What had made David a good dentist — an excellent dentist, in his opinion — was his keen ability to sense weakness prior to its development. A patient would come in without tooth pain, talking about a football game, and be surprised to learn that a cavity needed to be drilled and filled. David would point to the darkening patches on the X-ray, still subtle even there, as if the damage was being viewed from under a rippling layer of fluid. A lesser dentist might not even be able to spot it. The patient would frown at the image but relent, knowing precisely as much as he did before but trusting David’s professional opinion. The patient might wince through the Xylocaine but would hold as still as a sleeping dog while the dentin was breached and burred, Dycal installed to obliterate the possibility of a return, a white resin filler approximating the shape and texture of a tooth so closely it made David wish for his patients’ sake that the entire procedure could be performed without their knowledge, that they could come in unknowing and leave unknowingly improved. It seemed a kindness to improve upon an individual without his knowledge. David didn’t understand why anyone might see otherwise, particularly not the dental board of Ohio, composed as it was of former dentists and medical administrators who had presumably once felt the same protective urge for their patients, a nurturing urge they might feel for their families.
36
DAVID once saw Franny apply five layers of makeup to her lips. She lined them first with a pencil and then applied lipstick, some kind of powder, lipstick again, and then another tube that also looked like lipstick but was perhaps not lipstick. He had tried to kiss her afterward but she held her hands over her mouth.
The salon’s facial treatment room was dimly lit. Scented oils in bottles lined the wall. The room smelled so strongly of Franny that David had to take a seat on the rolling chair beside the bed. It felt better to be sitting on the chair. The room didn’t spin so much as it rocked slightly, unevenly, a cradle guided by a distracted hand. David wondered if Aileen would notice if he put his face against the wall.
“Here’s where she spent most of the day,” Aileen said. “Extractions, peels, facial massages, oil treatments, waxing.” She laid down her scissors and counted off the list on her fingers. “She was the best in the local business, besides me.”
“Ha,” David said. He rolled backward on the chair, away from her and toward the wall.
“David, I’m so glad you came to see us today. I’ve wanted to talk to you ever since it happened. I have so many questions. Could you answer some of my questions?”
“I’ll try,” David said. He dispensed a small amount of lotion into his hand and rubbed his palms together. The lotion lathered, and he realized that it was soap. “I have some confusion,” he said. “It’s been difficult to sort things out.”
“Is it true that the police have been by the house?”
Tea candles were burning in misshapen sand-colored bowls. David rested his wrists on his knees, his soapy hands palms up. He put his forehead against the wall and then the side of his face. He closed his eyes. “They want to talk about what I know,” he said. “I’m always disappointing them. I don’t know anything.”
“You don’t know what happened at all?” she asked. “Where did you put your water?”
“Did you send some women from the salon to my home?”
“Some girls?”
“Some women, some girls. A group of them arrived a few days ago and said they had been sent to cut my hair. They were very kind and helpful. One of them cut my toenails.”
“Some girls,” Aileen said. She took a deep breath in and looked at the door. She was silent for long enough that he thought she hadn’t heard part of the question. “A group of girls. Yes, I sent over a group of girls from the salon. I thought it might make you feel better.”
“Thank you, it did.”
“I was worried you would find it too difficult.”
“Not at all,” he said. He wanted to rinse off his hands in the room’s sink but didn’t want to seem insensitive. “It was nice to see people, and they were such nice girls. I’d like to pay them for their services.”
Aileen waved off the suggestion. “Think nothing of it, David. It’s the least we can do to help. We’ve all been so worried about you, and so curious.”
“I understand that.”
“Frances was one of my closest friends.”
“I know.”
“It’s easy to be curious.”
“I know that.”
“I’ve gathered some of her personal effects.” She pulled a box out from under the treatment sink and handed it to David. “I thought you might like to have them.”
The box was closed and David wanted to keep it that way. He felt that opening the box would release Franny’s ghost, that life after the box had been opened would make a distinct shift to a new form, a sugar cube dissolving in a saucer of tea, a hair trimmed from a nose. The hair, the nose, each altered forever. Aileen was watching him with a slight frown. He tucked one finger under the cardboard edge and opened it up. It looked to be the contents of a locker. There was an empty folder, a half-crushed package of chips, eight dollars in crumpled bills. Her aesthetician license, featuring a photo booth — size Franny grimacing through makeup. A folded apron lined the box. David searched the apron pocket, thinking about the times his wife had put her hands there. He found a paper scrap that could have come from a fortune cookie:
TRY TO KISS ME. SEE WHAT HAPPENS TO YOUR LIPS.
Aileen was watching him. Her lips seemed to have been injected with a chemical designed to increase their volume. David had heard about this type of treatment from his wife. The chemical made her lips look smooth and unreal, as if she had thoughtlessly mouthed a piece of slick plastic until it fused to her skin. David thought of the clear plastic spreaders he put in his patients’ mouths before X-rays, how the piece curled their lips into animal grimaces. He thought of his own lips, which felt dry and seemed to be peeling off in ribbons, a ticker-tape parade on his face.
“If you ever need my help, you shouldn’t hesitate,” Aileen said through the protrusion on her face, handing him her card.
He accepted it with the threat fortune in his palm.
“Think of me as your listening ear,” she said. Her lips seemed more capable of listening than her ears, which were masked behind a perfect shelf of platinum dyed hair.
He thought of a wet slit in her lips opening to reveal an inner ear, prehensile, protected by the mass around it. Her lip’s inner ear would be prepared to listen in the precise way that inner ears are able to listen.
David stopped by the decorated waiting room before he left. Above the coffee station, a palm-size painting of a girl in a dress caught his attention. The girl’s dress was flounced and dotted with pink and black. She carried a tiny umbrella in her gloved hands and smiled in a compelling way that caused David to lean even closer to her face. He leaned very close.
She’s lying, the girl said.
“Well, yes.” The force of his whispered breath close to her pushed the curls back from the girl’s face.
It is time to go home. You won’t like what you find there. The girl rustled the umbrella, releasing crystal droplets. The drops sank into her dress where they landed. The girl’s lips were so tiny that they must have been painted on with a single brush bristle bound to a toothpick with a single hair.
David saw a corner of something sticking out between the frame and the wall. He shifted the box of Franny’s things to one arm and worked the paper out from behind the frame. The frame was delicate and shivered against his movements as he unstuck the paper. The page was a thin receipt from the frame shop, featuring Franny’s dark signature. David tucked it into the box and held it protectively against his stomach as he left.