Cutting Teeth: A Novel Read online

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  For

  Justin,

  my everything

  and

  Luca and Cecilia,

  who taught me to love

  and be loved

  contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Family Trees

  Prologue: Thursday

  red alert Nicole

  Part 1: Friday

  babe in the wood Allie

  out of sight, out of mind Leigh

  taking stock Nicole

  domestic bliss Rip

  strings attached Leigh

  bosom buddies Rip

  tit for tat Tiffany

  word of mouth Tenzin

  silver lining Rip

  on pins and needles Nicole

  no picnic Susanna

  the chicken before the egg Rip

  make-believe Leigh

  blast from the past Allie

  the coast is clear Nicole

  Part 2: Saturday

  golden handcuffs Leigh

  no worries Rip

  all’s fair in love and war Allie

  knife in the back Leigh

  waste not, want not Tenzin

  try your luck Rip

  worrywart Nicole

  BFFs forever Leigh

  x marks the spot Allie

  don’t rock the boat Rip

  the grass is always greener Susanna

  white lies Leigh

  stick-in-the-mud Rip

  eat your heart out Tiffany

  fear the worst Nicole

  when pigs fly Tenzin

  the world turned upside down Allie

  what dreams are made of Rip

  knock wood Nicole

  the whole nine yards Allie

  off the record Rip

  once upon a time Susanna

  castles in the air Tiffany

  taking the plunge Nicole

  Part 3: Sunday

  to die for Allie

  do-over Tenzin

  pure gold Leigh

  odd man (woman) out Tiffany

  safe and sound Rip

  promise the moon Allie

  ever after Nicole

  Epilogue: Three Weeks Later

  lucky break Rip

  Acknowledgments

  About the Author

  Copyright

  Parents are the bones on which children cut their teeth.

  —PETER USTINOV

  Prologue

  Thursday

  red alert

  Nicole

  The playground was half-empty, as it is most late-summer Thursdays in the Brooklyn neighborhoods where the young professionals live. Those who summer, who go in with one or two couples and rent a cottage on Fire Island or out East. Those who eat organic and buy green and practice hot yoga and are in treatment and who name their children, without a second thought, after Greek goddesses and dead poets.

  Nicole pushed her almost-four-year-old son Wyatt on the swings, his cries of more more more fading, then rising as he swayed back and forth. Dusk was settling, the smoky veil that had hinted at danger for as long as Nicole could remember. The gloaming. The word still made her think of restless spirits and mistrustful things, the ghoulish witches in the dark woods of her childhood.

  The sun ricocheted off the sunglasses of the mother standing next to her, the spinning spokes of the tricycles, the side doors of the cars squeezed up and down the block, and Nicole shielded her eyes with her hand. The fumes from the ice-cream truck idling on the corner scratched at her throat.

  The little girl in the next swing coughed, and Nicole steeled herself. The child had a wet phlegmy cough, after all, not a dry raspy cough, which is what the Centers for Disease Control had listed as symptoms. Warning signs.

  Relax, Nicole thought. It’s just a summer cold.

  “Honey,” the girl’s mother said. “How do we cough?”

  The little girl lifted her arm to her face and coughed in the direction of her elbow, all the while looking up at her mother, seeking her approval.

  The mother smiled at Nicole with an apologetic shrug, and Nicole knew she was expected to commiserate.

  She shook her head knowingly and pointed to Wyatt, still clad in his white karate uniform.

  “I tell this guy the same thing. Every day.”

  The woman smiled, relieved. “They make you so paranoid, you know? All those hand-washing ads.”

  She was pretty, this fellow mother, and Nicole wished she had smoothed a little product into her own humidity-frizzed hair before leaving the house. Maybe some mascara to widen her tired eyes. As she gave Wyatt’s swing a big push, she felt the extra weight in her thighs jiggle.

  She tried to swing Wyatt away from the little girl who continued to cough, a cough so productive Nicole thought she could see the miniscule drops of saliva flying toward Wyatt’s gaping mouth.

