Separation Anxiety

by Laura Zigman

  “A hospice nurse is coming tonight,” she whispers. “She’s on her way.”

  I nod with relief. “You’ll call me?” I beg, hugging Charlotte in the sling, slipping my arms inside of it to get a fuller embrace and thereby undoing all the work I just did with the lint brush. I know I should be trying to comfort Daisy, who looks calm but must be terrified, her long blond hair up in a neat ponytail and her impossibly young face pale without makeup, but all I can do is reassure her that I’ll be back soon, the second the show is over, which I hope is soon enough.

  * * *

  By the time we get to the school—the front of which is festooned with hand-painted banners promoting the night’s big event—we are almost, but not quite, late. Gary searches the parking lot, swearing under his breath, every time what looks like it could be a space is taken up by a tiny hybrid or a group of bicycles. Normally he would say “What is this, Amsterdam?” but tonight he just parks half the car up on a curb, the hood pushed under a bank of shrubs, and calls it a day. “Let’s go,” he says. And we do.

  He runs, and I follow with the dog, fast-walking into the building. He glances back at me once, negotiating the girth of the sling, and I know he’s thinking he wishes just once we could go somewhere, just the two of us, without my impediment. I’m sure he’s also thinking: I wish she weren’t so weird. It’s one thing when I navigate the world on my own, making my own messes, as I did at the reservoir, and then being forced to clean them up, but when we’re together, he has to confront, yet again, the embarrassing fact that he has a wife who wears a dog in public. If we weren’t so late to the performance, I’d worry that the huge distance Gary is trying to create between us is to make it look like we’re not together—which we kind of aren’t, of course—and while most people at the school know us and know Teddy—this is our fifth year—there are enough outsiders attending that maybe he thinks he’ll be spared at least a few judgmental glances.

  Finally he stops and waits for me. “Maybe you should get a therapy dog vest already and use a leash,” he says in a loud whisper, and I know now that he is embarrassed by me. “Is it too much to ask that you get rid of that thing?” He points to the sling.

  I stop, look down at myself. The sling is kind of unsightly, as am I, wearing it, and though I’m full of self-loathing I pretend to take only slight umbrage at his remarks. “Really, Gary? On a night when ridiculously dressed People Puppets are going to grace the stage, are you seriously embarrassed to be seen with me?”

  He stops, too. “Yes. Yes I am.”

  “Wow.” This time I’m not playacting. My cheeks are hot with shame. And yet: I don’t blame him.

  He looks around at the empty hallway, then heads for the stairs to the middle school. He’s trying to find us a place where we’ll have a little privacy, since, if we stay here, someone is likely to come out of the multipurpose room to use the bathroom or make a phone call. I follow him, in the opposite direction of where we should be going—we’re missing the early part of the show—the skits with the little kids—the preschool and kindergarten and elementary grades—which isn’t an entirely bad thing—ill-timed marital fights have made couples miss far better things—but still I’m feeling a strange sadness creep over me: we should be sitting and watching our son and his earnest classmates perform while trying to temporarily ignore the fact that our friend is dying, not acting out the denouement of our marriage.

  There’s something about the hallway’s echo and the dog’s snout poking out of the sling that makes me want to do something big and dramatic and unexpected. Like take the dog off, lay her down on the cold linoleum floor, and walk to Glenn’s, leaving Gary to deal with the dog and the rest of the evening. But that would accomplish nothing, and I’d miss Teddy’s skit—miss seeing him in whatever sad and ridiculous and ill-fitting costume he’ll be wearing; miss being able to compare his adolescent awkwardness tonight to the unselfconscious effusiveness of his past performances, back when he was still young enough to enjoy new experiences and loved being part of group activities, as long as they weren’t about academics. So I follow Gary just inside the door to the middle school, where he’s waiting for me.

  “I mean, look at you, lumbering around with that thing!” he says, tiptoeing down the hallway and past a bank of open cubbies, full of sneakers and rain boots and artwork yet to be brought home. I shush him, knowing he’s going to get loud, and I don’t want our conversation, which could quickly escalate, to be overheard by anyone. The last thing we need is to call attention to ourselves. But Gary is just getting started. “And what did you mean by ‘We should do whatever it takes to make my happiness possible’?” He shakes his head, hurt and disgusted. “What if I said, ‘Hey, Judy, seeing you with some dude at the reservoir didn’t make me jealous—it just made me realize how much I want you to go live your own life so I can live mine.’”

