it works, if you’re careful. trust me.

“That’s the Hollywood version,” Dad said.

We sat in the dentist’s waiting room. Actually, it was an endodontist’s waiting room. The three of us were at ease, Mom and Dad having nearly made it through a week filled with medical appointments while maintaining their senses of humor and grace.

Mom made sure the receptionist understood that though I was interviewing Dad, we could release him the moment the endodontist required him. She tends to let people know I’m a writer any way she can.

I said to Dad, “You’re right. This makes it sound like you called Richard a day later, when really it might have been months. I’ve written it this way to make things flow better, but I can change it.”

“It’s fine,” he said, “since I don’t even remember how soon I made the call.”

“That reminds me,” Mom said, “we watched an interview of the real people from The Blind Side.”

“Yeah, the way it really happened, the young guy loved football all his life.” Dad and Mom went on discussing the based-on-a-true-story film we all saw recently, comparing their new knowledge with Hollywood’s version. I agreed with them that this time the movie-makers seemed to have gotten the important things right. Doesn’t always happen, of course.

I asked a question or two more before the endodontic assistant called Dad back. A little while later, the assistant ushered Mom and me into the small space where Dad’s exam was taking place. “I want you and Deanna here, Carol,” Dad said. To the endodontist he went on, “I’ll never remember everything you tell me, and they’ll grill me with a thousand questions.” The doctor said he had no problem with our presence.

I learned more than I hope I’ll ever need to know about root canals, specifically the history of this procedure since 1965, when Dad first underwent one in Oklahoma. Forty-five years later, it needs to be redone. After hearing the dental specialist’s evaluation, Mom and I felt we could trust him with Dad’s mouth.

I guess this sort of faith is essential to maintaining connected lives. These explanations of “how it happened” or “how it will happen” are, I suppose, unavoidably cobbled together to some extent. Fictionalized, if only slightly. Smooth communication from brain to mouth to a hearer’s mind requires editing. Rather amazingly, we can take in information and construct our individual views, and in most cases what’s lost in translation doesn’t cause a problem. The nature of truth is it’s malleable to a degree.

Yet something inside me tends to listen and watch for that off bit. You know it, or your instincts alert you, or something. When the tone of story becomes too convenient. I made sure to ask the endodontist if what he meant about the crown on Dad’s tooth was it might break when he redoes the root canal, no matter how secure he thinks it looks today. The doctor admitted he won’t know for sure about the crown until he does the procedure.

If someone asks me sometime — assuming my essay about Dad and Richard Brautigan gets published — whether or not Dad really phoned Richard as immediately as my story makes it sound, I’ll need to tell them I don’t know, don’t even think so. But I’m basing the story on truth, on what happened in a broad sense, and there’s enough factual meaning in there to be worth chewing on.

You trust me, right?