Like Pulling Teeth

By Calli DeSerio

It happens while I’m using the scaler and the mirror, chunks of food coming out from behind this kid’s braces. I think I meant to ask him where he was going to school and what year he was in as I shoved the tools further into his mouth, but instead it just hits me. The teeth. Rows and rows of them, covered in braces he clearly doesn’t clean, filled with food he clearly shouldn’t be eating. My hands shake, and I’ll probably cut open his gums if I keep this up, so I pull my hands out of his mouth and tell him I have to go to the bathroom. 

I only half lied; I really did need to go sit down. I’m dizzy again, and my eyes hurt in that pre-headache way, so I take off my gloves and my goggles and press my palms into my eyeballs. Everything feels fuzzy, like my head is stuffed with cotton. Something vibrates just beneath my skin. 

No one would understand about the teeth. How when I look at them for too long, they haunt me, and I realize that my job is basically the equivalent of touching soggy food in dishwater. No one should have to look at teeth this close up and for this long. No one. 

I will my hands to stop shaking before I head back to finish the appointment. They don’t. Luckily, I don’t have much else left to do before I turn him over to the dentist. 

My last patient of the day comes in. No braces. 

“I’m Agnes,” I say. “What grade are you in?” 

We talk about school, and I try my best to ignore the fact that I am cleaning another person’s teeth. You’d think I would have realized I hated this in dental school, but things were different then. I spent my days in the office park near my childhood home. I had the normal nineteen-year-old girl problems, but I didn’t feel the buzzing under my skin or the lead weight in my stomach.  

“Ow,” the patient says. I just poked a fifth grader in the gums because of my shaky hands. This is what it’s come to. 

“Sorry.” 

It’s not a good day. 

Things don’t get better at home. Nearly six months into my six-month lease and my new apartment still feels like a hotel room. The bathroom has a floor-to-ceiling wood cabinet that reminds me of summer camp bathrooms, and I didn’t realize that “fully furnished” meant the apartment would be filled with furniture so ugly that I feel nauseous when I look at it. I ignore the lease renewal notices piling up on the counter and the three missed calls from my mother.  

Later, in the bathroom, I can’t make myself pick up my toothbrush. I’m staring at it, and I know what to do with it, but I just can’t. All I see are flashes of food between braces, touching wet food in a sink filled with cloudy dishwater. Brushing isn’t hard to do; I’ve done it for twenty-five years now, though less so on my own. But it’s all too easy to lean in close, inspecting every inch of my teeth in the mirror. I’m sick of teeth.  

I go downstairs and practice restraint with the shopping channel instead. 

The next morning, it’s the same. I know the risks of skipping the brush. I know what to say to my patients with yellowed and fuzzy teeth. I go to work with morning breath anyway. 

“Agnes, your three o’clock is here,” Margaret says. “It’s Nora Parker.” She’s holding her stupid little clipboard and acting like she went through a lot of trouble walking over here from the front desk. 

“Alright.” 

She makes crushing eye contact. “And don’t run out on your patients today.” 

My ears get hot, and I nod. That bitch sees everything around here, and I hate it.  

Nora sits down in my chair, and I freeze at the computer. She’s gorgeous, and she’s waiting for me to clean her teeth, and all the air leaves my lungs. They did not prepare me to clean a hot girl’s teeth at SeaBright Dental Academy. What are the ethics of my accidentally telling her she’s beautiful while I floss her molars? 

I tear my eyes away from her, studying the x-rays of her teeth like they might hold her secrets. I finally chance a look at her, and she meets me with a smile. She seems to be about my age, though she looks more put together than I feel.  

“Hi. I’m Agnes,” I croak. 

“Are you going to talk to me while your hands are in my mouth? That’s not going to work for me.” 

I laugh, even though I’m not sure it was a joke. “I hate when people do that.” 

She laughs too, and it’s an electric shock. Her teeth don’t even seem that daunting. For the first time in a long time, I just do my job. I don’t have to analyze every question I ask or spiral into how much I hate it here. I’m so wrapped up in this not being terrible that she’s gone before I even get to appreciate it. 

I’m wiping down my station when Margaret comes over, holding something out to me. 

