Cutting Teeth: A Novel (44 page)

Authors: Julia Fierro

Before
had become a powerful word. One that needed no explanation when you were talking to another parent to a child under five. In life
after
children, Nicole often felt as if she were a character in a story; sometimes fraught with urgent meaning (fevers, falls, first steps), where time sped by, so fleeting that it made her crave for more life, for a hundred years even. Mostly, the story slogged along in monotonous tedium (diaper rashes, runny noses, potty-training purgatory).

Four years ago, she had woken groggy and sore, three layers of her body sliced open during the last-minute Caesarean that had interrupted Wyatt’s birth. She rose as if still dreaming, into a new story, one that came prepopulated. She hadn’t chosen these mommies and daddies. They were just the players that came with Wyatt. She had spent hours and hours with them only because they shared the story, which was a comedy, and occasionally, a tragedy. A story about loving little children.

What fools we are, she thought, to love something so brief, so fragile, as life. And especially that handful of sweet, little-children years. For all their complaining, Nicole knew that every mommy and daddy chided themselves each time they took these years for granted. It might be the best time of their lives. What else was there, after this? Freedom,
sure.
But for what? For ambition? For career? To grow old? To scrapbook, to join a book club, or garden or journal or renovate? Was that what she was waiting for?

Nicole knew there would be no more Friday afternoon playgroups. Excuses would be made. Lingering fevers, pediatrician appointments, nap-scheduling conflicts.
The
end hadn’t come after all, but another had, and she felt certain she was to blame.

Epilogue

Three Weeks Later

lucky break

Rip

HANKSDADDY76

BIG NEWS
! I’m starting the TWO-WEEK-WAIT! Anyone else?? Could use buddies to chat with to get through this brutal wait! How early have people started feeling symptoms? How soon can implantation start?

It’s been 4
+
years since I had a baby. I’m rusty, girls!