Cutting Teeth(44)
“Well, you can certainly at least understand the public’s fascination. Did your son’s pediatrician offer any kind of prognosis? How long do medical professionals expect something like this to last?”
“He didn’t offer a prognosis,” Rhea answers carefully. “No one can know for sure when the children will grow out of this stage, but one thing I do know is that as far as I’m concerned, there’s no rush. We have to support them. That’s not just our duty, but our honor as parents. We are joyfully available to meet their needs, all of them, whoever our children turn out or desire to be. Anyone who would think to do otherwise isn’t fit to be a parent, end of story.”
* * *
Rhea’s ears ring on the way home from the interview, the end of which she can hardly remember, and Bodhi’s with Marcus until who knows when, for as long as she wants, maybe. How long might that be?
Her palms are sweating on the steering wheel. She still has so much left to do. Today, she set the wheels in motion. Terrene in front of two million people. Time to get to work.
No sooner has she had this thought than her stomach growls. When’d she last eat? She groans, remembering the curbside groceries she was supposed to pick up yesterday. Only she never made it. And those groceries are long gone by now. She’ll be lucky if they refunded her money.
Her phone rings—brrr, brrrr, brrrrrr. “What’s up?” she asks Marcus.
“Why didn’t you tell me Bodhi has this—whatever this—this thing is—this syndrome? How come this is the first I’m hearing about it?”
“You watched the interview.” A cacophony of honks sounds up ahead.
“Of course I did. You were on TV.”
“Don’t freak out,” she tells him. “It’s all good.”
“I’m not freaking out, Rhea. But medical stuff, that stuff I get to know, too. You can’t shut me out. His pediatrician wasn’t concerned about anything specific?” It’s not that Marcus wouldn’t go to the doctor appointments, it’s just that Rhea’s two ears work perfectly fine and she doesn’t need two more.
She crawls past an exit-sign billboard, one she’d usually ignore except that today those golden arches seem like some kind of sign from the universe. A beacon atop a slippery-sloped hill.
“Bodhi’s doing fine,” she reassures him. “Just fine. Now, you know I know what I’m doing when it comes to Bodhi.”
“I don’t get it. With me, he hasn’t asked for any—you know—he wasn’t showing any signs he needed—”
“Blood,” Rhea supplies. “Marcus, I’m sorry. But I really can’t be doing this right now.”
“I know you’re busy.”
“I am. I really am. We can talk about this later.” Or never, that’d be cool, too. “Sorry. I’ve got to go. I’m getting another call—” She punches the “hang up” button on her touch screen, pulse thumping, and points all the air-conditioning vents at her face. Marcus. Why didn’t she factor in Marcus? As if she doesn’t know the answer to that perfectly well.
Breathe, Rhea, breathe. She is a force. She is not a reaction to a force. And she can deal with Marcus.
She veers onto the exit ramp and before she knows it she’s looking up and down the giant, light-up menu filled with dollar deals and Big Macs. Rhea pulls on her big sunglasses. She keeps looking around like somebody might be tailing her—she is something. It’s not like this is an actual thing. Not something she does.
It only takes one more thought of her mounting to-do list, her shrinking time, and her empty refrigerator to work up the courage when the lady’s voice crackles through the speaker box, “Welcome to McDonald’s, may I take your order?”
By the time she gets home, she’s already destroyed the evidence, but she’s still startled by the three thudding knocks that sound on her door. For one stupid second, she thinks: They know. But who and what exactly would they have found out? At this point, she could make that particular question a multiple-choice quiz. Whoever it is pounds with the side of his or her fist, not knuckles. Bang, bang, bang.
“Rhea Anderson?” a woman’s voice calls from the other side. Bang. Bang.
Rhea tiptoes across the rug to peer through the peephole. On the other side of the door stands the woman in the gray suit.
NINETEEN
Earlier, Mary Beth sat in her pajamas and powered off Rhea’s KNT News interview with a heavy feeling in the pit of her stomach. Normalize children drinking blood, Rhea said on national television. And Mary Beth thought: Normalize? Is that really where they’ve landed?
It does seem in vogue to normalize things these days. Mental health. The conversation around STIs. Body hair. Which all sound well and good, but Mary Beth feels like a fuddy-duddy when she finds herself still on the fence about others and finds still more examples completely absurd. Normalize talking about money. Normalize consensual incest. Normalize walking on all fours! Normalize sharp-toothed vampire children. Where does it end? She wonders as much later, when the sky has been spitting down all morning and on through half the afternoon, when the news reaches the mothers of Little Academy that Asher’s mother, Katia, has been sent to the hospital for a blood transfusion.