Separation Anxiety

by Laura Zigman

  “Boys! Boys! You can’t fight over the peace gong! It defeats the whole purpose! We share here!” Mr. Noah separates the boys and then, after some whispered diplomacy and with all hands on the mallet, brings them back in. They tap the gong together.

  I turn to roll my eyes at Teddy but he is no longer next to me, or right behind me, or wherever he was when we’d rushed from the car into the school. I scan the sea of small heads and hooded jackets, hoping to find him in a group of boys, yelling and laughing and doing something completely idiotic and annoying and un-Montessori-like, but by now I know better. He’s become a solitary child—neither academic nor athletic; neither popular nor universally loathed; no longer a tween, but barely a teen. It is an existential purgatory, not knowing who you are and who you will become. Even though I can’t see him I know that he is waiting somewhere on the periphery of the faux gymnasium for the unspeakable torture of Bring-Your-Parent-to-School Day to begin: alone, without a friend to confide in or roll his eyes to. My heart balls up like a fist in my chest. No wonder people day-drink.

  We’d moved him here to this small private school from public school for second grade, when the fact that he’d entered kindergarten without knowing his letters had reached such a fevered pitch of concern on the school’s part that they practically forced us into medicating him for depression. Gary and I would have been happy to agree to that if he’d indeed been depressed, but we both knew what being a sad child looked and felt like, and Teddy wasn’t a sad child. Except when he was in school. When he wasn’t in school he was full of energy and glee, playing with the boys down the street all day outside and becoming a tiny monster-guitarist at the nearby music school that was run by one of Gary’s old friends. But no matter what we told the team of special educators who came together every few months to review Teddy’s individualized education program (IEP), and no matter how much I tried to convince them that Gary and I weren’t against medication at all—in fact, we were extremely pro-meds (“Between the two of us, we keep most of the big psycho-pharmaceutical companies in business!” I’d joke, until they looked at me like I had a bird on my head)—it never did any good. My explanations sounded like excuses, the kind every middle-aged mother made when she was desperately clinging to her own distorted version of reality. The fact that Teddy might have a minor learning delay and some processing issues—what was now called executive functioning—not depression—was never discussed until we applied to Morningside Montessori and an informal diagnosis was made based on the assessments and school progress reports we submitted for admission.

  Just as I start to back away from the crowd to look for Teddy in earnest, Mr. Noah begins the school’s daily briefing. He claps his hands close to his chest, then mimes for everyone to sit down. “Time for morning meeting, Peace Pals.”

  In seconds, peace prevails, and there is the soft thud of a room full of little and medium-size bodies dropping to sit on the wooden floor. My eyes fill the way they often do now, at the tiniest moments of grace or beauty, always without warning. I find a wall to lean against, then wipe my nose on the back of my hand, then take a deep cleansing breath to signal to my body and brain that it is time to focus on the News of the Day.

  “Our annual intensive all-school deep-dive Autumn Inhabitancy begins soon, which we’re very excited about,” Mr. Noah says, holding a large photo above his head of a group of people in animal costumes. From where I’m sitting, I think I can make out a cow, a horse, and maybe a moose. “This year, for something new and very different, the People Puppet Theater is coming all the way from Vermont. They’ll need room and board for a few weeks, so ask your parents if you can be a host family.” He stops to gasp. “I mean, how fun would that be? To have real live People Puppets in your house? Puppets-in-residence! It reminds me of college!” He stops to sigh wistfully. I squint, and though I can’t be certain, I think one of the layers of clothing he’s wearing—T-shirt, oxford cloth button-down, lightweight quilted down vest, cotton neck-smock—is some kind of bib. “But this morning we’re very excited to have Teddy Vogel’s mom visiting us for Bring-Your-Parent-or-Grandparent-or-Beloved-Guardian-to-School Day.”

