Short Story: Dental Visit Of A Detailed Child

 I don't know that I've posted a short story on my blog before. I wrote this one a couple of weeks ago, so there may be future revisions.   

The wood of the coffee table is walnut, burnished dark and shining with a deep layer of polish, lines of grain visible, the differences making it more beautiful than any uniformity ever could. The girl across from me in the pea green shirt looks to be about four, coloring with a wild determination in a Highlights magazine. The coffee table is the best part of the waiting room, which has itchy seats and a carpet with a confusing pattern. I don’t like waiting rooms. Too many other people have been there and will be there in the future, a parade of ghosts who bring in and out their problems. I feel them lingering.

My mother is trying to be calm but I feel her worry seeping out from her clasped hands. It’s making me anxious. We practiced yesterday. We practiced sitting in the chair with my mouth wide open and my hands at my sides, NOT flying up to my face, NOT clenching my teeth, NOT sliding down the chair. Not turning away from the water and the suction and the scraping tools which make both my mouth and ears ache. My mother promised ice cream afterwards, to which I looked at her in horror and said, “Sugar? After the dentist? With no toothbrush?”
She then promised that we could bring along my toothbrush AND toothpaste but I’m still deciding if I feel okay brushing my teeth in an ice cream parlor bathroom. Something about it seems wrong. Wrong place for that activity, like sitting down to play a long game of chess in the middle of a busy hockey rink. That would be a good list to start: combinations of wrong places and activities, compared with all the pairings of correct places and activities. It could be color-coded and alphabetized. Maybe that’s what I’ll try to think about during the cleaning. 

“Did we bring my second notebook?” I ask my Mom.
“I believe it’s in the car, yes.”
I settle back into my seat, but not too much, because of the itchiness and uncertainty of past inhabitants. I don’t have my colored pens, so it’ll have to be a rough draft is all. First in my head, then onto paper, then a final glorious version in the notebook where only finished things go. I feel more settled. What activity would be wrong for here, for example? Eating candy or ice cream, for one thing. Though maybe not, because you could definitely brush your teeth afterwards, no problem. Gymnastics, perhaps. It would be cool to see someone vault across the carpet, over the toy area and the coffee table and across the reception desk in one beautiful, grand arc. But dangerous, too. Little kids and nervous receptionists could get in the way more than the objects. 

“Davidson?”
They always call out the patient’s names with a question mark, even when looking right at them. My mother smiles and stands, beaming at me as though we’re marching forward to accept an award. She walks with me as far as the swinging glass doors and then retreats, regretfully, turning back to her seat while I go on, following the dental assistant. The assistant is wearing yellow scrubs the color of a baby chick. They are too long for her; the pants could be cuffed, but instead the fabric pools slightly around her tennis shoes. If they were mine I’d cuff them, so they don’t gather germs from the shoes, and because it looks more purposeful. She leads me to the chair and my palms are sweaty. I sit down and she presses a button to lower the seat to a nearly full recline. I feel vulnerable, and I hate it. She pins a bib to my shirt and turns on the overhead light. On the ceiling is a poster with some smiling dolphins and a scuba diver, and for a bit I’m fixated on trying to figure out what’s wrong and weird about it. 

Don’t think about the metal tool scraping against your teeth, or the way the hygienist asks questions I can’t answer with her hands in my mouth, or the uneven, click-clack typing of the assistant taking notes on the computer behind my shoulder. Don’t think about the dentist saying words which sound like code, or the way you can hear a couple of the hygienists gossiping about boyfriends or husbands, or the high-pitched whir of the electric toothbrush cleaning thing, and the gritty toothpaste they use. Think about your list. Yes. Playing football in a library. Meeting your counselor for a session at a cell phone store. Glass-blowing in a preschool. 

It’s the smiles. Do dolphins really smile that widely? It looks digitized. I think the diver was photoshopped into the scene too. 

Having a tea party on a life raft. Getting a haircut in the kitchen of a restaurant. Clogging in a bank. Hmm, though that one could be amusing. I always wonder why banks are so quiet. Are we all trying not to wake the money? 

It’s a popcorn ceiling, built for noise reduction though now terribly out of style. How old is this building? My uncle is in construction. He can understand the bones of a building with a few measured glances, it seems. He taught me about types of wood. He says I’m the only person who can stare admiringly at pieces of wood for as long as he can. His smile is really deep when he says that. 

My father left when I was five. In my notebook is a list of the good memories and the bad ones. I told my uncle once that I was trying to determine how to quantify both lists. He told me not to do it. He said to write them down if it made me feel better, but then to let them be. So, they’re some of my only lists which aren’t color coded or otherwise organized. They’re just all in black ink. 

I like knotholes. They’re almost balanced, at first glance, but when you really study them you see all the variations within the circle or oval. No two are alike. Same with my lists. 

Having glamour shots done at a hospital. Taking a bath in a coal factory. Do coal factories and glamor shots still exist? 

“You’re old fashioned sometimes,” my mother teases. She worries a lot, but she loves a lot too. I think it must be hard to be her, with all those feelings and responsibilities and the sudden loneliness of my Dad leaving which I can’t ever quite tell was a great pain or a relief or both at once. Something else which is unquantifiable. 

I curl my toes in my shoes against the sticky fluoride paste the hygienist smears on my teeth. Finally, they’re sitting me back up, taking off the bib, and walking me over to the counter where I can pick a pencil, a toy, or a sticker. When I was younger, I loved the toys, deliberating for what I now know was annoyingly long over a rubber lizard or a plastic top. At eleven, I know I’m too old now for the toys, and too old to linger long over the various options. I take a pencil, one with a pattern of stars and planets on it. I pretend it’s the casually practical option, though secretly, I find it too perfect to use. It will sit in a tin can on my desk with my other perfect pencils and pens, on display and ever intact. 

My mother’s face breaks into a grin when she sees me. She’s relieved to hear I don’t have any cavities, grave over the fact that I will likely need braces, and chipper as she chats with the receptionist, whom I know she’s known for years. They only see each other for a few minutes about once every six months. A six minute, six month spaced-out friendship. Various types of friendships: an idea for a different list. 

“Ice cream?” she asks when we are settled in the car. The AC blows cool against my face. 
“Can we get it to go, and eat it at home?” I ask.
“Yes. The perfect compromise,” she replies. 
I twirl the pencil slowly in my fingers. Most pencils are made of cedar wood. 

“Red cedar wood from Kenya was popular for a time,” my uncle told me. “Nowadays, most are made from cedar which is grown in California.”
He told me that on my tenth birthday, before pressing a wood and metal pen into my hand.
“Cherry wood,” he said. “Feel how smooth, and just look at the grain.” 

The pen was heavy in my hand, solid and weighty in a good way. Grounding. Perfect for list making and just for being. One of my lists is “Things of Perfect Beauty and Use”. It includes the moon, matches, unbent metal cookie cutters, and the cherry wood pen, whose ink put the list to paper, perfectly.