  Great. Perfect timing and location for this. We’re finally going to have that conversation, and I guess there’s just no way to stop it from happening here, and now, probably the worst place it possibly could happen. Instead of escalating, I try to calm him. “Gary. Of course I care. It’s just that—”

  “You don’t care. It’s fine, it’s fine!” he mimics. “Go be with your girlfriend! Take your chance when it comes along! No problem!”

  “But I want you to be happy! I don’t want to stand in your way of being happy! I thought that’s what you wanted! Isn’t that what you said in therapy?”

  He ignores me. “All while you walk around with that fucking dog like it’s normal!”

  “I know it’s not normal!”

  “Then why do you do it? You’ve been wearing it for months now, Judy. When is it going to end?”

  We are both whisper-screaming now, our throats scraping the words out; our bodies half bent at the waist; pointing at each other with every word we say. Were it not for the dog’s sudden restlessness inside the sling—in fact, she’s actively trying to get out, something she almost never does—we’d continue arguing. But I have no choice except to let her out. I bend down on the floor and help her out of the sling—trying, but failing, to grab ahold of her harness or her collar before she gets away from me, running down the hallway and barking maniacally now. Gary and I both chase after her, stopping at the end of the hallway when we see that she’s skidded to a stop in front of a pile of what looks to be, from a somewhat safe distance, a pile of fresh poop.

  * * *

  We stare at each other. The reality of what we’ve stumbled upon—the third instance of the Secret Pooper, just as I’d predicted—shocks us. So much so, that we actually grab, and hold on to, each other by the elbow. Do we call someone? Take a photo of it in case photographic evidence is needed later? Or wait until someone happens by and can tell us what to do? That third option becomes a reality when, from the other end of the dark hallway, Grace materializes. Her face is pinched with dread as she realizes what we’ve found.

  “Oh no,” she whispers.

  I stare at her until she fidgets with discomfort. “You’re the Secret Pooper,” I say. Suddenly it’s all clear.

  There are tears in her eyes, and it looks like it’s all she can do to remain upright. She lets out a sharp breath, as if in that single exhale all the past few months of her insane behavior will now be expunged. I turn to Gary, my eyes wild with outrage. “I knew it. I knew it was her.”

  She shakes her head. “It’s not me.”

  “Oh really,” I say, full of spite, the adrenaline of defending Teddy and the anxiety about Glenn coursing through my veins. “Then who is it?”

  “It’s Noah.”

  I roll my eyes at Gary. “Sure. Blame your man-baby boyfriend.”

  She covers her face with her hands, then whispers, through her fingers, something I can barely hear. I make her repeat it. “Frontotemporal degeneration. Early onset dementia.” Gary and I look at each other in horror, then grab each other by the elbow again.

  She tells us that it started about a year ago,
that she thought then that she could cover for him, protect him. She thought the symptoms would be mild enough to manage, and at first they were—forgetfulness, saying the wrong word or not being able to think of the right word, the childishness—the effusiveness, the messy eating. But then it got worse. “That’s when the pooping started. I kept waiting for the right moment to tell the board, but I wanted to spare him the indignity of having his career end this way.”

  “But making someone else look guilty was fine.” Gary tugs on my arm. Judy. I ignore him and pull away. “It’s an incredibly sad situation but you tried to make it look like it was Teddy, an innocent teenager who’s been living in fear of being falsely accused of this! That’s unforgivable!” Another tug on my sleeve. Judy. “I’m sorry he’s ill, Grace, but you can’t go around casting suspicion on kids, on good boys who have been made to feel like criminals. I hope Teddy isn’t scarred for life. I hope you haven’t caused him to develop an anxiety disorder from all this stress!” Another tug, then finally Gary holds up his phone. It’s Teddy:

  Aren’t you guys coming?

