Chapter Eighty
Rose claimed to have “almost died like 59 times” while driving around Jamaica Wednesday, from “all the crazy drivers”. I wasn’t completely sure if that meant someone else was driving her, or if she was driving herself. Either way, a frightening prospect. When I emailed her later to find out where, exactly, she went on the island, she replied…
“…just to some rich guy’s garden, a pottery place, some shopping place, and tea at a hotel.”
Ladies and gentlemen – my sister.
Puck played light sabers with Crackers at breakfast, brandishing a handful of unsharpened yellow pencils at her velvety paws swiping back…
“Life saver cat! Life saver cat!” he chanted. I could only picture hard candies. Speaking of which, my dental appointment at 10:00 produced the anticipated news…
“Well, you have less fours this time, and no real bleeding from the gum spot check. But you do have a moderate amount of bleeding from the cleaning…”
I just can’t win. Doesn’t matter how I polish, poke, or pry, my gums will not cooperate. Maybe… I can just blame it on the needles they shove between my teeth. Yeah. Yeah… I’ll go with that. After smearing some sort of botanical-smelling fluoride all over my pearlies [sort of in that shade neighborhood; maybe from clams that enjoyed an occasional lemonade in their diets], I was free to go. Fortunately, I have a friendly hygienist, which makes up for my trouble.
“How are you liking spring so far?” the young dentist asked me later.
I walked right into the say-something-obvious-to-make-them-laugh-even-though-it’s-not-funny-at-all trap.
“Well, it hasn’t really felt like it so far…”
“Ha ha ha!”
[Hey, it was 22 degrees this morning. I could say it.]
“Any fun plans for the weekend?” he asked, poking at my molars.
Again, it’s like I just couldn’t resist…
“Taxes.”
“Ha ha ha! That’s almost as bad as going to the dentist!”
We put up walls. We Americans. We might as well be talking to Dillard’s mannequins.
“Great teeth,” he says. “You’re doing a great job!”
I took advantage of a child plastered in peanut butter and seedless strawberry jam captivated with Barney Fife’s most recent escapades to begin clearing books out of the shelves in the library. In two point five weeks, we were going to make the big switch. Puck would get the orange room, The Bear’s desk would commandeer the green. It’s amazing how much stuff invites cobwebs – thick reads on everything from Gaelic programs and Samuel Pepys’ 17th century diary, to fifteen year-old Iceland guides and Machiavelli’s “The Prince”.
Banana chips. Fiona Apple was sort of stuck in my head for no reason at all. I didn’t like that. Remnants of Carrie’s high school days. Puck state-penitentiary-style harmonic from his room. His dental appointment was at 3:30 while The Bear tried to get some more work done between speed reading during lunch and making plans for the summer.
Puck received a similar report from the sort of reddish-haired youngster of a dentist. He picked out two tiny plastic cameras from the treasure chest. When we clicked the shutters, little pictures of giraffes and fish flashed by.
“Were you in here this morning?” the receptionist-in-training with hair dyed black asked me.
I nodded.
“I was.”
“I thought I had seen you in here with your hair all squirreled up on the side.”
“Squirreled up”. I guess that’s a good way to describe it.
“Could I have a camera for my dad, too?” Puck asked the seasoned receptionist.
“Absolutely, honey.”
The lady in front of us at the check-out sort of smiled when she saw Puck ask me for “Monsters Inc.” on DVD. But then she seemed irritated that the dollar-off coupon for three bottles of sparkling white grape juice had expired yesterday. She returned the third bottle. People…
