by Manny Howard
I did not want the baby, only her—or so I said. My involvement as a father was her preference, but it was not necessary, she was having the baby with or without me—or so she said. Still ambitious for a win/win, I suggested we give up on conversation for a moment and proceed by employing a numerical system I devised to describe our feelings about our future: 1 = terminate the pregnancy and proceed together the best we could; 10 = have the baby and proceed together the best we could. Marriage, it was assumed by both of us, would follow the arrival of the baby, if there was to be one.
This worked inasmuch as it got us “throwing numbers at each other.” For two weeks we met and exchanged numbers, usually 2 and 9 (both of us pretending to possess some flexibility), then would take a day off and spend it apart, me in a motionless daze behind the steering wheel of my late-model (full-size) Chevy Blazer parked outside a Laundromat on Atlantic Avenue. Lisa, likely a blur of corporate activity, rounded off by hopelessly sobbing into the pillows on her enormous white couch in the living room of her apartment on Central Park West.
One week on Lisa provided a new number: 3. I was shocked. I asked if she was sure. She said she was. I could not comprehend how she had moved so far, so fast, and I said so. She said she had been thinking about what I had said, saw some merit in the idea that we needed to be together, eventually even as husband and wife (maybe), before we could be a good father and mother to a baby. Faced with what I believed was Lisa’s enormous sacrifice to keep me in her life, flattered, impressed—proud even—I could not stand the idea of being the one who convinced her that terminating the pregnancy was the right thing to do. I began a precipitous about-face. Two days later I announced that I was an unreserved 8.25.
Lisa was furious. She could not believe I could be so cavalier about this decision. She thought it best that she have the baby by herself. Offered to allow me reasonable visitation rights if I wanted them, but insisted on sole custody.
I was confused. “You were a 3 two days ago?”
“That’s right. I am a 1 now. I am having this baby. I can do this without you. I make enough money to take care of this baby all by myself!”
“Wait? You’re a 1?”
“Yes. And you’re an asshole.”
“A 1 is ‘terminate.’”
“It is not.”
“Yes. A 10 is ‘have baby.’”
“It is not.”
“Yes. That’s what we agreed on.”
“Fine, I am a 10 and you’re an asshole.”
“I’m an 8.25!”
“You are?”
What I ended up saying as a terrified 10 was “I love you. I want to be with you. That’s all I know. I don’t know if I want to be a dad. But I know that I can’t be with you and not be a dad, so I’m going to be a dad with you. I don’t know if it’ll work, but I want it to. So let’s have a baby and then see if we should be married, too.”
When we called Lisa’s mom and dad, whom I had met once on a family vacation on the Florida Panhandle, to tell them the happy news about the baby and the likely possibility that we would get married after the birth, they were happy for us, but not all that pleased about the order of things as we presented it. The pregnancy was not the problem. The problem was not being married and being pregnant.
We told them we’d call them back.
A few days later I called Lisa’s dad, John, and asked him for his daughter’s hand. He said, “Lisa’s a wonderful girl.”
I said I agreed. He said, “You take care of my little girl, now.”
I said that I would. “No, Manny,” said John, with deep concern verging on outright menace. “You take care of my little girl.”
When I had caught my breath, I said that I understood and repeated that I would take care of Lisa. “Well, that’s fine,” said John. “I’m going to hand the phone to Elise so she can talk to Lisa.”
Though an objective assessment of the details of each of our biographies did not hold out much hope for success, our friends received the news of our hurry-up marriage and impending parenthood with less dread than Lisa’s family. Well known by my intimates for being precocious and impulsive, it didn’t help matters that I fell in love with Lisa while closing on her from twenty yards, watching her stride purposefully from cab to restaurant. It was a blind date. We arrived at the front door at the same moment. “Manny,” she not so much asked as affirmed.
“I was hoping that was you,” was all I could manage. Game over.
We have proved unimaginable, yet obvious, partners.
