Baby Teeth

You can fly into Amarillo or Lubbock—it doesn’t make much difference. Either way, you’ll still have to drive for more than an hour on the hottest, flattest road in the world to get to my mom’s house. Desert is too pretty a word for the landscape you have to claw through—it’s endless sand, no night blooms, no exotic animals to trigger with a revving engine. You see everything there is to see full form, from miles away—farmhouses, Jesus billboards, the occasional clump of cows, all of it—tiny at first, getting bigger as you make your way. My mom lives in a place called Earth, which is a funny name until you have to listen to people make the same jokes about it all your life. I used to live there too, but I left.

In between the little speed trap towns, you can go as fast as you want, and I do. The windows are up, AC vents pointed right at my face, but there’s still sweat on my thighs, grit in the air. It’s a brutal backdrop, impossible to keep out. I really open up on 84, not because I’m trying to make good time—I can’t say I’m ever in a hurry to get back home—but because there are no other cars on the road, and the little blue rental is so light and low to the ground, it’s like a toy I’m supposed to try and flip. It’s risky, this invincible feeling—people get killed on this stretch all the time. A lot of them are drunks, but drivers also die from boredom, literally, because the road bewitches them and they fall asleep, launch themselves into dusty nothing. Once when I was a teenager, my mom and I came across flashing lights and paramedics, two bleeding people on stretchers, a small mound on the shoulder, covered by a sheet.

“Oh my god,” I said as we slowed to rubberneck. “Is that a baby?”

“Nah,” my mom said. “Probably just somebody’s foot came off.”

My mom likes to sleep late, and I make such good time to Earth that I have to stop at the gas station to kill some of it. Before going inside, I wash down three more airport Tylenol with the last of my airport bottled water. The trick is to stay on top of the pain, but this has gone on for so long I worry I’ve finally taken enough pills to shred my liver. I think again about the pre-dentist days when people flung themselves off cliffs, shot themselves with muskets, threw themselves in front of steam trains. Suicides spanning time and technology, all because toothaches are no joke.

Perry isn’t at his gas station, but his son is working the register. I’ve never met this kid, but I know who he is instantly. He looks just like his dad, maybe not quite so pale. He squirts liquid cheese onto a little plate of nachos, hands it over to a waiting trucker. It’s crazy to think I could have a kid this age too, a person taller than me who can grow facial hair, earn minimum wage. Perry and I used to be freaks together, though it doesn’t take much to unnerve people out here. I dyed my hair black, and Perry had a nose ring. We wore eyeliner and smoked cloves—that part seemed to really enrage people, the cloves—but we were also decent students who sang in church choir. We were baby goths together, melting in the sun.

Standing here, looking at this young Perry, it’s like I’m in high school again, cutting class to buy cigarettes. For a second, I’m hurt when the kid doesn’t smile back, though why would he?—he doesn’t know who I am. Besides, this Perry looks a little too clean-cut to smoke with me, and kids mostly vape these days, delivering chemicals directly to their oily, scented lungs.

The trucker pays for his nachos and leaves. The wind catches the glass door and blows it open, then slams it shut, bells jangling. I decide to buy a bag of gummy bears and a fancy chocolate bar with the last of my cash. I’ll give the bar to my mom, and she’ll insist on paying me back. I figure she’ll give me a twenty and I’ll net about 17 bucks. Young Perry rings me up, and I ask about old Perry. The kid pulls out an earbud I hadn’t noticed. He’s polite but a little short. He says, “Ma’am?”

“Your dad,” I say, “He’s not working today?”

“No ma’am,” he says.

“He’s off?”

“Yes ma’am,” young Perry says. “I mean, he doesn’t come in anymore.”

“Ah,” I say, teasing. “Now that you’re big enough he makes you do all the work?” I wonder what’s playing in the kid’s other ear, if it’s something lush and dark, angsty. Up close, I see that his eyes are different than Perry’s, bigger and brighter, a kind of golden green. His cheekbones are more defined than Perry’s ever were, his jawline strong. Mrs. Perry, whoever she is, must have tremendous bone structure.

“No ma’am,” young Perry says. “Just for the day. Cashier’s sick. My dad’s retired.”

I smile tightly while the kid tells me Perry owns five stores now: this one, plus two in town and two I must have passed on my way here. Retired!

“Well, do me a favor and tell him Amy says hello,” I say. “He’ll remember me. I live in New York now,” I say, raising my eyebrows.

“Oh, so do I,” the kid says without looking at me, punching buttons on the register. “I’m home for summer. Manhattan?” he asks.

