Separation Anxiety - Laura Zigman Page 0,37

have siblings.

I know, I’d say.

I really want one.

I know, I’d say again. Because I did know. I knew the longing, the solitude, the unbearable quiet of living in a house with no other children. And I also knew that I was too old to have another baby, because I was already almost too old when I’d had Teddy.

Sometimes we’d be driving when he’d talk about wanting a sibling—he’d be in the backseat because he was too young still to sit up front—on the way back from a playdate toward home, and a thick foggy sadness would creep into the car from the inside out. Sometimes we’d be in his room at night, me sitting on the edge of his bed and rubbing his back and talking to him about his day—a routine that is still in place, even now, despite all my complaining about the distance between us during the day, in public.

Sometimes it would be right after he’d come in for the night after playing all day with the kids on the street. He’d walk inside alone at dusk, and I’d catch him taking one last look over his shoulder to see everyone else paired, two by two, going home together for baths and dinner.

Sometimes, like when we’d leave from a visit with Gary’s mother and sisters in New Hampshire—cousins and dogs spilling out into the backyard, all the kids in shorts swatting at mosquitoes, their bug spray and sunscreen long since worn off—there wouldn’t be words at all. I’d see his face, full of joy at being part of a whole—at having a place in a big family—that feeling of fullness that comes from being in the midst of all that energy and activity, of all that life—right before it would fall, cheeks and eyes and mouth changing shape, dissolving, caving into itself like a dying flower.

It was always a cruel tearing away; his weeping would last almost an hour into the drive, when the crying would finally stop and the struggle between what he wanted and what he couldn’t have, would never have, turned to silent resignation and to two unassailable beliefs:

Things will never change. I will always be alone.

Or, maybe those were my beliefs, projected onto him. If I’m being honest. I hated leaving, too—returning to our quiet world of three always felt like a punishment for something I’d been accused of long ago and didn’t even do.

That’s when Glenn suggested we get a dog. Why we ever thought a dog—just a dog—one simple animal—could fill that black hole, that dark space, for Teddy, I have no idea, but many people besides Glenn, including a psychiatrist we’d consulted about his learning issues, and Gary himself, who’d grown up with dogs, all thought that was the answer to our problem. I didn’t grow up with animals, but Gary and Glenn swore it would help. Sure, we’d end up walking the dog and feeding the dog and training the dog and playing with the dog—no matter how much we’d try to teach Teddy the responsibility of pet care, Gary had warned—but it would be a long-term companion, a provider of love and affection, a protector against loneliness and sadness and grief.

I look down at the dog in the sling right now: Check. Check. Check. The dog is all of those things. For me. The law of unintended consequences.

And so it was after he started his new school, when he was the most bereft about being an only child, alone in the house with no one his age to talk to or play with or eat with; no one to eat cereal with in the morning and dinner with in front of the television as a treat on a Saturday night, or throw a ball with, or ride a bike with; no one to fight with and compete with and to feel less than or better than; no one to whisper good night to in the dark after rehashing the minutiae of his day—how he did at basketball, or video games, or skateboarding, or if he should even bother putting a crazy-expensive Star Wars LEGO set on his Christmas list or not because maybe there wasn’t really a Santa—that we ended up getting a dog. Charlotte. I knew nothing about getting a dog, less about what I would do with it if we found one, but a few friends I’d made online were serious dog lovers who told me to start with rescue shelters. Every day after school, I’d