Separation Anxiety - Laura Zigman Page 0,72
tomorrow, the receptionist tells me. Do I want it? I reluctantly accept. Why not have all the information before probably saying no?
Back in the car Teddy is quiet. I can’t tell if he’s glad to be getting braces like everyone else did two years ago, or if he’s horrified to be joining the adolescent masses so late. I know I could ask him—shouldn’t I just ask him?—but sometimes I think it’s easier for both of us if I just leave him alone with his feelings, instead of making him share them with me. Because maybe he doesn’t want to share them with me: maybe he’d rather process things himself, silently, without parental intrusion, the way I did.
On the way to school I don’t bother telling Teddy that my appointment with Michael was not to continue our trip down memory lane, but to talk about the possibility of braces for me. Why does he need to know, ten minutes before school, that the same mother who wears the family dog for comfort and mental stability might soon have a mouth full of embarrassing metal bands? Hasn’t he suffered enough? Instead, when we pull up in the blue zone, I hand him a note to give to Grace excusing his late arrival that I’ve scribbled on a piece of paper I rip from a notebook in my bag:
Please excuse Teddy. He had an orthodontist appointment even though he doesn’t have braces yet.
* * *
The next morning, though I don’t want to leave the dog, I decide to try going it alone again. It will be good to hear my options before committing either way without the distraction of the dog—and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little embarrassed to face Michael again wearing my neurosis in my sling. While the subject of his marriage, or divorce, didn’t come up in the few quick minutes I spent hyperreclined in his examination chair, I’m still somehow convinced that running into Michael and his encouraging me to come back to his office—for the second time—might be fate’s hand. Maybe there will be a way out for me. Maybe Michael Wasserman and I are meant to be.
I ask Gary to take Charlotte to the reservoir for a walk today before work.
Unencumbered, Teddy and I make the drive to school with considerably less tension. He seems more relaxed, now that it’s just us two in the car and I don’t have to drive with my seat pushed back as far as it will go in order to give the dog room between me and the steering wheel. When we pass the house getting the big stupid addition, I slow down the way I always do, only this time, Teddy looks, too.
“Isn’t that house big enough already?” he says.
“Seriously.” I breathe deeply, full of wonder. My work here is done.
After dropping Teddy, I get to my 9:00 A.M. appointment with Michael exactly on time, though it requires speed-walking from the parking lot to the waiting room. When I catch the young receptionist staring, I realize I must be beet red, or sweating, or both.
I fill out paperwork—financial and insurance information—then get shown to a chair in a different examination room—this time, one with more advanced equipment in it. When Michael arrives, he and his assistant take X-rays, then do a series of close-up digital pictures of my potential new virtual “smile.” They hand me an iPad so I can watch a time-lapse version of my teeth in motion: what they’ll look like and how they’ll get there.
I nod, marveling at the technology that can animate the seamless transition from my now-teeth to my future-teeth. Even after the iPad is taken away, the loop continues playing in my head. My teeth in motion, going to a better place. Maybe they’ll take me with them.
But the big decision still looms: full metal braces and brackets—the old-fashioned kind—or translucent ceramic brackets—both of which get cemented to the front of the teeth with wires threaded through them that get replaced every few weeks when the tension gets worn out. I ask Michael to explain it more—how it all works—how teeth actually get coaxed into moving—so he sits down next to me with a plaster model of a braces-filled mouth in his hands.
“The power is in the wire,” he says, pointing. “That’s where the movement comes. The brackets sit low on the teeth, but instead of tightening the wire like we used to, we switch out the wire at