I was broken from my paranoid planning by the ringing of the telephone. It was Peter.
“Where have you been all day?” I demanded, hoping I sounded more concerned than bitchy.
Before I could ask if he preferred little premade sandwiches on a variety of breads or a make-your-own-sandwich kind of platter should I ever have to plan his wake, he said, “Well you got your wish.”
“What are you talking about?” I asked. “It’s a girl. I’m at the hospital.” He sounded excited. My stomach dropped. I had forgotten, of course, that about two weeks ago I told him that I had hoped it was a girl, because I thought it would be easier for a single mother to raise a daughter.
Oh God! The man I want to spend the rest of my life with just had his first child with someone else. I burst into tears and hung up on him.
I immediately called Tara and told her everything. She has called me in tears numerous times throughout our friendship, but this was the first time she had to console me. I was a blubbering emotional mess. She was at my apartment in ten minutes. She basically said Peter wasn’t for me, that he should have told me back when he first heard from Linda regarding the pregnancy, and that I could do better. As she hugged me goodbye, I swore her to secrecy.
Peter called. He sounded exhausted. He said one of Linda’s friends called him to say she had the baby, so he went to the hospital and took pictures and everything. Peter did the right thing. Like all fathers, he should take pictures, but it just made me feel even more insecure. I told him I needed him to come over, and he did. He held me and fell asleep in a matter of minutes.
The next morning, he said that they did the DNA test and that it would take two weeks to get the results, but he just knew that the baby was his daughter.
I was writing and acting on a TV show at the time, Lyricist Lounge, and I shared the whole story with two of the other writers: a single mom and a married father. Both of them told me to run for the hills. They said I was young and on a TV show. Sure, the show was on MTV, but they still felt I could do better and should not sign up for this. But all I could think about was if I dumped Peter, I just knew within a year another girl would be in the passenger seat of that Expedition having a great life with him, while I would still be dating assholes and living with a crazy roommate.
I looked at the situation as if I was Saint Joseph, when Mary, mother of Jesus, had to tell Joseph, her fiancé, that she was pregnant by someone other than him. Saint Joseph married her anyway, and he’s the most famous stepfather in the world. Sure, Peter’s baby mama is not the Lord. She’s a Vietnamese hair-and-nail lady in California, and this is not taking place in Bethlehem. But other than that, the similarities are eerie.
What was a good Catholic like me to do but marry her pregnant boyfriend, except that the baby had already been born?
I decided to think of the positive things. There was just the one baby; it’s not like Linda gave birth to octuplets. She was healthy, and Asian babies have never been more in style. Plus, they’re traditionally overachievers at math. Also, what if I couldn’t have kids? This may be my only chance to be an almost mother.
That night, Peter and I went to dinner and we basically decided to get married. He never really asked me, but there was no way in hell I was going to go through this as “the girlfriend.” I can’t say for sure if there is a rule regarding your boyfriend’s getting another woman pregnant in The Rules, but I’m pretty sure the authors would agree I broke it.
I was in the room when Peter called his mother, Ginny, and said, “Congratulations, you’re a grandmother again.”
At first, she thought I was pregnant. She never got around to guessing that it was a woman he met at an El Torino happy hour in Riverside County nine months earlier. Maybe those dollar margaritas weren’t such a great deal, after all. He made plans to meet Ginny at the hospital in Fullerton the following morning and to introduce her to Linda and to her new granddaughter, Mackenzie.
Peter made plans to take his mother to meet Mackenzie (that was the baby’s name). I then told Peter that I wanted to go to the hospital with him, to show Linda that I had no resentment toward her or the baby and that I was there to help when Peter had his visitations.
When I got to the hospital, Peter introduced me. Linda, an attractive woman, even just after giving birth, wouldn’t look at me. I walked over to Ginny, who was now holding Mackenzie, and I touched the baby’s tiny hand. Just then, the nurse said Linda wanted me to leave. I ran out of the hospital room crying and Peter followed me, trying to assure me that everything was going to be OK. I guess Linda didn’t appreciate my being there.
