Dustin M. Hoffman
Little Annette came inside from play that afternoon carrying a face. She flopped it onto the dinner table as she washed up for dinner. Her mother spotted it from the kitchen, registering the grime-shrouded thing as some beleaguered toy the weather had battered holes through. But, no, it was a face, which was confirmed once the three of them, Mom, Dad, and Annette sat down for spaghetti, Annette's favorite meal. Annette's parents slurped noodles while risking glances, while determining that it was a man's face, speckled in dark-brown stubble across the cheeks and chin. It was a well-aged face, creased around the eyes, deep plow lines dragged over the forehead. If it had eyes, they'd be gazing up at the six-year-old Annette heaping a snowdrift of parmesan cheese over the scarlet marinara sauce.
During bath time, she let it float atop a skin of pearly bubbles as she washed her own hair, a newly acquired skill. She was unthorough, but neither Mom nor Dad felt much like reaching over the face to help lather her hair. Annette gentled an orange washcloth over the face, taking care to clean each nostril and both empty eye sockets with her slim index finger. Where she was careless with her own hair, she was precise with the face. Both parents couldn't help but admire the earnest sense of duty she applied and how the face gleamed in the bathroom lights.
Soon enough, the face worked its way into bedtime routine. Annette propped it up against a neglected purple teddy bear so that the face appeared to be reading the pages of her bedtime storybooks. Once the lights flicked out, she hugged it tight, tucking the face against her ribs. One empty eye socket peeked over her arms to ogle either Mom or Dad as they tiptoed out of the room.
When Annette lost her first tooth, her parents were forced to confront the face's empty stare. That night, Annette's loving grip loosened, allowing the face to gawk straight at them. An open-lipped smile revealed Annette's pink bedsheets through its mouth, enough like a tongue for Mom to freeze, sure it might speak, to denigrate her shoddy mothering, or perhaps request a glass of water or some shaving cream. It didn't speak, of course, and she traded the tooth for a five-dollar bill. Too high a price tag for a tooth, when a full mouth would spill out soon enough. But Annette was their only daughter. She deserved everything.
Maybe, they suggested the next morning, she might use the Tooth Fairy funds to purchase a stuffed animal, a new best friend to snuggle at night, and wouldn't she prefer soft fur and a plush body to Steven—the name she'd taken to calling the face. On their next visit to the store, she used the five dollars to purchase exfoliating cream for the face. She tugged her dad's hand toward the cosmetics section, as if she'd perused this aisle dozens of times. She thumbed her chin as she considered the various cool-blue and organic-green packaging. Eventually she settled on one touting all-natural honey, aloe, and coal pellets that cost $4.99. She was sure Steven would love it.
Annette's parents discussed the face most nights, talks that devolved into schemes of covert destruction. They could steal the face from her in the night and bury it in the woods or set it on fire. These plans carried the risk of lingering trauma, but the alternative seemed worse; they cringed at the idea of confronting Annette and initiating an intense, sincere dialogue, which they did with most behaviors they wished to correct—when she'd tried to ride the neighbor's Labrador like a pony, when she'd repeated overheard cuss words, when she'd spit off a hotel balcony just to see it fall and hear the wet smack. They prided themselves on respecting her curious whimsy, no matter how unseemly. They believed this approach had shepherded Annette into becoming the gentle, sensitive child they doted over. With the face, though, they landed on the lackluster strategy of a lie. They'd tell her the face's family had posted a missing poster.
The morning they planned to confront Annette with the missing poster, she walked down for breakfast wearing the face. It hung loosely from her forehead, where she'd affixed it with a Hello Kitty hairband. Her brown eyes twinkled distantly behind the face's eye sockets, and the face's jowls dipped low enough to sag against her collarbone. Annette's dad reflexively crinkled the missing poster in a fist. Mom poured too many Cheerios into an overfilling bowl, so many that they were still crunching Cheerios underfoot three days later. And three days later Annette had not taken off the mask.
They awaited the inevitable note to come from the school—Annette's classmates terrorized, her teacher unable to maintain order, the very fabric of the school system threatened by the disturbance. Each day, while Annette ate her afternoon snack of sliced green apples and cheddar cheese cubes through the sagging lips of an elderly man, her parents scoured her backpack for a note, for any excuse to demand she abandon the face. But nothing. Each day, the school bus driver greeted her with a grin. The neighbors waved. Annette's parents watched through the bus window as her tiny friends clasped Annette's hands and hugged fearlessly.
While taking family photos, they'd ask her to set Steven aside, but her actual face turned pinched, her smile squeezed, so much tension in her jaw and round cheeks, right down to her nostrils flared above her stiffened lips set aquiver. Annette's face became such a portrait of pain that they felt relieved when she redonned Steven the face. Following these photoshoots, their nightly meetings to discuss Steven's exile dissolved.
Steven joined the family for a visit to the Grand Canyon that summer. He peered down into its craterous plunge of bone-pale earth. As Annette leaned, her father had to choke back the urge to slap the face off—a gentle slap, just enough to dislodge that old man's skin. He imagined Steven's rubbery jowls flapping in descent. He could even hear the plop. Soon enough after, he fantasized, Annette would beam, revealing her teeth with the charming black gap, laugh even, at this phenomenon that had just been a phase for the passing.
Why don't you let me hold Steven, for safekeeping? he said. But Annette assured him he was safe, and then she spit into the canyon, through Steven, as if that were proof. She whirled to look toward her father, to aim that face at him. He spotted a flash of Annette's teeth behind the soggy lips.
Pale desert flanked the blacktop that sliced their path home. Annette's father drove with two clenched fists while Annette slept in the back, under the melted skin of that old-man cocoon. The face made a whistling sound each time she exhaled. Twinkly rainbow barrettes held the face's forehead to her hair in five places. Through the rearview mirror, Annette's father watched her sleep, counted and recounted the barrettes, couldn't remember where they'd come from—a Christmas or birthday gift, from him and his wife or maybe a grandparent. Where did anything come from anyway? It seemed so easy to lose track.
The car swerved when Annette's mother had to jerk the steering wheel to keep the car on the road. Her father had nearly driven them into a rusted chain fence growing out of the sand. He thanked his wife. They were both glad, in that second of dodging an accident, to be on the road still and safely nested in the middle of their lives.
Fueled by the endorphins of recently reaffirmed safety, Annette's father reached for the still-sleeping Annette. He yanked the mask from her face. The barrettes snapped with a tearing, and she probably shrieked. But it was in motion now, like the car he still needed to steer. And he was driving this family, wasn't he? He told himself this as he chucked the face out the window and drove onward. Miles would stretch between Annette and her face soon enough. The distance was already growing.
Annette's father looked to his wife, but she turned her face toward the window, and he found only the back of her head, a ponytail wagging in the breeze. It was fine. He didn't need to hear he'd done right. He was done agreeing, done with parental diplomacy, with gentleness. But he couldn't look at his daughter in the back seat. He wouldn't risk glancing in the rearview to observe the bare disappointment she wore on her face.