Charlie needs braces, and it’s Esther’s fault. Richard clutches his briefcase to his chest and glares at his ex-wife, sitting next to him in the orthodontist’s office with her new baby. Not just braces, but the works---lip bumper, retainer, headgear, palate expander, whatever the hell that is. Ka-ching. Ka-ching. Who do you think’s going to end up paying for all of it? Who else but Yours Truly, Richard Moulton, the human checkbook.

His teeth are fine. Not perfect, but fine. Not that his parents could’ve afforded braces even if he had needed them. Esther’s the one who had a rich doctor father who gave her everything she wanted: braces, a 10-speed, a swimming pool, a car, a divorce. And now, her kid’s going to get costly orthodontic treatment, and it’s probably not going to cost her a dime. She’s the one who’s insisted that Charlie’s incessant thumb-sucking (the kid’s almost eight years old, for Christ’s sake) is no big deal when clearly---even the orthodontist agrees---it’s made the problem worse.

Esther’s new baby, a girl, is asleep in her arms. She said she couldn’t find a babysitter. Just looking at Esther in her overalls and messy hair, having to smell the lavender perfume she still apparently douses herself with, makes his suit feel too tight; violent urges seize him. She probably brought the baby along just to spite him. See what I have and you don’t? He wouldn’t put it past her.

Dr. Lipski. That was the name of her orthodontist.

Why the hell does he remember that? He shifts in his seat, the edge of his briefcase digs into his ribs. Big mistake, that meatball sub for lunch.

“Charlie’s got Class II Malloclusion, a cross-bite, and his mouth is extremely small,” Dr. Eagleton tells them. Gold cufflinks gleaming (why not just announce: I’M RICH!), he plunks plaster molds of Charlie’s teeth on the table. Crooked. Crowded. A mess. Richard is shocked. He didn’t realize they were that bad. His son has fangs? “You can see,” Eagleton says, touching a finger---a manicured finger---to the molds, “there isn’t nearly enough room for all his adult teeth. The teeth are trying to come in, but they’ve got no where to go and they’re pushing the others out of alignment.”

Dr. Lipski’s breath, Esther told him, always smelled like whiskey. Why are things he wants to forget, such as the name of his ex-wife’s alcoholic orthodontist, Super-glued to his brain when things he wants to remember refuse to stick? Like Deborah’s birthday---he’s still paying for that one. God, he wishes he could loosen his belt. What was he doing, eating that shit? Deborah would kill him, he’s got to fit into a tux in five and a half weeks.

“In a case like this we generally recommend expansion.”

“Expansion?” Esther asks. Her baby, eyes open now, is squirming. Dark hair, dark eyes, the baby looks exactly like Esther’s new husband. Wonder how much that little pink outfit cost? Richard thinks. Another boiling surge of blood at the thought of his child support check paying for it---and the infant seat on the floor and the car seat and the mini van she drives around in and the diapers and the formula---although probably, he realizes, she is nursing this baby, like she did Charlie.

“It’s the most effective procedure we have for guiding permanent teeth into a more normal relationship,” says Eagleton.

He reminds Richard of an eagle---swept-back white hair, big beak of a nose. Richard can’t get over the manicured fingers. The guy obviously knows how to live, capital L, knows how to order wine, where to vacation, how to buy stocks, all the things Richard wished he knew, which he probably would know if he’d had a father like that, versus one who couldn’t hold a job and lives on social security in a trailer park in Rochester, NH. You can bet Richard thought twice before taking Deborah to meet his father, and he prepared himself to be dumped afterwards. But she wanted to meet him before the wedding, she said. Daughter of a high-powered Chicago lawyer, Jewish, she’d never stepped a Joan & David pump into a mobile home. But she was was fine with it. Actually held a conversation with his Dad, a feat Richard’s never managed to accomplish, sat in the Naugahyde Laz-E-Boy and watched Coach reruns on the TV that makes everyone look like they have fifth-degree sunburns while his Dad hee-hawed along with the laugh track. He thinks she was fine with it. The frightening thing is, you never know really know what someone is thinking. Just like he thought Esther was happy in their marriage when it turns out she wasn’t. But Deborah was a good sport, just like she’s been a good sport with Charlie, helping him with homework, making his school lunches, being motherly.

