Lydia Suarez

Extraction

The first tooth started to hurt the month after the wedding. By then, I was awash in laundry, regret, and unspoken plans how to escape and save face.

I wanted to be independent. We eloped. Our roach-ridden apartment had high ceilings, egg and dart molding and amber parquet floors. I decorated with books and seashells. I was nineteen, an only child, and a first generation Cuban-American.

My college grad position paid ten cents above minimum wage. The agency woman warned, “You better take it,” after I failed the timed typing test. At work, my fellow English majors honed witticisms, read newspapers, and penned novels. The most taxing part of government work was deciding where to eat lunch. I learned what dead-end job meant.

My husband’s family stopped speaking to us. When we ran off, first, second and third cousins had been deprived of criticizing our day before God and chicken cordon bleu at the obscenely expensive Villa d’Este catering hall. His mother visited once. She stormed out after I made a snarky comment about her all-too-close relationship with her son. My parents cried.

The dentist from 1-800-BIG-GRIN examined my mouth with bare fingers. I braced against the chair, picturing germs landing like marines at the shore. “All four wisdom teeth are impacted.”

“Only one hurts though,” I said.

“I can take it out for one-forty cash.”

“I’ll think about it.”

“You’ll be back,” he replied.

I raced out to find my husband. “Drive to Deckers.” I bought Anbesol, Listerine, and a large bottle of extra strength Tylenol. He idled.

How much could an invisible tooth hurt? It was Friday night. We went to the movies. I pretended not to feel pain and downed three pills every four hours. Sunday, when no place else was open, I was in the dirty office with the cash. Several shots later, my cheek was swollen into place with bloody gauze. He handed over a script with codeine, “Next time I’ll give you a discount for more than one.” After the pharmacy, I passed out for a few hours. I awakened itchy as a junkie with a throbbing gap and purple eye.

The next molar was diagonal to the first. “I advised your mother that nobody except an oral surgeon should have taken the last one out.” Dr. Powell pulled on lovely ecru gloves. “Count backwards,” he said. It cost five hundred dollars. He took checks. The one folded in my purse was embossed with my mother’s initials. I “borrowed” the money.

By then, I was divorced and living back home. When that pain began, my father told me waiting would only make it worse. “There’s no sense postponing the inevitable,” he had said.

Lydia Suarez works as a psychologist. She recently completed a first novel. She can be reached at sheepmon@comcast.net.