Eventually, though, the hours in between sling-time drag, and I find myself wanting, then needing, to wear the dog like a baby all the time. Who wouldn’t? But need leads to impulsivity, and impulsivity is how accidents happen.

* * *

It doesn’t take long for my secret to get discovered. A few weeks after I start wearing the dog, right after school starts, I get sloppy and lose track of time. I forget that every third Tuesday Gary leaves work as a part-time snackologist at a large communal work space near MIT—managing the infinite selection of organic non-GMO snacks and beverages for the hordes of startup teams and independent contractors half our age paying for daily shared office space—and races home, eager to do a few one-hits out the upstairs bathroom window hours before Teddy gets back from school and while I am usually still out running errands. That September afternoon, as I lumber from refrigerator to sink with the sling, fixing myself and the dog a little snack—cheddar cheese cubes and a few stale Fritos, our favorite—Gary suddenly appears in the kitchen. Tall and rangy and fit, he is wearing his mandatory company black fleece zip-up vest with the WORK IT TOGETHER (WIT) logo over the left breast, black jeans, and black T-shirt, a uniform he hates. With his still-full head of longish salt-and-pepper hair and rimless round Lennon glasses, he looks like an architect or designer, not an underemployed former musician trying to fit into a new corporate culture to help make ends meet.

When I see him I stop short. How will I explain why our dog’s slender pointy-snouted head is poking out of a diaper across my chest? I look down at the sling as if I’m as surprised as Gary to find it hanging there. “I was just cleaning out the basement,” I say, implying the basement cleaning was today, not almost a month earlier. I reach into the bag for another handful of corn chips but don’t eat them. I hadn’t planned on being discovered. I don’t have my story down yet. But as freaked out as I am, I’m actually relieved. It’s time. I’m tired of having a secret, of having to pretend that everything’s fine. This is who I am now in middle age—lost and confused and shifting constantly between my own world and the real world. If the dog is helping me survive these dark days, then good for me. I shouldn’t be ashamed. In fact, I should be applauded for finding a harmless, nonalcoholic, nonnarcotic, noncannabinoid solution to my pain. (Right?)

Gary leans forward an inch or two, waiting for the rest of my explanation, which is not forthcoming. “And . . . the sling just jumped out and demanded to be worn?” He looks at me like I could not possibly be weirder, like I have a bird on my head.

I slip a corn chip into the sling, then nod at him above the sound of the dog’s crunching, a sound I love almost as much as I love the sound of Teddy crunching Cheez-Its or Goldfish. “Actually, that’s pretty much exactly what happened.”