Christina Dalcher

A Killer of a Smile

 

She shows up every morning with the buzzing of the alarm, and every night after dinner, flashing her pearly whites, reminding me to brush. The woman’s a goddamned fanatic about it, never mind she’s as dead as my old dentist, the one who lined his office with pictures of festering gums, dry sockets, untreated cavities. Healthy Habits for Happy Smiles, the posters tell us.

 

Even so, I tried to stop cleaning my teeth when I was seven. "There's a monster in my toothpaste," I would say to my mother.

 

She never believed me, not even when I pointed to a long, scary-looking word on the back of the tube. I couldn't pronounce it, but I knew someone named FDA had put the word there, next to the number '.30' with the funny symbols after it.

 

"Nonsense," Mom said, half-smile on her lips. "You don't want your teeth to rot out of your head, do you?"

 

I did not want my teeth to rot out of my head. So I brushed.

 

Every night, I would twist the cap, a fraction of an inch at a time, careful to not let the monster glimpse too much of the world. He might like what he saw, like it enough to hang around, even. I’d squeeze out a pea-sized blob onto my Batman electric toothbrush, wondering if the toothpaste company and Mr. FDA knew about the monster, wondering if Batman could save me from it if the monster ever got loose.

 

They must have known, and that's why they put the warning to use only a pea's worth on the back of the tube, right above the directions to squeeze from the bottom and flatten as you go up. I didn't usually care about directions, but I followed those to the letter. I figured if I could squeeze the monster flat, spread it out in a thin layer, measure out no more than a pea-sized blob, and screw the cap back on real fast, maybe it wouldn't get me.

 

Mom watched me as I cleaned my teeth, and I watched my gums for signs of redness and swelling and bleeding, just like the instructions said. How the toothpaste monster worked was a mystery to me, but I figured the people who created it knew. Hey, they were the scientists. They knew everything.

 

When my two minutes were finally up, I rinsed the last bit of toothpaste out, swishing handfuls of water around my mouth until every trace of that chalky mint taste was gone. It took a long time, longer than it took to brush, but I had to make sure. The one time I didn't rinse enough before climbing into bed, I felt the monster going to work, doing his business, even though I'd pulled the covers so tight over my face I could barely breathe.

 

Chomp, chomp, chomp.

 

*

 

Mom died on my twelfth birthday. Her doctors used a bunch of big fancy words, but Dad explained she'd come down with a bacterial infection, like the kind you get if you eat raw chicken or order your scrambled eggs on the wobbly side.

 

"Will you brush my teeth for me, baby?” she'd asked one morning when she could still recognize me.

 

I had to unscrew the cap of the tube for her, remembering to squeeze from the bottom and flatten as I went up. And always—always—put the cap back on tight.

 

“Always told you there was no monster,” she sighed.

 

I knew better.

 

By the time we said goodbye to Mom, she weighed ninety pounds, her skin had turned to gray wax, and her smile hung on her face like crappy clown makeup. The guy from the mortuary recommended a closed coffin. Dad didn’t argue.

 

I remember her teeth, though. As the rest of her body rotted away, my mother's teeth remained perfect, white pearls. I still see them twice a day, even now.

 

*

 

When I turned seventeen, I took Katie on a date in her parents' car. The BMW was technically her car now, because both of Katie's parents were as dead as my mother, Dad, and my dentist. Funny thing, a couple of periodontists dying from gum disease. I guess it got into their lungs or something.

 

We cruised around, caught a flick, and then parked up at the reservoir. In the back seat, we made out, went all the way, and went all the way again. If there's one thing the twenty-first century gave us besides iPhones and antibiotic-laced toothpaste, it was consequence-free sex. A year ago, Katie and half of her girlfriends had gotten some sort of infection down there. They were all fine after a month or so, but the doctors said none of them would be able to have kids. So, naturally, with unplanned pregnancies and lecturing parents out of the picture, we went at it like rabbits.

 

You might think we should have been doing more grieving than screwing, what with our folks and half the town gone from The Infection, but there's only so much grieving you can take before you're numb to that shit.

