Cutting Teeth: A Novel (20 page)

They tried, but Susanna’s belly was like an unscalable mountain, and Susanna let out a giggle (
Sorry, the baby kicked
), and Allie was certain Susanna’s moans were too even to be authentic. Finally, Susanna tapped, then slapped Allie on the shoulder, whispering, “Stop, stop. Help me up!”

Allie lifted her face from between Susanna’s legs, wiped her mouth with the back of her hand, and gripped Susanna’s forearm. Susanna slid off the bed and onto her knees, a blur of loose white flesh. She wrapped a towel around herself, a butt cheek exposed, and hurried into the hall.

A few minutes later, Allie heard retching in the bathroom next door. Then the sound of water running through pipes. Then more retching.

Should she go in there? What could she do, really? Susanna had thrown up so many times with this baby.
My baby,
Allie thought, and then,
our baby.
It was part of the day’s routine, Susanna running to the bathroom to puke.

Allie lay on the bed and listened for more of the moans she’d heard earlier from down the hall, hoping (she surprised herself) that Tiffany and her man had gone for another round. But there was only Susanna’s heaving, Levi’s snoring, and Dash’s even breathing. The sounds of family.

She rolled onto her stomach, slipped her hand under her hips, and touched herself, rubbing in circles, the way she had always liked it, her face pressed into a pillow. She imagined Tiffany, one breast loosed from a diaphanous gown, her stare coy but inviting. Like Drost’s
Bathsheba,
whose eyes, Allie had thought on her first trip to the Louvre, shone with desire. She held her breath when she came. Levi mumbled. Dash’s hand crawled around his head until he found his pacifier.

She cleaned her fingers with a diaper wipe and pulled on a tank top. As she rummaged in her duffel for a pair of leggings, she heard feminine laughter outside, drifting up from the deck below. Then a voice: “Don’t! The rocks. You’ll kill yourself.”

Allie moved to the window and parted the thin synthetic curtains.

On top of the seawall, illuminated by a bright moon, stood Tiffany. She was naked, her hair loose around her, black against the blue-white of her back. She gazed straight ahead, as if in a trance.

She’s going to jump, Allie thought with a wave of panic as Tiffany rose to her toes—the shift of muscle under skin catching the moonlight—and dove off the wall.

There was a soft splash, then the black water rippled.

the coast is clear

Nicole

Nicole huddled on
a lounge chair on the deck, her sweater pulled over her knees.

She sucked hard to keep the joint lit against the whip of the wind. Each gust pulled a trail of sparks over the seawall.

The weed had done little to numb her dread. Under the vast starry dome, the unknowable dwarfed her, and she felt more mortal than ever. Insignificant. Impermanent.

“God, you are such a narcissistic self-pitying freak,” she whispered aloud to crack the chain of worrying.

She thought of her mother, who was always calling Nicole to tell her that she was praying for her and for Wyatt, and
even
for Josh (aka the Jew Nicole had married). When something good happened, like when her first book sold, or when Josh was promoted, her mother’s response was, “My prayers have been answered!” As if, Nicole thought, her mother was trying to take credit for Nicole’s life, for the never-ending pile of decisions she struggled to make.

She picked a piece of rolling paper from her lip and watched the yellow-tinged wisps of cloud hurry across black sky. She tried to imagine God, the white-bearded Father in flowing robes she had known as a child, who, she had imagined, hovered somewhere up there, his muscled arm reaching down toward his children on earth.

“Thunder’s just the angels bowling,” her mother had told a young Nicole when she’d been frightened during summer storms. What a comfort that had been. When Nicole had learned, in seventh grade Earth Science, the real cause, the clash of cold and hot air, she’d been ashamed, wondering how could she have been so stupid.

What she’d give to be a girl again, believing in prayers, sleeping under the simpatico eyes of a Jesus who hung above her bed in a gold plastic frame. Before her mother left for Florida that July, they’d had the same futile God conversation.

“I can’t make myself believe, Mom.”

“Well,” her mother had said, “you certainly could try a bit harder.”

Nicole flinched as a fantasy shot through her mind like a film. Couldn’
t it
happen any minute now? Like in the movies? A flash of light that fills every inch of the sky with the purest white, then a vacuum suck and a huge expelling, a wind trampling the earth with the force of a billion rabid horses with plutonium hooves.

She heard movement behind her and spun around with a frightened sound, more animal than human.

