Stepdog (8 page)

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 was 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.

“Yep. Might as well. Just want some fresh air. How does this leash go?”

The leash itself was nylon, but the part around his neck was a sliding chain that his rescue place had recommended because the harder the dog pulled the tighter it got, which made it easier to control the feisty one.

“Not so fast,” my beloved said after showing me how to secure the chain around Eddie's collar and I turned to leave. Jim informed me that great danger awaited just outside our pastel-colored walls and sat me down for a briefing.

It turned out enemies lurked around every corner, through fences and behind gates. Jim instructed me to be in a state of constant high alert to fend off impending attacks. First, the coyotes. Jim reminded me of the stories we had heard about coyotes taking dogs off the leash in the area, usually little dogs. There was an open field at the end of our street and that's where they lived. Jim had a close call not long ago, when he was out with Eddie before sunset and he heard rustling in the field's brush. In a second, not fifteen feet away, a big coyote came walking out of the brush and confronted them. Eddie let out a wail.

“This was not a coyote who was just wandering around and stumbled upon us,” Jim had told me when he came home spooked out of his mind. “This guy was hunting.”

My resourceful fiancé had first stomped his foot thinking the coyote would take off. He didn't flinch. So Jim started backing up to the house without turning his back on the coyote. He was walking backward and pulling Eddie. After gaining some distance, Jim turned, scooped Eddie up in his arms, and started jogging, all the while praying the coyote wouldn't follow. The coyote jogged along with them but lost interest when Jim cleared the corner.

I wasn't sure picking up Eddie and running had been the wisest idea. “What if the coyote bit you trying to get to Eddie?”

“I wasn't going to be a sitting duck and let the damn coyote take my dog,” Jim said vehemently. “That coyote meant business and his buddies may have been in the brush.”

Jim stopped short of telling me what to do if I had a similar encounter. I think both of us knew that while I wouldn't go out of my way to feed Eddie to the coyote, if it came down to Eddie or me—well, let's not dwell on the unpleasant.

Coyotes aside, there was still the business of Eddie's foes in our extensive canine community. We were talking legions of them. Lest we forget, Eddie was a bellicose prick. In dribs and drabs, Jim had revealed his dog's rap sheet. Eddie once almost bit Jim's young niece, Joanna. Eddie also got kicked out of the airport day care Jim used when he traveled for work because of fighting. And Eddie and Max, a golden retriever puppy from the neighborhood, had gotten into so many fights on the trail along the creek that Jim had to tie a yellow ribbon to the trail's entrance gate to signal to Max's owner that it was not safe to come in.

Like the father of the playground bully, Jim was always ready with excuses. Joanna annoyed Eddie by her play. Max was the attacker, always off-leash and always jumping from behind. “I'd go out of my way to keep my distance from Max, but one time I ran into Max off-leash by the creek,” Jim had explained. “He took off after Eddie. They started to get into it and I grabbed each by the collar and pulled them apart. Another time Eddie was off-leash and Max again broke off his leash and attacked Eddie. I pulled them apart and the momentum pushed me into some bushes and I got scratched up and Max started biting on my hand. The wife finally got her dog and then blamed me. I said, ‘Are you joking?' He was twice as big as Eddie. This was a dog they couldn't control. I can control Eddie.”