States of Motion

by Laura Hulthen Thomas

  Jerrell cruised past reception to waylay the doctor. What a racket, orthodontics. In the midst of the downturn, Frank’s waiting room was filled with the young and their antsy parents sipping big-portioned coffees and tapping at their smartphones and tablets as if there wasn’t a damn recession going on everywhere but this office. The latest Disney looped on the play-nook’s television, the screen level with the formative jaws awaiting expansion. In the second waiting room—business was so robust Frank needed two holding chambers—an entire wall was papered with video-game screens. A legion of gamers sat cross-legged on the floor. Indian style, Jerrell still called the pose. The good doctor kept the volume muted and the games mild. Eerily silent hedgehogs nimbly scaled bushes and streams to the low buzz of orthodontic tools wafting from the adjustment room. The young, too, kept their silence. Responding to conditions, Jerrell supposed.

  The bank of screens sure did keep the kids calm for the painful adjustments awaiting them. Dr. Frank sure knew how to lash his clients right to the rails. The place was a far cry from the sepulcher office of Jerrell’s boyhood orthodontist. Dr. Cannon the man’s name, no joke. As humorless as his dull potted-fern waiting room, last year’s Reader’s Digest and Good Housekeeping the only stimulants. Hairy knuckles, a hard way with the appliances. Jerrell never much liked his mouth touched after Cannon. He never enjoyed necking, for instance. Another of Lydia’s complaints, but it wasn’t like he wouldn’t lock lips under the right mood and circumstance, and anyway a woman didn’t leave a man just over a mild aversion to kissing.

  “Excuse me, sir?” The receptionist’s lilt, an anticipated obstacle. The trick lay in figuring out which of the four young women behind the low counter was trying to detain him. Dr. Frank was actually hiring, then. On the last visit, a trio of beautiful grins had flashed Ruth as she shuffled past the play-nook, gums weeping.

  “I have an appointment.” A lie, but desperate measures for desperate times, plus, Christ, the man should return a phone call.

  A click of the computer mouse, a flash from the monitor, and the smile vanished. “I don’t see you on the calendar, Mr. Jerrell.”

  At least he was known. “Came up at the last minute.” Keep coming, keep coming. Jerrell took the corner, landed in the adjustment room. Every station filled. Dr. Frank was bent over a teenage girl tipped back in the examining chair. Soft brown hair cascaded from the vinyl headrest. Frank was still tanned from the summer, or else the man actually drove to Ann Arbor to crisp in a salon. Glossy black hair, the crown just turning nude. The perfect teeth flashed the girl like a headlamp. A man just shy of Jerrell’s age, whose childhood orthodontics had taken, all right. Not a picket out of alignment.

  “What do you call a bear with no teeth?” The man had his hands lodged inside the girl’s gaping mouth, so how was the kid supposed to guess? To the child’s obedient gurgle, ah-duh-no, Frank grinned. “A gummy bear!”

  Typical of the man’s cruelty to crack a joke about a candy forbidden on the Brace Watcher’s Diet. The kid winced under the pliers’ methodical twist. The assistant standing by smiled brightly as if her job depended on amiable play-along. Jerrell rubbed his jaw. His hand throbbed. The doctor caught his motion.

  “Jerrell.” Frank snapped off the blue latex gloves. “Is Ruth due for an adjustment?” The man’s straight-razor smile broadened. He glanced at Jerrell’s seeping hand, then over his shoulder, seeking his mother’s frail shuffle.

  “Have a word, Dr. Frank?” Jerrell planted his legs in the practiced crouch that signaled the need for a serious re-tooling of the project plan. “Just take a moment.”

  The receptionist hovered at his elbow, the grin bloodless and fierce. “Mr. Jerrell insisted,” she began.

  Dr. Frank shifted his gaze to Jerrell. “Jenny in accounts is free to assist you.”

  “I’d appreciate a private word. Just take a moment.” From the second waiting room, a triumphant gamer’s howl pierced the office’s low mechanical buzz.

  Frank nodded in a confidential way to the receptionist, who was already manhandling Jerrell’s elbow to deliver him to Jenny in accounts. “Be with you in a jiff, then.” Frank rolled his examining chair to the next gaping mouth in the queue. The young assistant manning that station stepped back respectfully. “How can you tell a happy motorcyclist?” Frank flashed his incisors at the tipped head bobbling no. The punch line ushered Jerrell into the accounts office. “By the number of bugs in his teeth!”

