“But we’re not being child centered. Not really. Gary started sleeping downstairs in the guest room two years ago. Teddy was eleven then, and we told him it was because Gary’s snoring was out of control, which is just a big lie.”

Gary nods. “Judy’s the one who snores like a barn animal, but she’ll never admit it.”

I ignore him. “Do you think Teddy knows what’s really going on?” I ask Deirdre.

“Kids always know.”

“Do you think we’ve damaged him?”

“Children are resilient,” she says with a gentleness I’m grateful for, then exhales the way they do in yoga classes to signal a redirection. “I want to come back to Teddy but I need to get a bit more of the big picture. Tell me what kind of work you both do.”

Gary shifts in his chair. He hates this topic as much as I hate the no-sex topic, but he’s learned to just plow right into his shame. “After I dropped out of law school because of my anxiety, I’ve done SAT and LSAT tutoring; dog walking; worked in a special-needs after-school program. Now I stock snacks in a coworking space for startups. Which is ironic, since I barely know how to use my phone and I hate technology.”

“What’s the source of your anxiety, Gary?”

He shrugs, pretending his family résumé is no big deal. “Middle child. Raging alcoholic father. Long-suffering divorced mother. You know, the usual.”

“It doesn’t sound like ‘the usual,’” Deirdre says. And it isn’t. Both of Gary’s sisters have struggled with drinking over the years (he got sober before we met), and all three of them were estranged from their father, now dead, after the divorce when they were teenagers. But during the years when all our kids were small and we still got together for holidays and birthdays and summer vacations, before Gary had to limit how much time he could spend around his family because it made him too anxious, they were fun: they were loud and angry and volatile, but they were also affectionate and hilarious and inclusive. I was the odd one out—the only child, the lone Jew in a room full of Irish Catholics—always being pulled into a conversation about sports I knew nothing about, or to listen to, and sometimes mediate, a story about some terrible childhood misadventure—near-fatal riptides, sunburns, bouts of food poisoning—that almost felled them all. I loved every minute of it.

When it’s my turn I tell her that I used to write but don’t anymore.

“Really, Judy. What did you write before you stopped writing?”

I feel Gary bristle the way he always does when we get to this part: when the therapist finds out I’m a writer. Or was one. I point to her bookshelf. “There’s a Bird on Your Head. It’s about—”

Deirdre’s eyes get huge and her voice is full of exclamation points. “Ohmygod! Judy Vogel! The Judy Vogel!” She fans her face with her hands the way women of a certain age do when they’re having a hot flash. “I know it’s highly unprofessional but I’m a little starstruck! You’ll have to sign my book before you leave!”