Separation Anxiety

by Laura Zigman

  “I know!” I say. “Which is why we were trying to find out if we should be terrified before the show or not!”

  “Yeah, well, we’re excited,” Phoebe says. “I think you’ll really enjoy it.”

  I’m not ready to give up yet. “So there’s nothing—not a single little hint or tidbit—you can give us?”

  “Well.” Nick shrugs, finally cracking under the pressure. “There are six skits—one for each of the grouped grades: preschool, kindergarten, first through third, third through sixth, and the middle school.”

  I’m chewing and counting in my head. “So that’s five.”

  I feel a kick under the table and assume it’s Gary, signaling me to shut up already, but he’s totally preoccupied with his food. That’s when I notice Phoebe glaring at Nick.

  “Did I say something wrong?” I say as innocently as possible.

  “No! No! No!”

  I’ve stopped chewing and I am now watching Nick’s and Phoebe’s facial expressions like a tennis match. I put my napkin down. “Okay, guys. Come clean. What are you hiding?”

  “Okay, we’re busted,” Phoebe says, with a huge eye-roll and a big laugh. “It’s supposed to be a surprise.”

  “The sixth skit is going to be a solo, a special ‘Spotlight after the Spotlight.’ Just Phoebe and me, no kids.”

  “Oh! Cool!” I’m relieved but still not convinced anything they’re saying is true.

  “We just wanted to do something special. You know, since this is our first Inhabitancy. We want to make it as special and as entertaining as possible for everyone. Including you. Especially you! We’re so grateful that you opened up your home to us and that you shared so much about yourself—about why you wear the dog, all the feelings and life experience behind it. You didn’t have to be so honest. Especially during such a difficult time.” Nick’s voice cracks. He tears up.

  “Especially during such a difficult time,” Phoebe echoes.

  She takes Nick’s hand and holds it tight until he collects himself. He smiles at her, puts his forehead against hers and closes his eyes, then picks his spoon back up and inhales the rest of what’s in his chili bowl.

  “We were happy to have you,” Gary says. “And we barely even saw you!”

  I’m still trying to figure out what they mean by “especially during such a difficult time”—whether they know about the tuition credit we’re getting, or if they were indeed at the reservoir the day I accidentally stumbled upon Gary and his girlfriend, in which case they know far more than they’re saying—when Nick leans forward with his glass raised:

  “At first we felt like we made new friends, but now we feel like we have a new extended family,” Nick says. “Another set of parents, but younger than our real ones, and a cool half sibling. We love this guy,” he says, patting Teddy on the back.

  Teddy looks up and smiles with teeth. “Really?”

  “Of course. You’re the coolest kid in the school.”

  “No I’m not.” He blushes, but his eyes say tell me more.

  “Are you kidding? When you played the guitar the other day during music, didn’t you see how all the kids were in awe?” Nick turns to Gary and then to me. “They were in awe.” Then he turns back to Teddy. “I wish I could play like that.”

  “And, not to mention the dog,” Phoebe adds, “who is clearly the glue that keeps this whole family together.”

  We all clink glasses and smile and wipe our eyes and pet Charlotte, who is running around, wagging her tail and whoring for attention, checking in with each of us with paws and barks. I feel like such an asshole. Here I was, as always, untrusting and suspicious, ready to suspect two young puppets of something creepy and criminal, when all they wanted to do was connect with us.

  I pick up the dog and pet her as she settles onto my lap. “Well, we’ll all be there with bells on.”

  “Even Glennie?” Teddy asks, his face wide open with hope.

  I swallow hard and force a smile. “I’m not sure she’s up to it right now.”

  “But Charlotte’s coming, right?” Phoebe asks.

  “Charlotte is definitely coming,” I say. Teddy rolls his eyes but lets Charlotte lick his fingers when he reaches out to pet her.

  Nick and Phoebe beam. “Excellent!”