  Jenny in accounts, smile sheathed in clear plastic retainers, was firm on the refund policy, narrowly interpreted as no refund. She printed out terms of service on contracts Jerrell had signed and outstanding invoices Jerrell had ignored when Dr. Frank quit returning his calls. She called up his mother’s vivid diagnostic photo on her oversized monitor. The whole truth yawned at Jerrell. Livid, swollen gums cresting golden crowns, the hideous crowding a lurid accusation of Jerrell’s best intentions gone awry. The inkjet spit out Jerrell’s obligations in a monotonous hum. A drop of blood splattered the mahogany desk. Jenny offered him an antiseptic wipe.

  Behind Jenny’s sporty pigtail, cherry floor-to-ceiling shelves displayed Frank’s reference library, his degrees from schools both famed and obscure, family photos of his tanned, straight-toothed wife and sons. An examination chair stood in an alcove by the office’s only window, the chair’s headrest tipped down as if hosting a phantom patient. Outside, the traffic wove steadily down Michigan Avenue in the golden afternoon light. Tammy and Mr. Salisbury loitered outside the Gold Star vehicle, shivering near the meter as they sipped gallon-sized soft drinks. They must have killed time by walking down to Lucky Drugs. Tammy was pointing her straw at Mr. Salisbury. How do you know? Giving him the business. Good for her.

  Jenny stacked the sheaf of documents from the inkjet and pushed them across the desk as if settling the matter. Jerrell repeated the phrase he’d settled on as both firm and actionable. “My mother’s braces are detrimental to her health and welfare. I’d like to discontinue treatment.”

  “Dr. Frank will have to assess, but he is assisting other patients. We do recommend scheduling an appointment.” Jenny’s cheery emphasis skated the boundary of professional courtesy.

  “I’ve placed several calls.” Hard to tell whether Tammy’s posture had shifted from scolding to flirtatious. Mr. Salisbury’s expression had certainly lit up, or maybe the sun was in his eyes. Jerrell shifted his gaze back to his mother’s mouth. What wasn’t capped in gold was black, or crimson. Not so much a mouth as a craggy, forlorn cavern. Well, his gift to her now would be to get those braces off, let her die the way she’d been born.

  “I don’t see a record of those calls.”

  “I called Dr. Frank’s cell.” A number he’d discovered though sneaky back-channel means during Ruth’s last visit. Let Jenny hunt and peck for that record on her system.

  “If King Midas sat on gold, who sat on silver?” Frank breezed through the doorway. The man never quit the corny act for a second. Jerrell’s startled “I don’t know” was pure reflex.

  “The Lone Ranger!” Frank hovered over him. Grasped Jerrell’s good hand with glad-hand bravado. The man’s manicure gleamed like eggshell splinters. “A bit before your time there, Jerrell?”

  “Not real interested in who sat on whom today, Dr. Frank.” Jerrell curled his rough fingers into his palms. Winced when the punctures stretched and a warmth rose from the torn scabs. He pressed the antiseptic wipe to the top Band-Aid. “I’d like my mother’s treatment discontinued for reasons of her oral health and welfare.”

  “Team Frank’s on it, buddy.” Frank turned to Jenny. “How much time is left on Ruth Jerrell’s treatment plan, Jen?”

  “Six months, Dr. Frank.” Jen flashed her retainers at Jerrell.

  “What I mean by discontinue is that the brackets need to come out,” Jerrell clarified. “Now.”

  “Jenny has just reviewed the terms of your contract, champ.”

  “My mother has developed thrush. The braces are causing this
condition. Which has become acute.”

  Frank’s smile dipped. “Braces don’t cause thrush, buddy.” The man’s effusive gaze turned brittle. The doctor wasn’t sailing through the grim economy on the grin alone, then.

  “My research confirms that metal complicates the mouth’s environment, thusly leading to acute infections of my mother’s sort.”

  Frank indicated the documents on the desk. “At the time we agreed to treat your mother at her advanced age, we also agreed we would not be liable for any decline in treatment effectiveness. Jenny can go over that agreement with you.”

  “It’s part of the standard agreement,” Jenny pointed out. The retainers’ slight lisp promoted a smooth glide on the s sounds. “Regardless of the patient’s age.”

  “Since the decline is being caused by the braces, well, there’s your liability.” Jerrell gave Frank the hard stare right back. Posturing was also part of the standard agreement, the one between men playing chicken at the wheel. He decided against standing up to confront the man. Sometimes staying seated was the best tough guy move. Showed you didn’t need the physical advantage to prevail. “Which I can prove according to my research.”

  “No way the braces are causing the thrush, champ. But if you bring Ruth on in, we can put her to rights.”

