by John Fulton
* * *
The orthodontist’s office was painted in shades of mint blue, clean and arctic, and smelled of toothpaste and harsh, soapy chemicals. In the waiting room, kids with headgear and silvery mouths sat beside their mothers. These kids didn’t look happy, not exactly, though they did look changed. They looked stunned and maybe a little afraid. On the receptionist’s counter—a cool slab of green—sat two plaster molds of corrected teeth, a plastic model of the human jaw, and a shiny bell to ring for the receptionist. One girl said to her mother, “Is he going to use that thing on me again?” The girl wore an apple green T-shirt with the word Happening in large yellow letters across her chest.
Her mother just said, “Your teeth are getting so pretty.”
The orthodontist was called Dr. Ellis. His assistant was a Polish woman, Tasha, who spoke with a European accent and had this long bleach-blond hair and a nice straight smile and wore blue surgical clothes. It was our first visit, so Mom insisted on going back to the exam room with me. “We want to get on the two-year payment plan,” she kept saying to Tasha. Mom was nervous. Her voice trembled a little. She didn’t know what to do with her hands.
“You have to talk to the receptionist,” Tasha said. She motioned for me to sit in one of those long chairs and pulled a tray of metal instruments up beside me. The instruments were bright and seemed unreasonably sharp and pointed; they clattered on the tray as Tasha moved it. Lulling violins played “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on My Head” from hidden speakers. I heard the scream of a girl coming from another room down the hall.
“Relax,” Tasha said. She touched me on the shoulder. “We’re not going to do anything that hurts today.”
“Do they have braces in Poland?” I asked.
She laughed. “No. In Poland, the people are poor.” Her eyes were the same shade of blue that covered the waiting room’s walls. I imagined how Tasha had come to this country poor, with a brown potato sack over her shoulder, dust in her yellow hair, and a mud-puddle cast to her eyes. Then, simple as that, she’d cleaned herself up, gotten a job, and come into her bright, hard new-world beauty.
The chair buzzed and lifted me closer to the globular light that Tasha centered above me. She flipped the light on, snapped on a pair of latex gloves, and touched my mouth. The gloves smelled of mint and Clorox, and I started having these crazy thoughts about her. I saw Tasha and me in this dark blue minivan, with kids and the best downhill ski equipment in the back. With ungloved hands, she touched my face—my mouth was strong and symmetrical—as I drove up a bald, snowy mountain. The kids had bright alloy complexions like hers. “Michael,” she said, “Michael.”
I held her closely. I said, “We’re going to have a great ski vacation this year. The kids are going to love it.”
The doctor had entered the room, and Tasha seemed to disappear behind his tall shoulder. He introduced himself and said, “How you doing there, Mikey?” He had this large, fat man’s laugh, even though he was slim and had a neat haircut and looked like a newscaster or a senator. (Later, in the car, Mom would say, “Dr. Ellis was handsome, didn’t you think? Of course, he had to be wearing a ring. The handsome ones all do.”)
“Call me Michael, please,” I told him.
“He’s got a difficult mouth, Mrs. Larsen,” he told my mother. He moved my jaw from side to side, then up and down, and my bones made a light popping sound. “You’ve got a difficult mouth, Mikey,” he said. “What a jaw … what a mandible,” he said. Tasha seemed to agree. She was studying me with this focused, knowing eye.
“The kids teased him for years,” my mom said.
“Please don’t, Mom,” I said.
I saw my mother looking over Tasha’s shoulder. My mother was smiling and seemed extremely happy, as happy as she’d been since she kicked Dad out. “We’ve been wanting to do this for a long time now,” she said. “We want to get on the two-year payment plan.”
“He’s a difficult one,” Dr. Ellis said. My mouth felt small and soft in his hands. His face moved so close to my own that I could smell through his cologne and spearmint breath to some salty, moist odor. “But nothing we can’t fix.”
“That’s a relief,” my mom said.
The doctor was working my jaw in this funny sideways direction, until I felt my bones lock.
“I’m afraid, Michael,” he said, “that we’re going to have to correct your jaw.”
“What does that mean?” my mom asked.
