Teeth – a Story

I’m posting a story for Easter.  It’s about a kind of rebirth.  The heroine, Miss Agnes, is old but tough.  Oh, and Latin students will recognize her name.  I really like Miss Agnes.

TEETH

“Ain’t that something,” mutters Miss Agnes Day insincerely, her words as ever puncutuated by the clicks of her dentures slipping and sliding over the banana skins of her gums. She leans closer, the better to peer through her spectacles.

The object of her inspection lies glistening among the mounds of Mrs. Harriet Starchuck’s palm: a bright bubblegum-pink mass ornamented with ovals of ivory. As Miss Agnes moves her head to bring the form into focus, it resolves into a tiny, finely-modeled human gum, studded like a brooch with tiny human teeth.

“Isn’t it just,” responds Mrs. Starchuck, insouciance swelling her voice. “My granddaughter just sent it to me. She’s been saving little Terri Lee’s baby teeth right along, buying them off the Tooth Fairy for a dollar apiece. Then she made the plate out of Play-Doh and baked it. Makes a lovely souvenir of Terri Lee’s childhood.”

Miss Agnes looks even closer. “That’s an upper. Ain’t it?”

“Why, yeass. She sent the lower plate to Wallace’s mother. I got the complete set. Terri Lee lost one of her lower ones while she was chewing on a caramel. She thought it was a nut and ate it.”

“Looks almost real.” Miss Agnes’s voice registers such doubt, such distaste that Mrs. Starchuck looks up in a start of suspicion, but the ancient blue eyes glitter at the artifact as coldly and impersonally as stars. “They probably fit better than mine do.” She does not smile as she adds this, but only glares more severely at Mrs. Starchuck’s treasure.

At ninety-seven, Miss Agnes is the oldest resident of Sunset Acres, and as such her approbation is worth something, although – like the dollar – less now than formerly. She came here a state-supported pauper long before Mrs. Starchuck or any other current resident – even before the Director, who won her along with the institution itself when he took its helm nearly fifteen years ago, and to whom she has long been something of a non-profit albatross about the neck. (His solution has been simply to listen to her attentively, and then forget whatever she has said as soon as she is out of his sight.)

Somehow she is different from the others, a lamb as it were among old goats. Alone, she remembers a time when age brought with it not only gray hairs and wrinkles and empty gums, but also welcome measures of respect and obligation. Most of the other residents (among whom Mrs. Starchuck – a recent arrival – is beginning to wield a heavy club of influence) worship at the altar of youth, faithfully attending the sherry hours and the disco dances, tricked out in Bermuda shorts and Clairol rinses. Not a month ago, one of the men appeared for dinner in a wavy blond wig. Everyone cheered him. Miss Agnes wants none of this, none of them, really; yet one by one they come to her, almost on the sly, seeking her out for advice and approval.

Now Mrs. Starchuck mistrusts the score. It is hard to tell how Miss Agnes is presently reacting to Terri Lee’s teeth. In any case Mrs. Starchuck has no desire to press her to her limits, and so decides to call it a draw.

“Well, yeass. Have a nice day, Miss Agnes. See you at the Ball tonight.” She waddles away to exhibit her prize further, secure in the knowledge that Miss Agnes has at least found no fault with it, the old bat.

Malevolently Miss Agnes watches her departure. The morning-room is starting to empty anyhow, as the veteran card-players and afgan-hookers shuffle into the corridor toward the cafeteria and luncheon. Today something is afoot. An undercurrent of electricity charges their rickety bodies: the women gabble among themselves and the men nudge one another, softly laughing.

Now a tanned man about forty-five, wearing a green blazer and canary-yellow trousers, enters the room, beating against the departing antiquity. He wears the expression of a missionary working among simple natives to convert them to some true faith or other. Miss Agnes thinks he looks like a race-tout.

“Ah, dear lady. You’re simply the picture of health today. Have you seen either Mr. Connors or Mrs. Starchuck?”

“Ain’t seen him. She just took her new teeth in to dinner.”

“Ah. They’re heading up the Decoration Committee, you know. I wanted to ask them how the Ball is shaping up. And, by the bye, will we be seeing you there this evening?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. I’m too old for that foolishness.”

