Maureen was spinning herself around the kitchen, to make herself dizzy, she later told them, when she lost her balance and slammed face-first into the refrigerator. “Oh, no,” she cried out, “my tooth; I lost my front tooth,” and started bawling. Gwen and he were still at the table. He remembers saying just a few seconds before “Don’t run around so, Maureen. Let your food digest a little.” He jumped up from his chair — Gwen put her hands over her eyes and stayed seated — and got on the floor beside Maureen and said “Wait; don’t panic; let me look at it. Maybe it only feels as if it’s come out,” and she opened her mouth and blood dripped out and he saw that half of one of her top front teeth was gone. “I’m so sorry, my darling, so sorry,” and pulled the dishtowel out from the refrigerator handle and put it to her mouth and with his other arm held her close to him and now both were crying. “I know how terrible this is for you,” he said, “but we’re going to make it all right,” and she said “Why are you lying? It’s my second front tooth, my permanent. I’ll be ugly all my life,” and took the towel from him and ran into her room and slammed the door. He ran after her and said through the door “Maureen, do you need any help?…Are you taking care of the bleeding?…Let me speak to Mommy.” “It’s her permanent one, she says,” he said to Gwen, showing her the half broken part of the tooth he found on the floor,” and she said “Don’t you remember? Both front teeth fell out almost on the same day and she had this huge cute gap for months. Let’s see what I can do.” She called the emergency number of the kids’ dentist, left a message with the answering service. Called some of her friends with children and one said the same thing had happened to her son, but with a bat, and at around the same age. If the half that Martin found on the floor can’t be cemented back because the break was below the nerve ending, she explained, then the rest of the tooth will have to be filed down so a temporary tooth can replace it. Then, when her mouth’s fully developed, she’ll get a permanent tooth. Both will look and can be used like a real tooth and won’t discolor. They knocked on Maureen’s door, said they have some good news about her tooth. She let them in and they told her and she said “Then that’s what I’m going to do, even if it hurts a lot, if they can’t cement the tooth together. I want to look normal. You understand, Mommy,” and Gwen said “Daddy does too. When Dr. Dworkin calls I’ll tell him I need an appointment for you tomorrow. I’m sure he’ll make room for you when I say how urgent it is.” “But no tooth fairy this time because I don’t want this tooth put under my pillow. Okay, Daddy?” and he said “If you see me as the go-between to the tooth fairy rather than my being the tooth fairy himself, then okay: I’ll speak to him.” “Or her,” she said. Gwen later said to him “What a reaction you gave when she had the accident. You immediately knew what the loss of that tooth meant to her. My empathy is so much quieter and slower than yours and I think in the end less responsive. Sometimes I think I’m emotionally cold to you and the kids, while the three of you tumble into tears if I’m hurt or very sad, or you respond close to that. What’s wrong with me?” He put his arms around her neck and said “You? Nothing’s wrong. And all I did was hold and try to comfort her for the moment, and as you saw, really didn’t do much good. I didn’t have the right words or just my holding her wasn’t enough. While you were probably thinking of ways to make things better, and you did,” and she said “Now you’re trying to comfort me.” “No, it’s true. Your phone calls. I wouldn’t have thought to make them, not even to Dworkin, at least tonight. I would have just continued to feel awful about how miserable she was, while you used your big beautiful brain and saved the day. Once more, we’re a good team. Together we handled both aspects of a sad situation.”
