Writing my novel
08/03/2009

As some of you know, for the last year I’ve been finishing a novel with the working title Family of Strangers.  The novel was inspired by my marriage to a man from the Dominican Republic and subsequent introduction to his family and culture.  Although the marriage ended disastrously, it enriched my life in numerous ways—as life challenges so often do. (Photo by Michele Taras, www.micheletaras.com)

“Domingo,” as I’ll call him, was, like the fictional Jaime, a beautiful peasant with contemporary aspirations.  He couldn’t read—his father had taken him from school in the second grade and put him to work to help support the family—and he was probably dyslexic.  He could recognize certain combinations of letters, but he was unable to sound out words in order to make sense of them. 

He could, however, puzzle out construction, mechanical, and electrical problems.  I’d watch him stand in front of our circuit breaker box—none of the labels meaning anything to him—and patiently figure out which had thrown and how to get the power back on.  Similarly, he taught himself carpentry, sheetrock hanging, and roofing.  Although I could help him prepare estimates and invoices, I’d never hung sheetrock or installed crown molding, built a stairway, or patched a roof.  Neither he nor I knew there were tools—like drywall lifts and miter boxes—that greatly simplify these processes.  Without them Domingo had to position sheetrock for ceilings by balancing it on his head, and use the trial and error method for getting crown molding to fit.  If you’ve had any experience with crown molding, you understand how difficult that was.

In addition to being patient, Domingo was also hard-working and honest—at least professionally.  Before we could afford to buy him a truck, he rode my bicycle to meet with prospective clients.  They were usually charmed by how much he wanted the job—as well as his low overhead!

One client, who had to leave on vacation mid-way through a painting job, penciled a couple of tiny Xs on his home’s exterior to make sure Domingo gave him the second coat of paint he was paying for.  Domingo never noticed the Xs, but finished the job as promised.  When the homeowner returned from his vacation he was pleased to find his trust justified and his Xs invisible under new paint.

So what ruined us? 

Sex.  Not ours, but the sex Domingo was having with a lot of other women.  Like Alyssa, my fictional wife, I was almost unbelievably slow to catch on.  When I did, finally, question a cell phone bill with an awful lot of calls to a particular number—which was not a client’s number—I believed Domingo when he got down on his knees, looked me soulfully in the eyes, and said, “Mi amor, I would never do anything to jeopardize the life we have built together.”

Good point.  We had worked so hard…to learn each other’s language, to bring his children to the States to live with us, to get him his driver’s license and his green card, to build up his business, to talk about having a child of our own together…he’d be crazy to risk all of that.

Then he got to his feet and said, “Besides, she means nothing to me.”

Say what?

Crazy like a testosterone-driven male.

It took me three days to get up the courage to call the suspicious phone number and talk to “Tiffany,” who informed me that she’d had no idea my husband was married (“and I asked him”).  He’d told her he was raising his children single-handedly and that he’d like to take her to the Dominican Republic with him one day; would she come?

Wow.  It wasn’t that he was married to a cold-hearted woman “who didn’t understand him.”  It was worse; I didn’t even exist.  I thought of all the afternoons I’d spent wrestling with his children over homework; all the nights and weekends spent driving them to soccer practice; all the school lunches I’d fixed them…the laundry, the bedtime stories, the arguments about why we couldn’t eat at McDonald’s or buy Air Jordan tennis shoes.  Since they’d come to live with us, I’d parented them far more than he had.  But they were apparently just a pawn in his game, and I was the enabler.

I thanked Tiffany for her candor and told her that my husband had spoken truthfully, whether or not he’d known it at the time.  From this day forward, he was raising his children by himself—or at least without me—and she was free to accompany him to the DR, if that was what she wanted.

Tiffany, a smarter woman than I, said, “No thanks.  Why would I want a man who would lie to me?”

I couldn’t answer that question.

Here’s an excerpt from Family of Strangers, regarding Jaime.  I imagined this scene, set in the Dominican Republic—imagining what would make a man resist “being tied down” to a wife and children that he loved.

My earliest memory is of being tied to my mother’s waist as she hung laundry in the yard.  Sitting at her feet as she lifted the wet clothes overhead, I can still see the white of her smile set against the dark of her face and the blue of the sky.  The damp sheet-cooled breeze lightly tickled my bare skin.  She’d tell me stories while she worked—stories I don’t remember so much as the rhythm of her voice as I sat in the dirt and played with clothes pins.  I also remember tottering after her on my string as we scattered corn to the chickens, or threw table scraps to the pigs in the pen at the back of the yard.  I am just a fat toddler and, much as I love my mother, I’m frustrated that I can’t run after the chickens as I would like.  She has me on too short a leash.  To this day I resist the feeling of being tied down.