“Your last patient said she talked to you about an art show? Here’s the information she promised,” Margaret says. 

We didn’t talk at all, not even a little. I flip over the card and see that she’s written something in a neat script: if you actually want to be able to ask me questions, come to my art show tomorrow night. just don’t put your fingers in my mouth. 

The idea immediately sends anxious rumbles to my stomach, but I have to admit that it would be nice to go somewhere besides work and my apartment and Target for once. I put the note in my pocket and take my next patient. More braces. I end up in the corner of the bathroom. 

I still haven’t brushed my teeth by the time the art show rolls around later that week. I can’t tell if I can feel the plaque building up on my teeth, or if I’m just imagining it. Either way, it’s all making my throat feel weird. 

A lot of shows are opening tonight, but I find Nora’s in the back of the gallery. Her art is mesmerizing; the colors seem muted, and yet the works are so alive. There are clowns and birds and planes—things I recognize but that feel alien in her paintings. 

“I was serious about the fingers in my mouth thing,” says a voice behind me. 

I turn around and am met with the full force of Nora. I say this because no one wears their best clothes to the dentist. Her sweatpants and t-shirt were cute, sure, but I feel like I was cheated. If I’d only met her the one time, I would never have known that she exists like this. She’s wearing a black jumpsuit that’s at once industrial and formal. It’s tight at the top, with cutouts in the sides. It has pockets and buttons like overalls, but the bottom half flairs. I feel extremely self-conscious of my ripped jeans and t-shirt. 

I hold up my hands. “You’re safe.” 

She laughs, her short black waves moving along with her. “Thank you for coming.” 

It feels like it’s going to end there, but I can’t let it. “I don’t know a lot about art, but I did take an art history class in college,” I say. “I got a shitty grade, but I passed.” 

Nora laughs again, and it feels like a victory. I lean in close to a painting called I’ve met God and he’s a cow. “It’s just all so inventive. If I could, I’d say something fancy about color theory, but I can’t. I just like everything that you’re doing here.” 

She cocks an eyebrow, a challenge. “Not too weird for you?” 

I shake my head. “Just weird enough.” 

Nora gives me a look that I can’t quite place. It’s soft and open, like I might be one of the only people who understand. 

“So you’re a surrealist. Like Dali,” I say. 

Nora shakes her head. “Like Leonora Carrington.” 

“Have something against Dali?” 

“No,” she says, scrunching up her face. “It’s just, everyone knows him. Everyone knows the men in art. What about the women?” 

What about them, indeed. 

“It’s funny. Leonora. Nora.” 

She smiles. “Happy accident.” 

“When is this over?” I ask, and then I feel my face flush. “Oh gosh. I didn’t mean it like when is it over, I meant it like, do you want to get coffee?” 

“There’s a place just up the street. None of my friends have bothered to stop by, so I don’t know how much longer I’ll stay. Maybe ten more minutes.” 

I nod way too many times. “Cool. I’ll just meet you there, I guess.” 

The cafe is small and far too intimate. It’s all sleek lines and dark wood, a cafe the size of a shoebox. The menu is too confusing for me to understand, so I just order a tea. I take a seat in the back, trying to distance myself from everyone else as much as possible. The air is close, and the hum of conversation surrounds me. I don’t dare breathe into my hand and take a whiff. I used mouthwash. It wasn’t brushing, but it kills bacteria. I know this. I tell my patients this. Our proximity at this table is not going to out me as a non-brusher. 

She walks in, and I need something to do with my hands. I hold my mug tight, taking a sip and charring my tongue. I hear Nora order something like a nitro cold coffee. It took me a few minutes to understand what I was ordering and to get the barista to understand me. It takes Nora barely a minute.  

She sits down with her drink, smiling already. She might want to hold back the enthusiasm until she knows more about me. 

“Thank you again, for coming to the show,” she says. 

I nod. “It was really awesome. Usually patients tell me everything about their lives while my hands are in their mouths and then never speak to me again.” 

“What’s it like, being a hygienist?” 

“Weird.” 

Nora raises an eyebrow. “What made you want to become one?” 

“What makes anyone become a dental hygienist?” I laugh, but then realize she’s not kidding. “You know when we were little, and everyone was really worried about women going into science and medicine?” 

Nora nods. I continue, “Like, where are we going to get the women from? How are they going to do science? I just thought, if no one else is going to do it, I guess I’ll have to.” 

“Does being a dental hygienist make you a woman in science?” Nora asks, sounding genuinely curious. 

“Like I’d know,” I laugh. 

I take another scalding sip of my drink. I’ve leaned in during the course of this conversation, so I lean back in my seat. My breath does not need to be that close to her. Nor do my teeth, covered in the evidence. 

“I moved here to do this,” I say. “I’m from the middle of nowhere, and I left behind everyone I know. I could have done it there. We had dentists.” 

“Is this not the middle of nowhere to you?”  

“Having an art gallery puts this town on the map, I think. If anything, I can measure the difference by the size of the spiders.” 

“It sounds like you’re better off here.” 

My hands shake as I wrap them around my warm mug. “In a sense.” My tongue runs over my teeth, feeling the deposits of plaque, taking some of them away. 

“Did you ever want to be something different?” Nora asks. 

I swallow. “I wouldn’t even know where to start.” 

Nora finishes the rest of her drink in one go. “Maybe you just need to look.” 

The tension is palpable. She’s looking right into my eyes in the same way I looked at her x-rays at the office, like she’s trying to figure me out. 

“Nora!” a voice shouts. 

“Dave,” Nora says, sounding less enthused than the visitor. 

A frat boy-ish man is standing at our table, arms held out expectantly. When Nora doesn’t stand for a hug, he shakes it off. 

“Your collection was awesome,” he says, smirking. “Giving very much Dali.” 

Nora and I exchange a look, and it makes me aware of every hair on my arms. 

“Thank you for the support.” 

“You’ve got to come to this party. Sarah and Alison are already asking if you’ll be there.” 

Nora looks at me, and I think she wants me to give her an excuse to stay. All I want is to beg her to stay and tell me what she meant about just needing to look. I want her to tell me it’ll be okay, that my apartment will feel less lonely soon, that I’ll make friends. I want her to say that I can quit if I want to, that it’s okay to start over. I want to know why I think she can give me all the answers. 

“Go ahead!” I say, plastering on a grin. 

She scrawls something on her receipt and slides it across the table to me. “Think about it,” she says.  

I’m not sure if she means think about what she said or think about what she wrote. I look down at the receipt and see her phone number scrawled across the top. When I look back up, she and Dave are gone. 

On the way home, my mother calls, and I can’t very well ignore her again. 

She doesn’t bother with hello. “Sweetie, are you okay?” 

“Yes, mom.” 

“You haven’t answered my calls in days.” 

I sigh. “I clean a lot of teeth.” 

“Is your new apartment still working okay?” 

“Yes,” I say, unable to keep the sarcasm from my voice. 

“Are you going to renew the lease for another six months?” 

My breath catches in my throat. “I have the job, so.” 

“I’m just checking,” she sighs. “It’s hard being in a new place, and this is your first time being away from home.” 

“You’re making me sound like a ten-year-old at her first sleepover.” 

“You didn’t do well back then, either.” 

“Everything is fine.” I’m not having panic attacks every day. Oh, and I’m definitely brushing my teeth. 

She doesn’t respond for a moment, but when she does, her voice is soft. “You know you can always come home.” 

I can always be the one to wake up the other girls at the sleepover and call my mom at three in the morning. I can always be the one with a stomach full of rocks as I roll up my sleeping bag and march to the door. I can always be the one proving to my mother, time and again, that I’m not capable of existing on my own. 

“I can’t.” 

My mother laughs. “We haven’t turned your room into a gym yet, don’t worry.” 

“I wish you would.” 

Back at home, I type Nora’s number into my phone and shoot her a text before I lose my nerve. Thanks for chatting ;). She replies with lots of smiley face emojis, which I take as a good sign. 

When I go to pick up my toothbrush, I actually put toothpaste on it. My stomach feels less like it’s filled with sharp objects after tonight. Everything feels less sharp, actually. I’m not dreading going into work tomorrow, and my bathroom feels less disgusting. Maybe I could even find it in me to renew my lease. I put the toothbrush on my tongue, but when I taste the mint, it’s over. I let the toothpaste swirl down the drain.  

Nora and I meet up a few times after that. We get more coffee and walk around little shopping towns. She’s so clear headed it makes me dizzy. She knows what she wants and how to get there, while I clean teeth for a living, though still not my own. I think this is entering relationship territory, but I’m never sure. We hold hands, and I think she wants to kiss me, but I won’t let her get too close. Not until I can manage to deal with all this. 

Today we’re back in that first coffee shop, and I’m still not sure what to order. I let Nora surprise me. 

She returns with the drinks, sighing. “I’m sorry about last time.” 

I knit my eyebrows and take a sip, confused. 

“With Dave,” she says. “He’s an art guy who thinks he’s an influencer. He always tries to get me to go to these fancy parties, but I just don’t care. I’m not in this for the glamour.” 

“Because it’s so glamorous anyway.” 

“Right!” she laughs. “He wants people to think we live these incredible lives, but we live in the middle of nowhere.” 

I take another sip of my drink. It’s delicious. The coffee is great and it’s got a sweet kick. Hazelnuts and caramel, maybe. “There’s not much to love out here.” 

Nora just looks at me, one of the corners of her mouth turning up. She pulls out the small sketchbook that she carries around all the time. Sometimes she scrawls down words, sometimes fragments of sketches. It’s like everything can become a painting to her; the world is hers to deconstruct. 

“Do you mind if I sit next to you for a minute? I hate couples that sit on the same side of the booth together, but I’ve been itching to sketch this place.” She’s asking for permission, but she is already in motion by the time I nod. 

I’m so caught up in the coffee and watching her sketch that I almost forget about my teeth. I almost always forget about them when we’re together. Today could be the day. Maybe I’ll brush them again.  

I grin back at Nora, and she catches my eye, leaning in to kiss me. I jump back so far that I end up against the wall. She looks horrified. 

“I don’t brush my teeth!” I blurt. “I mean, I can’t.” 

Nora raises her eyebrows. 

“It’s a long story,” I say, suddenly too embarrassed to talk about it. 

“I’m listening,” she says. 

So I tell her everything. From dental school to moving here and feeling alone to snapping one day and suddenly being disgusted by teeth. I tell her about the panic attacks and the loneliness. I tell her about my apartment, and how I don’t have much time before I have to decide if I want to stay longer, and how six months isn’t a long lease but the idea of renewing it is nauseating.  

“The teeth are just the last thing, you know? Like everything is already a mountain of pure shit but then I see the teeth, and I’m just gone,” I say, sighing. 

Nora hasn’t moved away from me since I started talking, which has to be positive. I don’t want her to feel stuck with me, but she also makes my problems seem less big. 

“You know you’re the only one of my friends who came to my show,” Nora says, kicking the ground. 

“I wasn’t even your friend. I just cleaned your teeth.” 

“Exactly. But you came, and you were there when it mattered,” she says. “All of my so-called artist friends came to the show, but they didn’t visit my booth.” 

I try to interject and say something to make her feel better, but she stops me. 

“I’m not going to stop painting just because no one else came to my show. I love it. It’s what I’m meant to do.” 

I nod, but I’m not sure what this has to do with my teeth. 

Nora continues, “Do you feel that way about your job, or is there something else that you really want to do?” 

I don’t know what to say. I haven’t thought much beyond this line of work. It was always inevitable, always what I felt I had to do. I was a kid, went to the dentist, and thought this is how I can help. It never occurred to me to think of a backup plan. 

Nora squeezes my hand. “You can be anything.” 

It doesn’t help. 

URGENT NOTICE: YOU HAVE ONE WEEK TO RENEW YOUR EXISTING LEASE. 

I wake up from a dream of all my teeth falling out, and the email is the first thing I read. The combination sends me out of my skin. The feeling follows me to work, the email playing over and over again in my head. I’ve known for weeks about the deadline, and I know that I have nowhere else to go, and isn’t that really the problem? 

My hands shake too much while I scratch between this lady’s teeth. I keep poking at her gums with the probe, and they’re bleeding. I just keep spraying with the air water syringe, hoping something changes. 

I feel like I’m moving through clouds. Everything inches out of reach, with nothing solid to grab onto. Can you just breathe for me? Breathe for me, Ag. I’m talking to myself like I’m a dog or a baby or a senile woman. The more I think about it, the worse it gets. Is my throat closing up, or am I just thirsty? Am I good at this, or do I just poke at people’s teeth all day? 

Somehow, I manage to finish up with her without incident. It’s not particularly rewarding, though I don’t think I’ve ever finished with a patient and felt like I made a difference. As my teeth begin to feel more like a cashmere sweater, I understand my job’s importance a bit more. Still, why am I doing this every single day? I can pay for my distressing apartment and keep my mother off my back, but I’m not sure if it’s worth the daily panic attacks. 

Can’t do my job, can’t renew my lease. Can’t brush my teeth. Can’t, can’t, can’t. 

Margaret comes over with her clipboard again, gum smacking. “You’re all done for the day,” she says. 

“Okay.” 

I move to clean up, but Margaret holds up a hand. “Not so fast,” she sighs. “Some of the other hygienists have noticed something off with you.” 

“I’m sorry that I go to the bathroom so much, I just have a lot of anxiety.” 

She starts talking before I can even finish. “It’s not about that, though that also isn’t great. It’s your teeth. They’re starting to look a little,” she trails off. “Grimy.” 

“Grimy?” I didn’t think anyone else would notice. 

Margaret taps her long nails against the clipboard and raises her thin eyebrows. “Just make yourself an appointment, okay?” 

I nod, tears blurring my vision. 

Nora asks to paint me that night. I answer the door, and I’m practically vibrating with nervous energy. I know there’s nothing to worry about; it’s Nora. I know her. She squeezes my hands and kisses my cheek, which is all she’ll be able to do until I sort out my teeth. 

She sets up her things in front of the couch. My couch is a garish red, but she says it won’t be in the painting. 

“It won’t be like a portrait,” she says. “I don’t do realism, you know that.” 

Except when it comes to my own life, apparently. She’s big on me figuring out what I’m going to do. Not in a controlling way, but in a I’m-helping-you-carry-this-weight way. 

She says I can read or go on my phone so long as I look up when she asks me to. The lights are low, but she’s glowing. I’m still not sure why she’s stuck around this long. There’s clearly something wrong with me, but it doesn’t scare her. I don’t think the world needs to be clear for her to enjoy it. She seems to like having someone around who listens to her, too. 

I try to read, but my eyes can’t follow the words. There are three days left before I have to decide what to do with my life. My mother would say it’s not as dramatic as that, but I like the melodrama of it all. Sure, I could stay here and find a new job, but one change might not be enough. I might need to burn all my bridges to build a new one, and that terrifies me. 

“Chin up for a second,” Nora says. I try to catch her eye, but she’s in the zone. She’s registering me, but not as myself. I’m whatever she’s molding me into. 

My chest feels heavy, and the air is cold in my throat. It feels like this more and more lately, like I’m going to explode if this goes on any longer. Any time I think about next week, I shut down. Not one thing is certain. I could be living back at home, I could be alone again, I could be living exactly as I am right now. I bite my lip, hard. It sends a rush of pain through my mouth, and my tongue accidentally swipes across my teeth. Feeling my teeth has been something I’ve largely avoided. I know what to expect, and I don’t want to know what it feels like. But now I do. 

My teeth have gone full sweater, even with the occasional mouthwash. There’s plaque and bits of food stuck all over. I don’t have a mirror, so I imagine what it must be like. It’s all green, fuzzy slime sliding down my molars. The slime has little faces—or maybe those are my teeth—and they’re angry. Everything in my body is angry with me, actually. There’s a fire in my chest and my head and the teeth aren’t helping. 

“I can’t do this anymore,” I say, grasping at pieces of my hair. “I can’t.” 

Nora drops her paintbrush and rushes over to me, slowly pulling my hands out of my hair. “You can and you will.” 

