Cutting Teeth(36)

He pants and pretends to sit obediently. Then he howls.

“You’re going to make me trip.” Her fingertips hook into the back of her neck and she tilts her face up to look at the popcorn ceiling. The day is heavy on her. She’s got too much on her mind. Doesn’t know what she’s going to do about any of it.

“Baby?” she asks. “Can I ask you something?”

He nods, still half in character.

“Are you having certain cravings? Impulses, I mean, like…” She searches for a better word. “Are you hungry for anything special? Something like that?” She scoops him up and straddles his legs around her stomach. He squirms, but she holds him fast with her sinewy muscles. “Some of the kids in your class, their bodies have been talking to them, telling them that they need to—to take a drink from their mommies and daddies. Their arms or legs, for instance. Are you feeling like that’s something you might be wanting to do?” Rhea keeps her spirit open and accepting. She concentrates on radiating warmth and beaming light toward her son. “I want you to know, it’s okay. You can bite mommy. It’s okay this time. If that’s what your heart is telling you to do.”

“No.” Bodhi pulls a face, like someone’s held a camera in front of him and said, Now a silly one. He thrusts back against her and she wobbles. “That would hurt you. Biting is bad.”

“Right, usually, that’s exactly right. But if you need blood, if that sounds good to you, I understand.”

Bodhi sticks out his pink little tongue. “That’s disgusting. Gross.”

“But.” She strokes his head. “Maybe you’d feel better if you tried.”

“Yuck! Yuck! Yuck! Blech!” He spits, cheeks puffing out. Droplets spot her forehead and she grimaces.

He isn’t going to bite. He doesn’t want to. He is still her precious little koala boy, wrapped around her body. Her miracle son. Her moon and sky.

And yet there are seventy-five shipments that needed to go out today still sitting in her living room, tinctures that should have been mixed, a backlog of customer emails that require responses.

She lets her son slide down the length of her so that she can rummage through her purse and there, buried deep in her satchel, she finds what she’s looking for—Gabriella Becker’s business card.





SEVENTEEN




“Go ahead and fire me now,” Darby exclaims, tossing her hands up in the air. “I’m no good. Mine don’t look anything like the pictures.” She winces as she kneels on the hard-tile floor of room 401, squinting between her makeshift attempt at an egg carton creature and the Pinterest printouts provided by Mary Beth. It’s strange being in a new classroom, almost worse than if they’d remained in Miss Ollie’s original.

“Read the instructions.” Mrs. Tokem, the class’s new permanent substitute, patrols the tables, dipping to untwist the caps off glue and scoop glitter into neat piles.

Nothing has made the students and parents alike miss Erin Ollie quite like the presence of Mrs. Tokem, an older, cropped-haired woman and frequent poster to political threads on her neighborhood’s Nextdoor forum.

“Are you sure you want a sloth, Zeke?” Darby dots the back of two googly eyes with Elmer’s glue. “How about a crab? I think I could probably have some success with a crab.”

But Zeke doesn’t want a crab. In fact, none of the children assigned to Darby want crabs or turtles or snails or hatching chicks or anything else that might remotely be in her wheelhouse.

Darby’s knees crackle like that old brand of children’s cereal when she stands. She saunters over to Mary Beth, who is busy stockpiling materials at the craft counter. “Tough crowd out there,” she says, glancing over her shoulder. “So far my best attempt has been the walrus. Looks like you got a nice caterpillar. A caterpillar makes sense for egg carton animals. I need more egg cartons, by the way.” She leans her elbow on the surface like she’s waiting for her drink order at a bar. “But can you please be careful with that thing?” She points to the box cutter. “It looks lethal. Also, I’m probably not cut out for this.”

“We all have to pitch in,” Mary Beth murmurs. They glance over at Mrs. Tokem. The parents agreed—or at least no one publicly objected—when the school director issued a call for “parental supervision” in the fours classroom.

And so she is doing the thing where she pretends to be at her desk in her home office when she is really here doing arts and crafts while surreptitiously answering emails from her phone just quickly enough to keep from pissing off anyone important. She’s trying to avoid giving all mother-employees a bad name, but she’s just one mother and she has only her own children and it is really hard to worry about all those other mothers with their faceless children and tricky jobs and so, for the most part, she forgets about them and allows people at the office to whisper about how this is the problem with hiring moms.

Trust her. She’s had a corporate job in a fancy office. And there is more online shopping while sipping a fresh cup of coffee uninterrupted than anyone cares to admit.

Mrs. Tokem comes over to collect a new assortment of pipe cleaners and they fall silent until she’s passed.

“Did Lola pick a science fair project?” asks Mary Beth, as if Miss Ollie didn’t die.