I stop, look down at myself. The sling is kind of unsightly, as am I, wearing it, and though I’m full of self-loathing I pretend to take only slight umbrage at his remarks. “Really, Gary? On a night when ridiculously dressed People Puppets are going to grace the stage, are you seriously embarrassed to be seen with me?”
He stops, too. “Yes. Yes I am.”
“Wow.” This time I’m not playacting. My cheeks are hot with shame. And yet: I don’t blame him.
He looks around at the empty hallway, then heads for the stairs to the middle school. He’s trying to find us a place where we’ll have a little privacy, since, if we stay here, someone is likely to come out of the multipurpose room to use the bathroom or make a phone call. I follow him, in the opposite direction of where we should be going—we’re missing the early part of the show—the skits with the little kids—the preschool and kindergarten and elementary grades—which isn’t an entirely bad thing—ill-timed marital fights have made couples miss far better things—but still I’m feeling a strange sadness creep over me: we should be sitting and watching our son and his earnest classmates perform while trying to temporarily ignore the fact that our friend is dying, not acting out the denouement of our marriage.
There’s something about the hallway’s echo and the dog’s snout poking out of the sling that makes me want to do something big and dramatic and unexpected. Like take the dog off, lay her down on the cold linoleum floor, and walk to Glenn’s, leaving Gary to deal with the dog and the rest of the evening. But that would accomplish nothing, and I’d miss Teddy’s skit—miss seeing him in whatever sad and ridiculous and ill-fitting costume he’ll be wearing; miss being able to compare his adolescent awkwardness tonight to the unselfconscious effusiveness of his past performances, back when he was still young enough to enjoy new experiences and loved being part of group activities, as long as they weren’t about academics. So I follow Gary just inside the door to the middle school, where he’s waiting for me.
“I mean, look at you, lumbering around with that thing!” he says, tiptoeing down the hallway and past a bank of open cubbies, full of sneakers and rain boots and artwork yet to be brought home. I shush him, knowing he’s going to get loud, and I don’t want our conversation, which could quickly escalate, to be overheard by anyone. The last thing we need is to call attention to ourselves. But Gary is just getting started. “And what did you mean by ‘We should do whatever it takes to make my happiness possible’?” He shakes his head, hurt and disgusted. “What if I said, ‘Hey, Judy, seeing you with some dude at the reservoir didn’t make me jealous—it just made me realize how much I want you to go live your own life so I can live mine.’”
Great. Perfect timing and location for this. We’re finally going to have that conversation, and I guess there’s just no way to stop it from happening here, and now, probably the worst place it possibly could happen. Instead of escalating, I try to calm him. “Gary. Of course I care. It’s just that—”
“You don’t care. It’s fine, it’s fine!” he mimics. “Go be with your girlfriend! Take your chance when it comes along! No problem!”
“But I want you to be happy! I don’t want to stand in your way of being happy! I thought that’s what you wanted! Isn’t that what you said in therapy?”
He ignores me. “All while you walk around with that fucking dog like it’s normal!”
“I know it’s not normal!”
“Then why do you do it? You’ve been wearing it for months now, Judy. When is it going to end?”
We are both whisper-screaming now, our throats scraping the words out; our bodies half bent at the waist; pointing at each other with every word we say. Were it not for the dog’s sudden restlessness inside the sling—in fact, she’s actively trying to get out, something she almost never does—we’d continue arguing. But I have no choice except to let her out. I bend down on the floor and help her out of the sling—trying, but failing, to grab ahold of her harness or her collar before she gets away from me, running down the hallway and barking maniacally now. Gary and I both chase after her, stopping at the end of the hallway when we see that she’s skidded to a stop in front of a pile of what looks to be, from a somewhat safe distance, a pile of fresh poop.
* * *
We stare at each other. The reality of what we’ve stumbled upon—the third instance of the Secret Pooper, just as I’d predicted—shocks us. So much so, that we actually grab, and hold on to, each other by the elbow. Do we call someone? Take a photo of it in case photographic evidence is needed later? Or wait until someone happens by and can tell us what to do? That third option becomes a reality when, from the other end of the dark hallway, Grace materializes. Her face is pinched with dread as she realizes what we’ve found.
“Oh no,” she whispers.
I stare at her until she fidgets with discomfort. “You’re the Secret Pooper,” I say. Suddenly it’s all clear.
There are tears in her eyes, and it looks like it’s all she can do to remain upright. She lets out a sharp breath, as if in that single exhale all the past few months of her insane behavior will now be expunged. I turn to Gary, my eyes wild with outrage. “I knew it. I knew it was her.”
She shakes her head. “It’s not me.”
“Oh really,” I say, full of spite, the adrenaline of defending Teddy and the anxiety about Glenn coursing through my veins. “Then who is it?”
“It’s Noah.”
I roll my eyes at Gary. “Sure. Blame your man-baby boyfriend.”
She covers her face with her hands, then whispers, through her fingers, something I can barely hear. I make her repeat it. “Frontotemporal degeneration. Early onset dementia.” Gary and I look at each other in horror, then grab each other by the elbow again.
She tells us that it started about a year ago, that she thought then that she could cover for him, protect him. She thought the symptoms would be mild enough to manage, and at first they were—forgetfulness, saying the wrong word or not being able to think of the right word, the childishness—the effusiveness, the messy eating. But then it got worse. “That’s when the pooping started. I kept waiting for the right moment to tell the board, but I wanted to spare him the indignity of having his career end this way.”
“But making someone else look guilty was fine.” Gary tugs on my arm. Judy. I ignore him and pull away. “It’s an incredibly sad situation but you tried to make it look like it was Teddy, an innocent teenager who’s been living in fear of being falsely accused of this! That’s unforgivable!” Another tug on my sleeve. Judy. “I’m sorry he’s ill, Grace, but you can’t go around casting suspicion on kids, on good boys who have been made to feel like criminals. I hope Teddy isn’t scarred for life. I hope you haven’t caused him to develop an anxiety disorder from all this stress!” Another tug, then finally Gary holds up his phone. It’s Teddy:
Aren’t you guys coming?
* * *
With Charlotte back in the sling, we leave Grace in the hallway and race into the multipurpose room, where Teddy’s class is just now approaching the makeshift stage. Gary and I stand against a wall, behind rows of folding chairs and yoga mats and tumbling pads. We watch as the small group of gangly awkward teenagers, dressed as sheep, all follow a shepherd—played by several People Puppets under a big fat man’s suit with devil horns over an orange wig. The sheep stop following the devil-shepherd the minute they pass a sign that suddenly appears on a People Puppet signpost: