“Don’t walk away,” Andi says. “We need to talk this through.”
“I’m done with talking.” Ethan stands up, his voice weary as he pulls on some shorts and slides his feet into flip-flops. “I’m going for a walk,” he announces, and Andi listens disbelievingly as the front door closes.
They have fought before. Many times. But this is the first time Ethan has ever left the house afterward.
Three
“Hey, Andi!” Her neighbor Drew looks up from where he is replacing the cilantro that had bolted in the herb garden. “Where are you off to?”
Andi, about to go for a hike in Madrone Canyon, changes course and walks across the front lawn, stepping over the low rosemary hedge, into Drew’s garden, and bends down to plant a kiss on his cheek.
“Hello, love.” He stands up slowly, hands on his back. “God, I hate getting old,” he groans, stretching. “I’ve been meaning to ask you, have you spoken to your friend Isabel?”
“Don’t you mean,
your
friend Isabel?” Andi grins. Isabel is a childhood friend who landed in San Francisco a year or so before Andi. They bumped into each other one night in a restaurant, and despite not having seen each other for years, are now firm friends.
They don’t see each other as often as either would like but have enough of a shared history for that not to matter. Months can go by, and when they do get together, it is just as easy and comfortable as if they had seen each other yesterday.
When Isabel excitedly announced she was marrying her long-term boyfriend, Greg, she asked Andi whether she knew of any great venues. Andi didn’t, but she knew a man who would.
Drew not only found Isabel the perfect spot to get married, he has also ended up organizing the entire event, and, as a result, is now best friends with Isabel.
“
Our
friend,” Drew says. “How’s that? Is she happy? Does she like what I’ve picked for the lanterns?”
“Like? She
loves
! If it makes you feel better, she cannot stop talking about how beautiful everything is and how incredible you are!”
“It makes me feel better,” he says, suddenly peering more closely at Andi. “You look like you had a rough night. Is everything okay?” Andi shrugs, is about to say everything’s fine, but her expression gives it away.
“Come inside, love. Let’s have a coffee. Or vodka perhaps? You look like you need it.”
“You have no idea,” Andi says, gratefully following him inside.
* * *
When Andi first moved into Ethan’s house, next door there was a crotchety old couple who wasn’t the slightest bit interested in being friends with Andi or Ethan and seemed to hate all children, particularly ones whose screaming could be heard across the neighborhood.
Andi still feels guilty at being relieved when they died. Mr. Whitehall died a few months after they moved in, shortly followed by Mrs. Whitehall, and the house was put up for sale.
No one wanted the 1930s cottage, which was unsurprising given that it was like a miniversion of Grey Gardens, but without the cats. Litter was piled up everywhere, it was filthy, and broken. Everyone who came in was horrified.
The Realtors tried to persuade the Whitehall children that they would need to put a little money in to sell it, but the children were as unpleasant as the parents and too busy fighting over probate to want to contribute a penny, even to do the bare minimum to help facilitate a sale.
The house sat for months, and this was when the market was high. Everything else was selling, but no one could see past the years of neglect, until Drew. He arrived first, a former art director for a huge ad agency and now househusband with a spectacularly good eye, and saw, immediately, what it could be.
His long-term partner, Topher, came that evening, and despite his horror trusted Drew. On the plus side it was well below their top limit. It would mean they wouldn’t be house-poor, they could buy the house, do it up, and still be able to head to Bacara for their regular rest and relaxation.
Andi brought them chocolate-chip cookies when they moved in, dying with curiosity about who had bought the house.
She caught a glimpse of Drew one afternoon—his six-foot-two frame and handsome, Spanish features hard to miss—and felt they might be friends. When they opened the door—Drew first, an expectant but warm smile on his face, with Topher, a cool blond prepster in khakis, a Ralph Lauren cashmere sweater wrapped around his shoulders, behind him, she knew she was right.
The long renovation had been more expensive and more time-consuming than either of them had realized, they told her, within five minutes of meeting her, but it was all worth it. Would she like to see? Would she, by any chance, be interested in a tour?
