Stepdog (11 page)

“Is Stevie the one who drives the Corvette on his dad's lap?”

Henry was very much his daddy's boy and we didn't hang out as much as Arielle and I did. My stepdaughter and I enjoyed going to the Santa Monica mall or on special outings such as a night at the ballet. We talked easily over lunch and she was quick to apologize for any minor transgression. I so wanted for all of us to be at ease with each other. What did I know about raising kids other than my mother's example? It was a different world today and my stepfamily was an unconventional one by several layers. I decided I needed to hit the books. I had gone online and spent a small fortune on a survival library of stepparenting self-help books. Now was the time to open them. The first one,
Encouraging Words for New Stepmothers
, didn't disappoint.

“The situation is crazy. Not you.”

Thank you.

“The situation” was no piece of cake for the children or the husband either, the book noted. “In the first couple of years everyone is likely having a hard time adjusting.”

First couple years?
Encouraging Words
was sounding less encouraging. It couldn't possibly take that long. But as I read this and other books, I found out that it can take as long as seven years for the members of a stepfamily to fully integrate. Children often cling to the hope that their parents will get back together.

I turned to
Making It as a Stepparent
, which warned that children and money, “in that order,” were the most often cited reasons in the breakup of second marriages. Not that stepparents and stepchildren couldn't discover friendship and enrich each other's lives, said the author. But initially, you may resent your instant children and feel jealous of them—and of your husband for being their parent. You may not even like his kids, the author noted. Whoa. I had not even thought of that. Maybe I should stop reading and not add to my worries. But I couldn't put the books down. They spoke to me like a friend who knew all my secrets—even the ones I didn't know I had. I skipped to the chapter on discipline and found myself in more familiar territory. Whatever the discord, the book said, the couple must present a united front.

Yes!

“When they sense there's disagreement, children will play one parent off against the other.”

Of course! I didn't need a book to tell me that. We had all done that to our own parents. The author advised to fully participate in childrearing and disciplining stepchildren, but to build rapport first.

I wondered if Jim would allow my full participation. One thing was to change his style, another to let me impart discipline.

“The issue must be faced,” the book warned. “Is the real parent prepared to share his children?”

Good question.

Jim and I never talked about this in such specific terms. We were both newbies at this. But why would he want to bring me into his family if he wasn't prepared to share responsibilities? We loved, respected, and admired each other. We trusted each other's judgment. We were rational people. We'd make our own rules and work it all out. I didn't doubt it for a second. We'd get this discipline issue out of the way so I could be free to become only one kind of stepmother—the cool one. When Christmas rolled around, I got a big tree, the kind I could have never fit into my New York apartment. My Jewish stepkids loved it and helped decorate it. I had less success with my “chores board.” I gathered my family around one Saturday and showed the kids how they could help out on their days with us. Little things like cleaning the table after dinner, putting dishes away in the dishwasher, taking clean dishes out of the dishwasher—all jotted down on an erase board by day of the week. Father, daughter, and son all nodded in agreement and smiled as if saying “Isn't she cute?” Some chores got done—others didn't—whenever anyone remembered, despite my carefully laid-out schedule.

But I had absolutely no doubt I would marry my prince. No misgivings whatsoever. Jim was my cocoon of love and support. We were perfect for each other and cherished our time together. We hiked to the Eagle Rock summit in the Santa Monica Mountains and jogged along the ocean off the Pacific Coast Highway in always sunny L.A. (No bathing in the cold, polluted waters, though. This wasn't Puerto Rico's Luquillo Beach.) We took spur-of-the-moment day trips. One morning we got in the car and headed for Los Olivos in Santa Ynez Valley, our closest wine region, not even three hours away. We wanted to eat grilled artichokes and quail at the Hitching Post and drink the restaurant's own pinot noir, later made famous by the movie
Sideways
. Santa Ynez was not overrun by tourists like Napa Valley. It had its own grand wineries, such as Firestone, but the region was more low-key rural, with smaller wineries such as Sanford and Blackjack Ranch in Santa Barbara County.

