Make It Nice

by Dorinda Medley

  Little did I know that it wouldn’t be that easy. After the protective umbrella of marriage was taken away, what did I have? I no longer had the security of a husband. And this meant, unfortunately, that I was not considered in the same way—by some people anyway.

  I mentioned earlier that Londoners plan events months in advance. Well, before Ralph and I made the decision to separate I’d RSVP’d to a dinner party with the idea that Ralph would come with me. The friend who’d invited me heard about the separation and called and said, “I suppose you won’t be coming now.”

  “What? No, I’ll still come.”

  “Oh, darling,” she said pityingly. “It’s evens, not odds.”

  So, there you had it. In certain circles, I was a woman scorned—or at least a dinner party guest rejected. The separation was slow. Eventually, Ralph moved into another place and I stayed in our home in the Little Boltons. No matter what, I knew I’d be staying in London long enough for Hannah to finish the school year, but after that I thought it might be time to leave. She was seven years old. I couldn’t live in our giant house forever, and even though I had friends who were like family, I also had my real family back in America. For years I had longed for home but could do without it. After separating from Ralph, I suddenly needed to go home. I felt that if I stayed in London any longer my daughter would be decidedly British and we would be staying for the rest of our lives.

  So I kind of made the decision that we were going home. Home is where I go to lick my wounds after every big change in my life. I go out into the world, I hit rough waters, and then I go back home to be comforted. I sit at my childhood dining room table and my mom fixes me a tuna fish sandwich and tells me it’s going to be okay, and it feels, as it’s felt so many times before, like my parents’ house is the sun and everything else is the planets that revolve around it.

  I sold the cashmere company and moving back to America became my main focus. When summer hit, I packed up the house. I said good-bye to all the friends I hadn’t known existed nine years before. I reflected on how much I’d changed since arriving in London, all bushy-tailed and bright-eyed, in awe over that giant bowl of shrimp at the party I went to early on. And then Hannah and I left.

  Looking back, there’s a part of me that feels a little guilty because I didn’t consult Ralph as much as I should have before I left. Lucky for me, very soon after we moved, Ralph followed us. It was in New York where he met his now-wife, whom he adores. (So if you’re reading this, Ralph, you’re welcome.)

  I rented a place in Hyannisport that summer, as I’d been doing for years. Even though Hannah and I had often gone there without Ralph because he had to work, being on the beach that summer felt strange. I was getting accustomed to my new status. I was no longer married. I was separated. I was no longer returning home to London. Home was America again. It was Massachusetts for the summer, and then it was back to good old New York.

  Hannah was accepted at Sacred Heart, a Catholic school on the Upper East Side. I wanted her to have religion in her life, and reconnecting to the church in New York was important for me, too. I’d be lying if I didn’t tell you that I felt a lot of shame about getting separated. I was the first woman in our family to do it. I felt embarrassed. The great thing about New York is that it’s full of divorced women, which made me feel less alone.

  We found an apartment three blocks from the school—or really, my friend Anne found it for us. Like me, Anne had recently split from her husband and returned to New York as a single mother, so we had a lot in common. The place she found us was two buildings down from hers, so it was easy to spend a lot of time together. We both had young children. We went to each other’s apartments almost every day. We had the support of each other and the safety of the Upper East Side, which is a great place to raise children. What I remember most about my time living next to Anne is that we were all always laughing and eating. Hannah adored Anne and her kids, and so did I. Anne and I had always leaned on each other back in London, and it felt like we were taking on the world together in New York.

  The transition was as easy as it could have been, but that still didn’t mean it was easy. I didn’t realize how much I had changed until I got back to New York. I didn’t realize how British I’d become! I’d left as a struggling person working in the Garment District and come back as a single mom. The ages of twenty-five to thirty-four are formative years. You’re defining yourself more specifically and deciding how you want to live. Well, I had apparently defined myself as more of a Brit than I’d imagined. I thought I still understood America because I visited often, but when I moved back I realized that I didn’t understand America anymore at all.

  The way children were raised was different. The way you went to parties was different. In England, when you’re invited to a child’s birthday party it’s really more of an event for the mothers. Everybody dresses up. The mothers socialize and eat lovely food while the kids play fun games.

  Soon after we arrived back in New York, Hannah was invited to a birthday party. I got her all dressed up in an Anthea Moore dress, with red tights and red patent-leather shoes and a headband. I dressed myself just as nicely. We bought a lovely birthday present and followed the instructions to the party—which turned out to be at the top of a building in a gym area. None of the mothers were there. There were only nannies. And the children were out of control, running around like crazy people. Hannah was horrified. A pizza got delivered and placed on a fold-out table, and the kids went nuts, diving at this pizza. I looked over and there was Hannah standing on the sidelines with her arms crossed. I asked her what was wrong, and she said, “I’m waiting for the cutlery, Momma!” But there was no cutlery. By the time she got to the pizza it was like a massacre had befallen it. We went home and I made her pizza pockets. She was thrilled and ate them with a fork and knife.

