Three weeks after she married Richard Eckman in September of 1960, Leta had
her remaining teeth pulled. Over the years, she had been losing them steadily
to cavities and receding gums. By the time she was 60, she only had four front
teeth on the top and two molars on each side on the bottom. Consequently, she
wore four partials,
Richard suggested that she undergo the procedure. She had been complaining
of discomfort from the way her bottom partials rubbed against her natural teeth
and if she drank something too hot or cold, the front teeth ached.
“Taking aspirin isn’t doing my good, my dear,” he told her one morning when
she winced as she brushed.
“It’s helping,” she commented as she rinsed.
“Look at that,” he instructed, pointing to the sink where little strands of
blood swirled in the water. “You’re bleeding.”
“I brushed too hard,” she declared.
He looked at her skeptically but seemed to let the matter rest.
Fifteen minutes later, she gasped and put her hand to her mouth when she
had her first sip of coffee. Her face tensed and her eyes popped.
“That’s enough, Leta,” Richard snapped. “Make the appointment.”
Richard had been wearing dentures for more than a decade, he told her, and
he particularly liked how they made him look and the ease with which he could
speak and eat. He explained that he had terrible natural teeth. They were
crooked and cracked. At one appointment when he was in his thirties, he had ten
cavities. “Those vile things were rotting in my mouth. My breath was terrible.
My mouth hurt all the time. I couldn’t eat things I liked.” So he had them
removed.
“Best decision I made in my life,” he declared. “Well, one of them,” he
corrected, as he winked at his wife.
During the dental procedure, while her mouth swelled and ached, while she
waited for the dentures, even the first few weeks after she received them,
Richard took care of her. Leta hated how she looked and hated feeling ill.
Aside from a cold here and there and the occasional bout of influenza, she was
very healthy. Having her teeth removed made her mouth swell. She had no
appetite, and when she tried to eat, her mouth objected. She numbed her aching gums
with whiskey and then she could swallow soup or gelatin. Vivian made her
applesauce which went down fairly well, and she could swallow mashed potatoes.
She also refused to leave the house, have anyone visit her or even speak on
the telephone—in fact—she rarely talked until after the dentures arrived.
Even with these, she took several weeks to get used to them. Her gums
remained tender, she choked on them, and even the slightest particle of food
irritated her as much as getting a speck of dust in her eye.
One morning Leta woke and went into the bathroom. There were two highball
glasses sitting on the shelf above the sink. The glass on the left held her
husband’s teeth, and the one on the right held her own. She had been dreading
putting them in, but this morning, when she saw the glasses, she laughed. She
could not help herself. A week earlier, she overheard Richard talking to one of
his children on the telephone. “…like his and hers towels,” he said, “only in
glasses and on the counter. The only way we can tell them apart is that I’m on
the left and Leta is on the right.”
That day the artificial teeth seemed to fit, nothing irritated her, and she
ate well. The next day she went shopping. Two days later they visited Vivian
and that Saturday night, they hosted her grandson Don and his very pregnant
wife Pat for an evening of card playing.
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