Jim also wanted to drop in on Bob Senn. Bob had this lovely little wine store, Los Olivos Wines & Spirits Emporium, outside of town. Jim had met Bob while doing a story for the
Times
about the endangered California tiger salamander, which lived underground almost the entire year and came out to mate when it was really windy, rainy, and sucky in the spring and pools collected at the bottom of the hills. There was a movement under way to stop the wineries from ripping out the old California oaks and blanketing the hills with vineyards, killing off the places where the salamanders mated. Bob Senn was one of the characters Jim met in the town when reporting the story. They became fast friends.

His shop looked more hardware store than emporium, with Jim's story on the salamander framed and hung on a wall. Bob greeted us like old friends and started pouring. He had interesting new wines. We chatted and sipped and bought wine and drank some more. Another couple joined us, and we shared more drinks. They mentioned they were both L.A. sheriff's deputies on their day off. We drank to that too. At some point, we said our good-byes and stepped out into the dusk. Outside the store, we realized we couldn't go anywhere. We were wasted and two sheriff's officers had just seen us leave. We were stuck. Unable to drive—and afraid we'd be arrested for DUI—we had to wait more than an hour until the deputies left. But we didn't care. We opened the back of Jim's station wagon and sat there making out like two teenagers.

Back to L.A. and sobriety, there was a wedding to plan. I, frankly, wanted to elope. “Just you and me in Vegas again,” I told my sweetie, who was tempted. But he clearly preferred a family affair and he knew I ultimately did too. We would cherish the memories. We wanted to share our good fortune. I succumbed to planning a traditional wedding also for my mother's sake. It had been a year since my father's death and we were all eager for a reunion, a joyous one, with family and friends. Since even a house party in Puerto Rico required dancing, Jim enrolled in merengue and salsa dance lessons. Merengue is like marching in place, only sensual, and much easier to learn than salsa. Jim mastered the rhythm in no time.

“Remember—mar-ching, mar-ching,” I instructed as we practiced at night in the kitchen.

Our brilliant dog couldn't take the dancing. Maybe he thought we were fighting. Every time we came together in the dance hold and marched in place, Eddie got all upset and started running circles around us, jumping on us and biting Jim's Bermuda shorts as he tried to pull us apart. “Look, Eddie—me-rrrren-gue!” Jim said as he kept counting steps and mar-ching, mar-ching to the beat.

Jim was joking around, but I was on high alert. If the dog thought we were fighting, I wasn't the one he was going to protect. Although Eddie's behavior as protector was, to put it mildly, erratic. Yes, he almost bit the mail carrier. But this was how Eddie guarded me inside our home one afternoon: A noise downstairs signaled a potential break-in. I was upstairs in the den, with Eddie buried in his round cushion, dreaming of rabbits, and I was not going to get up to check around because I happened to be engrossed in a
Law & Order
episode I had taped a month and a half earlier and finally got a chance to watch. In any event, going downstairs to investigate a possible threat was Eddie's job. But minutes went by before he woke up to the persistent noise. As a possible homicidal maniac continued to lurk, our home security system stirred. His eyes froze in a vigilant stance. He growled from deep within, building up to a few hiccups of a bark. He vibrated with the effort but remained immobile in his doggie bed. The noise died down and so did the vigilance of our guard dog, who went back to chasing rabbits. Honestly, Eddie showed much better ability as a vacuum cleaner.

Now, as we practiced our merengue dance, Eddie's hissy fit—prompted by frustration that he was the dog and I was the bride, no doubt—got louder and I caught Jim offering him a hand to lick behind my back.

I had to laugh. “Stop cheating on me!”

After all that marching in place and all those checks on the interminable wedding to-do list, Jim and I were married in Puerto Rico before a judge because we couldn't find a priest to forgive Jim's divorce. We searched and searched, but the Catholic Church didn't approve of our marriage. One priest even suggested an annulment of Jim's first marriage—in fifty easy steps! The church didn't manage to dampen our mood, even though my mom, a devoted churchgoer, was disappointed. But we held the wedding in a former convent, so that counted for something. Hotel El Convento in Old San Juan had a lush Spanish-style courtyard, where we held the ceremony and cocktails, and an air-conditioned salon for dinner and dancing. In attendance were seventy-five relatives and friends who had seen me grow up—cousins and uncles and aunts and a few of my childhood friends—and also friends from the States. My cousin Alma, a soulmate who is more like a big sister than a cousin, even though I called her Titi, or Auntie, was my maid of honor, and my younger sister was my bridesmaid, along with Arielle; two girlfriends from kindergarten, Diana and Celia; and Edna, my buddy from New York. Titi Alma was in her fifties but had the onset of Alzheimer's and seemed a little confused by the goings-on. Jim's brother Paul was the best man. Henry got along swimmingly with my youngest nephew, Alexander, and the two were inseparable through ceremony and reception. Hank, my brand-new father-in-law, danced with my mother and pretty much everyone else. The families merged easily. Jim and I were happy-happy, even though the hotel misspelled Sterngold on the welcome sign in the lobby and Jim barely understood the judge's English.

