Cutting Teeth: A Novel (31 page)

Rip came up with a game. Count the trees. Count the different sounds of the birds. And when that was finished, count slowly all the way up to a hundred!

“Anything can be a game,” he said, and winked at Michael, feeling like a parenting expert, “if you make it sound exciting.”

This gave the two men a window of conversation. Michael turned to face him. The breeze had picked up, and the canoe was turning faster, and it felt disorienting as Rip thought, frantically, about what they should talk about. Time was ticking away. Soon the children would be bothering them again, destroying any chance there was to have a coherent—and just maybe—meaningful conversation. So he brought up an earlier topic, the one on which he and Michael had bonded the day before in their initial (and successful, he thought) tête-à-tête; what they hated about the playgrounds of brownstone Brooklyn.

“So,” Rip said, cringing at how much he sounded like a gossip-hungry mommy, “what’s the worst parenting you’ve seen at the playground in our ’hood?”

Michael guffawed, and it sent a cluster of birds shooting through the branches into the small patch of open sky above their heads.

Harper and Hank paused their counting and looked up, their lips parted in surprise.

“I saw some mom at Cobble Hill Park the other day,” Michael started.

“Oh yeah,” Rip interrupted. “I know where this is going. That’s the swanky part of the neighborhood over there.”

As if, Rip thought, Grace didn’t make close to three hundred thou a year. As if they didn’t own a three-bedroom apartment, renovated to boot.

Harper renewed her counting, “Thirteen, fourteen.”

Hank joined in and the children chanted in unison, “fifteen, sixteen, seventeen…”

Michael continued, “This mom, at the park, she gave her daughter—a quiet little thing—a time-out for walking up the slide!” He huffed in disbelief.

Together, the two dads shook their heads.

“No way,” Rip said.

“I mean, look,” Michael leaned over Harper so his face was just a few inches from Rip’s. His skin was a blueish gray in the fading light. Like he was telling a ghost story, Rip thought, and he felt the sudden chill on his bare arms. “I don’t let Harper climb up the slide if there’s a kid waiting to come down. But there was nobody up there. It was just plain gross.”

Rip wished the way he talked was more like Michael’s; thoughtful, unhurried, like he had all the time in the world. Rip had always disliked his quirk of spewing forth anxiously. His jokes falling flat, so that sarcasm was taken seriously, missteps that pushed people away. All because he couldn’t just slow the fuck down and because, he thought now, he was worried no one would listen for very long. It had been an issue in his college acting classes, his habit of delivering his lines too fast.

“Here’s my philosophy,” Rip said, his voice hushed, as if it was a secret. “It’s simple. Kids are kids. They don’t know what the hell they’re doing, and it’s our job to teach them. So they can go out into the real world someday and be functioning members of society. This”—he lifted his fingers in quotes—“
we-got-to-share-everything
rule is BS. Who shares everything in real life? The very opposite is the way life rolls!”

Michael nodded. “Totally. You’re preaching to the choir, man.”

“So why do we expect our kids to act more grown-up than grown-ups? Why do we get P-I-S-S-E-D when they freak out?”

Rip was excited now, as if something truly wise was flowing from him. He straightened his back, and the canoe rocked gently from side to side. “What kind of unpredictable world is that for a kid? It’s psychologically traumatic, if you ask me. Like, Oh, hey, Tommy, I know that’s your most favorite car
ever,
but this kid here, who we don’t even know, is bawling his eyes out, and so you got to hand it over. Give it up. For the good of spoiled children everywhere. That’s just crazy.”

Michael leaned over and squeezed Rip’s shoulder. So hard it felt good.

“You got a good daddy here,” Michael said, looking down at Hank. “You’re a lucky boy.”

“Yep,” Hank said.

This was it, Rip thought. There couldn’t be any window opened wider.

“Thanks, man,” Rip said. “You saying that means a lot to me. ’Cause I think you’re an awesome dad, too.”

Hank’s small, whining voice interrupted him, “Daddy? Daddy. I have to make a peepee.” Hank clutched at the crotch of his swimsuit.

“Hold on, buddy,” Rip said, patting Hank on the shoulder. “We’re heading home real soon.” And then to Michael, “It means a lot, ’cause I’m in this total dilemma with Grace. Maybe you could help me out?”

“Sure. Anything I can do,” Michael said as he turned to face front, gripping the paddle and lowering it into the still, blue water.