“You don’t get it, I can’t stop it,” I say through tears. I’m not sure when the crying started, but it’s taken over, the sobs rising from the depths of my stomach. “I don’t want to feel like this anymore.”  

Nora takes my hand and helps me stand, leading me to the bathroom. She moves swiftly but gently. She puts toothpaste on my toothbrush, then practically helicopters it toward my mouth. When I step back, she puts a hand on my cheek. 

“You need to remember that it’s okay. Can I?” 

She says it like it’s simple, like I’ve just forgotten what it feels like to brush my teeth. Part of me wants her to be right, and part of me wants to prove her wrong. I nod. 

Nora eases the toothbrush past my lips and works her way carefully around my mouth. I sob harder, and I can taste the tears as they fall, salt mixing with mint. Nora just keeps repeating it’s okay, Ags, I’ve got you, it’s okay. And when I spit everything out, it does feel a little more okay. My teeth are smooth.  

When we get back to the living room after what feels like hours, I catch a glimpse of Nora’s painting. I’m in the center, a floating head. I’m more angular than I am in real life, but it’s still clearly me. There are teeth floating all around me, melting like the clocks in a Dali painting. Much of it is still a rough outline, but the idea’s there. 

Nora looks embarrassed for the first time since I’ve met her. “I can stop if you want. I wasn’t sure if this would make it better or worse.” 

“Better,” I say immediately. “It’s like you pulled them out of me.” 

I touch the wet paint, leaving taupe and tan stains on my fingertips. “Can you keep taking them out?” 

She nods, and she does.

It’s easier to brush my teeth on nights when Nora’s there. She doesn’t brush for me again—that was mortifying now that I’m not sobbing. She just manages to soften the edges of all the hurt, stop the pain before it bubbles up and spills over.  

Tomorrow is the day I have to call about my lease. I called out of work every day since the painting incident, hoping it’d give me clarity and space. It’s given me none of that. I have no idea what I want to do with my life, or where I want to be. 

Nora’s busy in her studio today. I’d planned to stay home and think, but my feet carry me to the art gallery anyway. I look back at all her paintings. It’s like looking at them for the first time, now that I know Nora. I see her love of weird cow faces in one, her favorite Chinese restaurant in another. It’s her lens of the world, and it’s nothing like mine. Just like the painting she did of me. It wasn’t how I saw myself, but it let me see myself another way. 

She has one painting of a black hole swallowing some planets, and it looks like how I feel. Like everything is being lost to one inescapable thing. Even still, it’s comforting. Who knows what else could be in there, what possibilities lay ahead? I’m staring into a black hole, and I think I’m finally ready to jump. 

On the way home, I walk past the coffee shop where we went that first night. They’re hiring. I know nothing about coffee, let alone how to make it. I duck in anyway. 

Nora comes over later and makes dinner. It’s strange how quickly she’s settled into my life without the normal relationship milestones happening. Everything’s happening out of order, but it’s happening slowly. It’s all I can handle at the moment, but it’s nice to know someone’s there for me. I think Nora knows I’m there for her too, in whatever ways I can be. 

When we sit down with our plates, Nora immediately digs in, but I set my hands in my lap. “I’m giving up,” I say. 

Nora keeps her face noticeably calm. “Are we happy about that?” 

“I think so?” 

“What exactly are you giving up on?” she asks, twirling spaghetti with her fork. 

“My job. This apartment. Everything I’ve spent the last six months building.” I lace my fingers together and squeeze. “Or trying to build, I guess.” 

She smiles. “Jumping into the black hole.” 

“Yeah.” I take a few silent bites. “I got a job at that coffee shop, though. It’s one of the only places in this town that doesn’t make me feel like I have bees under my skin.” 

“I can see that my favorite barista is about to be dethroned,” Nora says, laughing. I kick her foot under the table. 

“I wouldn’t go that far. Besides, being your favorite barista still doesn’t make it possible to pay rent with that job. I’m gonna be living in a shoebox.” 

Nora sets down her fork. “I have an idea, but it might be too weird.” 

I don’t point out that she’s brushed my teeth before. 

“Why don’t you move in with me?” 

She grins at me, and I think of making spaghetti and watching movies and brushing our teeth side by side. For once, I know what to say.