Richard feels a surge of love and gratitude for her. What a jerk he was for forgetting her birthday. He’s glad he’s agreed to the big wedding she wants so much, bridesmaids, ushers, white limousines, fancy reception at the University Club, rabbi, huppa---he’s going along with all of it. He’s even going to wear a yarmulke.

Eagleton shows them a plastic and metal appliance bristling with wires. It looks, Richard thinks, like some evil torture device. “We insert the palate expander, here, in the roof of the mouth,” he says. “This widens the upper jaw, actually moves the bones, making space for the permanent teeth.”

“Doesn’t that hurt?” Esther asks. Her eyes, behind the unattractively thick lenses of her glasses, are bloodshot, Richard notices, black joy leaping in his heart. She must’ve been too tired to put in her contact lenses.

“Is it really --”they both start to ask.

“Necessary?”Esther finishes.

“Well, I don’t have a crystal ball,” Eagleton says, chuckling. Wonder how many times he’s used that line? Richard wonders. “So, it’s impossible to know for sure. But--” He picks up the scary-looking plaster teeth, making a show out of examining them, and suddenly Richard is struck with the suspicion that these aren’t really Charlie’s teeth. Maybe they’re some other kid’s, a severely bad case that Eagleton drags out for every single consultation. “But, certainly, if left untreated Charlie will have problems, problems that could go well beyond oral hygiene. I’m not saying that this will happen, but there are cases--and it’s not that rare--in which the roof of a person’s mouth moves up to block the air passages to the nose, making it difficult to breathe.”

“Oh, my God!” Esther says. She’s standing now, bouncing her baby, who is making whimpering sounds.

“Painful tongue sores are also common as well as digestion problems. Chewing is the first step in digestion, so if your child can’t chew his food properly, his digestive system becomes irritated. The potential result? A lifetime of stomach problems.” Eagleton shakes his head tragically.

Sweating, barricaded behind his briefcase--the thought of all the papers in it, all the work waiting for him back at the office makes him nauseous---Richard darts his eyes around the room, at the Halloween decorations, the posters---“A Healthy Smile = Healthy Self-Esteem!”--- and the Before & After photos. Sure, the kids do look better in the After photos, and if those molds are of Charlie’s teeth they are in pretty bad shape. But it’s going to cost a lot of fucking money, on top of what he already gives Esther every month. What if he put his foot down? Charlie can’t have braces. We can’t afford them. Sorry, sister! You didn’t want to be married to a boring lawyer, yet you want the financial benefits of being married to one. I never had braces, and I’m fine. Fine! So what if she accuses him of not caring or being a Bad Father.

But he is trapped and he knows it; he’s tied up and knotted into a straight-jacket, chained and padlocked. As much as he wants to hurt Esther, as much as he hates her and wants to make her miserable, and he really, really, really does, he can’t. He can’t, goddamnit! because. . . it always comes to this . . . to do that would hurt Charlie.

“Any questions?” Eagleton says.

“Yeah,” says Richard. He can’t wait to get in his car and loosen his belt, let out a huge fart. “How much is all this going to cost?”

Of course Esther is not sitting down reading the Orthodontic Services Payment Agreement, which Eagleton---obviously a pro at dealing with divorced parents---placed exactly between them on the table. Noooooo --- she is walking around bouncing her crying baby on her shoulder. What a coincidence that at the exact moment Eagleton produced the financial papers, the baby started to scream. As if she’d been pinched. Esther probably did pinch her, so she’d get out of the financial discussions, so he’d have to sign all the papers, so he’d be 100 percent responsible for the whole thing

The persons signing this agreement hereby, (jointly and severally, if more than one ) agree to pay --- Jaw clenched, Richard tries to read, but it’s impossible to concentrate. The Amount Financed above as follows: $3,500.

