Cutting Teeth(19)

There isn’t time for a nap. There is never time for a nap because of a mother’s Forty-Five-Minute Rule. That’s what she wants to shout in his pruned face. She is always supposed to be somewhere in forty-five minutes. Not enough time to go home and take off her too-tight pants and watch an episode of Love Island. Take any point in her day and the same will be true. And today that somewhere is Noelle’s school, where she’s supposed to be meeting with Darby and Miss Ollie. In forty-five minutes.





EIGHT




On the drive, Rhea listens to Bitch, Please, a motivational audiobook by Zazzy Tims, recommended by her new investment advisor. A little grabby for Rhea’s usual tastes, but she tries not to hold that against it.

Zazzy—a sassy white Midwestern lady with an inverted bob on the thumbnail image—walks women through the ten most common excuses they make for themselves, the ones that keep them from realizing their dreams, and answers each excuse with a resounding “Bitch, please!” coupled with a humorous essay about her own rise in the business world.

Rhea cuts the ignition, snapping Zazzy off mid-sentence and filling her little lime-green Kia with bloated silence. Beyond the windshield, a bluebird day unfurls over the Little Academy campus, fucking with her whole vibe.

She goes over it again in her head because once she steps foot on that pavement, there’s no turning back.

Yesterday she put in a formal request for Bodhi to change classrooms and was rejected flat out. Some kind of freeze on all transfer requests, the front office said, thanks to this crazy situation with kids biting the bejesus out of each other. That was Wednesday. Today is Thursday, tomorrow Friday. Tomorrow Miss Ollie emails Marcus and gives him ideas about how things ought to go with her son.

Rhea runs her fingers along the border of the thin manila envelope in her hands. Is she really going to do this? Is she prepared to ruin a woman’s life? Her breathing is even, her pulse steady. She’s not flying off the handle. This is not the Rhea of seven or eight years ago. The one who made a stupid snap decision that nearly ruined her whole life. Even though she knows that Rhea is in there, waiting, biding her time, this one has thought it through. This is different. This is about her child.

She unbuckles her seatbelt and climbs out.





NINE




Darby’s stalling. It’s amazing how easy it is to stall with a smartphone; she used to have to get creative. When she received Miss Ollie’s very nice, very nonthreatening request for a meeting to “touch base,” her first thought had been: Can we not? Though you’re not allowed to say that when it comes to your kid. You have to care. You have to care so much and you have to do it all the time. You have to care which school to send them to and about the evils of YouTube and whether they’re sharing and the changing consistencies of their diaper contents and high-fructose corn syrup. All of it matters because apparently every parent is one wrong move away from raising a serial killer.

But sometimes—only sometimes—Darby would appreciate a time-out from all the paying attention and keeping an eye on, just a month or two break from giving a shit. Maybe it’s one thing for the parents with easy children, who frankly ruin it for everyone, but Darby has a wonderful but difficult daughter.

So she will show up and listen and not get defensive at this meeting. She will lean forward and ask questions. She’ll welcome an outsider’s perspective. Anything to understand what makes Lola tick. Because Darby is realizing more and more that she has no idea.

And she especially doesn’t know what any of this has got to do with Noelle and Mary Beth. She hopes it’s not the biting. Please, anything but that.

I wish I could bite you. Lola had sounded so cold and calculating yesterday in the car; she can be sweet, she really can be. But Darby knows better than to say this in the meeting. She sounds like a crazy person, even to Griff, who just this morning suggested they send their four-year-old to some kind of experimental group therapy he’d read one stupid article about. Sometimes, Darby feels like she’s seeing someone who isn’t really there. A different version of her little girl.

Whatever it is, she’s glad Mary Beth will be there. Mary Beth is a world-class carer.

As if on cue, a text pings her phone from Mary Beth. Bad news, it reads.





TEN




In her car, Rhea’s hands still tremble in her lap, where no one would know they’ve been trembling for a full fifteen minutes before the first responders ever got there. An ambulance, three police cars, and a fire truck.

She’s now been staring at the vehicles blocking the pickup lane, her pulse booming in her ears. A hard thwap on the driver’s-side glass startles her.

“Bodhi’s fine,” another mother—her name’s Roxy—calls through the window. “The kids are all fine.” She gives a thumbs-up and Rhea nods dumbly.

“Yeah. Yeah. Okay,” she mumbles through the glass, realizing too late she’s forgotten to thank Roxy. Rhea would never have thought to do that, and knowing this about herself makes her feel lonely, like maybe she needs to examine some stuff.

“Bitch, please!” Zazzy Tims exhorts through the car speakers. She can’t remember turning the ignition back on, hasn’t caught a single word of the chapter in this ridiculous audiobook since she made her final decision, stepped out of the car, and walked across the promenade to change things.