  * * *

  With Charlotte back in the sling, we leave Grace in the hallway and race into the multipurpose room, where Teddy’s class is just now approaching the makeshift stage. Gary and I stand against a wall, behind rows of folding chairs and yoga mats and tumbling pads. We watch as the small group of gangly awkward teenagers, dressed as sheep, all follow a shepherd—played by several People Puppets under a big fat man’s suit with devil horns over an orange wig. The sheep stop following the devil-shepherd the minute they pass a sign that suddenly appears on a People Puppet signpost:

  THIS WAY TO LOVE.

  Parents clap, whistle, and cheer as the sheep break out of their slow-crawl toward hate and reverse course, joining together in a joyous embrace of unity and acceptance—this is, after all, Morningside Montessori, and it wouldn’t be Spotlight without Mr. Noah turning up the music and coming out to join the teens in dance to mark the end of Inhabitancy. Gary and I exchange glances—knowing what we now do about him, we can’t help but feel gutted at his childlike ebullience, his blissful ignorance, the last dance of his career as head of school. The whole world is ending tonight, and we are helpless to change it.

  It’s then that the sheep clear out and the lights go down. When they go back on again, slowly, and dimly, there are only two People Puppets—Nick and Phoebe—for the finale they promised. They’re presenting as two sheeted figures: a woman and a dog. The Puppet-Woman is sitting on the floor, crying, holding her heart as she waves goodbye and blows farewell kisses to invisible people, bereft until she looks down at the Puppet-Dog, who crawls over to her and puts its head in her lap. And then, through the magic of yards and yards of fabric and some kind of pulley system, the smaller Puppet-Dog—Phoebe—is hoisted up into a sling that the Puppet-Woman slips over her head and around her neck. Suddenly, the big sad papier-mâché face is gone, replaced by a giant papier-mâché happy face. A sense of beatific bliss, created through warm yellow lighting, bathes the stage: the once-sad Puppet-Woman is now wearing a Puppet-Dog, and she is saved.

  It takes a few seconds for me to realize that they are acting out my life. That they, spies in our house for three weeks, have been preparing to make a public mockery of my story, of my most private pain.

  Before I can turn to Gary and say Let’s leave, the room explodes in applause. I feel people’s eyes on me, on the sling, on Charlotte, on Gary; it’s clear to everyone who the People Puppets modeled their closing act on—me, standing there, wearing a dog. I’m so embarrassed I can barely breathe.

  I wish the floor would open up or that I could disappear into the crowd the way Teddy did a few weeks ago when I came to talk about my writing, but for once the ground I’m standing on feels solid and real. It is not going anywhere, and neither am I. I glance at Gary, expecting to read shame on his face, too, but his eyes are soft, and full of love and understanding and compassion. “I’m sorry,” he mouths, and we lean against each other, holding each other up, I realize, the way we always do, while everyone turns back to the stage. Then all the People Puppets and all the children, the little ones and the big ones, including Mr. Noah, who looks like one of them, return to take a noisy group bow. Nick puts his arm around Mr. Noah and hugs him, and then Phoebe, still dressed as a dog, hugs Nick. Grace finds them and joins the hug. Nick searches the crowd of onstage sheep-kids to find Teddy, and suddenly he is next to him, absorbed into the hug, too. Nick starts to cry, his body shaking in its giant white sheet: his father’s brain is dying, and all he can do is weep and let himself be held together by love.

  I reach for Gary’s hand and hold it. Our eyes lock. I feel all the available light—all the life—all the tiny shards of joy and sadness and grief and love—flow through me, the chimera of the past finally giving way to the reality of the present: we are who we are; we are doing our best; it will all work out. It is a choice—to accept, to believe, to remain—and I am choosing all of it now. It’s then that my phone vibrates in my pocket. I’m certain it’s Daisy, calling to tell me that Glenn has left us, that the world as we’ve known it is gone again. But I’m not ready to leave it yet. I stay, where we are right now, in this place, in this moment, for as long as I can.

