We sip our coffee. We smack our lips. “Yes,” I say. “That is probably true.”
Gerard says he bombed out at the Met auditions. He says he doesn’t want to talk about it. I oblige him but then wonder what sort of complicity with his demons and my own weak, ignoble ease that entails. Tomorrow night is his big debut in the Free Verdi Company’s Carmen. Some directors of various opera company apprenticeship programs are supposed to be there. Perhaps they’ll come backstage afterward and give him their cards.
“Wait until you see it, Benna. The best Don José ever: Carlo Bergonzi meets Neil Sedaka meets Zelda Fitzgerald.” He regales me with some vocal calisthenics that sound inhuman, worse than fog horns. He laughs at my wince. Hank shambles over and asks him if he could not “make these such noises.”
“I have to have a wisdom tooth removed this afternoon. I’ve scheduled it now while I’m still employed and have insurance to cover it, so I suppose I should,” I say to Gerard, my mouth gluey with egg.
“Poor you.”
“But listen, I’ll be there tomorrow, munkface and all. I’ll come backstage and give you a rose and a cough drop.”
“Thanks,” says Gerard.
Darrel offers to pick me up from the dentist’s office, but I tell him nah, not to worry, I’ll be fine.
“Are you sure? I’m actually fond of dentists’ offices. They’ve got great chairs.”
And I say, “Sure as squash.”
He narrows his eyes. “I’ll try to be there just in case.”
The air downtown is slate cold, Christmas-shopping air. I step into Dr. Morcutt’s office (“Morcutt?” hooted Gerard. “You would go to a dentist named Morcutt?”), and it’s stuffy and chemical, as if the place had just been painted and no one had opened the windows. It gives me a slight headache. I walk up to the receptionist and say, “I’m a little early for my appointment. Should I come back, walk around in the fresh air for a while, rather than wait in here?”
The woman at the desk, a Mrs. Janice Felds, according to a bar pin high on her left breast, looks at me, suddenly concerned. She stands up and presses my hand between both of hers. “You don’t look well,” she says, probing my eyes with hers, attempting to locate something in them, something serious in them, she’ll never find it. My face feels hot, my stomach bruised, my back clammy as a dock. Mrs. Janice Felds presses her hand against my forehead like she’s the school nurse.
“Come with me,” she says, and leads me into one of the examination rooms.
“Really, it’s no big deal,” I’m saying. “It’s only just the paint smell.”
“Sit down. Lie back,” says Mrs. Janice Felds, and I sit in the big dental chair, lean back while she cranks it into a horizontal position; someone walking by could see up my skirt.
The examination room looks suddenly odd to me. Instead of being crammed with dental equipment, it is big, with one long empty counter on the side—like at a vet’s, where everything is put away, out of sight, protected from the thrashing of terrified animals. It feels like a roller skating rink with just this spare dental chair at the center.
Now there are other people in the room. There is murmuring. I detect it. Someone presses a cold wet washcloth to my forehead. I begin to feel foolish, begin to sit up. “Really,” I say. “None of this is necessary.”
“Just rest,” says the other nurse, and I am made to recall a lover I had once who also hovered over me and commanded things: Here, here, no here; relax, damn it. I look up and see three sets of nostrils and an ebony birthmark. The dentist comes in and takes my pulse. I close my eyes wearily.
“Really,” I continue to protest. “It’s only that you just painted in here. I sometimes get a little dizzy around fumes is all.”
Dr. Morcutt is troubled. He looks at me, like Janice Felds, searches vainly for a trace of substance in my face, in the smudgy, silly, crayoned and stained-glass windows of my soul. “But we haven’t just painted in here,” says the doctor. “We haven’t painted in here for two years.”
The extraction is a rape. Or a Caesarean. Some sort of untimely rip. Due to Dr. Morcutt’s concern for what he calls “patient management,” I’m given only the minimum local anesthetic, no general, no laughing gas, no funny business. He’s afraid I may have allergies.
“Hey. Do I have allergies,” I say, though I really don’t. I have fears.
