Her smile was falling off all day. But she didn’t seem to notice, and everyone else was too embarrassed to say anything. At first it just looked a bit off kilter, a little crooked, like a crayon drawing or a cloud or a one-way street. But then it got worse. It moved up to her cheek for a while, remaining there while she mailed some bills at the post office. Then it slipped down to her chin, where it dangled and jiggled as she shopped for bread, milk, and instant Jello at the supermarket. From there, the smile slid down her neck and under her blouse, reemerging once again on her left bicep. It looked a bit like a tattoo in that position, and people who saw her during this time, and didn’t know any better, thought of her as a real bad ass. But still, nobody said a word. Her hair was pulled tightly into a bun so everyone who was looking could see the smile when it moved again to the back of her neck. And there it began to grow. It grew and grew and grew like a wart or a cyst or a tomato plant or a ten-year old child. And then it fell off. It fell off as she was walking down the sidewalk toward her home in the middle of a housing tract. It fell off and she kept walking. It made a terrible shattering sound, like a dropped mirror or a jet plane or gunfire. She didn’t hear it, but her neighbors did. They stopped mowing their lawns and trimming their hedges and drinking their lemonade and smoking their cigarettes in order to look at the smile’s scattered shards on the ground.
