Later, when they were maneuvering their chopsticks with varying degrees of facility (Lizzie was the most inept), Elaine started telling dentist stories.
“Now, Lizzie, I know you’ve never heard this story, but, George, I’m sure I’ve told you about Dr. Sidlowski before.” She turned to Lizzie and said, “He was my regular dentist’s partner. I went to him once, right before I left Montreal for Bryn Mawr because Dr. Gratz was on vacation or something. I’d broken a tooth after eating too many pieces of this really crusty sourdough bread at lunch. I was just beside myself—who breaks a tooth at age eighteen? Don’t answer that, George,” she said hastily as he started to speak. “It was a rhetorical question. Anyway, they took me in right away, and when Dr. Sidlowski asked me how it happened, of course I blamed the bread. But then he asked how many pieces of bread I’d had, and I told him three, which was agonizingly embarrassing. And then he said in this critical voice, ‘Well, clearly the first piece sensitized it, the second piece loosened it, and the third piece cracked it. Perhaps you should take a lesson from this.’ And I have. I almost never have three pieces of bread right in a row, and I certainly don’t when it’s that crusty sort of sourdough. I’m glad I never had to go back to him again.
“I wonder if any of his patients ever complained about the way he talked to them. I suspect there’s a way to find out. It’s that sort of question that keeps me up at night.”
“Nothing keeps you up at night, darling,” Allan said.
Elaine chuckled. “You’re right. But if I were the kind of person who did lie awake at night and ponder various questions, that’s what I would ponder. If Dr. Sidlowski was ever made aware of what an awful person he was. There I was, already suffering from guilt and shame, and look how he treated me, with more guilt and shame. Don’t ever be like that, George,” she ordered, but it was unnecessary to say that, because everyone at the table knew there was no way that George would ever commit the sin that Dr. Sidlowski had.
“There’s a book I really enjoyed that has a dentist in it,” Lizzie began, “called Do the Windows Open? Have you read it, Elaine? It’s by Julie Hecht. It’s a collection of linked short stories about this really neurotic woman. In one of the stories she’s at her dentist’s and . . .”
She paused. Should she continue? Okay, why not? she thought. It’s probably inappropriate but also really funny. Okay, whatever. I’m going to go for it. George loves me, right? Isn’t that what he said? I’ll think about what I’m going to do with that piece of information tomorrow or the next day. In any case, let him see the real me. Let them all see the kind of person I really am.
She began again. “So the dentist is drilling away, and, I can’t remember her exact words, but she’s musing to herself something like ‘Dentists have the highest suicide rate of everyone in the medical professions,’ and then she goes on to say, ‘Not high enough, in my opinion.’ For some reason I think that’s really funny.”
For several minutes after she finished, no one spoke. Finally Allan coughed. Elaine looked up from studying the remains of the Chinese food on her plate. “Are you getting a cold, Allan?”
George interrupted before his father could answer. “Hmm, I can see how people who hate going to the dentist might find that funny. And you know, it very subtly makes an excellent point: people with depressive personalities shouldn’t go into dentistry. Think about it: people come to you in extraordinary pain, you have to inflict pain to cure the original pain, and you’re working on something that’s only a bit bigger than a grain of rice, with little or no margin for error. I remember one of my teachers saying that what a dentist needed most was a steady hand, steady nerves, and an untroubled heart.”
Lizzie looked at him gratefully.
“That’s why we love George, isn’t it, Lizzie?” Elaine said somewhat mysteriously.
“Yes,” Lizzie said slowly. “I suppose it is.”
*?The Defensive Tackles?*
M’Ardon “Mardy” Preatty, built like a fire hydrant, was undrafted and later signed by the Lions after a so-so career at Clemson. Although he never became the game-changing pro player that his high school coach had predicted he’d be, season after season he managed to hold on to a spot on the team. Of course, the team as a whole wasn’t very good in any of the years he played for them. Lizzie occasionally saw him on television at the end of a lopsided game and she never failed to point him out to George, although she never went on to mention under what circumstances they’d met.
The other tackle suffered in comparison with Mardy Preatty, but then, almost any tackle playing on the same team as Mardy would. Leon Daly chose not to go to college, or perhaps he dropped out before graduation, and was last seen by Lizzie working at the local Toyota dealership, where he was a highly skilled and much-valued mechanic.
*?Lizzie Makes George Laugh?*
When Lizzie was little, Sheila used to tell her about watching the submarine races at Island Park with her boyfriend. It sounded really exciting to Lizzie: submarine races! Whoa! What submarine races were didn’t become clear to her until one morning in Tulsa when she and George were walking on the River Parks Trail and she wondered aloud if they had submarine races on the Arkansas River too. George looked at her and gulped loudly. At first Lizzie thought he was choking and regretted that she’d never learned how to do CPR, but then he started laughing. George was a laugher, all right—it was one of the things Lizzie loved about him. His was the sort of laugh that had people who heard him rolling on the floor, joined in a fellowship of mirth. Lizzie had obviously missed the joke, if a joke there was. In any event, George was bent over, chest heaving, hands on his knees. Every time his laughter seemed to be slowing down, he would gurgle something mostly indistinguishable that sounded to her like “submarines, Arkansas” and go off again. Finally, when he got himself more or less under control, he explained as you might explain to a young child.
“Lizzie, honey,” he began. “I have some breaking news for you. Submarines are underwater, right? So you can’t see them. Saying you’re watching a submarine race is a euphemism for making out.”
Oh, how embarrassing, Lizzie thought then, her face reddening. I am so glad I never told Jack about those stupid submarine races.
George was constantly surprised at how naive Lizzie was, how easy it was to tease her. His favorite Lizzie story, which he tried not to remind her of too often, had to do with IGA grocery stores. Passing one on their way home in Ann Arbor, Lizzie wondered aloud what the initials stood for.
“You know about the International Geophysical Association, right?” George asked, in the tone of voice that indicated that absolutely everyone knew and anyone who didn’t was impossibly lacking in smarts.