It struck me early in the third trimester that we weren’t going to escape the phobias that all the other new parents we knew had fallen prey to. Why, then, fritter away maternity leave, the biggest chunk of paid leave anybody in the honest workforce ever gets, sitting around our apartment worrying that we were being terrible parents? If we were going to worry about being bad parents, we should probably just go be bad parents. Over dinner I announced that when the baby was three weeks old, we were going to drive across the country and back. Lisa was not immediately convinced. I reminded her that I was the one she had put in charge of adventure.
Once we had decided to have the baby together, Lisa insisted we replace my beloved late-model, full-size Blazer with a car recognized as “safe” by Consumer Reports, a brand-new Volvo Cross Country wagon—the Castratimobile, by my reckoning.
Since we now had a brand-new car that could make the trip, I needled, do you really want to waste maternity leave sitting at home? I continued to badger and Lisa finally agreed. Unlike me, she had never driven across the country. She was excited at the prospect. I spent the balance of the final weeks planning a route that would take us eight thousand miles in twenty-eight days, buying gear and calling the friends we would barge in on. Heath Ryan Howard (almost immediately dubbed HRH) was born at the end of October 2002. I tucked Lisa, Heath, and our pointer-Lab mutt, Fergus, into their compartment in the crowded wagon, and we left for our victory lap in plenty of time to spend Thanksgiving with Lisa’s sister, Marian, and my stepbrother, Justin, in Northern California.
In September 2003, expecting our second child, Lisa and I begin looking for a larger home and are drawn to the broad, tree-lined streets of Prospect Park South, a well-manicured, landmarked neighborhood, part of greater Flatbush. A garden district with grand, columned houses, and a carefully landscaped esplanade, it reminds Lisa of Jackson. I never gave much serious thought to moving out of the neighborhood that I grew up in, but I had taken Lisa on a tour of the neighborhood when we were courting, figuring it would warm her to the idea of Brooklyn, draw her away from Central Park West. It often takes a little bit of convincing to sell the borough to outlanders who arrive in New York and spend years in Manhattan, chasing ambition without paying much attention to the rest of the city. Not Lisa. The idea inspires her, and before the end of the week she has lined up a number of houses for us to view in Prospect Park South.
We meet the Realtor, Mary Kaye Gallagher, midmorning on a pleasant fall day outside what is to become Howard Hall. Gallagher is waiting for us on the broad front porch. “She’s porch-sitting!” breathed Lisa with delight. “Just like home.”
We are ushered into the dark green Italianate manor house that I immediately judge to be beyond our price range. Almost every building in this neighborhood beggars the established metric for reasonable square footage in New York City. Gallagher, the dominatrix of real estate in Prospect Park South and bordering neighborhoods in western Flatbush, announces that the house sits on a lot one hundred feet deep and sixty feet wide. She says the interior dimensions work out to be six thousand usable square feet—give or take. Gallagher has toiled tirelessly for generations to return this garden community to its former greatness. One of her most consistent challenges to closing deals seems to have been the maintenance and housekeeping standards that the long-term residents consider reasonable.
The interior of this home, one of the first completed on the block, suggests that nothing that has entered it has been
discarded since it was sold to one Josephine Halback directly from Dean Alvord, the developer, in 1903. Gallagher begins apologizing to Lisa for the clutter—some of which is stacked in long, low rows and covered by bedsheets, to morbid effect, in the middle of the apparently long-vacant bedrooms on the second and third floors. One bedroom on the third floor has an alarming brown stain—that is not blood—in the middle of the dirty pea-green, wall-to-wall carpet. When I turn to Gallagher for explanation, she simply rolls her eyes in a way I will learn to love and suggests we continue the tour. Here, look, the home’s most significant architectural feature, the nearly two-story-high tower room with pitched roof and two walls of windows in the southeast corner of the building.