A tittering Tiffany appeared in baggy sweatpants and Michael’s black motorcycle jacket.

“Shit,” Nicole whispered, rolling her eyes. “You scared me.”

“Don’t drop the joint, whatever you do,” Tiffany said with a smile.

Nicole laughed and raised the joint along with her eyebrows. An offering. A howl of wind carried off orange sparks.

Tiffany huddled next to her, each on one of two chaise lounges pulled side by side. They wrapped beach towels around their shoulders and tucked them over their legs. The thick black leather of Michael’s jacket creaked as Tiffany lifted the joint to her mouth. Nicole cupped her hands around the glowing ember and saw the smudged mascara ringing Tiffany’s eyes.

“Fuck,” Tiffany said into her thick, smoky exhale. “It’s freezing. This is totally messing up my postorgasm high.” She laughed before a gale picked up her giggles and flung them into the sea.

“I thought there was something different about you,” Nicole said, not mentioning it was the musky scent of skin and come and sweat that now seemed so foreign to her own life. “You’re glowing.”

“Isn’t that what they tell pregnant women?”

Nicole tucked her head between her knees, her legs shielding the roach, and took a drag.

“Things must be great between you two,” Nicole said, trying to remember the last time she and Josh had sex somewhere other than their bedroom.

“Well,” Tiffany started, and Nicole could hear the calculating note in her voice, “I asked Michael which of the lesbian mommies he’d like to fuck.
That
set him off.”

“Jesus, Tiff.” Nicole laughed, although she had often admired and envied Tiffany’s damn-the-world attitude.

With a whine of impatience, Tiffany said, “Listen! So that led to which one I’d fuck.” She paused to take a hit off the joint. “In front of him, of course.”

“And?” Nicole asked.

“Who do you think?” she asked. “Allie, of course.”

“And Michael?”

“Susanna,” Tiffany said, with a tut-tutting headshake that made Nicole suspect Tiffany was hiding something. A bit of jealousy? Sometimes, Tiffany couldn’t stomach her own little mind games when it was her turn to be the underdog.

“I hope I wasn’t too loud,” Tiffany said, a new energy lifting her voice. “It’s a good thing Harper was pooped. Out like a light.”

Tiffany gripped Nicole’s arm. Her eyes widened.

“Do you think anyone heard?” she asked.

Nicole knew Tiffany by now, and she knew Tiffany hoped the whole house had heard.

“It wasn’t actual
sex,
” Tiffany said, “Just oral. But it’s really doing it for me lately. You know?”

Tiffany’s matter-of-fact tone threw Nicole off-balance. What could she say? Yes, she wished Josh were doing anything for her lately. Yes, she wished her libido hadn’t been flattened by antidepressants for the past three years.

“Ugh,” she groaned. “It’s been ages for me.”

Another reason not go back on her meds, she thought. As a girl, she’d masturbated daily, sometimes multiple times a day, and when she and Josh were first together, she’d been filled with a churning desire, which had only just now, almost three months meds-free, begun its shy return.

A clang of metal rang out from the side of the deck, and Nicole jumped.

“You’d think I’d be a bit more chill,” she said. “Under the stoned circumstances.”

Tiffany took a hit, and, holding her breath, squeaked, “Who, you?”

“Who me?” Nicole sang in tune to the “Cookie Jar” song Tiffany had performed in many a Tiff’s Riffs class.

“Yes you!”

Nicole finished, “Couldn’t be!”

Smoke trickled out with Tiffany’s laughter.

“I hate that song,” Tiffany said as she poked at the spit-flattened base of the joint with a nail polished green. “It’s all about guilt and shame.” She took another hit. “It’s enough to give some poor kid an eating disorder. I mean, who cares who took the cookie from the cookie jar?”

“You crack me up,” Nicole said. “Have you ever thought about writing? Or blogging? I bet you’d be great at it.”

“Maybe,” Tiffany said. She pulled the sweatshirt over her knees until only her toes, also painted in green polish, peeked out. Her silver toenail winked as she wiggled her toes. She wore a dreamy look, Nicole thought as she followed Tiffany’s stare across the Sound to the blur of industrial Connecticut that had always reminded Nicole of the lights of a distant carnival. But then she caught a befuddled look masking Tiffany’s face. It was the look Tiffany wore when the playgroup parents talked about books or films or politics, topics Tiffany dismissed with a wave of her hand, and, “You guys are too smart for me!”

