Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

But no, the day before, Susanna had reminded Allie of the invite for a weekend out East, something from one of the “mommies” in Susanna’s playgroup. They had bickered — Allie demanding Susanna cancel ( They were getting married, for fucksake ), and Susanna calling Allie out on what they both knew was bullshit, reminding Allie that she hadn’t cared about getting married anyway. An hour spent snapping at each other as they got the boys ready for bed — until Susanna burst into pregnant-woman-pitched tears, promising Allie (between sobs) that they’d get away soon and have a real honeymoon. Allie had been the one to apologize — again — the defeated opponent of every bout they’d had since the twins were born.

The woman hosting the weekend had gotten hold of Allie’s cell number, and Allie’s and Susanna’s phones had dinged simultaneously with the arrival of every exclamation-point-laden, smiley-face-emoticon-punctuated response from the moms in the playgroup, and the one dad who wrote, with what she hoped was irony,

woo-hoo! we’ll bring the tequila. body shots!!

Here they were, Allie thought, moving closer and closer to a destination where the talk would be of what viruses had recently ravaged the children’s immune systems, of the preschool drama that never ceased to bring a sparkle of urgency to Susanna’s eye, and the minutiae of day-to-day child-rearing that made Allie feel as if life were running out. That by the time they woke from the monotonous half slumber of parenthood, they’d be old, probably get cancer or something, have just a little time left to be Allie and Susanna, to live the life they had shared before.

Susanna pointed toward the glove compartment.

“Get me one of those candy bars, Al?”

Allie couldn’t stop herself.

She said, “I thought Dr. Patka told you no sweets. That chocolate made heartburn worse?”

“ What did you just say?”

Allie shrank back, the way she had as a girl each time her father confronted her after she’d been caught in a lie or gotten detention (again) for doodling in her textbook. He had used the same words when she tried to lie her way out of punishment, usually a few licks on her bare legs with his belt. What did you just say? As he bent to peer in her eyes.

“You know,” Allie said, “that you have to be careful of what you eat?”

“Do you want me to puke?” Susanna asked quietly.

“No.”

“Then give me the goddamn Snickers bar.”

* * *

The sea cottage was shabby, bordering on decrepit: piles of junk near the front door, along with a tangle of driftwood and half a buoy. Allie practiced her smile as Susanna rang the doorbell.

“Lay-dies,” sang the woman who answered the door, clad in a white tube top that showed off her bronzed skin.

Tiffany, thought Allie. The oversexed, self-righteous mommy Susanna always crabbed about.

“It’s so exciting to have you here!” Tiffany said.

The woman, Allie thought, might as well have said, Well lookee here, if it isn’t those darn lesbians? How interesting!

Awkward introductions followed — and reintroductions; one could never remember whom you had or hadn’t met in the hazy, sleep-deprived early parenting years. There was Michael, Tiffany’s baby daddy, a greasy-haired hipster dude. Then Nicole, whose parents owned the beach house; Rip, the sole daddy in the playgroup — springy with nervous energy — and finally Rip’s wife, Grace, a boxy Asian woman, whose firm handshake made Allie wonder if she wasn’t just a tad butch.

Allie looked out onto the living room full of kids. The light streaming in from the seaside windows turned the scene into a tableau. A twisted moral. Titled Life After Children, Allie thought. The twins were in a tussle certain to turn violent. A plump Asian boy (Rip and Grace’s kid, Allie guessed) stood in the corner, his hand sunk into a bowl of M&Ms. There was just the one little girl, a long-limbed beauty whose scabbed knees peeked out from under her flowered sundress. Allie knew this was Harper, daughter of Tiffany — a child Susanna loathed almost as much as the girl’s mother. Harper had just won a tug-of-war over a jump rope, and the loser, a flaxen-haired boy with an upturned nose, wailed. Oh yes, Allie thought, the crier must be Chase. She had heard Susanna speak of Chase’s “behavioral issues” in a whisper, as if the boy had an unspeakable disease.

But it was the mommies that frightened Allie the most. The mommies. Must she really use that word, she had asked Susanna on the drive. Their sugary smiles, their kisses like pats on each other’s cheeks, the exaggerated rolls of their eyes at their children. The daddies seemed harmless enough, shoulder shrugs punctuating most everything they said, as if they were embarrassed at the “crazy” situation they’d gotten themselves into. Aw, shucks, parenthood.

And where did Allie fit in?

With the mommies? Oh no, she thought, she was too much of a dyke, too part-time mommy for them.

With the daddies? Nah, a woman could never join those ranks.

She belonged to neither. And that was exactly the way she liked it.

Leigh closed her eyes andsank into the wicker chair, into the coppery sun that streamed through salt-streaked windows. Four-month-old Charlotte sucked sleepily on her nipple.

It was just as Nicole had promised. A lovely end-of-summer getaway filled with the scent of sunscreen and BBQ.

Maybe the last, Leigh thought with a shiver. Before autumn bore down, before everything withered in anticipation of the imprisonment of winter — every parent’s cross to bear.

She wished she could lock herself in this moment forever. She and Charlotte. The warming sun and the shushing sea. A current of seaweed-scented air trickled through the window and the swaddle blanket draped over Charlotte rippled, tickling Leigh’s naked breast. She shivered and pulled her cashmere cardigan over her shoulders. The screen door thwacked gently in the breeze, and beyond it, Leigh heard Tiffany’s throaty laugh rise from the beach. Leigh had almost forgotten about the others, even about her own son Chase, who, Leigh thought with a guilty wince, was certain to disrupt this peace.

They would return soon.

It had been at least an hour since Tiffany had led the parade of children — like a voluptuous pied piper, Leigh thought — along with Nicole and the other parents down to the beach for what Tiffany had promised was a seaside dance-a-thon !

Tiffany’s voice, the elongated vowels that sashayed from her ever-pouty lips, had always seemed seductive to Leigh, even when Tiffany was being playful with Chase and the other boys in the Monday afternoon Tiff’s Riffs music classes. Especially, Leigh thought, when Tiffany’s attention focused on Rip, the playgroup’s token dad, whom Leigh found inauthentic and undergroomed.

Once a week, Leigh, with Chase and Charlotte, and the other playgroup parents and children, clapped, danced and even squirmed like caterpillars on the colorful mats at a local yoga studio in Tiffany’s Tiff’s Riffs classes. They sang songs about mermaids who drove taxicabs under the sea, about children who rode the F train to the moon — songs written by Tiffany herself. Songs that Leigh had, at first, disliked for their fantastical nature. She’d felt compelled to explain to Chase that cars couldn’t really drive under the ocean.

As the familiar melodies trickled through the screen, as she stroked baby Charlotte’s pale arm, memories of the day before crept in. The Olive Tree Preschool Fundraising Committee meeting. The sour heat of the rec room where the committee had met — just a few doors away from the classroom where Chase spent four mornings a week. The slither of queasy fear that had snaked through Leigh’s gut as she, committee treasurer, had presented the group with the latest account balances — numbers she had tweaked again and again in the week leading up to the meeting.