To my son, Colin, the jolliest class biter around—your taste for human flesh may fade, but my love for you will never
PROLOGUE
It’s not true that nothing bad has ever happened at Little Academy. Not entirely. There was the boy last year whose hands slipped off the monkey bars. Next thing the mother knew his collarbone was popping clean out of his skin. (His father right there, he could have caught him!) At least once a school year, when the temperatures still reach well into the nineties, some mom or other accidentally locks her keys in the car along with her baby. The school is just around the corner from the fire station and the truck arrives within minutes, but the mother still sobs, unable to believe she’s been so careless; it could have been worse. Not that it ever is. Not here. Not at Little.
Maybe all preschools are designed to be adorable, but Little Academy is particularly so. Children’s handprints outline a cement walkway where on a typical day the baby classes ride around in covered hippo wagons. The children help to maintain a garden; in it grows an impressive display of knockout rosebushes and jasmine and other sorts of flowers that attract real, live butterflies. To step on campus is to feel your heart lift just the slightest bit in your chest, almost as if there’s less gravity there. A shrine to these final few glimmering months when none of the kids are too old for enthusiastic hugs at pickup, when big, fat tears are still cried while waiting for mommies.
Inside, the walls echo with the shrieks of tiny voices, muffled behind closed pony doors. Teachers clap—one, two, three—and announce that it’s time to change centers, to clean up, to keep hands to yourselves.
It smells like graham crackers. The memory of chubby wax crayons white-knuckle pressed between small fingers. That’s how it looks, actually—melted wax creeping shadowlike from beneath the door, out into the empty hall. The reflection of a fluorescent ceiling light wavers uncertainly on the puddle’s slick, red surface.
The door at the foot of the corridor hasn’t been closed properly. The way it hangs ajar feels lazy; somebody should put up a note, ought to be more careful. The supply room is where all the pointy things live—grown-up scissors, industrial paper cutters, letter openers. With all the tiny curious hands, it’s a bad situation waiting to happen.
The soft sound coming from the other side of the door is hard to place. A gentle wet sopping noise, like a puppy trying to suckle. A too-wet tongue. The smell of saliva like mouth sweat in the air.
The light flips back on, motion activated.
There is blood everywhere, but on the gray-flecked tile most of all. Viscous and slippery, it squelches and slides. Heat leaks out along with it and the room feels dank. Used up.
But even here, cold creeps across skin, puckering it into goose flesh. An electric current charged with disbelief hums in the deafening quiet. The wrongness of it, plain as day. Car seats, child-proof locks, Consumer Reports, swim lessons, they’ve worked so hard to avoid danger, to ward it off, and yet somehow, some way it’s snuck right past them.
First comes love, then comes marriage, then comes the baby carriage. And now, now at last, the fear arrives.
ONE
The blood kept coming out of her. She was going to die. People died. She knew that intellectually and yet she couldn’t believe it was going to be her.
Rhea’s teeth rattled around in her skull like one of those wind-up chatter-jaw toys with the little feet.
“It’s going to be okay. You’re going to be all right now.” Behind her, the orderly with the James Earl Jones voice tapped the rubber grip on the wheelchair handle. She hadn’t seen his face before he whisked her down the corridor, following the intake nurse’s instructions.
How much blood was in her body? How much could she stand to lose? Of all the stupid things she’d been forced to learn in school, shouldn’t this at least have been one of them?
The elevator lurched up and Rhea felt her vision narrowing to pinholes, the whole world shrinking. When the orderly asked if she could stand to get into the hospital bed, she wasn’t sure her legs would hold her. He took her beneath an armpit and an elbow. As he lifted, she felt sure the bottom of her would fall out like the base of a soggy brown grocery bag and what would spill out was her own insides.
A new nurse came in and immediately started messing with the cords and tubes behind Rhea. Her back was on fire. Her body felt like it was begging her to evacuate, get out, leave now, before it was too late, but she found all exits blocked.
“How long have you been bleeding?” A female doctor looked deep into her eyes. She and Rhea were about the same age and Rhea had never seen this doctor before in her entire life.
Spit flew out from the corners of Rhea’s mouth as she forced the words through her teeth. “A couple of hours. I came as soon as it started, but I’ve been waiting.”
The doctor pressed a jellied ultrasound wand to her belly now. “Has it been about this rate since the bleeding began?”
A warm gush flowed between her legs. Rhea moaned. Her Walmart maternity joggers stuck to the inside of her thighs.
The doctor stopped moving the wand and looked gravely at the screen. “The placenta has completely separated from the uterine wall, Rhea, and I can see you’re hemorrhaging. You’re going to need a blood transfusion.” The doctor reached for a blue button on the panel above Rhea’s head and pressed it. “And we need to deliver that baby. Now. Do you understand?”
“I’m only thirty-six weeks.” She clawed at the nubby hospital blanket beneath her. Copper and earth tinged her nostrils and she registered, impossibly, that the smell was her.
More people filled the room. She could suffocate. She wasn’t even sure if she was breathing. “What are you doing?” She panted. “What’s happening? Wait. You have to stop. Wait.”
The nurse, who’d at some point stabbed her with an IV, now buzzed around her head. “I’m going to slip this mask on over your mouth and nose. Nice and easy. Very gentle.” She adjusted the rubber band behind Rhea’s ears. “How’s that? Comfortable. Breathe normally.”
Pain lassoed her stomach. Another giant gush of blood. She screamed into the hollow plastic.
“The baby doesn’t have oxygen.” The doctor moved so quickly around her. It was as if everyone were paying attention to Rhea and also no one at all. “We have to do a crash section.” This didn’t feel right. Wait. Wait. “We have seconds, not minutes, seconds.”
Rhea could feel her body shutting down. She hadn’t even asked about her baby yet. The fire burned up and down her spine, tearing through her ass muscles.
“No time for an epidural or painkillers. Rhea, you’ll be put straight to sleep. Do you understand?”
No. She was trying to tell them. No. No. She’d miss it if they put her to sleep. She would miss this thing, she would miss everything, everything she was promised. She would miss him. Hers.
“Take a deep breath.” She gasped, more a death rattle than an attempt to cooperate, but the world dissolved around her anyway. Down she sank. Down, down, down, down. Into a deep, salty darkness. Into a rotting cavity with no bottom, a medically induced black hole, bitter-tasting, like Advil with the sweet casing dissolved; she was swallowed alive. Rhea was plunged into motherhood the same way a cat’s drowned in water.
Some days she feels like she went to sleep on that hospital bed and woke up where she is now, with Bodhi four years old. Her eyes travel his classroom as she waits impatiently for his teacher to join her.
When she woke up at the hospital, it was to find that not only was she no longer pregnant but that her heart had been extracted, taken out of her chest, and transplanted into this beautiful little boy. She now watches her heart play trucks with two other boys his age. Her moon baby. Her wildflower. Her ocean soul.
Around her, the classroom is a museum of enthusiastic art displays: colorful handprints, a kindness tree, a guess-the-smell chart on which one little girl answered “wine,” and tissue collages. The colorful rug at the center of the room has all the letters of the alphabet and ten wooden cubbies house ten individual lunch boxes—hearts, superheroes, princesses—each a little dingier than when they were so lovingly selected at the start of the year.
It wasn’t that long ago that Rhea’s experience at this school had been not as a parent, but as a nanny, though she doesn’t advertise that. To a little blond girl who, at just three years old, attended Kumon for tutoring, loved sloths, and hated the smell of yogurt, and Rhea thought, as she took in the sparkling school, slightly dumbfounded, slightly awestruck: If I ever have a baby, this is it.
This is Little Academy, a small, private preschool on the campus of RiverRock Church. Rhea’s not religious, but she sees the value in a strong moral upbringing at this age, good versus evil, wrong and right, and all that.
Over by the sink, Bodhi’s teacher, Miss Ollie, helps Noelle Brandt unscrew the top of an Elmer’s glue, then comes over to join Rhea.
“I’m glad we could connect finally,” says Miss Ollie, dusting her hands off on a bright yellow maxi skirt as she sits. The tails of a chambray top are tied at her waist. She looks like a Disney princess, with her candy-apple cheeks and pearly pageant teeth. “It’s been hard to reach you by email.”
Rhea runs her fingers through her long strands of inky black hair, interlaced with a few subtle streaks of mauve. A gorgeous willow tree tattoo with deep, intricate roots appears to sway on the pale inside of her forearm. It’s not easy to look dignified while squatting on a tiny chair made for tiny-assed children, but she’s making it work.
“I must not have gotten them,” says Rhea, which might be true, who knows. She gets hundreds of emails a week. Her burgeoning business, Terrene, a curated essential oil collection (super easy to use and accessible) is a one-woman show and she’s that woman.
“Or phone.”
“I’m here now.” Though only because Miss Ollie waylaid her at drop-off this morning.
There was a big fuss amongst the other parents when Miss Erin Ollie joined the staff of Little Academy. She has a PhD in child development and Rhea doesn’t have one clue what she’s doing here teaching toddlers like some kind of Preschool Poppins, but you do you.
Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Bodhi pick up a toy bus and move out of her line of sight. She resists the urge to keep her eyes on him. The instinct to watch over him is nearly impossible to turn off in his presence. She missed his first cry, his first breath. She doesn’t know what the first thing her son experienced in this world was, but it wasn’t her. Maybe it’s because she was still asleep when the umbilical cord was cut that she still feels it tying her to Bodhi like a phantom limb.
“Bodhi’s looking a little thin,” says Miss Ollie. “For his age, I mean.”
“Okay,” Rhea answers carefully. “He was a chunky baby. Now he’s growing like crazy.” Her son has beautiful brown skin and thick, brown shoulder-length locks. If Rhea had a dollar for every person who asked if he’s adopted, she could afford the down payment on a house.