Nicole thought it strange the way Tiffany played the ditz card when it suited her. When everyone knew Tiffany was smart in the ways that mattered most. Nicole remembered the ugly scene a few weeks back at the Jakewalk bar, on the group’s Girls’ Night Out. It was the kind of intelligence that snuck up on you when you least expected it.

They passed the joint back and forth until it was a brown-stained nub of wet paper. Nicole let it slip through her fingers into the black night.

“Lookie what I have,” Tiffany sang, and pulled a cigarette from behind her ear. “And I’ve got more.” She tapped the pocket of Michael’s jacket.

“Nice,” Nicole said.

“So,” Tiffany said, hugging herself, the lit cigarette dangling from her lips. “Why don’t you tell me what’s really going on, Nic?”

The emphasis on
really,
the questioning trill, made Nicole flinch, and she wondered if she’d heard Tiffany right, if the wind hadn’t mutated her words.

“What do you mean?” she said, when what she meant was,
how on earth could you know?
She had been so careful on urbanmama.com, not to use any details that would give her identity away, a choice that had made her think,
Well, how crazy can I be, if I’m covering my tracks so well?

“Sweetie,” Tiffany said, “it’s obvious.”

“What?” Nicole laughed, hoping she sounded genuinely clueless.

“You were so doom-and-gloom all afternoon,” Tiffany said, “I mean, that whole thing with Josh and his bag on the sofa?”

Tiffany lifted her eyebrows, an expression that reminded Nicole of her own mother; disapproving.

“Maybe,” Tiffany continued, passing the cigarette to Nicole, “if you share, you’ll feel better. So, what’s up?”

“I don’t know,” Nicole said.

“You
do
know.”

“It’s embarrassing.”

“Worse than your thing about swine flu? Worse than when you thought the city was being attacked by terrorists and texted Josh, like, twenty times?”

“Fuck,” Nicole said. “I’m a freak.” She squeezed out a small laugh.

“Just tell me, dammit. I’m not going anywhere until you do.” Tiffany pulled the lit cigarette from Nicole’s hand. “No judging, promise.” She took a drag, squinting against the smoke as the tip blazed red.

“I’m happy,” Nicole started. “I mean, I know.” She nodded somberly. “I seem miserable. Josh reminds me that every day. But I swear. In many ways, this is the happiest I’ve ever felt.”

“But are they the ways that matter?” Tiffany asked as she reached over and patted Nicole’s wind-chilled hand. “Look, Nic, if there’s anyone out here that understands, it’s me? I’m broken, too. Remember? I should be on a ton of drugs!”

How did Tiffany know she had stopped taking her meds, Nicole thought. What if Tiffany outed her to Josh, motivated by what Tiffany would call
friendly concern
? Nicole imagined Tiffany’s slinking next to him, hooking her arm in his, whispering,
You know, Josh,
her hot breath in his ear,
I’m worried about Nic
.

Tiffany, Nicole thought, was not the frenemy any mom in her right mind would take on.

“I’m sorry,” Nicole blurted.

“What’s there to be sorry about?”

Tiffany pulled the crushed pack of American Spirits from the jacket pocket. She tapped two cigarettes out, tucked one between her puffy lips, gave the other to Nicole, and tossed the empty pack over the seawall.

Nicole stopped herself from mentioning pollution.

“I’ve been meaning to text you about last week,” Nicole said. “You know.” She paused. “The thing at the bar. With Susanna.”

“Pregnant women,” Tiffany said with a huff. “They’re certifiable.”

“Susanna was just”—Nicole paused—“so upset. You know how she is. Always mommying everyone.”

Tiffany mumbled something Nicole couldn’t hear.

Nicole continued, “She thought that—maybe—you were drunk. Vulnerable. That the guy was going to take advantage of you. And I got caught in the middle.”

What Nicole didn’t say was that they’d all been on Susanna’s side. Susanna had been the only one brave enough to tell Tiffany she’d had too many Cosmos, she was being loud, she was embarrassing them on this one night they’d all managed to get sitters or secure husbands to watch the kids, after they had squeezed into their
before children
clothes and straightened their hair and tweezed their eyebrows and shaved their legs in anticipation of Girls’ Night Out.

Nicole was anxious to change the subject now that she’d performed her apology, and she felt that shivering sense that time was both slowing down and speeding up, a precursor to her panic attacks.