“Death’s just fine,” he heard his mother say. “At least it’s easier than dealing with this day in and day out.”

Andrea Topher, all 73 years of her, sat stiffly at the vanity and powdered her face a ghastly white, having just hung up the phone.

“Who was that?” John Topher stood in the doorway, shirt untucked and hair unkempt, grasping the gnawed half-moon of a bagel in one hand. It was the only barrier right then preventing him from getting sick at that mid-morning hour on a Saturday.

He could feel his pulse beat out a frantic rhythm behind each one of his eyelids, heavy with the unfulfilled promises of the night prior.

“Who was what, Dear?” she said, brushing a flush of pink back into her powdered cheeks in quick, circular motions.

“Who were you just on the phone with?” he asked. He tore off a chunk of bagel, working it tirelessly with his jaw, the dough wicking away nearly all moisture from the inside of his mouth so that he could barely swallow without the sensation of choking.

“Oh, that was just Dr. Levinsky’s secretary confirming my appointment for this afternoon.” She paused her applications and glanced up at that small spot in the mirror where she caught him reflected like a fly in ointment. “What makes you ask?”

The space between the two rooms felt saturated with heat and the back of his neck flashed hot as if sunburned.

“Didn’t sound like a secretary, that’s all.”

It was abominably early for her to have begun playing her games and he wished he could reveal he knew all too well the context regarding her recent request for Valium from her physician.

All the doctor could permit himself to say was that she had requested a suspiciously specific amount of pill and nothing more. Her blood pressure, however, was nothing short of fantastic for someone her age and he ought to be satisfied over that at least.

“When’s the last time you set foot in Dr. Levinksy’s office anyway?” she said.

“How is that…” he started, and then pushed himself to consider that the entire dentist ordeal wouldn’t last longer than one hour. Then he could just see to her comfort when they returned home, before driving back to Westchester.

Even 90 minutes seemed sustainable, if he could prevent his body from turning against itself.

“I don’t recall,” he admitted, flatly.

“So then, I guess you wouldn’t be too privy as to what the doctor’s secretary sounds like these days.”

“No then,” he said. “I guess I wouldn’t.”

His mother took the lull in conversation to run a tube of ruby red lipstick across her lips victoriously.

Above them, a pair of voices rose in anger and Andrea began to hum.

Footfalls thumped back and forth, and then something crashed, prompting the male voice to completely overtake the other in force.

“Only be another minute or two, Dear,” his mother said.

“Sounds like they’re really getting into it today,” he said. “How do you live with that?”

Andrea made a popping sound with her lips and then smiled.

“Okay,” she said. “I’m ready.”

The car ride to Chestnut Ridge, although thankfully brief, played out as the typically trying affair he imagined it would be.

It wasn’t enough that John had to dedicate all of his focus to minding every stop sign and red light, but he also had to contend with every pant and gasp elicited from his mother whenever he braked a bit too short or else accelerated a bit too quickly.

All the while she fidgeted with the radio, groping at knobs and poking buttons the way a blind woman might do.

There seemed to be no shortage of static that could sate her, lingering always on the fringes of a station where you might catch the shadow of a song being played before she passed over it completely, succumbing to additional white noise.

At one point, she turned her attention to a man walking on the side of the road in an overcoat while they were at a stop.

“You know, the mayor really ought to do something about the vagrants around here. It’s simply unbecoming.”

“There aren’t any vagrants in Chestnut Ridge. Trust me.”

“You’d certainly like to think so,” she sighed. “The world’s not the same place it used to be.”

He’d like to tell her that only a crazy woman would wish things had stayed the same as all those years ago, but a hiccup of reflux lashed his throat like battery acid and he choked down his words, lapsing into silence.

The office had not changed much from the way it had looked when he used to go to Dr. Levinsky on a bi-annual basis—first with his mother as a child, and then by himself as an adolescent and young adult.

The smell of latex permeated the small waiting room, and a large tank of goldfish hummed in the far corner.

On the walls hung accolades and news article clippings where Dr. Levinsky was either author or else lauded in some regard. Every frame was in the shape of a tooth as if there was some fear a patient might believe themselves dropped off at the gynecologist instead of the dentist’s office.

The only noticeable change was that they had removed the old tube television wedged into the corner just off to the side of the front desk window and just below the ceiling, replacing it with a small flat screen that no longer played daytime television but instead ran ads for expensive dental treatments that could be paid off over the course of incremental charges.

John plopped down on one of the grey plastic skinned chairs closest to the exit while his mother checked herself in.

For as long as he could remember, he had hated the dentist. He had nothing personal against Dr. Levinsky, but there always seemed to be a tooth that required drilling or some business about gums receding.

Every session ended with the same question about flossing, and his answer never changed. He’d be forced to hold the same tooth shaped mirror up to his face while the dentist demonstrated proper flossing methods, as if it might one day alter John’s perspective on dental hygiene.

“John, dear. Would you just come over here one second?”

The hair on his arms bristled as he realized his mother was still hovering around the front desk like a gnat.

He imagined endless possibilities: was there a problem with the insurance? Had she yet again gotten her dates and times mixed up?