  Even though I still can’t see him, I know that Teddy is horrified at the mention of his name, which is not even really his name, since Vogel is my last name, and Teddy’s last name is Flynn, Gary’s last name, but the school, irrepressibly progressive, insists on allowing teachers to call children by the mother’s surname instead of the father’s, even if the names aren’t hyphenated, whenever they want to. I can feel myself start to bristle—a school should call a child by their given name, not a politically correct interpretation of what their name could be, right?—when I realize Mr. Noah is coming to the end of his brief parent-intro and that in seconds it will be time for me to get up and speak. I pull out my old dog-eared copy of Bird from my bag, the one I used to read from when I still did readings, and pick a few pieces of stray dog hair from my sweater.

  “. . . so here’s Judy Vogel to tell us all about writing children’s books!”

  I hug the sling as Mr. Noah waves at me to come forward, out of the shadows. When I’m standing next to him, I realize that he is indeed wearing a bib—made from terry cloth, with a little lamb on it. Maybe he wears one first thing in the morning with the preschoolers? He points at the sling.

  “Teddy didn’t mention there was a new baby!”

  “There isn’t.” I finally find Teddy in the crowd, and as soon as I do I almost wish I hadn’t. His face has crumpled into misery. “It’s a dog,” I whisper.

  “A dog-baby! How adorkable is that?” he coos, and just as I’m about to start nervous-talking about the dog and how much I love wearing her and how she’s helped get me through a difficult time, I watch Teddy sink into the crowd and disappear, like he’s fallen backward into a dark lake that has swallowed him up whole. I want more than anything to find him and apologize for embarrassing him, but instead I pull something else out of my bag: a Bird on Your Head knit Peruvian-style hat that was part of the official promotional merchandise for the book and animated television series. I take a deep breath and put the hat on over my hair, tucking the long strands behind my ears and letting the multicolor yarn ties fall straight along the sides of my face. Then I step forward to start my presentation.

  That’s when the doors to the all-purpose room fling open and a teacher runs into the crowd. Her hands form a frantic T—for time-out. “We need you upstairs right away, Mr. Noah!” she yells in a panicked screech. “It happened again!”

  Mr. Noah turns and stares at her across the sea of student bodies. His mouth drops open into a horrified O. “Again??” he says, before chasing her through the crowd and out the doors toward the middle school, his crepe-soled shoes squeaking on the polished wood floor as he flees.

  * * *

  The interruption of my “talk” before it even starts proves to be a total buzzkill to the crowd, and to me, and I can’t help feeling annoyed that what I assume is nothing more than a clogged toilet or maybe a mouse in one of the middle school classrooms couldn’t have waited until I finished. Rattled by the teacher’s dramatic entrance and Mr. Noah’s even more dramatic departure, I stand there for a few silent seconds with the stupid Peruvian bird hat on my head, staring out at all the children, who are looking at me expectantly. My presentation, if you can even call it that, lasts no more than five minutes—just long enough for me to explain that my book was essentially a “weirdness manifesto” about “embracing difference,” and that I’d written it because my mother always used to look at me like I was the strangest person on earth—“like I had a bird on my head.” When it’s clear they have no idea what I’m talking about, I try reading from a page tagged with an ancient Post-it note:

  “Why are you wearing orange tights with a purple skirt?

  Why not a girl’s blouse instead of a boy’s shirt?

  Why don’t you color instead of playing with dirt?” my mother always said,

  Looking at me like I
had a bird on my head.

  “There’s a bird on my head! A bird on my head! But I love my bird!” is what I said.

  Crickets. I don’t understand the logic of having a parent or grandparent or beloved guardian speak to an audience having such a large spread of ages—how could you possibly appeal to everyone? What might be mildly interesting to thirteen-year-olds will be excruciatingly dull to eleven-year-olds and incomprehensible to six-year-olds. I might just as well be speaking in tongues.

  Once I’m done, and once I open it up to questions—and get none, which surprises me, since all they ever told us when we started at the school was how curious and inquisitive Montessori kids are—I’m instantly overcome by a strange combination of humiliation and relief. Just the way I was when I did painfully underattended bookstore events for my second and third books—Stop Doing That! and Why Don’t You Like Me Anymore?—all I wanted to do was leave.