“For sure. One hundred percent. I just wanted to point out that it’s noticeable compared to the other children and I—” Miss Ollie wrings her hands like she’s getting ready to break up with a boyfriend, but feels really badly about it. “Restrictive diets can have a number of health benefits, I know—but in adults.”
“Excuse me?”
“I see his lunches. The dried seaweed and purple cauliflower and vegetable grits. He’s hardly eating any of it. I know you want him to eat healthfully. I just wonder if it would be better, you know, for Bodhi, if he had a few more normal, higher-calorie options day-to-day.”
“Better … for Bodhi?” Rhea’s not hard of hearing, she just wants to give this twentysomething a chance to run that back. Better for Bodhi. Did she really just say that?
Rhea gives nothing away. She is the still pond. She is the tree trunk, unruffled by the wind. She is the horizon in the distance. But underneath, Rhea feels undulations of rage crashing at her seams. Who the fuck does this woman think she is?
“You know,” Miss Ollie continues like this is all just occurring to her, “it might be worth including Bodhi’s father in this conversation.”
“I can talk to Marcus just fine, thanks.”
She knows most people, her friends included, refer to Marcus as her “ex,” though ex-what she has no idea. When she got pregnant with Bodhi, she had only just started a new type of birth control, a last-ditch attempt to curb the chronically vicious menstrual cramps that had been wrecking her world. She chalked up her missing period to the new pills for longer than she might have otherwise. She didn’t get cramps anymore. But she got a baby.
And mostly, single motherhood suits her. She makes what she wants for dinner. She decorates the apartment to her taste. Lets Bodhi watch television or doesn’t, her rules. She starts a business, her money.
“Right.” Miss Ollie chews her lip, waiting for Rhea to make this less awkward. She’s going to be waiting awhile. “I could provide a list of easy lunch ideas. I just want to be a—” But right at that moment, it’s as though the ground beneath her sentence crumbles. Her whole demeanor transforms. “No!” she bellows, jumping from her chair. “No! No! No!”
Rhea whips around at the same time as a single, panicked cry of agony splits the room. A small pile of children writhes on the story mat. An empty shoe flops out of the mess. Rhea’s eyes dart to every corner—where’s Bodhi? Where is Bodhi?
“Where’s my son?” This time out loud.
A girl whines. Then— “You’re hurting him.”
“Mommy.” His voice is small and muffled. The word throbs inside her. “Mommy?”
“Bodhi? Bodhi!” Rhea drops to her hands and knees and crawls toward the fray. Her own sandal loses its grip between her toes and she slips out of it. The stiff carpet dimples the thin skin over her kneecaps as she stretches an arm into the tangle of tiny limbs. The willow tree disappears within.
A distinct growl from somewhere in the broil and Miss Ollie’s face goes red as she heaves a toddler by the armpits. “Off! Off! There are grown-ups here!”
The two kids remaining scatter, but the bottom one stays put, shaking uncontrollably with silent sobs.
Bodhi.
His long hair fans out around his head. He still clutches the large plastic bus in his arms as blood soaks through the cotton collar of a sky-blue T-shirt. Rhea drags him up and pulls him tight to her chest. “Shhhh, shhhhh, shhhhhh,” she soothes. “Mama’s got you.”
“Teeth are not for biting.” Miss Ollie’s voice seesaws as she crouches down to eye level with Zeke Tolbert, a chunky biracial boy with a tight fade and striking, crystal-blue eyes. “You know better.”
“I didn’t do anything,” says Noelle as she plucks her giant pink bow from the floor and clips it back in her curly blond hair. “I told Zeke he better stop it. Also I need a Band-Aid.” She holds up her fingers, which are red from being squished.
“Bodhi wouldn’t share his bus and he’s gotten a super long turn. Like, super long.” George Hall, who is always dressed like a tiny golfer, limps to retrieve his lost club loafer.
Rhea feels an earthquake coming on. Her hands tremble as she pulls her son from her body to examine him. A ring of puncture wounds where Bodhi’s neck meets the curve of his shoulder leaks an angry shade of red, leaving behind a Rorschach test of spots on her linen tunic.
“Oh-kaaaay” is all Miss Ollie manages for a handful of seconds. “That’s—okay. We’ll—everyone’s okay.”
Rhea glares over the top of her son’s head. “I’m sorry, what now?” She feels the heat in her hands first, that sensation of warmth spreading through her veins, shooting up toward her head. Her voice trembles; the sight of her son, her sweet, wouldn’t-hurt-a-fly baby boy oozing blood from an attack in his own classroom makes her feel as though she’s been sliced open herself. She’s waiting for Miss Teacher-of-the-Year over here to show the same degree of horror she’d reserved for Rhea’s cauliflower just two minutes earlier, but look who’s all laissez-faire now. Maybe she deserves to get bitten, see how “okay” she feels about it then.
“It’s definitely not okay. Okay?”
The teacher stares, open-mouthed. Some of the other children have already resumed playing with blocks and plastic food items and pretend cash registers. George tries to pull a picture book off the overstuffed Read-with-Me shelf and the books that fall off make the sound of dead birds slapping the ground. Miss Ollie’s eyes dart over then back. “I’m sorry, I don’t know what’s been getting into them.” She takes Zeke’s hand in her own.
“What’s been getting into them? Like this has happened before? Like this is a normal occurrence?”
“No.” Miss Ollie swallows. “It’s not that— I’m sorry, I’m not allowed to discuss incidents involving any of the other children. But I take it very seriously. We’re working through it. Rhea, I understand you’re upset. I’m upset, too. These are like my children.”
“Yeah?” Rhea says. “Except that’s the difference, isn’t it? They’re not.”
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF WITNESS, BODHI ANDERSON
APPEARANCES:
Detective Wanda Bright
PROCEEDINGS
DET. BRIGHT: Do you know what detectives do, Bodhi?
BODHI ANDERSON: Beep when there’s smoke in the kitchen.
DET. BRIGHT: Beep when there’s sm— Oh, no, those are detectors. I’m a detective. I solve mysteries. Mysteries are stories we don’t know the ending to yet.
BODHI ANDERSON: I don’t want to be that. I want to be a teacher and a veterinarian.
DET. BRIGHT: Sounds like you’re going to be pretty busy. Do you think for today, though, you could help me solve a mystery?
BODHI ANDERSON: What’s the other choice?
DET. BRIGHT: What do you mean?
BODHI ANDERSON: Do you want to color for five extra minutes or would you like to hear the end of this story? Like that.
DET. BRIGHT: Oh, um, you can help me solve a mystery or you can answer some questions. Which one do you want to do?
BODHI ANDERSON: I’ll do the mystery.
DET. BRIGHT: Okay, Bodhi. Can you tell me whether anyone was in your class that day that wasn’t usually in your class?
BODHI ANDERSON: No.
DET. BRIGHT: Even for a second.
BODHI ANDERSON: I guess one person.
DET. BRIGHT: Who was that, Bodhi?
BODHI ANDERSON: Just my mommy.
TWO
“She did seem like she felt really bad about it,” says Darby Morton, who had returned to drop off Lola’s forgotten water bottle—there has been a lot of drama around that water bottle—and had therefore witnessed the immediate aftermath in Miss Ollie’s classroom. Darby has one of those pleasantly round faces with bright skin that makes her nearly impossible to get irritated with, which, in itself, can be a bit irritating, Mary Beth finds, if she’s being honest. “She went pale,” Darby relates, dramatically. “Like a ghost.”
“I don’t care how she feels. It shouldn’t have happened,” Rhea shoots back. There is a lovely tattoo of a hummingbird just below Rhea’s collarbone that Mary Beth finds oddly uplifting at a time like this, which one might not expect to be her official opinion on the matter, but there it is.
The thing about Rhea is that she is granola, which is the polite term Mary Beth’s mother would have used for hippie, and Mary Beth hoped that the mere proximity of fresh-pressed juices and ancient grain bowls at this aggressively healthy café where the three mothers have agreed to meet would have helped to ease her off the ledge.
“Right.” Mary Beth sets down her tea. “Of course. But she’s a fantastic teacher. I think we can all agree, we’re lucky to have her.”
Rhea makes a noise that suggests they cannot all agree.
Mary Beth has yet to remove the large, buglike sunglasses from her face as she sips hot tea while nursing the tail end of a forty-eight-hour migraine. A nasty one, too.
The headaches started sometime after her last pregnancy, though one has nothing to do with the other, according to doctors. After one of her episodes, she invariably craves carbs, ideally in the form of french fries. She imagines the look on the waitress’s face if she were to try ordering some, just for kicks. Perhaps it will be similar to the look she gives when Mary Beth vomits all over this gluten-free menu.
She really does try not to take Rhea’s perspective personally, but if Rhea only fully grasped the number of envelopes Mary Beth stuffed, the scope of fundraising meetings she attended, the Edible Arrangements she delivered just to ensure that the three of them had first pick of teachers this year of all years—the fours.
Less discerning mothers might have been put off by the fact that this is Miss Ollie’s first year teaching at Little, but not Mary Beth. Her résumé alone separated her head and shoulders above the rest. But also, it’s more than that. Miss Ollie seems to prefer the children, teaching them knock-knock jokes, crawling through chair tunnels on the floor, never getting sucked into adult conversation with parents. She’s like magic.
“The dads definitely agree with you on that front. Fantastic is absolutely one of the words they’d used to describe her, I think,” says Darby.
“What’s that supposed to mean?” Mary Beth lifts her sunglasses to wipe the beads of sweat copulating on the bridge of her nose.
