Separation Anxiety - Laura Zigman Page 0,23
work all those years ago when we only had two hours to put up our booth at a major trade show because all the boxes had been shipped to the wrong place and how Gary, sputtering comically on the verge of panic, was somehow calmed and spurred on by Glenn’s pushy encouragement. Deep breaths, Gary. You can do it. You’re a brave bear. A mantra he repeated constantly as he worked tirelessly to get the job done.
Or when we dragged him with us and Teddy to Story Land in New Hampshire—a small adventure park for toddlers where he had initially refused to go because it was full of people in costume, but he didn’t want to miss out on it for Teddy’s sake. While I went on the tiny rides with Teddy—sitting in the rotating teacups and in the flying Dutch shoes and on the little pirate sailboat—Glenn took Gary by the hand to each area that had storybook characters physically built into them, her own version of tough-love exposure therapy. They sat on either side of a creepy clown on a white wooden bench and next to a giant Humpty Dumpty on a fake stone wall, even pressing the button to make it talk, though apparently Gary drew the line at allowing a traveling pack of Barney characters to hug him. I’d had to drive home that night—Gary was too drowsy from all the extra Klonopin he’d taken—but every time Glenn smacked him affectionately on the head from the backseat and called him a “brave bear” for what he had accomplished that day, he’d beamed. I’m a brave bear, he’d whispered. I’m a very brave bear.
Glenn reaches over and sticks her hand inside the sling to pet the dog. “Now, take me home.” Her face is pale, but there’s a spark in her eyes that wasn’t there a minute ago: the promise of future entertainment that she knows will come in the form of texted photos with descriptive captions of a farce about to unfold, fun—possibly disastrous—at our expense. “I’m exhausted and nauseated and I miss my Lucy.”
* * *
Later that night, much later, my phone will ring. It will be Glenn, and at first I’ll assume she’s checking in about my visit tomorrow—I always do a weekly grocery shop and Gary always helps with the heavy things—the water and ginger ale and dog food—but instead she’ll ask me if I ever think about being in the wrong place at the wrong time, the way those Harvard types had been that afternoon at Shepherd when she’d chased them away.
“Because that’s all I think about,” she’ll say. “My body. All my cells. Everything in the wrong place at the wrong time. Is that what life comes down to? Luck?”
I won’t know what to say, so I won’t say anything.
“If I had kids I would just die,” she’ll whisper. “I know you don’t want to hear that because you have one, but if I had one and if I knew I was dying like this, I wouldn’t be able to stand it. I couldn’t take the heartbreak.” She’ll sigh, but now that she’s started she won’t be able to stop talking. “Parents get sick and die all the time. How do they stand it? Knowing they’re leaving too soon and not being able to fix it?” There’ll be a long pause and then the words that come next will be thin and full of air. “As it is, I can hardly bear the idea of leaving Lucy.” Her little corgi, her constant companion.
“Lucy will be fine.”
“But what will happen when I’m gone? Who will take her when I’m gone?” She’ll cry then, and the sound of it will be so crushing that I’ll wish I could throw the phone across the room to make it stop. It’s excruciating to watch someone disappear, slowly at first, and then quickly. Having done it twice, I can’t fathom having to do it again.
“I will,” I’ll say. “I’ll take her.”
“You’d do that for me?”
“Of course I will.”
“But how could you handle another dog? You can’t wear two slings.”
“Maybe by then I’ll be better,” I say, thinking of a day in the future that neither of us believes will actually come, “and I won’t be wearing any slings.”
Part Two
Cabin Fever
Host Family
In the kitchen, with the autumn sun going down fast and a sharp chill in the air, since like all self-respecting long-suffering New Englanders we refuse to turn the heat on until well into October, Gary