Cutting Teeth: A Novel (9 page)

strings attached

Leigh

The room hummed
with the business of children. After a glass of white wine, Leigh felt as if the noise in the room had elevated. The revving of toy cars and the clatter of plastic blocks. The jabber of half-formed language and shrieks of fury in the never-ending battle of toy sharing. The giggling chatter of the mommies and the sobbing that followed a boo-boo; all of it plucked at the growing pain behind her eyes.
Mommy! Mama! Mommy! Mama! Mommeee!

Wine was poured, Brie and crackers nibbled. Leigh smiled and nodded appropriately as the mothers alternated between admiring the children in the moments they behaved (
Look at them. They’re so cute!
), and critiquing them when they fussed (
It’s a good thing they’re cute
).

Hank was crying again, rubbing at his swollen eyes with fleshy fists.

“There’s still sand in my eyes.”

Grace looked around the room, caught Leigh’s eye, and said, “He has a hard time at the beach. Everything’s so intense.”

Leigh nodded; there was a hint of a question in the woman’s stiff voice, a silent plea for commiseration.

“Yes,” Leigh said. “It
is
a very sunny day.”

Then she caught sight of Chase creeping closer to Hank. Chase’s head was tilted, as if mesmerized by Hank’s despair. Leigh started to stand, to intervene, but the weight of the baby in her arms pulled her back, and just as she was about to call for Tenzin, Chase backed away.

“Yip, yip, yip!” he sounded off as he galloped around the room.

“Give people their space, Chase. Honey,” Leigh said.

Chase continued to race around the room, skirting the other children. It was a game he played, to see how close he could get without bumping someone. He sounded off as he galloped, yips and tongue-clucks and fluttering of his lips.

The soundtrack of Chase, she had once joked with his speech therapist, who assured Leigh her son did not have a tic. Still, Leigh feared a Tourette’s diagnosis down the road. She had always been proud of how still she could hold herself, even as a child. In the polished pews of Saint John’s Episcopal Church on Sunday mornings. At the
barre
in Miss Posey’s ballet studio. In cotillion class, her white-gloved hand sweating in the viselike grasp of a pimply thirteen-year-old boy.

Grace wiped the tears from Hank’s reddened cheeks with the corner of a towel, and said, “Chase just wanted to cheer you up, Henry.”

Hank summoned the breath for an even louder wail. “My name is Hank!”

“If you don’t calm down,” Grace said, pausing to search the room, “I’m going to have to get Daddy.”

“I want Daddy!”

“Okay, that’s it.” Grace’s lips were a thin white line. “You’re getting a time-out.”

“Daddy!” Hank screamed, raw and phlegmy. Leigh covered Charlotte’s little ears with her fingertips.

“Actually,” Tiffany began as she knelt in front of Hank and rubbed his back.

Leigh saw Nicole’s eyes flicking to catch Susanna’s, a
here she goes
look passing between them. The air in the room fell flat, the same tense silence that always accompanied Tiffany’s lectures on child development.

Tiffany continued, sweetly. As if talking to the children during music class, Leigh thought. “Studies show time-outs don’t work as effectively as we might think they do.”

“Oh. Really?” Grace said. A skeptic’s wrinkle creased her forehead, and Leigh could see she was a woman unused to criticism, trigger-quick to bat down any challenge. “Where did you hear that?”

“Well,” Tiffany said, “I don’t know if you’ve heard of the Waldorf philosophy? It focuses on imitation. It suggests you guide the child to more appropriate behavior. In a gentle way.” Tiffany gestured toward Harper. “Harp goes to a Waldorf school.”

As if to say, Leigh thought,
look at this perfect specimen.

Tiffany took Hank’s free hand, and the little boy, his sobs ceasing, looked up at her expectantly. Leigh could see that Grace’s lips had parted. In astonishment, or irritation.

“I’ll start on the kids’ dinner,” Nicole called out before vanishing into the kitchen.

“Let me give you a hand,” Susanna said, waddling after Nicole.

The fear Tiffany inspired in the playgroup parents baffled Leigh. Tiffany had been nothing but kind toward
her.
Even loving.

“For example,” Tiffany continued, “if a child was acting in a disruptive manner, the teacher would redirect. By leading them away with an outstretched hand.” Tiffany mimed the gesture. “Suggesting an alternative activity.”

Tiffany grabbed a beach towel hanging over the back of a chair. She held it out to Hank and smiled. Her voice was soft. Seductive even, Leigh thought.