“Are we really married?” he joked after the ceremony.

“Yeah, Mr. Navarro!” (I kept my maiden newspaper byline.)

Jim and I got married nearly four years after our first encounter at the bar in Phoenix. We had survived a long-distance relationship of almost two years before I moved to California and we were finally able to create our home. Our love had prevailed despite the distance and the odds. We had done it!

It did feel different to be married, I thought as we walked outside to have our photos taken on the blue cobblestone streets of Old San Juan. Love felt more proprietary, on a more stable footing. Jim later delivered a toast in his limited Spanish, which everyone appreciated, and we did our merengue, which further impressed the crowd. We added a couple arm flourishes and the room went wild. A cousin known for his bootleg rum flavored with guava, tamarind, and other tropical fruits regaled us with a slightly out-of-tune a cappella song. My mami was ecstatic, even as she, my sister, and I missed Papi terribly. My sister cried throughout the ceremony, thinking of him. But my mom was mostly relieved. She had lived to see her oldest marry—finally!—a good man she fondly called her “favorite gringo.” Mami, who nervously walked me down the aisle to my groom, after my nephews, Jonathan and Miguel Angel, walked me to her, once told my sister she worried about dying while I was still single. “She's all alone,” she said. My wedding was her crowning achievement.

After a lovely four-day honeymoon on Tortola, where there was nothing to do but make love and drink rum (and, in my case, get seasick snorkeling), my brand-new husband and I came home to plan the second phase of our wedding—a Jewish ceremony and party in our backyard a few months later with another seventy or so friends from the States. The rabbi met me and welcomed me, no questions asked (hear that, Pope?). Jim's sister, Nancy, and his brothers, Arthur and Paul, held the chuppah. My maid of honor was Tammy, my longtime girlfriend and fellow journalist whose assignments in California, New York, and Miami had coincided with mine over the years. Jim's best man was his dad. My friends Elaine and Michele flew in from the East Coast. I hired a paella maker from San Diego, who set up his huge shallow pan on a gas grill in one corner of the backyard and was harassed for most of the early evening by salivating guests who wanted to know when it would be ready.

“It's ready now. Do you want me to serve?” the chef asked me several times. Rican that I was, I was convinced the guests would split after they ate. “No,” I said.

Jim and I got the dancing going and partied like relaxed guests at our wedding all night. Arielle and Henry made cameo appearances. They had many friends among the wedding guests this time around, and they mostly held court in the rooms upstairs. Everything went according to plan, except I couldn't help but notice that my wedding dress felt like a corset, just a few months after the first wedding. The dress fit snugly in Puerto Rico, but in L.A. I was afraid the zipper would pop open. No, I was not pregnant. I was just heavier. I automatically gained ten pounds shortly after moving to Los Angeles because of all the driving. And I developed a sweet tooth eating like the third kid in the house—tacos, pasta, Nestlé Crunch Drumstick cones of vanilla ice cream dipped in chocolate with nuts. There was always ice cream in the freezer and cookies in the pantry.

This was one thing about stepmothering: You don't get pregnant, but you still get fat.

The weight might have also had something to do with another little habit that had crept up into my lifestyle—daily wine drinking. In New York I usually drank only when out with friends. As an attached and now married woman, I was putting away at least half a bottle of wine every night preparing dinner and eating with my hubby. It was so easy to do in California, where you could find great wines from Santa Ynez and Napa and Sonoma for under fifteen dollars at the local Vons. But I wasn't going to lie. I looked forward to that glass of wine more and more as things didn't go my way on the home front.