For Dr. Lipi, every man was his smile, and every woman hers. And when Dr. Lipi entered a room, every smile seemed to cry out to him, "Is there a doctor in the house?" He loved talking about teeth and assumed others loved listening. To Dr. Lipi, there was nothing surprising about Margaret questioning him for her essay.
One evening, Margaret went to his office as the last patient was leaving. Feeling shy and unsteady, she followed him into an examining room, where he showed her several x-rays of decaying gums.
Not for the first time, she wondered why anyone would choose to become a dentist. It was not a romantic calling: a dentist did not save lives, the way a doctor did. There was nothing heroic about a dentist. He was necessary, perhaps, but somehow not important. The popular image of a dentist was never a romantic figure. He was a villain, like the dentist in Marathon Man. Or a buffoon, she thought, envisioning W. C. Fields with pliers, leaning over his patient, a woman whose legs began flapping wildly, then suddenly wrapped themselves violently, obscenely, around him. Yes, she would have to discuss that in her essay.
"My name is really Lipinsky," said Dr. Lipi. "But I didn't want to cash in on my heritage. I wanted to make it on my own. No special pleading."
Margaret looked at the row of x-rays clipped to the white, lit screen and tried to remember how to flirt. Well, she could just pretend she was Till or Edward. For them, talking was a kind of flirtation, a flirtation with existence, preparatory to fucking its brains out. At the notion of fucking someone's brains out, even existence's, she felt herself suddenly aroused, and frightened in that cold room with Dr. Samuel Lipinsky. She shivered a little.
"Cold?" asked Dr. Lipinsky-Lipi. He gently laid a rubber-coated, lead-heavy x-ray apron across her shoulders. He had moved very close and stayed there. He likes me, Margaret thought. He likes me, too. Perched on the arm of the dental chair with the lead apron on her shoulders, she was at eye level with his charms of gold dangling teeth, with his white polo shirt, with his chest. He stayed where he was, saying nothing. This was it. This was her opportunity. What should she do? How to flirt? Show interest in what someone cares about? She'd been doing that shamelessly. Was there any aspect of the role of the tooth in Western civilization that she had not touched upon?
Flattery, passionate flattery, too. That was flirting, wasn't it? But not really a skill within her grasp, flattery.
"Teeth," she blurted out, "teeth are such ambivalent signs. They smile, yes, but they also bite. They can express friendliness, or they can be weapons."
She sat sideways on the edge of the dentist chair, and the dentist stood before her, against her. His legs in their loose, soft linen pants were just touching her knees. Had they been touching before? Or had Dr. Lipi moved closer?
"The dentist's existence qua dentist," Margaret continued in a quick, nervous, strangled voice, "is determined by his relationship to teeth, and so to what teeth signify."
She looked hopefully into his eyes, then quickly away.
"If teeth can be used to express friendliness," she went on bravely, "then the dentist's assault on them is a rejection of friendliness." If only Edward were there. He could do this for her. He would know just what to say. "If, however, teeth are weapons, then the dentist's assault is an attempt at disarmament, at castration."
Dr. Lipi, almost imperceptibly, moved back, just a little bit, just enough.
"But then the dentist is an ambivalent symbol independently, too," Margaret continued, hanging on to a last shred of hope. "For, on the one hand, he is the enemy, a stranger from outside attempting to disarm his patient, his victim, to strip away the defenses. On the other hand, he is a caring health professional, a healer, relieving pain."
Dr. Lipi cleared his throat. He stepped away from her. "Precisely," he said. "Precisely."
Margaret lay in bed watching Claire's Knee on Channel 13 and thinking of Lily's knee, Dr. Lipi's knee, Martin's knee. She turned the TV off, unable to concentrate on French witticisms. I'm not making sufficient progress, she thought. I'm stagnating. That's because I'm suffocating. Because Edward is always here, in this apartment, always around, always talking to me, at least he used to always talk to me, always listening to me when I talked, attentive, bringing me coffee, giving me encouraging kisses when I worked. No wonder I'm making so little progress! He has no consideration. And now, he's never even around! Just because I barely speak to him does not mean it's right for him to come home late, to devote so much time to his students and his sordid little didactic love affairs with pretty girls.
It was no one's fault. That's just the way it was, irresponsibility and betrayal on his side; the simple search for independence on hers. She would have to stop fooling around and tell him. The fruit was ripe, ready to fall from the trees. Quit standing around in the shade palms up, waiting. Shake the branches, Margaret.