It’s only one tooth, but it takes an hour to get it. Not only is it impacted, it’s committed as hell to remaining with the rest of my body and rather than surrender, it self-destructs, crumbles into twenty tough little bits and slivers, and the doctor sweats, says shit, chomps his fruit gum harder. A nurse behind keeps pulling up on my jaw, as if its attachment to my skull or neck were an irritating superfluity. To communicate my body’s complete disapproval of these goings on, I make low groaning sounds, which after a while I’m afraid sound like sex, so I stop. The tugging, scraping, snapping in my mouth is a war, a huge mean war, this is what it is to die, to be fighting dying, to be snatched, gouged. I keep thinking I’ll swallow my tongue or even that I already have. My jaw aches and bends. “Her jaw can’t take this,” the nurse behind me warns. “The bone’s giving way.”
“Uuuuuuuhhh,” I say in agreement, will I faint I may faint.
After it is all done, the dentist and I look at each other: We’ve been through something together.
“You have the bones of a woman twice your age,” he says into my eyes.
“You don’t like that?” I ask softly. He rubs a smooth finger naillessly around in my mouth, like a lover.
“I’ll call you tomorrow,” he says. And he walks through one of the side doors that leads to an adjacent room with another patient in it, a blonde maybe, someone from Radcliffe with a completed thesis, awaiting his services.
I rinse with water. I spit. Then I stumble out of the chair, turn, and shake hands with the nurse, whose eyes are all atwinkle. “Take care of yourself,” I say.
Darrel is in the waiting room. He sees me and stands up, extends an arm my way. I have a prescription for codeine clutched in one fist; I can feel my bangs damp against my temples. I must look funny, swollen and bedraggled, for Darrel gives me a gummy, toothy grin, and shakes his head, like I’m cute, like I’m not his teacher. He puts his arm around me. “You okay?”
My tongue’s dead in my mouth, thick and swollen, like something hit by a car. There’s Christmas music in this room, piped in from the ceiling: and quiche lorraine forever and ever. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! I lean my head against Darrel’s arm. It is slippery with nylon; already it is parka weather. “Why, it’s one of the three wise men,” I say, trying to smile. I look up at him. “And I think I know which one.” I wonder if I should have the tooth put back in. “I love you,” I say. Forever. And ever.
Darrel smiles. “You’re on drugs,” he says.
Hallelujah! Hallelujah!
“Poor mumpy-mom,” coos George when she sees my swollen cheek. She wants to touch it, the way people always want to touch the stomach of a pregnant woman. She brings me a glass of milk. “Can I look inside?” she asks.
“It’s like giftwrap,” I say, and I open my mouth so she can look at the black threads.
“Eeeyow.” George looks both mesmerized and ill. “Does it hurt?”
“Uh-uh,” I shake my head, my mouth still open for her to see.
George turns away. “That’s enough,” she says and I close my mouth and she takes a sip of my milk, peering out at me from over the glass rim. Like an owl. Like a suspicious owl.
“Hello, Mrs. Carpenter?”
No one calls me Mrs. “This is Benna Carpenter, yes.”
“Mrs. Carpenter, this is Rita Milnheim from the Lertoma Club, and we’d like to know if you’d be interested in donating eighteen dollars to send four mentally retarded children to see Hansel and Gretel performed by an authentic New York theater group.”
The voice is chilly and mechanical. Eighteen dollars sounds like a lot. “The what club? What’s the name of your
club?”
“The Lertoma Club, Mrs. Carpenter. We also have the nine-dollar plan which will allow us to send two mentally retarded children to see Hansel and Gretel.” Once an insurance salesman came to my door. “Mrs. Carpenter,” he said, shaking my hand, “my name is Dick Helm and I’m here to find out if you’re covered.” I stared at him. Then I glanced down at myself. “Gracious, I think so,” I said. At which point I sent him over to the Shubbys. Which is a habit I have.
“Well,” I said, “the nine-dollar plan sounds a little better, but I just had a wisdom tooth removed and can’t really talk very well. Could you send me brochures or something? I would just like some more information on your organization before I give any more money away.”
“Certainly. Thank you very much for your pledge, Mrs. Carpenter. You’ve made two handicapped children very happy. Good night.”