“Oh, come on. All the moms are talking about it. The dads are ogling Miss Ollie. Asher’s dad told his brother—you know, Asher’s uncle—and now that uncle volunteered to pick Asher up from school just to catch a peek for himself. Katia probably doesn’t mind the extra help, though.”
“Stop it.” A phantom wisp of pain echoes around Mary Beth’s head, and she winces, but barely. “That’s got nothing to do with it. Doug volunteered to do drop-off a couple times last week.” She hears how it sounds as soon as she’s said it.
“That’s very generous of him.” Darby feigns wide-eyed innocence.
“She’s not his type,” says Mary Beth, not minding if she sounds clueless.
The three of their kids—Noelle, Lola, and Bodhi—were in the same infant class, and they’ve grown up together ever since, year after year, lockstep, the best of friends. Or at least that’s the way it has been up until recently.
The waitress with the nose ring pierced through her septum comes to collect their orders, and Darby takes the opportunity to pick up her phone and scroll through work email. She’s from Los Angeles and has a background as a high-powered PR executive but took a step back when she had Lola. Now she’s overqualified for her job as a crisis manager for the county, where Mary Beth can only assume there are no pressing crises to manage today.
Rhea’s background, on the other hand, has always been more of a mystery. She pulls a gauzy orange wrap around her shoulders, obscuring the little hummingbird from view.
“If Miss Ollie spent half the amount of time and energy she spends nosing into how I parent my kid on her own teaching,” says Rhea, “then she might be able to control what goes on in her class. It makes me question whether our kids are even safe.” She levels her mossy green eyes at them. “I’m thinking about filing a formal complaint with the school.”
“Rhea.” It comes out more chiding than Mary Beth intends and indignation flashes across Rhea’s face.
“What?” Rhea blinks hard. “You think because maybe I don’t pay as much tuition as you I don’t get as much say?”
“No,” Mary Beth stammers. “Of course not.” She feels her face flush. She knows Rhea accepts some sort of financial aid package from the school even though, as she understands it, Bodhi’s father, Marcus, offered to pay the difference, no problem. For whatever reason, Rhea preferred to take out the loan instead and so naturally Mary Beth hadn’t been thinking about money when she made her comment. Anyway, she thought maybe Rhea’s business was doing quite well these days. Terrene. You’ve got to extend the e when you say it, like serene.
“I just think being a teacher is a really challenging job,” Mary Beth says gently.
“And maybe not everyone’s cut out for it.”
Mary Beth presses her lips together. She tries very hard to see it from Rhea’s point of view. Rhea’s feelings are … valid. Her child was harmed. Emotions are high. Of course they are.
“Care to jump in here, Darby?” Rhea sets her water down too hard and the ice tinkles against the glass. “Anything to add?”
Darby glances up from her phone. “Sorry, what are we talking about?”
Rhea rolls her eyes. They both know Darby has a tendency not to pay close attention, though Mary Beth sometimes suspects it’s a selective strategy more than a condition.
How long can it take to make raw food? she wonders a tad miserably.
“I’m talking about how I saw Griff at school.” Rhea leans back in her chair like she rests her case.
Darby puts down her phone. “I doubt that. What would he be doing there?”
Not that it would prove any point, but Mary Beth would like to know the same thing. Of all her friends’ husbands, Griff Morton is, by far, her least favorite.
Rhea purses her lips, like she’s not sure how much she should say, but now that she’s started, the lid has been good and lifted and what else can she do? “I only bring it up because he didn’t look too happy with Miss Ollie. He was, you know … They were arguing.” She watches Darby, they both do, searching for a glimmer of recognition. This is ringing a bell, right? You know about this, surely? But Darby’s face remains disturbingly blank. “I figured,” Rhea presses, “that something must be going on with Lola.”
Yes, Mary Beth thinks. There. Finally. Something is going on with Lola Morton. And now someone has finally had the guts to say so.
* * *
After dinner, Mary Beth takes an Oreo out of the package. Then she takes three. She eats them standing over the freshly wiped counter in her modern farmhouse.
Sooner or later, she and Darby will have to face the conversation about their daughters head-on. Of course, Mary Beth will be exceedingly gracious; she’s already been practicing in the shower how gracious she’ll be because it’s important not to gloat, never to gloat. It’s not her own daughter who’s been turning into a little monster (no wonder Noelle no longer wants to be friends with her), but it just as easily could be.
Well, maybe not just as easily. No judgment (Verse 7:1).
She scrapes the crumbs from the countertop and dusts them from her palms into the sink. Then she climbs the stairs to her master bedroom and rustles in the back of her closet for a shopping bag. Out from it, she pulls what the saleswoman called a red “cocktail lace playsuit,” which sounded promising.
She musses her hair, the way the models do in Victoria’s Secret ads. Better.
Swear on the Holy Bible, she never would have thought to buy lingerie if it weren’t for Pastor Ben.
Pastor Ben is new. Pastor Ben has tattoos. And wears hats indoors. She wasn’t even intending to pay attention to the sermon. Many Sundays, she tunes out, enjoying the forty-five or so minutes of her week during which no one is asking for chocolate milk at the exact same moment she sits down, or wondering whether she’s seen the remote, or talking to her while she’s on the toilet, asking her what smells.
Pastor Ben came onstage to the tune of “SexyBack” and Mary Beth was alerted to the movement of his firm biceps, his swaying hips, and his lack of forehead wrinkles. The point of the talk was to encourage married couples to have sex and, at the end of it, he announced the 30-Day Challenge with a zingy exclamation mark.
A spark plug shot off inside Mary Beth. When was the last time that she and Doug had had sex? Three months ago? Four?
But now, as she stands in front of a mirror in desperate need of a good Windex, wearing some unmentionables, a swell of pride rushes into her rib cage. She can do this. A starting point. A fighting chance. Carve out a place for herself, away from her crippling headaches and her nibbling volunteer work and her adorable children. She can take back her life.
* * *
“You didn’t need to do all that for me.” Doug’s put the kids to bed and, finally, the house is quiet. He peels off his socks and drops them into the hamper.
And suddenly, Mary Beth feels silly, and silly is not what one wants to feel in a cocktail lace playsuit. “I know.” She sounds dull, not vixen-y at all.
But need had nothing to do with it. Of course she didn’t need to wear new lingerie. What she’s after is desire. Now she doesn’t know what, exactly, she was expecting.
Or maybe, worse, she does.
She hoped her husband’s eyes would widen, caught by surprise, like a camera flash had gone off two inches from his nose. She imagined him crossing the room without a word, wrapping his fingers in the hair at the base of her skull and tipping her head back so that he could lower his mouth onto hers. That had never happened to her before and it sounded nice, like something she should experience at least once.
Instead, Doug stares at her, flat-footed, in his rumpled khakis and flannel shirt. He’s a regular guy, her husband. A dad sort, and that is not a knock. He enjoys putting up Christmas lights and coming up with family itineraries for the weekend and talking hypothetically about the dog he plans to get when “things slow down.”
“Pastor Ben told us we should have fun with it.” She evokes the pastor’s name like a shield: Don’t blame me, this wasn’t my idea.
Mary Beth could have sworn she was warned—many, many times, in fact—that she would spend much of her married life concocting sorry excuses to stave off the unwanted advances of a pawing husband. She thought that once there were no longer sleepless nights with babies in the house, the space in their minds and bodies would open up naturally, but perhaps they needed a jump start. Enter Pastor Ben.
“It was on sale,” she says. It wasn’t.
“I mean, I like it.” Doug can’t seem to sort out what to do with his hands. He scratches behind his ear, pets the back of his neck, checks the buttons on his shirt.
“You do?”
“I haven’t seen you wear lingerie since our wedding night.” He grins now, his turn to look silly.
“But that was just yesterday,” she says, which they both know is the most ridiculous thing of all. Their wedding feels like eons ago. Recently, in a morning breath fog, as she fumbled for coffee, she had the thought: Wait, does the Earth go around the sun once a year, or is it a day?
It takes something like five or six or fifteen seconds for Doug to cross the room to her, and though his fingers do not twine through the roots of her hair, what they do instead is quite nice.
An absurd number of throw pillows rains down onto the floor and the playsuit soon becomes irrelevant as Mary Beth forgets all the things she’s been forgetting lately and time swirls in a way that doesn’t feel draining and she is very thankful for her soft, cushioned mom body, which is rarely if ever ogled when—ouch! ouch!—there’s an alarming pinch on her heel.
“Did you do that?” Her head picks up from the mattress.
“Do what?” He hovers over her, a sheen of sweat slicked across his wiry chest.
She rolls him off the top of her, and then emits a bleat of distress when she sees the blond top of her four-year-old’s head sticking up over the edge of the bed.
“Honey!” she shrieks, unsure to which member of her family she’s speaking. “Noelle! Noelle, sweetie! What are you doing up?” Mary Beth huddles her knees into her chest while Doug’s busy pulling pillows over his most sensitive areas.
“I couldn’t sleep.” Noelle has a sweet, high-pitched voice that reminds Mary Beth of angel bells.
“Okay. Well…” She trails off.
The door. They should have locked the door.
“Watch it.” Doug points. “You’re dripping.”
She is momentarily horrified by his implication before she sees what he means.
Blood slowly bubbles up in the spot on her ankle where she’d felt the pinch. A bright bead falls onto her white duvet spread. “Shit.” She scoops her hand underneath her heel.
“Language.”
“Sorry.” She takes a closer look and counts. There are six separate puncture wounds. “Did you … did you bite Mommy, Noelle?” There it is, that absurd third person, which, for whatever reason, has come to sound completely natural to her ear, as though that Mary Beth—Mommy Mary Beth—is her own person. As though she lost the I of it all once she became somebody’s mother. If witness protection really wants to know the quickest way to make a woman disappear, just make her a mom.