$3,500. And that’s just for Phase I.

“How many phases are there?’ Richard asks.

“That depends,” says Eagleton placidly. “Each case is different.”

… as the initial payment and equally…

Richard stares at the document, seeing the words but not seeing them. The crying rips into his skull, tearing at his insides. How can such a small thing make so much fucking noise? When Charlie was a baby and they couldn’t get him to stop crying, Richard remembers how for the first time he truly understood the saying, Silence is Golden. Esther bounces the baby harder, pats its back. Its face is contorted, red. Richard has never seen Esther’s new husband cry of course but now thinks he knows what he’d look like. Why do girls look like their dads and sons like their mothers? Charlie is a carbon copy of Esther---so Richard can’t even get away from her when he’s away from her.

His eyes drill into the document on the table. But he’s being sucked into a screaming black wind tunnel. In his mind he grips the table edge with his fingertips, his hair blows backwards off his head. And then suddenly, under the wails, Richard hears humming. He stiffens. He recognizes the tune---a song she made up for Charlie. She used to sing it to him every night. Mommy Loves You, Daddy Loves You, You’re Their Very Best Boy. Together they’d sit on Charlie’s bed, he and Esther, while Charlie, in his pj’s, his hair damp from his bath, gazed up at them with gleaming, love-filled eyes. After Esther left, Richard tried to sing the song to his son, but Charlie would just shake his little head, No! No! No!

… each with the first payment due… Esther, humming louder, holds the squirming, screaming baby on her shoulder, fumbles inside the diaper bag (he probably paid for that, too) and fishes out a pacifier. She struggles to get it into the baby’s mouth. Richard, pretending to read, watches all this out of the side of his eye. The pacifier clatters to the floor under his chair. The baby cries louder. Richard picks up the pacifier and hands it to Esther.

“Thanks.”

The damn baby spits out the pacifier again. Again, it lands near Richard’s feet, but this time he pretends not to see it even though it means that Esther will have to bend down and get it and will no doubt notice his expensive shoes and he’ll have to hear about that, like he hears about his Saab 900 turbo and his house with the pool.

Esther retrieves the pacifier, but instead of trying to give it to the baby again she sighs and sits down. There’s the scent of lavender and something he can’t identify but that makes his stomach fold over on itself. Through his eyelashes he sees the baby laying across her lap. Small pink-socked feet kick furiously, nearly touching Richard’s leg. He jerks away. His jaw tight, still hugging his briefcase, he continues to read, If any installment is not paid, the holder of this agreement may accelerate and declare immediately due and payable . . . and then he hears. . . clink ,an overall strap unfastening. . . . the full unpaid . . . ...the full unpaid. . . Her arm, the one nearest him, reaches up inside her shirt . .. immediately due and payable . . . There’s the quiet snap of (he remembers the sound) a nursing bra. . . . unpaid. . . One hand lifts up her shirt, the other maneuvers the baby’s head upward. Her shirt lifts, lifts and Richard sees, he sees . . . her breast.

Esther’s breast.

Just a glimpse. He didn’t mean to. He couldn’t help it. She was two inches away, for Christ’s sake!

And then it’s quiet. The little socks go limp. Esther leans forward to read the payment agreement; with her free hand she adjusts the paper slightly so she can see it better. Golden, golden silence. Except, inside him, car alarms are going off.

She’s doing this on purpose. He’s not stupid. So he will feel sorry for her and offer to pay for all of the orthodontic work.

Plump.

Heavy.

Soft.

Her breasts, when she was nursing Charlie, must have looked like that. Why doesn’t he remember? Where was he? A faint memory surfaces of her complaining of soreness.

