Separation Anxiety - Laura Zigman Page 0,77
someone else in real time?
I stare at Gary and his girlfriend like they’re Martians, their body language so alien to that of ours at home. They’re holding hands now, and Gary kisses her on the head. If I weren’t about to be arrested for animal cruelty, I would probably run away into the woods and vomit. But instead, I force myself to watch them, to see the result of my ambivalence and disinterest. Isn’t this what you wanted? Your husband has found a woman who likes him and wants to date him. Isn’t that what you wanted for both of you—freedom? Shouldn’t you let him go and be happy? Shouldn’t you stop your “confinement and restraint” of not just the dog, but of him, too?
I finally force myself to look away. I realize, when I hug Charlotte before taking her out of the sling and putting her leash on, that I’m crying. My eyes blur with tears as I turn back toward the water, but when I do I still manage to see, in the other direction of the trail, the strange figures of a couple, shrouded in oversize puffy parkas and hats and scarves. I wipe my eyes and blink, trying to get a clearer view: if I were the paranoid type, which of course I am, I would say the couple looks like Nick and Phoebe—something about their theatrical movements as they flee from my line of vision, ducking behind trees and now running toward the parking lot. If it is them, aren’t they supposed to be at school—rehearsing for the evening Spotlight, which is less than a week away? What are the chances that they’d be here, at the same time as me, and at the same time as Gary and his new girlfriend—all while I’m about to be arrested for some arcane animal cruelty infraction—unless they’d followed me here? But why would they do that?
Before I can even concoct an answer to such a bizarre and unlikely question—I’m probably just seeing things—Ranger Molly arrives. She’s wearing her usual forest-green pantsuit uniform with an army-green windbreaker, carrying a clipboard. A heavy black radio hangs from her belt. As she gets a quick briefing from the outraged mob, I stare at my phone and pretend not to notice while Charlotte strains on the leash. She wants to leave. A wave of sorrow for the weird un-pet-like life I’ve forced upon her overwhelms me. She should be running and playing with other dogs, not awaiting possible punishment for my sins. But no good dog goes unpunished; she did nothing to deserve any of this and yet she is stuck paying the price for all of it.
They’re pointing at me now, while I stand there, the empty sling hanging from the front of my body like a big empty bra. “The dog is on a leash now but before she wasn’t—she was confined to that instrument of torture.” I can hear someone say these words, carried on a breeze that blows through Charlotte’s fur and makes her, for once, look like a wild animal. As she should.
Ranger Molly takes notes, nods, then walks toward me. Her big boots crunch the gravel on the path.
“So much for cool heads prevailing,” she says with a thick Boston accent and a half-smile that makes the wrinkled skin on her cheek look like a skate wing. “These people over here are claiming that you’re abusing your dog.”
I shake my head. “Oh. My. God.”
“I know, I know. Everyone’s an animal cruelty activist, but I’m the one paid by the city to make sure no one’s actually harming their pet. Now, because I didn’t see anything—right now what I see is a dog on a leash, with an up-to-date city permit on her collar—I’m going to let you go.”
“Thank you.”
“But because they’re a mob of entitled crazy-people, I’m going to pretend to write you a citation.” She winks at me, then flips to a clean piece of paper on her clipboard and takes a pen out from behind her ear. “So I’m going to write it like this—All work and no play make Jack a dull boy—The Shining, that’s my favorite movie—and then I’m going to do a big John Hancock at the bottom.” She winks again. “And now I’m going to make a big deal of handing it to you like this and you’re going to look at it and nod like I’m explaining it to you.”
After we each play our part in an exaggerated