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 pantomime of justice being meted out, I fold the “citation” up and put it in my pocket and tug on Charlotte’s leash to head back to the car. With their activism a success and nothing left to see, the mob backs away and returns to the mundane daily business of dog park small talk.

I shake Ranger Molly’s hand through the window of her van. “Well, thanks for saving me.”

“If I were you, I’d take a break from this place for a while,” she says, backing out, the tires of her van crunching the gravel as she turns the wheels.

I wave, then get the dog back into the car. Don’t worry. I won’t be back.

Contained

Getting braces only compounds the collective misery at home after the Vermont trip. Gary and I are barely speaking despite still sharing a bed, and Teddy seems touchier than ever: simple questions about homework elicit near-tearful grunts, then high-pitched pleas for privacy, then dramatic exits. I keep my mouth shut, literally, and keep to myself and the dog, working extra hard on Well/er, feeling the added financial pressure that our orthodontia is bringing—especially now that my fantasy of starting, let alone selling, a new project doesn’t feel like it will ever happen. I had my chance. I could have buckled down over the weekend with Sari Epstein’s coloring books and gotten to the buried core of my dormant creativity, but I let myself get derailed. Instead, I churn out five to six Well/er pieces a day now, which seems to be the perfect pace to keep me from thinking too much about anything: money, Gary’s new girlfriend, our increasingly miserable teenager, my terrible behavior that still hasn’t been called out in any of Sari’s social media feeds.