“Here, Hank. You may help me fold the towel.”

The little boy reached for the towel, but his mother jerked him away and, for a moment, there was an absurd tug-of-war.

“That’s so very interesting, Tiffany,” Grace said with a beaming smile of her own.

Grace’s calculatedly cordial tone made the back of Leigh’s neck prickle.

“I’m a child-development specialist.” Tiffany shrugged modestly. “With a master’s in music therapy.”

“And where was that?” Grace asked. “The Columbia School for Teachers?”

“No. City College.”

“Oh,” Grace said, and smiled. With a barely perceptible nod of pity, Leigh thought. Then Grace ushered the still-whimpering Hank to the screen door and out onto the deck.

Even before the screen door thwacked shut, Tiffany had pulled out her phone and was jabbing at the keypad.

Three seconds later, Leigh’s phone vibrated.

The text message read:

ok! she’s a fucking cunt!

Leigh’s hand jumped to her mouth to smother a laugh. When she looked up, Tiffany winked at her, seemingly unscathed.

Tenzin rushed by, shuffling after Chase, singing, “Potty time! Make a peepee on potty time!”

Chase cried, “Can’t get me!” and leapt onto the sofa seat next to Leigh, jumping up and down, his hip knocking the arm cradling Charlotte.

“Chase, sweetie, careful,” Leigh said. “You’ll wake the baby.”

“You can’t get me, Tenzie,” Chase sang with an openmouthed smile.

“No, no, no, Chase, my boy,” Tenzin clucked quietly, reaching for him.

With each jab of his elbow, Leigh felt the coil tighten in her chest.

“Stop, Chase. Please!” she heard herself begging. Then she took a slow breath and tried a more rational approach, “You’re not doing good listening, Chase.”

With each thudding jump, each dip of the cushion seat, Leigh felt a sense of unsteadiness grow, and when he fell against her, his fingers catching in her hair, a white-hot stinging at her temple, she almost laid her palm on his bare chest, imagining his skin still sun-warmed under her fingers, him on the floor, on his back, his elbows skidding across the thin carpet at her feet.

But Tenzin was there to save Chase (and Leigh) again, scooping the boy up under the armpits and swinging him up in the air and away, his giggles trailing behind them.

Leigh relatched the baby’s mouth around her nipple, the hot gush of her milk letting down a relief. Only then did she dare to look around the room, bracing herself for the disapproving stares. But no one looked her way. She couldn’t tell if their busy chatter was intentional. Maybe they were embarrassed for her. More than once, Nicole, and even Susanna (a mother to twins!) had said things like
I don’t know how you do it, Leigh.
As if Chase were a trial she must endure, as if she were a mother to be pitied.

But now she had her Charlotte.

Nicole, Susanna, and Tiffany stood in the kitchen doorway, their shoulders touching in a conspiratorial huddle as they watched Tenzin hop among the boys, plucking brightly colored foam sandals from their sun-browned feet. Leigh sensed a hint of mischief in their amused smiles. Even from Tiffany, who, as Tiffany loved to remind Leigh, had “discovered” Tenzin, and who called Tenzin a goddess to her face.

The Tibetan woman did look a bit comical, Leigh thought, and instantly felt it a betrayal to think this, as if she had joined forces with those judgy mommies against her precious Tenzin. Tenzin didn’t own a bathing suit and was wearing one of Leigh’s. It was too small in the trunk and left her hip bones exposed. But it was too big in the chest; the empty cups two pockets of air-filled fabric. She wore white men’s athletic socks and sweatpants rolled up to her knees. Her
SAVE TIBET!
baseball cap was perched atop her head. Still, Leigh thought, there was beauty in Tenzin’s effortless smile, in the simplicity of her unwrinkled golden skin that left little to distract from those loving black eyes.

When Leigh saw children look at Tenzin with lip-curled disgust, as Harper sometimes did, as the parents in the playgroup did now, Leigh felt a swelling urge to defend her.

“Tenzin going to clean up,” Tenzin sang in her usual cheer.

The only way Leigh could make sense of Tenzin’s playful energy, and her habit of referring to herself in the third person, was that she’d been a first-grade teacher back in India, where her husband and three children still lived. Leigh preferred to think of Tenzin’s clowning as intentional. An act. Tenzin’s daily performance was just as seamless as Leigh’s own. But lately, as she grew to rely on Tenzin for more than child caregiving, but also for comfort and even for guidance, Leigh sometimes feared that Tenzin was as clueless as she appeared. The nanny might actually believe there was goodness in everyone. After all, Leigh thought, Tenzin’s most-used American cliché was
look on the bright side.