Noelle gives a wide-eyed nod. Tears are welling in her little-girl eyes. “I’m sorry, Mommy. I—”
Mary Beth scoots her bare ass off the end of the bed and, in a few quick strides, wraps herself in her plush, white robe.
“It was probably just a reaction to—well—to what we were doing.” Pink blotches have erupted at the tops of her husband’s cheeks. “She’s traumatized.”
Mary Beth sinks to her daughter’s level. “Did we scare you?” Noelle shakes her head. “Were you not able to get our attention? Was that it?” Noelle shrugs.
“Oh my god,” Doug says, but there’s a hint of a chuckle in his voice. At least bewilderment. “Should I phone the child psychologist now or wait till morning?”
“Shhh. She doesn’t know. She’s too young.” Then to Noelle—“Mommy and Daddy were just play wrestling, that’s all. We’re so silly, aren’t we?”
Come to think of it, Mary Beth herself feels a tiny bit traumatized.
She uses toilet paper to blot the spot on her heel, which continues to ooze. What on earth got into Noelle? That hurt.
She feels sorry now for her discarded playsuit and its truncated spin around the block—so much for adult time. What’s the etiquette of wearing it again, anyway?
As she leads her daughter back to her bedroom, Mary Beth wonders if, given everything, it still might be perfectly honest to successfully check off day number 6 in her challenge. She’s not one to bend the rules, but just this once it might be harmless. They can always do better tomorrow.
THREE
Darby hit her child. Hit her. The things you say you’ll never do as a parent, and yet. Is a “bop” a hit?
Griff screamed, “You can’t hit her!”
That was all her husband did, though.
All he did as she shrieked bloody murder. “She’s got me! Let go! You’re hurting Mommy!” Bop, bop, bop. Panic climbing her rib cage like a ladder.
Her wrist now has a visible heartbeat. The surface puddles of eight wounds—a top row and a bottom—ooze in rhythm with her pulse. The two holes where the little incisors pierced remind her of natural hot springs, their depths ominously unknown, mystically terrifying.
What was she thinking moments earlier? What was it? She feels like her earth has been scorched, razed in the rush of searing pain, shocking and distressing as her daughter bit the shit out of her.
Moments before the bite, Griff was rubbing his whole face with his palms, ruffling the boyish mop of chestnut hair that hangs down over his forehead. “This just—this can’t be normal! What if there is something wrong with her? Like, psychologically? But we don’t know! Because you’re so against the idea of asking the school to do a workup with the counselor for no reason! Except that it wasn’t your idea, probably.”
Lola’s cartoonishly red face dripped with snot and tears, lubricating her cheek as she slid it over the hardwood floor like a wonder mop, knees tucked underneath her, tiny bottom spiked in the air, knuckles wrapping around her hair as she screamed and sobbed, then screamed some more.
And Darby shouted back, “It is normal. Four-year-olds have tantrums. Normally.”
But the violence of Lola’s fits has been getting incrementally worse lately.
Griff went for the stern-dad voice. “Lola, if you don’t stop crying in five seconds. One … two…” The volume of her cries only increased.
“No! No! No! No! Noooooo!” she shrieked.
“Three … four … five.” Griff finished the pointless exercise.
“And?” Darby looked at him, expectantly. “If she doesn’t stop crying in five seconds then … what?”
He rolled his eyes. She and Griff are as bad as the kids.
“That was the entire plan? That was it? That’s as far as you got?”
At which point, she consigned herself to carrying Lola to her room, where her daughter could remain until her soul returned to her body. She reached for Lola’s armpits to scoop her up like a kicking, screaming rag doll and that’s when she got bitten, bitten so deeply Darby felt the scrape of bone on bone, and tasted iron on her tongue.
Her own mouth contorted into an ugly, silent scream as she pressed her thumb in the spot between Lola’s eyebrows and slowly, painfully pushed—with the excruciating care of one pulling a nail from her foot. Chin tipped back, her daughter’s bangs, which are cut straight across and styled into a short, 1920s flapper bob, swept from her darling forehead. Her tiny jaw released and Darby thought: Every year, every month, every day; it’s supposed to be getting easier! And then Lola’s tongue, washed bright red, slipped out and licked the cupid’s bow of her precious, heart-shaped mouth.
* * *
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.
“Hardware update.”
“How late will you be?”
When Lola was born, Darby went from senior publicist at a brand management agency to working completely from home as a crisis manager for the county. She thought she should be more available, the way her mother was for her growing up. Now she manages just enough to keep from getting fired and begrudges Griff the freedom to walk out the door and wind up at a place where only grown-ups need him.
“Should be back by eleven or so.”
As she mounts the stairs, her knee cracks from where she had ACL surgery years and years ago. “Oh.” She stops midway and leans over the banister, a scenic overlook from which to appreciate a living room she once quite liked before her daughter used marker on the green-upholstered chair and stuffed animals overflowed from three separate boxes next to what should have been a wet bar. “I meant to ask. You didn’t go to school the other day to talk to Miss Ollie, did you?”
The thought has been prickling the back of her mind since lunch. It seems like she and Griff agree less and less about the best way to parent their daughter with each passing day, but he wouldn’t go behind her back. Would he?
He thumbs through his phone, a terrible habit they share equally. “No. Why?”
“Never mind.” She shakes her head. “That’s what I thought.”
And that, she reminds herself, is one of the many perks to being married to Griff: She never has to worry.
FOUR
“I’m hungry.” Bodhi is already wearing his coat, the hood pulled up over his curly black hair.
By evening, Rhea’s managed to climb back into her skin. She’s applied honey and garlic to the bruised area across Bodhi’s collarbone and told him not to try licking it off unless he wants to have nasty monster breath. He pulled one of his scary faces and made her laugh from deep down in her belly, despite herself. That’s the magic of Bodhi, her alchemist. Takes a bad situation and, just like that, turns it around in ways big and small, the same way he did with her whole life.
“Your father will be here any minute.” She dumps the crumbled ash from her incense plate into the sink and checks the clock. Marcus is ten minutes late.
She keeps busy, running a cloth over a few plates and adding them to the drying rack. As soon as he walks in, she’ll tell him about the conversation with Miss Ollie and it’ll be no big deal, just wait, she’ll see. Marcus trusts her instincts as a mother. He’s always let her take the lead, never stepped on her toes, not once. As a father, he’s both present and enthusiastic, but not overly confident.
Rhea’s own father was a wet blanket of a man, not mean or cruel or temperamental, but he chewed up dreams in the same plodding manner that he chewed his breakfast cereal. He liked to dispense life advice like Lower your expectations and you won’t be disappointed, and You can take the girl out of the trailer park, but you can’t take the trailer park out of the girl, which was the closest she ever heard him come to making a joke. Her mother was kind but busy. She worked as a call center agent, long hours, lining somebody else’s pocket, leaving Rhea to fend for herself, surviving off Chef Boyardee and Ritz crackers. So, yeah, everything Rhea knows, she learned from her parents.
“Can I have a snack, please?”
Rhea smiles at her son’s impeccable manners, another sign she’s doing a good job. Take that, Miss Ollie.
Rhea still breastfeeds Bodhi before bed, but only when he asks. His diet is whole-food-centric, no gluten, GMO-free, and she avoids as many over-the-counter drugs as she possibly can. Does this make her life harder on occasion? Yes. But how could she forgive herself if she didn’t offer her child the best, the healthiest, the free-est? The last thing she needs is anyone looking at Bodhi sideways, feeling sorry that he got stuck with a single mother. And so she can’t just be good; she has to be superior.
“He’ll be here any minute,” she repeats. But the minutes are ticking slowly, slowly by, as they always do in the span before Marcus’s arrival.
The doorbell to her duplex rings. “What’d I tell you?” She cuts through the living room, which has been transformed into a fulfillment center—boxes, packaging labels, tissue paper—piled high with her jars of oils and special blends. Tea tree oil helps with acne and athlete’s foot. Peppermint supports digestion and relieves headaches. Lemon oil kills bacteria and reduces anxiety. Orange for pain. Rosemary for joint inflammation. Bergamot to lower blood pressure. Rhea feels like a witch, mixing and matching, finding just the right recipes to create unique potions for her customers’ particular ailments.
“Sorry I’m late.” Marcus rubs the soles of his shoes on the doormat. Rhea’s tall, but Marcus is taller. Deep brown skin and broad shoulders and a groomed beard. Rhea’s got good taste in men, always has, but it’s a gift that’s mostly wasted on her.
“You’re not that late.”
He gets that stupid dimple in his left cheek like he knows she’s giving him a free pass. He must not have a girlfriend at the moment. She can always tell.
“How’s the walking wounded?” Marcus teases. Kneeling down in front of his son, he gently peels back the bandage Rhea freshly placed. “Oh, it’s not that bad.” He grins up at her. “I think he’ll live.”
Rhea doesn’t see what’s so funny. “He was bleeding.” Is Marcus blind? Why is everyone minimizing this? Her son—their son—was attacked. Viciously attacked. At school. He cried out for her.
“Kids bite.” Marcus palms their son’s sweet head. “It happens. Can’t roll him up in bubble wrap.” As if that’s what she’s implying.
“You weren’t there,” she says.
“You were?” He frowns, surprised. “Why?”
“I—” It’s not actually that hard to lie once you’ve had a bit of practice, and Rhea has had some. “I was just dropping off some supplies.”
It hangs there between them. Fix it, she thinks. Explain. Tell him what Miss Ollie told her and let him offer his two cents. He pays his child support, on time—usually a few days early, if she’s being honest—every month, without fail; this is the deal. The moment balloons.
