“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.”