  Ralph ended up getting a job at Credit Suisse and an apartment in the neighborhood. We were relaxed about how we split parenting duties. Ralph had a key to my apartment, and I had a key to his. Hannah would spend the nights with him on weekends, and if he didn’t have time to shop for her favorite foods then I would buy them and stock his fridge so their weekend meals would be ready. We were in no rush to get technically divorced, and in fact, I wouldn’t divorce Ralph until six years later, in 2005, when I decided to marry Richard.

  Even though Ralph and I weren’t together, our lives were very intertwined, and they still are, although it’s different now. Ralph and his wife are like extended family to me. We’re all very close. Back when Hannah was young, Ralph generously continued to support us financially and I devoted myself to motherhood. I picked Hannah up every day at school and cooked her dinner every night, and Ralph joined us when he could. Hannah’s young life was structured, just as mine had been. A routine creates safety, and this is especially important in moments of transition.

  In London I’d been a mother who balanced child-rearing duties with late nights dancing and socializing, but when we got back to New York I became a tame, stay-at-home mom, and a protective one. I didn’t let Hannah sleep over at other kids’ houses. I had them all come to ours. I probably had the smallest apartment out of all of Hannah’s friends, but it didn’t matter. I bought the kids sleeping bags. They were happy. And I could keep an eye on Hannah. I didn’t want her heading in the wrong direction.

  There were many good things about moving back to America, and one of them was that Hannah got to see my parents more often. We’d drive to Massachusetts on the weekends and I’d watch my mother teach Hannah how to cook, just as she’d done with me. My mother became, again, my rock. Everything that I loved about my childhood my parents were now giving to my daughter. It was grounding to watch them together, and I knew that I’d made the right decision by moving home.

  Eventually, I started dating, but Hannah always remained my primary focus. I made the conscious decision that she would never see a man in our apartment. If I was dating someone who wanted to meet my daughter, my answer to that was
, “Don’t worry about it.” I only wanted Hannah to meet boyfriends I was very serious about, ones who I thought could be husband material. The truth was that I really wanted to be married again and I still wanted more kids. Well, things clearly did not go according to my plan. I didn’t like it at the time, but now I can see that everything unfolded as it was meant to.

  I spent a few years dating men who weren’t meant to become my next husband. Some of them were just plain wrong for me. Some of them were almost right, but not quite. I dated a man named Daniel for about three years, which was long enough to introduce him to Hannah. He loved Hannah and Hannah loved him. I still put Hannah first, though. If we went on vacation, Daniel would sleep in one room and Hannah and I would sleep in another. He never slept over at our apartment. And he was okay with that, because he was very close with his family, too.

  On paper, Daniel was wonderful. In person, he was wonderful. But there was one problem. He didn’t want to get married. I always got the sense he was waiting for someone better. After we broke up, I gave up on dating. It was just too hard as a single mother. I wasn’t willing to put the effort into it anymore. Dating is time-consuming! You have to go to dinner and drinks five million times, and then you’re probably going to find out the guy you’re dating isn’t right for you anyway. I not only decided to stop dating, I also decided that I needed to lower my expectations. I would probably never be married again, and maybe I didn’t want to be either. What was the point? I liked my life with Hannah. Why change it?

  Instead of looking for men, I started looking for a job. It was time to get back to work. But what was I going to do? I’d done sales; I’d done the fashion jobs; I’d done the cashmere company. I didn’t want to go back to any of those—but I could see myself selling again, because I was so good at it. I also needed a flexible schedule. Even though Hannah was a a little older by then, I still wanted to pick her up from school every day and be involved in her life.

  So, I became a real estate agent. One of my dearest friends, Sarah, and I decided to go work for a boutique firm. It was called Mercedes Burke and it was owned by a hip lesbian couple. Sarah had also moved from London, and we used our own experience with relocating from London to New York and turned it into a sort of niche market. We knew which neighborhoods British people would like and in what kinds of places. We had a lot of Londonesque town houses and well-appointed apartments listed close to the park.

  Sarah was a very close friend, so we were more than happy to cover for each other when one of us was on mom duty. The mutual support made it easy, and I genuinely enjoyed the job. I got to meet great people and go into their houses, which was fascinating. How people design their homes says so much about their personalities. You might think that you understand who a person is, but when you go into their house you often learn something new. If someone has wacky decor, you assume they must be quite colorful. If the decor is simple and white, you assume the person must be more Zen than you’d originally imagined. On Park Avenue, you might not expect a lot of hoarders, but this is wrong. There are a lot of hoarders on Park Avenue. People are full of surprises!

  About two years into my life as a real estate agent, in 2003, I got a cold call from a woman named Karima. She was calling on behalf of her boss, Richard Medley, who was interested in buying a piece of property and wanted to set up some showings.

  The first time I met Richard Medley, he was in his fifties, handsome, elegant, bald, and eccentric, but in a quiet way. He didn’t say very much, but what he said landed. Richard was a person who either did things or didn’t do them. Nothing was ever casual with Richard. He was all in or all out. He never chuckled. When he laughed, he really laughed, and his laughter could make me laugh at things I didn’t even find funny. I thought he was generous and kind and obviously genius-level smart. I wasn’t hugely impressed with the way that he dressed, if I’m being totally honest. I remember noticing some chest hairs popping out of the top of his shirt.

