The Oak Table That Paid for Her Braces

My dental plan through the salon had an orthodontic benefit, which is a nice way of saying it paid its share. What was left was ours to carry, and the office worked it out in two pieces.

There was a $1,200 down payment, due before a single bracket went on her teeth. After that, $140 a month, which I could manage if I gave up a few things I was already used to giving up.

Our divorce papers were not complicated. Shane and I had worked most of it out at my kitchen table with a pot of coffee and a mediator from the county.

Anything insurance didn’t cover for Maddie’s doctor or dentist, we split down the middle.

Half of $1,200 was $600. I had the other $600 in an envelope in the cupboard above the fridge, in the coffee can where I kept the salon cash I hadn’t deposited yet.

I want to say something about Shane here, before I tell the rest, because it matters to how this ends.

Shane Kroll is not a bad father. He was a lousy husband in the specific way of a man who never once in his life looked at a bank statement, but he has loved that girl since the minute the nurse put her in his arms.

He taught her to drive the riding mower when she was nine, walking alongside the whole first summer with one hand near the key.

He hasn’t missed one of her volleyball games in three years, even the away games in towns with gyms so small the bleachers are on the stage.

He works as a mechanic at the implement dealer out on the county road. He is good at it. Farmers bring him combines and grain carts and tell the front desk they’ll wait until Shane can get to it.

But money and Shane have never gotten along. When we were married, the electric bill was mine to worry about and the new fishing rod was his to enjoy. That was most of the marriage, if I’m honest.

I called him that night from the back step, so Maddie wouldn’t hear through the wall. It rang five times and went to voicemail.

“Shane, it’s me,” I said. “Maddie told me what you said about the braces. Call me back. I’m not mad, I just need to know what we’re doing. Her appointment is Monday.”

I wasn’t mad yet. That part came the next night.

Wednesday I had a full book. Two perms, a color correction on a woman who had tried to go blonde in her bathtub, and four trims for the high school boys before football practice started.

Shane didn’t call back. He texted once, around noon, while I had foils in somebody’s hair.

“Sorry Jess. Things are tight. Can we do it in a couple months?”

I wrote back that the appointment was Monday and the office needed the down payment by Friday. I said we had already moved the date twice. I said Maddie had been waiting since she was twelve.

He didn’t answer that one.

That evening I was on the couch with my feet up, scrolling through my phone, too tired to cook anything but scrambled eggs.

And there it was, near the top of my feed, because Facebook seems to know exactly what will ruin your night.