The Longest Date: Life as a Wife (14 page)

I
can’t believe it’s already been seven years since the FBI knocked on my neighbors’ doors to see if anyone knew anything about the man I had just married, Ian Wallach.

That’s how I met my next-door neighbor, Karla, the first in a long line of L.A. neighbors I would meet thanks to Ian.

In all of my years living at the beach pre-Ian, I’d never so much as introduced myself to Karla. And still, she was kind enough to stop by and let me know that an FBI agent had been at her house, and at a number of houses on the block, asking questions about Ian, and the agent would not, or could not, disclose why he was asking.

She smiled gingerly, as if this might be the first I was hearing that I had married a fugitive. For all she knew, Ian was a drug lord, or serial killer, or both. She and the other neighbors were concerned for me. And, I imagine, for the neighborhood.

I was concerned, too. I had a lot of unanswered questions, such as:

Where had the FBI been for my previous relationships? Why had I had to figure out
on my own
if those were good guys or bad guys? Why now, when the wedding had already happened, when the photo album had been finalized, when the gift receipts had been tossed, were my tax dollars finally at work helping me figure out what sort of person I was sleeping with?

Here’s why:

Ian, after leaving his job at a big law firm in New York, was doing pro bono work through the Center for Constitutional Rights representing Guantanamo Bay detainees, and his access to classified documents necessitated FBI clearance.

Neither Ian nor I had realized that clearance would include door-to-door questioning, but that’s how my neighbors, who barely knew me, found out that I had gotten married. Not by invitation—by interrogation.

In the years to come, Ian—and then Ian and Tink—would meet almost all of my neighbors, and definitely all of their dogs. Ian would tell me who we should invite to our house for a four-ingredient meal (everyone), who was moving, who was pregnant, who was dying, who needed cheering up, and who needed avoiding.

Upon hearing his news, I would always say, “Who are you talking about? A dog or a person?” (Tinkerbell might be a dumb name for a dog, but at least it’s clear she’s a pet. Shaun, Jessie, Oscar, Leyla—I wasn’t sure if they were puppies or children, afflicted with fleas or the flu.)

But one thing was clear. I would never be anonymous again. I was now “the other person who owns Tinkerbell,” or less generously, “the unfriendly wife of Ian Wallach.”

At least, I felt like that’s how I was known. Ian would always encourage me to come with him on his dog-walking rounds, but I wasn’t ready to let the world in. I was still getting used to letting Ian in, not to mention Tink. Who needed neighbors?

And then came our daughter.

Olivia.

She was the tipping point.

Once you have a baby, you become a citizen of the world whether you like it or not, and nobody was more surprised than I was to realize I liked my new status. I liked being part of a community. And I really liked being a mother.

It probably sounds crazy and ungrateful, after so many years of trying, to be
surprised
that I liked being a mother, but I think that it was precisely because we’d been trying for so long that I had simply stopped imagining life with a child. I had stopped imagining a future in general after so many disappointments, so now that we had finally adopted a baby, I was learning to allow myself to enjoy her.

Even the sleepless nights everybody warned us about weren’t so bad. Maybe because my body didn’t go through the trauma of childbirth, maybe because we’d waited so long to hear a baby cry—when Olivia would wake crying for a bottle, Ian and I were both kind of excited to be the one to give it to her.

Ian doesn’t remember it that way. He says I would invent “ghost feedings” by telling him I was up at three and that it was his turn now . . . when actually it was the night before that I had been up at three. It all became a blur, but we both remember being awake in those late hours, and being tired but happy.

Karla (after I found out she was my next-door neighbor) sold her house to a couple who was expecting a baby girl two weeks after we adopted Olivia, and they have become the kind of neighbors I never dreamed existed—the kind you are hoping will stop by, the kind who bring leftover brownies, the kind who are great friends to you and your daughter. Olivia and their daughter Eva are like sisters. They have literally been best friends their whole lives. And Olivia always says, “Night night, Eva” to their house as we walk upstairs to her bedroom.