  “My mother isn’t able to be transported at this juncture of her health and welfare.”

  “I’m not Marcus Welby, buddy. No house calls.”

  “You’ll have to make an exception. And I’ll expect a refund.”

  Dr. Frank was smiling again, the grin of a winner with a signed contract on his side. “The refund policy is clear.”

  “I’m willing to accept a prorated reimbursement.”

  “Jenny has reviewed that policy with you, champ.”

  Jerrell’s fists tightened on his lap. In fifteen years of construction work he’d only lost it once on a job site, so he wasn’t about to overreact with a pill like Frank. His record of keeping cool was one to take pride in, considering the caliber of the men involved in building trades. Hard workers, mostly, but rough around the edges and drinkers or worse, some of them. After cold-cocking an electrician, Jerrell had been let go on that particular job, a renovation and addition to Brecon Corners, the local mall well past its prime. The episode was decidedly not the reason for Jerrell’s chronic underemployment now, despite what Lydia claimed. The whole damn industry was in the shredder, and besides a woman didn’t leave a man just over showing a wise guy a thing or two for once.

  Jenny paper-clipped Jerrell’s documents with a silver clasp. Outside, Tammy and Mr. Salisbury moved to the vehicle, impatient to resume the lesson. “I want those fucking braces out. Tomorrow.”

  Because he was all worked up, Jerrell’s jaw was gaping a bit. Frank’s gaze settled on Jerrell’s mouth. “You know, Jerrell, I can fix that adult crowding for you.” The doctor was squinting at Jerrell’s lips in a way altogether inappropriate to a negotiation situation. “Jenny, pull the quote form.”

  “Not necessary, Jenny.” Jerrell didn’t mean for his tone to sound threatening. But Jenny hesitated. Looked to Frank for reassurance.

  “You ever have braces?” The doctor advanced a step. “Back in the Stone Age, before jaw expanders? Or were you noncompliant during the retainer phase, champ?”

  Jenny clacked away on the keyboard. Jerrell reoriented his position in the client chair to point his knees at Dr. Frank’s shins. The man’s brilliant smile flattened to a shrewd horizon. Strong arms, sculpted by years of unmerciful adjustments, crisscrossed at the chest. “I wore my retainer.” Jerrell relaxed his shoulders, loosened up to engage. “Twenty-four seven.”

  “Just kidding there.” Nothing about the steely copperhead stare looked like kidding around. “Wouldn’t have mattered whether you did or didn’t. Adult crowding was inevitable with the treatment available in your time. Especially with that narrow jaw. But I can put you to rights, same as your ma. Jenny, got that quote sheet handy?”

  Jenny ceased clacking. “I’ll get that from reception.” She shut the office door firmly on her way out. The adjustment room’s low buzz clipped to silence. The sun’s slanting angle cast an orange oval on the beige rug by the examining chair. The headrest’s dull shadow deepened like a lost patch of the night sky.

  Frank slid a hand into his jeans pocket, pulled out a pair of powder-blue latex gloves. “How about a quick exam right here, Jerrell? Just take a sec.” With Jerrell’s glance at the chair in the nook, Frank said, “Stay right where you are. Hell, I do these exams on busy housewives right in the Kroger aisle. Always carry my gloves.”

  Frank stepped forward. His knees brushed Jerrell’s shins. His gleaming manicure vanished, wiggling, into the glove’s blue casings. “Open up there for me, champ.”

  The office’s quiet, warm air turned clammy. A gliding sensation along Jerrell’s jaw tingled the nerves in his neck. A rage percolated. The windup was coming, like one of those spinning gyros Jerrell used to let loose with a string. He’d deck this asshole right in the pickets. He’d tear up the fucking contracts and wipe his mother’s ugly mouth from the screen. He’d put that electrician square in the hospital, and a part of him got off on it, just as he was about to get off on seeing Frank’s teeth skittle on the oak floor’s polish.

  Then the dry chalky latex was prying at his lips. Frank’s knee pressed his shin. The doctor cupped his narrow chin, probed his jawbone with his thumbs, caressed the old breaks that had never healed quite right as if he knew exactly where Jerrell still hurt. Jerrell closed his eyes, straightened his shoulders, tipped his head back dutifully. A rubbery odor filled the tight space between them. A pressure on his jaw’s socket, and Jerrell’s mouth popped open like an obedient cork. The latex pressed his tongue, penetrated his throat. He gagged, and the fingers withdrew, pressed the swollen gums at the back molars, ran along the crooked line of the canines and incisors. Another sharp pressure to his socket forced his head further back. He opened his eyes, expecting to see the white-tiled drop ceiling. But Frank’s mouth loomed close. His breath, musky-sweet, poured into Jerrell. A single filigreed wire glinted behind the perfect sentries of his bottom teeth. So that’s how Frank thwarted adult crowding.