Christ, he was so scared all the time then. First it was being a law student (“Look around at the person on either side of you. One of you won’t make it past the the first year.”) Then as a junior associate at the big corporate law firm,where he’s now a partner, the pressure on him to perform, which she never understood. The long hours, the traveling, the pressure from her when he got home, to talk, to help, to spend time with Charlie. She had no clue what it was like for him.

Still, her breasts must have looked like that, beautiful, and he hadn’t noticed.

Esther----this comes as a surprise----actually signs the financial contract, agreeing to split the costs of Charlie’s orthodontia. How’s she going to manage that? Richard wonders, watching her buckle the baby, now sleeping, into the infant seat. She makes hardly any money and her husband, some kind of artist, doesn’t exactly rake it in.

He watches as Esther jams the documents into her purse, which he can see is already stuffed with papers; she’ll probably lose them, that’s how she’ll get out of paying for it. Richard carefully folds the payment agreement, lining up the edges, matching the corners, the way he folds laundry, which, Deborah, for one, appreciates. His ex-wife struggles into her raincoat, grabs her purse and diaper bag. She hoists up the infant seat--- it’s heavy and awkward, Richard can see that, but he’s not about to say, Here let me give you a hand. Let me help you carry the baby you’ve had with another man. When she was pregnant with this baby and he had to see her twice a week when he was dropping off or picking up Charlie, he never, faced with her steadily swelling belly, never acknowledged it. Aimed his eyes anywhere else, her neck, collar-bone, the middle of her forehead.

He’s not feeling so good. When he stands up, he has to hold on the chair for a second. His briefcase, dangling at his side, feels incredibly heavy.

“Bye.” Esther rushes out. In a hurry, late for something, probably, she’s always late.

“Bye.”

Relieved to be alone, Richard heaves his briefcase onto the table and opens it. His hands shaking---what the hell is wrong with him?--- he places the papers inside, arranges them neatly. He’s about to close the lid when something on the floor catches his eye. White, round, it looks like a yarmulke, like the one he’s going to wear at his wedding. For a crazy second he thinks it is a yarmulke, it’s fallen out of his briefcase. He bends down. It’s soft and. . . slightly damp. Flames race in red-hot panic up the length of his arm and into his brain. Jesus Christ! It’s a nursing pad. Her nursing pad! DROP IT! he police bullhorn in his brain blares orders. DROP IT! NOW!

“Well?” Deborah says when he walks in the door. She’s on high alert. She knows he’s been with Esther today. Pen in hand, she sits on the new plaid sofa, which is flanked by matching end tables and matching lamps. He likes things that match. He likes order.

Deborah’s dark gypsy eyes watch him---she’s jealous of Esther, no matter how many times he tells her she’s being ridiculous. She twirls her pen like a miniature cheerleader baton. Was she ever a cheerleader? He doesn’t know. How can he not know this about the woman he’s about to marry? She’s been busy addressing wedding invitations. There’s a six-inch-high stack of them on the coffee table. Her fingers, long, slender, polished, womanly, slay him.

With Esther he never knew what to expect when he got home, what her mood would be, what condition the house would be in, who would be there. She’d have been doing a project with Charlie and all over the floor would be beads or Play-doh that stuck to bottom of his shoes. Or she’d have impulsively decided to re-do the kitchen---without consulting him---and had started yanking wallpaper off the walls. Or she would start crying, for no reason. Once he came home to find her entertaining the town crazy lady, who lived next door. Miss McNab, with her secretive cat face and matted hair, zipped into her fifteen grimy parkas, was sitting at their kitchen table, a tea cup in her hand. She aimed her gummy eyes at him when he came in. “The next time you make a bowel movement don’t do it in the street!”

He drops into a chair.

“Well?” Deborah says, again.