The thought of having to repeat the same ordeal the following Saturday or the Saturday after that unnerved him to the point of nausea.

He slumped over to where his mother had perched her bent elbow upon the desk besides a container of “Levinsky Dental” pens.

“John, dear. This is Sophia. She runs the front desk for Dr. Levinsky on the weekends.”

The young girl behind the desk looked painfully embarrassed as she turned her head toward him with an attempt at a half smile.

It was clear his mother had teed up the promise of some vague proposition and that the girl was not at all interested in the idea of one but was merely attempting to appear polite.

John raised his open hand in greeting and could very nearly feel his face flush a shade of purple as he stammered out a hello.

“The doctor’s just running a few minutes late, so we were just verifying some of my emergency contact information and I thought to myself, why don’t I just call him over?”

“I’m going to sit down now,” he said, regretful for his rudeness and knowing full well Sophia had not asked for any of it. She was simply being civil.

Certainly, his mother had noted every detail of her decades long patronage of the office and how she didn’t trust another soul with her teeth outside of Dr. Levinsky.

Andrea lingered a little longer at the front desk before taking the chair adjacent to John.

“You didn’t have to be so abrupt,” she half whispered. “I was only trying to make conversation.”

“You didn’t have to involve me,” he said.

“She’s only been in the area for a few weeks and I thought it might be nice to meet someone new.” She folded her bag across her lap. “Wouldn’t be the worst thing for you either.”

The buzz of the fish tank filter hummed in John’s skull and the dryness in his throat prevented him from swallowing too much at once.

He prayed the current patient would bite down on Dr. Levinsky’s ring finger and gnaw it clean off in some sort of freak accident so that John wouldn’t have to return to this place for a long time–possibly forever.

He wondered if dentists harbored those sorts of fears, or if it was just something you had to expunge form your thoughts in order to go into the field properly.

The single plantation-style door separating the patient area from the waiting room creaked open, led first by a slightly heavyset woman cupping a hand against her jaw, followed by Dr. Levinsky with what looked like all ten of his gloved digits still intact.

“We’ll look into a Pomeranian for sure,” he said. “Good seeing you, Martha.”

“Gug seein’ you,” the woman said, her lips hanging open and wet as a leftover from the Novocain most likely.

“We’ll mail you the bill for any necessary charges, Mrs. Kelvin,” Sophia called invisibly from behind the desk.

The woman pulled her coat form the rack with one hand and raised the other behind her as she waddled to the exit.

“Thang you!” she cried out.

John watched through the glass as she shuffled happily own the walkway and out into the street, no arm to lean on necessary. He presumed she was driving herself back to wherever she needed to go.

Now what in the world was so bad about that, he wondered.

“Mrs. Topher,” the dentist beckoned from the doorway. “Looks like you’re up to bat.”

The man was slight to the point where it seemed the center of his body leaned inwardly. Even his shoulders seemed to slop downwards.

His glasses, thick as coke bottles, enlarged his eyes to the point that it was impossible not to notice how one had been indiscriminately drawn to the side and gloated there in dead space like a marble suspended in a jar of Vaseline.

Overall, he looked most the same as he always had, just older now.

“Just a minute, Dr. Levinsky,” his mother chirped as she fussed with her belongings, rifling through her bag in search for something John knew she would never find.

“What could you possibly need right now,” John hissed, having witnessed the act a multitude of times before.

No matter who it was—the bank teller, the girl at the checkout line in the supermarket, and even her own dentist. She was going to make them wait until she felt they had borne the wasted time to the degree she saw fit. Then and only then did she count herself ready.

“Oh, I just thought maybe I had brought along something, but seems like I don’t have it,” she said.

“And what was it,” he asked, careful to speak in a tone he was sure would annoy her.

“I suppose it’s not much of consequence now,” she responded, directly and without the heat John had hoped to stir up from within her. He’d relish nothing more than to rake her across those coals just for spite.

She stood up from the chair and placed her pocketbook behind her. “I don’t know if you noticed, but I have my special caretaker with me today.”

The phrase “special caretaker” sounded to him like a death sentence handed down to him out of obligation, and he could feel his breathing quicken.

“John! Didn’t even recognize you. How are you doing?”

“Oh, pretty good, I’d say.”

“Great,” he said. “We’re just going to put your mother under for a little while we fix some things. She might be bit woozy coming out of it, so glad you’re around to help her out.”

John offered him forced half smiles as the raucous thumping beneath one eyelid began anew. “Can’t allow her to go it alone, can we?” Privately, the sound of words rolling off his tongue could make him spit if his sickness had not so completely drained him dry.

“Couldn’t have put it any better myself,” the doctor said, as if the position of son to mother was a bond of exalted responsibility, the cord that had affixed the two since conception never truly detached. “Perhaps one day we’ll even get you back in the chair,” he said, a lilting glimmer of hope present in his voice. “For old time’s sake.”

John had ceased his visits years ago, partly because he had moved far out in the northern section of Westchester, but partly due to the doctor himself.