“Where y’all headed?” Her breath spills out. She kneels to tie Bodhi’s shoe and looks down at the floor, brushes the whole thing off.
“Fresa’s.”
She gives Marcus a look. “No flour tortillas, remember?”
“Yeah, I know.” He cranes his neck to peer into her living room, all nosy. “Looks like you’re running Grand Central Station. How many orders are you sending out these days?”
Her cheeks plump as she tries not to look too pleased with herself. “About two hundred a day.” It’s been five whole months since she put in her notice at the property management company where she was working as an executive assistant to the owner, her latest in a long stream of meaningless jobs.
“I hear you’re looking for investors, Rhea,” he says, putting his hand on Bodhi’s shoulder.
“I don’t need your money.” She folds an olive-colored dish towel and hangs it on the oven handle out of habit. She keeps her duplex cozy but neat. A macramé fruit hammock hangs from a nail in the low popcorn ceiling. She likes the feeling of the clean wood-grain tile beneath her bare feet and the butcher-block countertop under her palms when she prepares fresh food.
“Maybe I want to give it.”
“I’m not looking for gifts. I’ve got a prospectus and everything.”
“A prospectus?”
She sighs, half wondering what happened to that law student he was dating. Laurie, was it? “Yeah. Investor literature. I went and got a business accountant.”
Marcus whistles low. “Okay, I see how it is.” He winks. “We got a girlboss here.” For the record, Rhea hates that term. “Well, come on, Bode-Man. We better get out of here. Oh, hey, you catch that email from the school?” He turns halfway out the door. “What’s that about?”
“What email?” she asks.
“You gotta check your emails, Rhea.” Jesus, she knows, she knows. Marcus treats every email from the school like it’s mission critical. “The one sent about half an hour ago.” He starts to pull out his phone to show her.
“I’ll check it out,” she cuts him off.
He looks hard at her. “You okay? You seem, like, stressed or something.”
“I’m fine. I’ll see you tomorrow after school, Bodhi—love you.” Her heart jams up in her chest.
Marcus lingers another beat and, for a second, she wonders: Does he know? Is he testing her? Is she failing by not communicating about Miss Ollie and the lunches? She holds her breath, unsure of what to do or why this thought has even occurred to her.
“Later, Rhea.” He pulls the door gently closed behind him.
Dear Little Academy Parents,
I hope your weekends have been restful. I’m writing to keep you apprised of a few developments in our classroom. While I would never discuss any particular child’s health status or concerns, I do want to mention that a number of parents have informed me that something seems to be going around, the first instance having been reported to me right around Thursday morning. We don’t currently know the cause, so for now, if your child is acting “off” or doesn’t seem like him- or herself, please do take them to see their pediatrician as soon as possible. Thank you for your cooperation.
Yours truly,
Miss Ollie
* * *
By morning, the pads of Rhea’s fingertips are raw from pulling at packing tape and wrestling cardboard boxes into submission. She put together each shipment of Terrene by hand, finishing the latest batch sometime around three in the morning and realizing, at that point, that she’d hardly get any sleep anyway, so she might as well spend the wee hours putting together the pitch deck for the angel investors.
Two weeks ago, she hired a brand consultant and paid 500 of her own hard-earned dollars to meet with her for an hour. It turned out mostly to be a crock. A bleached-blond lady with hot pink crocodile-leather shoes and a turquoise portfolio who suggested Rhea become the Earth Mama version of Gwyneth Paltrow—effortless, aspirational, more design-forward, less folksy.
Last night, she stared at profit-and-loss statements, at account numbers, and at scaling projections until it felt as though her eyes would bleed, praying that her numbers weren’t wrong. Almost everything she knows about running a business has come from a mix of Google and trial and error. Each slide preparation, each calculation takes Rhea twice as long as it would someone with formal training. Investors would change that. She could get an assistant, a bookkeeper, a warehouse that wasn’t her living room. But not today.
Today, her insides feel like a growl. In and out, that’s all she’s got to do. Grab Bodhi and go.
On her way onto campus, a group of old church ladies wave from the Mobile Loaves and Fishes truck—“Good morning!”—back from their morning rounds feeding the community’s homeless. Rhea smiles back at them, tight-lipped.
She presses the passcode into the preschool hallway keypad and holds the door open to enter the upper-age-range hall. Everything smells like apple juice, but not how Rhea makes it. No, the kind with “made from concentrate” stamped across the box. Surely parents wouldn’t choose to rot their children’s teeth with that junk if they knew what kind of pesticides and growth hormones went into it, but, then again, she’s always surprised what parents will and won’t do.
Rhea joins the other parents in line to pick up their children. She watches the class through the doorway and, for a moment, she forgets herself, forgets her foul mood, forgets that she’s avoiding Bodhi’s teacher. She loves the time at the end of Bodhi’s school day when she gets to watch him play, stolen seconds before he senses her presence.
She scribbles gibberish across the sign-out sheet and, when Miss Ollie’s back is turned, waves to get Bodhi’s attention. Miss Ollie helps one of the little girls gently collect a stack of not-quite-dry art projects.
Come on. Rhea gestures to her son enthusiastically. And you know, she’s about to get away with it, too. Other parents collect their children, other parents leave. And Bodhi moves slowly.
Like he’s got some kind of Mommy’s-in-a-hurry radar that taps his internal brakes upon detection. The boy can mosey. Mosey to gather his artwork. Mosey to retrieve his backpack. Mosey to locate his water bottle. Easy like Sunday morning.
And here’s Rhea, losing her mind.
“Rhea?” Out of nowhere, Miss Ollie turns and registers her. “I wanted to say again how sorry I am about what happened to Bodhi. It looks like it really hurt. He seems to be doing much better today, though. I’m sure you saw my message,” she continues. “If it’s any comfort, I’ll just say that Bodhi isn’t the only one, and we’re working on the biting behaviors. We’ll be talking about it in class—”
“That’s all right.” Rhea leans in, looking for Bodhi again.
“Also.” Miss Ollie pushes back into Rhea’s line of vision. “I was thinking that I really would like to speak with Bodhi’s father about what we discussed last time.”
“Not necessary,” says Rhea.
“I know.” She gently touches Rhea’s arm; Rhea’s whole body goes rigid. “I would just feel more comfortable. I wanted to give you a heads-up and make sure you had the opportunity to catch up with him first if you wanted.” Miss Ollie beckons and Bodhi comes trotting over. The teacher helps him loop his skinny arms through the straps of his backpack. “Please feel free to have Marcus contact me. If I haven’t heard from him by Friday, then I’ll go ahead and reach out directly.”
Finally, Bodhi rushes out the door, headlong into his mother’s body. He wraps his arms tightly around her waist, pressing his face into her belly button. Her fingers find the familiar flat spot on the back of his skull. Ears ringing, her feet feel like they’ve been planted there and put down roots.
Miss Ollie busies herself with the other children. A hot flush rises between Rhea’s breasts, sweat building in the pockets beneath her arms. Is it because of what Rhea said, about none of the children being hers? Could Miss Ollie, a whole-ass adult, really be that petty? Is this some kind of power trip? Is this because Rhea is the only single mother in the class? Would she be making a thing about contacting the father if Rhea and Marcus were together? Or how about if Rhea looked more like one of the Lululemon moms, the PTA moms, the moms who wear Tom Ford lipstick and consider drag queen brunch a wild girls’ outing, and who are not “alternative,” as Mary Beth once described Rhea?
“Mommy? Mommy?” Rhea feels the tug on her skirt and understands her son has been trying to get her attention. Mommy. Mommy.
The world and its sounds come crashing back in, fast and loud.
“What, honey?” She takes his wrist gently in her hand. Mommy. Mommy.
The spit that hits the back of her throat feels tacky. She tries to let the name soak in—Mommy. What business does Erin Ollie think she has stepping between her and her child? She has half a mind to—
“Can we go?” Bodhi whines.
Rhea looks down at her beautifully innocent son and sees how rare and precious a thing that is.
Adults, in comparison, are garbage. If Erin Ollie doesn’t understand the line between doing her job and meddling, then Rhea will have to show her.
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF WITNESS, GEORGE HALL
APPEARANCES:
Detective Wanda Bright
PROCEEDINGS
DET. BRIGHT: So it was sudden? One day friends just started biting; is that right, George?
GEORGE HALL: Yeah. But Zeke said sorry and it’s not nice to stay mad at people, Miss Ollie says.
DET. BRIGHT: I agree. Do you have any idea why they were biting?
GEORGE HALL: Over the bus usually. Sometimes the big elephant because there is only one big elephant. Their tusks are actually teeth and they can use their trunks to snorkel.
DET. BRIGHT: Right, yes, the elephant. But did anything happen? Did anything change that gave kids the idea to start biting?
GEORGE HALL: I don’t know. Mommy says you’ve got to bite when it’s stranger danger.
DET. BRIGHT: That’s true.
GEORGE HALL: If you see a stranger you can kick and punch and bite and pull down their underwear and you won’t get in trouble at all, it’s allowed.
DET. BRIGHT: Sure. But the first time—
GEORGE HALL: Mommy told me even my old man neighbor can be a stranger and that he might try to take me.
DET. BRIGHT: George, did you see a stranger?
FIVE
“Pastor Ben?” Mary Beth blurts his name without thinking when she passes him in the preschool hall. It’s a Tuesday morning and she’s just dropped off Noelle. The blip of recognition electrifies her, as though she’s spotted a minor celebrity somewhere unexpected, like in her local Starbucks.
He has the dark waves of a nineties heartthrob and a V of back muscles to fill out his white T-shirt to go with it. He probably does CrossFit or some newer, cooler workout Mary Beth hasn’t even heard of yet.
