Stepdog (14 page)

Perhaps blending a family was just an exceptional feat—doable for some but impossible for most. Perhaps the situation was so unnatural that there was no way to make it work without making somebody unhappy. Our situation was also a function of our inexperience and lack of preparation, but how can you prepare for stepparenting? Stepkids will ignore you, they will run hot and cold, and sooner or later someone will hurl the B-word at you, other stepmoms warned, and they were right. But everyone was going through their own struggles and a challenging family dynamic was to be expected. With some work, so was genuine affection, eventually. What came as a surprise to me was how my instincts seemed to fail me, how self-doubt took over and threw me off balance as I had to learn a whole other way of being. I admitted my shortcomings and I apologized for them. Perhaps there was another way. One morning, I found it on the pages of my own newspaper. There, in front of me as I drank my mud-thick coffee, was a story about the experiences of couples who lived in two households. The arrangement even had a name—L.A.T., for “living apart together.” Experts cited in the story particularly recommended it for blended families with children who “are so vulnerable to internecine resentments and power struggles.”

Oh my God. I read on.

“Although social pressures encourage stepfamilies blending,” said Jeannette Lofas, a clinical social worker and founder of the Stepfamily Foundation, “only one out of three stepfamilies survive. I always say to people, Would you go on a plane to San Francisco with your child if you had a two-thirds chance of not surviving it?”

Once again, brutal. But to me, what resonated in the article was the success of couples who had tried L.A.T. lifestyles. They were unanimous that their marriages and long-term relationships were stronger, and had lasted, because they had room to be themselves.

The approach was so logical, so sensible. Jim could parent however he wanted without my interference. I could give him the support he needed without feeling robbed of my identity. The kids would be fine. They lived in their own busy worlds and they still had their mom and dad full-time. Any threat I may have posed to them—of stealing their father away, of competing for motherly love—would recede. I could still hold on to the picture of a happy stepfamily around the dinner table, someday. And if Jim and I split up, there wouldn't be any custody battles—he could have the dog!

“Look!” I told Jim, showing him the paper. Jim read the story with a pained look. He had his own disappointments too. He didn't get the marriage he signed up for either. He also felt sad, with a spouse who was too unbending. He felt I sat inside a fortress and didn't allow myself to be vulnerable. I agreed I had built up a wall that got higher and higher the less I was trusted. I didn't know how to gain that trust. He didn't understand why I was so unhappy. But we both wanted to save the marriage. He too wanted to bury his anger and preserve the support, inspiration, and respect, he told me. He too wanted to recapture the passion and “the spiritual high a true meeting of our souls can provide.”

The idea of living apart was scary when we first discussed it. The experiment could go terribly wrong. But the risk seemed within acceptable levels and we began to warm up to the concept of separate homes as a viable option. As we tried to decide what to do, the
Times
called. They wanted me back in New York.

Somebody's Got to Go

T
he call came from the top editor in charge of breaking bad news. Because of layoffs in the newsroom, she told me, they wanted me back in New York along with another reporter in the
Times
's L.A. bureau.

The
Times
was eliminating some hundred or so newsroom jobs. I was about one year short of maxing out on my national bureau rotation, usually about five years, so of course I feared the worst. They knew I was married with young stepkids and couldn't just pick up and leave. Didn't they remember this was exactly what forced Jim to quit? The paper was now offering buyouts. Should I take the money and run?

I didn't want the editor on the line to mince words. “Do you guys want me to quit? I need to know.”

“No, we want you to stay,” she reassured me.

I was in the backyard, where I had been reading clips for a story, and Jim was upstairs in the den, working.

“Jiiimmm!” I screamed at his office window as I hung up.

He came down and I told him the news.

“It's not a complete surprise,” he said soothingly. “Let's talk through the options. Pull up stakes and go, or stay. There's freelancing. You can look at things involving Hispanic issues. It doesn't have to be in journalism.”

We tackled professional concerns first because it was easier than talking about us. But I didn't appreciate that he started off the discussion by suggesting I could leave my job. I wasn't done with my career yet. But I also knew I was past the stage of the professional taking precedence over the personal. I knew I'd do whatever was best for our marriage.

