Deep Down True (11 page)

“She began to cry—loudly. I had to throw some cash at the waiter and practically carry her out. I got her home, and of course I said I would have the jacket dry-cleaned.” His voice went falsetto. “‘No,’ she says, ‘it’s not really his anymore. Just throw it away.’”

“Oh, Dr. Sakimoto, that is just about the worst date story I’ve ever heard!”

“Please call me Tony,” he said with a satisfied grin. “Now that you know my most embarrassing moment, it’s weird to be so formal.” He clasped his hands together, “Okay, are you going to tell me how you busted this tooth, or should I just shut up and get to work?”

Dana sighed. Of course she had to tell him now. Part of her wanted to, she realized. He would laugh, and his laughter would dilute her shame, and it would seem just a little less mortifying the next time she thought of it. “Well, my son, Grady, he loves Cheez-Its. . . .”

By the time she was imitating the pimply clerk saying, “Dude, you know you’re bleeding, right?” Tony Sakimoto was shaking with hilarity. Finally their laughter subsided, and they sighed themselves to composure. “Thank you for telling me,” he said. “Until now it’s been a hell of a day.”

“For me, too.” She nodded, relieved. Now that she’d confessed, the sin of her indecorousness was absolved.

Tony examined the tooth and took X-rays, after which he told her, “Well, this is one of those times the glass is half full
and
half empty.” Dana felt her shoulders tense as he went on. “There doesn’t appear to be any nerve damage, so you won’t need a root canal. But the chip is just large enough that I’m afraid a filling wouldn’t hold for very long. We’re going to have to put a temporary on today, and have you come back for a veneer.”

Is that covered by insurance?
was all Dana could think. And if not, how much would it be? But she didn’t ask. He was having a hard enough day without considering her money worries.

Like a commentator murmuring at a golf tournament, he told her what he was doing at each step. “I’m smoothing these little rough pieces of enamel your steering wheel left behind . . . Now, where is that three-thirty bur?” he muttered to himself. Metal instruments clinked as he rooted around. The drill spun out its
zeeeeee!
sound off and on like a tiny siren as he buffed the newly composed fill. “This polishing paste,” he said. “It’s made with crushed diamonds. You’ve got diamonds in your mouth right now.” His gaze flicked up to her eyes. “Go tell
that
to those goons at the party store.” When he bent toward her, she could smell peppermint as he exhaled, with a faint undercurrent of aftershave.

“Now I take an impression of the tooth to create the veneer.” When he was done, he handed her the mirror. She couldn’t see very clearly without her reading glasses, but it seemed fine. “I can’t even tell!” she said truthfully.

“Yeah.” He grinned as he yanked at his latex gloves and tossed them in the trash. “I’m pretty good with a chip, if I do say.” He gave her follow-up instructions. “No nail biting. And chew hard stuff with your back teeth.”

“Thanks for taking me so quickly,” said Dana.

“Don’t thank me.” He ducked into his office for a moment, then walked her out to the waiting room. “Thank my receptionist and hygienist for being out and all those patients for leaving. Sometimes a good thing comes when everything else falls apart.”

He handed her a sheet of paper with some names and phone numbers. “Association for the Prevention of Eating Disorders” blared out at her from the list. “I’m sure you’re already working on it,” he said, “but just in case you needed some further resources.” Then he reached for the ringing phone. “Cotters Rock Dental,” he said into the receiver. “Speaking . . .” He rolled his eyes at her. “Yes, I’m a regular one-man band today . . .”

T
HE COLLISION DEDUCTIBLE ON THE CAR WAS A thousand dollars. Dana called the insurance agency to confirm that there’d been a mistake. The agent, a woman with a practiced customer-relations brand of charm, told her, “We’ll get to the bottom of this in a jiff!”

We’ll get to the bottom of this, and we’ll find the deductible is only two hundred fifty dollars,
Dana told herself. She’d set up the coverage herself and would never have agreed to such a large deductible. Kenneth was the one who thought bad things would never happen. “Insurance companies make their millions off people like you,” he’d often told Dana.

People like me,
she brooded as she waited on hold.
People who sideswipe light poles and chip teeth and act like a lunatic in public . . . we need insurance.