During the numerous custody hearings to follow, this incident kept coming up, making Peter look like a total asshole. Once a judge questioned his judgment, he declared, “You, Mr. All American, take your current girlfriend to your former girlfriend’s hospital room, just after she gave birth to your child?” Yes, in retrospect, it did look bad.
• • •
What followed during the next five years were custody battles and false accusations to fuel a Lifetime Saturday movie marathon. In anticipation of yet another fight with her mother we would video tape Mackenzie’s feedings on our weekends with her. I would say into the video camera, “Hello, it’s Saturday morning at nine-oh-eight a.m. and this is Gerber’s organic bananas Level Two.” Linda fought every settlement that was presented to her. It wasn’t enough money. Then she wanted Peter to pay for her to go to computer technology school. All the while, the attorney bills were piling up.
Once I had decided I was going to spend the rest of my life with Peter, I told my parents. I went to their house for dinner and announced I had some news.
My mom looked up and said, “You’re getting married?”
“Well, yes, but...”
Before I could finish, my dad interrupted, “You’re pregnant?”
“No, but Peter was,” I said.
They both looked at me rather confused. Then I explained to them that Peter had gotten knocked up and I was going to make an honest man out of him by marrying him. I told the whole story of Linda and Mackenzie, as well as the problems we were having with settling on a visitation schedule and child support.
My dad suggested Peter just pay to support the child but relinquish his parental rights. He said this woman was going to make our lives hell. In his day, this was a respectable option, but Peter was going to be an active father to his child and that is what I loved most about him.
During all of this, Peter and I started planning our wedding. Only my parents, Shannon, and Tara knew about Mackenzie. We were having a big wedding with 170 guests. I didn’t want to be in the bathroom stall at my wedding reception and overhear guests whispering, “You know, he has a baby with someone else, not even an ex-wife. It’s a mess. I would never marry someone with that kind of baggage. I’m glad I got the chicken; the salmon smelled very fishy.” That is why I chose not to tell my other sister, Kathi, who would go crazy over this juicy story.
In order to get married in our Catholic church, you have to go through an eight-hour precana seminar/workshop, take a personality test, and then meet with another couple to discuss the results of the test. I think this is important. The seminar was a lot like traffic school. It takes place on a Saturday; you meet new people, break into small groups, and eat a box lunch of a turkey sandwich, potato chips, and a chocolate chip cookie.
At one point, they had us add up all of our personal debt and tell the group what it was. The instructor’s opinion was that a couple should not get married if one person is bringing excess debt into the marriage. I looked at Peter’s paper. Despite the lawyers’ fees, he had no debt besides his mortgage and a car payment. He had no credit card debt.
I broke down and cried to the group: “Yes, I am eighteen thousand dollars in credit card debt! But that is it! My parents paid for my schooling at USC. I have no student loans. Shouldn’t that stand for something? I was in The Groundlings theater for years. We performed comedy sketches. I had
to buy wigs and costumes and get new head shots every few years. I had to buy spaghetti strap sundresses that I couldn’t afford so that I could attract a guy like Peter. So there, burn me at the stake, I lived beyond my means in my twenties!”
Everyone was shocked by my honest outburst. However, Peter was very understanding. It was yet another benefit to having my fiancé father another woman’s baby. It made my little old eighteen grand in credit card debt look like mere pennies.
The next thing we had to do to get married in the church was to meet with the couple about our personality compatibility test. We went to Debbie and Don’s home. I had known them for years because I went to grammar and high school with their daughters. Their eldest daughter had just gotten her marriage annulled, but Don was very proud of himself because he had his suspicions from the start and therefore never changed his daughter’s trust to include the husband. All I could think of at the time was, I wish I had a trust.
As we started to talk, Don said, “Now, I see you have a child, Peter. Do you support it?”
“Yes,” Peter answered.
“Good,” Don and Debbie replied in unison.
I said, “She’s seven months old.”
“Seven months old!” Debbie screeched. “I thought you were going to say seven years old.”
I started to cry and told them the whole story. I wanted to get everything out and tell them everything we had been through, to really use this as a useful counseling session for us as a couple. As we left, I felt great about it. I had purged all my fears and frustrations.