“Jersey City,” I say, my smile gone and then back bigger, a little deranged. “Or, I don’t know, I’m in a short-term situation.” I don’t tell him about my three roommates or the hanging sheet that indicates my bedroom, the black mold that swells in one corner of our kitchenette. “I’m looking for something else. Brooklyn, maybe.”

“Cool,” Perry’s kid says. “I’m in Tribeca.” He hands me my change, says he’s going to Paris in the fall, something to do with a stop-motion animation program. My tooth is throbbing again, ears ringing.

“Study abroad,” he says absently. He looks out the window at the empty pumps, nods at me and takes out his phone.

“Cool,” I say, toggling through my roster of emotions that aren’t fury. I settle on surprise. “Wow, that’s—wow!” Once, before we could even drive, Perry and I got stoned in my black-lit bedroom. He pulled up my T-shirt a little bit and drew on my midriff in pink highlighter. His hair was long enough back then that I could pretend he was a girl, and his focused attention—the elaborate, looping florals, the heat from his hand, the bold filagree around my belly button—was, for many years, the most erotic thing to happen to me. Perry never made a move—too afraid or too polite.

…

I rip open the bag of gummy bears in the car and they fly everywhere. I try to pick them all up, but the ones I lose will melt in the coming days. When I drive back to the airport, I’ll notice how delicious the car smells, how pleasantly tropical, and later, the rental place will charge a fee to shampoo the maimed rainbow bodies out of the upholstery. When I’m back in New York, my mom will call to casually mention this. She won’t be mad, but she’s incapable of paying for something without declaring it, and the car was reserved in her name, on her credit card, just like my plane ticket.

After rescuing a bunch of bears, I realize I can’t chew them anyway. I tuck one—my favorite flavor, clear—in between my gums and cheek on the far side of my mouth, away from the throb. After the bear dissolves I start in on the chocolate without thinking about it, pulling soft pieces from the triangular box as I drive. By the time I get to my mom’s, it’s gone. I realize that not only is this mindless mistake rude, it has effectively cost me twenty dollars. I’ve fully regressed on the drive, a selfish teen again.

…

Of course there are dentists in New York, but none of them are Dr. Rankin. This is the way my mother plays it, like Rankin is some world-renowned specialist and not small town, like I’ve got a rare tumor and not a tooth I cracked on a Jolly Rancher, then refused to address for a decade. The truth is there are many dentists in New York, and I can’t afford a single one. For a long time, the pain was something dull I could live with, growing a little each year, a slow-rising line I could draw on the wall of whatever terrible apartment I was living in. It was with me for my shitty telemarketing job, my shitty personal assistant job—it was there when I sold my plasma and served on a focus group for lunchmeat. The pulse of it got worse a few weeks ago, impossible to ignore. Instead of cutting off my ownhead, I caved and asked my mom for a check, but no, that was too simple. Instead, she’d pay for everything, bring me home to Dr. Rankin. This way she gets a rare visit from me, I get to solve my mouth on her dime, her beloved Dr. Rankin gets paid. Transactions all around.

Now she’s got me cleaning out her refrigerator. “So you’ll feel useful,” she says.

This kitchen, my childhood kitchen, is bigger than any apartment I’ve ever lived in. It’s gleaming white and smells like actual lemons, actual pine. My mom makes weekly grocery trips even though she lives alone. She buys in bulk, then throws it all away.

“Sour cream doesn’t go bad,” I say.

“Plastic’s still on these,” I say, a container of cream cheese in each hand.

“But the expiration,” she says.

“Is a myth,” I say. “It’s been proven.”

“Toss it,” she says. “Tell me you don’t eat old food at home?”

Now, on top of all my other failures, she gets to be worried that I’m drowning in rancid dairy.

She takes the containers from me.

“Ask Dr. Rankin about the grinding, too. You still doing that at night?” she asks.

“Not as much,” I say. “Maybe. I don’t know.”

“Are you having dreams about teeth?” she asks. “That’s how you can tell.”

“No,” I say, but I don’t tell her I haven’t been sleeping soundly enough to dream, that I can hear my decathlete roommate’s frequent, frantic masturbation on the other side of my sheet wall, his pet rat gnawing the bars of its cage.

“I’m throwing these out,” she says. She uses her pointy acrylic fingernail to slit the cellophane on each tub of cream cheese, squeezes them out into a trash bag.

“Now you’re just making a mess,” I say.

“Because I know you,” she says. “You’ll come out at night and dig if I don’t make it impossible.” She’s not wrong.

