Mad Girls In Love (17 page)

October 14, 1973

Lillian B. Wentworth

214 Dixie Avenue

Crystal Falls, Tennessee

Dear Ms. Wentworth:

It has come to our attention that you were recently involved in risqué behavior, resulting in the personal injury of Violet Jane Jones. Therefore, all visitations with minor child, Jennifer Wentworth (“CHILD”) will be discontinued until further notice. If you have questions, please contact this office. Under no circumstances are you to contact Mr. Claude E. Wentworth III, Mrs. Claude E. Wentworth III, or Mr. Claude E. Wentworth IV (“CLIENTS”) or legal action, such as a restraining order, may be required. Additionally, all letters to CHILD and CLIENTS must cease or harassment charges will be forthcoming.

Sincerely yours,

Arthur P. Van Cleave III

Dear Jennifer,

All the lawyers in Tennessee can't keep me from writing you. The problem is your grandparents' lawyers have forbidden me to mail you any letters. So your Great Aunt Clancy Jane bought me a carved rosewood box, and I'm keeping all my correspondence inside it. Then one day you can maybe read the letters and decide for yourself if I was a bad mother.

I love you,

Mama

The summer of 1974 marked the end of my celibacy. I owed it all to the new Winn Dixie. At the grand opening, I won a door prize, a free dental checkup, along with my choice of a complimentary tooth cleaning or one cavity filled. When it came to dentistry, my motto was: If it doesn't hurt, don't fix it. I guess I wasn't the only one with this philosophy, because down at the Green Parrot, I tried to give the coupon away, but nobody wanted it. Byron said he'd never heard of the dentist, Walter Saylor Jr., DDS, but he advised me to hang on to the certificate. I stuck it in a drawer and forgot about it, until the first week in June, when I got a toothache.

The wreck with Violet had totaled my Mustang, so I walked everywhere. Dr. Saylor's office was a squatty red brick building with casement windows. A breeze stirred the sign, making it swing back and forth,
WALTER SAYLOR
,
DDS
. I almost turned around, because my tooth had stopped aching yesterday, at the exact moment I'd made the appointment; but then I considered my finances and changed my mind. So I hurried inside—the waiting room was filled up—and I hastily wrote my name and appointment time on a pad. A gray-haired receptionist asked me to fill out a patient information form. I found an empty chair and propped the clipboard on my knees, scribbling out my name, date of birth, and next of kin.

Finally my name was called and I was led down a pink-and-brown tiled corridor that smelled of peppermint into a small room with a mural on one wall, featuring a waterfall, trees, and a rushing river. On the opposite wall was a glass block window. As I settled into the padded chair, which just happened to match the tile floor, I wondered why a dentist would need to obscure a view of the outside world and provide a fake one. I sure hoped it was to protect the patient's privacy rather than to hide barbaric techniques.

A drill whined in the background, and a heavy-lidded nurse put my chart in the door, then clipped a paper bib around my neck. Pinned to her chest was a white badge with her name spelled out in black letters, Patricia Eller. “Ma'am, I think I made a mistake coming here,” I said, looking up at her huge forehead, which slanted like a shelf of rock, throwing her eyes into shadow. She resembled a Cro-Magnon, like the sketches I'd seen in Violet's anthropology textbook.

“Mistake?” She blinked. Her thick eyelids were dusted with turquoise powder.

“My tooth isn't hurting anymore.” I started to rise from the chair. “So I'll just be going.”

“Don't be scared, dear. Dr. Saylor is known as the painless dentist. Just sit tight. He'll be in here directly.” She patted my arm, then turned on her heels and scurried out of the room, firmly closing the door behind her to block my escape.

I shut my eyes and listened to the piped-in music that wafted all around me. It wasn't old-fogey elevator music, either, but contemporary rock—Deep Purple was singing “Woman From Tokyo.” After a long while, the drill stopped. I hadn't heard any muffled cries or outright screaming, so I began to relax. Finally the dentist stepped into my room, accompanied by the Cro-Magnon nurse. He looked old, at least thirty, and he had bushy red hair which was styled into a white man's Afro. His eyebrows were arched and wiry, setting off his pale, chalky skin—in fact, he looked as if he suffered from a serious blood deficiency.

“So,” he said, glancing at my chart, “Bitsy Wentworth—is that Mrs. or Ms.?”

“Ms.,” I said. “And I think I have a cavity.”

“Alrighty.” He picked up a long instrument with a round mirror at the end. “Can you open up wide for me?”

I shut my eyes and felt his fingers pull back my lips. “Hmm,” he said, sliding the mirror along my gum, “not so bad.”

