Past in the Night or Waking Up to More

Merle was just a dentist. How he longed to be more than just a dentist.

People didn't like him much. When was the last time anyone dreaded going to see the librarian, or the nice waitress at Hugh's who took his order only after she'd licked the tip of the pencil? No, people were eager to be pointed to important bits of information. Having his oval plate of three scrambled eggs and three bacon strips cooked crisp delivered by milk white hands with pink pearl polish on the nails—who would run from that? People came to him in pain most often. Then complained about the price. Yes, his profession was simply a necessary evil, and so by association, he was much the same. Sort of like taxes.

It might have been better if his grandma hadn't died when he was ten. She was the only person on the whole earth that he'd felt connected with. She understood things about him that he didn't understand himself. She would have taught him. Merle knew it like he knew the sun would come up tomorrow. His life would have been so much different if she would have been around long enough to teach him some crucial point he was obviously missing.

He'd tried to live it as he thought she'd want, but it was difficult to bring her into his adult world. He ended up following his father's advice—the mantra that still ran through his head like a chant. "As long as there are teeth, we'll need dentists. As long as there's running water in houses, we'll need plumbers. So do you want to crawl under houses with me?"

That he didn't want to do. Mold made him sick. Mud—well mud was an entity all it's own and he didn't care at all for it. There was no mold or mud involved in dentistry.

Funny Dad hadn't mentioned being a doctor. It took almost as long to be a dentist, but his father thought it was easier. Besides which, Matthew was in line to be the doctor.

Merle moved from the waiting room, where he hit the switch and allowed the darkness to settle before he flipped the sign to the closed side. No crises tonight. Besides his potential partner was on call. Which meant Merle should go home. But he didn't. First he made a trip to the extraction room and took a meek inhalation of nitrous oxide, then retreated into the little den in the back of the building where he sat sometimes when he needed a break from people in pain. He closed the door softly behind him and locked it. His hand was sure and steady as it reached behind the Charles Dickens volumes to find his grandmother's box of medicine. This was one treasure that had remained his, because no one else had ever known of its existence.

He settled into the massive leather chair behind the desk and kicked off his loafers. The carpet was soft under his feet; he was again without clean socks and made a rather hazy mental note that he should buy some soon. He settled into his chair, centered the medicine box on the blotter centered on his immaculate desk. All that was left was to peer over it to the corner where Matthew's favorite rocking stood silent and still; it would be swaying when he woke, and the scent of polished wood would fill the air.

It wouldn't be hard to see Matthew then, astride the rhythmic creature, the sun gleaming in his red-blonde hair. Merle could not figure out how such a thing could happen in a room where the light sources together amounted to less than 100 watts. Matthew would ride (in silence; if Merle spoke he'd disappear) and Merle would nod, until the rocking stopped and it was time for him to go home where he could dream of something else other than the gone-too-soon grandmother and gone-too-soon-forever-too-perfect brother.

That was where Bea found him most Friday nights after she eased the pin into the hole in the doorknob and popped the lock, and came in to clean. The first time was the only time she was surprised to see him sprawled spread-eagle in the chair behind his desk, somehow managing not to let gravity pull him all the way out to the floor. He looked more huge than he did even when she worked up the nerve to have him check her decades-old wisdom teeth to see if they'd lost their smarts and needed to come out. He hadn't blinked once or made her feel like the idiot she already felt, searching for some reason to visit the dentist. It was another amazing feat of Dr. Merle.

Bea did the quiet things first, like dusting, watering and grooming plants, scrubbing sinks with quiet sponges instead of bristle brushes. She always drew him a cup of water because he snored ferociously and breathed through is mouth as he slept. She knew from experience that made a person very thirsty. Asleep he looked like an overgrown boy; a boy who couldn't stop until he dropped from exhaustion, only when he was positive he could not miss anything important. How wonderful it must be to have an important job, a job you would gladly do again and again and again, because skill flowed from your mind through your fingers and made people's lives better.

When she gazed upon him like this, from the charcoal shock of wavy hair that fell cross his forehead to the too-long big-toe nails, she felt a twinge of guilt. She argued in self-defense that there should be some perks to being just the cleaning lady. How she longed to be more than just the cleaning lady. People expected her to stay invisible, as though the counters dusted themselves and fingerprints on glass doors automatically vanished overnight. What would happen if just this one night, when there was nothing left to do but vacuum which would wake him, she pulled up a chair opposite him, kicked off her shoes and let the carpet squish under her toes, and simply watched him until he woke? He'd do that at 2:00 am, give or take ten minutes. She knew precisely when to go out to her Kia for a break, then come back to finish after he'd driven his forest green Jag out to 44^th street and made a left under the yellow-orange streetlight that turned the car brown.

What if tonight she took her break right here and let him wake up with her in full view? He'd blink, bounce to his feet and say, "Who are you? What are you doing here?" and she would say, "I am Bea and I brought you water." He would be thankful and ask if she was about finished and she would say yes, but I think I'll stop by the café at 44^th and Rose and have a piece of cherry pie. And he'd say cherry was his favorite. (There were often plastic dessert plates with cherry pie remnants in the trash.) And maybe in the eeriness of the hour he would relax and she would ask what was in the box, and why the horse rocked in the corner, and he would know she could be empathetic and soothing, even if she could never be as important as a dentist.

But her mother would talk to her the longer she sat there. She knew her mother's voice; they had lain her body to rest but not her tentacles, and they would insidiously over-reach Bea's mind. Nice girls wait. They aren't forward or pushy. Humble girls didn't look for more than they deserved. Mother thought she'd make a good plumber's wife.

Here was Dr. Merle, no plumber, that's for sure, and for some reason he stirred something in her that she dared not culture or examine. She did not pull the guest chair to the desk. Instead she wiped down the rocking horse, as she generally did—the last thing before she went on break. It didn't help that tonight for some reason she was so god-awful tired. Tired of cleaning, tired of oogling the sleeping dentist, tired of dealing with all the insignificant details of her life. The thought crossed her mind that she could just vacuum so she could get home. So what if it woke him? He could go sleep at home where he belonged and they'd both feel better for it in the morning. He obviously needed a reason to go home and sleep in his bed on Friday nights. Why couldn't she be more than invisible for just one night, for crying out loud? Let what happened happen.

---------------------------------

Prompt: Describe a barefooted prophet walking with grandmother's box of medicine. The year is 1612; the dentist is high on gas, while a toy horse rocks in the corner.