“Are you gonna show me the issue?” she asks. She lets her own jaw gape, stares, waits for me to open my mouth.

She keeps my baby teeth in a cut crystal bowl on her vanity. I worry she’ll never be able to unsee the ragged black hole in the back of my mouth, that its gravity will tug at her long after it’s fixed. In the neighboring county where she grew up, people have been known to get gray flecks in their enamel from the tap water. “I’ve been so blessed in this life,” she once told me, tearful after Bible study. “I got you as my daughter and the good lord spared my teeth.”

My mother’s nails are always polished, her eyebrows and god knows what else waxed, her smile perfect, bleached and gleaming.

“I’d rather not,” I say, trying not to move my lips, face tilted toward my collarbone.

…

At Earth Dental, Dr. Rankin pumps me full of gas and caps my shattered Jolly Rancher tooth. This takes maybe 45 minutes, and it’s like dousing a fire with water, how swiftly the searing pain goes away. I sit there totally high, my arms rubbery and impossibly long, feeling grateful and stupid that it has taken me all this time to get here.

“Now,” Dr. Rankin says. He turns off the nitrous, tilts me up in the big leather chair. He says he can see tartar buildup even on my x-ray.

“That’s good, right?” I say. He doesn’t laugh.

“When was your last cleaning?” he asks.

“When was I last here?” I say. He pokes around in my mouth with his little hook. He thinks I’m kidding.

“Who’s your actual dentist?” he asks. “At home?”

People in medicine—they know just how to make you feel judged. Dr. Rankin takes the tool out of my mouth to let me answer. I’m bright red, coming down.

“I didn’t want to cheat on you,” I say.

“Amy,” he says, flipping through my chart. “This is irresponsible.” I can’t be the only one who has fought tears under Dr. Rankin’s bright dome light, who has flushed with shame in his robotic chair. There’s a toddler at the next station over, getting her newly-erupted teeth polished by a gorgeous hygienist. I hope some part of the kid overhears and assimilates my conversation with Dr. Rankin, that her little brain absorbs the moral.

“I’ll have to do your mouth myself, in quadrants,” Rankin says. “It’s too severe for a hygienist, and I don’t have time to take care of it all at once.”

He wants to start with the lower left.

“I can numb you up,” he says. “There’s going to be a lot of scraping.”

“Nah,” I say, his fingers in my mouth. I deserve whatever’s coming.

He gets to work and asks me the questions he always asks. He’s known me since I was little, chewing those little purple tabs that show you where the plaque is, getting bubblegum-flavored fluoride treatments, cleaning around my braces. He’s lost track of me.

“You went to college in…” he starts.

I wait for him to squirt water in. I spit, answer.

“Right, right,” he says. “Where you studied…”

I spit, answer.

“Right,” he says. “That’s right. Hate to say it, but I fall asleep during movies,” he says. “I don’t finish most of them.” “That’s okay.” I spit and say, “I didn’t finish my film degree.”

He doesn’t laugh. He doesn’t even hear me.

“Hold on,” he says. He flips on the light behind my x-ray again. He squints at the film. “This dark spot,” he says. “This lump in your gumline.” He puts a gloved finger in the back of my mouth. “You ever notice that?”

“Yeah,” I say. “It’s always been there.”

“It hasn’t,” he says.

“Well, for years,” I say. The first time I noticed it was at the apartment in Long Island City, the roachy one over the French place, a hedge fund prick for a roommate. I remember feeling the bump, looking at it in the warped bathroom mirror. I tell him white stuff occasionally comes out of it, but it never hurts.

“This is an active infection,” he says grimly.

“Well, it’s been like 10 years,” I say.

“10 years,” he says.

“Who knows,” I say. “A while. I’d have to piece together some things to pinpoint. Does it matter?”

“What matters is that you get it taken care of right away,” he says. “I’m referring you to a periodontist.”

He commands me to spit.

“How old are you?” he asks. He looks at my chart. Is he asking to see what percentage of my life has been actively infected? Or is it because I seem like a child to him, out of control? I don’t answer.

“You’re lucky it hasn’t caused any problems,” he says. “You need to take care of yourself.” He shakes his head and gets back to my filthy quadrant. He keeps stopping to mop off my face.

“Sorry I’m giving you a shower,” he says.

I pull away from his scraper and ask, “Is that blood spraying all over me?”

“What?” he says, “No—it’s water.”

“Okay,” I say. “I was imagining blood.”