“Rwelly?” I said around his fingers, and then I felt foolish.

“You have beautiful teeth.” The dentist leaned closer, blinking at my incisors. “Did you wear braces?”

I nodded, but I was a little unnerved by his intense gaze. His eyes were brown with yellow slashes. He took the mirror from my mouth and then fixed me with a smile.

“Who did them?” he asked. “Your braces, I mean.”

“Dr. Throckenberry,” I said.

“He's retired.”

“Yes, I know.”

“I'd be more than happy to be your dentist,” he said. “If you're a student—are you one?—anyway, I give students a discount.”

“I'll bear that in mind,” I said.

He fixed me with a broad smile and tapped his teeth. “Caps,” he said. “But I didn't do them myself. Now, open up wide again. Good. Oh, that's just great.”

He placed a long Q-tip against my gum. First, I tasted something sweet, then my mouth began to go numb. The dentist faced the counter and I heard the clinking of instruments. “I'm just going to put your tooth to sleep,” he said, and the nurse held out a hypodermic needle. He grabbed hold of my upper lip, then I felt something sharp prick my gum; the doctor began to shake my lip back and forth.

“Does it hurt?” he asked in a concerned voice.

I managed to garble out a “nuh-uh.”

“No?” he asked, and the nurse put a suction tube next to my tongue. It made a loud, gargling noise.

“Mmmhum,” I managed to say. It looked like a dentist would know better than to strike up a conversation with an incapacitated woman. From somewhere behind me, a phone trilled. The dentist sighed, but he kept injecting medicine into my gum.

“Mrs. Eller,” he said calmly, “would you please see who's buzzing me? And tell them that I'm with a patient.”

“Certainly, Dr. Saylor.” She nodded and stepped out of the room. Then he leaned closer.

“Would you like to have dinner and see a movie?” he whispered.

I wondered if I'd heard him correctly. Even if I had, I was afraid to answer, since the needle was still lodged in my gum, and the suction tube was slurping up Lord knew what. He seemed to sense my dilemma, and he removed the needle. Then he hovered over my face, the yellow eyes glowing.

“That's better, isn't it?” He lifted those crazy eyebrows. “So, will you go?”

This dentist was too mouthy for his own good. Once the word got around that he was hitting on the patients, he'd be ruined. I plucked the tube out of my mouth and held it aloft. “You're asking me on a date?”

“Yes, I guess I am,” he said, looking sheepish.

“Can a dentist do that?”

“I don't normally. In fact, I've
never
done it. See, I'm going through a divorce, and I—well, I'm not sure what I thought. I hope I haven't scared you.”

Scared wasn't half of it. My brow tensed up, and I focused at the wall mural, the water flowing endlessly into the river. Rod Stewart began to sing “It's All Over Now,” from the
Gasoline Alley
album, which I recognized from Aunt Clancy's collection. As I listened to Rod, I tried to come up with a polite reply. I sure didn't want to make him angry before he filled my tooth. What if he hit a nerve? On purpose. I wanted to tell him that I was sorry, not to take it personally, but I just wasn't interested—not in him or anybody. All my energy centered around the café and the visits with my daughter. But then, I'd have to explain why I didn't have custody, and I wasn't in the mood to confess to a dentist.

“Thank you for the invitation,” I began, rubbing my face. It was starting to feel numb and rubbery. “But I'm sorry, I don't date.”

“Oh, oh.” He looked surprised, then he nodded, as if he'd figured it out. “You're already involved with someone?”

“No.”

“If you're not involved, then you're free to date me. Is that correct?”

“I don't think you understand. I no longer date men.” I frowned. That didn't sound right, and I wondered if I'd only confused him more or if I'd made a faux pas.

“May I ask why?” he asked, his eyes bobbling.

“It's a long story.” I glanced at my watch, a gift from Violet. It had a pink strap and Cinderella face, and her arms pointed at the three and the six. “And I'm in sort of a rush.”

“I guess you stay busy, don't you? A pretty little thing like you.” He paused, and I knew he was waiting for an answer. But I couldn't explain, and I decided not to try. He began to fiddle with his drill, fitting it with a new bit, or whatever it's called. It looked bigger than necessary, and my heart began to thud.

He glanced coolly at me and said, “Are you numb?”

“Excuse me?” I blinked. If he was asking if I'd become desensitized toward the male species, the answer was yes, but it wasn't any of his business. I thought back to the door prize and wished I hadn't set foot at the Winn Dixie.

“Your tooth,” he said. “Is it numb yet?”

“Oh, that.” I reached up, felt my face again. “I think so.”

“Are you free this Saturday?”

