“Bang and Olufsen,” I slur, pulling the headphones off my ears and trying to look at them as they flop against my neck. “Are they from Sweden?”
“Denmark,” he says through his blue paper mask.
I don’t buy it. “I think they’re from Häagen-Dazs.”
Another question: “How old are your kids?”
“Eleven, nine, and seven.”
My eyes fill with tears. “I remember eleven, nine, and seven,” I whisper. “Teddy still liked me then.”
Then the real question: “So why did you get divorced?”
Michael’s brow tenses over his mask. “What makes you think I’m divorced?”
“It’s obvious,” I slur, trying to point with my floppy hands, at the walls and at him. “There’s no Janie in the photos, and you don’t wear a ring.”
“You’re a real Columbo.”
I nod, then point to my brain, smugly. “I’m a writer. It’s my job to notice this stuff.” I let a few moments pass, then I ask again. “Seriously.”
“Seriously what?”
“Seriously why did you and Janie get divorced?”
“Oh Judy,” he says, smiling, with the tiny pliers still in my mouth. “Wasn’t it enough that you wrecked my Passover diorama?”
I laugh, and close my eyes. I’m floating in the chair, my head a swirl of cotton candy. “Then let me ask you this,” I say, forcing my eyes open again. “How did you both know you were making the right decision? When did you go from thinking maybe splitting up was the right thing to do, to knowing it was? My husband and I are separated but we still live together, and there’s a weird kind of shame about not being brave enough to leave.”
“Judy.”
“Yes, Michael.”
“I didn’t marry Janie. I married her brother. And we’re still together. Very happily so.”
* * *
I drive home with my mouth closed over teeth already hurting from being pushed and pulled, reluctant participants in the drama and chaos that I’m trying to control. I’m deep in the black hole of shame for how badly I misread the situation with Michael, thinking he might be my vine, my way forward, the perfect ending to my sad story. Isn’t this what would happen in the movie version of a person who moves back to their hometown? Wouldn’t this have been the perfect plot point?
I suddenly wish I’d kept some of my mother’s OxyContin to dull the tooth pain and erase the humiliation and disappointment of the death of a tiny fantasy. Just a few pills, or a handful of pills; maybe just one container from the drugstore, that giant-size refill she was getting at the end, which wasn’t enough and required the addition of a fentanyl patch. How easy it would have been to slip a few pills into my pockets at the end, in hospice, when they sat unused in the overnight bag my father and I had brought for her, because there was no time to wait for pills to work when liquid morphine under the tongue was so much faster and didn’t require swallowing. For five days we moved that bag, full of other things we didn’t use—Enya CDs, slippers, hand cream, a bathrobe—from chair to closet to chair again—packed because I’d glanced at a few end-of-life websites and taken the advice of the home hospice nurse to bring nightclothes and soft sweatpants and socks; family photos to put around her temporary room; things to remind her of home, of her happy life, to make the phase of active dying—her transition—her passing—easier. To make it easier for her to let go.
But she didn’t want to let go. She didn’t want to leave early. Not even a little bit early.
Unlike me, my mother was always the last one to leave: birthday parties, dinner parties, get-togethers of any kind. She always stayed to the very end of everything, as if to get every drop of whatever experience she’d signed on for. Growing up, while waiting to go home, I’d always find my mother in somebody’s kitchen with a dish towel in her hands, helping to clean up, laughing and talking and smiling, flushed with energy and life, so unlike the way she was in our kitchen, in our house. Sometimes I’d watch her from a doorway, from another room, from where she couldn’t see me—Who was this delightful social fun person?—wishing that version of her could come home with us and be my mother. But somewhere on the ride home, on the highway or on the quiet side streets that led past all the Victorian houses that surrounded our modest street of tidy Colonials, the air would seep out of the balloon. The world, our world, deflated back to its normal size. Back in our own driveway, in our own house, we were once again ourselves: quiet, disconnected, passing each other like strangers in the kitchen or on the stairs on the way to bed. Did we ever say good night to each other when I was growing up? We must have. We should have. Isn’t that what families do?
There at hospice, in a big room with a view of a Japanese cherry tree in full bloom and a giant bird feeder hanging from its branches—though she was drugged and her mind and body were already shutting down, slowly at first, and then all at once—her eyes were still wide open, taking everything in. Until she was gone, she was somewhere she didn’t want to leave, not until the last possible second.
In bed now with the dog in the sling, my tongue running over the sharp brackets glued to the front of all my teeth, I think about everyone who has left early: my parents and, soon, Glenn. Not to mention Teddy, who will go off to college in a few years, and Charlotte, who will, like all pets, eventually expire. I think about disconnection, and how I’ve been trying to find ways to keep Teddy and me from growing further and further apart. It hasn’t occurred to me until now that going through the same experience of getting braces right along with him could help him, or me; that our circles could overlap instead of floating next to each other; that we could suffer together instead of alone.
Maybe we can stave off drift and relapse. I fall asleep thinking about Teddy and me in big white sheets, dressed as giant People Puppet teeth, connected at our waists by chain-link belts, our braces, keeping us together forever.
Walking the Reservoir
I get out of the car and walk toward Wheeler’s Field off-leash dog park, where I always take Charlotte first before we do a long loop around the reservoir. The usual suspects are all here—Lady, Atticus, Poppins, Ogi, Bazel, Shelby, Cooper—dachshunds and Bernese mountain dogs and border collies and mutts and shepherds, all running and jumping and chasing balls under a perfect blue autumn sky while their owners, in layers of crewnecks and fleece vests and quilted jackets, stand along the sidelines, making awkward small talk. As always when I approach the group, I feel both ignored and deeply scrutinized. It reminds me of the awful playground years, when Teddy had to be dragged kicking and screaming whenever it was time to leave the slide or the sandbox and all the parents rolled their eyes in judgment.
It’s a bracingly cold fall morning. I watch the dogs play, and Charlotte, poking her head out of the sling, watches, too. This moment is always a nice transition before I take her out of the sling and let her join the fun for a while, before we go off on the walk. It’s an especially welcome moment of peace today after so much stress: the disastrous trip to Vermont; adjusting to my braces and being in the black hole of shame for what I said to Michael Wasserman; Gary and I not talking further about the kiss since he first confessed to it in our bedroom. Not to mention: Glenn’s steady decline. Despite it all, I force myself to follow the advice I’ve prescribed in twenty or fifty or a hundred of my Well/er pieces: gratitude. I’m grateful to be outside on such a glorious New England fall day; I’m grateful to have my dog with me; I’m grateful to have a supportive husband, even if that husband isn’t technically my husband anymore, and even if that husband is in-like with another woman.