She also says “night night” to the other kids in the neighborhood—Dorian, Max, Violet, Little Violet, Benny, Harlie, Devan, the girl from her music class. . . .

And I know these kids. And I know their nannies and parents and even their dogs.

And here’s the weird thing. I like knowing them.

Now when Ian and I go to the farmers’ market on Sunday, several of Olivia’s friends will be there, and I’m not annoyed to run into them or their parents.

I never realized what a curmudgeon I was! I’m not sure why I was always in such a rush to avoid people, but I’m not anymore.

I think my friend Winnie Holzman said it best when she told me, after I had Olivia, “Isn’t it great having a baby? Doesn’t it make you a better person?” She went on to explain her theory that not everyone needs a baby to become a better person, that some people can become better people on their own, but she needed a baby to do it.

And I think I did, too.

A husband can only force you so far out of your comfort zone (and Ian gives it his best shot, every day), but a baby catapults you into a world so foreign, a place so new, you have no choice but to seek help from your spouse, your parents, your friends, strangers, anyone who has information, even if it’s bad information.

You have no choice but to become a citizen of the world.

For me, that meant that all of the babies I had ignored for so many years, stepped around, wished quiet—now they were little people with big personalities and sippy cup preferences. And their parents were tired people with nap schedules and Cheerios in their pockets. And everyone suddenly seemed so connected and relevant to me that I could no longer ignore the rest of the world, nor did I want to.

And it’s not just babies and parents. I now stop people with dogs to ask how old their dog is. That is something Ian used to do, and I always thought,
Who cares? Why are we stopping?
But I now understand, as a fellow dog owner, that when a stranger assumes your dog is younger than your dog really is, it makes you extremely happy. It’s as good—or better—than being told
you
look young, because being told your dog looks young means maybe you have longer with your dog. I see this now. I see the dog, and then I see the owner, just like now I see the child, and then I see the parent. I never used to see any of this.

I still see single women, of course. I’ve always seen them. I still relate and sympathize with their plight—the checking of the text messages, the debating of the scone, the making of the small talk on a bad date. Having been a single woman myself for so many years, and knowing I could be one again at any moment (this is Los Angeles, after all), I hope this book is an optimistic reminder that the happy ending of marriage is not an ending. It’s another beginning.

And I now see married women. I especially feel for married women, because it’s so hard to talk about your problems without feeling disloyal, or worrying you’re opening a door you will never be able to shut again. Not everyone is willing to spill every sordid detail about her marriage in a book, especially while she is still in the marriage and hoping to stay in the marriage.

Initially Ian worried that a book like this was inviting an ironic end. He told me that if I wrote a book about how great we were together, we would certainly break up and look very foolish, to which I replied, “Don’t worry. It’s not about how great we are together.”

But I can’t help feeling that Olivia is the happy ending to this chapter of my life, even though I know she is the beginning of another.

I am a parent.

I was never in this club before. I knew it existed, but the line was always so long, I didn’t bother looking inside. And now I live inside the club, and it’s a crazy place with crazy hours, and I’m so happy—as Ian put it, since we both live life fully—that we are not missing this big part of life.

I hate saying that, because I was so comforted knowing we didn’t
have
to have a child. And we could have had a nice life without one, I’m sure. But it wouldn’t have been
this
life.

I realized I had crossed over to the other side when I caught myself showing baby pictures that nobody asked to see. I was never someone who oohed and aahed over baby pictures. If you don’t have a baby, it seems strange that you have to see a picture every time you see a friend with a child.
Didn’t I see one last time?
I used to think.

But now I’m the one showing pictures, because Olivia is so much better than anything Ian and I could have created on our own, and I just have to show her off.