“You’ve never had a cavity, is one good thing,” Dr. Rankin says, marveling again at my horrific films. “This is one of those cases that makes it so obvious cavities are genetic. It’s all about mouth chemistry. Because with your situation, you absolutely should have cavities,” he says.

“Thank you?” I say.

…

Dr. Rankin finishes up, says we’ll do the rest of the bottom next week and move onto tops in the weeks following.

“Sounds good,” I reply. We won’t, because I’m leaving town, and also because I’ll never come back here, ever. Still, I stop to make my appointments with Kelly, the cute receptionist with a half-shaved head.

“I’m a monster,” I say as she looks over my chart.

“Oh, I’ve seen worse,” she says. “Hey, where’d you get that top?” she asks.

“This?” I say, pulling at my waist. “I don’t know, I’ve had it for so long. My mom bought it. You want to look at the tag?”

She comes out from behind the desk and I pull my hair over one shoulder. She flips up the back collar of my shirt.

“No tag,” she says. I feel around the side seams, lift up the hem.

“Sorry,” I say.

“Must just be one of those treasures,” she says. She’s a head shorter than I am, and she reeks of cigarettes. “Are those leggings suede?” she asks.

“Yeah,” I say, and I can tell she wants to touch them. I’m a curiosity to her, dressed for the wrong season. She reaches across the desk and the not-shaved part of her head brushes my shoulder. She hands me a pamphlet about gingivitis.

“I have this?” I ask. “He didn’t say I had this.”

“Your pockets are dirty,” she says, “Deep. Too much space around the teeth.”

“Does it say that in my chart?” I ask. “Where does it say that?”

“I can see from your scans,” she says. “He probably didn’t want to overwhelm you, but I’d bet money you’re on your way to this.”

“Great,” I say.

She laughs and walks back to her side of the desk.

“How long have you worked here?” I ask.

“A while,” she says.

“Isn’t it kinda punk rock,” I say, “that I’ve had an active infection this long?”

She laughs. “It’s something,” she says.

“Just so you know,” I say, “I’m not gonna call the gum guy.”

“You have to!” she says.

“I don’t have to do anything, Kelly,” I say. Maybe it’s being free from pain for the first time in so long, maybe it’s the nitrous or the rush from my incandescent shame, but I feel bold, flirty.

“There’s a long-haul trucker who died from what you’ve got,” Kelly says. “His head swelled up like a pumpkin.”

She asks about my schedule for the remaining appointments.

“Whatever’s easiest,” I say. She grins and looks down at her typing hands. When we’re finished, she writes out three separate little reminder cards by hand. I shove them into my back pocket.

“Now you’re on the books,” she says. She puts her palms flat on the desk and looks up at me. “Are those eyelashes real?” she asks.

“What?” I say. “Yeah.”

“Mine are fakes,” she says. She looks down, then up, bats her eyes at me.

“Very nice,” I say. “I never learned how to do that stuff.”

“You don’t need ‘em,” she says.

“Listen,” I hear myself say. “Do you want to get a drink?”

She laughs. “What? Now?”

“When does Rankin turn you loose?”

“Three,” she says. I know where the closest bar is, but I let Kelly draw me a map anyway.

“Perfect,” I say. “This is my vacation, so I’m trying to make the most of it. I’m going back to New York soon.”

“Right,” she says. “I want to go there so bad. How long are you here?”

“Two more days,” I say.

She looks at her appointment screen and laughs. “You’re terrible,” she says.

…

The clean quadrant of my mouth makes the rest seem disgusting, fuzzy and gruesome. I can’t stop running my tongue over the new, slick real estate.

Kelly stands up when I come in.

“I got us this table,” she says.

“You sure did,” I say. “What are you drinking?” This is my universal ice breaker. If somebody just tells you their drink and turns away, you know they aren’t interested in you. Kelly holds the glass out. “Sip?” she says.

It’s Jägermeister, libation of my youth. “I love it because it’s so awful,” Kelly says, and I want to hug her.

I order my own Jäger. Kelly tells me she just went through a breakup. “Same,” I say, though it’s really been years. She tells me her partner was too ambitious, a workaholic. I listen for pronouns, but they never come.

“Tell me some Dr. Rankin dirt,” I say.

“There’s nothing!” she says. “He’s so boring.”

I say, “There’s got to be something.”

She says, “Well there’s one weird thing.”

“Yes!” I say. “There always is.”

“He sends money to a woman in Abilene,” she says. “Makes me write the check every month.”

“Okay,” I say. “That’s a start. Do we know who this woman is?”

“Nope,” Kelly says, “But she’s young. I looked her up. Oh, and his wife doesn’t love him,” she says, then covers her hand with her mouth like she can’t believe what she’s just done.

