Cutting Teeth(8)
That was two hours ago. Now Griff accepts the glass of pinot noir that Darby hands him before setting it down on the coffee table, untouched.
A couple days ago, there was a shooting at a Midwestern school and you know what Darby thought while sobbing at her computer screen? She thought: I’m going to cherish every moment with my children from now on. The next day, she set a timer just to get herself to play Star Wars toys with Lola for twenty minutes without glancing at her phone. And now imagine how she feels today, the self-loathing of it all.
The hallmarks of motherhood are already written over Darby’s body, like a cautionary billboard. She remembers that ad campaign, the one with the egg frying in a pan—This is your brain on drugs. That’s Darby: This is your body; this is your body on motherhood. Terrifying. Utterly terrifying.
She really committed to pregnancy, at least insofar as it involved eating for two. It was the one time—okay, two—in her life that she stopped worrying for a goddamn second about counting calories or exercising properly or how she looked naked. She ate ice cream daily, with toppings, and it was cute. People told her what an adorable pregnant lady she was. She felt like a jolly panda bear. Of course, no one warned her there would be consequences. Or if they did, she pretended not to hear—she does have a habit of doing that occasionally. But that changed instantly after her babies were born and suddenly she was surrounded by advice on how she could lose the baby weight. The emails she once so loved to receive, the ones that used to track her baby’s growth in terms of fruit size, instead started sending her strength-training programs.
In her defense, she developed a bad case of diastasis recti, the condition, which she previously believed was fake, where a woman’s abdominal muscles fail to knit back together properly postpartum, meaning that more than a year after having Jack, she’s been asked on more than one occasion when her baby’s due.
Did you gain a lot of weight during your pregnancy? The physical therapist asked when she went in to learn exercises to address the issue. She never went back.
She has stretch marks, too, silvery veins that crawl across her hips and ass. It’s in vogue to call them her “tiger stripes.” Apparently, she’s supposed to love them, they’re supposed to make her feel fierce. Look what her body has done. It has birthed two small human beings.
She hates those stripes, has no interest in making peace with them. And this is to say nothing of her breasts, which used to be quite nice before her kids literally ate them. Lately, she’s been able to crunch them up in her fists like stress balls. They didn’t use to do that.
When Darby looks at her body, she doesn’t recognize it. She feels like it belongs to someone else, mostly because it does.
“What if she has rabies?” Darby asks her husband. “You can’t cure rabies.”
“Rabies is already cured.”
“Not once you show symptoms.” Darby takes a long pull of wine. It’s not from one of their better bottles. “Google it. What if there was a bat in her room? Or a rat.”
Lola bit her. Not just bit but—and this is unpleasant—chewed on her. She distinctly felt grinding.
Fine, she’ll admit, she felt a little smug when Zeke Tolbert had been the culprit today in class. It felt good. For once, on the right side of things. It’s just that Lola isn’t an easy child and, as such, Darby gets a perverse sense of satisfaction when somebody else’s kid is the problem. Allow her this small pleasure.
Griff hunches over his phone, scrolling. “You’re right,” he says. “How did I not know that? She can’t have rabies. We don’t have rats. I think we’d know.”
“I’m going to be up all night thinking about whether she’s contracted rabies,” Darby says. “Should we put her in our bed?”
“We just got her to sleep.” He sighs.
There are so many things she would never have expected to fret over as a parent, pinworms chief among them. But others include time changes, teaching her kids their home address in case of emergency, flying on the same plane as Griff without their children, stem cells, wills, whether other parents own guns, constipation, the proper age for ear piercing, Elf on the Shelf, and now rabies.
“Maybe you can at least check to see if there are any cracks in her walls. Or in the vents?” she suggests instead.
“Right now?”
“Yes, right now.” Darby can be bossy. Just thirteen years earlier, which isn’t really that long ago if you think about it, she was captain of the varsity volleyball squad at UCLA, one of the best volleyball programs in the country, and she was very physically fit, a fact that, though not actually relevant to this situation, bears repeating because, to reiterate, it wasn’t that long ago and she could be in good shape again, it’s not out of the question.
“But I’ll wake her up.”
“Never mind. I’ll just stay in her room tonight.” She isn’t looking forward to having her stomach, thighs, and rib cage poked and kicked through the night, but at least maybe her mind will be at ease.
Griff pinches his earlobe. “I have to head back to the office.”
“Tonight? Are you sure?”
He’s spent his entire career working in the IT department of a large law firm, where he’s now the manager. It’s a thankless job and Darby has been telling him to find a better one for ages, but that would require interviewing, which would require talking to people, which means Griff won’t do it.