  * * *

  Later that night, after Teddy goes up to his room to make Glenn a get-well card and the People Puppets are back in the basement, Gary and I finish the dishes, scraping and rinsing and loading plates and glasses and silverware onto the racks of the dishwasher. Usually I rearrange the plates to line up evenly on the left side—straightening them from how Gary throws them in there, seemingly without any rhyme or reason, but tonight I don’t. Why bother controlling something so meaningless when everything else seems to be spinning out into the universe?

  “Well, that was fun,” Gary says as I shut the faucet off and bury my hands inside a dish towel. “But I’m sad. I feel like the People Puppets just got here and now they’re leaving. Time really flies.”

  I keep my nervous hands hidden inside the towel.

  “Do you think we’ll actually see them after they leave or was that all just bullshit?”

  I shrug. “It’s probably bullshit, but I wish it weren’t.”

  “You do?”

  I shrug again. “Sure I do. I miss having a family.”

  He stares at me. “But you have a family, Judy. Teddy and me. We’re your family.”

  “I know, but—”

  “Okay, Judy. What’s going on?”

  I shrug. “What do you mean?”

  “You’re upset, so you might as well tell me what’s wrong so we can go to sleep. We do have to sleep in the same room tonight, but don’t worry,” he says more sharply now, “you’ll have the place to yourself soon enough. Just a few more nights of pretending to be married and things will go back to normal. Whatever that means.”

  I want to tell him about the reservoir—how the mob came after me and the dog, how humiliating it was to be publicly shamed for wearing her, to have something so innocent called so into question with such a malevolent take—but then I’d have to tell him about seeing him there. Seeing him there with the woman he was with, the woman who is probably his girlfriend. I don’t want to go there. I don’t want to hear about how he might be in love, how we’re going to have to figure out a way for him to move out and move in with her.

  But for once I push myself to speak. “I saw you last week. At the reservoir,” I whisper. I put the towel down. My hands are shaking. “I saw you talking and laughing with someone, a woman, and then I saw you kissing that woman.” I take a deep breath and let it out slowly, one last pause before ripping off the rest of the Band-Aid. “You looked happy. The way you used to look.” I stare at him, at his big green eyes and his sharp jawline and silvering hair, trying to see him the way she does, the way I used to. “That’s what I want for you. You deserve it. I think we should do whatever it takes to make that possible.”

  He nods slowly, processing. “Are you saying you want me to move out?”

  I think of Glenn. “I’m saying that life is short. I’m saying that if you have another chance at happiness, you should take it.”

  Making Plans

  I bring fresh blueberry muffins from Flour, Glenn’s favorite bakery, and a few single-serving containers of her favorite full-fat grass-fed locally sourced maple-flavored yogurt. I also bring the card that Teddy made the night before and slipped to me in the car on the way to school—a bulging envelope barely taped shut because he’d put a small LEGO figurine inside to go along with the card. “That’s the Cancer Monster,” he’d said when I took the envelope from him at drop-off before he left the car. “To scare away her sickness.”

  “Oh, Teddy.”

  “Tell her I hope she feels better but I understand if she can’t come to Spotlight.”

  I nod. And for what feels like the twenty millionth time this week, my eyes blur with tears.

  “It’s okay, Mom,” he say
s, patting my arm, just like he used to when each of my parents was sick. “It’s okay.”

  When I get to Glenn’s house I let myself in with my key, then walk through the quiet of the living room, full of floor-to-ceiling bookshelves, walls filled with framed art and photographs of past husbands and authors she worked with. A clock somewhere, maybe in the kitchen, ticks. I listen to it mark time, counting the days and hours and minutes and seconds left, measurements of a life shutting down and coming to an end.

  Upstairs, Glenn has no appetite, so I put the card on the nightstand and let Charlotte out of her sling, lift her and Lucy onto the bed, and then find a spot for myself. “I brought you something,” I say, opening my tote bag. “It’s an activity. Something we can do together.”

  The old Glenn would swear at me, tell me we’ve never needed an “activity” to do together—like playing cards or knitting or even playing Scrabble—“isn’t talking the activity?” she would always say. But today I get no such back talk as I pull out coloring books and crayons. I give her one—Mindful Mantras and Mandalas—and take Creative Coloring Meditations for myself. Flipping through my book and cracking open the big box of Crayolas with the built-in sharpener makes me think that coloring in a giant geometric design is the most perfect and peaceful thing to do in this sad and awful moment: we will literally fill the emptiness with color.