He stops mid-stride, confused. Sheepishly, she waves. “Sorry, that was me.”
“Hi.”
She’s surprised to learn that he also has eyes the color of a Christmas tree, and that when he turns to look at her, the lights twinkle on. A mischievous sort of grin plays at the corners of his mouth as though he’s listening to a good joke.
That’s her cue. Say something. She’s usually so good at this.
“Hi, no, sorry, you don’t know me. I just—I wanted to tell you that I loved your last sermon.” You can never go wrong with a compliment, that’s Mary Beth’s motto.
Once a week, Mary Beth attends RiverRock for church service. Partly for the forty-five minutes of quiet time, but she also considers it an act of spiritual exercise, a time to reflect on “her why,” an expression amongst her Bible study group best defined as the reason she does all the back bending and self-sacrifice her daily life requires. A mother’s why should always be her kids. Always.
That’s why she’s an involved mother. On Mondays, she volunteers at the library. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, she shows up as a lunch aide at Angeline’s elementary school. She chairs the silent auction committee for the school’s annual Spring Fling and the Fall Gala at Little Academy and she never misses a chance to sign up as one of the “read-aloud” parents in her children’s classes.
The Bible is filled with really good mothers. There was Rebecca and Leah and Jochebed, not to mention the Virgin Mary, all women who did far more than Mary Beth and without the benefit of arch support. Sometimes she asks Noelle what mommies she learned about in school, but it’s always Jonah and his whale and David and the lions that stick in children’s minds. God should have given biblical women more stories involving animals.
“So glad you liked the sermon.” Pastor Ben has a slow southern lilt that makes Mary Beth imagine him standing whenever a lady gets up from the table. “Now, do you mind going back and telling that to my public speaking professor at divinity school? I got a D in that class.” He puts a finger to his lips; their little secret.
“Stop, you’re very inspiring.” She touches him, actually touches his forearm where a diamond-shaped freckle dots the outside of his elbow, touches him like her own hand isn’t part of her body. She slides it away, but she can still feel it like an indelible mark between them. “My husband and I—” She invokes Doug for obvious reasons. “—we’re actually doing your challenge, the having sex one. Some nights have been harder than others, but we’re keeping at it.” Oh dear. Did she really just say that?
“Tell your husband I accept thank-yous in the form of chocolate and Chick-fil-A.” He scratches the scruff on his cheek; he must only shave on Sundays.
She notices they have naturally begun talking in hushed voices. It feels sort of weirdly intimate, but also, if she’s being honest, not weird at all. The school hallways are remarkably quiet at this time of morning as classes begin emptying out onto the playground for the first recess of the day. There’s no one volunteering in the little square room a couple doors down that passes for a school library, with its Adirondack rocking chair and assortment of puppets that can be checked out to children’s homes right along with the tattered old books.
“It’s more me, actually.” She laughs. Lord Jesus. “I mean—”
“I didn’t catch your name,” he says.
“Mary Beth Brandt.” She extends her hand to shake, touches him for the second time. His hand is warm in hers and he gives it a knowing squeeze. Oh. Ohhhh. And just like that, her buzzing, busy-lady thoughts are replaced by a new awareness of a gentle sensation that’s taking root between her legs, a familiar but long-lost tingle, like an old friend she hasn’t seen in ages, though now that they’re together, it seems they’ve still got plenty to talk about. She clears her throat, self-consciously. “Ah. Well. What brings you to this side of campus?” she asks.
“I’m reviewing plans for the new youth center I’ve been spearheading. Exciting developments. Doing the Lord’s work.”
“I had no idea.” Though she’s not surprised. In general, the church does beautiful ministry. Teen mission trips to Yucatán, backpack drives, and the important work of preventing human trafficking. “I have a daughter who still attends here.”
“You know, I had a hunch,” he teases.
“Right. Duh.” She palms her forehead. “She’s in the fours. I’m on the parents’ committee actually and chaired the gala last year, so if I can ever be a resource, please don’t hesitate to—”
“You know.” He snaps his fingers. “Maybe you’re the person we should be roping in to help fundraise.”
“I mean,” she stumbles, “I guess I could.”
Ben crosses his arms, biceps forming small hilltops. She can’t tell what the tattoo is that peeks from his T-shirt, some kind of forked tail, maybe a sparrow or perhaps a mermaid.
She loves her husband and not in, like, a familial, we’ve-been-married-so-long type way. Doug’s cute. He has a baby face that’s hardly aged a day since they met; he looks the same, other than the few new pounds around his neck and jowls. She likes to back her body into the curve of his chest and stomach in bed. She enjoys the touch of his nose in the crook of her neck. All this to say there’s no harm in a crush. She’s not worried when that feeling in her vagina unexpectedly drops in for a visit and unpacks its bags and decides to stay awhile longer.
“Think of the children.” He winks.
“Well, when you put it that way,” she says. “I guess I have no choice. I’d do anything for our children. Absolutely anything.”
Maybe that’s Mary Beth’s problem.
* * *
“Hello, Mary Beth?” It’s soft-spoken Charlotte Higsby, George’s mom, on the phone. “I just wanted to check to see if you were aware of what happened in the parking lot this morning?”
The parking lot … the parking lot. She doesn’t like the sound of that. An uneasy feeling leaks into Mary Beth’s stomach, instant visions of a child being run over by a member of the army of mothers reversing their three-row SUVs.
“Not specifically, no,” she answers uncertainly.
Charlotte isn’t a fussy mom. She pays on time to the teacher gift fund, usually sending in a little extra. She asks Mary Beth how she can help. She’s the type of mother who will be her son’s first and maybe last love. And that’s why Mary Beth knows that if Charlotte Higsby is calling it must be for a very good reason.
“Another biting incident.” An audible wince in her milk-sweet voice. “Bex bit her mom—sorry, I’m trying to remember her name—?”
“Lena,” Mary Beth supplies.
“Right. Bex bit Lena. Badly.”
“Oh gosh.” Though there’s more than a little relief for Mary Beth. “I’m so sorry to hear that. Is she okay?” The nip on Mary Beth’s own ankle is already just a circle of itchy scabs. She understood Miss Ollie’s cryptic email last night to be somehow related to Zeke’s biting incident and heard rumblings of a small uptick in class bites. A sibling had been uncharacteristically bitten over the weekend. A nip last week in class that nobody thought much of. One of Lincoln’s moms said something about nearly losing a toe. The rhythm of life with tiny humans.
“Um, well, yes, mostly. It was the weirdest thing. Bex got agitated and then, you know, out of nowhere, practically, she bit Lena on the thigh and … okay, I’m just going to say it: I think she licked it.”
“Licked what?” Mary Beth asks.
“The blood. She licked the blood.”
Silence because, well, what really is there to say to that? A child who licked blood. Licked her mother’s blood? Mary Beth has the intense urge to say, “No, but thanks for calling,” and hang up.
“Zeke’s mother, Megan, is a nurse,” Charlotte continues as though Mary Beth doesn’t know. “She applied a butterfly bandage and said she didn’t think it would require stitches.”
“Poor Lena.” Mary Beth makes a mental note to add Lena to her prayer list tonight; it isn’t fun when your child acts out, let alone in public. Maybe she should send a note of encouragement. On second thought, that might make things worse. “Is there something I can do to help?”
“The other parents agreed we should be keeping a record. Of the biting. I understand there have been seven total from our class. Maybe a couple in others across the hall, but that was just something I heard.”
Seven. Seven instances of biting seems excessive, doesn’t it? Or does seven seem normal? It feels like Mary Beth should know the answer one way or the other, and yet she could be convinced either way. Seven.
“We figured,” Charlotte continues, “as our Room Mom you might be able to help keep a record, you know, just in case.”
It will be another sixteen minutes before the obvious question pops into her head: Just in case? Just in case what?
* * *
Mary Beth sits in the over-air-conditioned church meeting room, with its violent bright-white lighting, the sort almost always head-scratchingly reserved for swimsuit fitting rooms. Pastor Ben is running late, giving her mind a chance to wander in all the wrong directions.
“Oh good.” Miss Ollie slides into the chair beside her. “We haven’t started yet.”
“I didn’t know you were on the youth center committee,” says Mary Beth. “I would have joined sooner.” As if there’d been arm-twisting.
Miss Ollie shrugs. She so rarely shows her twenties, but, here and there, a peek. “I think it’s important for the preschool to have representation. There will be a lot of overlap. Design input. Construction. Logistical hang-ups.”
“Mm, yeah, of course.” Mary Beth feels a sense of maternal protectiveness over Miss Ollie, the way she does for all of Noelle and Angeline’s babysitters. She enjoys hearing their plans, their goals, their relationship drama. “Did you hear Bex bit Lena? George’s mom called me a few minutes ago to tell me.”
She has big girl-next-door eyes. Probably very popular in high school. And college. “Really? That’s number seven.”
“You’re keeping track?”
“I think it’s important to.” Miss Ollie reaches into her canvas tote and pulls out a notebook. She uncaps a pen with her mouth. “I come from a research background. Data points are my love language.” She flashes a grin; her bottom teeth are a little crooked. Mary Beth never noticed. Probably didn’t wear her retainer religiously. Mary Beth will definitely make her girls wear theirs every single night until she’s dead.
Miss Ollie leafs through the pages of her notebook and begins printing Bex Feinstein’s name along with the date on a fresh line. “I’ve been doing my own research.” She talks as she writes. “There’s a syndrome associated with biting. It’s called Renfield’s syndrome. It’s a psychological condition that causes those afflicted to crave blood the way some pregnant women want to eat clay, and there are documented pediatric cases going back at least fifty years. It’s kind of amazing.”