“Oh, that’s a terrible thing to say! That’s perfect.”

“It’s true,” she says. “It’s so obvious.”

I say, “How old are you?”

“Exactly twenty-five,” she says. “A quarter century. Would you have guessed that?

“Yes,” I say.

“My birthday was yesterday,” she tells me, “No lie.”

“No!” I say. “Kelly. Kelly! This is a celebration.”

“Twenty-five is a minor birthday.”

“Doesn’t have to be,” I say. “You can, what? Rent a car now?”

“Yeah,” she says. “I think I could do it before but now I can do it without a fee?”

“We should do that,” I say. “Rent you a car.”

“And drive it where?” she asks.

“Just around,” I say.

“I have a car,” she says.

There’s something floating in her drink. “Oh my god,” I say, “Is that a tonsil?” Kelly holds her glass up to the light and says, “Nope, it’s a peanut shell!” She’s cheerful, but I’m disgusted, contaminated by proxy. I down my drink to clean my mouth.

“Rentals are fun because you can do donuts or pull the e-brake while you’re speeding down a stretch. You can sit your naked ass on the seats if you want. No consequences!”

“You’re 40?” she asks. “I saw on your chart.”

“39 and three quarters,” I say. “And I have a rental car. An actual one. I drove it here. What’d you do for your birthday?”

“Worked,” she says. She runs her fingers up and down the shaved side of her head.

“That’s a shame,” I say. “You want another round?”

“I don’t know,” Kelly says. “I work tomorrow and you’re staying with your mom?”

I say, “I don’t want to get you into too much trouble, but we should celebrate. It’s your birthday yesterday.”

…

I’m not sure what it says about Kelly, that she can be so easily led, first to a bar and then to many, many drinks, now back to a stranger’s house. I’m positive there’s no screen on my bedroom window, but my mom has had the gardener cut back the scrubby juniper bushes. There’s nowhere to hide. It’s not quite dark yet, the sky still pale green. “This’ll be fun,” I whisper.

I grab Kelly’s hand and we make the dash together. My mom has the blinds open, which I hadn’t expected. She’s folding laundry, probably mine, in front of the TV. Kids scream happily in some close backyard.

I lose a shoe to the burned lawn and let it go, crunchy grass poking my bare foot. I pray the fire ants won’t get me. We make it to the side of the house, and I flatten out against the stucco walls.

“What are you doing?” Kelly laughs.

My heart is pounding, and I realize my bad tooth isn’t throbbing in synch, that now it’s just a normal tooth. I want to kiss Dr. Rankin, kiss Kelly, but instead I focus on the mission, on the sharp shards of obsidian my mom has imported for ground cover, spread along the perimeter of the house. I tug Kelly and she softly slurs, “You left your lights on.” She’s right. I also parked poorly, way out from the curb. I click buttons on the rental’s keychain and we listen to the car doors lock and unlock, lock and unlock. The lights stay on. “I’m leaving it,” I say, worried I’ll accidentally set off the alarm.

Perry used to sneak into my room like this all the time, my bay window opening smooth and silent, a plush purple couch on the other side for a soft landing. I press my palms on the glass, but the window doesn’t budge.

“Shit,” I say.

I try again. Locked.

“I have to pee,” Kelly says, and I put my finger to my lips.

I cup my hands and look into my time capsule of a bedroom, the same bedspread, same posters and pictures on my walls since forever.

“There’s another way,” I whisper. “Laundry room.”

“Seriously?” Kelly says.

One of my mom’s neighbors pulls into their driveway, home from work, beams us with their headlights.

“This is silly,” Kelly says, stepping away from the house and onto the lawn

“What are you doing?” I hiss.

I hear her ring the doorbell, hear my mom answer. Kelly introduces herself, explains that she’s a friend of mine.

Mom’s looking over Kelly’s shoulder, surprised, saying, “Of course! Come in.”

I forget that she knows Kelly, sees her at Earth Dental several times a year. Dr. Rankin looms large in my mom’s eyes, and Kelly is a distinguished guest. My mom is offering fried chicken, chardonnay. Kelly tells her she can’t really stay, that she has to work tomorrow. Both of them seem a little confused. I have no choice but to step out from the eaves, walk up the slate path. I see my missing ballet flat by a brown shrub, bend over and grab it. I’m sobering up. I’m sober. They turn, watch me stumble along the path. They stare and I give them an embarrassed little wave. They stand together in the bright entryway of my childhood home, two grown women.