  “Sari Epstein sent me these,” I say. “After I invited myself to her house and we accepted the free gift of Gary’s spot and I defiled her property and fled under cover of darkness. Instead of publicly shaming me on Instagram or Facebook or sending me a furious email, she refunded my retreat fee and sent me a package full of her coloring books. I mean, who does that?”

  Glenn closes her eyes. “A total bitch.”

  We both laugh to the point of tears.

  “I’m such an asshole,” I say. “And it was her note that really got me. It said, I’m sorry you’re in pain. May you be released from it soon. How did she know that?”

  This time we don’t laugh.

  “I am in pain,” I say. “I’m sad about everything.”

  Glenn takes my hand.

  “I wish this weren’t happening. I wish you weren’t sick.”

  “I won’t be sick much longer.”

  For a second I think she’s telling me that she’s getting better, that a scan I didn’t know about has come back showing unexpected improvement and recovery. But then I realize what she’s really saying. That it won’t be much longer.

  I put the crayons—a fistful of blues and pinks and greens and reds—down. I watch Glenn, with both dogs asleep next to her on the bed, close her eyes.

  “It looks like I’ll probably be leaving soon, a little earlier than we thought, so like you said the other day, we need to make our plans.”

  I start to cry. I don’t want to make plans. I don’t want her to go. I don’t want her to leave early.

  “I’m not ready,” I sob.

  “I know. But I am.”

  * * *

  The plans we make are short and simple; the basics. I know the drill, the order of what’s needed at the end:

  We will call for a hospital bed to be delivered; we will call a home hospice service to visit and start their services; a palliative “comfort kit,” with liquid morphine, will be stored in the refrigerator. I’ll print out and tape her DNR—Do Not Resuscitate order—to the refrigerator so there won’t be any misunderstanding should someone—Daisy, me, Glenn herself—panic and call 911. Gary and I will come by daily, but it will be Daisy, technically her cousin’s daughter, who will come down from Portland, Maine, and be on call for the duration and then pack up the house and settle things after Glenn is gone.

  “But you’ll take Lucy,” she says, an urgent reminder.

  “Of course I will.” I show her the pictures on my phone that I’ve already taken of Lucy’s cabinet in the kitchen: the food she eats, the treats she likes, all the supplies—her crate, her bed, her leash, her brush, her toys. “I’ll bring everything with me so that our house feels like home.”

  We look at the dogs, lying next to each other, similar enough in their coloring and shape and size to almost look related. I picture myself walking Lucy on a leash while still carrying Charlotte, just for a few days, until I give up the sling for good.

  “Gary doesn’t mind?”

  “Of course not. He’d do anything for you.”

  “He’d do anything for you, too.”

  “I know. But maybe it’s time we let each other go.” I think, but don’t say, that maybe he’d be happier with the girlfriend whose name I don’t even know.

  “He doesn’t love her.”

  I turn to her. “He told you?”

  She nods. “He came yesterday, by himself.”

  “He didn’t tell me.”

  “He doesn’t tell you a lot of things.” I stare at her as she closes her eyes. “He doesn’t want to leave. He’s not ready yet. And he doesn’t think Teddy is ready, either.” She takes my hand and holds it. “I told you long ago that I was happy to be wrong about you and Gary, and I was wrong. Loss has made you afraid of life, but you have to stay open. Porous. You have to let all the available light—all the tiny shards of joy—still flow through you.” She closes her eyes. “Who knows what beauty the rest of the way will bring.”

  Glenn leans her head back, lets out a long slow sigh. “I wish I’d had children. I wish I hadn’t lost two husbands. I wish . . .” Her voice trails off until it is just breath. There is a long silence when we say nothing, when the enormity of where we are and how surreal it is to know that she will soon be gone hangs in the air—taken from the world any day as if by the rapture, with those of us left behind gaping in grief. “I wish,” she whispers, reaching out for Lucy, “I could see how all of this turns out.”

