by Laura Zigman
I look down at the dog in the sling right now: Check. Check. Check. The dog is all of those things. For me. The law of unintended consequences.
And so it was after he started his new school, when he was the most bereft about being an only child, alone in the house with no one his age to talk to or play with or eat with; no one to eat cereal with in the morning and dinner with in front of the television as a treat on a Saturday night, or throw a ball with, or ride a bike with; no one to fight with and compete with and to feel less than or better than; no one to whisper good night to in the dark after rehashing the minutiae of his day—how he did at basketball, or video games, or skateboarding, or if he should even bother putting a crazy-expensive Star Wars LEGO set on his Christmas list or not because maybe there wasn’t really a Santa—that we ended up getting a dog. Charlotte. I knew nothing about getting a dog, less about what I would do with it if we found one, but a few friends I’d made online were serious dog lovers who told me to start with rescue shelters. Every day after school, I’d pick Teddy up and every day we’d visit a shelter—in towns beyond his school, north and south; east and west—we’d park and get out of the car and he’d take my hand and I’d see his eyes close in silent prayer that we would find the perfect dog.
How will we know which dog is for us? he would ask. And I’d repeat what my dog-lover friends had told me: we’ll know.
And so in and out of the shelters we’d go—leaving after a quick survey of the cages lining the walls—mostly pit bulls and rottweilers and scrawny mutts and mixed breeds with missing eyes and paws and patches of fur. Hiding under his long hair and baseball cap, Teddy would look and shrug, which was his way of not saying that none of the dogs was our dog.
And none of them were. Until a cold January day—Martin Luther King Jr. Day—when he was home from school, and Gary was home from work—and when the house vibrated with so much tension between us that I took Teddy to the Harvard Museum of Natural History to look at the giant bugs and the glass flowers. Afterward, as I drove more slowly than usual in an effort to postpone the inevitable—I didn’t want to go home and deal with Gary’s jumpiness and anxiety, always worse in the winter when the weather was bad and we were all trapped in the house together—Teddy tapped me on the shoulder from the backseat: Can we go to the pet store?
The pet store was the same one that I had gone to when I was young—it’s where my parents got me my first (and last) goldfish and the pair of gerbils that gnawed and burrowed in a glass aquarium until they killed each other and their litter in a crazy act of murder-suicide. For serious dog people, pet stores were evil sellers of dogs from puppy mills, but we were desperate: we’d been looking in shelters for over a month and hadn’t found a single dog that called to us. Until that freezing cold afternoon when I opened the door to Debbie’s Petland and saw, instantly, in the cages along the right wall of the shop, a perfect fluffy fur-ball—a tiny Lassie—and announced to Teddy and anyone else in the store who may have had designs on her: that’s my dog.
I still remember Teddy on the floor of the pet shop playing with her, then just three months old, that cold gray afternoon—how he said he wanted to name her Charlotte because they’d just finished reading Charlotte’s Web at school—a smile under all his long hair and looking happier than he had since preschool. So I bought the puppy, and the crate, and the food and the bowls and the leash and collar and the chew toys, over a thousand dollars’ worth of pet and gear, loading everything—except the dog itself, who sat on Teddy’s lap in the backseat—into the trunk. Which was a small price to pay for what would become my full-time companion; my life vest; my vine; my dog-baby.
Inhabitancy
Having the always-costumed People Puppets in our house feels strange and quickly creates a cloud of shoulds in my head: we should entertain them, we should treat them as special guests; we should put out snacks, make dinner with all their favorite foods, fix all the broken and leaky things (“The top 10 ‘should’s and why you should [see what we did there?] ignore them”). But for the first few days of their stay, I’m off the hook: after they load in their giant duffle bags, stomping their hoof-boots on the front hall mat before scuffing the walls with their massive plastic storage containers on their way to the basement, we barely see them. They leave early in the morning and come home late, after dark, already working long hours at the school, building sets and sewing costumes. Morningside Montessori Autumn Inhabitancy is in full swing, apparently, but the only thing Teddy has told us is that the themes for the big finale “Spotlight” performance in a few weeks have been decided on: a combination of “Resistance” and “Together We Rise”—an echo of the country’s pushback against the political turmoil in our country.
“Great,” I say in the car on the way home from school, barely remembering what it was like to wake up without that sick the-world-as-we-knew-it-is-ending feeling in my stomach because every day it’s clear from the news that the world as we know it is ending. “I especially love the positive message in ‘Together We Rise’—how depending on others for support helps us survive difficult times.” I practically tear up, thinking about how I shouldn’t have to defend my sling ever again. Shouldn’t everyone be wearing a dog for improved mental health?
“That’s not exactly how Mr. Noah described it,” Teddy says with a dubious head-tilt. “You’re making it sound like a self-help book. He made it sound political. Like civil rights and stuff.”
“The personal is political,” I shoot back, as smug as a college freshman who did some but not all of the assigned reading. “Tell them to remember their history. It’s Feminism 101.” Fuck Mr. Noah and Ms. Grace, I think, moving beyond defending my dog to more pressing matters. Together we will rise and resist our awful new government and the Secret Pooper, whether they help us or not. No wonder Teddy barely tells me anything.