  This morning I speed-walk with my arm under the sling through the school’s hallways, which are festooned with student artwork (Who I Am: A Self-Portrait Project is clearly the current unit, which I have mixed feelings about—isn’t this generation self-referential enough?) and fake-talk into my phone past the library to preemptively avoid real-talk with anyone who might try to engage me in conversation. I pass a TUITION DUE! sign on the window of the main office and ignore Grace, the combination business manager, Spanish teacher, and after-school program director, who’d summoned Mr. Noah and interrupted my presentation earlier and who is now practically falling over herself waving at me through the glass, trying to get my attention.

  I put my phone away, give a mom walking toward me a big aggressively smiley “Hi!” because she’s staring at the sling, and then at me, like I have a bird on my head, and am about to storm through a side door onto the playground. Just when I think I’m safe, I feel the poking: first on the arm, then on the shoulder. I close my eyes and try to collect myself before turning around to face Grace, who has somehow managed to catch up to me.

  “Boy, you’re fast!” I say, hoping that opening with an aggressive compliment will help me stall for time. “And you’re not even winded!”

  “I run.” Grace shrugs matter-of-factly. “Marathons.”

  “Seriously? That’s impressive.” She is wearing a fleece zip-up with the Morningside Montessori logo and a nylon knapsack loaded with hot and cold reusable beverage containers in both side mesh compartments.

  Another shrug. “Not really. I used to have an eating disorder but now I run. Which means I just traded one obsession for another.”

  I blink, then smile, trying my best to lean into the awkwardness.

  “I’m sorry,” Grace says. “TMI.”

  I laugh out loud. “Are you kidding? You’re talking to someone wearing her dog in public. I’m the embodiment of TMI. Which means I’m the one who should be slinking away in shame.” But instead I’ll just stand here and endure my shame, hoping you take the dog-bait and forget to ask about our overdue tuition.

  “And I’m sorry about the interruption this morning.”

  “Yeah, what was that all about?”

  “I can’t say.”

  “Really?”

  “No. I can’t. Privacy issues.”

  “Like HIPAA?” I ask, and Grace nods. “You can tell me anything—I don’t talk to anyone. And even if I did, I’d probably forget what you told me anyway.” I tap the side of my head with my finger. “Senior moments on a daily basis.” That’s when I realize I’m still wearing my Bird hat. I pull it off as fast as I can and stuff it into the sling.

  Grace smiles nervously, then looks down at the dog. “Such a cutie!” she coos, pointing to Charlotte’s head poking out of the off-white cotton opening. The sling-dog distraction appears to be working. Grace is being super friendly. She couldn’t possibly be any nicer. There’s no way she’ll bring up money now. “And you take it everywhere with you like that? Despite it being disabled?”

  Confused and slightly offended, I take a step back from her. “The dog isn’t disabled.”

  “I’m sorry. Differently-abled. Or walking-challenged.”

  “Wait, what? The dog is fine.”

  “So why don’t you just walk it?—I’m sorry. I don’t know what gender your dog identifies as so I keep calling it ‘it.’”

  “Girl. Female. Charlotte.”

  “Then she’s a therapy dog. Without an official vest.”

  “Nope! Not a therapy dog!”

  “Then why do you carry her?”

  I shrug and sigh. “It just kind of happened. And now we can’t stop. It’s just what we do.”

  Grace nods vigorously. “I know what that’s like. And I also know that sometimes life is too painful without a little buddy to help you feel safe.”

  I hug the sling. “Exactly! I’m her little buddy!”

  Another head-tilt. “Oh. I thought she was your little buddy.”

  I make a big face. “Then I would need the vest!”

  We both laugh again until Grace clears her throat. Here it comes. “This is, like, so awkward.” She cringes, lowering her voice to a whisper. “But you guys are really really behind on tuition.”

  “I know!” I cringe and whisper, too. “I’m so sorry!”

  “I’m sorry, too!” Grace looks truly pained. “So many people are struggling right now. It’s such a bad time in the world.”

