Cutting Teeth(10)
“Kids bite.” Marcus palms their son’s sweet head. “It happens. Can’t roll him up in bubble wrap.” As if that’s what she’s implying.
“You weren’t there,” she says.
“You were?” He frowns, surprised. “Why?”
“I—” It’s not actually that hard to lie once you’ve had a bit of practice, and Rhea has had some. “I was just dropping off some supplies.”
It hangs there between them. Fix it, she thinks. Explain. Tell him what Miss Ollie told her and let him offer his two cents. He pays his child support, on time—usually a few days early, if she’s being honest—every month, without fail; this is the deal. The moment balloons.
“Where y’all headed?” Her breath spills out. She kneels to tie Bodhi’s shoe and looks down at the floor, brushes the whole thing off.
“Fresa’s.”
She gives Marcus a look. “No flour tortillas, remember?”
“Yeah, I know.” He cranes his neck to peer into her living room, all nosy. “Looks like you’re running Grand Central Station. How many orders are you sending out these days?”
Her cheeks plump as she tries not to look too pleased with herself. “About two hundred a day.” It’s been five whole months since she put in her notice at the property management company where she was working as an executive assistant to the owner, her latest in a long stream of meaningless jobs.
“I hear you’re looking for investors, Rhea,” he says, putting his hand on Bodhi’s shoulder.
“I don’t need your money.” She folds an olive-colored dish towel and hangs it on the oven handle out of habit. She keeps her duplex cozy but neat. A macramé fruit hammock hangs from a nail in the low popcorn ceiling. She likes the feeling of the clean wood-grain tile beneath her bare feet and the butcher-block countertop under her palms when she prepares fresh food.
“Maybe I want to give it.”
“I’m not looking for gifts. I’ve got a prospectus and everything.”
“A prospectus?”
She sighs, half wondering what happened to that law student he was dating. Laurie, was it? “Yeah. Investor literature. I went and got a business accountant.”
Marcus whistles low. “Okay, I see how it is.” He winks. “We got a girlboss here.” For the record, Rhea hates that term. “Well, come on, Bode-Man. We better get out of here. Oh, hey, you catch that email from the school?” He turns halfway out the door. “What’s that about?”
“What email?” she asks.
“You gotta check your emails, Rhea.” Jesus, she knows, she knows. Marcus treats every email from the school like it’s mission critical. “The one sent about half an hour ago.” He starts to pull out his phone to show her.
“I’ll check it out,” she cuts him off.
He looks hard at her. “You okay? You seem, like, stressed or something.”
“I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow after school, Bodhi—love you.” Her heart jams up in her chest.
Marcus lingers another beat and, for a second, she wonders: Does he know? Is he testing her? Is she failing by not communicating about Miss Ollie and the lunches? She holds her breath, unsure of what to do or why this thought has even occurred to her.
“Later, Rhea.” He pulls the door gently closed behind him.
Dear Little Academy Parents,
I hope your weekends have been restful. I’m writing to keep you apprised of a few developments in our classroom. While I would never discuss any particular child’s health status or concerns, I do want to mention that a number of parents have informed me that something seems to be going around, the first instance having been reported to me right around Thursday morning. We don’t currently know the cause, so for now, if your child is acting “off” or doesn’t seem like him-or herself, please do take them to see their pediatrician as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation.
Yours truly,
Miss Ollie
* * *
By morning, the pads of Rhea’s fingertips are raw from pulling at packing tape and wrestling cardboard boxes into submission. She put together each shipment of Terrene by hand, finishing the latest batch sometime around three in the morning and realizing, at that point, that she’d hardly get any sleep anyway, so she might as well spend the wee hours putting together the pitch deck for the angel investors.
Two weeks ago, she hired a brand consultant and paid 500 of her own hard-earned dollars to meet with her for an hour. It turned out mostly to be a crock. A bleached-blond lady with hot pink crocodile-leather shoes and a turquoise portfolio who suggested Rhea become the Earth Mama version of Gwyneth Paltrow—effortless, aspirational, more design-forward, less folksy.
Last night, she stared at profit-and-loss statements, at account numbers, and at scaling projections until it felt as though her eyes would bleed, praying that her numbers weren’t wrong. Almost everything she knows about running a business has come from a mix of Google and trial and error. Each slide preparation, each calculation takes Rhea twice as long as it would someone with formal training. Investors would change that. She could get an assistant, a bookkeeper, a warehouse that wasn’t her living room. But not today.
Today, her insides feel like a growl. In and out, that’s all she’s got to do. Grab Bodhi and go.