  Richard didn’t like the first listing, so I showed him a few more. One day, he asked if he could see a place on the West Side again and I said it wouldn’t be a problem. I was headed to a dinner afterwards, but I could squeeze him in. I always overdressed a bit, and when I would go out in the evening I would really go nuts.

  “This doesn’t look like something a real estate agent would wear,” Richard said. “Do you have a date tonight?”

  It caught me off guard, but I just kind of laughed it off and went on with my day. I didn’t consider Richard to be a serious love interest then. He had a girlfriend.

  Richard ended up renting a town house on 63rd between Park and Madison. He was happy. I was happy. We parted ways. Then, six months later, he called my office.

  “Dorinda, I have Richard Medley on the phone.”

  I answered the phone, unsure of what he wanted. “Hi, Richard, how’s it going?”

  “Well! Very well, actually!”

  I remember asking the same question twice. “So, how’s it going? What’s up?”

  He told me he’d broken up with his girlfriend. And then he asked me out. “I was wondering if you’d like to go out with me tomorrow night to the opening of the Time Warner building?”

  Yes, I wanted to date Richard, now that he was single. He seemed like a wonderful person. But I didn’t like that he had given me only twenty-four hours’ notice for a date. I was a single mother and he knew it. I talked about Hannah all the time. If we were going out on a date I would need time to get a babysitter, and I’m not the type of woman to scramble. Also, I was already going to the opening with my girlfriends, but that was beside the point.

  “No,” I said. “I have a daughter. If you want to ask a single mother out on a date, you should really ask her a week in advance so she can get a babysitter.”

  “How about three weeks from tomorrow?”

  “Very funny. I have to go.”

  “Is that ‘Dorinda speak’ for yes?”

  At some point he said good-bye and I hung up the phone, neither of us having agreed to a date. To be honest, I didn’t take him too seriously because I just wasn’t in the dating mind-set. My life was all about work and Hannah.

  Anyway, the following evening, there I was at this Time Warner party talking away at the bar with my girlfriends when all of a sudden I felt a tap on my shoulder.

  When I turned around and saw Richard, I thought, Oh no. It was such a big party that somehow I thought we might not run into each other.

  “I see you got a babysitter for your daughter,” he said.

  “I told you I have a daughter, not that I didn’t have a babysitter.”

  We laughed hysterically and ended up talking all night.

  At some point, he asked, “Would you be available a week from today for a date?”

  This time, I said yes.

  Everything in life has a beginning, a middle, and an ending. God controls the timeline.

  (This one is courtesy of my mother, Diane Cinkala.)

  Chapter Six BECOMING MRS. MEDLEY

  For our first date, Richard brought me to TAO.

  I hate TAO. It’s too big, too young, too loud, and it’s really not my style. I was a mother, not a twenty-five-year-old who wanted to wear a short dress and party with the girls. I was more of a dinner party type. I didn’t want to have to yell in order to hear myself speak.

  What makes the Upper East Side so beautiful is how light it is. I don’t know why, maybe it has something to do with the streets being wider or the buildings being shorter, but you can feel it the moment you arrive at the edge of Central Park. It’s like one of those old Claritin commercials where a frosty film peels off the screen. TAO is the opposite of the Upper East Side. It looks like a dungeon, with a big dark door sporting those red-lit letters.

  The centerpiece of the restaurant is the giant buddha inside, which is probably twenty feet high. Embedded within the seating chart of a restaurant is a hierarchy system that no one really talks about, but everyone can feel. At TAO, the closer
you are to the Buddha, the higher up you are in the food chain.

  The waiter brought us to our table, and it was right next to the Buddha. I looked over at Richard and he had a big grin on his face and his arm out. “Well, look at this!” I quickly realized that Richard, like me, didn’t really frequent places like TAO, and I assumed he’d probably pulled some strings to get us this spot. He looked so pleased with himself, but totally out of place, too, which only made me like him more.

  No matter where you were with Richard, he had a way of making you feel like the center of the universe. There are those people who, regardless of whether you are or you aren’t special, make you feel like what you have to say matters, even in the most unexciting situations. Richard was one of those people. His gift was his ability to carve out little nooks in crowded spaces for you to be heard. Where you came from and what you had didn’t matter as much as the fact that you had something to say, and Richard made it his business to hear it. You could really be yourself with him because there was no penalty for contradicting yourself. He was never shocked by anything, only ever curious and empathetic. He didn’t hold grudges or dish out judgment.

  A few dates in, I got honest with Richard: “I’m not interested in a lover, Richard Medley. I want a life partner. I want a best friend. I want someone I can count on no matter what. I’m a mother, first and foremost; do you get that?”

  That was something I used to repeat constantly: “I’m a mother.” I never explained what it meant and didn’t feel like I needed to. If he didn’t get it, there was nothing more to talk about. I was never going to have my daughter wake up with some stranger in our kitchen. I would always choose her over everything and everyone else. Dating me meant accepting that you would always be second, and that was hard for some men.