A fireplace. A backyard. His-and-hers bathroom sinks. I had arrived!
One night before our move, we were in the kitchen in Jim’s town house, where my adorable fiancé was seasoning chicken breasts with soy sauce to get them ready for the grill. I gently brought up some rules for our dog. As if his pampered life with Jim could get any better, Eddie would now have a full backyard to romp around.
“Honey, Eddie is going to have to be retrained. I don’t want him in our bedroom or my office or on any of the furniture.”
“Of course not. I’ll take care of it.”
“And I don’t think it’s a great idea to let him go in the backyard.”
“No, no. I’ll walk him just like I walk him now.”
“Actually, while we get the new lawn he shouldn’t go into the backyard at all. All he’ll do is bring dirt into the house.”
“Yep.”
I loved this man so.
• • •
We moved into our new home on a Friday and spent the day directing movers and unpacking. The house looked great, with newly refinished hardwood floors and one wall in each room painted a pastel color, my Miami-influenced idea. After the movers cleared out, we brought the kids and the dog home. When we opened the front door—zoom!—Arielle and Henry ran up to their bedrooms as Eddie excitedly followed. For a while, all we heard was thump-thump-thump on the cream-colored carpet, even with bare feet and paws. Eddie discovered that the short, zigzag staircase to the bedrooms and den could be navigated in a nanosecond. He kept running upstairs and then downstairs, pausing just long enough for an obsessive sniff. Jim was somewhere outside, behind the garage, talking to neighbors, and I roamed around the huge space, stepping around the boxes, a bit disoriented, not exactly sure where to start or what to do.
Soon the kids opened the sliding door to the backyard to check it out, with Eddie on their heels. The kids lost interest the minute they stepped out, but lingered long enough for Eddie to get his paws coated in brown dirt. He tracked the dirt back indoors and left a train of paw prints on our new hardwood floors all the way to the carpet in the stairwell. When I saw the dog running amok with dirty paws inside my house, I was furious at Jim.
Where the hell was he? Didn’t I ask him to keep the dog off the unfinished yard? Didn’t I predict this? (It would be the first of my many psychic episodes as a married woman.) “EDDIIEE!” I screamed, grabbing him in mid-run so he stopped soiling the house. “JIIIIIIIIIIIIM!”
I waited for Jim, sitting next to his dog in a wrestling lock. We were both panting.
Was this new, beautiful dream house really my home? Were these kids and this mutt really part of my life now? Everything felt chaotic and out of control. Jim was my partner. He and I had to be a team for us to work, for me to feel supported in unfamiliar territory. Discuss, strike agreements, follow through. Yet here he was failing me on Day 1. Didn’t he promise he’d make sure his dog didn’t go into the backyard?
When Jim came in through the garage door into the dining room, his smile disappeared when he saw my angry face.
“This is exactly what I didn’t want to happen,” I said.
Without a word, Jim quickly took Eddie back to the garage to clean him up. My fiancé was surprised at my anger and didn’t like it. He believed I was missing the point. This was the official start of our new life together. Why was I obsessing over the dog when we should have been savoring this happy milestone? Pizza arrived and we all gathered around the table in a nook off the kitchen. Jim chatted with the kids while I ate in silence and Eddie twisted on the professionally cleaned carpet, scratching his back.
By bedtime I had calmed down and started to feel guilty. I had overreacted. It was clear that I freaked out not about the dog but about my new circumstances. I had to take a deep breath and stop feeling so anxious. Could we rewind?
“I’m sorry I overreacted,” I said when we were in bed.
“Let’s make a promise,” Jim said. “The Archbishop of Canterbury gave this advice to Prince Charles and Diana when they were married. He said, ‘Don’t go to bed angry.’ I think that’s great advice.”
“Yes,” I said, wholeheartedly committing to this beautifully unrealistic concept that not even Charles and Diana could follow under direct orders.
