone else to know how it felt.

* * *

Allie helped Susanna into the car, the long grocery list fluttering in Susanna’s hand.

“We’ll be right back!” Allie said, and waved to the twins, who stood at the steps of the front door. Levi whimpered from the gentle prison of Nicole’s arms. Dash kicked at a rust-streaked sign staked into the earth by the withered azalea bushes. Refusing to even look in Allie’s direction since she’d slapped him.

WELCOME TO EDEN the sign read in hand-painted letters.

After she’d hit him, Dash hadn’t cried a tear. Only gone quiet, like a wounded lover, and walked stoically back to the house, where he resumed playing with his toy car on the deck.

As if it hadn’t happened.

She would have a talk with him, Allie promised herself, the minute she and Susanna returned from shopping. She’d figure out just what to say.

“Don’t worry about the boys,” Susanna said brightly once Allie was in the car. “They always cry for the first few minutes when I leave them. They’ll be happy again soon.”

Allie thought of how some people who met them for the first time — at the park, at a family wedding — asked who the twins’ real mother was. Susanna reacted defensively, we both are. But Allie was speechless in those moments, desperate to avoid the attention. And her doubt.

Dash was right, she thought as she pulled out of the sea-pebbled driveway and onto the sand-dusted road. That little conniver Harper was right. Allie was not a real mother. Not like Susanna.

She decided the next time someone — a mom in music class, the receptionist at the pediatrician’s office, some kid’s grandma at the playground — asked them who the real mother was, she’d tell them to fuck off.

Rip sat in the kayakwith the paddle resting on his knees and Michael’s broad muscled back facing him. They had lugged the two-seated kayak from the cobweb-filled shack at the side of the house, then searched for the paddles in the piles of Nicole’s father’s crap, everything from badminton racquets to moldy deck cushions.

Now, finally, the beach house at their backs and the open sea stretching limitless in front of them, they waited to start their journey. As the cool breeze ruffled his hair, Rip felt almost at ease. If only the kayak didn’t feel as if it were sinking, then maybe he’d feel even better. He hadn’t realized the boat operated half-submerged. Water was already spilling into his seat and he was about to ask Michael if this was normal. Then he heard his name being called from the deck behind them, a punch of urgency in Grace’s voice.

She was standing behind the seawall, Hank’s head peeping over the concrete. Rip saw, despite the distance, the red in Hank’s face, and knew his son was crying.

“Fuck,” he groaned.

“Daddy,” Hank wailed. “I waaant you!”

Michael turned to face Rip. “Could you just tell him no?”

Behind Michael’s casual grin, Rip sensed that Michael was annoyed.

Rip knew Grace wouldn’t relent, and even if he argued with her, right there, in front of everyone, Hank would cry until Rip took him along. And he had traumatized the boy earlier with his insane reaction to the princess dress, hadn’t he? He owed it to Hank. He tried to find satisfaction in the fact that Hank felt safest when he was with him, his dad, but right now, it felt like a burden.

“No, wait. We can go. We can take the canoe instead of the kayak!” Rip said, cringing at the desperate ring in his voice.

“With Hank?” Michael said. His upper lip twitched enough that Rip could see the disgust. “Won’t he just cry?”

A small flame of anger flared in Rip’s chest.

Sensing his screwup, Michael added, “Cool. Let’s bring Harper, too.”

After another twenty minutes of complications; searching for the kids’ life jackets, pulling the canoe out from under the deck, last-minute potty trips, and last-minute commands from the mommies — mostly Grace, who Rip could see was terrified with the idea of the kids going along — Harper and Hank took their seats, and Michael shoved the canoe into the water, the base grinding against the pebbles.

Rip had wanted to be the one who shoved out, the one who the mommies would watch from the seawall, their delicate, manicured hands shielding their eyes, checking out his tanned leg muscles as they flexed with the effort. Instead, he walked behind Michael. They climbed in the boat once the water was chest high, and amidst Harper and Hank’s squeals, they set off.

“And we are on our way!” Michael sang out.

Harper whooped from the head of the boat.

It wasn’t fair she got to sit in the very front, Rip thought as he rubbed Hank’s goose-pimpled arm. He wanted Hank to prove to Michael he could do more than just whine and cry. For Rip’s sake and for Hank’s own. Please, for the love of God, Hank, stay calm, Rip thought.

The last time Rip had been in a canoe was at sleepaway camp as a kid, one of those Jewish camps where all the kids wept at the end of the session during the good-bye ceremony. Not Rip. He’d wanted to get back to his air-conditioned house, his Game Boy, and the privacy of his room, where he could masturbate when inspired.

Paddling was not how Rip had remembered it. This was hard work, and the current made it feel as if they were pushing their way through pudding. He had imagined that he and Michael would have time to chat, to get to know each other a bit more, and he was hoping he’d get a chance to ask Michael for advice. Maybe another male perspective would help Rip find the way that would convince Grace to have another baby. Like a magic spell to transform her into a procreative believer.

Rip’s palms stung by the time they’d made it out to the buoys where the Island residents docked their boats. The white cottages, squeezed side by side, stared at them from the shore with their sea-weathered faces. He spotted people lounging on the decks under striped umbrellas and wished he were there instead of here. Then he focused on the twitching muscles in Michael’s arms, and it gave him the strength, the competitive boost, to paddle faster.

“Slow your roll back there, man,” Michael said without looking back. “Or you’ll be pooped before we make it around the bend.”

Harper giggled. “Daddy said pooped!”

“Poop. Poop,” Hank echoed, looking up at Rip with a grin.

Rip smiled back although he felt a rising dread this trip had been a mistake.

“Sure, boss,” Rip said with just enough attitude (he hoped) to send Michael a message.

Nicole had suggested they paddle to the estuary. Rip was vaguely familiar with the term but had no idea what an estuary actually was. All they had to do, Nicole had explained, was paddle around the tip of the island. There, she had promised, they’d spot the families of swans that had made the secluded cove their home for generations.

Michael led, directing Rip in a way that reminded him of Grace, and he wondered if the world wasn’t chock-full of micromanagers.

“Don’t lean so hard to the left, partner,” Michael said. “Let’s try to paddle in sync,” and finally, what Rip felt was totally unacceptable, especially in front of the kids, “Can you pick up the pace a little? You’re paddling like a girl.”

Michael followed the dig with a bark of a laugh before adding, “Just kidding, man.”

Rip concentrated on the tip of the paddle polished white with wear, commanding himself to play it cool, brush it off; this was just how guys bonded. Through humiliation.