Cutting Teeth: A Novel (27 page)

“Harper, sweetie…”

The girl was gone. The breeze from the swinging doors rolled over Nicole, and she thought she might fall to her knees on the cold linoleum. Instead, she stood, climbed onto the step stool and slid each knife, as well as the parer, the apple cutter, even the blades from the Cuisinart, and finally the knife block (
knockonwood knockonwood
…) into the cupboard above the oven.

She knew Josh would notice. He knew the signs that she was approaching an episode. He would find her and ask if she was doing
it
again. Was she having bad thoughts? Shortly after Wyatt was born—fucking baby blues, Nicole thought—Josh had to hide the knife block because every time she walked in the kitchen, the thought of slashing herself had popped into her mind, like an unwelcome squatter.

Josh still brought up the knives in their couples’ therapy. As if he were outing her insanity to their therapist, Nicole thought. He knew it was the humiliation she wanted most to forget. Who, in their right mind, obsessed over household objects? The washing machine she feared would overflow, checking five times each cycle. Or faucets in the bathrooms, which she tightened and retightened before bed, in case one dripped, drop after drop accumulating until water cascaded through the ceiling of the room below.

Are you having your
thoughts
? Josh would ask, as if their code could protect Wyatt from the obvious.

Nicole stood by the kitchen door and listened.

The children were silent. They must be eating. The only quiet moments she’d had in the last three and a half years were when Wyatt was eating or sleeping.

She thought of the cache of Go Bags in the trunk of the car and wondered if she should visit. A dose of security. A little something to get her through the night. Instead, she poured herself some Prosecco and swallowed a whole Xanax.

She returned to the living room, where Tenzin was leading the children in a merry game of Ring Around the Rosie. Nicole sat in her favorite chair, a high-backed midcentury piece of red-and-gold brocade that had belonged to Grandma Lois. The single soul in generations who’d possessed an inkling of taste, Nicole thought. She had loved that chair as a girl, crowning it the princess chair, and spent hours there, scribbling in her notebooks as stories unspooled—of unicorns, goblins, and fair-haired maidens stalked by hook-nosed witches. Stories of lost children in dark forests.

Tenzin led the children in a wide circle around the living room. Nicole was walled in by their laughter. She remembered a lecture by one of her grad-school literature professors—a spinster with a romantic pouf of hair, who had reminded Nicole of the heroines in the turn-of-the-century novels that were the professor’s expertise. She had reveled in the gothic, and also in revealing how it threaded through today’s pop culture.

Nicole itched to stand, to halt the children’s carefree song. Don’t you know, she wanted to tell Tenzin, that the ring—a red ring, a rosy ring—is the first sign of the plague? That pockets full of posies aren’t pretty flowers to wear in your hair, but sachets of herbs, to ward off infection? As for ashes, doesn’t it make you think of the burning of diseased corpses?

She imagined herself saying, We
will
all fall down, clasping Tenzin’s arm, calling to the other mommies chitchatting on the deck about who knows what insignificant gripes. Death won’t be as fickle as us, Nicole would shout, with our never-ending wants and needs! Death loves all its victims. Rich and poor. Young and old.

Instead, she sipped her Prosecco. She chided herself, calling herself names. Insane, melodramatic, and the worst; the word Josh hurtled at her in arguments. Sick. She snapped the rubber band around her wrist until she wore a red ring of inflamed skin like a bracelet.

Ashes-ashes-we-all-fall-down!

Please, Nicole.
Web bots? You don’t even believe in God, how can you believe in prophetic computers?

The children were still on the ground, giggling, Tenzin crouched in the middle of their circle, when Tiffany walked into the living room, an apple in one hand and a butter knife in the other.

“What in the H-E-L-L happened to all the knives?” she asked.

Nicole felt Josh’s eyes fall on her.

“Anyone?” Tiffany said.

Nicole chanted silently
. Knock on wood, knock on wood, knock on wood
 …

“Mama Nicole did it,” Harper said.

The little girl was standing, pointing at Nicole.

Mercifully, this was the moment the Xanax kicked in. Liquid calm.

BFFs forever

Leigh

Tiffany had terrified
Leigh at first. She was crass. She was a sloppy drunk, and burped and farted, and giggled
excuse me
in a sweet, childish voice that hinted at sex. Tiffany talked about sex often, which served as a reminder to Leigh that she herself was, as Brad had told her, so “fucking uptight.” Leigh had even considered dropping out of playgroup, making an excuse, like she’d registered for a Tumbling Tots class on Friday afternoons. She hadn’t felt a bond with any of the parents, though she liked Susanna, who was pretty and sweet, especially for a lesbian. Leigh had thought about inviting Susanna to lunch, but she worried she couldn’t relate to someone whose perspective just had to be so different from her own. Susanna was elegant. She looked like Natalie Wood. With an extra twenty pounds on her frame.

Leigh knew Tiffany had grown up white trash. A phrase Leigh had heard Tiffany use to describe herself with obvious pride. She had boasted about her inspired decision to meld her and Michael’s last names (Zelinski and Romano) into a hybrid surname for Harper—Zelano—and if there was stronger proof that Harper’s mommy and daddy came from little, so little that they wouldn’t continue their ancestors’ names, Leigh couldn’t imagine what that might be.

But Tiffany knew how to shop. Her clothes were boutique-quality. At least she was trying, Leigh thought, and began to feel sorry for Tiffany, who painted a childhood of neglect for the rapt parents at playgroup (all the product of privilege), a gritty tale of rural, working-class upbringing. Tiffany’s father was a mechanic, who ran a garage out of their front yard. Her stepbrother had kept a pet raccoon. Her sister was a methamphetamine addict, and Leigh had stopped herself from asking Tiffany if her sister’s teeth were all rotted out.

There was also the near-miraculous way Tiffany engaged Chase. When she crouched at Chase’s eye level and looked straight into his eyes, Chase actually looked back, a marvel that nearly took Leigh’s breath away. So Leigh had not only stayed in the playgroup, she had signed up for one, then two Tiff’s Riffs music classes. Tiffany seemed unbothered by Chase’s behavior during class. The way he whirled his body around with little awareness there were other little bodies nearby. Tiffany gently redirected him when he mouthed the egg shakers and ran around the room in jagged circles instead of sitting and “participating.” Leigh was grateful Tiffany never snapped at Chase in frustration as former babysitters and therapists had. As Leigh herself did.

Almost a year ago, Leigh’s phone began buzzing nightly with Tiffany’s texts. At first they were short and playful, Tiffany’s syntax unmistakably alcohol-mussed. A joke about something stupid Rip had said at playgroup. Or Tiffany might send Leigh a message through Facebook, asking for her opinion on a hand-sewn quilt Tiffany had found on Etsy that she just had to have. Did Leigh like the cobalt or the tangerine color best?