“Ah yes ah yes—” He lingered a while at each molar, then went on to caress the next. “Ah, this one was something. We took good care of this mouth, all right. Not a hundred mouths in all of New York like this one. People pay me to build a mouth like this — no, no, keep it open. Wider.”
Marge Howells had called. I allowed that business to occupy my mind while I obliged my father with my mouth. I closed my eyes, shutting out his gleeful face, and took stock. Just five days earlier I had repacked Marge’s cardboard carton, and had had to pack her suitcase too, while she pounded at me from behind with her fists. “You’re not folding my skirts right!” she wailed into my ear. “Stop it, you’re getting everything wrinkled! Oh Gabe, stop! I love you I love you I love you” until at last she hurled a bottle of Breck against the bathroom wall. Nevertheless I had carried her belongings to the car and driven her, weeping, to her room. Then I drove alone to the airport, and late that night had rubbed unshaven cheeks with another weeper, my father, in the freezing rainy openness of Idlewild. Now Marge had called and I was sure it was from my own phone. I was weary with the knowledge that despite all I had determined to set right, she had managed to retain her key — which I had forgotten about in my determination just to get her out — and had probably engaged some taxi driver to carry her belongings back up the two flights to my apartment.
I would not call her back.
“I just want to take some pictures,” my father was saying. He had rolled the black X-ray machine noiselessly up to my cheek and was taking aim at my back molars. “Let’s just get the lay of the land,” he said. “Remember, Gabe, how I used to carry an X-ray of your mouth in my wallet? Just for a gag—”
“Why don’t you use that one?” I asked limply.
The prints, when developed, glowed with health. What more was there to do? I made a move to leave the chair, but my father touched his fingers to my chest. “You know,” he said, “you always have to have a total picture to see the whole thing.”
I sighed. “What whole thing?”
“The X-rays, a check-up,” he said vaguely. “Hygiene aside, consider it a matter of curiosity. A matter of self-investigation. Know thyself, you know? I’m acquainted with people who think of dentists as mechanics, carpenters, nobodies. Ridiculous. Dentists are astronomers — just let me go on — dentists are geologists. Gabe, when seen from the proper angle, dentistry is a romance. Take the stars. I see the fellow next door up on the roof charting stars. ‘Charting’ them, is that right? Looking, examining, and so forth. Now I want to put it this way: what’s so different about dentistry? I’m serious now — what’s so different about getting directly at what’s in a man’s head? Not millions of light years away, but right here — God Almighty, almost touching the brain. Now there are cases, documented cases of the tooth actually piercing the brain. Can you imagine? So galaxies, solar systems — believe me, a tooth is just as much a mystery as a star. A man’s got to have a philosophy of life, why he works, and that’s mine. You get older and you wonder why you do what you do. A man doesn’t get along without reasons. To go through life, just putting on your garters and eating your food, alone, by myself, without sufficient reasons, day after day, how can a fellow do it? Unless he’s got like Gruber, smiling sickness, smiling on the brain. For myself, Gabe, I need a little mystery in life. As I get older I haven’t got a lot of the old concerns, you know. Well, I find much to think about in terms of the human mouth. The third molar alone could occupy a lifetime. Don’t laugh — that’s a fact. Just the why of it, I’m telling you … Life makes you stop and think, that’s the thing. Life changes on a man, and then he’s got to have a little something in reserve. I feel a little ashamed about what I didn’t have in reserve.” He had then to look off for a moment in another direction. “Look, I don’t have to go on and on. It’s nice to talk to someone who understands. Lean back again, I want to clean them.”
“Dad, the cleaning isn’t necessary. Everything is fine here. I’m not going anywhere. I haven’t any plans. I’ll be here until New Year’s Eve.”
“I thought New Year’s Day.”
“New Year’s Day, right.” I tried to maintain a composed expression even while I remembered how we had tussled over dates driving back from Idlewild with his wallet-sized calendar between us. “So you can relax. Take it easy. There’s no need to clean my teeth right now. I’m sure they’re fine.”
“Have you had a chance lately to look at your last molar?” He measured off a good size fish with two hands. “Tartar,” he said. “Let me be the dentist and you be the patient.”
“Fine,” I said, smiling. “If I’m the patient, I think I’ve really had enough for today.”
“You don’t care that your teeth are all furry?”
“I have to make a phone call.”
“How long will this take, ten more minutes? You’re going to have it done you might as well have it done right.”
“Oh Christ, can’t they clean teeth in Iowa?”
A hand rose up as though to find its target on my cheek. It swiped at the overhead lamp, which buzzed and died. My father reached behind him to unbutton his white jacket. “You’ve got an important phone call, go make it.” He walked to the window, as his fingers, traveling down his back, broke off a button that rattled to the floor. “Go call Alaska, call Bangkok. Go ask the operator for the furthest place she can get you — then go dial it.” His foot slammed down on the button, producing absolute quiet in the room.
“What do you expect me to do?” I began, softly. “Sit in this chair the rest of my life?”
“I happen to be a thirty-thousand-dollar-a-year dentist. People wait hours so I can reconstruct their mouths. Some of the leading stage stars in New York have sat in this chair for weeks. I change people’s looks. I give them health and beauty, two of the most wonderful things in the world. I take an interest in teeth. You’re my son, I take an interest in yours. Is that a crime these days?”
“Nobody’s talking about crimes.”
“I get the feeling somebody around here is.”
“Please,” I said, “turn around. I only meant you don’t have to trap me in the chair. I’m sorry if I was snide. I only mean that you would be better off if you take it easy about me. Just relax, that’s all.”
“I am relaxed. I know how to relax. If you don’t relax at my age you get bad pressure, sluggishness. I am relaxed.”
“If you want to go ahead,” I said, after a moment, “why don’t you just go ahead.”
“Go ahead where?”
“Clean my teeth,” I said, finding it difficult to talk.
“You have to call some girl.”
“I’ve got a mouthful of tartar. How can I talk to anybody? Go ahead, if you want to.”
“No, no,” he said, “you go ahead. You have a life in Iowa. Go conduct it.”
“Why don’t you clean my teeth? I’m asking you to clean my teeth.”
“You’ll sit there fidgeting. I don’t do a rush job. I’m not a plumber.”
“I won’t fidget.”
Without looking at me, he walked around the chair. “I just won’t work with somebody fidgeting.” A hand appeared over my head and I was in the glare of the light again. He spoke from behind, like Marge, “I don’t know when you became so casual about your health. You used to love to have your teeth cleaned; you used to say your mouth tasted pink afterward. I still tell that to patients. I don’t know where you suddenly picked up such bad habits.” Behind me he was scratching together a sweet-smelling paste, “It’s funny,” he went on, “how a mouth doesn’t change, how yours is the same mouth now it was then. I can remember it, you know that? I can remember your mother’s mouth. I find that I can remember every single tooth in her head.” Then his face appeared above my own. I could have reached up and pulled him down and kissed him. But would he understand that I was not prepared to surrender my life to his? He was a wholehearted man, and such people are hard to kiss half-heartedly.