That night, as I tried to fall asleep, I thought, Wait a minute . . . We had just been handed a gift! This was the temporary separation we so desperately needed, without the guilt. After toying with the idea of maintaining two households, we now faced a whole different set of options. The kids were not little anymore. Arielle and Henry were progressing through high school. The marriage needed a breather. Wouldn't a move to New York allow Jim and I to stay together even if apart? We were experts at long-distance love. It seemed counterintuitive, but it was a solution. I could keep the job and the marriage. Funny how the
Times
facilitated the marriage by transferring me to L.A. and now it was coming to rescue us by taking me—and eventually Jim—back to New York.

I was dizzy with a mix of emotions. I was excited. Jim was not. He was facing the relocation (or dislocation, as he saw it) of his wife. It would be an anxious, trying time for him with my leaving. He was of two minds—he wasn't up for another JetBlue relationship, but he understood that in these tough times in our industry, we were fortunate that I still had my job, and that wasn't a small thing.

Ultimately, Jim came through and supported my decision to move to New York, like I knew he would. We were always in agreement when it was about just us. Even if it took years, we knew we'd always be together. I was certain everyone was headed for their own exciting futures. In no time the kids would be applying to colleges. Our relationships would all move to the next stage. We'd get a chance to redefine our bonds. We may have survived after all. Only one thing would make everything perfect.

“We'd have to find a new home for Eddie,” I told Jim in the glow of our newfound understanding. “He won't survive the city.”

I was getting ahead of myself, but I was anticipating that Eddie would become an even bigger issue down the line if Jim insisted on taking him to New York. I truly believed that a dog whose life revolved around roaming in more than three thousand square feet of house, sunbathing in the backyard, rolling in the grass, and terrorizing other dogs in the neighborhood (except the two badass Pomeranians) could not possibly be happy around concrete in nasty weather. But, mostly, I saw my chance to get rid of Eddie. I needed to plant the idea.

The thought of the brute in my small one-bedroom in New York was horrific. Even for Jim and me, the eight-hundred-square-foot space would be tight given the downgrade from our gigantic house. Eddie would go berserk in such tight quarters. His barking would prompt complaints from the neighbors. His spiky hair would flutter around with even less room to land; it would collect into even bigger fur balls. He wouldn't be able to sunbathe or roll in the grass to scratch his back anymore. My co-op didn't even allow dogs in its grass areas. He'd become depressed—another neurotic New Yorker—and bite the doorman. We'd get sued, maybe kicked out by the co-op board, and be forced to move to New Jersey.

Eddie and I didn't get along and New York was stressful enough. We'd have plenty of time for me to find him a nice home.

“He's my dog” was all Jim said.

But he looked pensive, as if he could entertain the notion of life without Eddie, leaving the door open for me to hope . . . but not for too long, I knew. Have I mentioned Jim's a Libra? That's the sign of people who pretend to weigh every alternative endlessly only to end up doing exactly what they wanted all along.

I left my husband to his transparent thoughts to go back to worrying about finding a job within my job. I was told I was going back to Metro and needed to talk to the Metro editor about my next assignment. For me, Metro had been home. It was where I began at the
Times
when I was hired from the
Examiner
and where I had wanted to return after my five-year stint in Florida and the Caribbean. I welcomed the chance to reinvent myself once again, especially by going back to hard news, to writing about more sober issues than dancing dogs and Hollywood celebrities.