 

Katie was fantastic. When she kissed me, I tasted mint mouthwash and cherry lip-gloss and the chewing gum I'd bought her at the mini-mart, the new kind that kills the germs that cause bad breath, or so the ads said. The mini-mart hadn't followed the rest of the town's businesses and shut down yet, so we did all of our shopping there, even though the manager gave us the creeps. Katie insisted we only buy things that came to less than twelve bucks—but never three-something, and never with the change ending in three pennies—because the sight of his rotted teeth when he said long "ee" bugged the shit out of her. One night I grabbed a tube of toothpaste—those old habits die hard and slow—and I hit thirteen dollars and fifty-three cents. Katie made me split the goods at the register so the totals came to five ninety-nine and seven fifty-four. It was a waste of our time: all that work, and Mr. Gingivitis took our money, beamed a wide grin in Katie’s direction, and told us he’d see us real soon.

 

After our fourth go-around in the car, Katie smiled and said she loved me. God, she had a great smile. Should’ve been a model in one of those commercials, maybe for lip-gloss, maybe for toothpaste.

 

*

 

We've been married five years, me and my girl Katie, and she’s still got the same killer of a smile.

 

"'Night, sweetie," she says when I tuck her into the hospital bed on the first floor. “And don’t forget to put the cap back on after you brush." We’ve got a running joke in our house that since I'd outgrown my childish dread of the toothpaste monster, I'd gotten kind of casual about getting that cap back on. It’s a challenge with one hand, so most times I just leave it on the counter as-is. What the hell. It’s not like the stuff is gonna ooze out and take over the world.

 

Katie laughs at her own joke, then hacks out the cough of a lifetime three-pack-a-day junkie. As if Katie would ever touch a cigarette. “Turns your teeth yellow,” she always said. Still, the cough’s a nasty one, and she might be coming down with another case of strep. I get her antibiotics from the kitchen cupboard before hopping up the stairs on one leg. The hopping's gotten easier over the past few months—I’ve built up enough muscle to sometimes take two steps at once, a good trick. When I’m not hopping up and down steps, I’m doing leg presses on the Powerline, skipping rope, whatever it takes.

 

Last time he came for a visit, Doc said I gotta treat my right leg like it’s solid gold so I can help Katie. Poor kid—she’s not as strong as I am, and the shit that’s been eating away at her works fast—Katie's scheduled for a third amputation tomorrow. We both know it's The Infection. What we don’t know is why the antibiotics haven’t put it in check.

 

In the bathroom, I work up a one-handed lather with germicidal soap from the mini-mart. All the other stores are gone, but the mini-mart guy with the rotting teeth and the smile that smells like a skidmark has stayed in business. Better than that, he's bought up half the town. Good for him.

 

I won’t tell Katie, but my leg looks bad, smells worse, and itches like someone’s taken a blowtorch to it. I have to save the leg, I think, have to save it so I can help Katie. I wish away the itch and the urge to scratch and bite down hard on the toothpaste cap with my teeth, rotating the tube with my left hand. Thank God for strong teeth. Like Mom always said, take care of your teeth and they’ll take care of you.

 

I never learned how to pronounce the active ingredient, but I know it’s no monster—just a trace of some harmless antibacterial agent in my toothpaste. Developed by scientists, recommended by four out of five dentists. Sometimes I wonder what the fifth dentist’s problem was that he couldn’t just get on the bandwagon and be agreeable. I wonder if he’s still hanging around on the fringe, or if he finally caved.

 

Katie hears me laugh at the label I used to be so afraid of, and she calls up, asking if I'll come downstairs and sleep in her bed with her. "Plenty of room, now," she says. We both know that after Doc comes by in the morning with his tools, there will be a leg's worth more. Katie will hurt for a while, but then she’ll be smiling again. Like my mom, who I know is proud as hell that I still brush every day, morning and night.

 

 

 

Christina Dalcher is a theoretical linguist from the Land of Styron and Barbecue, where she writes, teaches, and channels Shirley Jackson. She is the sole matriculant in the Read Every Word by Stephen King MFA program (which she invented). Find her work in Bartleby Snopes, The Molotov Cocktail, and New South Journal, among others. Find Christina at www.christinadalcher.com, @CVDalcher, or brushing her teeth with the old kind of toothpaste.