This was a Friday night. The following Monday morning, my phone rang at work. It was Debbie.
She said, “Well, Don and I prayed for you all weekend long, and we know the invitations have gone out and deposits have been paid, but we really feel you should postpone your wedding. We just feel that Peter has everything to gain by marrying you and you have everything to lose.”
Oh my God! Now I felt bad that I had ruined two people’s weekend with them worrying about me the whole time when she could have been making her famous chocolate mint bars and he could have been golfing.
“Debbie, I appreciate your thoughts, but to be honest with you, I am not as happening as you may think. Peter is the best guy I’ve ever met and I’m eighteen thousand dollars in credit card debt. I failed to tell you that,” I confessed.
“Well, dear, in our evaluation we could not recommend to Monsignor that you get married, and I still think you should really think about it and what your future might be like with this man.”
I immediately called Peter and told him how they thought I shouldn’t marry him.
He asked, “Well, did you tell them about your eighteen thousand dollars of credit card debt?”
“Yes, I did tell them, and she still told me I could do better,” I said proudly. I still love reminding Peter of this a few times a year. Every time I see this couple at church, I make sure they see us, and how cute we are. Debbie has to fight back tears of joy each time. I really think she, as a mother, was worried for me, since she was coming off her own daughter’s failed marriage. Needless to say, we continued with our wedding plans and Monsignor never said a dang thing, which made me wonder if he even read those long typewritten reports that Don and Debbie had agonized and prayed over before writing.
The next on our marriage to-do’s was getting Peter fitted for a tuxedo. That day, we had Mackenzie with us. I loved how people complimented on how amazing I looked for just giving birth. I would just thank them and pat my tummy.
I also loved how they looked at Peter like, “You’re doing the right thing man, marrying this girl.” I mean, is there anything more Hollywood than the cute actress marrying the baby’s daddy after the baby is born and able to attend the nuptials?
Peter’s father, Joe, who passed away in 2004, had a very matter-of-fact attitude about the whole thing. He had lived through World War II in Czechoslovakia and seen many atrocities. When I asked him what he thought when he first heard about Peter’s becoming a father, he answered, “I thought, well, it’s about time. I was surprised it didn’t happen sooner.”
What the hell does that mean? Apparently, Peter had a lot of girlfriends.
About a year ago when Tom Brady left his pregnant actress girlfriend Bridget Moynahan for supermodel Gisele Bündchen, I really could relate. I, of course, was the supermodel in this scenario. People thought Tom Brady was terrible for doing this, but obviously he was not in love with Bridget. Had he married her, he would be doing her no favors. Gisele’s mistake, however, was telling Vanity Fair that she felt she was just as much the baby boy’s mother as if she had given birth to him herself. First of all, it’s not wrong to think that, but even if Gisele did think it, why would she tell Vanity Fair? You’d think after being a Victoria’s Secret model all these years, she would have learned how to keep a damn secret.
As Mackenzie grew to be a toddler and was looking a little more Asian, we’d get approached usually by older couples inquiring where we got her. Once an older woman came up to me at a restaurant and said, “She’s adorable. Our daughter went all the way to China to get hers.”
It took everything in me not to say, “Really? That’s far. My husband just had to go to a happy hour in Fullerton to get ours.”
Once we were married, things with Linda only got worse, and our attorney recommended that in order to avoid any more false accusations, we should start doing the exchanges at the police department. At the precinct in the West Valley, they even have a special little section with toys for the children to play with. It’s interesting to see the dads and the kids at the police department on Friday nights and Sunday afternoons. Ah, what a wonderful society we live in. Who knew that one day the police would be here to serve, protect, and babysit? Today, Mackenzie is ten, and thankfully the last couple of years have been very uneventful. We do exchanges at Starbucks now, where the coffee is better and served in more environmentally friendly cups.
When Mackenzie was around four years old and we would read the princess stories, it was a little awkward for me that the stepmother character was always so evil. I don’t know what went down in Walt Disney’s childhood, but I’m guessing he didn’t call his stepmother “Mommy.” Snow White and Cinderella ruined it for any stepmother trying to get in good with her boyfriend’s preschooler. Once when we were reading fairy tales, Mackenzie said, “You’re a mean stepmother.”