  Relief washes through me. I grab her arm, a little too hard, I realize a little too late. “So it’s not just us? We’re not the only ones barely staying afloat? No matter what I do I can’t seem to get ahead.” My voice trails off the way it does when I forget I’m with a person and not just talking to myself and I almost tell her about how truly awful the last few years have been—in detail—but something—her awkward smile, the half step back she takes—stops me. Because I realize suddenly that she probably can’t wait to get away from me. Who could blame her?

  “I’d just hate for Teddy not to be able to come back next year,” Grace whispers. “Everybody loves him.”

  “Really?” I blurt. “I just mean—he’s gotten so quiet. Sometimes I worry that people mistake that for unfriendliness or hostility.”

  Grace shakes her head. “Oh no. It’s just a phase.”

  “You think?”

  “He’s a teenager. They all get like that.”

  “You mean that awkward phase of adolescence when they seem like sociopaths?” I joke. I think of him on the fringes of the multipurpose room that morning, of how quiet the house has become; how he barely ever picks up his guitar or talks to me in the morning before school or while I’m cooking dinner the way he used to and wonder if every mother of a teenager is walking around like a cored apple, completely hollowed out inside.

  “Teddy’s always been so special,” Grace says, smiling. “I still remember the first day he came to Morningside. He had that long rocker-hair that covered half his face and purple skinny jeans. He was wearing a Frank Zappa T-shirt. He was so shy at first, but everyone thought he was incredibly cool. Including all the teachers.”

  I hug the dog and bite my lip, but still the tears come.

  “It’ll work out.” Grace takes a step toward me now, rubbing my arm and reaching into the sling to pet the dog. “He’ll come back. Boys always do.”

  “Do they really?” I’m crying now, and so, I see, is Grace.

  “Of course they do. They’re just scared. Underneath it all, they’re just little children in big bodies. They still need us.”

  Grace hands me a tissue and keeps one for herself. We blow our noses, and as we do I look at her face, her skin, trying to get a sense of how old she is. Younger than me, I’m sure—everyone is now—but beyond that, I’m not sure.

  “I just realized I’m standing here crying with you and I don’t know anything about you. Your life. What you do when you’re not here. Do you have kids?”

  Grace looks away, wipes her nose. “It’s complicated.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t
be. It’s no one’s fault but my own.”

  I have no idea what that means and no idea what to say next—I’ve never understood people who don’t like to talk about themselves—so I put the tissue in the sling for the dog to play with. Then I stand up as straight as I can, which, given the weight and position of the dog, makes me overcompensate by sticking my stomach out the way I did when I was pregnant.

  “So how much time do I have?”

  Grace sighs, looks up and away. “Another year or two. In my experience, by sixteen things start to turn around.”

  “I meant for the payment.”

  We both laugh at the misunderstanding, but I feel like all the molecules in my body have suddenly rearranged themselves into a snowflake of hope. There’s a clock on my heartache, and I’ve just started running it out.

  “November fifteenth. That’s the drop-dead date for what’s overdue and the next payment. And,” she says, an idea suddenly occurring to her, “if you’re interested in housing some People Puppets, that could definitely reduce your payment.”

  “Definitely. I’ll talk to my husband.”

  “Great.”

  “November fifteenth,” I repeat.

  “Six weeks.”

  “Six weeks,” I repeat again.

  Grace gives me a quick hug. “It’ll work out.”

  “Okay.”

  “Hang in there.”

  “Okay.” And then I add: “You, too!”

  Grace turns and smiles, and when she does I reach into the sling and take Charlotte’s paw and wave it at Grace even after her back is turned and she is halfway down the hallway.

  The Snoring Room

  The snoring room is in the basement off the laundry area, a guest room/playroom that Teddy never actually used when he was little enough to need it because it felt too far away and separate from the rest of the house, which he didn’t like. As an only child, he had learned at a young age to entertain himself for hours, but he always wanted to know that he wasn’t actually alone. That there were other people in the house—even if those other people weren’t siblings—which is what he wanted more than anything in the world. (That’s why, when he was eight and I was, well, older than that, we got the dog.) There’s a bright orange modern sofa that converts into a bed without even folding out; a guest chair; two floor lamps; bookshelves, side tables, and Teddy’s old train table, which now functions as a coffee table.