Introduction to
The Bitch in the House
excerpted from The Bitch in the House, William Morrow/HarperCollins, 2002
This book was born out of anger—specifically, my own domestic anger, which stemmed from a combination of guilt, resentment, exhaustion, naivety, and the chaos of my life at the time. But ultimately it is not an angry book. It's a book that shows us that the trials and tribulations of our work and relationships, children and homes and sex lives—complete with their passions, dysfunctions, and frustrations--are not ours alone but the same or similar struggles of so many others. It's a book that reveals that, if the grass sometimes seems greener, sometimes it is. And sometimes, it's decidedly not.
The book began, two years ago, after my family—my husband, Dan, and our two children, ages four and one—had just left New York City to move to a small town in Massachusetts where the kids could each have a room and Dan could work part-time from home instead of full-time from an office, enabling him to write his second novel and do his part of the co-parenting arrangement we'd both always (if vaguely) envisioned. The move came, for me, after an autonomous decade in my twenties indulging in all the things I had come to value--a rewarding, lucrative career combined with exercise, romance, solitude, good friends—followed by six whirlwind years that included marrying, moving three times, and birthing and nursing two children, all while contributing my necessary share of the family income by writing a monthly magazine column, publishing a novel, and completing a second novel under contract. By the end, I'd worked my way up to roughly two-thirds time childcare, much of it taking place in our apartment (in which I also worked). Our final year in New York had been a veritable marathon: nursing a baby at the computer while typing to make a deadline; sprinting home from my daughter's nursery school, both kids in tow, to return phone calls; handing the children off to Dan the instant he walked in at night so I could rush out to get my work done. When we moved, I expected things to finally be different. I'd be able to work purely and efficiently—to focus as I had years ago—knowing Dan was on during those times. We'd be calm, we'd take family bike rides...our New Lives would begin.
Instead, my life, my marriage, my schedule felt more overwhelming than ever. The phones rang nonstop. (We had three different "distinctive rings" –Dan's work line, my work line, and the family line. Total nightmare.) Fed Ex packages and cartons of books I was supposed to be reading--I was writing Mademoiselle's monthly books page at the time--arrived by the week, to be added to the still unpacked boxes that rimmed every room, dust bunnies breeding around them. I rarely managed to cook a good dinner, as my own mother had virtually every night, and I rushed my children through the hours so I could get to all the things I had to do, furious when they wouldn't go to bed, when they were up calling me in the night. Dan was doing more parenting than he ever had (and feeling, I imagined, like a better father than those of previous generations simply by virtue of being around), yet I still felt I was the one who managed and was responsible for the kids—from their meals to their clothing, activities, schoolwork, babysitters, birthday parties—as well as handling all the "domestic" things I'd always done (grocery shopping, cooking, laundry, school and social responsibilities, and so on). I still had the same work—my income now even more important—and, it seemed, less time than ever to do it. My days were nonstop at high speed, my brain flooded with lists and obligations.
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