I ask Gary to take Charlotte to the reservoir for a walk today before work.

Unencumbered, Teddy and I make the drive to school with considerably less tension. He seems more relaxed, now that it’s just us two in the car and I don’t have to drive with my seat pushed back as far as it will go in order to give the dog room between me and the steering wheel. When we pass the house getting the big stupid addition, I slow down the way I always do, only this time, Teddy looks, too.

“Isn’t that house big enough already?” he says.

“Seriously.” I breathe deeply, full of wonder. My work here is done.

After dropping Teddy, I get to my 9:00 A.M. appointment with Michael exactly on time, though it requires speed-walking from the parking lot to the waiting room. When I catch the young receptionist staring, I realize I must be beet red, or sweating, or both.

I fill out paperwork—financial and insurance information—then get shown to a chair in a different examination room—this time, one with more advanced equipment in it. When Michael arrives, he and his assistant take X-rays, then do a series of close-up digital pictures of my potential new virtual “smile.” They hand me an iPad so I can watch a time-lapse version of my teeth in motion: what they’ll look like and how they’ll get there.

I nod, marveling at the technology that can animate the seamless transition from my now-teeth to my future-teeth. Even after the iPad is taken away, the loop continues playing in my head. My teeth in motion, going to a better place. Maybe they’ll take me with them.

But the big decision still looms: full metal braces and brackets—the old-fashioned kind—or translucent ceramic brackets—both of which get cemented to the front of the teeth with wires threaded through them that get replaced every few weeks when the tension gets worn out. I ask Michael to explain it more—how it all works—how teeth actually get coaxed into moving—so he sits down next to me with a plaster model of a braces-filled mouth in his hands.

“The power is in the wire,” he says, pointing. “That’s where the movement comes. The brackets sit low on the teeth, but instead of tightening the wire like we used to, we switch out the wire at every visit so that each new tight one pulls the teeth to where they need to go. Not too fast, not too slow.”

I look behind his elbow to the framed photos of his three children on the wall beyond the swing-arm light, two boys and a girl in the mountains, at the beach, on bikes. I wonder why Janie isn’t in any of the pictures and notice suddenly that there’s no wedding ring under the purple latex glove. Why wouldn’t he have just said that he was divorced?

I try to focus on the photos Michael is showing me of my orthodontic options—always so many choices, too many choices in life—but after I see the translucent brackets, I make up my mind.