“Actually, no,” I said, and he looked crestfallen. So I quickly added, “I've got family obligations.”

“All weekend?”

“Er, yes. I'm tied up both Friday and Saturday,” I said. What I felt wasn't revulsion; it was more like the opposite of attraction.

“Are you free Sunday?” He persisted. “We can have breakfast. Or would you prefer brunch?”

He was bullying me. I shot him a disgusted look. Didn't he understand that no meant no? Maybe he was equally unclear about the meaning of yes. Wait a minute—that could be my excuse. “Sure, I'll have breakfast,” I lied. Then I quickly added, “If my tooth isn't hurting, that is.”

I promised to meet him Sunday morning at the Caney Fork Truck Stop, then he reached for the drill and began whittling away at my tooth, enamel dust wafting in the air. When I got home, I found Aunt Clancy in the garden picking green tomatoes, wrapping each one in crinkly paper. She looked as if she'd just returned from the café. She was wearing her usual funky garb—an embroidered cotton blouse and cutoffs. Around her waist was a fringed suede belt. In August, she would turn thirty-six, but she could pass for a much younger woman. Her hair hung past her shoulders, and it was tinted Dusty Blonde, the long layers melding together. As she moved, her earrings glinted in the late afternoon sun.

She'd certainly experienced many ups and downs, but you'd never know it from her calm, placid expression. Her eyes were large and luminous, a startling shade of blue. Her nose turned up slightly at the tip, dainty and regal—she was a natural beauty, the type that never showed her age. Her looks were more Old Hollywood than Crystal Falls. Violet always laughed when I compared people to movie stars, but today Aunt Clancy reminded me of Tippi Hedren in
The Birds.
Tippi with her hair down, minus the scarves, furs, and sunglasses—although Aunt Clancy would have looked stunning with those accessories.

“Where've you been?” She squinted up at me. “Your face looks strange.”

“It's numb,” I said, tugging at my lip. “I've just come from the dentist. And the strangest thing happened. He asked me out on a date.”

“Before or after he filled your tooth?” Aunt Clancy laughed.

“Before.”

“Isn't that blackmail? Date me, or I'll grind your teeth down to stubs!”

“That's what it felt like.”

“But you said yes. Oops.” She dropped a tomato, and it rolled between my legs.

I nodded.

“I just hope he doesn't have ulterior motives,” she said.

“But he's a professional. He's taken oaths.”

“I thought you said he was a tooth man.”

“He is.”

“The only oath he's taken is to overcharge for fillings and root canals.” Aunt Clancy sighed. “Oh, Bitsy. I wish I had your innocence. You should hear Byron talking about the other doctors. Put a white coat on a man, and he acts like he's lord and master, in charge of his fiefdom. And you're an attractive girl.”

“I have no intention of meeting him. But at least I got a free filling out of it.”

“Is the dentist handsome?” Aunt Clancy reached for another tomato.

“Hardly.” I laughed and sat down in the grass, tucking one foot beneath me. The summer light fell in long strips. Crape myrtles were in full bloom, sticking through the fence. “Plus he's got freckles and one thousand pounds of hair. It's orange, and real curly, like Abby Hoffman's.”

“
Orange
hair?” Aunt Clancy's eyebrows slanted together, and she wrinkled her nose. “Well, does he
look
like Abby?”

“No. He looks like somebody dumped a bowl of sweet potatoes on his head.” I laughed. “Oh, and he's got piercing yellow eyes.”

“Like in
Rosemary's Baby
? What did you say his name was—Dr. Saperstein?”

“No, Saylor.”

“They could be related. Both surnames begin with Sa.” Aunt Clancy giggled. “I'd love to see a white man with an Afro in
this
town. Maybe he's got all that hair for a reason. Did you check his head for horns? Is 666 tattooed on his scalp?”

“I could meet him for Sunday breakfast and find out. ‘Dr. Saylor?' I'll say, ‘My Aunt Clancy thinks you're a devil, so will you kindly drop your drawers so I can make sure that you don't have a tail.'”

“Or forked tongue,” said Aunt Clancy. “Is he married?”

“I think he said divorced.”

“You
think
?”

“Well, he had a needle in my mouth at the time. But it's hard to believe that Dr. Saylor was ever married. He's too funny-looking.”

“Yes, but he's a dentist. They don't need to be cute. If you go on this date, you better check him out. Because ninety percent of
all
men commit adultery. The rest of them die at puberty.” Aunt Clancy held up a small Roma. “Will you look at this? It's too perfect to eat. It's like the perfect man. I'm just going to put it in the kitchen window and admire it.”