The next morning when I woke up, Jim was long gone from our bed. He was an early riser, even on Sundays. He had showered, walked Eddie, picked up The New York Times and the Los Angeles Times from our driveway, and served himself breakfast before I woke up to the chirp of birdies perched on the magnolia tree by our bedroom window. When I opened the bedroom door to go downstairs, there was a lump at my feet. Eddie was lying on the floor across the doorway. The first time he did this in Jim’s old town house, I thought: How sweet. He’s been waiting for me. But he wasn’t just waiting. He was guarding me like a corrections officer at Sing Sing, making sure I didn’t escape and attack Jim with kisses.
As I stepped over him, he sprang up and broke into growling barks. He barked as he raced ahead of me and escorted me down the stairs. He continued barking as I reached Jim, who was eating his usual cereal and toast while juggling the papers. Eddie was in hysterics, jumping on me, jumping on Jim, and trying to get in between us, preventing me from getting close enough to our man. Jim’s solution was to give him a hand to lick. Gross. I planted one foot on Eddie’s side and gave him a firm push. Out of my way, Eduardo. He’s mine.
“Good morning, baby,” I finally said.
Muah! I kissed him extra-loud to rise over the barking and perhaps induce such excited delirium the dog would drop dead.
“Good morning!” my sweetie said. “Did you sleep well, darling?”
“Very well, thank you. And you?”
Eddie positioned himself across the kitchen doorway, giving me an over-my-dead-body look. I had to step over him once again. All this jousting and it wasn’t even ten a.m. I had to do something about this dog.
The dog was only one jarring aspect of my new life as a spoken-for woman. I was in a new time zone but lived three hours ahead, still on Eastern Standard Time, to keep up with the Times’s deadlines in New York. No more dragging myself out of bed at eight-thirty a.m. to make it to work at ten-ish. Now my home life superseded my social life. My immediate world consisted of Jim and work. No more staying up late hanging out with my revolving door of friends coming through the Big Apple. No more spur-of-the-moment whims, like rushing to the TKTS discount booth in Times Square just minutes before curtain to watch a Broadway show. No more me, me, me.
Now I had a car and lived in the suburbs. Now I had a husband-elect, two kids, and a dog. But I didn’t miss New York, or “old me.” With L.A. and suburban life came a slower pace and different interests. I discovered the joys of hiking, which in L.A. came with the awe-inspiring payoff at the end—a view of the coast and the Pacific. In the consistently great weather of Los Angeles, we often grilled and ate outdoors.
In New York, so many things and people competed for my attention that I never had time for movies. But L.A. was a movie-industry town that I now covered as a reporter. Jim also had many friends connected to filmmaking. Sooner or later, the latest releases always crept up into conversation the way Fidel does in Miami or real estate in New York. I kept up. I took to L.A. easily, except for one rather disturbing pattern—in a predominantly Latino area, I too often found myself the only Hispanic in a social gathering who wasn’t serving the meal. I made a point of making conversation in Spanish with “the help.” I wasn’t looking for a reward, but I always got the biggest shrimp.
In spite of the jealous dog—watching, watching, always watching—and our shaky start, I loved our new home and surrendered to its rhythms. I had a half-hour commute—enviable by L.A. freeway standards—on the Pacific Coast Highway and I-10. I passed the ocean every single day. Sometimes I made it back early enough to catch a dramatic sunset. A right on Sunset Boulevard, a left
on Palisades Drive, two miles up the canyon, and I was home.
The house itself was an adjustment after apartment living. There was no super, no doorman, no co-op office with duplicate keys to make life easier. If anything broke, Jim tried to fix it or one of us had to stay home to let someone in, depending on what was going on with the workday. Eddie’s job, meanwhile, was to go batshit at the stranger in the doorway and invite lawsuits. He hadn’t taken a chunk out of any visiting human yet. His thing was more to intimidate, and he looked and sounded scary with that bark of his. But once petted by a visitor, he invariably calmed down and retired to the living room to pee on the carpet from all the excitement.
“What’s that?” I asked Jim on one of our first nights home after getting into bed and hearing a noise above us.