  “Higher, higher, Mommy,” he yelled. “Up in the sky. I’m an airplane. I’m a superhero. I’m a pterodactyl. The fastest pterodactyl in the world. Watch what I do!”

  “Oh-kay,” she said with a big exhale between syllables, “we have to go now.”

  She gripped the chain of the swing and stopped him too abruptly. Wyatt nearly flew out of the seat.

  “I’m sorry, sweetie,” she laughed. “Mommy’s so silly.”

  “I don’t want to go. I want to stay.” His lower lip displayed a clownish quiver.

  “I’m sorry. I really am. But we have to go, Mister.”

  Nicole was sorry. Sorry she was ruining his afternoon and, perhaps, she thought with a growing panic, ruining his life by visiting the park because she was certain the little girl was very ill, certain that within a few hours, the girl would be shivering with fever in bed, a nasal swab sample on its way to the hospital lab. Because isn’t that what they said online, on the news, and in the handouts that had been given out at Wyatt’s preschool? That it hit fast and hard? That you woke with a sore throat in the morning and by nightfall had a high fever, cough, chills, vomiting? She knew the incubation rate, the statistics, the symptoms, and the percentage of children—healthy children, robust children (like her Wyatt)—who had died. At first, Nicole had tried to avoid the news. She had even considered, at her husband Josh’s prodding, disabling the wireless, shutting off the cable, but reminders were practically everywhere. In CNN’s top headlines and most popular online searches. The death toll, the latest CDC reports. The public-service commercials with that ridiculous rhyme, Know what to do about the flu. She had googled “flu” and “swine flu” and “h1n1” so many times that the little ads that popped up in the margins of her e-mail were all for antibacterial hand soaps and flu remedies. How to stay healthy. Ten ways to keep you and your family safe.

  Then, after so many months spent fearing the flu, Nicole had spotted, just the night before, the paranoid chatter on urbanmama.com, the online mommy message board she browsed regularly. Post after post by mothers fretting over rumors that some computers were predicting the world might end? Josh had laughed at her that morning when she told him, then laughed again when she had tried to explain what a Web bot was, all of which she had learned via Wikipedia. Web bots were superpower computers that scanned the Internet for patterns, and many of their predictions—9/11, the market crash, Oklahoma City, bird flu—had come true. Josh had muttered something about overeducated women with too much time on their hands,
ignoring her pleas for him to just google it!

  Thank God they’d be away that weekend. What luck that she’d scheduled the playgroup’s Labor Day weekend trip to her parents’ house out on Long Island. When she had first read about the rumor that morning, what the moms on urbanmama.com were calling a potential “catastrophic event,” implying that it might take place that very weekend (Saturday night, to be exact), she had thought about canceling the playgroup’s three-day vacation out East. But it had been such a hassle to find a weekend that worked for all five parents in the Friday afternoon playgroup, and their significant others. The e-mailing and texting, scheduling and rescheduling had gone on for weeks until they had found a weekend when they were all free. Nicole knew that if she canceled, she’d ruffle many a feather. A few of the parents had even arranged to take off work the next day. She could already hear Tiffany, with her sanctimonious tone, “It’s just so cruel to disappoint the children, Nic. Don’t you think?”

  Wyatt’s hands, white-knuckled, gripped the swing’s chains.

  Nicole leaned over him and whispered, her lips close to his flushed cheek, “You want a treat?”

  She tucked her fingers into the sweat-damp curls at the back of his neck. Sweet little boy sweat that smelled of apple juice and cut grass. She inhaled, wishing she could stop time and bottle the smell—bottle Wyatt even—because one day it would all be over. Wyatt would be a harsh-smelling hard-angled man. She and Josh would be old. Dead.