  Thanksgiving

  After we bury Glenn and bring Lucy home to live with us, we decide, as a way to distract ourselves from our sadness, to host Thanksgiving. Since we have no friends anymore, except Nick and Phoebe, I go out on a ridiculous limb and invite Michael Wasserman and David Levy and their three kids. I’m shocked that they say yes to such an unexpected and last-minute invitation, and when they do it feels like the only possible happy ending to the past few months, if not years: full circle from destruction to reconstruction, from never socializing to hosting a crowded table, with Mr. Noah and Grace, with new friends and puppet friends, and Teddy the center of attention for all the younger kids. What could be more hopeful than that?

  The People Puppets have not left yet. It seemed unnecessary to make them clear out now that Mr. Noah’s medical condition is finally public and Nick and Grace have started the painful process of finding an assisted living facility for him. And besides, it’s nice to have the house full of people and dogs, full of talking and laughing and barking, full of life, after so much loss. So for now they’re staying in the basement, and Gary and I are staying upstairs.

  Instead of giving up my sling for a therapy vest for Charlotte and putting both dogs on leashes, Gary has started wearing Lucy instead. He says it’s reduced his anxiety more than any drug he’s ever taken—even pot, which he has markedly cut back on out of respect and caution for Teddy. The sling seems to be good for Lucy, helping her process the loss of Glenn and the move to a new home. Nick now wears Moochie, a rat-terrier rescue that I helped him pick out a few days after Spotlight. For what he’ll be going through, I knew he’d need a dog to wear, too.

  At night, in bed, Gary and I watch the dogs play before they fall asleep on their chew toys, and if we’re not too tired we ask each other couple-versions of Sari Epstein’s Noble Journey prompts. (“Describe your earliest memory of our relationship.” “Tell me three things you miss about who you used to be, and three things you don’t miss.” “What happened today that you’re grateful for?”) We are trying to start somewhere. When Teddy comes in to say good night we sometimes manage, while pretending to ignore him, to trick him into telling us something, anything, about his day. We are always shocked and secretly ecstatic when the trick works and he shares a moment, a thought, a snippet of conversation from his life. Maybe he wants it to work. Maybe, like us, he’s just a tiny bit happier now, and connecting is starting to feel good again.

  I keep a notebook in my sling now. I pretend it’s to jot down article ideas for Well/er, but really it’s for me. A way to bring myself back from the dead. In the mornings after drop-off, I go to Shepherd for coffee and sit at a table by the window. When I think about Glenn and my parents, gone and missed; about Gary, still
struggling but now giving Nick and Teddy bass lessons and practicing for a local club’s open mic night; and about Teddy and Nick and Phoebe making dinner from the meal-box delivery service that Gary agreed to order, I open my notebook to a clean page. Sometimes I write or draw something in it and sometimes I don’t. But I think There’s a Dog in Your Sling is a working title that Glenn would like if she were still here. Which of course she kind of still is.

  It is almost winter. The days are short and cold and the light is sharp. In the afternoons, and on the weekends, before dark, in a pack of people and dog slings, and with all the birds on our heads, too, we walk the reservoir. We don’t know the future. We have no answers about where we will be in a month, or in a year, or in a decade; where the money will come from and how it will all play out; when and if, someday, one of us, Gary or I, will decide to take off the sling of our marriage and leave early. But for now there is safety in numbers. We are holding each other together with love. And for now that is not just enough. It is everything.

  Acknowledgments

  Many thanks to close friends, pep talkers, faith keepers, cheerleaders, and early readers: Alice Hoffman, Ann Leary, Julie Klam, Jillian Medoff, Wendy Law-Yone, Paul Fedorko, Beth Teitell, Hilary Ilick, Pamela Painter, Janet Dale, Gesine Bullock-Prado, Katie Rosman, Lori Galvin, Lynn Bikofsky, Brendan Dealy, Ben Dealy, Erin Braddock Pearson, Kimberly Mikesh, Barbara Hall Gordon, Ashley Van Buren, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, Reagan Arthur, Sandy Pool, Marianne Szegedy-Maszak, Julie Grau, Sue Miller, Joan Wickersham, Zoe Anderson, Donna Apostol Heimlich, Bill Mueller, Laura Rossi, and Rory Evans. I could not have done this again after so long without so much support.