Rip sighed. “I appreciate that. ’Cause here’s the situation. There’s nothing I want more in the world than…”

Michael interrupted him, “Why don’t you get that paddle in the water, okay? We’ll talk on the way home. It’s getting dark.”

“And dark-time,” Harper said, peeking around her father, her little fingers doing a creepy-crawly movement in front of her face toward a wide-eyed Hank, “Dark is when witches and monsters come.”

“Daddy?” Hank mumbled, pressing into Rip’s stomach as he backed away from Harper.

“Harper, sweetie, please don’t scare Hank,” Rip said. “So, like I told you, Michael. There’s nothing I … And we. Grace, too,” he lied. “There’s nothing we want more than a brother or sister for Hank. Like I said yesterday, on the deck”—he laughed nervously—“we have to use a D-O-N-O-R to get this show on the road. And, ugh, she
hated
going through the whole process at the clinic.”

Michael grunted. “Man, the current is fierce back here. I can’t get the boat to move an inch.”

Rip continued, “I’m cool with it, but it creeps Grace out, you know.”

“Are you paddling?”

Michael’s back arched, and Rip could see the effort he was using. The taut lines of his upper arm muscles gleamed in the alien blue light.

Rip started to paddle, and the resistance almost yanked it from his hands.

“It’s like we’re stuck,” Rip said. “Oh yeah, so”—he paused, trying to find the best way to explain what was a stomach-roiling humiliation, that his wife wasn’t just antibaby, but that he was starting to suspect she was antihim—“you think you could help me out? With Grace? ’Cause I’m at a loss, man.”

Michael lifted the paddle and held it aloft, water dripping from it, cold and black. Michael sat unmoving, his head bent forward, until Hank turned to look up at Rip. The soft down on his son’s cheek glowed.

“What’s wrong, Daddy?” Hank asked, and Rip could hear the terror in his boy’s voice, which sent a shiver of unease through Rip’s gut.

“Michael?” Rip said. “What’s up?”

“Are you asking me,” Michael said, so quietly Rip had to lean forward to hear, “what I
think
you are? You. Me. Grace”—his voice dropped to a whisper—“and a turkey baster?” Michael laughed, but there was an ugly kink in it. “Maybe a few scented candles and Sade on the iPod?”

It took a moment for Rip to understand. Did Michael think he’d been suggesting a threesome? To squeeze some sperm out of Michael like he was a reproductive vending machine?

Anxiety thrummed in Rip’s chest as he looked around them; at the still water and the blackening branches above and under and everywhere, like an enchanted forest had closed in around them, and the canoe felt too small and he thought they might be trapped there forever, spinning in lazy circles.

“Let’s get out of here,” Michael said, and spat into the water.

“Ew, Daddy!” Harper said.

“Whoa,” Rip could barely speak. His mouth had gone dry. “Wait. I did
not
mean that, dude. You’re not hearing me right. Or I wasn’t making myself clear, I mean.”

“I heard you fine,” Michael said. Rip could see the sweat blooming darkly under the back of Michael’s shirt. “You need a”—Michael paused, then finished the sentence as if he had a mouthful of bad food—“D-O-N-O-R.”

“In a clinical setting!” Rip said. “A freaking doctor’s office. Not a bedroom!”

“Do not”—Michael paused—“use language like that around my baby.”

“I didn’t even mean
you,
” Rip said. “This is some crazy misunderstanding.”

“We’re done talking about this. Done. Get your”—he looked over his shoulder, and Rip saw the rage in his clenched jaw, but then Michael paused, his eyes moving to Hank in Rip’s lap, and he spelled the next word—“F-U-C-K-I-N-G paddle in the water.”

Rip was too mortified to speak. He was stuck in a boat in the middle of nowhere with a pissed-off dad, possibly drunk and practically a stranger. And Rip’s child, his precious only child, was with him.

“Michael,” Rip said, but Michael ignored him, dipping his paddle into the water, stroking with a groan that escalated until Michael released with a grunt.

Hank gripped Rip’s forearm, and Rip could feel the boy’s sweat-slick palm.

“Daddy?” Hank said, and there was no need to say more. Rip knew what his son was feeling.

“Can I have a turn paddling?” Harper asked.

“Michael,” Rip said. He reached over Hank’s head to tap Michael’s sweat-soaked back.

“Don’t touch me,” Michael said quietly. Rip sat back, shifting Hank so his son was as close as possible.

