All Adults Here(98)
The door creaked and Barbara turned. The young dentist whose picture she’d seen on the website walked in and sat down on the stool next to her.
“Hi there,” he said. “I’m Dr. Dan. You can call me Dr. Weiss, if you like, but most of my patients call me Dr. Dan.” He shook Barbara’s hand, which was a little bit clammy from resting on her forearm as it had been. She hoped he didn’t notice.
“Hello,” Barbara said. She smiled. He was even more handsome in person, not yet thirty, she guessed, with hair that looked freshly trimmed and only the slightest hint of razor burn on his cheeks where he had no doubt shaved that morning.
“Can I take a look?” he said, and pointed toward her mouth.
Barbara rolled her eyes with embarrassment. “Of course,” she said, and opened wide.
“Now bite down? And let me see you smile?” Dr. Dan bit and then smiled, for reference. The walls of the office were painted a pale orange, like a Californian sunset. Barbara knew certain colors were supposed to make people feel certain ways—that people fought more in red rooms, that sort of thing. Maybe orange was supposed to put you at ease? Dr. Dan probably knew. Barbara demonstrated the movement of her jaw. “I see,” Dr. Dan said. “May I?” He waited for Barbara’s nod, then gently reached his gloved hands into her mouth, one on each side of her teeth. It was so funny, going to the doctor, who was, in most cases, a stranger, and feeling totally free to let them touch whatever part of your body you’d agreed to by making the appointment. He slid his fingertips alongside Barbara’s teeth, slipping from one to the next, like a bicycle ride over gentle, rolling hills. She closed her eyes as he lowered his hands to her bottom teeth and bumped along those too. No one touched her anymore. At night, Bob snuggled close, hugging her torso like a koala bear, but five minutes later he’d roll away and start to snore. She couldn’t remember the last time he had reached underneath her clothes. And who else? Barbara tried to make a mental list of people who physically touched her and couldn’t think of a single one, except a woman for whom she’d held open the door at the bank, who had patted Barbara’s shoulder like you would a Labrador after it dropped a saliva-coated tennis ball at your feet. This was different. This was attentive. Barbara pushed everything else out of her head and concentrated on the feeling of Dr. Dan’s young, strong hands in her mouth.
“Okay,” he said. Dr. Dan slowly slid his hands out and then pulled off his gloves. “This is going to be no problem. Let’s get you fitted with a mold. I think six months with brackets would do just what you need. Maybe a year. And we could do natural, instead of silver, so that they’re tooth-colored, and less noticeable. A lot of adults like that.”
Barbara nodded. “Oh, that’d be great.” She wanted him to put his hands back in her mouth. There were those women in Japan, weren’t there, who were paid not to sleep with men, but just to sit and talk with them? That was what she wanted. Not sex, necessarily, or even the future promise of sex. She wanted a companion who didn’t need anything from her. She wanted someone to buy the juice she liked, without her asking, and kiss her on the cheek when he delivered it. Surely that sort of thing existed. It was America, wasn’t it, where everything was possible? But it wasn’t the sort of thing she could look up on her computer, because what if Bob saw? Couldn’t people see what you’d looked for? Not that Bob knew how.
“And how often would I need to come in?” Barbara hoped she didn’t sound too eager.
Dr. Dan shrugged. “Every six weeks would be great. Smile for me again?” Barbara smiled. “Oh yeah,” Dr. Dan said. “Every six weeks should do it. I think this will be great. And plus, we’ll get to spend so much time together!” He laughed. No one wanted to spend time with their dentist. No one but Barbara. She laughed at his joke and then laughed longer at her own. Dr. Dan looked pleased. “Okay then! Cassidy will take some x-rays and get everything set up so that we can get the impressions we need. Sound good? I’ll be back.”
Barbara swallowed. “Yes, thank you.” She watched Dr. Dan swivel his stool toward the door and then leap up gracefully, Gene Kelly in a lab coat. She snuggled back into the chair and stared up at the screen. Who would look at that when they could look at Dr. Dan? When the appointment was over, Barbara booked her follow-up in five weeks, fibbing and saying she was going to be traveling, and wanted to fit it in before she went away, though she wasn’t actually going anywhere at all.
* * *
—
Bob was waiting by the door when Barbara got home. “How was it?” he asked. The cats jogged down the front steps to greet her and rubbed their bodies against her bare legs. She supposed they had adopted, after all, and Bob hadn’t really noticed. If they’d had children, she might not have been so angry at him. She’d thought of the children she’d crossed back and forth across the street all those thousands of times as her children, but they weren’t, not really. They went home to their own mothers, who knew best. Barbara had just been an onlooker, a bystander. That wasn’t the same. If they’d had children, Bob would be inside, talking to one of them on the telephone, bothering them about their daily lives the way he bothered her. Bob would have been a great father; that stung. But now, so many decades later, he was the child and she was the parent and she only had the one life, didn’t she? “Did you stop on the way home and get orange juice?” Bob asked. “We only have the thick kind.”