I do feel, though, as if we’re helping create her every day, when Ian takes her up to the roof to light a magic balloon (like the one we wished on in Thailand) and almost sets the neighborhood on fire. Or when we take her traveling with us and we are suddenly the people I used to hate on planes, except that now I can’t tell who is more annoying—Olivia for crying, or Ian for singing and making funny noises until she stops. Or when I read to her and she “reads” to me, and we laugh about things she’s learned from reading, like the fact that she’s become the pigeon who wants to stay up late.

She has a little of both of us in her, and a little something magical that nobody can take credit for, which I now know is the case with all children, no matter how they came into this world.

One night recently, I was putting Olivia to bed, and even though we’ve had two years to get used to it, Ian and I still both love being the person who gets to put her to bed. I’m not sure if this is because we’re still amazed we finally have a baby, or if we’re just sick of each other, but each night one of us takes a turn being the parent who sits in the big overstuffed chair in Olivia’s room to read her a bedtime story while twinkly stars dance on the ceiling (because, of course, Ian had to order a planetarium projector from Japan).

And on this particular night, I was too lazy, or just too cozy sitting with Olivia, to get out of the overstuffed chair and get a book from the shelf, so I decided to make up a story instead.

That’s what I do for a living. How hard could it be?

The backstory of this bedtime tale is that when Olivia was a newborn, anytime she was sleeping soundly, it was Ian who was the stereotypical worried parent, convinced she wasn’t breathing. He would put his hand in front of her mouth until he could feel her breath, or he would wake me to wake her. I always felt that he was being slightly ridiculous. I knew she was okay. I don’t know why I was so confident, but one of the few things I did
not
worry about was whether Olivia was breathing when she slept. She seemed quite capable on her own. It was the two of us, the adults in the house, who were in constant need of manuals and reassurance.

But one night when I got home late from work, I did what you’re not supposed to do as a parent: I picked up a sleeping baby and held her in my arms and rocked her for few minutes, not because she needed it, but because I did.

And during those few minutes, there was an earthquake.

Now, in California, you have a lot of earthquakes, and this was not a large one. Olivia didn’t even wake up, but still I was so relieved that I was holding her at that moment that I didn’t have to worry about getting to her to protect her.

And I started thinking about what I would do if anything ever happened to her, and if I couldn’t get to her, or if I could get to her, but still couldn’t help her, and it took my breath away. I finally knew how Ian felt all of those nights, how all parents feel at some point—that you would not be able to go on if anything ever happened to your child.

And then I thought:
My mother, Ian’s mother—they can’t still feel this way, because that would be untenable! It would be impossible to go through life feeling this much love and worry all of the time!
Clearly at some point, maybe when the child rebels, the parent can also step back.
It must be like a breakup,
I thought;
both people don’t necessarily want it, but you have no choice—you have to move on when the other person does.

I asked my mom and Ian’s mom if this was the case—if there was a point, as mothers, when they felt that they could finally exhale.

And they both told me the horrible truth: you never love your child any less, or worry about your child any less.

Oh. My. God.

I suddenly regretted every time I’ve ever worried my mother. Or said something hurtful. Or just not called.

And I regretted reading the
hilarious
story of Ian’s apartment rappelling incident to his mother, who did not find the story funny. At the time, I thought she just didn’t get it.

Oh, she got it, all right. And even though Ian was clearly fine, had lived to tell the tale, and was laughing along with me as I told the story, there was a moment (when I explained how Ian might have fallen to his death) that his mother was more horrified than amused.

She explained that, as a mother, you not only continue to feel what I was feeling for Olivia, it grows.

It
grows
?! How could this love grow? I could barely contain it already.

I felt sick. And that’s what I was thinking about when I started to tell Olivia a bedtime story.

I told her that our love for her was like a giant hot-air balloon, and the more we loved her, the higher we went. And every day we loved her more, so every day, we went higher and higher, past the trees, past the birds, through the clouds. And then at some point . . . we realized we were too high. We had to get back down. But how?