The Suburban You Read online

  Reports from the Home Front

  MARK FALANGA

  BROADWAY BOOKS • NEW YORK

  CONTENTS

  TITLE PAGE

  DEDICATION

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  AUTHOR NOTE

  PROLOGUE

  YOUR SUBURBAN TRANSITION

  YOUR SUBURBAN WORK-LIFE

  YOUR SUBURBAN FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS

  YOUR SUBURBAN WINTER

  YOUR SUBURBAN SPRING

  YOUR SUBURBAN SUMMER

  YOUR SUBURBAN FALL

  EPILOGUE

  COPYRIGHT PAGE

  I dedicate this book to the three most important people in my life—my wife, Diane, and our kids, Blake and Bianca. After twenty years together, Diane still makes me laugh every day; she is the funniest, most honest and creative person that I know. Diane is my best friend and has a better ability to laugh at herself than anyone I have ever met in my life; without realizing it, she has supplied me with an abundance of material from which to draw upon for this book. I am so grateful for our two incredible kids, who have been so captivated with this project from the very beginning and who unknowingly prompted us to move to the suburbs and assume a lifestyle that, without them, we would have never discovered. Without the support and encouragement of Diane, Blake, and Bianca, The Suburban You would have never happened.

  I also dedicate this book to my parents, Dolores and Sal Falanga, who taught me many things, including that if I pay attention, many funny things will reveal themselves.

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I would first like to acknowledge my wife, Diane. She was the first one to read this material and she laughed louder and longer than anyone. I also could not have written this book without our kids, Blake and Bianca, expressing so much interest and enthusiasm along the way and hearing them laugh at the stories I read to them. I love you all.

  I thank Chris Kennedy for listening to me tell many of the stories that are in this book before it was even contemplated, over a period of several years. His laughter told me that the stories were funny. I thank Sheila Kennedy, who suggested years ago that I consider writing a book.

  I thank the world's most extraordinary editor/agent/manager/mover/shaker, David Kuhn, who I believe can make anything happen. David is a guy with big ideas who delivers.

  I thank Mark Bailey, who had the vision to see this material as something worthwhile and who put me in contact with David Kuhn.

  I thank Jim Warren at the Chicago Tribune, who was the first person to publish any of my writing.

  I thank the many friends and family to whom I sent the first draft of The Suburban You, or who have read some of its stories and who responded with vigorous enthusiasm including: Diane, Blake, and Bianca Falanga; Dolores and Sal Falanga; Elise, Gary, Lily, and Louie Berticevich; Dolores and John Sapieta; Linda, Ed, and Julia Pucci; Pat Rehak and Jayne Tighe; Joan and Ralph Meyer; David, Terry, Jeremy, and Rachel Meyer; Linda, Elliot, Alex, Sam, and Tori Goldman; Chris and Sheila Kennedy; Max Kennedy; Mark Bailey; David Kuhn; Jim Warren; Colonel John Heller; Dick and Lorin Costolo; Ray and Marsha Pesavento; Pat and Paul Pappageorge; Art and Denise Lutschaunig; Victoria Cook; Helen Wan; Kerrie Hillman; Michael Hainey; Chris Knutsen; Nina Willdorf; Walter Bode; Doug Seibold; Robbie Deveney; Richard Rubin; Jennifer and Scott Woolford; Michael and Pat Welborn; Greg and Lianne Mech; Karen DeMar; Frank Zinn and Lauren Isenberg-Zinn; Jodi Coe; Joan and Steve Ulrich; Jim and Lisa Carlton; Woo Holmberg; John Kupper and Janet Koestring; Mark and Wendy Irwin; JJ Hanley; Jim Kokoris; Dana and Janet Olsen; Debbie Regina; Steven Levy; Linda Stremmel; Sky Geyer; Ann-Marie Farley; Sean Bisceglia; Julie Stahl; Barb Dunlap; Matt Walker; and Tina James.

  I thank Deb Futter, Bill Thomas, David Drake, John Fontana, Michael Windsor, and Anne Merrow at Doubleday Broadway, who are the most creative and fun group of book publishers to work with anywhere.

  This is a work of nonfiction. The situations, places, and people depicted in this book are based in reality but in some cases have been exaggerated for effect or modified in order to disguise a location or protect the anonymity of a private individual.

  PROLOGUE

  Living in the coolest part of the city, you never imagined yourself ever living in the suburbs. Then you have a kid. He starts to get bigger and older. Soon you recognize fewer and fewer familiar faces at the parks that you frequent with your kid, the same parks where, only a year or two earlier, you knew everyone. You recognize fewer people because those familiar faces have moved to the suburbs. They sold out.

  You start looking at houses in the suburbs and are horrified at the thought of living there. Then you meet some people who live there and they like it. They show you some of the fun suburban stuff to do. It takes you awhile, but you acquire a taste for vintage homes and brick streets, which at first looked old and run-down but now look charming to you.

  Your kid will be ready for kindergarten next year and your options are some low-rung city public school or one of two $15,000+++ private schools where kids do not know how to catch a football or ride a two-wheeled bike.