“Well, you know, that is not true,” I said calmly.
Mackenzie giggled and said, “It’s a joke, because it’s not true.” Even though that is not the proper definition of a joke by the official joke rule book, it made it clear that to Mackenzie I was not an evil stepmother and that was all that mattered.
11 The AARPs Next Door
Today my life is pretty darn fantastic. Peter and I are still married and will celebrate our tenth wedding anniversary this year. Mackenzie is also ten and in the fifth grade.
Yes, I have vaginally given birth to two boys—Drake, who is seven, and Brandon, who is four years old. Because I only gave birth to boys I feel that much more blessed to be a stepmother to such a beautiful daughter who is calm and likes to shop at the American Girl store. Praise the Lord that they have not come up with an American Boy store because then I’d really be screwed. Hot Wheels are not nearly as expensive. Mackenzie’s and my shopping sprees come complete with visiting the doll hospital, which unfortunately does not take Blue Cross but does take AmEx, and a hair salon that Vidal Sassoon himself would be proud to put his name on. They should have an American Girl Bank so parents can get a second mortgage to pay for all of the dresses, accessories, beds, nightstands, dressers, and little stuffed pets. I love that Mackenzie is still innocent. When she wanted to buy Addy a girl from the 1800s, I simply didn’t know how I felt about my daughter owning a doll who was a slave.
Having a daughter who is ten can be a wake-up call for me too, like when my cleaning lady keeps mistakenly placing my clothes in Mackenzie’s closet. I get it, Margar
ita; my dresses are a little short for my age. Thanks for the subtle hint.
A few years ago we bought the 1960s ranch-style house next door to my parents’. They rode the real estate wave all the way until this latest bust in 2007 and now I feel they watch way too much TV. Why is everyone concerned with how much TV their children watch yet no one thinks that watching Fox News for twenty-four hours straight may not the best thing for senior citizens to do with their life?
To some, choosing to live next door to one’s parents may sound crazy, but so far it’s truly been great. They have a heated pool and we don’t, so we built a little gate between our two houses and we are able to go swimming whenever we want. Sure, it’s a little awkward when we have big pool parties in their backyard and they aren’t invited and I see them staring at us, with their noses pressed against the French doors, but I think they understand that the same friends who accidentally witnessed my dad skinny-dipping in our pool at my fourth-grade slumber party don’t want to see him to do it again at eighty, wearing only a pair of goggles and flippers. My parents are great when I need a babysitter, or run out of milk or Chardonnay. My mom always has an ice-cold bottle waiting ready to be uncorked, or if we really need a Vicodin, it’s convenient to have relatives with a senior prescription plan right smack next door.
I am also really grateful that I did not listen to some of my friends who told me not to marry Peter because of all of his baby baggage, especially because those same friends are still single today.
The one friend whose advice I sought and took was Regan, who is fifteen years older than I am. She had given me great advice before about whether or not I should go two thousand dollars deeper into debt by taking three different planes on New Year’s Eve to be a bridesmaid in my sorority sister’s wedding. Her advice was: Don’t be a bridesmaid. At twenty-five it was all about being a good friend and worrying that my other friends would think I was a bad friend for not participating. Regan was like having Dr. Phil and Suze Orman rolled into one attractive heterosexual female. She had the maturity to explain to me that invites to destination weddings are something you can turn down, especially if you are a poor, struggling girl in her twenties. So, based on my financial situation, I legally had an out, and after a lovely letter and generous gift to the bride, we are still friends today. Besides, the dress was tea length—the absolute worst cut for my tiny ankles. It would have looked like two toothpicks coming out of a large marshmallow. So when I explained the Peter situation to her, she immediately said, “This might be the greatest thing to happen to you.” She went on to say, “What if this is the only child you are ever able to have—won’t you be grateful that you could be a stepmother to a healthy daughter?” When I remind her now of all the good advice she has given me in my life she just laughs and says, “Well, I’m glad I was able to give such good advice to you because I certainly haven’t given it to myself.”
You’ll Never Blue Ball in This Town Again Page 21
