back to attention. In fact, I actually sat up halfway. By some miracle, my giant swollen head which was now the size of Utah did not roll off its pitiful stalk of a neck. I summoned my most authoritative voice, the one I always used when all hell broke out in homeroom the morning before Christmas vacation.
“Listen up,” I said. “I’m not letting anybody near me with painkillers or anything that numbs. You want to give me an antibiotic, that’s fine. And tetanus is okay, too, but that’s it. And if it’s all right with you, I’d just as soon get cracking. I’m not about to miss trick-or-treat.”
Something new showed up in Dr. Kratz’s eyes, which was not easy to spot since she’d narrowed them to little slits. But I now felt confident of one thing: my jaw was going to sport the tidiest little stitches of her career.
“You got a radio around here?” My dentist lets me listen to it if he has to fill a cavity. The last time he’d used novocaine, I’d had facial paralysis for two months and I learned that a person with facial paralysis drools a lot.
But there was no radio. The next half hour was a blur of what the medical community refers to as discomfort. Joe held my hand through it all and dried my cheeks when they got damp. I will not admit to real tears because I was not crying. I believe it’s just one of those natural anatomical responses to somebody making a hem in your face—your eyes do tend to water.
The receptionist appeared briefly on some excuse, presumably because she’d never heard of anybody getting fourteen stitches without anything to kill the pain. I didn’t look at Joe during the procedure. His face, so full of misery, undermined my resolve, and I needed it all. So instead I stared at the part in Dr. Kratz’s hair, admired the coloring job and repeated to myself over and over: om, om.
8
I woke up just as we were crossing the Triborough Bridge. The sun was hanging out over New Jersey, and the Manhattan skyline was so crisply focused it made my eyes ache. The inside of my mouth felt like a subterranean cavern that was home to a million bats. I reached for the lemon lozenges in my bag. When I sat up, Joe was looking at me in the mirror. There were no smile lines now.
“How long did I sleep?” My jaw was throbbing. Talking didn’t help.
“About an hour. How do you feel?”
“Not bad.” Kind of like I went a few rounds with Mike Tyson and he bit my face off.
“I’ll pull over and you can come up here with me.”
“No. This is nice. I feel like I’m having a hot thing with the chauffeur.” Much too long of a speech. I’d have to learn to keep it clipped until I healed. Tasteless to crack wise anyhow, given that Joe was probably pretty fed up with me. “Are you fed up with me?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“What would you say?”
“I wonder why you insisted on climbing up there.”
My relationship with Joe up to now had been entirely unlike any other in my life. I thought back to our first meeting in the photography center, to the random or, who knows, destined reconnection at the Morgan Library, to our lovemaking suspended in sky and water. I made what I felt to be a brave decision, brave because it was difficult for me, far more difficult than enduring fourteen stitches without a painkiller.
“I was jealous of Lola Falcon.”
“What are you talking about?”
He had moved into the right-hand lane, where he could slow down and hear me more easily. Traffic was heavy moving south from the bridge, maybe bringing people into the city for Halloween revelries. “I saw the photo you took for her book jacket, in the mountains. I was trying to compete. Didn’t work out.”
Our eyes met in the rearview mirror and held for longer than was probably safe given the vehicular insanity on the FDR Drive. I could have sworn his eyes filmed over for a second before he looked away.
“Don’t ever do that, Anna,” he said.
“Okay.”
We didn’t talk again for a while.
“Listen up,” I said. “I’m not letting anybody near me with painkillers or anything that numbs. You want to give me an antibiotic, that’s fine. And tetanus is okay, too, but that’s it. And if it’s all right with you, I’d just as soon get cracking. I’m not about to miss trick-or-treat.”
Something new showed up in Dr. Kratz’s eyes, which was not easy to spot since she’d narrowed them to little slits. But I now felt confident of one thing: my jaw was going to sport the tidiest little stitches of her career.
“You got a radio around here?” My dentist lets me listen to it if he has to fill a cavity. The last time he’d used novocaine, I’d had facial paralysis for two months and I learned that a person with facial paralysis drools a lot.
But there was no radio. The next half hour was a blur of what the medical community refers to as discomfort. Joe held my hand through it all and dried my cheeks when they got damp. I will not admit to real tears because I was not crying. I believe it’s just one of those natural anatomical responses to somebody making a hem in your face—your eyes do tend to water.
The receptionist appeared briefly on some excuse, presumably because she’d never heard of anybody getting fourteen stitches without anything to kill the pain. I didn’t look at Joe during the procedure. His face, so full of misery, undermined my resolve, and I needed it all. So instead I stared at the part in Dr. Kratz’s hair, admired the coloring job and repeated to myself over and over: om, om.
8
I woke up just as we were crossing the Triborough Bridge. The sun was hanging out over New Jersey, and the Manhattan skyline was so crisply focused it made my eyes ache. The inside of my mouth felt like a subterranean cavern that was home to a million bats. I reached for the lemon lozenges in my bag. When I sat up, Joe was looking at me in the mirror. There were no smile lines now.
“How long did I sleep?” My jaw was throbbing. Talking didn’t help.
“About an hour. How do you feel?”
“Not bad.” Kind of like I went a few rounds with Mike Tyson and he bit my face off.
“I’ll pull over and you can come up here with me.”
“No. This is nice. I feel like I’m having a hot thing with the chauffeur.” Much too long of a speech. I’d have to learn to keep it clipped until I healed. Tasteless to crack wise anyhow, given that Joe was probably pretty fed up with me. “Are you fed up with me?”
“I wouldn’t say that.”
“What would you say?”
“I wonder why you insisted on climbing up there.”
My relationship with Joe up to now had been entirely unlike any other in my life. I thought back to our first meeting in the photography center, to the random or, who knows, destined reconnection at the Morgan Library, to our lovemaking suspended in sky and water. I made what I felt to be a brave decision, brave because it was difficult for me, far more difficult than enduring fourteen stitches without a painkiller.
“I was jealous of Lola Falcon.”
“What are you talking about?”
He had moved into the right-hand lane, where he could slow down and hear me more easily. Traffic was heavy moving south from the bridge, maybe bringing people into the city for Halloween revelries. “I saw the photo you took for her book jacket, in the mountains. I was trying to compete. Didn’t work out.”
Our eyes met in the rearview mirror and held for longer than was probably safe given the vehicular insanity on the FDR Drive. I could have sworn his eyes filmed over for a second before he looked away.
“Don’t ever do that, Anna,” he said.
“Okay.”
We didn’t talk again for a while.
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