  A plane passed overhead. A whoosh that built and built until it seemed to Nicole that a great big hand had unzipped the sky, and she looked around to see if anyone else had heard it, had felt it, as a warning of some kind. A prelude to disaster. There were a few mothers looking up, shielding their eyes with freshly manicured hands. Was it too low? Nicole wanted to ask; did they think it was suspicious? The engines were awfully loud, weren’t they? She snapped the rubber band on her wrist, an assignment from her therapist, pulling it farther away each time, the sting growing with each release. Nothing bad is happening, nothing bad is happening. She looked again at the sky to watch, to wait for the sign that all was clear, that it was just her ever-faulty interpretation she had, even as a child, doubted.

  She was about to turn to the sick child’s mother, to ask, Did you feel that, when something changed. What exactly, she couldn’t say, but it was there, an offness that reminded Nicole of the light right before an eclipse, an otherworldly light, and she kept asking herself What is it? What is it? What is happening? She lunged for the chains of Wyatt’s swing, jerking him up and out so fast his foot caught in the seat and he fell to the ground, his plump fingers splayed in the dirt. This is it, this is it. The panic buzzed in her chest, and there was a sudden adjustment in her vision, like she could see through goddamned walls.

  It was only the pink chemical blush of the overhead streetlamps coming on. A child behind her yelled pretty, lights, and Nicole heard comfort in the little girl’s voice. She, too, wanted to be fearless.

  She pressed Wyatt’s face to her chest, hiding that silent openmouthed wail, the precursor to great gulping cries. She shushed him, whispering, “Sorry, baby, sorry.”

  Nicole let out a shuddering sigh as Wyatt’s screams arrived. Yes, she thought, what a relief it would be to go away that weekend. Even if there was just a tiny chance those silly end-of-the-world predictions might come true. At least her little boy would not be in the city when it happened.

  * * *

  Web bots predict a catastrophic event on September 4

  Posted 9/1/2010 8:43pm

  (18 replies)

  * * *

  —what is web bots? 8:43pm

  —they’re predicting something for THIS Saturday? creepy. 8:46pm

  —for real? 8:48pm

  —on Labor Day Weekend? Bummer. 8:48pm

  —Here is a link: www.webbotpredictions.com 8:49pm

  —shit. really really wish I hadn’t read that. 8:55pm

  —this is freaking me out. 9:30pm

  —you’re all egging each other on into hysteria. chill the fuck out. 9:33pm

  —things do not feel right to me. 10:28pm

  —me too. my hubby is making fun of me, but I can’t

  help it. I am scared. 10:31pm

  —put on your tinfoil hat, sister. 10:34pm

  —can someone summarize the impending crisis, please? 10:46pm

  —RE: summary (from the site) “The sort of agony, grief, and pain felt in the six days following 9/11 will be felt for five and a half months” 10:48pm

  —Where do you find this shit? 10:52pm

  —yeesh. wtf is this? 10:58pm

  —scary 11:04pm

  —who/what are the web bots? 11:09pm

  —is it safe in NYC? should we evacuate? 11:11pm

  The last post, at 11:11P.M., had been Nicole’s.

  As a child, at elementary-school sleepovers, she and her girlfriends had made a wish when the clock struck 11:11, as if the synchronicity was unique to them, a sign fortune was on their side. For each and every wish: at 11:11, at the side of a fountain with a handful of coins in her sweaty little hand, and with the sharp intake of breath before extinguishing her birthday candles, she said the same wish. More of a plea. Dear God, please keep me safe. Please don’t let anyone or anything bad hurt me.

  She still whispered the words every night before bed. When Wyatt was born almost four years earlier, the me had turned into us.

  But when Nicole had read about the Web bot prediction the night before, and the rumor that something truly terrible would happen, there had been nothing she could tell herself (nothing bad is happening, nothing bad is happening) to calm her instinct to flee.

  She’d been visiting urbanmama.com; reading, posting a few comments, as was her nightly ritual, to see what the mommies’ hot topics were that day (to circumcise or not to circumcise, breast vs. the bottle, time-out vs. talk-it-out), and to check if there was news of (fingers crossed!) openings in that year’s highly coveted Pre-K at the local public school.

