Temporary Filling
By Katy Mahood.
Day six of isolation. Today, I replaced my husband’s filling. Lucky for us, my dad had some old packs of dental filler from before his retirement. He offered to guide proceedings via video call, but by the time we’d hustled the kids upstairs it was gone nine o’clock, so Matt and I threw caution to the wind and went all out on the kitchen table. In that exciting new domain of marital intimacy I peered at the black-edged decay in his mouth.
‘Don’t worry,’ I told him as I pushed a ball of mint-flavoured putty into the cavity, ‘Dentistry’s in my blood.’
He couldn’t answer because my hand was in his mouth. He seemed to take it well, though. All in all, he isn’t a bad patient, which is good, considering how much patience life requires these days.
In a time of grieving, time slows down. Each day now lasts approximately a week. Today has moved with cussid slowness through a bright-eyed Monday energy to the indifference of a wet Wednesday afternoon, stoking a brief Friday-style enthusiasm before collapsing into the boredom of a Sunday in 1987. Every day now is a Sunday in 1987: nothing open, everyone morbid, only lunch to live for.
Most Sundays of my childhood were notable for their quiet. The visitors were gone (there were always visitors) and the household was in the throes of re-setting itself from whichever cousins, uncles, aunts, friends, grandparents or long-lost great aunts from Australia had come to stay. We (the children) were left disappointed that our uncle had declined to bring the shotgun he’d pointed at us through his letterbox weeks before; or we were faintly nauseous because another uncle had spun us by our legs for hours; or we were struggling with a sugar hangover from eating the family pack of Skittles our aunt had snuck us after bedtime. Our parents would occasionally be struggling with real hangovers, which was good because it meant they’d buy more sweets and rent a video. Once the house was tidy, the five of us would fold up like a nest of gerbils and watch a film, while mum picked her way through a bag of Liquorice allsorts without ever eating any of the liquorice.
On the Saturday nights when the uncles — or whoever — were visiting, I would fall asleep to a faint lullaby of cigar smoke and voices. The sound of all those people made me feel part of something important. Being important was important to that side of my family. The family name means ‘fierce in battle’ and, by God, they were fierce. The voices that drifted up the staircase were often pitched like weapons. Occasionally someone stormed away: down the hill, or up the stairs, propelled by the unruly emotions of a family hooked on drama. Noisy, but not nasty. The nasty words were quiet: a poisonous letter, a vitriolic phone call, the caustic incision of a thirty-character text message. You’re not one of us any more.
The first time I understood that violence could be quiet I was four and in my nightie. My bare feet pressed in the soft pile of the front room rug as I watched mascaraed tear-tracks bisect my mother’s cheeks. The phone lay in its cradle on her lap.
‘What’s wrong?’ I said.
My dad answered in his unhurried way.
‘She’s been speaking to Nana.’
I climbed onto mum’s lap and she put the phone aside. She sniffed behind my ears and took me back upstairs.
Yesterday, I cried on the phone to my mum. Who hasn’t cried by now? The children are fractious, the adults are fraught. I mourn the loosening that used to come at 9.05 each morning, when everyone was where they were supposed to be and silence settled ready as a blank page.
‘I’ve got my arms around you,’ she said. That would have to do.
Today, I cycled through the absent traffic to the house on the hill where my parents still live. On the front steps my dad set down a sandwich bag. I waited for him to retreat and picked it up. Inside was a purple packet of dental filler and the rich scent of isopropyl alcohol.
‘I wiped it down,’ dad said from two metres away.
‘Wash your hands anyway,’ said my mum, who was standing beside him.
I spoke with them from the foot of the steps. Mum told me she’s been saying hello to passersby. ‘Sometimes they say hello back,’ she said, ‘and sometimes they stare at me as if I’m mad.’
I pushed my bike on to the road and freewheeled down the hill, back towards my home. Later, when the dinner things were cleared away, Matt lay down on the table and I packed his tooth with out-of-date putty. ‘Not bad,’ I said to the inside of his mouth.
He looked contemplative as he probed my handiwork with his tongue. I patted his shoulder in what I hoped was an encouraging manner.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘It’s not supposed to last forever.’
After that, I went upstairs and held each of our children until they fell asleep.
@KatyMahood