  You find a house in the suburbs and you move there. You, my man, are living in the suburbs with your family. Over time, you come to realize that you did the best thing for your family and can admit that you have entered a new phase of your life, the suburban you.

  Help Your Wife Decide If She

  Should Work or Not

  You live in the city and your wife has a nice career going, as a corporate executive with a shampoo company. She likes her job and is engaged in her work. As a side benefit, she has a great excuse for talking about hair, one of her favorite topics. Then one day, after you have sex, she is pregnant. Her belly gets big and she delivers a baby in a hospital where they tell you to put on hospital scrubs over underwear you are not wearing.

  In three months, your wife resumes her career. You hire the nanny that she selects and you think that everything is going the way that makes your wife happiest. Except for one problem: every single day, your wife comes home from work crying. Not a little sniffle but a full-fledged, all-out fifteen-minute sob.

  Each and every day, you ask her what is wrong. “Why are you crying?” you ask, and she tells you the same thing. She says, “I like working, but I want to stay home with Blake.” You are fortunate that either scenario is an option. So every single day for two years you say, “Honey, you do what will make you happy.”

  The next day, and every Monday through Friday thereafter, you will relive this same scenario. It lasts about fifteen to twenty minutes each evening. Your feeling on this matter is crystal clear. You believe that there is nothing more important than your kid, and that the right thing is for your wife to stay home with him. You, however, do not want to reveal this opinion to her, because you feel even more strongly that this difficult decision is hers to make. The best answer, you believe, is the one that will make her happiest.

  One day, your wife comes home and announces that she has made a decision. She is clear, she says, and she has inner peace. She wants to stay home. You say, “Whatever will make you happy, honey.”

  Except that the next day, when she comes home, she tells you that she will continue working. You reply, “Whatever will make you happy, honey.”

  Then one day for real she makes her decision and the next day announces it to her colleagues. That, you and your son believe, is the best decision that she has ever made, and, by the way, she has never cried again—about that.

  Next stop, the suburbs.

  Move to the Suburbs

  You have spent three or four nights a week, or so it seems, over the past year and a half looking for a house in the suburbs. In the last month or so you have really ramped up your search for a suburban home because you had sex again and you just foun
d out that your wife is pregnant with your second child. Alone, you leave your city house, while your wife stays at home with your child. You leave when your son goes to bed, usually between 8 and 10:30 P.M., a time that you are never able to predict, because with your first child you did not want to interfere with his natural sleep patterns (a philosophy that, by the way, your wife turned 180 degrees on with your daughter, your second child). From where you live in the city, you drive the half hour up to the North Shore suburbs, where you think you will live, because there you are close to the lake and your kids can go to the best schools around. They are public schools, and kids there know what a football is and can ride two-wheeled bikes.

  You make this trek many evenings, armed with listings of properties that are for sale and a suburban map, which you have marked in advance, noting the exact location of each property. You arrange the listing sheets in the order in which you will drive by the homes that are for sale, so that you can perform this thankless task in as short a time frame as possible, so that you can get home and go to sleep, so that you can wake up refreshed and ready to be a corporate executive tomorrow.

  Your task is to drive by each house and see if you can find one that you can imagine you and your family living in. You think that this task should not take that long, given the amount of money you are willing to pay for a house, but you are wrong. You are wrong because everything you look at looks so old and run-down. At the time, you are living in a four-story, contemporary city house. It is large and clean, and was new when you moved in. While you are stepping up in your purchase price-wise, it doesn't seem that way house-wise. You think that in the price range you are looking at you should be able to find a house on a hill, overlooking the lake, with a nice spread of land. And the house should ramble. You think that such a house should exist, but you are dead wrong. Rather, the houses are old-looking, they are on small lots, and they all need hundreds of thousands of dollars of work. This, you come to accept, is the price you pay for brick streets, big trees, living close to the lake, having smart neighbors who are interesting, and access to really good schools.

  The brokers who assist you in this process are generally really old ladies. They are not like you and your wife at all; in fact, being old and being out of touch seem to be the two main characteristics of the brokers with whom you align yourself. These are brokers who were last in the city you are moving from twenty-five years ago, and whose main qualification is their tenure in living in the suburbs where you are looking.

  You tell them, in great detail, the characteristics of a house and street that will appeal to you, but they keep on sending you listing sheet after listing sheet of properties that don't even come close. You invite them to your city house and try your best to articulate what you want, but they send you to see the opposite. You up your upper limit by a few hundred thousand dollars, but it makes no difference in what you see. The houses all need so much work and they were all designed for the way families lived eighty years ago, however that was.

  This routine becomes redundant, until one day your friend-boss says to you, “Why don't you give Megan O'Connor a call?” You do and you find out that she lived where you live in the city and she knows your scene. She is young, like you, and she gets it. You ask Megan to please call your wife so that your wife can articulate to her what you want in a house and a neighborhood. They talk and Megan says, “There is a house that just came on the market that I think you will like.” Your wife says OK and you meet Megan at the house that evening after work.