They dug their paddles into the water until it felt to Rip like they were gouging at frozen earth. The back of Michael’s neck turned purple and Rip imagined the capillaries bursting under his own skin. The veins at his temples throbbed. But the canoe moved only what seemed like an inch every try.

They did not speak. The birds called to each other—a sad and lonely plea that mimicked Hank’s whimpering. The drooping willow branches swayed in the breeze. The frogs croaked. More mechanically, Rip thought, than the way he’d imagined the frogs in the books he had read to Hank or in the cartoons the boy had watched. There was nothing natural about the sound. It reminded Rip of the buzz of a city-apartment doorbell, and he wished he and Hank were at home, and the apartment door was buzzing.
Chinese food!
Hank would shout joyfully, and they’d settle down to watch
Toy Story 3
for the fortieth time, and Rip would cover Hank’s eyes with his own hands during the scary parts.

Rip almost had to stop himself from laughing as they clawed and clawed at the water with the canoe barely moving. This is crazy. Just a silly misunderstanding. A temporary hell, he thought, like childbirth. All would be good in the end, once they got back and ate some food, had a few beers. He’d make Michael understand.

He could smell the sour scent of his nervous sweat.

The frogs and the cicadas grew louder. A relentless, grinding, buzzing chorus.

Then he felt it. A hot trickle on his feet.

Hank sighed. Rip caught the rising scent of his son’s urine.

“It’s okay, my special guy,” he said. “Daddy’s here. He’s got you.”

the grass is always greener

Susanna

The car ride
to the supermarket had been puke-free.
So far,
Susanna thought.

As Allie drove, Susanna listened to her talk a mile a minute about how intense the mommies were and
what the hell were GMOs
? And
why was Tiffany so against GMOs
? And
what was up with Rip, could he be gay
?

Susanna nodded and answered in short responses. GMOS were Genetically Modified foods. Tiffany was an extreme domestic sancti-mommy. No, Rip was not gay. Just strange.

She used the opportunity to check her savings account on her phone.

The balance was $4,250. It wasn’t much, she thought, but her business was just getting off the ground. She’d scored her first big rental, a Swiss family with three kids under five, who would visit their Brooklyn cousins that fall and had booked a double stroller, three car seats, and two portable cribs. For a whole month! Things were sure to pick up in the spring, when the weather warmed.

Then she remembered. There would be the baby to take care of, which would create at least a six-month distraction from building the business. She could hire a part-time babysitter. Tenzin was lovely—but that would spend money meant for their future home. If only Allie were more interested in pitching in with the child care. If only Allie were more interested in general. Honestly, Susanna thought, even the most disinterested daddies, like Nicole’s husband Josh, were more invested then Allie.

The car hit a bump, and Susannah’s belly slapped against her thighs.
Fuck!
She rubbed her bump, an apology to the baby for the shock, and for swearing. Even if it was only in her head. She’d read many an article on pregnancy that warned stress and general negativity had a harmful effect on a life
in utero
. And although Susanna took little Tiffany said seriously, there was that study Tiffany had mentioned not long ago, linking stress to an elevated level of testosterone in a pregnant woman’s blood, which just might be responsible for the dramatic increase in Autism and ADHD. As Tiffany had lectured the rapt parents, Susanna had felt her heart beat faster, as if her body temperature were rising right then, as if she could feel her stress level rocketing. She had imagined the endorphins pinballing the testosterone, setting off a toxic rainstorm in her uterus.

So she’d taken to apologizing to the baby each time she cursed. A miniantidote, she hoped. Just like the swear jar her Midwestern mother had kept on the corner of the kitchen counter. A nickel had clinked into the jar for every cussword.

The automatic doors of the Shop & Stop whirred open, and Susanna was reminded of the magical efficiency of suburbia. Ice-cold central air. Starbucks drive-thrus.

Allie veered left toward the dairy aisle and picked up her pace, waving her grocery list, “I’ll knock this out fast, babe. You just chill, and I’ll meet you at the checkout in a few, okay?”

“Okay,” Susanna said as she eyed the few shoppers; an older woman in a housecoat and a few kids trailing their mother, their faces pressed to handheld video games. Had they heard Allie call her babe? Had they reacted? This wasn’t the city, after all, as Allie was always reminding her, using it as the principal reason they could not never ever move out of city; there wasn’t much love of gays in the ’burbs.