“Well, Mrs. Larsen,” he said, “it means that we’re going to have to break it.”
* * *
Dad was still on the phone. He was saying, “Please, Mikey … please. Just pick up the phone and talk to me.” I picked up the phone, but I didn’t talk to him. “Are you there, Mikey? I just want to talk to you, Mikey.” His voice sounded tired. On the Our Friends from the Sea program, performing dolphins were being transported. These men wrapped the dolphins up in thick black slings and carried them into the backs of special air-conditioned trucks, then drove them onto the freeway. I couldn’t help but imagine this terrible accident. I saw the truck burning and the slick, mercury-like bodies of dolphins flopping over the black asphalt as semis and cars tried to swerve around them.
“Dad,” I said.
“Mikey,” he said.
“Could you call me Michael instead of Mikey? I’m fifteen. I want to be called Michael now.”
“Sure,” he said. “I could do that. Look, Michael, I’m sorry about this. I didn’t want you to get caught in the middle.” He sounded sort of sad, and I liked the way it felt when he called me Michael, as if some weight, some realness, had been added to me.
“I know,” I said.
“Look,” he said, “maybe we could make a deal. Would you make a deal with me, Michael?”
“I don’t know.”
“Well,” he said, “if you tell me where your mom parked my car, I’ll pay for your braces.”
I thought about this. “You don’t have that kind of money, Dad.” He was silent. I heard the grainy buzz of the line between us, and I wished I hadn’t said anything about his money. Next to me on the couch, Ben huddled over his pink claws, absorbed in the minuscule task of preening them.
“Do you hear what you’re telling me? This is me. This is your dad, your father, speaking. You’re my son, Michael. You used to call me Daddy. We lived together in the same house for fifteen years.” He wasn’t shouting. I had heard him speak like this to Mom before. It was a kind of forceful begging. He sounded weak, dependent on me for whatever kindness I could show him.
I said, “Winnie Howell.”
He said, “What?”
“The car’s parked in Winnie Howell’s garage.”
“Thanks, Mikey. Thanks so much. We’re going to take care of your mouth, all right?”
Then he hung up. I turned to Ben, who was staring into the TV screen—the glow of the colors could mesmerize him—and said, “I fucked up, Ben. I fucked up.” The dolphins flew through hoops and performed back flips.
I rushed over to the refrigerator door and pulled down the numbers of Jim and Larry, the guys Mom was sort of seeing—not seriously, just dating. I called Jim’s place and got an answering machine. At Larry’s a little girl answered. I hadn’t met Larry or Jim yet and didn’t know this little girl. “Is my mom with your dad tonight?” I could have asked for Larry, but I didn’t really want to talk to him.
She said, “I don’t know. Who’s your mom?”
“Marsha Larsen.”
“I don’t remember the name of the lady he’s with. She’s pretty, though.”
I said, “She’s got shoulder-length hair. It’s black.”
“That’s not her,” the little girl said. “This lady has short red hair.”
I remembered that Mom had gone to the hairdresser that afternoon. She’d probably had a cut and gotten her color changed. “That’s her,” I said. “Is she there?”
The girl handed the phone over. “Hello.”
“I told Dad about the
Mustang.”
“Who’s this?” the woman asked.
“Michael,” I said. “It’s Michael.” A key turned in the front door then and Mom walked in. She was with a man—probably Jim—and I said, “I’m sorry,” to the woman on the phone and hung up.
* * *
The snow was really coming down now. It covered the streets and sidewalks, and the houses in our neighborhood were quiet, shut up inside the glow of their windows. On the walk from our place to Winnie’s, Mom was edgy, excited. She kept slipping in her little pointy shoes and Jim had to hold her up. “Why did you have to spill the beans, Mikey?”
I said, “I don’t want to talk about it in front of him.”
She fell, and Jim picked her up. “Ouch! Ouch!” she said. Then she looked at me. “I don’t think you’re acting very grateful.”
When we got to Winnie’s, Mom said, “Ha! We beat him. We got here first.” We were standing on the front porch in a halo of snowy light when Winnie answered the door. She was a skinny woman with curly dark hair and high cheekbones. “Bill’s coming for the Mustang,” Mom said.