  You drive up to the house and you and your wife look at each other and know that this is the one that you will buy. You walk through it and it is funky; it has personality and character, and a large yard with big trees. It is close to the lake and the schools and is on a brick street that many call gracious, because the houses are set so far back from the road.

  You tour the house, you accept that you will want to do extensive work on it, and you walk out. You and your pregnant wife talk on the lawn and you tell Megan that you will buy that house. Your wife says that there is no better house for your family and that she would like this house. “This is the one,” she says. Later that evening, after your broker's office has closed, you submit a signed contract and drop it in the mail slot on the front door of your broker's office. It falls to the floor. You and your wife are happy. This issue is behind you.

  Until that night, that is. Your wife, at two o'clock in the morning, wakes up crying. “I don't want to move!” she cries. “I don't like that old house.” You know that your wife does not like change, even in small doses. For God's sake, she is still using a 1984 Macintosh SE. She is so upset that you say, “The only thing that we can do is retrieve the contract that I dropped off at Megan's office earlier this evening. Because nobody was there, I slipped it in the mail slot, and we can fish it out,” you say, trying to comfort her.

  You go to the basement of your home and craft a stick with a nail on the end of it to poke your contract and direct it out of the mail slot. You and your new tool will go to the real-estate office at 5 A.M., before any of the brokers get in on Saturday morning. Your plan is to retrieve the contract, which nobody will even know you have submitted. You take a drive up to the office and your contract is not on the floor, under the mail slot, where you last saw it. You see it on the receptionist's desk and it is clearly out of reach of you and your new tool. You return to your car and like an FBI surveillance agent you stake out this office until someone arrives. You prepare yourself for what may be a four-hour surveillance but hope that it is less. You cannot believe that this is happening.

  At 7:10 on that Saturday morning, someone enters the office and you step out of your car and follow him in. You reach for the envelope with your contract in it and slip it into your pocket. You then pretend that you want some information on a particular listing, so you ask the person whom you followed into the office if he has any information on 1103 Sycamore Street. You take a listing sheet that you have no interest in and leave without engaging in any further conversation. The contract that you came to intercept is now safely concealed in the inner breast pocket of your jean jacket.

  Over the weekend, you have several discussions with your wife. The first one centers on the fact that you and she have been looking at houses for a year and a half. “Why,” you ask, “did you think that we were going through with this exercise? Did it ever occur to you that all this would conclude one day with us actually finding a house that we wanted to live in?” Surprisingly, your wife admits to you that she was not prepared for actually finding a house that she would like. You agree that the neighborhood is everything you want. It is quaint, peaceful, and quiet, and has character. The house is the most suitable that you have seen. She is ready to go through with it. You tell her that you are submitting the contract and that you will not retrieve it. Two months later, you close on the purchase of your new house.

  Five months after buying the house, you are well under way with the renovation and you are ready to put your city house on the market. You engage another broker, who one day puts a For Sale sign outside of your city house. For the past five months your wife has understood that you were committed to the new house; you bought it, and are doing work on it, and you assumed as part of that process she understood that you would eventually sell your city house. However, understanding all of that does not prevent your wife from crying hysterically the day that she comes home to a For Sale sign posted in front of your city house. “What were you thinking?” you ask, as gently as you can. You let this one slide.

  You are eager to get the work done in your new home, because there are things that are more fun in life than paying for two homes when the second one is not in Telluride, Jackson Hole, or Crested Butte. The work is completed just two months late, and you move in January, two and a half months after your daughter is born and after selling your city home.

  That first weekend in your new home, before you are even unpacked, you invite friends from the city over one
evening. You tell them about the brick streets, the big trees, and the proximity to the beach. You tell them how quiet and how peaceful it is in your new neighborhood. “It is so quaint,” you say. “A real safe neighborhood.” “Everyone here is so nice,” you say. “We have brick streets.” They have no interest in any of this. They are thinking that you sold out. You have abandoned them and there is nothing that you can say about it that will change their already made-up minds.

  Then John asks, “Hey, what is that orange glow outside? Is someone barbecuing or something?” It is a cold, snowy January night, and it would surprise you if someone were barbecuing, but maybe this is what they do in the suburbs, you think, to justify the expense of those built-in barbecue grills. You walk over to the dining-room window, and standing outside your next-door neighbor's side door is a kid who looks like he is twelve years old. He is holding a homemade contraption that consists of an in-line bicycle pump and a reservoir of some sort. He is furiously pumping this in-line bike pump and napalm is shooting out of it. You look in disbelief as you realize that your next-door neighbor's twelve-year-old kid has built a flamethrower, which works spectacularly well. The kid is shooting fifteen-foot flames from this sophisticated homemade device, and he is enjoying it more than he should be. He is mesmerized, and so are you and your jaded city friends, who thought until tonight that they had seen everything.

  You, your wife, your friend, and his wife are all looking out the window, not knowing what to say. You imagine the value of your house has dropped by 40 percent tonight and that you selected the one house in the entire suburb that is next door to a twelve-year-old pyromaniac. On top of that, you have lost all credibility with your city friends, who will no longer believe you when you tell them how idyllic your suburban life is. You know they can't wait to pass this story on to all of your other city friends who also think that you sold out.