  “Bite down, Jerrell.” Frank slipped his fingers free. Jerrell aligned his teeth. Frank rubbed the inside lip, massaged the receding gum line with gentle circular pressure. Released Jerrell’s jaw, snapped off the gloves. Saliva misted from the powder-blue latex.

  The door glided open. Jenny kicked a doorstop into place and handed Frank a quote sheet.

  “I can do the job for six big ones, Jerrell.” Frank took a pen from his shirt pocket. “Minus the family discount plus a little consideration for Ruth’s setback, that’ll run you just under five grand.” Frank leaned over the desk, scrawled the figures on the sheet, pushed the paper over to Jerrell. “Sign for your new smile with team Frank.”

  Jenny grinned. Her plastic retainers glistened behind her moist lips. “Oh Mr. Jerrell, getting fixed changed my whole life! You’d be such a looker if it weren’t for those teeth.”

  The latex taste curdled on Jerrell’s tongue. A real Sabrina, this Jenny, a wholesome mask on a cock-tease act. Not at all like his lovely straight-toothed Lydia who, for all her complaints about Jerrell, some of which he’d admit he deserved, never ever minded his bad teeth. He took the pen, signed fuck you in big script letters. “Schedule that, Miss.”

  Jenny backed away as if the heavy desk weren’t between them.

  “I’ll take that, Mister.” Dr. Frank slipped the quote sheet from Jerrell’s grasp, folded it in two, ripped it in half. No jagged edges, clean as a razor blade. Jerrell made for the door.

  “What promise did Adam and Eve make after they were kicked out of the Garden of Eden?” Frank called after him.

  Jerrell swiveled on his heel, tossed the hard stare. “You’re a real asshole, Frank.”

  Dr. Frank flashed the star-bright grin. “To turn over a new leaf, champ.”

  Jerrell
cruised into Lucky Drugs to snag Ruth’s Vernors. When he eased into the passenger seat, Mr. Salisbury’s skinny, leather-clad arms were already positioned at nine and three. The engine was humming, the rattle behind the glove box a soft, idle knock. The kids had tossed their empty cups and straws on the back seat’s floor mats.

  “Don’t appreciate the litter in my car.” The words, thick and sour, gelled in Jerrell’s throat. His cut was seeping again. He pulled a Kleenex from the soft pack he’d stashed in the door’s slot.

  “Sorry, Mr. Jerrell,” the student drivers said in unison. Friends now, were they? A few moments alone was all it took for the flirtation to begin. What had passed between them over Lucky Drug sodas and Jerrell’s long absence? They knew they should have returned to the Gold Star facility by now. What wonders did they share about him? Jerrell resisted the urge to glance back at Tammy, hands thrust in her lap, lovely green eyes alert to conditions. Such a glance would be searching in a way altogether inappropriate to an instructional situation.

  “Pull out when it’s safe to proceed.” Jerrell’s throat felt bruised, sore, and swollen as if he’d vomited. Something about that garroted sensation made Tammy’s presence unbearably arousing. All the more vexing since Jerrell’s moral outlook did not allow for even the hint of hunger for the young. Jerrell unscrewed the Vernors’s cap, tossed it into the cup holder. Took a big swig. Ginger flooded his mouth, a wretched chaser for the bitter latex. He hated Vernors. “Take a left up there at the Tastee Freez.”

  “You mean the Subway, Mr. Jerrell?” Mr. Salisbury eyed the soda as if he hadn’t already chugged his own liter of pop.

  “Well, it used to be the Tastee Freez.” Jerrell should know. Tastee Freez was what he got as a kid instead of Dairy Queen Brazier because the Tastee Freez cones were a nickel cheaper. Only that one time Ruth had treated him to a Dairy Queen, the summer he was learning to drive, his first step toward leaving this crappy town and never ever returning. In the air-conditioned Brazier he’d ordered a soft serve in a cup. The twisty flavor, chocolate and vanilla ribbons joined like a snake-charmer’s serpents. Nothing like the gritty Tastee Freez plain vanilla, ordered and eaten standing in the high hot sun at the cheap plywood stand, as if the Tastee Freez had been built from day one to be temporary. His jaw was wired after Ruth had fractured the mandible with one of her punches she referred to as exactly what he had coming for breaking her damn swans. For that entire summer, he couldn’t eat a single cone.