“Mom. Stopppp.”
Nick waves at Teddy. “Do you like puppets, dude?”
Teddy shrugs, smiles shyly. “They’re okay I guess.”
Nick turns to Gary. “Do you like puppets?”
Gary’s mouth actually drops open. He shoots me another desperate look. I know exactly what he is thinking: Seriously. We have to leave. But how can we leave early from our own house? Since he’s not answering Nick’s question, I decide to talk for him, thinking, ironically, that in doing so he’s like my puppet. “In theory, Gary likes puppets,” I say. “But in reality, Gary is terrified of puppets. He’s actually terrified of all costumed characters.”
“Judy—” He tries to stop me, but it’s too late—I’m already blurting the alleged origin story of his phobia: one of Gary’s first jobs in college, at a Chuck E. Cheese–style restaurant, as one of three costumed mice playing on a tiny stage in front of families eating shitty pizza.
“He told me that he got almost all the way through his first shift, but suddenly the music stopped and he pulled off his giant mouse costume head and started screaming: ‘I can’t breathe! I can’t breathe!’”
There’s a bird on Gary’s head. “The air-tube-mouthpiece-thingy inside the head part was blocked.”
“With anxiety,” I whisper.
“I couldn’t breathe, man!” Gary erupts, before catching himself and looking around, embarrassed. “Sorry.”
I adjust the dog on my lap and pretend everything is fine. “So, how did you get into puppetry, Phoebe?”
“My moms were founding members of this puppet theater at Bennington College,” she explains. “They still perform—in fact, they just did a puppet adaptation of The Vagina Monologues. They wear these huge vagina costumes, made out of dark red velvet, and ohmygod it’s totally embarrassing.”
Nick turns to Gary, man-puppet to man. “Dude. You have no idea.”
I can see Gary doing the math in his head—dog sling, vagina costume, same thing. “I think I do.”
“Not that there’s anything wrong with vaginas, Teddy,” Nick explains, a sage in llama’s clothing. “They’re beautiful. I mean, I’m not sure how much you know about stuff like that.” He turns to me and covers his mouth with his hoof. “Sorry.”
“No problem,” I lie, as if I’m totally fine discussing vaginas in my living room with Teddy blushing in the doorway. I quickly change the subject. “Were your parents into puppets, Nick?”
“My father was. He loves everything to do with theater. Which is pretty much why my mother divorced him. Which was kind of a big deal. At the time.”
“Well, that’s something you two have in common!” I say, elbowing Gary. “Gary’s parents got divorced and he still hasn’t gotten over it!”
Nick points down at his costume shamefully. “Neither have I. Hence the career switch.”
“You weren’t always a puppet?” Gary asks.
“I went to law school because my mother wanted me to but I never practiced because I never took the bar. I hated it. It just wasn’t me.”
“It wasn’t me, either,” Gary says, softening. “I dropped out after my first year at Georgetown to play music.”
“I didn’t know you went to law school,” Teddy says. I watch as something—surprise? confusion? disappointment?—crosses his face. “Jackson’s dad is a lawyer.” It’s the first time I realize that Teddy is deep in the age of comparison—seeing himself and his family in relation to others, though what he thinks about those differences I have no idea, except that I’m sure I come up short compared to other moms who don’t wear the family dog.
“I thought I’d told you,” Gary says absently. He’s a terrible liar. “Sometimes you just know that something isn’t for you and law school wasn’t for me. I couldn’t take the pressure. I was practically hospitalized after the first year.” He laughs to make it sound like a joke, even though it’s fairly close to the truth. After dropping out, years before we met, he’d spent the summer living with his mother in his old bedroom in New Hampshire, the one with a twin bed and airplane wallpaper, and decided to go back to music, his true passion. If not for his anxiety, which got more and more debilitating, he would have had an amazing career, I’m sure of it.
“And a year after that he opened for Aerosmith!” I say super enthusiastically, citing his résumé highlights from memory, since aside from a few grainy old videos, pre-iPhone quality, I’ve never seen Gary perform live in a big venue. Except for small bars and coffeehouses, he’d stopped playing with his band before we met, and I’ve always wished I had known that version of him.
“Our band did,” Gary corrects.
“Dude! Impressive!” Nick says.
“It was a long time ago,” Gary says, changing the subject. Reminiscing always makes him uncomfortable—how does he explain to people what happened to his promising future, how does he square the present with the past, when he barely understands it himself? “I’m in snacks now. Ordering, stocking, and restocking beverages and crunchy, chewy, salty, and sweet nut and protein bars. It’s a low-pressure job. Relatively. Unless you run out of Kind bars right before the four o’clock rush.” He pauses, then lowers his voice to an intense whisper. “But I do miss playing sometimes. I went to hear a band last week and I was like, man, I want to do that again someday.”
“Last week?” I’m confused. “Before or after couples therapy?”
There’s an awkward silence.
“You guys go to couples therapy?” Teddy asks, inching into the living room.
Gary sighs. “Thanks, Judy.”
I turn to Teddy. “We just go once in a while. For maintenance. Like going to the gym.”
Teddy’s eyes narrow. “You guys fight all the time, so I don’t think it’s working.”
Everybody laughs, and Teddy’s face relaxes, brightens. Even adolescents love the power of cracking people up.
“We do not!” Gary says.
“You’re scaring the People Puppets, Teddy! Now they’re not going to want to stay here!” I turn to Nick and Phoebe. “We absolutely do not fight all the time, I swear! Plus we have a great dog!”
“We love dogs!” Phoebe says.
“Not that any dog care will be required, since, as you can see, I’ve got that covered.” I hug the dog through the cotton, then stick my hand inside the sling for a calming hit of fur. Yum.
“As you can see,” Gary says, “Judy wears the dog.”
Nick and Phoebe shrug inside their giant costumes. “That’s cool. That’s cool,” Nick says. “Everyone has their thing.”
“It’s a long story,” Gary explains, “which I’m sure Judy will eventually tell you—she tells everyone at some point.”
“Because I’ve worked past my shame.”
Gary nods. “Yes, she’s worked past her shame.”
“Shame was very big in my family.”
“Shame is big in everyone’s family, Judy.”