Winnie Howell flipped on the yellow garage light, and the waxy red paint of the Mustang glowed as our nervous shapes glinted and slid across it. It was kind of miraculous how the car was still there, untouched, recoverable. “This is a beautiful car,” Jim said. He was sort of caressing it. Jim had that newscaster look, like the orthodontist—aging, slim, and knowledgeable. He probably kept a decent bank account, too. Mom’s new hairstyle was weird, cut close to her head, feathery and mulchy, so that her face seemed larger, crisp with makeup. She had been spending all sorts of money—for clothes, jewelry, hairstyles—on the strength of what the Mustang would bring in. Every time I glanced at her that night, I was shocked by how odd and different she looked, and I turned away again.
Mom slid into the driver’s seat and started the car. Winnie said, “I don’t want to be here when he arrives.” She was shivering in the yellow light. At the mouth of the garage, the storm made a sucking sound.
“Get in,” Mom said. “We’ll all go out for a drink or something.”
Mom craned into the windshield as she drove. “I can’t see anything,” she said. Normally, she wouldn’t have driven in this weather, but she was determined to get the car out of the neighborhood, out of Dad’s reach.
“Drop me off at home, please,” I said. “I don’t want to go for a drink.”
“Party pooper.” Mom’s voice sounded mean. She slowed down and came to a stop in front of our home.
“Sarah’s been calling,” I said. “She says someone she owes money to is going to hurt her.”
“She’s just crying wolf,” Mom said. Then her tone changed. She was trying to be nice, I guess. “Mikey got his braces on today. Show Jim and Winnie your braces, Mikey. Give us a smile.” Jim and Winnie looked at me. Mom’s face was a weird green color from the glow of the dash. I didn’t want to show these strangers my teeth. But I did.
“Very handsome,” Winnie Howell said in this fake voice.
* * *
On New Year’s Day, three days after I’d had my jaw corrected, Dad showed up on the doorstep. Mom was at work. Sarah had already taken off, and I wore this huge bit in my mouth, with a space in it for a straw. My mouth would be wired shut for more than two weeks. I ate mostly thin milk shakes and soup and drank a lot of fruit juices, even though it hurt to suck on a straw. I couldn’t talk. I carried around a pad and pen and I tried to communicate with these things. The world seemed extremely loud to me, full of noise and words, as if I had become some kind of silent focus where all this sound gathered and blared. It was strange to be home alone and hear the phone ring. Sometimes I answered it and heard the voice on the other end say, “Hello … hello. Is anybody there?” At these times, my mouth felt large and muzzled. “Helloooooo,” the caller would say. I felt pushed away from them in this insulated world of silence and injury. Eventually they or I hung up.
I told myself that this would make a difference, that this would change something. I would have a straight, corrected mouth forever after this.
“Jesus, kid!” Dad said. “What happened to you?” I wrote the explanation out and showed the pad to him. He said, “Oh, braces. Good for you. Good for you.” He was grief-stricken and wasn’t worried about money or even about his car yet. He had lost his license for several months because of his poor driving record and wouldn’t start wanting his car back until he knew that he couldn’t have Mom. Then he wanted his car.
We took a cab to a diner called Lambs. Little woolly lambs stood on the front of the menus, cute and vulnerable-looking, despite the fact that they were also featured inside the menu as a dish. The waitress was very cautious—people pitied me, thought I was fragile—and set the milk shake in front of me as if it were an explosive. I waited for it to melt a little, thin down.
Dad said, “I’m trying to change. Tell your mother that, will you? I’m feeling under control. Look at me, Mikey. I look good, don’t I?” He wore freshly laundered clothes and so much cologne that the abrasive scent of it hovered in the air—all things I was supposed to tell and tried to tell Mom later. But his face was swollen and his hands shook as he lifted his orange juice. “She’s seeing other men, isn’t she?”
I wrote “I’m sorry” on my pad and showed it to him.
“So she is seeing other men?”
I showed him the words on the pad again.