A second couple, older than us by at least ten years, show up to view the property, but Gallagher runs them off. “Come back later,” she commands. It appears she likes the details of our biography: one kid and one on the way, Lisa’s fancy job title at an even fancier fashion media company, even my credentials as a writer (she’s already recruiting me for the neighborhood newsletter). We do the real estate dance, and eventually Lisa offers a polite “We will be in touch.”
Lisa and I turn from the house, walking close enough to each other to feel her dress brush my hand. On the way across the street to our car, having absolutely no idea whether we can afford to buy the house, I whisper advice to Lisa, who is transparently in love with the property. If she feels this strongly, she should go ahead and make an offer. The place is a wreck, but it looks like most of the work is cosmetic; nothing a floor sander, a skim coat of plaster, and some white paint can’t fix.
In the contract, finalized in September, we insist that a provision be added requiring the removal of every single item inside the house. The odd-jobber who does the work reports that he removes eighty contractor bags before the job is complete.
On the same day in December that we move into Howard Hall, the return pipe for the furnace bursts, so moving men and plumbers jockey for position in the basement. At least once a month during the first three years some facet central to the operation of our home collapses in a heap requiring (after failed attempts at repair on my part) the skills of a professional of some description. Lisa and I try to stay philosophical about the costs of getting Howard Hall up on its knees and functioning adequately, often joking when the doorbell rings that answering it will cost us $2,000, as that is almost without exception what any guy in coveralls who steps over the threshold will bill us for fixing the plumbing, chimneys, electrical, windows, whatever. Two months after we move in, with the paint still drying on the walls and the solder still setting between the new copper pipes, our son, Bevan Jake Howard, is born.
Six months later, dinner is over. The kids long since in bed, we are sitting out back on the screen porch indulging ourselves, flirting while fantasizing about home improvement. What if we put in a hot tub before replacing all the failing storm windows? A long pause as the reality of how many responsible home-repair items trump installation of a hot tub washes over us both. Thoughts of dishes left unwashed and waiting laundry piles eclipse lottery-winning-based fantasies for a luxurious domestic future.
As we are about to return to our chores, a shambling presence reveals itself beyond the far corner of the garage. In the dim glow of a sporadically operating floodlight a raccoon crosses slowly in front of the garage doors. “A raccoon in Flatbush?” whispers Lisa.
I gesture I guess? and slip out of my chair and, in a knee-destroying crouch, make my way to the screen door.
The raccoon is followed by four offspring. When they reach the parent (I can’t sex a raccoon), it stands up and begins using its nose in our direction. “It can smell our dinner,” Lisa stage-whispers.
“Get a broom,” I command. In the moments it takes Lisa to fetch a broom, the critters vanish across the yard and through a hole in the shambolic fence. The following day, I’m talking to my childhood friend Josh, who lives around the corner, and he says he’s seen the raccoons around and heard talk that an entire colony, known as a gaze, live out of the Dumpsters behind Kentucky Fried Chicken on Coney Island Avenue. That makes perfect sense to me. Where else in Brooklyn would a raccoon find anything to eat? We don’t see them again for many years and only occasionally hear stories about sightings.
For dinner the day of my phone call with Faye, I grill a Newport steak for the family. Lisa really enjoys a good Newport, salty black on the outside and blue, barely warm on the inside. I also steam some artichokes, not my favorite but certainly hers. As dinner winds down, Lisa is scooping the fur from the heart of the artichoke for the kids. It is time to introduce The Farm. “So, I got a call today about a magazine piece that I want to talk with you about,” I say.
“I thought you weren’t going to write magazine stories anymore? Where does the Afghanistan film stand?” she replies, distracted, smiling at our son, Bevan Jake, who’s devouring the now bald artichoke heart.
“You know where it stands. I’m out,” I growl, thinking darkly about disappearing the last two years of my work life: no more dumbed-down script rewrites, no more endless meetings spent biting my tongue, navigating fragile egos and dishonest careerism for the cause of producing half-smart journalism. “I’m not talking about that anymore. I am interested in this piece for New York, though—could be a nice size.”