The din had woken the baby, who, unlike big brother Chase, was all smiles after a nap, even one interrupted. Leigh tried to avoid comparing them, but it felt impossible when they were such opposites. When the Leigh who was Chase’s mommy was a stranger to the Leigh who was Charlotte’s mommy.

Leigh jumped when she felt the hand on her shoulder.

The scent of Tiffany’s musky perspiration swarmed her.

“Jumpy, a bit?” Tiffany asked with an amused lift of her eyebrows.

“You scared me, silly.”

She gave Tiffany’s cool dry fingers a squeeze, counting
one-two-three
before releasing. Recently, Tiffany had pointed out, with a tone of exaggerated hurt, that Leigh didn’t hug her back, so Leigh had been making an extra effort.

Tiffany tucked herself between Leigh and the arm of the sofa, curling her naked legs under her. Like a cat looking to be scratched, Leigh thought. Harper ran over and climbed onto Tiffany’s lap. The girl’s long legs, spotted with yellowing bruises, spilled across Leigh’s thighs. The soles of Harper’s feet were filthy, and Leigh scooted over to make room.

“Milky-time, Mama,” Harper pleaded. She fell back so her head rested in the crook of Tiffany’s elbow. A cradle position. The same way Leigh held Charlotte.

But Charlotte was three months old. Harper nearly four
years
old. Again Leigh wondered when Tiffany would put an end to the sullying of this naturally beautiful act that, in Leigh’s opinion, Tiffany had made wholly unnatural.

Tiffany lifted a heavy breast over the neckline of her shirt, and Harper cupped it in her hands, closed her eyes and opened wide before pulling the bright pink nipple into her own pink mouth.

“Gentle, Harp,” Tiffany said, “I know you love mama’s yaybies and all, but ouch.”

Leigh smiled, more of a reflex, when Tiffany used her embarrassing alternative for boobies.
Boob has negative connotations
,
Tiffany had once explained.

Leigh pressed her fingertips into the hollows above her eyes.

“Do you have any painkiller?” she asked.

“Nope. But,” Tiffany’s voice fell to a whisper, “Nicole has like a grab bag of pharmaceuticals in the bathroom upstairs.”

Leigh was about to stand and head for the stairs when Tiffany clutched her elbow and pulled her back into the sofa.

“Did you get a chance to think about the babysitting schedule?” Tiffany asked. “I really
really
need those hours on Thursdays.”

Not this again. How many times did she have to tell Tiffany no, without actually saying no? Tenzin was hers on Thursday—the only weekday Chase’s preschool did not have a spot, which meant twelve hours alone with the kids. Twelve hours trying to protect Chase from himself while she nursed the baby through the 5–7
P.M.
witching hour.
Don’t jump headfirst off the couch, Chase. Don’t stick Cheerios up your nose, honey. Don’t chew on Mommy’s cell phone, please.

“I’m sorry,” Leigh started, but Tiffany interrupted.

“Tenzin says she’s cool with it. She really wants the cash.”

Leigh felt a blush of humiliation at the thought of Tenzin and Tiffany conspiring behind her back.

“Other side,” Harper demanded, and swiveled around in her mother’s lap. Wordlessly, Tiffany tucked one breast back into her shirt and extracted the other.

“And Tenzin said she’s super happy to do a share,” Tiffany said, leaning close until Leigh could see the depression in the woman’s nostril where her nose had once been pierced. “Which would be great, Leigh. ’Cause it would save sooo much money.”

And, Leigh thought, I’d come home to Chase in hysterics after hours of Harper-abuse. No one riled Chase like Harper, and Tiffany’s
laissez-faire
discipline only made matters worse.

The lusty suck of Harper’s nursing deepened, and Leigh felt the girl’s shining eyes watching her, waiting for a reaction. As if Harper hoped Leigh would defy Tiffany, knowing it would make for entertainment. All the kids were drama junkies, their little noses in the air, sniffing out the slightest hint of blood drawn between the mommies. Especially Harper.

Leigh slid out of Tiffany’s grasp and stood. She sniffed at Charlotte and wrinkled her nose. “Oopsy! Got to change this baby girl’s diaper.”

“Just think about it, okay?” Tiffany tugged on the hem of Leigh’s seersucker skirt. “Okay? If I can’t promise Shabbat Tots Tuesdays
and
Thursdays they won’t give me either.”