“Of course you’re not! But this is all the more reason why you should come with me. Get away! Take a break from everything! You’ll get to miss a whole day of school!”
Teddy shakes his head vehemently. “No, Mom! I don’t want to be stuck at Grandma’s for a whole entire weekend! She never has any food and she’s always trying to get me to hike and I hate hiking! Remember that time she lost me?”
Which time? When she walked so far ahead of him on a birding trail because she was in hot pursuit of a stupid blue heron that it took him fifteen minutes to catch up to her and he almost didn’t because he was six? Or the time she came to Boston to visit and lost him near the swan boats in the Public Garden because someone asked for directions to Beacon Hill and she decided just to walk them there, without saying more to him than “Wait here—I’ll be right back”? (Which he didn’t, because she wasn’t. And because he was eight.) “Please. Don’t remind me.”
So maybe he’s safer if he doesn’t come. But hearing his refusal, seeing his face contort in misery at the thought of spending an extended amount of time with me—“a whole entire weekend?!”—is too much for me. Remembering the road trips we’d taken over the years—to the tip of Cape Cod, throughout New England, down to New York—and how many hours we used to spend together so peacefully and without conflict in hotel rooms and diners, over pancakes and chicken fingers, makes my throat seize and the tears start. When Teddy goes upstairs I duck into the bathroom, forgetting to turn on the overhead fan before the trumpet of nose-blowing starts.
Not that it matters: the People Puppets aren’t stupid. They’re witnessing their first family fight, and there’s nowhere for any of us to hide. Whose idea was it to have complete strangers in the house?
Back in the living room, with the dog in the sling in my lap and a fistful of Kleenex, I pretend to be hard at work on a new Well/er piece (“Is communal living good for the soul?” “Why long-term houseguests can be good for your marriage [no really!]”), when I’m actually checking Sari Epstein’s feed. Sari in child’s pose. Sari painting with watercolors. Sari deep in an evening gratitude meditation by candlelight. Sari drinking tea and journaling before bed. Sari with her palms together, head bowed, telling everyone to sign up for the Noble Journey creativity workshop this weekend because space is limited. I creep on all the photos, watch the short videos, spy the expensive couches, rugs, the diffuse light from the vast high ceilings in her home yoga and art studio, the foot-high bed with super-fluffy down duvet and far too many throw pillows. Except for the ridiculous throw pillows and the stupid journaling, she is perfect. I would trade my life for hers in a second.
I’m still sniffling when Nick sits down on the couch across from me. For once he’s not in full costume, but he’s still wearing his hoof-shoes and hoof-hands, which he taps, like a drummer, on his legs. I think of Sari Epstein in her perfect yoga pants in her perfect house with her perfect steady-creativity-seminar-income lifestyle, which does not require her to house hoof-wearing People Puppets to pay the bills, and I want to die all over again. I can tell that he means well, that he wants to try to make me feel better—to tell me about how, when he was Teddy’s age, he didn’t want to spend time with his parents, either—how it’s normal to separate and differentiate.
But I don’t want to hear any of that. My son doesn’t want to go away with me. My husband has a girlfriend. My best friend is dying. I’ll never be Sari Epstein. Haven’t I suffered enough for one day?
“So,” Nick says with a percussive tap of his hooves. “What’s with the dog?”
I stare at him, then down into the sling. “What do you mean?”
More tapping. “I’m just curious about it. It’s pretty unusual. I mean, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone wear a dog.”
“No one’s ever accused me of being unoriginal!”
“Exactly! I’m just really curious about how it started and why you do it. And like, if it bothers Gary. Does it bother Gary?” He’s sitting on the edge of the sofa, as if it’s children’s story time at the public library. Isn’t that why he has taken his hoof-hands off and has a sketchbook out and is starting to draw me with a big soft pencil, making smudges to the lead with his thumb?
“So many questions!” I lob back, but I’d be lying if I said I’m not just a little bit flattered to be asked. Not to mention giddy at the opportunity to talk about it. No one ever wants to talk about it. No one ever wants to talk about anything to do with me, I’ve found, now that I’m fifty and invisible. The fact that Nick does makes me almost teary with gratitude—especially after I misjudged his curiosity for nosiness. I start at the beginning: the day I found the sling, the red cabbage and the bath towel and the cans of tomatoes, and the sudden epiphany about wanting to carry something around because I missed carrying around a baby and because it somehow made me feel better after so much loss and sadness.
Nick nods. “Wow. I had no idea.”
“Yeah, well, watching both your parents get sick and die within two years of each other really kind of takes it out of you.” I clear my throat. “Sorry. I didn’t mean to get so grim.”
By the time Phoebe sidles into the room and onto the couch, tilting her head and sizing me up, as if she’s trying to figure out how much I weigh and what shape my body actually is under my sweater and T-shirt and sling—I’m telling them about Grace barring me from bringing the dog into the school.
“Unless I register the dog as an official support animal and show her the paperwork.”
Nick shakes his head. “What. A. Bitch.”
“Seriously,” Phoebe adds.
“I know, right?” I’m so grateful for their support that I find myself holding my pose of outrage—mouth open, hands in the air—while Nick flips to a fresh page in his sketchbook.
“I’ve never liked her,” he says, still sketching.
“You know her?”
He looks up. “She’s my dad’s girlfriend.”
“Noah is Nick’s dad,” Phoebe explains. “And Noah and Grace are a couple.”
I feel like my head is going to explode. “Wait, what?”
Nick puts his sketchbook down and puts his hoof-hands back on. “That’s why we got the job. My dad put a good word in for us and the teachers all voted us in. I like to think we would have had a chance without the nepotism, but I’m not stupid. People Puppets are a hard sell without someone on the inside.”
I’m still trying to absorb all the connections I hadn’t known about when I take that as an opening to keep the conversation going. “So, speaking of ‘hard sell,’ what’s with the costumes?”
Nick seems confused by the question.
“You asked me why I wear my dog. So now I’m asking you: Why do you wear . . . that?” I’m not sure what animal he’s dressed as, or is becoming through dress, but it’s a symptom of something larger. “Clearly there’s a story behind the need to cover oneself up and the desire to become something else.”
“Sure there is,” he says, matter-of-factly. “My dad. It’s all his fault.”