He starts to turn away. “Oh Miss Agnes. You’re never too old for Mardi Gras.”

She will not be mollified, and there is something else on her mind. “Director.” It is always thus that she addresses him, he who would so much prefer to be called Carl, or at least Dr. Blaine.

“Yes?”

“I want to see the dentist. I need new teeth.”

“Of course, Miss Agnes. Of course.” And he is gone, utterly. All that remains is the sweet scent of his Brut.

Although she often eats with the others in the Acres’ cafeteria, today Miss Agnes has decided to take the noon meal in her room. Through the morning-room door and along the linoleum corridor she steps smartly, slight and thin and venerable as the wind. Once inside her room she closes the door and seats herself in front of a laid table that someone has wheeled in. She lifts the aluminum dish cover to confront with a grimace her repast: mashed potatoes, peas, a sprig of parsley, and a broiled chicken breast. With wide shakes of pepper she blackens it all, especially the potatoes, and then cuts off a tentative first forkful of chicken. As her teeth close on it, they clack together like castanets.

She stands up. Her face reveals not so much shame as anger and disgust as she goes to the door and props a chair against it. (Residents of the Acres cannot lock their doors.) Turning to a small washbasin in the corner of the room, she draws a glass of water. She closes the blinds. Only then does she remove her teeth from her mouth, placing them into the water, finally resuming her attack – now somewhat blunted – on the food before her.

Afterwards she gazes sourly over her orts: most of the chicken, all of the parsley, none of the peas and potatoes. She has always had a good appetite, thank the stars, and a good digestion. “Just them teeth,” she sighs aloud, plucking them from the glass and thrusting them once more upon her shrunken gums.

In the afternoon the morning’s mood intensifies, the Acres grown breathless and quick as its inhabitants bumble and mutter among themselves with gathering excitement. Miss Agnes feels like a wood chip in a torrent when she steps out into the corridors. Little eddies of residents whirl about her, bubbling in confabulation.

“Verna’s oldest daughter sent her a new gown. It’s just beautiful.”

“You got yourself a date tonight, Buddy?”

“They’re electing a King and a Queen, you know, dearie. I’m voting for that cute Jack Winslow.”

“Me and some of the boys are getting up a little pool on the Queen contest. You interested?”

Through it all Miss Agnes walks regally, remote and tight-lipped, until she comes to the television room. It is almost one-thirty, and she would no sooner miss her afternoon serials than she would pass up the opportunity to set straight an erring resident. However, even today the sanctity of the television room is not proof against pre-Ball hysteria. Mrs. Starchuck and several of her committee members have gathered here to take final count of their decorations, and for the first time in recent memory at twenty-five past one on a weekday afternoon, the set is not on. The screen sits blank and blind, ignored by all of them save now of course Miss Agnes – who without a nod cuts past the others to pick up the remote.

Mrs. Starchuck talks on, oblivious: “ – a real cute floral display. And flowers on every table. We can thank Mickey Connors for them. His son manages a Marshall’s and he arranged to lend us all we want. Just lovely of him.”

“Harriet – ”

“Yeass?”

“ – a full hour of As the World Turns.”

“I’ve been working on the thrones for the King and Queen. They look nice, just real nice. There’s just one problem. Some of the glitter comes off on your dress when you sit on it. Do you think we ought to try something else?”

“ – The dirt’s not just on Davy’s clothes. It’s in them. That’s why I use Tide.”

“Why, no, dear. I wouldn’t worry about it any. I’m sure it’ll be lovely.” Mrs. Starchuck pauses. The attention of some committee members has been drifting toward the television.

“ – Franny has really come to mean a lot to Kim. Especially since Kim got her memory back.”

“People,” says Mrs. Starchuck sharply. They snap their eyes back to her as if attached to rubber bands. “I want you to see something.” She roots into a large paper shopping bag.

“ – Does that mean that Kim is not going back to John?”

She holds up a small glittering crown. The committee members draw in their breaths. “This is for the Queen.” A few people start to clap.

Without looking over at the committee, Miss Agnes picks up the remote.

“ – BETSY COULD HAVE TOLD KIM ABOUT HER DREAM OF HEARING DAN’S VOICE ON THE ANSWERING MACHINE.”

“Darn it all, anyway,” says Mrs. Starchuck. “Let’s go and find another room.”