The breezy voice of the agent came back on the line. “Apparently Mr. Stellgarten increased the deductible about a year ago. He preferred a lower premium.”

“
He
preferred?” said Dana. “But it’s
my car
!”

“He’s listed as the primary policyholder,” said the agent, downshifting to a friendly-but-firm tone. “If he instructs me to change the coverage, I’m bound by law to make that adjustment. You might want to discuss this with him.” Dana called several repair shops instead. The lowest estimate for the replacement mirror was almost five hundred dollars.

The front door opened, and Morgan came into the kitchen, studying the package of paper plates Dana had left in the mudroom. “Did they have any that weren’t so, like,
happy
?” she said.

Dana sighed, feeling certain that a return trip to Party On! was in her future. “Happy-face plates, honey. That’s what you asked for. They’re happy.”

Morgan shrugged. “Okay.”

“Okay? You like them?”

“Well, I’m not going to frame them or anything. They’re just paper plates, Mom. No one will care that much.” She sank down into a chair next to Dana. “What happened to your lip?”

Dana told Morgan the story, and Morgan interjected regularly with mortified gasps of, “Oh, my
God
, Mom! You were scared of a chipmunk?” and “Oh, my
God
, Mom! They all saw you?” When Dana got to the part about chipping her tooth, Morgan said, “Let me see.” Dana rolled up her lip, and Morgan leaned close, running her tongue across her own teeth. “Did it hurt a lot?”

“A little,” said Dana. “You think it looks okay? It’s just temporary. I have to go back for a veneer next week.”

“Smile,” said Morgan, leaning back to get a fuller view. Dana smiled, her lips pulling taut across her face. Morgan started to giggle.

“What?” said Dana.

“I just can’t believe a cute little
chipmunk
made you freak out!”

“He wasn’t cute, he was horrible—his face was orange!”

“Whatever you say.” Morgan laughed. “At least your hair looks good. Are you using a new conditioner or something?” She reached her hand out to stroke her mother’s hair, shifting it to one side, then the other. “It’s shinier. It almost looks like Kimmi’s.”

Then Morgan began to recount the cogent facts of her day, the most important of which always revolved around lunch. She’d been thinking about sitting with the popular girls, because she’d helped one of them make an ecosystem terrarium in science. “She didn’t get it that the dirt goes in first, not the little plant.” But Morgan couldn’t catch her eye to see if she would move over. “It would’ve looked like I was squeezing in, not just sitting down, you know, normally.”

But then Darby called out to her, “Hey, nice shirt!” and they laughed really hard, because it reminded them of the time they bought the same shirt in different colors. The clerk at Hollister was really cute, but he had a little snot in his nose and it made him look totally disgusting. Morgan and Darby told all this to Kimmi Kinnear, who’d had that very same thing happen once, only it was her brother, who’s not cute at all, but girls seem to like him for some dumb reason.

“It was so funny, Mom, and it was really good, because I was sitting
between
Kimmi and Darby, so they couldn’t turn away from me.”

“Why would they turn away from you?”

“I don’t know. Kids do it all the time. You’re with someone, then somebody else comes over and says to the person you’re with, ‘I have to tell you something!’ and they turn away.”

“But that’s not right. If they need to speak privately, they shouldn’t do it in the middle of a crowded lunchroom.”

“Mom, I know, but that’s what they do.”

“Well, I certainly hope
you
don’t.”

“Not that much,” said Morgan wistfully. “I can never think of anything good enough to say.”

 

 

Grady banged through the door and unloaded his backpack, jacket, baseball mitt, and spongy Nerf football onto the mudroom floor like so much fill dirt dropping from a backhoe. “How was school?” Dana asked.

“Good.” He shrugged, as if the question were meaningless. “Can you move your car? I’m gonna skateboard in the driveway.”

“Okay, but you have to use knee and elbow pads—Please don’t give me a face,” she said, stopping him mid-whine. “I only want you to be safe.”

She had just parked out on the street when another car pulled up, an avocado green station wagon with graffiti scrawled across the door panels. Music throbbing from the car cut out suddenly in the middle of a barrage of pulsing, unintelligible words.