Walls had come down, windows put in, the space had been opened up. They walked from room to room, these two, tall, handsome men leading the way, brimming with excitement at their new home as Andi fell in love.
It helped that they had done exactly what Andi would have done herself, only with a more masculine design, and were working on plans for a beautiful garden—gardening, Drew confessed, was his true passion.
Several hours later, Andi hadn’t left. She found herself sitting at their kitchen counter downing peach mojitos and laughing more than she had in years. When Ethan texted her to find out where she was, she told him to come next door, and a firm friendship was formed.
Even Emily liked them, which was something of a first. When they did the garden, they put a hot tub in the corner, with grey wooden sun loungers on a gravel terrace, under the shade of a large eucalyptus.
They told the girls to use it whenever they wanted, and the girls took them at their word. Andi was terrified they would overstay their welcome, or that
the boys,
as they had come to be known, would regret their kind invitation; but they truly loved having the girls there, to the point where Drew removed one of the fence panels in the backyard, and put in a wooden gate so the girls could just go straight there.
The boys were a huge port in the storm that was Emily. They loved her, and seemed to understand her, and she was sweet with them, and chatty, and revealed things, in a way she never would with Andi, choosing instead to shut down when Andi was around.
“It’s almost like a veil that comes down over her face,” Topher once said. “I totally get what it’s like because I’ve seen it.”
“Can’t you talk to her about it?” Andi pleaded.
“I just do it subtly. Talk about how much we love you, what a wonderful person you are. The couple of times I asked, she just goes into a bit of a diatribe, and we can’t seem to get through.”
“Oh, God,” Andi had groaned. “I don’t want to know.”
“You really don’t,” Topher said. “Not because it’s bad, but because it’s just classic teenage hating the parents stuff. It’s meaningless. And it will pass.”
* * *
Topher is a recovering alcoholic. He will happily mix the mojitos but won’t drink them. He has been sober for nine years, and his life, he says, has never been better.
Andi knows his routine. Three meetings a week, Tuesday mornings, Thursday nights, and Sunday mornings, seven
A.M.
If he misses a meeting, which he tries not to do, he will go to one the next day. Nothing is more important than his sobriety, he says.
Drew, as his partner, goes to Al-Anon. He doesn’t commit to it quite as seriously as Topher does to AA, but certainly in the early days, when Topher was getting sober, Al-Anon was his support system, teaching him how to live with someone using drugs or alcohol, teaching him how to get on with his life instead of becoming enmeshed in Topher’s.
In much the same way Andi’s life is becoming enmeshed with Emily’s. For when Emily is sweet, Andi is sweet. When Emily is angry, Andi is angry.
It is the very definition of codependency, as Drew gently pointed out, after months of listening to Andi talk.
They couldn’t get involved when it came to Emily’s accepting Andi as her stepmother, but they could get involved when it came to drugs and alcohol. That is something they both knew about, and with Ethan refusing to take it seriously, refusing to do anything about Emily’s drinking and, Andi suspects, drugs, the boys are the ones she turns to.
Maybe the boys can tell her what to do.
Four
“This is not good,” Drew says sternly, handing Andi another cappuccino from the giant Gaggia sitting on the counter.
“Which bit?” Andi pauses from her reenactment of the scenes from last night’s drama to take a tentative sip, complimenting Drew. “Delicious.”
“None of it, but I really don’t like that you and Ethan haven’t spoken since then.”
“I know.” Andi stares down into her cup, then back up at Drew, fear flashing for a moment in her eyes. “It’s the first time he’s walked out.”
“But he came back, right?”
“He had to shower and stuff, so we saw him, but it was just cold and awful.”
Drew shakes his head. “It’s not insurmountable,” he says finally. “But you have to communicate. If you leave these things, they build into bigger resentments, until the resentment is so big there’s no way to get beyond it. You cannot let this relationship get to that point. You have to talk about this.”
“Resentment.” The word emerges from Andi’s lips in a long, low whistle. “That’s how I feel. All the time. Resentful. I resent that he doesn’t stand up for me. I resent that he allows his daughter to treat me like shit. I resent that he thinks I am somehow culpable in this, that I have a part.”
“Maybe you do.”