“Squirrels,” he lied.
We had rats in the attic. I’m not sure where Jim got the reference, but the exterminator who eventually showed up at our door wasted no time telling us Mick Fleetwood was a client. We feigned awe and let the guy set up rat traps with apple slices. The guy promised to be back in a few days.
“How long will it take to get rid of the rats?” I asked him on his way out.
“Hard to say. It gets hectic,” Fleetwood Mac’s exterminator said, waving his hands for emphasis.
Apparently, waging war on rats would take protracted battles and the signing of a peace treaty. He charged us two hundred dollars a month for coming by regularly to lay down traps and pick up casualties and wouldn’t commit to a deadline to get the job done.
I smelled a rat.
“Doscientos pesos?!” my mother shouted on the phone when I told her about the scam. “Que barbaridad.”
My mom, a handywoman who attempted to fix everything before calling for help as a last resort, offered to fly to L.A. to dispose of the vermin herself for that much money. No need. I wasn’t fearless like my mom, but now I had a man in the house. After a few apples and dead rats, I shamed Jim into taking over the repugnant but straightforward job from Mr. Hectic.
Jim and I argued and disagreed over fastidious stuff as couples who live together inevitably do.
Me: “Can you please put the shoes in the coat closet? All those shoes in the foyer are unsightly.”
He: “Can you please not put the knives in the dishwasher? It ruins the wooden handles.”
Jim made fun of my meticulous coffee-making. Puerto Rico is a coffee-growing country and takes its coffee seriously. Its production is not big enough for widespread exporting, but I could make do in the States with any strong bean. I used an old-fashioned espresso maker set on the stove, and boiled whole milk, strained it of skin, and mixed it in with one spoonful of sugar. If the color wasn’t exactly right—darker than lighter, but still more beige than brown—I kept pouring more coffee, then more milk, then more coffee—until I achieved the right hue.
“You’re like a chemist in a lab,” Jim teased me as I stood in my bathrobe, pouring away with both hands.
What did he know? He poured cold milk straight from the carton! Jim was not allowed to make my coffee.
Aside from minor irritations, Jim and I had to get on the same page about things big and small. My new Jewish family, it turned out, didn’t eat pork. I first realized this glitch when Jim declined the traditional pernil on New Year’s Eve in Puerto Rico. He occasionally ate bacon, so why not pork? That’s what was allowed growing up, he told me. The restriction extended to the kids, which meant doing away with about two-thirds of my recipes. No pork chops with garlic, rosemary, and mustard. No pork ribs sautéed with eggplant. No pork roast in sweet wine. And no pernil, the garlicky pork shoulder served during the Christmas–New Year’s Eve–Three Kings’ Day holiday. I still cooked pork chops for myself every now and then, but felt a bit self-conscious filling up the kitchen with the garlicky aroma from the oven. I was grateful that Jim and the kids didn’t seem to mind. In return, I ate their sticky rice. On the island, “sticky” means you’ve ruined the rice. Puerto Ricans cook it fluffy. My new family, however, preferred it in lumps, Japanese-style, and I got used to it.
More and more of the cooking fell to Jim, who spoiled us with his porcini pasta, grilled salmon with asparagus, and the kids’ favorites, including ground-beef tacos, chili over rice, and plum cake just like his mom used to make it. On weekends, I made arroz con pollo or broiled spicy chicken wings.
Despite the culture clashes, Jim and I clicked as housemates. We got along, split the bills reasonably, and fell into chores instinctively. If he cooked, I did the dishes, and vice versa. If he did laundry, I folded. When in doubt, we had sex. Making plans, sharing love and life—married (or soon to be) life totally suited me. When we were (sort of) alone it felt like date nights, with candlelit dinners in our dining room and Eddie snoring away in a corner. But when we weren’t, I had to learn to play nice. Now when he called out “Darling?” three heads turned.
