Nice teeth

One day a couple of years ago I was in my dentist’s office for my regularly scheduled six-month checkup and cleaning. My dental hygienist was away on maternity leave, so I had a substitute.

About 10 minutes into the cleaning – at the point when your mouth is full of sharp objects and vacuum cleaners and buzzy things and so on – the substitute hygienist asks casually, “So…do you know Pierre ___________?”

It was a name from the distant past. Pierre and I had kind of dated while living in the house on McLeod Street way back when I was a teenager. We never had sex because he was freaked out about me being a virgin. For some reason he thought that meant a whole lot of responsibility on his part. As for me, I guess we’ll never know if I would have gone for it if he had been willing. Maybe yes, maybe no. But we did spend quite a few nights talking until the sun came up – sometimes at home, sometimes in an all-night restaurant at Bank & Holmwood. I forget what that restaurant was called then but now it’s just a Pizza Pizza.

Back to the dentist chair and the sharp objects in my mouth.

“So…do you know Pierre ____________?”

I nodded.

“I thought so,” she said, “I married him.”

I opened my eyes wider and made a questioning type of grunt.

“He’s such an asshole,” she mused thoughtfully.

Our eyes locked.

“You know,” she said, “He was a cold, selfish prick. All he cared about was himself.”

I waited for her to go on. The scraper scraped, the hose sucked, the clock ticked.

“I asked him once,” she continued “If he had ever loved anyone in his whole entire life. And you know what he said?”

I shook my head no.

“He said ‘Yes. I loved Susan _______________’ ”

I stared at her. She stopped scraping and stared back.

“What a jerk,” she said, flipping her instrument over and digging under my gumline with it.

There was a long pause while she dug deeper, pausing occasionally to wipe her sharp object on her latex glove.

“So you can imagine how I felt,” she said at last, “When I got to work this morning and saw your name on my appointment list. I mean, it’s an unusual name. How many Susan ______________’s can there be? I figured it had to be you.”

I felt sweat beading on my forehead. Why couldn’t I have been Susan Smith? Susan Jones? Susan White? Why did he have to TELL her my name?

“Oh don’t worry,” she chuckled, “I’m over him. I’ve been over him for a long time. But it’s nice to finally meet you.”

I started to relax a bit, and smiled weakly to show good will.

 
“All these years I guess I thought you’d be something special,” she went on, “But you don’t seem all that special.”

The clock ticked.

“But you do have nice teeth,” she said, “I’ll give you that.”