A part of him wants to tell his soon-to-be wife about seeing his ex-wife’s breast. Hey, he could do it in a critical way as another example, not that they need one, of how manipulative Esther is. Then together they could attack her, gnawing away like two dogs on the same chew toy.

It’s risky, though.

She lifted her shirt up in front of you? And you looked?

No, he better not.

“It looks like he definitely needs braces.”

Deborah’s eyebrows go up a few floors. “Uh, huh.” As if orthodontia is just another of Esther’s ploys to squeeze more money out of him---out of them. And suddenly Richard is annoyed at the way she is wearing slippers over her panty hose. He’s annoyed at the slippers themselves.

“No. Seriously. His teeth are really bad.” He leans forward to untie his shoes. “We saw molds.”

“That’s not what I meant.”

He knows this. “And it looks like Esther’s agreed to pay half.” He struggles with a knot.

Deborah returns to addressing envelopes. He can see the part in her hair and the lines of frosted blond in the dark. She mumbles something.

“What?”

“She’s broken promises before.”

Richard’s hand freezes. “Do you smell gas?”

“No.”

“I smell gas.”

He jumps up, panic flaring in his chest. He hurries into the kitchen, sniffing, his eyes skittering around. Last week a house in Cranston exploded. The people came home to find fire engines and their home a smoldering pile of sticks. No one knows how it happened. He puts his nose to each of the stove burners and sniffs. He gets down on his knees and sticks his head in the cold oven. He breathes in. Nothing. That’s a relief. Wait. There’s a faint smell. Richard is not mechanical, he was not one of those boys who took things apart and put them back together. He has no idea how things work.

“I’m going to check in the basement!” he calls out. Down in the musty darkness he has to swing his arm around like a blind man before finding the string to the light switch. The fat, ancient, asbestos-wrapped furnace glows in the gloom. Next to it stands the water heater, tall and thin. The water heater’s fairly new--at least, that’s what the realtor said, but then again she also said the basement wouldn’t flood---and people think lawyers are liars--- and the furnace looks peaceful, sort of Buddha-like, but it could be a time bomb. What does he know? Richard breathes in deeply, staring warily at the appliances. He smells nothing, until the very end of his inhalation, and then maybe catches a scrap of a scent of gas. So he breathes in again. Again. And again. At this point, he could be so used to the smell he doesn’t smell it anymore. Any second there could be an explosion. If he’s down here when it happens he’s dead for sure. He’s sweating all of a sudden, his heart slamming. He feels tingling in his fingertips. Jesus Christ, he’s hyperventilating! He tries to calm down, tries to to suck air into his lungs. But he can’t. Not only that, now he’s lightheaded. He remembers that Esther, when she was giving birth to Charlie, started to hyperventilate and the nurses gave her a paper bag to breathe into.

He sits on the floor, his back against the dryer, the small brown bag that until a second ago held screws and washers crinkles as he breathes in and out. In and out. His eyes roam the basement, Boxes of books from his graduate school days, neatly labeled plastic containers, patio furniture.

A shadow falls on the stairs. “Ricky?” Deborah calls down. “Is everything all right?”

He moves the bag away from his mouth. “Be right up,” he gasps out. When Esther was pregnant, he remembers, her sense of smell went haywire. She smelled things that weren’t there, like licorice and burned toast and dog shit. Olfactory hallucinations. Is that what’s happening? Now it’s not the odor of gas that’s making him weak, it’s the sour sweet smell of breast milk.

Richard is in the bathroom shaving when Deborah appears in the steamy mirror. She leans against the doorway in her bathrobe, hair twisted up into a towel turban. She looks queenly in the turban, and he feels himself get hard underneath the towel. Really, he is so damn fortunate to have found her. He has to be in early today, but maybe there’s enough time to---

“What’s this?” Deborah asks, holding something, something white, daintily between two fingers.

“What?” He knows exactly what it is, and his insides drop like a freight elevator.

“This.” She holds it higher. Waggles it.

“I have no idea.”