Amazing. The word rolls around in Mary Beth’s head. She blinks. “Um, are we sure we shouldn’t be looking into something a little more, you know, run-of-the-mill first? Like, could it be something the kids are picking up at school?” Seven bites. Seven—eight, actually, because she hasn’t mentioned Noelle’s—and counting. And that actually is a lot, yes, Mary Beth sees that now, and yet it feels like she’s treading water against the current. The children are in the same class, so she starts there. “They’re learning about dinosaurs this week, aren’t they?” she asks. “Maybe if we laid off the dinosaurs, just a thought?”
Miss Ollie looks at her with tremendous gravitas and says, “We’ve been keeping it to non-scary dinosaurs. Herbivores like the stegosaurus and the brontosaurus.”
“Right.” Mary Beth chews the calloused side of her thumb.
“Kids love dinosaurs. Barney is a dinosaur. Barney is a T. rex. I don’t think dinosaurs are the problem.”
Mary Beth presses her lips together. They’re the youngest committee volunteers by a landslide. Across the room sit a couple blue-haired ladies and men with thick-soled orthopedic shoes and brown, pilled socks.
Miss Ollie scribbles a final note and flips the cover shut. “I plan on sending some literature home this weekend. I really do care about this class. They’re some special kids.”
On the worktable in front of them, Miss Ollie’s phone screen illuminates with a text. The background of her lock screen shows a guy in his early twenties—tanned, outdoorsy, kissing a scruffy terrier mix in his arms.
Mary Beth smiles. “Is that your boyfriend?” Changing the subject.
“My brother.”
“That’s sweet. I hope Noelle and Angeline are close like that when they grow up. You know, this might be too personal,” Mary Beth says in her best big-sister tone, which is exactly how she’d like Miss Ollie to see her, like a cool, laid-back, but very nice and popular big sister. “Do you want kids of your own some day?”
Erin brightens. “I can’t wait to be a mother.”
The perfect answer, at least for Mary Beth, who loves baby showers, loves visiting new moms and offering to hold their infants while the new mother sneaks a quick nap. She loves getting soft blankets monogrammed. She loves the way in which every daughter is suddenly open to her mother’s advice.
But right then, Pastor Ben arrives and both of their eyes slide over to him. For a moment, Mary Beth is fully lost in the presence of the man, like a silly middle school student daydreaming about her crush. He’s like a work of art. She keeps noticing something new about him to appreciate. He looks vaguely like someone she knows, an actor maybe, but after a second or two of not being able to place him, she’s forced to give up. She’s never been good at this game.
“I want to start today’s meeting by talking to you about a troubled young kid I knew.” He folds his hands behind his back. “This kid came from a good family. Grew up middle class, mom and dad were kind, committed parents. But this kid had a wandering eye. At fourteen, he started drinking at friends’ houses. Not even beer. He went straight to the hard stuff. At first he got hangovers and then, sure enough, he could hold his liquor. Though that was just the start, as it turned out. He discovered pornography shortly thereafter and pretty soon he was obsessed with it.” A murmur hums through the committee members at the mention of such a naughty word in a church space. “That led to girls, which led to parties, and by sixteen he started taking prescription pain pills. He even sold them when he could. This kid barely graduated from high school, skated through college by the skin of his teeth. He even saw a close friend die in a terrible accident while driving under the influence that he, himself, was lucky enough to survive.” A small sound escapes Miss Ollie beside her. Everyone in the room appears to be deeply moved by the story. “Even still, he didn’t wake up. Not until he was twenty-three years old and he overdosed. He was found, you see, with vomit caked in the corners of his mouth.” He demonstrates. “Barely breathing, by one of his so-called friend’s parents, and he was rushed to the hospital, where he was resuscitated by the grace of God. After that, he found Jesus. Or maybe Jesus found him. He went to seminary. And he became … the church pastor you see standing before you today.”
A murmur of appreciation. Mary Beth glances over at Miss Ollie again to see if she’d guessed the punch line. Erin stares, rapt, yes, genuinely emotional.
“Children are our future,” he says, easing back into his slow-honey cadence. “But when I tell you the most shameful part of my past was seeded in my childhood, you’ve got to believe me. And that’s why it’s our responsibility, our duty, to take our youth in our arms and carry them across the finish line to adulthood, so that they can arrive unscathed.” With a flourish, he unveils the blueprint. “Many of you know I’ve been spearheading this initiative almost since my arrival, and that’s why I’m overjoyed to have something concrete to share with our committee today, never before seen. It’s going to take a lot of time, effort, and, frankly, expense,” says Pastor Ben. “But I believe our children are worth every penny.” He receives a hearty hear-hear from the group.
After, he shares the figures that have been set aside by the church so far, numbers already reaching into the six figures, but they’ll need more. A lot more if they’re going to build it. That’s why they’re gathered, to float ideas. Where will the money come from?
“We haven’t chosen a cause for this year’s Trike-a-Thon,” Mary Beth points out. “If she agrees, Miss Ollie and I could suggest it. I actually think parents might be even more generous than they are with children’s hospitals, though those are very worthy causes as well.”
Pastor Ben claps. “Yes! Now those are the kinds of ideas I’m talking about.”
Mary Beth blushes. Before the end of the meeting, she’s more than earned her keep. “Easy,” she tells the group. “People, especially parents, want easy. Make it so they can just sign a form and they’re automatically billed as part of their tuition and—bingo—they’re in. Maybe even a QR code. Point and click and the money pours in.” She beams.
Miss Ollie doesn’t say much, but at least she agrees with everything Mary Beth proposes. After the business of the meeting wraps and Mary Beth is flush with visions of dollar signs dancing in her head, Pastor Ben lopes over and offers her a high five. A high five!
When she slaps his palm, he grips his fingers around her hand, again, the second time today, and they wind up in a secret handshake of sorts. Her nervous system reacts. “Good chat,” he says.
* * *
After, Mary Beth packs up her day planner and ballpoint pen. “I’ve been wanting to talk to you about Lola and Noelle when you have a minute,” she says to Miss Ollie, scooping the strap of her purse onto her shoulder. She feels emboldened. “Doesn’t have to be now.”
Miss Ollie’s eyes are unfocused, her mind elsewhere. Mary Beth can see her dragging her attention back from wherever it went.
“I think that’s—that’s a good idea.” Miss Ollie runs her fingers through her glossy hair. “Actually, I asked Darby to come in Thursday before pickup. Can you make it then?”
Mary Beth hesitates. “For us all to meet together, you mean?”
Erin scratches her arm, leaving white nail lines across the pink bump of a mosquito bite. “It’s easier if we’re all on the same page.”
“It’ll be picture day.” Mary Beth already has Noelle’s outfit laid out—a blue-and-white-striped dress with a Peter Pan collar from Mini Boden. A splurge, but she would always prefer to spend money dressing her girls than herself.
“That never takes long.” Erin reaches her arm over her head, stretching for a spot between her shoulder blades. Her shirt lifts, exposing her belly button and the taut skin just beneath it.
“Here, let me get that,” says Mary Beth. She eases around Miss Ollie’s side and digs her nails through the fabric as best she can. “Better?”
“Much. Thanks.” Miss Ollie nods and relaxes finally. “Do you mind if I ask what you think of Ben?”
“Ben?” Mary Beth’s fingers freeze on the young teacher’s back. “Oh,” she says. “Pastor Ben, right. I … think he’s a good speaker and he’s doing great work in the church.”
Miss Ollie frowns but adds nothing.
Oh. My. God.
She’s starting to feel very itchy herself as the revelation that single, twentysomething Miss Ollie would have her eye on Pastor Ben—sorry, just Ben to her—breaks over her.
“You know what?” Mary Beth says. “I think I need to visit the ladies’ room on the way out. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
Without waiting for a reply, she flees to the bathroom, which is bare-bones and reminds her of middle school, with its dirty grout and penny-round tiles the color of pink Tums. She slumps down onto the toilet seat and drops her sweaty forehead into her open hands.
It’s not fair. She can’t even be mad properly. She can only feel stupid. Her children deprive her of any ability to feel remotely sexy and the moment she does feel the slightest bit hot and bothered, sensuous, flirtatious (fine), in waltzes their teacher.
Pain has started to shish kebab her right eyeball. Go away, she wills it. Not now.
She removes a fistful of toilet paper and dabs at her nose and around her eye.
The socket throbs, agony dancing around the rim of bone. She feels like she’s brought it on herself somehow. It’s not full-blown yet, this terrible head implosion with which she’s becoming all too familiar. Nevertheless, she persists, she thinks, with only a touch of irony. Because isn’t that what motherhood is? Tiny acts of heroism and daily sacrifice. Where is her Purple Heart?
She takes stock. She feels like she’s crash-landed into this tiny restroom stall that stinks of blue toilet bowl disks and urine, bottom first, right back into her life as Mom. Not enough fuel in the tank to go or be anywhere else; she’s marooned here. So she grants herself one last heaving, dramatic sigh because it’s both that bad and not really that bad at all being Mary Beth Brandt. What she’s got to do now is get ready for Thursday and figure out how to break the news to Darby that, difficult as it may be to hear, Lola needs help before she gets completely out of hand.
SIX
Lola is on her best behavior as Dr. Meckler crab-scuttles around on his rolling stool, listening to her heart and pointing an LED light up her nostrils. The examination room is haphazardly decorated to the theme of fish with peeling vinyl stickers—seaweed, bubbles, blowfish—stuck to the walls. Of all things, this has deeply impressed Lola, who loves marine life with the sort of reckless abandon most children reserve for candy.
“Kids bite,” he says, bumping Darby’s knees again as he rolls past. “It’s a way of testing their limits or expressing feelings.”
“She’s four. She’s never bitten before. Never.”