In New York, one of the Metro writers who took a buyout, Anthony, covered the environment. I wrote a proposal for the environmental beat easily, using much of what I learned writing
Green Wedding
,
which was about to be released early the next year. I got the beat and was expected to start the new job after the summer, in three months. Three months to say good-bye to my family and to L.A. Whatever New Yorkers thought they knew about California, it was usually reduced to mockery. The plastic surgery faces. The tiers of exclusivity. Even going-away parties like the one for our colleague (who is married to a movie studio chief) had an A-list and a B-list. But it took living in L.A. to realize that there was a real upside to all that sprawl, bad air, and gridlock on the freeway. L.A. didn't get the civic boosterism New York enjoyed, but it was a real city, with enough culture, diversity, and fine dining to keep any New Yorker busy for a lifetime (I found even better pizza). But the biggest appeal was the lifestyle that came with good weather. Fine weather doesn't mean just sunny days. It means a different life altogether. It gets you out of the house and into the outdoors—to walk, to hike, to become intimate with your surroundings, to warm your soul and make you aware of life's pleasures, even little ones, such as eating in the backyard under starry skies.

We lived close enough to the Pacific that it cleared the smog and we could see stars. I was already missing our backyard. And I wouldn't miss the driving, but I'd miss my company Chevy. How could I live again without a trunk? It was my big purse. The impending separation was making me nostalgic even before I left. I began to suffer mini bouts of panic.

At yoga church the next Sunday, I tried hard to relax.

“Feel your stress dissolve,” the instructor said.

My anxiety felt hard as a boulder. I lay on my mat, trying to fend off the assault of worrywart clouds that instead of floating away ganged up to attack me. One of them was in the shape of a huge black hole swallowing all our money. We were going to have to sell our house at a loss in a down market. Most of my savings were tied up in that house. Jim's too. But he wouldn't be able to afford the house by himself once I retrieved my New York apartment from the tenants and resumed paying its mortgage. Jim would have to get a rental in the Palisades. We were forced to put the house on the market now to leave ample time for a sale.

To prepare our house for viewing, we repainted the walls and refinished the wood floors on the first floor. That meant no paws allowed to scratch the three-thousand-dollar job. I bought Eddie two pairs of booties online, but he couldn't stand them. His legs buckled when he tried to walk in them. He looked like a newborn horse learning to stand and take the first tentative steps, with legs spread out at funny angles. He bit the booties off. Good-bye, thirty-five dollars. We had to keep him upstairs, positioning his crate in front of the stairway to block access. He whimpered at first, confused at the inexplicable curtailment of his freedoms. But he still had the second floor to romp around on and eventually seemed to accept his fate.

“At least he's not trying to kill himself anymore by jumping over the crate,” I told Jim.

We were both leaning against the wall in the hallway at the top of the stairs, arms crossed, as we assessed our dog. How much of our limited time on this earth did we spend talking about Eddie? Too much.

“Are you trying to kill yourself?” Jim asked Eddie.

The dog tilted his head as if communicating that he indeed had considered suicide, until a dust ball distracted him. Maybe he could live in an apartment after all. I brushed aside the thought.

We made a list of the furniture I'd take. When Jim and I had moved in together, both sets of our belongings found their own spot in our house, matching as harmoniously as if we had acquired it all together. We were partners even before we met. In our almost five years living together, we jointly bought only one sofa. We had been so in tune with each other, so in love and excited about the future together. Now I was taking back to New York everything I'd brought—my Italian love seat, my dining table, my Westin Heavenly mattress, acquired after a conference at a Westin hotel, where everyone was obsessed with how well they slept the night before. The possessions of a single woman. I was leaving with my stuff as if I had just ended a long visit. The weight of what was about to happen hit me one day in yoga class as I lay on my mat trying to dissolve . . . I was leaving Jim.

I drove back to the house from the class tense and tired and found Eddie alone. No barking this time since he welcomed some company, only a sniff and a snort. I remembered Jim and the kids were going to Old Navy to shop for T-shirts. I fixed myself a sandwich and sat at the kitchen table with sections of the Sunday
Times
spread before me. From the corner of my eye I could see Eddie debating whether to chance it and try to get under the table. We made eye contact. I looked at him and he held my gaze—so innocent, so single-minded, so loyal, so present, so constant, so much like home—and so out of my life in just a matter of weeks.

I heard the garage door, and Eddie rushed to intercept Jim and the kids as they walked in with their shopping bags. Then I heard Jim.

“I know, I missed you too. You thought we'd never come back, did you? IknowIknowIknow.”

I felt like crying.