But the strangest thing about the People Puppets’ stay by far is how it has forced Gary and me back into the same room and the same bed, Gary’s clothes and toiletries brought up from the basement and piled in a corner of the room and in a heap on top of my dresser without any thought to acquiring permanent drawer or shelf space.
I text Glenn.
We’re like best friends sharing a motel-double on a longer-than-expected road trip. Side by side, absolutely no touching. Like we did that time we got snowed in in Rochester, after that huge “Bird” book signing.
Don’t tell me you’re making him sleep head-to-toe.
Good idea! Even safer!
Oh Judy . . .
* * *
Even Teddy is confused by the temporary arrangement. On the first night of the Puppets’ stay, he stops into our room with a made-up question about what time we’re leaving for school in the morning—we always leave at the exact same time every morning—late—and then stares at us suspiciously, as if the minute he turns his back to go to his room we’ll break character and dive into sleeping bags on the floor. The idea, frankly, is tempting, since I feel claustrophobic with Gary in the room and in the bed: he is so big and unwieldy, and noisy, with his anxiety-related constant throat-clearing—a sound that causes me such annoyance that I self-diagnosed myself with a mild case of misophonia (“Is marital misophonia an actual thing?” “Can marriage cause misophonia?”). I’ve grown so used to having the room all to myself that it’s become a “safe space,” a respite from the daily annoyances of normal marriage. Any infringement on it, however temporary, seems almost too much to bear. In the dark, very much on my side of the bed, I am already counting the days until the Puppets are gone.
On the second night, Teddy comes in to pet the dog, passed out on my feet, and then lingers, staring at us—Gary reading and me scrolling through the news feed on my phone. He is at a particular phase of his age where he won’t voluntarily or spontaneously speak without being prodded to.
“Yes, Teddy?” I say, over the glow of my screen. I have a vague idea of what he’s thinking before he says it.
“I thought you guys couldn’
t sleep in the same room because of the snoring.”
Gary puts down his book and I put down my phone. “That’s true,” he says. “But there are extenuating circumstances. We have guests.”
“Yes. We have guests,” I repeat. A mantra, a magic word. Gary and I nod and smile cordially at each other, and then at Teddy—we’re playing the parts of two good-natured adults in a romantic comedy, suffering in the short term—housing People Puppets in our snoring room, which was really our separation room!—to keep our son in private school and to spare him the true meaning of our arrangement. I feel my fake smile start to fade. Even Sandra Bullock couldn’t pull this off.
“Okay, but what about the snoring?”
“It’s not so bad,” I say.
Gary snorts. I turn and elbow him hard enough for his book to slip out of his hands.
“How would you even know? You’re the one sleeping through it.”
“Um, Judy?” He elbows back. I’ve gotten so carried away with my lie all these years that even I forget that I’m the snorer, not him.
“But if it’s not so bad,” Teddy presses, “then why can’t you sleep in the same room when we don’t have guests?”
There it is. The big question. If he were seven, or eight, or nine, that would be the end of it—I’d just say because and follow him down to his room, read him a book, or distract him with talk of a new longboard or whether his next guitar should be a Gibson SG like Pete Townshend, or a Rickenbacker like Paul McCartney, or a Fender Stratocaster like Jimi Hendrix. But I can’t remember the last time he longboarded with friends or played music, or the last time we sat on his bed like that with the little train night-light on, the future paved with birthday and Christmas gifts and lit by the warm glow of a tiny bulb. But it’s different now. I look at Gary for an answer, and when he doesn’t have one either, I just shrug and say: “Maybe we’ll try.”
“Really?” Teddy says, almost breathless with hope. For a second he’s a child again, unselfconscious and unafraid to express himself, to be vulnerable, to reveal what he wants.
Gary sits forward. “Does it bother you that we don’t sleep in the same room, buddy?” It’s the first time we’ve asked him that question, and the first time in a long time that Gary has softened a question with buddy.
“Kind of.” He shrugs. “Not really.” He pets the dog. “It’s just that everyone else’s parents sleep in the same room.”
“Well then, like Mom said, maybe we’ll try.”
* * *
“Were you serious about trying?” Gary says once Teddy is out of earshot.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I shrug. “Were you?”
“I don’t know. Maybe.” He sits up against the headboard, looks around at the old photos on the walls and on my bureau. “It’s weird to be back in this room.”
“Maybe at some point, after the Puppets leave, we should switch back and forth with the basement. To make it more fair.”
“I don’t mind it down there, actually. It’s peaceful.” He shifts onto his side, then clears his throat. “There’s something I need to tell you.”
No good news has ever come from that sentence. For a few seconds, I don’t even breathe. Even though this is what I want—for both of us to lead separate lives, even if we can’t technically afford to live separately yet—I’m stunned, instantly paralyzed, a lizard on a rock.
“Better you should know than not know. And better you should hear it from me than from someone else. Even though we don’t really know anyone anymore who could possibly tell you.” He stops, restarts. “Isn’t the conventional wisdom that a separated couple should be honest with each other about what they’re doing outside their separation?”
“You’re doing something?”