“It’s a normal part of childhood development. Probably just a very brief but frustrating phase. And it can start even as old as four.”
She chose Dr. Meckler that many years ago because he had jovial wrinkles around his eyes and a very comforting look about him, probably a favorite grandpa, a man who reads Mitch Albom novels by the fire, but “comforted” isn’t what Darby’s feeling right now. She’s actually frightened of her daughter, if she’s being completely honest. It’s like she’s built her home on an active minefield.
“It wasn’t normal,” she insists. “She came after me like I was prime rib.” Something thick and hard swims up her throat. “I think she might have actually … swallowed blood.”
A flicker of a frown for Dr. Meckler.
Her search history from last night was the work of a masochist. A litany of every horrible, unthinkable malady that could have befallen her daughter. Darby may not always love the grind of motherhood, but she’s still spent every year since entering it mentally running through each terrifying potential calamity like a pilot through a flight simulator. How she could throw her body in front of a moving vehicle, what she would do in the event of a home intruder or choking incident, the complete inventory of precious items she’d sell off in a heartbeat if she ever needed to pay for her children’s medical bills.
“You’re sure it’s not rabies?” She tries again when he doesn’t immediately snap into problem-solving mode. Her daughter’s lips had glistened with blood.
“There’s no sign of a bite mark on her anywhere. She doesn’t have a fever, no headache, no vomiting. She’s swallowing perfectly, doesn’t seem confused. I can promise you, this isn’t a kid with rabies. If it makes you feel better, I’m happy to order tests. Blood, saliva, skin biopsy, the works, if it’s what you need.”
His suggestion makes her feel dippy.
When it comes to parenthood, people love to tell you that everything that happens along the way is so normal. As though that makes it better. Your feet have grown a size during pregnancy—normal! You need to go on bed rest for four weeks—normal! Your baby has acid reflux—normal! You haven’t slept for ten months—normal! You pee when you sneeze—normal! Your child still isn’t talking at two, you had a miscarriage, your toddler still wears pull-ups at night—normal, normal, NOR-MAL!
But the worst part, the absolute shittiest bit about the word normal, is how the word itself gives permission to take whatever it is that’s normal for granted. Why not? Who needs to appreciate the unremarkable?
“Could she be sick?” Doesn’t hurt to brainstorm. “Can’t pets become aggressive when they’ve injured a leg or something?” What if Darby missed some vital sign related to Lola’s health and now it’s too late? That would be so infuriatingly like Darby, who feels like she’s missing whatever gene moms have that helps them remember to schedule their children’s dentist appointments.
Dr. Meckler ropes his stethoscope over the back of his neck and Darby steels herself. “She’s fine, she’s healthy.”
“I know—I just—” She doesn’t mean to be rude. It’s simply occurring to her that she’s never seen a pediatrician do anything other than press on her children’s bellies and stick flashlights up their noses. It seems like there should be a level two for bigger emergencies. “Then what about something … mental? My husband and I, well, we have different opinions. That’s putting it lightly, actually. We’ve been arguing—not in front of the kids, or at least not loudly—about whether we need the school counselor to do a full evaluation. I think maybe he’s just being impatient—she’s a kid, you know how men are sometimes, sorry, Dr. Meckler, but you must know and I guess, though, I’m asking you: Does she need help?”
She holds her breath. Darby will admit that Lola is more sensitive than other children, that she likes things a certain way, that she struggles with transition, but she’s always believed in her heart that Lola is a good person. She just needs direction. A bit of guidance. And patience. A lot of patience.
He types notes into her daughter’s chart. “I know it’s hard as a parent not to feel anxious over every little thing.”
Darby rubs the spot on her arm, which doesn’t feel little. She’s not one of those parents whose children act as socially acceptable outlets for their varying neuroses. Depending on the day of the week, Darby can either feel proud or negligent for being one of the “laid-back moms,” but always one or the other, as if her brand of mothering is a choice and not mere survival.
She doesn’t agree with Griff, but that doesn’t mean she automatically agrees with Dr. Meckler either.
“I think I’d like to go ahead and order those tests, please.” And she resigns herself to saying goodbye to the rest of her morning.
* * *
“I’m thirsty, Mom.” From the back seat, Lola stares too hard into the rearview mirror through her fringe of bangs. Darby doesn’t like this “Mom” business. None of the other four-year-olds call their mothers Mom. It’s weird.
“Where’s your water bottle?”
“Gone.”
“What do you mean it’s gone? The one with the whales on it?”
Lola had not wanted the cute sparkly water bottle that Darby picked out to replace the one that got squished beneath her tires when she accidentally left it on the roof of her car. She also didn’t want the purple unicorn water bottle that matched her backpack.
Lola isn’t prone to suggestion. She doesn’t go with the flow. Darby can’t present Lola with a surprise and expect happiness. Her daughter doesn’t work like that. And so they returned to the store where Lola picked out whales. That was five days ago. And the whales are now gone and Darby thinks she might—probably will—scream.
“It’s stolen.” Lola is defiant for no reason.
Darby beats the heel of her hand—the one that was recently spattered with pee while helping collect her daughter’s urine sample—gently against the steering wheel. “It’s not stolen, Lola. It’s misplaced. There aren’t water bottle burglars. That’s not a thing.”
Lola pouts. “I’m thirsty,” she repeats. “I wish I could bite you.”
The meanness of her little girl’s words pierces Darby. She gave up her whole day to take Lola to the pediatrician. And she feels like a bag lady in her shapeless tan dress that looked sort of chic on the mannequin but not on her. And she can spot pretzel bits and goldfish crumbs in the space between her seat and the console. She’s not even mad at Lola. It’s worse. She’s annoyed. Her daughter is bugging her. For a split second, she can see the appeal of Lola’s tantrums. It would feel so good to throw her sunglasses into the windshield and pull her hair and scream at her daughter to shut up, shut up, shut up.
Instead, she sits very still, growing angrier and more exasperated both with Lola and with herself. She should feel relieved. They’ve dodged at least one potential catastrophe. If it were an emergency, she could call Griff on his office line and speak to the receptionist, but it’s more like the opposite of an emergency. What about that? Does that still warrant a call?
She’d done the thing so many mothers had done before her, put herself on the Mommy Track in her career. She didn’t want to miss her children being little. She wanted to experience childlike wonder through their eyes. Except that’s the problem. It’s their wonder. She thought she was giving up her big, fancy job for something more exciting, but watching kids is pretty mundane stuff.
She tries calling Griff. His voice mail recording picks up immediately. Her husband has turned off his phone.
TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW OF WITNESS, BEATRICE “BEX” FEINSTEIN
APPEARANCES:
Detective Wanda Bright
PROCEEDINGS
DET. BRIGHT: What’s your favorite part of the school day, Bex?
BEX FEINSTEIN: I’m tired of talking. I don’t want to talk about school. I hate talking about school because it’s boring.
DET. BRIGHT: We just started, Bex.
BEX FEINSTEIN: Why do you keep calling me that? Bex Bex Bex.
DET. BRIGHT: That’s your name, isn’t it?
BEX FEINSTEIN: Well, yeah. Okay. How about it’s my turn to choose what we talk about, then?
DET. BRIGHT: I have a few questions I need to—
BEX FEINSTEIN: But that’s not fair because you had a turn already.
DET. BRIGHT: Actually, I didn’t.
BEX FEINSTEIN: Do you have any pets?
DET. BRIGHT: I have one cat.
BEX FEINSTEIN: What’s your cat’s name?
DET. BRIGHT: Stabler. Bex—
BEX FEINSTEIN: You said my name again! That’s kind of weird!
DET. BRIGHT: At the end of the day, when it was almost time to go home, can you remember noticing anything different? Maybe close your eyes. Imagine that you’re back in your classroom. Do you notice anything, anything at all?
BEX FEINSTEIN: There was one thing. I smelled blood.
DET. BRIGHT: Okay, okay, good. How did you know it was blood?
BEX FEINSTEIN: I can always smell blood now.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
When I said I wanted to write a book about four-year-olds with a penchant for blood, there were … questions. Lucky for me, those questions came from the two smartest, most insightful readers I know: my agent, Dan Lazar, and my editor, Christine Kopprasch. Thank you both for your honesty and your support, and for asking even more questions during my dark night of the soul when I thought I wanted to stop writing this book.
I feel so at home at Flatiron Books, and that has everything to do with the wonderful team of people I get to work with there. Thank you to Nancy Trypuc, Amelia Possanza, and Katherine Turro—you are the dream team—and to Megan Lynch, Maxine Charles, and the entire sales team—I know how fortunate I am to benefit from your expertise and passion.
Thank you to Dana Spector, Olivia Blaustein, and Paige Holtzman at CAA for helping my books find homes in new mediums.
To my writing friends, Charlotte Huang (who came up with the title of this book) and Lori Goldstein—I know for a fact I wouldn’t have lasted in this business this long without you. Thank you to Julia Teague and Lisa McQueen, who generously helped double-check my work (and please, rest assured any errors left behind are my own). I also have to express my undying love for my book club. It is such a delight to spend time each month with a group of women who love books—happy ten-year anniversary! And speaking of bookish friends, thank you to the Bookstagram community for championing both my work and books in general. You compose such a joyful corner of the internet and I’m happy to be a tiny part of it.
Finally, the biggest, mushiest thank-you goes to my family. While writing a book about parenting, I couldn’t help feeling grateful over and over that I get to parent with my husband, Rob. And to our kids, Elliott and Colin: you are both an inspiration in every sense of the word. Thanks for being a constant presence at my writing desk.
CUTTING TEETH. Copyright © 2023 by Chandler Baker. All rights reserved. For information, address Flatiron Books, 120 Broadway, New York, NY 10271.