* * *

Midnight and finally the Acres are at peace. Miss Agnes lies rigid in her bed, still wearing her spectacles, slippers beside her on the floor. The Mardi Gras Ball has ended, and the old dancers are all fast asleep, the excitement and exhilaration and exercise having exhausted them beyond measure. From her room Miss Agnes has endured the echoes until they faded at last to silence. Now she sits up and pushes her legs over the side of the bed onto the floor. Her feet, thin and blue-veined, find her slippers. She is standing, ready to move forward in the first few moments of Ash Wednesday.

There is a clatter. She has extracted her teeth from the glass on the bedside table and flipped them onto the floor where they lie, leering and unbroken. Taking the chair she sometimes uses to bar the door, she sets one leg on top of the pinkish denture material and sits down hard. The bridge cracks like a rifle beneath her weight. The chairleg scrapes on the floor. Splintered porcelain bits scatter across the linoleum. She sniffs – and then sits still.

Apparently she has not disturbed anyone. By the soft yellow glow of her nightlight, she puts on a robe and sweeps up the shards of broken dental plate, pushing them deep into the dirt of a pot containing a twisted old chrysanthemum. Next she shakes the pillow from its case onto the bed. As she steps to the door, pillowcase in one hand, she stops by the washbasin to rinse potting soil from the other. In the dim mirror she sees her face – cheeks fallen in and mouth drawn like a purse – and glares at it. Finally she leaves the room, silent as mist.

The residents are all slumbering mightily. Miss Agnes has been here too long now not to know how to move from one place to another without tripping over a nurse or a custodian. Nobody’s door is locked. All the rooms have night lights. So without much difficulty she passes noiselessly from one room to another, taking teeth from the water-glass beside each bed and dropping them into her pillowcase. Only once does she pause, and then to look over what lies at the bedside of Mrs. Starchuck: Terri Lee’s teeth, seemingly set within a shining circular gold frame. Looking closer, Miss Agnes sees that the frame is actually a sort of crown. She does not disturb this arrangement, but slips the actual Starchuck dentures in with the others; and then on through the corridors she glides, her pillowcase rattling gently beside her from time to time. In an hour and a half she has them all, seventy full or partial sets of teeth. The remaining residents either do not remove their teeth at night, or – if they do – hide them.

Returning to her room, she climbs into her bed and upends the pillowcase. Such a cascade of ivory and pink clattering at her toes! Miss Agnes picks up one set, fixes it with a toothless yet benedictory smile, and pops it into her mouth. It proves larger than her old set. She cannot close her lips over the incisors; her cheeks are distended like a chipmunk’s with the molars; and her upper gums rest near the back edge of the plate, utterly unable to reach the gum trough.

She finds a second set, half the size of the first, which fits much better, though perhaps it is still a bit too wide. If mouths were feet, Miss Agnes would take at least a triple-A. She sets this one aside and begins sorting through the rest of her collection. When she is finished, she has tried in sixteen pairs of false teeth and has found one that fits perfectly, as soft and light on her gums as blancmange, as solid and unyielding as beefsteak. She bites experimentally on her thumb, then shakes her head from side to side. Once more she smiles. Repacking the discards into the pillowcase, she sets out once more into the wilderness of corridors.

To every empty bedside glass goes a denture. Having reaped, Miss Agnes is now sowing; and from these teeth will emerge some ancient and angry warriors indeed, who will scowl and stamp all over the Acres, mumbling indistinctly until a dentist is brought here to restore order to this dental havoc. The Director will have no inkling of who is responsible. Miss Agnes will escape with her new teeth, scot-free.

The last room she visits happens to be that of Mrs. Starchuck, who lies on her back, open-mouthed and empty-gummed, snoring heavily. When Miss Agnes reaches into the pillowcase, however, she comes up empty. She has forgotten that, because she has broken her own plate, there will be one fewer sets of teeth than glasses of water. This lack of symmetry bothers her, and so – with a precision and delicacy that will in no way alleviate Mrs. Starchuck’s rage and horror when she wakes to discover what has happened – Miss Agnes drops into the glass Terri Lee’s set of milk teeth and in the first faint light of dawn watches them sink to the bottom, where they glisten like spring flowers.