Cutting Teeth(41)

Lola—and Darby swears this is true—sniffs the air. Sniffs it. Like a dog or a rabbit. And says, “I want Mommy.”

“Mommy’s not on the menu this evening,” says Darby.

The storm returns to the little girl’s face.

“Oh my god, what’s the point?” The needle stays stuck in Griff’s arm as he swipes his fingers through his beautiful head of hair.

“Don’t look at me,” Darby says. “Jack, shoot, what do you have in your mouth?” She bends, turning her finger into a fishing hook, and scoops around in Jack’s mouth until she comes out with a feather from a pillow. Lucky again.

Griff, noticing the floppy needle stuck in his skin, does the honors. “If she’d let me be the one to feed her, don’t you think I’d be more than happy to do it?”

“Not really, no. You weren’t really itching to wear condoms when we were trying to prevent pregnancy if I recall, which seems like sort of the same thing.”

You would think Darby had spoken in a made-up language.

“I’m sorry, I really have to go,” Griff says.

The parade of Mortons exits the bedroom. Griff finds his keys, his phone, his wallet.

“Are you going to worry about Lola or not?” He points at their daughter. “You can’t just let her cry.”

“I’m always worried about Lola.” There it is again, this idea that good mother means worrying, constant, expert worrying. The energy in her house is combustible.

“How can you be late anyways?” she asks Griff as he lurks by the back door. “I thought you said nobody was going to be up at the office.”

“It’s work, Darby. Someone’s expecting me.” He picks up Jack and gives him a perfunctory kiss on the cheek.

“Did you know that in France it’s illegal to contact an employee with work communication outside of work hours? People need distance and off-hours, that’s the point. People need to disconnect.”

“This isn’t France.” He pushes Jack back into her arms. She feels like a docking station for a Roomba, her children occasionally leaving her, but never for long, always called back home, and it makes her inexplicably sad that the most apt description of herself is in the form of a vacuum cleaner.

She can’t even imagine what she might accomplish with two free hands.

“I was talking about me.”

There he goes. She turns back, the Mortons now minus one, and when she does, she startles to find how close by Lola is standing. An arm’s length at most and staring, there, with the flat black-hole pupils and the flaring nostrils and the glistening lips that Darby felt times ten in the classroom today, and Mary Beth’s question from earlier that day returns to her: You don’t think they would have …

“Come on.” She rolls up her sleeve and prepares a new syringe, fresh cotton swabs, and all the other accoutrements. She thinks: How is anyone supposed to lose weight, go to the gynecologist, clean her closet, and parent gently? How does any mother do anything? “Tell me something else about the octopus,” she says.

Minutes later, Lola’s expression has cleared, leaving behind the precious daughter who gives clammy hugs and counts bouncing her knees as dancing. “After a girl octopus lays eggs,” Lola says, voice husky, “she quits eating and just lays there and gets real skinny until her babies hatch and then she dies.”

“That’s terrible,” Darby says, inching back against the sofa cushion. She cuddles her daughter. “Poor mommy octopus.”





TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF WITNESS, LINCOLN SAWYER


APPEARANCES:


Detective Wanda Bright





PROCEEDINGS


DET. BRIGHT: Lincoln, did you like Miss Ollie? Was she a nice teacher?

LINCOLN SAWYER: Most of the time.

DET. BRIGHT: Most of the time, okay. So sometimes you didn’t like Miss Ollie?

LINCOLN SAWYER: Yeah, because sometimes she was mean.

DET. BRIGHT: What did she do that was mean?

LINCOLN SAWYER: She took away my scissors privileges.

DET. BRIGHT: Ah. Your scissors privileges. Just yours? Or the whole class’s?

LINCOLN SAWYER: Mine and Tamar’s.

DET. BRIGHT: Why’d she do that?

LINCOLN SAWYER: Because I got in trouble for cutting Tamar’s clothes.

MRS. CHELSEA SAWYER: When was this?

LINCOLN SAWYER: Um. Yesterday or last year?

MRS. CHELSEA SAWYER: Why would you cut up Tamar’s clothes?

LINCOLN SAWYER: We were just trying to be werewolves!

MRS. CHELSEA SAWYER: Lincoln, you know—

DET. BRIGHT: Which one, Lincoln? Was it last year?

LINCOLN SAWYER: Tomorrow I think? But after Christmas.

DET. BRIGHT: I see. How did that make you feel, Lincoln, when Miss Ollie took away your scissors?

LINCOLN SAWYER: Mad. Real, real mad.

DET. BRIGHT: I’ll bet. And what do you do when you’re mad?

MRS. CHELSEA SAWYER: Now, wait a minute. What are you imply—

LINCOLN SAWYER: I growl. Like this. Rawwwrrrgrrrrr.

DET. BRIGHT: Oh, wow, that is scary. You do that a lot, Lincoln?

MRS. CHELSEA SAWYER: Like he said, he’s into werewolves. He howls at the moon before bed. That kind of thing. Kids go through these phases, you know—