She wiped the tears from his sunburned cheeks, then his arms shot out, stick-thin but full of reflexive strength, and she fell back, her elbows scraping against the wood floor. A sob rose from her stomach.
Then Tiffany’s voice was behind her. The cutesy tone Leigh had heard her use in music class a hundred times.
“Good job using your words, Chase,” Tiffany said. “Right, Mommy?”
Leigh swallowed her anger. “Yes. Good job, Chase.” She got to her feet, smoothing her pants, and then her hair.
Chase looked from one woman to the other, and Leigh wondered if he was more aware than they appreciated. Maybe he was laughing at them and their silly games, and their failure to accept that children are not like the projects from life before. Leigh thought of her art history dissertation that had won high honors, her 4.2 GPA, the fifteen pounds she had dropped before her wedding, the perfect dinner parties she had hosted. Life before could be perfect, or at least seem so, if you worked hard enough or if you had enough money to hire someone else to do the work for you. She had had both. But no amount of work or money could fix the broken neurology in her son’s head.
“Why don’t you go play with our friends outside, Chase?” Tiffany said. “They’re having lots of fun.”
“Oh-kay,” huffed Chase as he shuffled through the screen door.
Leigh peeked out the window and watched him join the other children, who were attempting to play catch with a giant beach ball, coached by Nicole.
“Poor Chasey,” Tiffany said.
“I pushed him with my foot. I shouldn’t have. He was actually being so good. But can you imagine? If Susanna had fallen?”
“But she didn’t. Like our sweet Tenzie would say, all is good.”
Coming from Tiffany, Tenzin’s optimism sounded like mockery.
“She’s fucking amazing,” Tiffany said, “Isn’t she? Tenzin, I mean.”
“Yes,” Leigh said, lifting her chin so that she looked over Tiffany rather than at her, “she is.”
“Fabulous,” Tiffany said with her half-shy girlish smile. “Then she was worth it.”
Before Leigh could ask what she meant, Tiffany spoke again.
“I talked to Michael,” she said as she swiveled from side to side in one of the little half pirouettes that had always, even in the bloom of their friendship, irritated Leigh.
“And,” Leigh probed, “what did he say?”
“We both agreed,” Tiffany said, “that the share isn’t the best idea anyway. ’Cause. Well, I don’t know how to say it exactly.”
The hemming and hawing was unbearable.
“Tiffany. What is it?”
“Michael just doesn’t feel comfortable with Chase’s influence.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well”—Tiffany sighed deeply, hushing her voice, forcing Leigh to lean in—“he worries Chase is a bad influence on Harper. You know?”
No, no, no, Leigh thought.
“Chase is not the problem,” Leigh said. She was surprised to hear how even her voice sounded, especially when it felt as if so much blood was pooling in her head. Hot lakes of blood.
“Oh, Leigh,” Tiffany said, “I know you think that.”
Leigh knew she could do something terrible to this woman. She could slap her. She could pull her hair. She could drag her nails down her face and erase its cocksure sunniness. The certainty of what she was capable of was a shock, and for a second it was as if time slowed, the way it had when she’d crashed her dad’s car the night of Halloween her junior year, time slowing as the car spun out of control, movement sloshing as if she were underwater, followed by the electrifying zoom as time caught up to itself, launching her back into the moment.
Before she could speak, the children’s voices rose.
“I do, I do!”
Leigh looked out the window and spotted Nicole standing in front of the seawall, waving two fistfuls of squeezable applesauce pouches.
“Who wants dessert?” Nicole yelled cheerfully.
The children were shrieking. Me! Me! Me!
Like people stranded on a desert island, Leigh thought.
“I need app-sauce!” Chase hollered.
Leigh called through the window screen. “Tenzin, none for Chase, please.” Any sort of sugar before bedtime kept him up an extra hour.
“Come on,” Tiffany mumbled. “Let him enjoy himself. Before it’s too late.”
Leigh felt something soften inside her. Like the slippery queasiness she’d felt with Chase at the start of labor pains.
What had Tiffany meant by before it’s too late ?
“App-sauce! App-sauce!” Chase cried.
The children echoed him. Me too! Me too!
The mothers answered in near-perfect unity,
“How do you ask?”
“Ask nicely, please?”
“What’s the magic word?”
Then the children in chorus: Please! Please! Please!
When she looked up again, she saw Chase was already sucking on the small pouch of fruit puree. She imagined the fifteen grams of sugar coursing through him, heading for a massive orgy in his brain.
They paddled and paddled, and still, the shoreline was not appearing. Probably going on an hour, Rip thought, his arms aching with every stroke. The current in the estuary was brutal. Harper and Hank wouldn’t stop whining. Michael’s grumbling swelled.
“Sit down,” Rip commanded Hank each time the boy stood and did the saddest little terrified dance, his chubby legs pumping, his balled fists punching at the air.
“I want to go home,” Hank cried. “Ho-o-o-me!”
The lower half of the boy’s face was coated with tears and snot, and Rip had given up trying to wipe it away with his shirt. There were spots of blood dotting Hank’s own shirt where Rip had killed mosquitoes midsuck.
For the first half hour, Harper had remained as nonchalant as usual, sitting so her head leaned against one side of the canoe and her feet on the other. Like they were on some peaceful fishing trip. But as soon as Michael starting swearing, his voice echoing against the wall of trees, birds scattering into the darkening sky, she had started to whimper, to call Mama, Mama in such a sweet and vulnerable voice, like the mew of a kitten, that Rip had wanted to cradle her in his arms.
Not Michael, who seemed oblivious as he dug into the water with his paddle, trying to push off the bottom of whatever lay under the murky black water. Rip imagined that the veins in Michael’s forearms might pop through his skin.
Michael hadn’t spoken to Rip for a good twenty minutes and was silent except for occasional explosive grunts and motherfuckers and Jesus fucking Christs . Rip had never heard anyone curse in front of little kids like that. Then Michael turned to look at Rip so suddenly that the canoe swayed, and the children yelped, clinging to the sides, their mouths stretched into gaping holes.
“Michael,” Rip said as calmly as he could, because he was frightened, too. “Please, be careful.”
“We’re not moving,” Michael mumbled as if lost in thought, still standing. “Maybe I should swim to the shore over there. Get help.” He pointed to the thick trees and lost his balance, the canoe rocking.
“Daddy, don’t leave me!” Harper cried.
Michael’s wide, unseeing eyes reminded Rip of the wacked-out junkies he’d seen on the F train.
“Look at your daughter, Michael,” Rip soothed, despite his pulse making his ears throb. “Look at Harper. She’s scared.”
Michael sat down, and the fruitless paddling resumed.
Hank buried his face against Rip’s chest. Rip could tell that Hank was exhausted and close to falling asleep. He felt the boy’s warm breath, a near match to the sluggish pace of their paddling.
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