Julia Fierro - Cutting Teeth

Now, her identity boiled down to a) good mommy or b) bad mommy. She scanned the room, relieved that Rip was nowhere in sight. Daddy Rip, which was what an often inappropriately flirtatious Tiffany called him, was the most judgmental of all. Leigh knew Rip thought himself a better parent than the mommies, and he spent most of each Friday’s playgroup time criticizing the mother who was absent that week. He was probably out on the deck chugging beers. She had felt his alcohol-flushed cheeks earlier as he’d given her that awkward hello, how are you kiss when Leigh, Tenzin, a groggy Charlotte, and a carsick Chase had first arrived at the beach house. Leigh disliked the exuberant hellos and good-byes that bookended playdates, but the way of the mommies was to hug all around.

Grace, Rip’s wife, was tugging a wet swimsuit off whimpering Hank. She wore pressed capris and a plaid headband that pulled her thick Asian hair into a flawless curtain down her back. Leigh thought she seemed like the last match on earth for Rip, with his baggy shorts and hippie sandals.

“Stop!” a shrill voice piped into the room, and everyone, even the boys sifting through the bins of toys, fell silent and looked to the front door.

The source of the command was Harper, the playgroup’s only little girl.

As Harper watched the spastic throng of boys, the sun glinting off her tight red-gold curls, the girl’s upper lip lifted. Leigh tried to push aside the dislike she felt for Harper. It made Leigh feel like some kind of monster.

Harper was a pint-sized early-childhood package the elite private schools were sure to drool over. Tiffany was aiming high and had begged Leigh, whose niece Peyton attended the crème de la crème St. Ann’s School, to arrange for an interview, and so Leigh had called her sister-in-law Caroline, who was secretary of the school board.

Leigh had texted Tiffany with the news that the interview was on. And Tiffany had responded with thank you!!! fingers crossed!!!trailed by a row of plump, red, heart emoticons.

Leigh had no trouble envisioning Harper at St. Ann’s. Not even four years old, Harper had a precocious self-control. Leigh had studied the girl. In music class. At the public library’s storytime. While the other children fidgeted, and Chase careened around like an entranced whirling dervish, Harper sat with her little hands folded in her lap. During snacktime, she sipped from an open cup without spilling a drop, even patting her lips with a napkin when she was finished. A perfect performance. One moment, the girl was a miniature version of the debutantes Leigh had come out with so many years ago at the Waldorf Astoria. The next, she was a fearless tomboy leaping off the roof of the playhouse at the park.

Just then, Chase dashed past and gave a shriek of excitement when he spotted the plastic bin of matchbox cars.

“Slow down,” Leigh called right before Chase fell to his knees with a thud.

Grace gasped, but Leigh knew Chase didn’t feel pain like other children. He had “sensory issues”—the term his therapists used again and again, as if they were casting a spell, and Leigh had been enchanted, because she found herself using the term more with each week as she apologized for her son. At the playground. At playspaces. At the playgroup. I’m so sorry, she whispered, like it was a secret. He has sensory issues.

The preschool, (which was, Leigh thought, little more than an overpriced day care) had called her twice this month to pick up Chase because he’d bitten someone, and just that week, the director, a sweaty woman who put on grandmotherly airs, had suggested Chase might need a school with a smaller class size, where children had the same “issues.” Leigh had parroted the therapy-speak: Chase has trouble relating his body within the space around him. Chase can’t measure his movements, his pace, the volume of his voice. She felt like a proselytizer trying to convert the preschool director to see (and believe) that Chase’s behavior wasn’t intentional, just a side effect of his faulty neurology. He was a good boy.

“Are you sure he’s okay?” Grace asked. “Hank would be hysterical.”

Hank was hysterical about most things, Leigh thought.

“He’s fine,” Leigh said, remembering to smile.

She knew the weekend would be full of her commands.

Stop running, Chase.

No grabbing, Chase.

Use your inside voice, Chase.

Hands to yourself, Chase.

“The boys are sooo out of control,” Harper said, rolling her eyes in a perfect mime of the mommies.

The parents laughed — Michael the hardest.

In the harried pace of life after children, Leigh rarely noticed men. But Michael’s long lean torso and his lash-fringed eyes reminded her of a young Sylvester Stallone. He was noticeable.

“I don’t know where she gets this stuff from,” he said, and Leigh heard the hint of a rural upbringing in his accent.

“Hello?” Nicole said as she hurried past Michael with an armful of damp beach towels. “Have you met the girl’s mother? She’s a B-A-L–L buster.”

“That’s our ginger-haired girl,” Tiffany said, appearing in the doorway. Her hair was a radiant mess of kinky dark waves. Her cleavage glistened with oil when she leaned over to comb the sand out of Harper’s curls with her fingers.

Leigh knew what Tiffany was thinking. That’s our exceptional girl. So advanced. So much better than all these testosterone-laden spastic little boys. Tiffany talked about Harper’s intellect as if it were a burden, but Leigh knew it was false humility.

Tiffany looked up, searching the room, as if she had heard Leigh’s thoughts.

“Hey, Leigh,” Tiffany asked. “Isn’t that your mom’s name? Ginger?”

Leigh nodded, smiling. “Ginny,” she said.

“You got to love those country-club names,” Tiffany said.

Leigh felt a prickle of annoyance. Tiffany was always pointing out Leigh’s family, and their money, as if they were something immoral Leigh had done. Despite the many times Leigh had tried to explain to Tiffany that the family firm had taken a huge hit in the crash of 2008. Brad’s poor investments had nearly ruined them and Leigh’s father had cut her off, as if she should be punished for Brad’s mistakes.

Leigh thought of the lockbox in the back of her closet, under the stacked shoeboxes of heels she hadn’t worn since Chase’s birth, and which she knew she would never wear again. Inside that lockbox sat a pile of financial papers, the last year of bank statements for the Preschool Fundraising Committee, numbers that Leigh had to fix before Monday.

If fixing was at all possible, she thought.

Tiffany rolled on. “Bunny. Muffy. What else?”

“Don’t forget Baby in Dirty Dancing, ” Nicole called from the kitchen.

Susanna sighed as she lowered herself onto the sofa, one arm searching behind her, the other supporting her pregnant belly. “God, I had such a crush on Jennifer Grey. That movie was, like, my coming out.”

A tour commenced, Tenzin left in the living room to look over the children. Leigh trailed the playgroup parents, with Charlotte stuffed into the baby carrier — the straps already damp with Leigh’s sweat. They started outside, where Nicole pointed out the public beach in the distance, past the wall of boulders. Leigh could make out the colorful dots that were beach umbrellas, and the silhouettes of fishermen waist high in the water. Nicole explained that they were to find her immediately if any stragglers from the public beach made their way past the boulders, especially if they had dogs.

Also, Nicole added gravely, her eyebrows lifting. They were to be on the lookout for any of the children slipping into the woods. She pointed to the dunes that rose between the public beach and the woodland. Beyond the fluttering sea grass that sprouted thickly from the sand, Nicole told them there was a trail that led to hundreds of acres of untouched state-park grounds.