She hangs up before I get to protest. First of all, I haven’t officially pledged anything, and I resent being rushed, bullied, misunderstood into it. Second of all, why would two retarded children ever want to see Hansel and Gretel, a play about the abandonment of children? What if I refused to give the Lertoma Club my money. Certainly most of it benefits the theater group and not the kids at all. Why not nine dollars for, say, beer and M&M’s? If I were retarded—hell, even if I weren’t—that’s what I would want. What if I don’t pay? Would two kids be left standing out in front in a lobby somewhere, teary-eyed, wondering why Missus Carpenter didn’t send in the money? “We don’t like Missus Carpenter! We don’t like her!” they would chant in unison. Would they be stuck there while all their friends went on in? Would this be the real Hansel and Gretel? Would this be what they should see?
“Mom, a long time ago I put a tooth under my pillow, but the tooth huvvah didn’t come and give me anything.”
Huvvah is Georgianne’s baby word for fairy. I don’t know where she got it; I think it just kind of developed on its own, like marsupials in Australia. For some reason we’ve kept it in circulation.
“Really?” I say, wondering if I should wrench her out of infancy, get rid of this tooth-and-money jazz. My mother had told us right from the start that there was no tooth fairy, sorry kids, and that Santa Claus was simply a spirit in your heart that prompted you into present-giving. The Easter Bunny, however, I knew really truly existed, though he was crucified on Friday and had to wait until the third day to rise and pass out jelly beans. What could I say to Georgianne? “Honey, there’s no such thing as the tooth huvvah”? It wasn’t compelling. It wasn’t a spirit in your heart.
“Why don’t you try again?” I suggest and cup my hand over my jaw. “The tooth huvvah owes me quite a bit of money, too. Maybe the tooth huvvah will come visit tonight.” Maybe Darrel, I thought, was the tooth huvvah.
“Nah,” says Georgianne.
“Why not?”
“Cuz in school I made a ring with it.”
“A ring?”
“Yeah. Wanna see?” And she whips out from behind her back a tiny pipe cleaner twisted and curled into a circle. Glued to it, rather precariously, is her tooth, the blood in it now brown as a body part. It looks like some horrible thing that got done in Vietnam and people never talked about until ten years later.
“My,” I say.
George slips it on. “It’s very pretty. I just have to be careful.”
“What did your teacher say?”
George shrugs. “She said I just shouldn’t wear it to church. But I tole her we didn’t go to church, we went to Donut-O-Donut, and she said, ‘Well then I guess you could wear it there.’ ”
The dentist calls, as he said he would.
“How are you?”
“It’s supposeta hurt, right?”
“Uncomfortable is the word we use.”
“I’m uncomfortable then. Yeah. I’m okay.”
“Good. Glad to hear it.”
“How are you?”
“All right, thanks.” He pauses. “After you I had five more.”
I think about this. It sounds like something I said once to my first boyfriend, in a bad coffee shop, over beers, in my imagination, in New York: After you I had five more.
But what does one say to a dentist?
“Eye-yi-yi.”
“That’s teeth for you.”
“Yes,” I say, “it certainly is.”
“Come in on Tuesday, and I’ll remove your stitches.”
“That sounds interesting.”
“Yes. Well. See you then.”
“Right,” I say. This is like every divorce. You get tears in your eyes and think, “God, all that oral sex and now we’re talking to each other like bureaucrats.”
My face is puffed up like a boxer’s. I know Darrel secretly finds me irresistible this way but just isn’t letting on. When I mention this he rolls his eyes and exhales in an exhausted fashion. Then he, too, asks to see my stitches.
Benna Carpenter’s morning classes had nothing to say about poetry. They had nothing to say about sex either when she switched the subject to that. They merely wanted to be told what to know. They wanted to know what they should be writing in their notebooks. “This class is supposed to be full of lively discussion,” she said to her eight o’clock class. “I’m going to start bringing in pots of coffee.” To her ten o’clock class she said, “It’s people like you who were responsible for the Holocaust.”
