Cutting Teeth(54)

Right, that’s her point.

“Yes, now. I mean, after work, yeah, but now.” She shimmies on a pair of yoga leggings—look, she won’t even have to change up her wardrobe—and a loose T-shirt that offers coverage. Coverage is such an old-lady word, fuck. “You’ll have to handle school pickup and care on the days I have my … appointments. Sessions?” She’ll work on the vocabulary once she successfully becomes a gym person.

Griff takes a handheld buzzy device from the leather Dopp kit she bought him last Father’s Day and runs it along the insides of his nostrils. “Don’t you think,” he says, pulling his mouth down for better nose access, “we have a lot going on? I mean, we’ve had so much change to our routine in such a short amount of time.”

“Now is the time,” she declares firmly. “I’m packing my gym bag as we speak.” She steps over two messy piles of clothes on her closet floor and tugs a crumpled-up duffel bag from a top shelf. Several out-of-style clutches rain down on her head and she ducks for cover. “Let’s see. Tennis shoes.” She scours the vicinity. “Socks…”

Griff pokes his head in to check on her. He looks kind of panicked. “Does it have to be today?”

“Yes.” Now she’s annoyed. “Did you have plans?”

“No.”

“Then what’s the problem?”

“You look fine.” Now he sounds annoyed. “I love you the way you are.”

“Thanks.” She stumbles out of her cave of a closet. Someday she will clean it, but one thing at a time.

He waits. As if he expects his proclamation that he likes her just the way she is will be enough to throw her off her new direction. Okay, as long as you like me, Griff, as long as I look fine, then never mind.

“What’s gotten into you?” he asks. She might ask him the same thing. He runs his fingers through his still-damp hair, which hasn’t even started to thin. Meanwhile, she is still losing thick chunks of her own hair in the shower ever since she stopped breastfeeding Jack. She has a bald spot on the hairline of her right side. She’s going bald before her husband. “You’re going to get hot and leave me, is that it?” he asks.

She stares at him and he tries to laugh it off, like she doesn’t have a sense of humor.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” she asks. She’s fully aware that Griff nurses a pet fear that, without her, he would have to go out in the world and interact. Without her, he would have to call the repairman when the refrigerator breaks. He’d have to speak to the cable technicians. He would have to deal with so many people. He loves her, but he also needs her. “Get hot,” she repeats. “As in you don’t think I am already?” She’s determined to sound more angry than hurt, though the reality for her is definitely flip-flopped. It’s like her “hot” just fell and dropped out her flappy, wider vagina.

“Come on. You know that’s not how I meant it.”

The anger comes and the burn of it is a relief. Two weeks ago, she would have sworn her husband would always be on her side, no matter what.

“You know, you’re always so focused on Lola’s issues. But I think you’re the one with the real issues. Where’s your evaluation from a counselor, Griff? Huh?” Darby holds herself together. “Something’s seriously wrong with you.” She hits below the belt and doesn’t care. A touch of labia for a bit of foreskin. How’s that for coming in hot, honey?





TWENTY-THREE




“It happened again,” Lincoln’s mom, Chelsea, murmurs to Mary Beth at the playground.

“Again?” She feels fragile, like one of those rickety toothpick-and-marshmallow bridges built by elementary schoolers. “You’re kidding,” she says. “Where?”

“This time, it was in the book nook,” Chelsea says, then adds darkly, “The class copy of Dragons Love Tacos has been permanently removed.”

To date, there’ve been two mysterious incidents since the first, one at the bottom of the slide, one in the play kitchen. This marks the fourth incursion.

She angles her body to shield herself from the wind, which has picked up over the course of the day. Above them, the American flag flaps violently against the pole. “So who was it? Do we know?”

“Still the sixty-four-thousand-dollar question.”

They watch their children play normally within the fenced border of the playground area. It feels like they’re being detained. A look around at all the other adult faces in attendance and none of them suggest a parent who is having a good day.

Mary Beth has always been fascinated to see the way the office of president of the United States ages a man—so far only a man—in four years, but that’s nothing, that’s only four years. By that math, Mary Beth has already served two terms as mother and still has years and years to go. She tries to imagine what she’ll look like by her kids’ eighteenth birthdays and then thinks, better not.

“I don’t understand how that’s possible? A child can’t drop trou and do…” She waves her hands around for effect. “That without anyone seeing.”

“This one can,” Chelsea intones ominously. “Asher’s dad is over there giving Mrs. Tokem an earful.”