Chewing Slowly

The hygienist's fingers were in my mouth, her latex-clad thumb pressing against my tongue while the dentist hovered behind her, speaking numbers and codes I couldn't understand with my jaw propped open. I'd come for a cleaning, but they'd found something. A shadow on the X-ray, they said. Might be nothing. Might be everything.

"You have some—" She pointed at her own front teeth. "Spinach, I think."

I nodded, my face flushing hot. Spinach. I'd eaten a salad for lunch, alone in my office while watching the clock tick toward 3:00 PM—when the baseball fields across the street would fill with children whose fathers hadn't received calls about shadows on X-rays.

They gave me a cup of water to rinse. I swished and spat, watching the pink liquid swirl down the drain, carrying bits of green and blood and whatever else had been hiding in my mouth all these years. Water. I'd been swimming in uncertainty for months now.

"Your husband's hair," the hygienist said conversationally, polishing my teeth with the vibrating tool that made my bones hum. "It's getting so thin. My husband's too. We both joke about it, but then I catch him staring in the mirror, you know?"

I didn't know. Tom hadn't mentioned his thinning hair, just as he hadn't mentioned the missed promotions, the sleepless nights, the way he'd started going for long drives after dinner while I sat at home eating salads that stuck between my teeth.

"We need to schedule a biopsy," the dentist said, his voice gentle. "Just to be sure."

I nodded again, thinking about baseball—how Tom had played in college, how he'd stopped talking about it years ago, how some dreams don't die but just grow quiet, like hair thinning so gradually you don't notice until someone points it out.

"You're biting your lip," the hygienist said.

I tasted blood, metallic and sharp. I'd been chewing my lip since the phone call yesterday, since Tom said he'd been offered a job in another city, a baseball coach position he'd applied for on a whim five years ago.

I spit into the suction tube. "I think I'm ready for the biopsy," I said. "And maybe some other changes too."

The water in the cup rippled, catching light. Outside, a baseball arced across the sky, and somewhere, someone's husband was still young enough to catch it.