How you’re going to create him in your own image?”
“Just the ticket Sandy, you and I opening our own office. Like a father and son.”
“Do you know,” Mrs. Riddle said to Sandborn, “why we don’t have any children?”
“Did you know, Sandy, that Mrs. Riddle made this entire meal in the microwave?”
“That’s very impressive,” said Sandborn.
“That’s why it all tastes like white rice with margarine,” Dr. Riddle said.
Mrs. Riddle picked up her soup spoon.
“She’s a microwave queen,” Dr. Riddle said.
Mrs. Riddle scooped her soup spoon into a casserole dish and aimed carefully for her husband’s mouth.
“Have some asparagus puff pie,” she said gaily, sending it across the table and onto his forehead.
“Maybe I’d better be going,” Sandborn said.
“Oh please do stay,” Mrs. Riddle said. “For after dinner treats we have pumpkin bars and asparanuts.”
Dr. Riddle pushed his chair back, squatted down, and lifted his end of the table, trying to slide the entire meal onto his wife’s lap.
In the dining room of his apartment, Dr. Sandborn worked for thirty-seven evenings in a row, making informal placemats for the dining room table that the tourists could enjoy with him while they ate lunch. He laminated them himself. His plan was to serve the tourists in shifts of four to preserve that family feel without crowding anyone at the table. First, he reproduced a pencil sketch of Rembrandt’s The Charlatan, depicting a market busker in sweeping criss-crossed and curved lines holding up a crude medicine with which to ease toothaches. This placemat was reserved, of course, for the artsy tourist. On top of it, the tourist might enjoy some cascadilla soup and perhaps some alsatian cheese salad, served with a tofu and soy sauce side plate.
The second placemat catered to the superstitious and neurotic tourist. It was a pen and ink drawing of Goya’s Hunting for Teeth, with a woman standing on tiptoe averting her face and holding a scarf over it while removing the teeth from a man who had recently been hanged. Some women, Dr. Sandborn knew, still retained equally ridiculous superstitions about how to relieve their own toothache pain. One patient had told him that her mother used to make her eat a banana whenever she had a toothache. Invariably the girl would eat the banana and lose a tooth in the process. Any female tourist who might have had similar painful childhood experiences could sit at the Goya placemat and concentrate on the superstitious look on the woman’s face, while sipping a hot soup completely unlike a banana, such as spicy tomato or mushroom bisque or even Brazilian black bean, if Dr. Sandborn had time to prepare it.
However, to show he was giving the ladies a fair shake, and in anticipation of the inevitable feminist tourist, he made a water color of Daumier’s She Stands Her Ground for the third placemat, boasting a burly female dentist with her entire hand hidden in a patient’s mouth, five overly sized molars and a tooth-key at her feet. He added just a touch of ruffle to the woman’s dress at the shoulders, elbows, wrists, and waist to suggest a softer look than Daumier had. For the feminist tourist, Dr. Sandborn would prepare a regular ground beef hamburger on a plain Sunbeam roll with some ketchup, prudently holding the mayonaise, mustard, onions, pickles, relish, lettuce, tomato, cheese, and salt.
And, for the fourth placemat, geared to the particularly witty and analytical tourist, he pastelled a copy of the controversial 1956 painting by Solot, The Revolt of the Molars, using additive colors for the two adult forceps and subtractive colors for the two baby forceps. The forcep family huddled together on their handles behind the wall, terrified of being caught up in the bloody revolt outside, where a mob of molars hoisted some of the forceps’ nuclear family members up onto the gallows, the molars dancing mirthfully. An intelligent eater, Dr. Sandborn knew, would recognize the placemat’s symbolic representations of the crucial odontology issue: radical (tooth extraction) versus conservative (root canal). This placemat would be particularly relevant when serving bologna and cheese sandwiches.
He thought of everything. He decided against reproducing Elgström’s 1945 water color, The Widov, depicting an old lady sitting in an office armchair and grinning reminiscently at her dead husband’s false teeth smiling up at her from her hand. He even denied himself the urge to reproduce Pieter Breughel’s 1556 Christ Casting Out the Money-Changers, completely resisting the temptation to circle the often-ignored dentist on Jesus’s right with red crayon. The religious implications, he thought, would be too controversial. Also, he kept Paul Bunyans, sweet and sour pork, chili, sauerkraut, and pigs in a blanket strictly off the menu, because he knew what they would do to his tourist’s breath.
Three years earlier, the two doctors had worked side by side in the same office.
“Smell this, partner,” Dr. Riddle said, sneaking up behind Dr. Sandborn and covering his chin with a nitrous mask.
“Not me, your patient,” Dr. Sandborn said, trying to stay calm and guiding Dr. Riddle’s wrist to his patient’s face.
“I’d rather be having a baby than a root canal,” Dr. Riddle’s patient said.
“Well here, Gladys, let me just adjust this chair a little,” Dr. Riddle said.
Gladys laughed and breathed calmly with the mask over her nose.
Dr. Sandborn returned to the mouth of his own patient, twiddling his instruments like chopsticks, trying to scrape some plaque off a molar without frowning. The patient’s breath smelled like yellow ammonia. Dr. Sandborn knew that was impossible. He knew because he had once answered a test question incorrectly: Antibacterial substances secreted in saliva include:
(a) lysozyme
(b) immunoglobulins
(c) peroxidase
(d) ammonia
(e) all of the above
He did detect, however, a hint of a yeasty smell, and he knew that was possible. All mouths, when opened, excreted a certain amount of yeast, merocrine, and something that smelled like vodka. The patient swallowed suddenly and Dr. Sandborn caught a whiff of sour orange juice as the patient exhaled.
“Do you use mouthwash regularly?” Dr. Sandborn asked.
“No,” the patient said.
“How long since you’ve had your teeth cleaned?” Dr. Sandborn asked.
“About five years,” the patient said.
“No wonder you had curly little hairs stuck in there!” Dr. Riddle yelled from across the room.
Gladys laughed.
“This gas is great,” she said. “I’m on a cloud. Floating down the highway with Frank Sinatra. He’s singing ‘Ring-A-Ding-Ding.’ On a cloud.”
“What flavor is it?” Dr. Riddle asked.
“Vanilla, silly, all clouds are vanilla.”
“All good clouds are vanilla,” he corrected her.
Dr. Sandborn tapped his own patient on the shoulder.
“Your mouth will taste funny for a while after this,” he said, “but start using Listermint twice a day and the smell will go away.”
“Okay,” said the patient.
“Now,” said Gladys, “the cloud is angel hair. Like at Christmas. And I’m taking a nap and eating an orange.”
“What does it smell like?” Dr. Riddle asked.
“A lemon,” she said, delighted. “The orange smells like a lemon!”
Dr. Sandborn had always been bothered by the stench of chicken or fish most people left lingering in their kitchens. He offered his tourists several instructive alternatives. Most dentists typically asked their patients to tap on