I ignore Gary. “I used to be embarrassed about the sling but I’m not anymore. This may not be who I am forever but it’s who I am right now.” I have no idea what I’m talking about. (“Professional social workers ‘meet people where they are’ and so should you: how self-acceptance is the secret sauce of self-help.”)
“We certainly hope it’s not who you are forever!” Gary says, elbowing me lightly.
“But it’s who I am right now,” I repeat. (“Looking for a life anthem? Edie Brickell FTW: ‘What I am is what I am.’”)
“Indeed it is.”
The bird on my head has a bird on its head, which I take as my cue to stand up and head toward the kitchen. “How about a house tour?”
* * *
I won’t lie: it feels strange to have giant costumed characters in our house, knowing they’ll soon take over the snoring room, which will force Gary and me to share a bedroom again, albeit temporarily. The sound of their hoof-shoes on the wood floors, the way the fabric of their oversize clothes catches on doors and stair banisters, how they need to bow their papier-mâché heads under light fixtures and entry moldings: it’s what I do all the time, too, I realize now. Maneuvering the sling in stairwells and around furniture, I’m always conscious of my width in tight spaces and squishing the sling when necessary—and this ability to navigate daily life encumbered by such a protrusion suddenly feels like an actual skill, one I could list on a résumé, which I should probably start sending out at some point to supplement the Well/er work. But for now I try to stop looking at them like they have birds on their heads, and try to remember instead why they’re here and why we’re doing this: for the money. And for Glenn. And to move past our still point.
We all head toward the kitchen, but before I can even finish showing Phoebe our “open pantry” (which is really just a closet that was missing a door when we bought the house and which we never bothered to fix and ended up filling with makeshift shelving) and brag about our love of organic grains and commitment to #MeatlessMondays (in truth, we had just one vegetarian Monday) to help save the planet—all lies—Teddy peels off to go back upstairs, and the men—Gary and Nick—slip down the other stairs to the basement, where they will undoubtedly be up to no good in no time.
I raise an eyebrow to Phoebe. “I guess Gary is going to show Nick his etchings.”
Behind her I suddenly see the side of a giant box of Frosted Flakes, Gary and Teddy’s favorite, sticking out from behind a small prop-box of the ancient grain farro, its florid electric-blue packaging screaming ignorance and a complete and willful disregard for health and nutrition, and making me wonder yet again what kind of parent I am. I want to reach behind her head and cover it with the nearby box of polenta and two cans of pinto beans, which are probably expired, but there isn’t time, and if she caught me it would only make things worse. How would I possibly explain that I was pretending to swat at a nonexistent fly or clear away a nonexistent spiderweb because I was trying to hide some stupid highly processed food?
“Nick’s not gay, if that’s what you’re thinking,” she says, sweetly, without a trace of annoyance or rage, the two main emotion-molecules that make up most of everything I feel when I’m around people. “Not that there’s anything wrong with that.”
I wave my hand a few times too many, trying way too hard to backtrack. “Of course not!”
“Just because he’s a People Puppet—someone who likes to walk around in a big costume—doesn’t mean he’s hiding under there. In fact, the costume allows him to be more himself.”
I nod vigorously even though I’m not entirely sure what she’s talking about and how that’s possible—how wearing something that separates you from the world could possibly be considered anything other than insulation or protection or a way to hide—I should know!—and because I’ve just spied a package of Paul Newman sandwich cookies that I stupidly hid in an abundance of caution when I didn’t even have to and that could have made us actually look good, since all proceeds from his products go to charity.
“Sometimes what starts out as protective gear turns out to set us free,” Phoebe adds, looking down at my stomach area. I follow her gaze and absently realize, yet again, that I’m wearing the dog—which is almost always a complete shock, so much a part of me, like an extra limb, or a pregnancy belly, the dog has become.
“Therapy dogs are so cool.”
I laugh out loud—the demented caw of the delusional, of the perpetually misunderstood—still reeling from Grace’s awful parting words to me yesterday and the haunting threat of her possibly suspecting that Teddy could be the Secret Pooper. “She’s not a therapy dog! She’s just a dog! That I wear! Because she’s really anxious! All the time!” I lean up against the canned goods section of our fraudulent health closet and something sharp sticks into my back, but I ignore it. The nerve of someone I’m trying to help with free housing—someone barely out of college in a zebra costume and papier-mâché hooves—accusing me of having a therapy dog. It feels like an assault. I’m tempted to change my mind and clear the bad puppet-energy out of the house.
Then Glenn and her bald head appear like a flash, and I stare down at the sling, put my arms underneath it, and hug the dog toward me. I feel the urge to tell Phoebe everything—about the farce of my marriage, about having a teenager who doesn’t seem to need or like me anymore, about having a friend who’s dying, but all I say is: “Not that there’s anything wrong with therapy dogs.”
Phoebe searches my face, sees the tears forming, shakes her head. “I didn’t mean to offend you. I don’t even know you and I shouldn’t have assumed anything about you.”
I wipe my eyes and wave her away. “I assume things all the time, and even though I’m almost always wrong, it’s my guilty pleasure. I can’t help myself. Like, for instance, I assumed you didn’t get my ‘etchings’ reference because you’re so young.”
“But I watch old movies. And one of my moms’ favorite New Yorker cartoons is the one that says, ‘You wait here and I’ll bring the etchings down.’”
We both laugh until I get quiet. “You have two moms,” I say, more a statement than a question. “That’s cool.”
“You think?”
I shrug. “I don’t have a mom anymore. Or a dad. And my best friend who kind of felt like a mom is sick now. Which is probably why I wear my dog.” I stick both hands deep inside the sling, into all that warm fur, until the tears stop.
Phoebe’s face falls, and she reaches to squeeze my arm. “I’m sorry.”
“I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m just a big old Debbie Downer sometimes.”
“No you’re not. Sometimes life is just really, really sad. Like, I have a friend who’s dealing with a really heavy thing right now in his family. It’s hard to imagine what’s going to happen, but I guess he’ll just get through it, right? I mean, that’s all you can do. Do your best to survive the bad times.”
There is something so comforting in her words that I’m thrown back to the days right before my father died when I knew the end was coming. I couldn’t bear to go through the final decline—first slow, then swift and shocking—again, so soon after going through it with my mother, so for one week I just stopped visiting him in his assisted living apartment. It was the holidays, cold and dark and icy, with colored lights twinkling everywhere. I had barely seen Teddy, there had been a ton of snow, and Gary told me I needed a break before I burned myself out completely and that the private nurses we’d hired would take care of things for a few days. But I’ll never forgive myself for shutting down when his illness suddenly escalated. When I saw him next, he could no longer stand without help, and he barely recognized me. After all I had done right, I couldn’t get past what felt like selfishness for taking that short break, for not being present during that part of his descent. It nearly ruined me. A few months after he’d died, on a cold March morning when I was walking around the reservoir with Glenn and the dogs, I was still consumed with guilt.