Determined to stick to broad strokes, I outline the project for Lisa, who is exhorting Heath Ryan, busy pantomiming a vomiting attack, to try the various artichoke parts on her plate. Lisa looks up at me occasionally, not entirely interested in the specifics of the assignment, but clearly curious about my newfound enthusiasm. Finally, she stands, clears the kids’ plates, and announces that it’s time to march upstairs for books and snuggles.
In the kitchen now, dishes clattering, she calls, “How much will this ‘growing your own garden’ story pay?”
“Don’t know exactly, but if it’s assigned at ten thousand words, then it could be enough to help get the garage redone once it’s all over.” This is what, during Lisa’s wheeler-dealer day, is called my close, and it requires that I stifle my desire to correct her, to make sure she understands there will be no garden, that I am planning to build The Farm.
After reflecting for precisely the time it takes her to load the last two plates and close the dishwasher, she concludes the negotiation: “Okay, sounds good. You’re excited. That’s nice, hon.”
I endure the verbal pat on the head. Then footsteps upstairs.
NEXT ACTIONS
I accept the story assignment. The kids are in school. Lisa is working. Now I’m working again, too. All is well.
There are two kinds of people, those who feel fine doing the bare minimum, and those who can’t do anything without throwing themselves entirely into any project. I am both of these people. This duality leaves the door open for the question that dogs me through every endeavor, however: are you going to fail at this, too?
The phrase food miles, used to describe the distance food travels between producer and consumer, and more pointedly to quantify the modern consumer’s alienation from the source of his nourishment, was coined by Tim Lang, a professor at City University in London, in 1991. It is the foundation of an enormously popular food movement in the developed world known as locavorism, the core premise that food grown and produced locally is superior to food produced thousands of miles away. It is as personally affirming and proactive as it is politically subversive. In the United States a growing number of people have identified agribusiness as their current bogeyman and engaged in what is called urban agriculture in order to ward him off. Since a sustainability convention held in San Francisco during 2005, a vanguard interested in whole foods started describing themselves as locavores.
In November 2007, the Oxford American Dictionary added locavore to its pages and thus, some would say, to the language. Being a locavore in 2010 must be a very different experience from what it was in 1991. For one, the historically disinterested news media is suddenly providing affi
rming details about the crisis in food production, constantly squawking about the global food crisis. In 1991, as far as the population was concerned, food described as organic was still the manna of the lunatic left. Alas, the poor, doomed organic-food movement; just as it moved out of the yurts and freak caves toward the light of general acceptance, Big Food swept in, co-opting the term, undermining accepted standards for what constituted organic food, and plastering snack bags with shamelessly misleading claims: “Contents 70 Percent Organic.”
The decimation of the organic movement by industrial food producers is still a painful memory for food-conscious folk. People who think about these things have come to believe the reliance on processed food—some of which, even when it was organic, journeyed an average of 1,494 miles to the dinner plate—doomed consumers of healthy food. This belief inspired locavores. Their solution was to buy food directly from the people who produce it, often accompanied by the promise that the food is grown and harvested in accordance with best organic practices, but always grown within one hundred miles of the market. This is not simply an individual purchasing decision aimed at improving the health of loved ones and one’s self. Not for the locavore. The locavore believes that pursuing this personal philosophy is the responsible thing to do, as it might also have an ancillary beneficial effect for local farmers and, possibly, the larger environment. Chances are if you describe yourself as a locavore, you attach some political or moral importance to your consumer patterns. You shop better than other folks. Your shopping has more significance. It is important. Your grocery list is a declaration of principles. As a result, you likely identify yourself as a member of a virtuous, forward-thinking group. You are part of a movement possibly; and so, unavoidably, you define yourself in opposition to others. You can now more easily identify a foe—likely malevolent, probably dangerous, and possibly deadly.