The kids consumed most of Jim’s time when they were with us. He was an extremely hands-on parent with homework, car-pooling, and playdates. He was so unlike my own father, who provided for the home but pretty much left the job of raising two daughters to my mom, down to the disciplining. If we did something he didn’t like, if he didn’t want us to go out, he’d send my mom in to deliver the message. It was as if he were scared of all that estrogen. In my new home, Jim and I tried to do things together—including dinner at the table, always—but the kids had their own social lives to attend to as they came and went between two households. Every Tuesday and Wednesday, and alternate weekends, they were with us. But they always had at least one weekend day with each parent, no matter what. That meant that on their mother’s weekend, we didn’t see them from Thursday to Saturday, but we had them Sunday night. When it was our weekend, they came back to us Friday and Saturday and went back to their mom late Sunday. My head was spinning, but everyone else seemed used to this. Eddie, unfortunately, never went anywhere.
My main job as a stepmom, it appeared, was just to be there. Jim basically wanted me to serve as a role model and supportive wife, not as co-parent. That was okay by me, inexperienced as I was at raising children. My involvement mostly entailed things such as going shopping with Arielle or showing up at school events to watch Henry read poetry or play the drums.
I tried not to be critical—not of the poetry, which was actually very good, but of behavior. I employed the three-strike rule to let little annoyances pass, speaking up only after three things had bothered me. Flip-flops discarded in the hallway? No sweat. Dining table left dirty after lunch? It could wait till dinner. Stomping upstairs? None of my business.
I tried to ignore the inconsequential stuff. I wanted to lavish affection and impart wisdom. I figured the children didn’t need a third parent, so I didn’t scold much. I knew the transitional first year would be hard on me, having lived alone for the previous two decades and having been actually fond of my solitude. What single woman has not looked forward to going home after work on a Friday night, changing into her jammies, ordering in Mexican food, opening a good bottle of wine, and settling down to watch a movie? Heaven. I designated the master bedroom as my Zen space, a hideout with a dressing area and bathroom.
Arielle’s bedroom was across from ours and her screams when fighting with her brother were hard to ignore. It was interesting how amusing this was when you watched sitcoms but how unamusing it became when it went on under your roof.
“Stop!” “Get out of my room!” “Daaaaad!”
I felt, strongly, that a harmonious household required ground rules. This was a matter for Jim and me to hash out. I didn’t feel I could just deal directly with his kids. We had not bonded enough for me to start telling them what to do. I was also afraid of saying the wrong thing and screwing it up for Jim. My expectations would have to wait.
But I had no such qualms about the dog.
Eddie’s hostility did not subside with cohabitation. In fact, it w
as just the opposite. He became more proprietary of Jim the more time they spent home alone. To clear his head during the workday, Jim took walks. Guess who the lucky dog was who joined him? Eddie sometimes got walked five times a day, depending on the news cycle. Then I came home and ruined his life. The dog greeted me barking with a craned neck as he sniffed around me and followed me as I dropped purse and backpack in my office and headed upstairs. By the time I reached Jim in his office, I was ready to kick the dog to the moon. What a pill.
In the new house, he was our undisciplined and untrained ball-and-chain. After we moved in, he quickly marked his territory with his butt, sitting on chairs, sofas, beds, and assorted soft surfaces, flagrantly ignoring his own doggie beds scattered around the house. In a matter of days, there was dog hair everywhere.
I had plans for Eddie, but first we had to bond. The dog was always there, ready for action, so a few weeks after we moved into our new home, I decided to go out for a walk with him.
How naive of me.
“You’re going to walk Eddie?” Jim asked me in disbelief when he saw me grabbing the leash.
He had a look of both happiness and concern, much like his mutt, who was looking at me, then at Jim, as if watching a tennis match. At any moment, he would break into his jarabe tapatío Mexican dance and head for the garage door.
The business of walking a dog three times a day—much less waiting for him to select the perfect location to relieve himself and then picking up—was not for me. I never understood girlfriends of mine who swore their dog walks were their best way to meet men. How could sparks fly in such undignified circumstances? But here I was in sunny California, about to self-consciously pick up after a dog even after snagging the man.
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