Jacob Levinsky was a nice enough fellow, but he had been in the business for many decades an developed a worrisome tremor in his hands when he worked.

The development seemed to weigh little on the efficacy of his methods, but the constant shaking as he probed the mouth with surgical hooks proved too much of a mental anguish to contend with, so that John was more than enthusiastic to take the care of his teeth elsewhere, considering Dr. Levinsky just another relic of the past.

“We’ll see what we can do,” John said, grateful that the old dentist was taking his mother from him for a spell.

He was going to knock her out for a little while as he worked so John would not even have to worry about listening to her nonsense for the better part of an hour.

John sat listening to the sound of sucking air and the drill whirring as he waited in the otherwise empty area.

The clicking of the keyboard prompted him to get up and go over to the front desk.

“Hi again,” he said.

“Hello,” she said, disinterestedly.

“I wanted to apologize for my other just before. She can sometimes involve herself where she doesn’t belong.” He scratched a patch of stubble on his cheek. “She means well.”

“Oh no worries,” she said, looking up at him now. He hadn’t noticed what a good-looking girl she was before. “She wasn’t involving herself at all.”

“Oh good,” he said, relieved that the situation he had imagined might have been far less of a train wreck than he had believed. “I would hate for her to have said anything silly.”

“She only mentioned how long she had been a patient of Dr. Levinsky’s and how thankful she was to have a son wonderful enough to bring her to her procedures.”

“She said all that, did she?” He laughed.

“She did,” she said, and he thought he noticed the hint of a smile in the corners of her mouth.

“Well, she insists on being put under completely for this sort of thing and they won’t release her to go home unless she’s with someone she knows,” he said. “Liability reasons, I’m sure.”

“That’s what they tell us,” she said. “Still, these sorts of trips must try your patience every now and again. My mother drives me crazy. Sometimes I think she does it on purpose.”

The point of consensus had been reached and John began to speak freely of all the trials and tribulations of the relationship with his mother, all the while Sophia blinking at him with bright mirthful eyes and laughing.

The connection seemed a most fortunate one and John felt immediately thankful toward his mother for the introduction.

By the time Dr. Levinsky emerged back into the waiting room, both parties were red faced, jabbering away about a dozen different subjects, and laughing.

Sophia, for her part, turned immediately back to her computer screen and began tapping out a rapid assault on her keyboard.

The weary faced dentist rubbed his arthritic knuckles as John attempted to recover from the sudden change in mood.

“Everything went just fine with the procedure, but we had to administer a bit more of the gas than we usually do in order to ensure your mother remained comfortable throughout the entire process.” He cleared his throat and then peeked behind the plantation door to what John could only imagine was the prostrate figure of his mother. “She’ll be coming to soon but will probably be out of it for a little while. I’d recommend keeping an eye on her for the next few hours.”

A low guttural groan emanated from the back room, causing Sophia to jump in her set as John gnawed furiously at the inside of his cheek, drawing blood.

They hit a patch of construction coming back when John attempted to take a short cut on 304 through Pearl River, costing them nearly ten minutes in a bumper-to-bumper crawl through the congestion.

“Can’t you go any faster at all?” his mother cried, eyelids fluttering and opened mouthed. “There was none of this driving in.”

“I took a different way back,” he admitted, his knuckle white gripping the steering wheel, gritting his teeth when he had said his piece so not to risk saying anything that would further send her into hysterics.

“Oh, ho ho,” she cried. “I just want to go home, John. Please just take me home this instant!”

He careened into the parking lot where it seemed half the town had taken up horn honking as a national sport, and he had to half shoulder her up the small flight of stairs to her apartment door in a desperate dog paddle against gravity as she shrieked and moaned the entire way.

By the time he fished the keys out of her bag and the two of them stumbled into the living room, he was soaked with sweat.

“My god,” she cried. “Have you been drinking? Is that why you’re thrashing your mother about like some rag doll?”

John was very nearly blind with it now, the slow realization that he could not abandon his mother in this state.

“Calm down, mother! I’m only trying to help!” he shouted.

“Only trying to help,” she nearly screamed.” Just get me my pills! Get me my pills right now!”

He discovered her collection of pills hidden under a bundle of towels in the linen closet not long after getting her off to bed.

He rattled a few into the palm and drank them off with an old bottle of marsala wine he found in the kitchen cabinet.

After flushing the rest down the toilet, he sat down.

It was the shouting upstairs that awoke him, the sounds of bodies shifting around.

He glanced about the dimly lit room trying to recall where he was, unable then to even pinpoint the time of day.

“Johnny,” she called. She had not referred to him by that nickname since he was a little boy. “Johnny, what in God’s name is all that racket?”

He did not respond, and instead listened to the sounds that would encapsulate his existence the rest of his life.

Things went clattering.

Things went crash.

James Maxwell resides in Pennsylvania with his wife and son. He graduated with an MA in English from Iona College and has been writing for as long as he can remember. His work has been featured in Scarlett Leaf Review, Indiana Voice Journal, Running Wild, Drunk Monkeys, Allegory Ridge, Free Spirit, Half and One, and CFCC Portals Magazine.