“Actually, I think I’ll pass.” I sigh, restraining myself from explaining that money is tight and that this is the first time in five years that someone hasn’t been diagnosed with something awful or dying in hospice. Look at me, keeping my mouth, with its relapsed bite and its crowded lowers, shut.

He shrugs, then takes the crinkly paper bib off my chest, flips the light away from my head and angles my chair back up. “Okay, but don’t blame me in a few years when your teeth start falling out.”

* * *

I sit in on Teddy’s consultation, then sign the proposed but nonbinding treatment and payment plan for his braces—a minimum of two years with the probability of an extra year, depending on the growth of his chin and subsequent exacerbation of his pronounced under-bite. We schedule his appointment—the big day—for the second Wednesday in November, after Inhabitancy ends—and then, since the idea of my teeth falling out is still haunting me, we schedule an official consultation: there has been a cancellation for tomorrow, the receptionist tells me. Do I want it? I reluctantly accept. Why not have all the information before probably saying no?

Back in the car Teddy is quiet. I can’t tell if he’s glad to be getting braces like everyone else did two years ago, or if he’s horrified to be joining the adolescent masses so late. I know I could ask him—shouldn’t I just ask him?—but sometimes I think it’s easier for both of us if I just leave him alone with his feelings, instead of making him share them with me. Because maybe he doesn’t want to share them with me: maybe he’d rather process things himself, silently, without parental intrusion, the way I did.

On the way to school I don’t bother telling Teddy that my appointment with Michael was not to continue our trip down memory lane, but to talk about the possibility of braces for me. Why does he need to know, ten minutes before school, that the same mother who wears the family dog for comfort and mental stability might soon have a mouth full of embarrassing metal bands? Hasn’t he suffered enough? Instead, when we pull up in the blue zone, I hand him a note to give to Grace excusing his late arrival that I’ve scribbled on a piece of paper I rip from a notebook in my bag:

Please excuse Teddy. He had an orthodontist appointment even though he doesn’t have braces yet.

* * *

The next morning, though I don’t want to leave the dog, I decide to try going it alone again. It will be good to hear my options before committing either way without the distraction of the dog—and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t just a little embarrassed to face Michael again wearing my neurosis in my sling. While the subject of his marriage, or divorce, didn’t come up in the few quick minutes I spent hyperreclined in his examination chair, I’m still somehow convinced that running into Michael and his encouraging me to come back to his office—for the second time—might be fate’s hand. Maybe there will be a way out for me. Maybe Michael Wasserman and I are meant to be.