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.’”