“Really? That’s interesting because I found it in your briefcase.”

Richard places the blade against his neck. One neat slice, that’s all it would take.

“What were you doing in my briefcase?” he can’t help saying.

“I was looking for a pen.”

“Did you find one?” Richard imagines himself sprawled on the floor, blood geyersing from his neck.

“No. But I found a nursing pad.”

“Huh.” Blood is everywhere, and Deborah is on her knees, her beautiful hands pressed to his neck trying desperately to stop the gushing blood. Help! she calls out. Oh, Richard I’ll forgive you, I’ll do anything, just don’t die!!

“Let’s see,” she says. “Who do we know who is nursing a baby?” Each word like an icicle, frosty, pointed.

Richard, quiet, keeps shaving, pretending he is what he was a few minutes ago: a man lucky enough to have a second chance in life, a man engaged to a woman with a beautiful hands, a man going through his regular morning routine.

“Who do we know who is nursing a baby?” Her voice puddling.

He doesn’t answer.

“I’ll tell you who. Your ex-wife.”

Richard, clutching the slipping towel--this is not the time to be naked-- turns to face her, but he has no idea, no idea at all, what to say.

“Is this Esther’s?” She sticks the pad in his face. It gives off only a faint smell now.

“Deb--”

“Is this Esther’s?”

“Yes.” She flings the pad like a frisbee and runs into the bedroom. Richard follows her. “Deborah.” He reaches for her. She shakes him off.

“I knew you looked strange when you came home that day.”

“Deborah, I can-”

“Don’t even bother!” She yanks open a drawer and the perfume bottles on the dresser top wobble.

“Listen, please. We were at the orthodontist’s office and her baby started crying.”

“She brought the baby?” She grabs an armful of clothes

“She couldn’t find a babysitter.”

“Sure,” she says.

“The baby was screaming its head off,” he explains, thinking it is clever of him to refer to the baby as “it.” “And we couldn’t hear what the orthodontist was saying.”

Deborah looks at him. The “we” was a mistake. Now he’s back to square one.

“It was really getting on my nerves,” he adds. “It wouldn’t stop. It was hungry, I guess, so she. . . had to feed it.”

“She had to.”

“Well. . .yeah.”

“So. “ She turns to face him, her turban is crooked. Her features are large, sort of masculine, and in some moments, like this one, she is not beautiful. “She lifted up her shirt in front of you?”

“She couldn’t exactly not lift up her shirt.”

“Well, I wouldn’t know.” She reaches into her closet and plucks high heels from her shoe bag.

“That’s it.”

“That’s it?” She throws the shoes into a suitcase.

“Yup.”

She glares at him.

“Oh,” he says. His grip on the towel is sweaty. “Well, when I got up to leave---she was already gone--- I noticed it, the pad, on the floor. At first I thought--” No, better not mention that he thought it was a yarmulke. “I was going to throw it away, you know, but I didn’t see a trash can. So, I just-”

“Put it in your briefcase?”

Shit. He should have mentioned the yarmulke. But now it’s too late, now she’d think he was lying.

“And then I forgot about it.”

“For a week?”

“I’ll throw it out now. Will that make you feel better?”

“Whatever. It doesn’t matter.” Her calm tone turns his heart into an ice bucket.

“I’ll throw it out. I’ll flush it down the toilet. I’ll burn it!”

It’s Sunday night and Richard’s hand is halfway down his son’s throat. The expander that the orthodontist installed two days ago in the roof of Charlie’s mouth comes with a little key, the size of a paper clip. Two keys, actually---one for Richard and one for Esther. Every other day one of them is supposed to fit the key into a hole in the center of the contraption and turn it a notch. This is supposed to move the bones in Charlie’s upper jaw little by little, widening his palate to make room for his permanent teeth. It’s supposed to be easy; it’s supposed to be a snap, except Richard can’t do it. The hole is too small. His hand is too big. Charlie won’t stop fidgeting.