  Wyatt and Josh were forgotten, but for the whistling of their snores. After midnight, it felt to Nicole as if an enchantment had fallen over the city. The screech of the bus banished, the car horns muted, even the trucks rumbling over the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway subdued into a soft tremor under her feet. She knew she should go to bed, that she’d wake tired and irritable, but in this newish mommy life, the sacrifice of sleep for a few hours of still and silent solitude was worth the exhaustion.

  As a child growing up in the outer suburbs, on a wooded road without streetlamps, Nicole had feared the night. Loathed the open-ended what-ifs darkness invited. Her phobia had worsened over the years until she grew to fear even the darkness of a familiar room, the fumbling for the light switch that seemed to ridicule her vulnerability.

  Now, the night was her refuge.

  The day was for doing. For organizing and reorganizing. For finagling. For dealing with Wyatt’s tantrums and his resistance to eating vegetables, to dressing himself, to wiping his own butt. The negotiations. Yes, you can play with Mommy’s tweezers if you promise to take your nap. Sure, you can cover yourself in Band-Aids, as long as you eat your broccoli.

  Daytime had expectations of Nicole. She had to drop Wyatt off at preschool (two hours of respite, just enough time to take a shower and clean the apartment), usher him to karate, toddler tom-tom drumming class, and playdates. Each interaction felt fraught with the possibility of conflict—with other mothers, between Wyatt and other children, and, of course, with Wyatt himself. Although Nicole knew that life with one healthy (knock on wood) child was a relatively easy one (what about those Orthodox women she saw on the train, seven children in tow?), it often felt as if even the most simple tasks were a test to prove to herself that she was a good mother after all.

  By the end of the long day, when Josh finally returned from work, she heard a tone in her voice (he was always complaining about her tone)—a pathetic desperation. As if she were an impoverished third-world mother
with a disease-riddled baby. As if she had to roam the streets begging and whoring herself to put food in her children’s bloated bellies. As if she, a privileged American housewife, had just narrowly escaped disaster. Which was, she thought, exactly who she was, and exactly how she felt.

  When they returned home from the playground—Wyatt still pouting after his fall from the swing, “Mommy, you hurt me,” he said—Nicole was already longing for the night. But the late-summer, late-afternoon light was still strong as it streamed through their windows. Josh would not be home for another three hours.

  They performed the routine stripping of clothes, both she and Wyatt down to their underwear (you never knew where a pair of bedbugs might lurk these days). She heated up a vacuum-packed roast from Trader Joe’s and lip-synced to an entire Raffi album, which made Wyatt laugh and finally stop complaining about his boo-boo and the tear in his karate pants.

  Nicole had sworn to herself she wouldn’t go online, she wouldn’t google “Web bot end-of-world prediction,” she wouldn’t reread the warnings on urbanmama.com.

  Then she was logging on, posting a few benign questions about alternative preschools in her neighborhood (best Montessori in Cobble Hill? thx!), switching pediatricians (Dr. Zimmerman’s office smells like puke!), and a request for advice on a good handheld vacuum. Then she found herself tapping the refresh button on her laptop, waiting, waiting for someone to respond to her new post titled end-of-world stuff serious?? And, in what she hoped would read as a self-deprecating tone, neurotic mama freaked about world ending this weekend.

  Sure enough there were mocking responses, like, get a grip, sister and oh, God, it’s alarmist mom (she could hear the eye roll in that one) and the scathing quick, run to the supermarket and stock up, you stupid cunt, but there were also those who responded with a fear too suggestive of her own—oh, shit, maybe I should go to my mom’s in Jersey and first swine flu, now this? The sound of fear in another anonymous mother’s voice was enough for Nicole’s mind to grab and roll and knead until she could see the future clearly. The emptied supermarkets. The looters. The disease. The end.