“Tell her that I’m going to that group—AA, right?—and that I sit there and say, ‘My name’s Bill and I’m an alcoholic.’ Will you remember to tell her that?”
I wrote “Sure, Dad” and showed him the pad.
“Good kid,” he said. He laughed. “How are you going to tell her anything? Look at you. You can’t say two words.” Then, right out of nowhere, he said, “I love you, kid,” and I looked at my pad and pen and didn’t know what to do with them.
When he reached out to touch my cheek, I blocked his hand with mine and wrote out another message: “Not my face, Dad. It hurts.”
“Oh God, kid,” he said, taking my shoulders and squeezing them so hard that I felt the trembling from his swollen hands enter me. “We’ll be okay, won’t we?”
* * *
I stood in front of my house, watching Mom and Winnie and Jim turn the corner in the Mustang, and thanked God I wouldn’t have to sit around while they had their stupid drinks and asked me to smile for them.
When I walked in the front door, the phone was ringing. I knew it couldn’t be Dad, not yet. He would be driving across the city in a cab. Ben had gone down to the basement, and, from the kitchen, I could hear him burrowing into some boxes. He was somewhere beneath me. I could hear the small, struggling sounds he made, creepy sounds, and I moved into the living room. Ben would disappear in the basement all night sometimes, not emerging until the next day. He liked the closeness of it, the dark down there.
It was Sarah on the phone. “Look,” she said, “these people who want to hurt me have knives, Mikey. They may not kill me, but they’re going to cut me.”
I felt my face heat up. I hated her for doing this to me. “Don’t give me that shit, Sarah. We all know what you’re up to.”
“Jesus, Mikey,” she said. Her voice had become defensive and vulnerable. “What’s your problem?”
I hung up the phone and started to put my hat and coat back on. I thought maybe Dad would be at Winnie’s by now. I didn’t want to talk to him and I didn’t want him to see me, but I wanted to see him. The phone began ringing again. I closed the door and locked it. Outside, snow flurried in the bright circles of streetlamps. Trees bent sideways, cloaked in white. I put my gloved hands to my mouth because it hurt from too much goddamn talking.
At Winnie’s, I stood behind some bushes across the street and waited. I felt the snow fall and gather on my lashes and hat and become heavy on my coat. The roads and walks and lawns lay buried and mute and the air was a chilly lunar color from all the white. The shapes of parked cars stood crys
tallized beneath snowdrifts. Everything had been softened, erased. Dad’s cab pulled up and he stumbled out of it and ran to the garage door. A huge orange coat covered him up, its bright color burning in the white air. His footprints curved awkwardly through the snow. He was drunk, fucked up. He looked into the little windows of the garage, then looked away. “Oh God,” he said. He pounded on the garage door.
I stayed behind the bushes. I thought of Tasha, Dr. Ellis’s blond assistant, and how we could disappear together, live in abandoned school buildings and beneath docks in California, the way Sarah had disappeared with Marcus. Or maybe we would live in a house, the way people should live. A house on a stupid green hill somewhere. And I would learn her language, the only language we would speak together.
I had screamed a lot—I was conscious and could hear the bones in my face crack—when they broke my jaw. I screamed even though I felt nothing. I screamed at the distant snapping of my own bones. Dr. Ellis grimaced from the effort—my jaw hadn’t broken easily. “We’re going to make you a handsome set of teeth,” he said. My face floated out into the room, rising to the ceiling because of all the dope they’d given me. Tasha stood behind Dr. Ellis, her blue eyes clear and glowing, beautiful, so beautiful that I knew I could never have her. I tried to picture it anyway—the green hill, the house in which we sat at our table in a roomful of yellow light, speaking to each other in her language. I spoke it perfectly, a stream of delicate foreign words coming from me as I said things to her, graceful and true things, that I could not imagine saying in any language that I understood.
CLEAN AWAY
It happened in a steak house somewhere near the Idaho-Nevada state line. I was with Ruby, my second girlfriend after my third divorce, on a long weekend trip to Bayview, Idaho, a little mountain town with a view of a lake, where we were going to try to save our relationship of five months. But we got caught in a blizzard and had to turn around.