He’s been putting this off all weekend. It’s been just the two of them.

When Charlie asked where Deborah was, Richard said she was visiting her sister in Boston.

He did not tell Charlie that she was staying at the Biltmore, had been at the Biltmore since the nursing pad incident, five days ago.

“You’re still in love with her,” she’d said, climbing behind the wheel of her car. She said it matter-of-factly, as if she were pointing out that he had tomato sauce on his tie

“What are you talking about?” he protested. “I hate her. I hate her!”

Deborah won’t return his calls. He’s even gone to the Biltmore and knocked ---O.K. pounded--- on her door, Room 346. “Deborah. Deborah!” He knew she was inside---he could hear her exercise tape--- but she didn’t answer.

“Open wider,” Richard orders Charlie. He looks into his son’s mouth. That is, he tries to, but it’s impossible to see around his hand. With the point of the tiny key, which he holds between his thumb and index finger, he feels for the hole. Tap. Tap. No, that’s plastic. The hole is in the middle section, which is metal. Tap. There. That feels like metal, that feels like a hole. He pushes. The key doesn’t slide in the way its supposed to, so Richard pushes harder. The key slips and Richard feels the point pierce soft flesh. Charlie screams and jerks away.

“Shit!” Richard says. “Oh, God. I’m sorry, Buddy.”

Charlie’s eyes swim with tears. He’s so pale and skinny. Would he be so pale and skinny, Richard wonders, if he and Esther had stayed together? Richard hugs him, his heart pounding with fury.

The minute he drops Charlie off at Esther’s, which he was supposed to do ten minutes ago, Charlie will probably tell her how Richard stabbed him in the back of the throat and that he said the “S” word. Shit! Richard says again, to himself. He’s furious with Esther---for giving Charlie her crappy crooked teeth genes, for not cracking down on his thumb-sucking, for reproving Richard for swearing in front of Charlie, which of course she will do. Like, she’s never sworn in front of the kid!

“You O.K?” Richard examines his son’s face.

Charlie nods.

“O.K. We better get going. We’re late. Get your stuff.”

He rings Esther’s door bell. Halloween was two weeks ago, but her house is still decorated. Rubber bats dangle from the porch ceiling. Wisps of store-bought cobwebs flail around in the cold wind. At his feet there’s a rotting pumpkin.

Impatiently he rings the bell again. He’s cold and just wants to drop off Charlie, go home, have a scotch, watch football, and tune out the messages on the answering machine from the caterer and the florist and the RSVPs that have been arriving in the mailbox, two or three a day. He’s not even going to try to call Deborah. Fuck her, he thinks. He looks around. The houses are so close together here, compared to his neighborhood. He knows Esther felt isolated when they lived in the suburbs. No wonder she had tea with Miss McNab, he suddenly thinks. And then Esther answers the door, wearing--he can’t believe his eyes---an apron. A white apron with stains all over it.

“Hi, Honey,” she says to Charlie, opening the door.

Charlie rushes into her arms. Mom, Dad stabbed me in the throat with the key! Richard expects him to say, and he braces himself to be yelled at. But Charlie says nothing

“What’s wrong?” Esther says

Charlie says nothing.

“I stabbed him in the throat trying to get the damn key thing to work,” Richard volunteers.

She looks at him over Charlie’s head. “They showed me how to do it at the orthodontist’s office.”

“And your point is?” Richard says, batting away a cobweb strand. The smell of moldy pumpkin fills his nose. The point, obviously, is that she, not him, took Charlie to the orthodontist, that she, not him, is the good parent. He’s supposed to have a job that makes enough money to support two households and that also lets him get out in the middle of the day to take kids to dentist appointments!

“Want to come in? I’ll show you how. I haven’t done it yet, but it looks easy.”