  Spotlight

  We dress, Gary and I, in our casual best—he in the khakis and button-down chambray shirt he hates, which is what he’s forced to wear to work now after a new Dockers Dude dress code was announced—I in an obligatory black Eileen Fisher pantsuit, either from 2006 or 2016, impossible to date, since each piece is so minimal it can’t possibly ever be in style or out of style.

  Teddy has stayed at school, where he’ll be forced to change into whatever costume they’ve decided to dress the kids in for whatever skits they’re putting on. I’m done asking. After last night when I shamed myself with my questions, digging around for a crime before it happened, I’m trying to go with the flow. To let go of my vine of anxiety and fear and just let things happen.

  It isn’t going well. My decision to let go has not left me awash in a sense of calm. Internally I’m full of fear and dread, certain that the seeming quiet from Grace—and the fact that there has not been a third pooping incident yet—is a sense of false calm. Don’t bad things happen in threes? Aren’t we due for the Secret Pooper to make his appearance again—and, if so, what better time than tonight, when there will be a captive audience of parents to shock and repulse?

  Or maybe not. Maybe the Pooper, instead of wanting attention through a big public act, is looking to continue his little campaign of terror in private, waiting to strike again while the iron is cold. Maybe, while I’ve been expecting some kind of defecatory event tonight for maximum effect, the slow reveal will continue, day after day, week after week, creating a sustained level of discomfort and unease for people worried about the situation. Which, for some reason, appears to just be us. How is it possible that we’re the only parents who’ve complained? Why haven’t other parents heard the news from their kids and demanded a meeting, a morning coffee with stale doughnuts and bloated bagels, or an early evening after-dinner meeting with boxed wine and Costco cookies, to discuss the situation?

  When I share my fears about tonight with Gary, he’s certain that our meeting the other day with Grace took care of it. “We put the fear of God into her,” he says, smug in the knowledge that he has protected Teddy, and us, from harm, and wholly unconcerned that some cr
eepy kind of unmasking is about to take place. “Plus, it’s Spotlight!” he says, as if Spotlight is the sacred ritual of an ancient religion, a magical time when nothing can go wrong and nothing bad can happen, like Christmas.

  To calm my nerves after I’m dressed, I brush the dog, then brush myself with a lint brush, something I almost always forget to do. But I remind myself I’m going to be among people tonight, humans, other parents, and I need to not look crazy. Once I put the dog in the sling and we get into the car, Gary behind the wheel, I text Daisy to check in on Glenn. Something about her response—She’s sleeping deeply—or perhaps just my concern gnawing away at me since yesterday, makes me ask Gary if there’s time to stop there on our way.

  “Of course there’s time,” he lies.

  When we get there, a few blocks from our house, he live-parks while I run in. I smile at Daisy, who I haven’t seen for years, as she stands holding Lucy near the bed, and then bend down to get closer to Glenn.

  “We’re off to Spotlight. To see the People Puppets,” I whisper. “I wish you could come. I’ll give you a full report tomorrow.” I put my hand on hers as gently as I can and feel her holding something in it: it’s the LEGO Cancer Monster. My eyes fill and my throat seizes. Her lips move and she’s smiling, but no words come out. I think she’s trying to say Teddy.

  I stand there, not wanting to move. Why do life’s most terrible moments always collide with its most mundane ones? The night my mother died was one of Teddy’s first rock-school concerts; I had no choice but to miss that joyful milestone—it was my mother. Tonight I have to be there for Teddy in case the Secret Pooper shows up—even though I have a terrible feeling that I may never see Glenn, my best friend, my only friend, again.

  Daisy makes a few minute adjustments of the blankets and pillows, then puts Lucy down on the bed. We both watch as the dog, slowly, gently, finds a spot somewhere off Glenn’s left knee—close but not touching it—as if knowing that the time for physical contact is past—that she is already beyond the tactile sense of the living and into another dimension, the mysterious and unknown one where transitioning, from life to death, takes place. Daisy takes my hand and leads me away from the bed and slowly to the bedroom door. If she didn’t, I don’t think I would ever leave.