“Drew!” She looks up at him sharply. “You know how I am with Emily. I don’t deserve any of this.”
“I didn’t say you deserve it. I said that maybe you have a part. Not even consciously, but from her point of view, she had her daddy all to herself. She was his leading lady until you came along. Her real mother might not be interested in her, but she’s still going to feel an intense loyalty to her, and how disloyal would it be if she loved you? How would that make her mother feel?”
“I do get it.” Andi sighs. “I know all of that, but Drew, I couldn’t be any nicer, I couldn’t do more for this kid, and I’m at my wits’ end. I don’t know what else to do.”
“You could try setting boundaries,” he says.
“How?” Andi’s voice rises. “Ethan can’t set a boundary to save his life. He’ll set a curfew, then not enforce it. Take away her car and give it back when she says sorry and turns on the tears.”
“Honey? This isn’t about Ethan’s setting boundaries, this is about you. You can’t change him,” Drew muses, “it’s true. But you can set boundaries of your own.”
“I try,” she says, “but…” and she trails off.
“What?”
“I’m as scared of her damned screaming as Ethan is. He’ll do anything to keep the peace, give in to anything to keep her happy, and I just want to…”
“What?” he says gently.
Andi looks up at him with tears in her eyes. “Leave.”
* * *
Oh God. She said it. She can’t believe she actually said it out loud. Until this moment she wasn’t even aware she had actively thought about it, but now that it’s out there, hovering in the shocked silence, she knows it’s true.
But it’s not
always
true. That pendulum swinging from love to hate, the pendulum driven toward hate by resentment and fear, can come just as swiftly back to love, back to safety and security.
The nights Emily and Sophia are with their mother, supposedly one night a week and every other weekend, are the nights Andi looks forward to the most, the nights she doesn’t have to worry about being held hostage by a teenage terrorist, doesn’t feel the weight of dread sinking upon her as they pull in the driveway, not knowing whether they will find good Emily or bad Emily.
The weekends when they go hiking, or poke around the farmer’s market in the CVS parking lot, or run down to Sausalito for sushi and a game of pool at Smitty’s. Then they are just another couple strolling around the bay, looking at the boats, hand in hand, Ethan pulling her in for regular kisses.
“Do you know how happy I am?” he says, smiling down into her eyes.
“Do you know how happy
I
am?” She’ll reach up and kiss him. And in that moment, it is true. In that moment, those moments, Andi knows they will be together forever. She didn’t marry until her late thirties, and when she did, she married because she found a partner. Unlike so many other women she knows, she wasn’t driven by fear: not having children; being left alone. She married because she found a man she loves, a man who makes her happy.
The qualities she loves about him are the same qualities she resents in his relationship with Emily. His kindness, generosity, calmness. His selflessness, thoughtfulness, willingness to talk about any problems until they are resolved. When he is kind and generous with Andi, helping her sort out life’s problems, she is grateful, but when he does the same for Emily after one of Emily’s screaming tantrums, Andi feels exasperated that Emily has deliberately acted out knowing it will give her Ethan’s attention.
But why can’t he be more firm when it comes to his children? Why can’t he learn to say no? Andi may not have children of her own, but she is a child, a beloved only child of parents who doted on her but still had rules, and who were strict, and firm.
Why can’t he be more like her father?
* * *
Drew is first to break the silence. “You don’t mean that,” he says finally.
“You’re right,” she says. “I don’t. But … sometimes I do. Sometimes I do just want to … leave. I’m tired, Drew. I’m tired of the drama, the screaming. I didn’t sign up for this. I waited thirty-seven years to find the right guy, and he is. There’s no doubt in my mind that he is the right guy, but the stepkid situation is just … too much. I can’t deal with it.” Tears fill her eyes as she sits. “I just don’t know for how much longer I can do this.”
Drew reaches out and puts a hand on hers, squeezing it. “Take a breath,” he says, “and know that this will pass.”
“I know,” she says. “Until the next time. And the next. And the next.”
“Andi, breathe!” he commands sternly, and this time she does. Closing her eyes, and with him, inhaling deeply, then exhaling as he counts.