That’s the last, the very last, thing he wants to do. He practically kills himself going up the stairs. Soccer cleats. Bike helmets. Piles of unopened mail, bills probably. But, he thinks, you can bet she rips open his child support check the second it slides through the mail slot. Some kind of bad, burning smell is coming from the kitchen.

“I’ve got to make this quick,” he says.

The three of them crowd into a ridiculously small bathroom---it apparently was once a closet---Esther armed with a high-powered flashlight. The bathroom smells like piss and is painted red---red!---which only makes it feel more claustrophobic. The paint splotches on the ceiling and the light switch tell him that Esther painted it herself. How does her new husband stand it? She hands Richard the flashlight.

“Okay, put your head back,” she tells Charlie. “And open your mouth really wide.”

Richard shines the light into Charlie’s mouth and he and Esther peer in. The beam of light illuminates the plastic and metal device. God, it must hurt. And, how’s the kid going to eat? All weekend, all he’s been able to manage are milkshakes. Richard can’t believe a thing this awful even exists, let alone that he has allowed it in his son’s mouth. It wasn’t my idea, he wants to tell Charlie. He wants to yank the thing out and stomp it to pieces. Behind the contraption is the roof of Charlie’s mouth and his throat, pink and glistening, veined, like a heart.

“Okay, I think I see the hole,” Esther says, reaching in.

Charlie stands absolutely still, not complaining, his head cocked back, his mouth open wide. He is in a small room with both of his parents. He’ll stand like this forever, Richard thinks, quiet and still, if it means they all can be together.

“I think I’ve got it,” Esther says.

Her face is inches away from Richard’s, their arms touch. He’d like to pull away, but he has to hold the flashlight. He hasn’t been this close to her in years, he’s done his best to avoid this moment. He takes in the mole on her cheek, the hairs sprouting unattractively from it, her small ear with the simple gold earring, the new faint lines around her eyes. He takes in all these details as if they will add up to something, give him an answer to the question he’s kept himself from asking.

“Can you please hold the light steady?” she says.

“I’m trying.”

“It’s not going in.”

“That’s what happened when I tried,” Richard says. So she’s not perfect, either.

“Jesus.”

“Let me try again.”

This time Esther holds the flashlight. Richard, pinching the tiny key in his fingers, looks into his son’s mouth. But he doesn’t see anything. He’s distracted by the warmth of her arm against his, her breasts pushing against the front of her apron, heavy and full, the smell of her, the sour sweet smell of breast milk and her hair and lavender and piss and their son’s breath and the pulsing red walls and still their arms touch, just him and her and the child they made together. How did he lose this? How did he lose her?

“Do you see the hole?” Esther asks.

“Yeah.” It’s right there, in the center of the metal divider. “I see it.” He slides the key in

“Now push down on it,” Esther orders. “Are you pushing down?”

“I’m trying.”

“It’s supposed to go down easily.”

“Well it’s not.”

“Let me try again.”

Somewhere in the house her baby cries.

Wait. I’ve got it. There!”

“Ouch!” Charlie cries. He pulls away, angry and surprised. “It hurts!”

Charlie glares at them, innocent eyes swimming in tears. Tell me again, Richard thinks, why do we have to do this? He feels it as if it’s in his own mouth, his chest, the bones stretching, an ache, unnatural, wrong. He reaches to hug his son, but Charlie turns and runs from the room. They hear his feet thump up the stairs.

Richard, breathing hard, stands there, unable to move, the sink digging into his back, the terrible key still in his fingers. Esther drops down on the toilet seat, face in her hands.

“I hate this,” Her voice is muffled.

She does? He takes in her bowed head, the back of her neck, pale, exposed. Somewhere upstairs a door slams. The baby cries louder

§ § §

Barbara Lucy Stevens is an award-winning journalist and fiction writer. She teaches writing at Rhode Island College and lives in Providence, Rhode Island with her husband and four children.

This piece was first published in Special Edition INK POT - 2004, a literary journal.

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