“‘Doing’ is a bit of an overstatement. But I guess you could say I ‘did’ something.” He sighs; I hold my breath again. The truth is coming. “I met someone. At work.”
No good news has ever come from that sentence either, a trench digger, one of life’s many dividers between then and now, before and after. Proximity, which once drove us apart, is about to bring us closer together. Not in the form of tentative kisses, or the accidental brushing of skin, or the sudden spooning in the dark in the middle of the night. We are not coming back together like damaged nerves regenerating after an accident or a fall; our marriage is transforming itself in an unexpected way: through kindness and radical honesty, which is what drives deep platonic friendships, and it seems, those who are consciously uncoupling.
“The snackology team catered a meeting,” he explains, “and I use the word cater with extreme relativity here—one of the startups did a presentation. And, well, let’s just say there was a lot of excitement about a new energy bar we debuted at the first break: dark chocolate maple bacon coconut almond quinoa Paleo Dream.”
A month ago he didn’t even know what quinoa was, or how to pronounce it.
“I know you’re thinking that a month ago I didn’t even know what quinoa was or how to pronounce it, and so how deeply ironic it is now that I’m trafficking in the stuff. But. Anyway. A fellow snackologist and I snuck off to the little stockroom and decided to put out the new bars.” He sits up straight now. “We usually debut new snacks on Mondays, which had been the plan with this one, but the meeting was so dull and had run so long that we decided to ignore tradition and take a risk.”
I thought he was the only snackologist, but no, he explains, there’s a few of them, a small team—team being the new term for department. There is a lot of explaining going on. Including how crazy everyone went for the new flavor of the snack bar, which was apparently a big deal: having such a positive reaction to a new snack, right out of the gate like that, increases the visibility and the buying power of the person who ordered it because the risk of making a mistake is so high. Lots of explaining and lots of words. We still haven’t gotten to the main story.
“You have to understand: I was the one who purchased this item, I was on the hook for that decision—I took a real flier—these people are serious about their nut bars, and if they don’t like what we order, the snack just sits there and doesn’t go away, while all the other snacks disappear quickly, requiring near-constant replenishment. There’s nowhere to hide when you make a purchasing error like that—they’re an everyday reminder of your failure to correctly assess the collective tastes of the companies we work for—and it gets factored into your job performance rating: lesser snackologists have been fired or replaced for misjudgments like that. So there was a lot on the line for me. It was impulsive, putting it out there like that, without any planning. Prematurely. But I have to say, it turned out great.”
I watch a smile spread across his face at the memory, and I start to realize that this is the part of the story that stops being about energy bars. “You slept with someone,” I say. A statement, not a question.
“I kissed someone. Yes.”
I feel the room—the bookshelves, the walls, the dog—recede. Even though we’ve talked openly about this possibility for a while now, it feels incredibly strange and unpleasant to actually be here now. Gary, who has always seemed like a completely open book, now has a secret life. He tells me that he didn’t plan to do it, that it just happened, that he’s sure he’ll never see her again. That he’s just some older dude who put out a great snack on an otherwise excruciatingly boring day.
“But of course you’ll see her again,” I say. “She’s on your team.”
“She isn’t a fellow snackologist. She’s the CEO of the startup.”
“The CEO?”
“I know, right?” He shrugs, then laughs. “How crazy is that? She’s thirty—maybe—and she probably mistook me for some dude from MIT. Little does she know who I really am.”
“And who are you really?”
A long slow breath comes from deep inside his chest, like he’s blowing out a candle in slow motion. “A guy who loves his wife and his son but sleeps in the basement because he’s too anxious and underemploy
ed to find a place of his own.”
Escape
There’s no easy way out—I can’t make Gary sleep in the snoring room now, because the People Puppets are there—and as much as I want to, pulling my bedding into the living room and sleeping there—with strangers in the house—doesn’t seem like a good idea, either. If Teddy were three or four I could bunk in with him, but now I’m trapped sharing a bed with someone I’m separated from who has just told me he’s met—and kissed—someone else—something I thought I’d wanted; something I thought would free me. And maybe it eventually will. But right now, while his sudden confession has exhausted him—he’s already asleep on the other side of the bed—I’m wide awake and rigid on my side, struggling with the sadness at the failure of our union and the strange guilt of relief: that he has moved a step away from me; that he will eventually end up with someone new who is far better suited for him than I have become; that one day we will both be happy again in our own way, together or apart.
So when I check my email on my phone in the dark and see that Sari Epstein has invited me for a special meditation-weekend—okay, when I receive her mass email advertising “only a few spots left” in her retreat, The Noble Journey: Creativity Unbound! at her Vermont farm this coming weekend—designed to “unlock your blocked artistic impulses and guide you toward free expression”—I decide to sign up. I know it’s last minute and impulsive and financially irresponsible, but I also know that solving our problems, marital and otherwise, starts with me finding my way back to the person I was when I created Bird: if Gary and I are ever going to be able to split up it will be because I’ve finally been able to make some real money again, or at least get back on track for doing what I was meant to do. Doing “just enough” at Well/er will never be enough to save us. But Sari Epstein might.