The Free Verdi Company performs at Baker High School, a few miles outside of Fitchville. I arrive a little late and have to tiptoe into the auditorium, which is a large room, perhaps used in the daytime as a cafeteria, with a stage at one end and rows of folding chairs, unfolded and arranged in meticulous lines. The cast is already on stage, singing. There are no costumes, no sets, no orchestra: This is what the Free Verdi Company means by free. There is a piano, and the cast reads the music from books they hold in front of them. And Carmen: This is what they mean by Verdi.
The auditorium is only half-dark and half-full, mostly, I assume, with friends, parents, senior citizens who in the middle of Carmen’s arias squeak in their chairs, or readjust them loudly across the floor. The woman singing Carmen is a pale, wheat-haired woman named Dixie Seltzer. She tries to look seductively Spanish, but ends up steamily emoting like a Kansas housewife with the vapors. Gerard hasn’t really prepared me for the amateurishness of this production. Mediocrity alone never surprises me, but this particular example, unheralded by the usually shrewd and cynical Gerard, comes as a painful surprise, like a car accident. I’m probably being unkind. I adjust to my seat, slip off my coat, re-cross my legs. Perhaps it’s not all that bad. The rest of the audience seems to be enjoying it, smiling and applauding and glancing down at their programs to see who’s singing whom. Perhaps it’s just my unpreparedness for this that has made it seem so quickly awful, or perhaps it’s the Jewish mother in me, wanting only the best for Gerard (“My son! My son the musical genius is drowning!”). What the hell do I know about opera?
The lights go up. There will be three intermissions. The cast is allowed to meander the corridors, linger at the water fountain, chat pleasantly with relatives. An older man, strikingly white-haired and in a red turtleneck, brushes by me, in a hurry to leave. He has his car keys in his hand. “I for one am not sticking around for the rest,” he says to me meanly, stagily, because I am the nearest person at the moment. He stops and smiles at me, as if I’m supposed to agree. I look away. I look for Gerard, spot him by the stage door with his back to me, scurry up behind him and then give him a big hug. “You’re terrific,” I say, though I’ve hardly heard him sing a line yet. “Act two,” I remember him saying, “act two is where I turn into Placido Domingo.”
Gerard turns and beams. His eye wanders off to one side like a haywire satellite. “Thanks for coming. Let’s walk.” He takes my arm and we march loudly off down the corridor to the left. It’s one of those hallways with a long glass wall on one side. Outside it’s night and bushes. “I just need someone to pace with,” says Gerard, and our legs are close,
brushing and in step, identical, like pals, like siblings. “Two siamese twins,” says Gerard. “Tragically joined at the hip.”
“I like this,” I say. “I’m absconding with the leading man. I think it’s something that with a little practice I could learn to do very well.” Gerard isn’t really listening. He seems nervous, a slight rose flush behind his forehead and eyes. “Are you nervous?” I ask. “You don’t really seem nervous.”
“There’s a guy in the audience from City Opera. It might be nice to impress him, you know, shake his hand backstage, all that gladhanding stuff. He’s got white hair and is wearing a red turtleneck—I saw him from the stage. Did you happen to notice him?”
“No.”
Gerard looks at me, clearly tense, this the ravage of ambition. “You think this is all bush league, don’t you?”
“No, of course not, Gerard.”
“Where’s my rose?” he grins.
“Damn. I forgot it. I’m sorry.” We have stopped walking. We are both looking at each other’s feet.
“Well,” says Gerard, looking up, hopeful as a fisherman. “I still say this is better than the Ramada. What’s wrong with your face?”
“Thanks a lot, Gerard.”
“No, I mean your cheek. It’s swollen.”
“My wisdom was removed. I told you about that.”
“That’s right,” he smiles. “Now I remember. You taking funny pills?”
“Yeah, but they’re never funny enough. This morning I told my students they were responsible for the Holocaust. They never looked up, just wrote it in their notebooks. I’ll buy you a drink after you kill that bitch Carmen.”
“I’ll need one,” he sighs, and then we walk back up the corridor. When we get to the stage door, the corridor is emptying and I take Gerard by the elbow and say, “Well, good luck!”
“I don’t believe in luck,” he says. “I believe in miracles.” He stops and tucks in his shirt. “That’s just part of my personality.”