Alder was on the passenger side and leaned over to hug the driver, then sprang from the car, which started to roll before the door was completely shut. The driver leaned out her window and screamed, “CALL ME LATER!” Dana caught a fleeting glance: a girl with short, spiky black hair and rings of eyeliner that seemed to creep down to her cheekbones.

Alder cocked her head as she took in the sight of Dana’s puffy lip. “Tough day?” she said.

Dana was still processing the green station wagon and its loud, blackened occupant. “You have a new friend,” she said, hoping she sounded happy about this development.

“Maybe,” said Alder, and she started for the house.

 

 

When the kids were in bed, Dana pulled the dental-insurance binder from the desk in Kenneth’s office, a square little room on the first floor he’d claimed when they bought the house. On the wall by the desk, he had taped the children’s pictures and notes. “TO DADY,” one declared in uncertain crayon, “A BG LLYN.” Dana had written in pencil along the bottom, “a big lion.” It was drawn in slashes of orange, with red for the tongue, teeth, and eyes. Inexplicably, its tail was green. Under the Scotch tape at the four corners, the paper was several shades lighter.

“Dad, Your The Best!” gushed a pink-and-purple birthday card from Morgan. It was almost two years since she’d written it, the most recent addition to the wall. Now the collection served as a sort of two-dimensional time capsule from the days when his fathering was a daily occurrence.

Why didn’t he bring their pictures with him when he moved out?
Dana wondered, saddened and a little annoyed. Should she take them down? If she did, would it be a harsh indicator of his removal from their lives? But if she didn’t, their arrested development would become more and more blatant. Which was worse?

Through the open door, she heard Alder say, “Connie.” The silence after that one brief utterance seemed to go on for minutes.

“Are you done?” Alder said, annoyed. More silence. Then, “Fine, just let me know when it’s my turn to talk . . . How you
look
? When have you ever cared how you look to other people? . . . It’s
Dana
, for godsake. She’s, like, the least judgmental person on the planet. She loves
every
body.” The words seemed complimentary, but the tone was not. Dana frowned.

“I’m fine . . .” Alder went on. “Yeah, despite all that, life here is totally great . . . Well, you don’t—. . . You don’t—. . . Could you stop interrupting me for once? . . . Okay, I just called to say could you
please
have my car fixed? . . . Because it’s not her responsibility, and besides, she can’t afford it . . . Because I just
know
. . . You say I’m so intuitive, and you’re all proud of it until I pick up on something you don’t feel like knowing . . . No, it
is
true . . . Like the time you were dating that chiropractor guy? I told you he was a loser . . . Okay, whatever. Can you please get my car fixed? . . . I’m asking you nicely . . . Nice
does too
count for something . . . Forget it, then . . . Good night, Mother . . . No, I’m calling you that because you’re my
actual mother . . .
Good night.”

B
Y FIVE O’CLOCK ON FRIDAY, MORGAN HAD HUNG streamers in the dining room, taken them down because they looked babyish, and put them back up because the room looked boring without them. She was thinking of removing them again because boring was better than babyish when Alder strode past. Morgan flagged her down with, “Did you have streamers at your twelfth birthday party?”

“Oh . . . um, no. Connie doesn’t do store-bought stuff. She thinks it’s unimaginative.”

“Well, what did you have, then?”

“She let me and my friends paint anything we wanted on the living-room wall. But she got kind of disgusted with all the rainbows and ‘Girls Rule,’ and she painted it over the next day.”

Morgan glanced at the streamers. “These look bad, don’t they?”

“They’re okay.” After a moment Alder said, “I like those china cups your mom has with the handles that curl up at the bottom. When we’d come here for holidays, she’d always use them.”

“You haven’t been here for a long time. Since Grandma died, I think.”

Alder’s eyes went unfocussed for a moment. “Yeah,” she said.

“Are you going to be around tonight?” Morgan asked hopefully as she yanked at the streamers.

“No, I’m hanging with a friend.”

“Does Mom know?”

“Yep,” said Alder. And then she was gone.

 

 

At 5:20 the doorbell rang. Morgan gave her already sparkly lips one more dab of gloss and ran for the door. Dana knew to stay put, straightening the napkins and adjusting the teacups.