15 It will be beautiful
15
It will be beautiful
Love is much more complicated than we were told. I’m the kind of person who spent my whole life embarrassed to fall in love; I don’t know at what point in my upbringing or education I came to understand that love was a weakness. So when my friends would splutter with their mouths full that they were in love or tell me, their eyes shining with excitement, what they were going through in their new relationships (because we only do these things in the beginning), I would sink into my chair and look away, praying it would end soon.
I’m a terrible friend, I know, I know. But come on, in my defense, I do always try to be a good ear for them. If I learned anything from Tristan, it was to empathize with all the poor people in this world afflicted with that ailment called love. But I can’t deny that I had a hard time when I fell in love with Tristan.
While I believe that love is the compendium of many things, including a few chemical processes I don’t claim to understand because, for fuck’s sake, that’s the only thing that can explain why we turn into such assholes. I think we all remember the moment when we realized we were crazy in love. That one that you can mark with a before and after. The one we thought would be forever, that would save us from cynicism, that would hold us until the world ends.
I was aware that I had fallen in love with Tristan, like I had been hit with a dart smack in the middle of my forehead, with an overwhelming certainty that left me with half a word dangling from my mouth, unable to finish the sentence.
It was the day I first met his friends. That morning, he asked me, as if it wasn’t about him, as if it wasn’t that deep, if I wanted to join him for a drink with some of his friends from Vigo who had come to spend the weekend in Madrid. No warning: it was news to me they were even coming to see him. He always does important stuff like this: he strips it down to the skeleton of pure practicality, into facts with no emotional conditions. It’s a symptom of how much he respects emotions, how much he fears them, and what sincere and visceral emotions they provoke in him. Tristan, the man of silences, needs to chew things over before he feels them. Tristan, the man who digests his feelings into emotional baby food.
At the time, I already suspected that I had long since left the safe lane; the “don’t get involved” rule that allowed me to be a bit indifferent somehow felt that it was important, even if I didn’t want to show it, because showing it would be like pointing straight at the bull’s-eye of my weakness for him. And right there, in the middle of trying to be nice, being so charming that his friends would have no choice but to tell him how much they liked me for him, I realized that I loved him.
I loved him. Does a cornier expression exist? No. But there’s no realer one either.
Today, when I wake up and realize that’s the day I’m in, I wonder if the fact that I talked about love with him last night (or in the timeline of our story, four months ago now) will have changed anything. But…as embarrassed as I am about love, I can’t hide the fact that I’m glad I woke up “today.” “Today” is one of those days.
Those ones. You know the ones.
Despite everything, I never liked waking up at his house, so when I open my eyes, on top of the confusion of not knowing where I am, I’m greeted by the dreary white walls, the IKEA curtains he never hemmed so they drag on the floor, and the sheets he never uses fabric softener on. Tristan is a neat guy, but his place is still 100 percent bachelor pad, clean, tidy, but no extras. We women are much more caring when it comes to nesting. We’re detail-oriented, and we treat ourselves. One of my friends says that we know we have grown up when we invest in good towels and pans. I would add candles and flowers. Not that I expected the latter in that little flat in Chueca, but…
Tristan’s towels were scratchy. The sheets were clean, but he hardly ever made the bed. The survival prospects in his fridge were awful. And it’s not like I’m one of those people who can whip up something delicious with just a few ingredients, but the thing is Tristan only ever had milk, beer, coffee, and ham. Very enticing menu.
“I only have food when I know I’m going to make something. Otherwise everything goes bad, and I have to throw it out. I hate throwing food out.”
Well, that’s fine. I was never that well stocked either. Plus, I was always happy to pop downstairs and buy whatever I needed or order what I felt like. But at his house…I didn’t have my stuff. And I like having my stuff.
Tristan comes into the bedroom in his navy blue pajama pants, shirtless, with his phone pressed to his ear. Once he checks that I’m awake and have my phone in hand (looking to see what day it is, my sweet, summer child, don’t look at me like that), he keeps talking:
“Yeah, yeah…yes. He’s like the dinosaurs that survived the meteor.” He laughs at his own joke. “But give me a second. I could have sworn I left my card in my leather jacket pocket.”
He pulls the phone away from his mouth as he moves toward the wardrobe.
“I’m making coffee. Do you want anything else for breakfast?”
“Ooh, yeah. Serve me a slab of ham.”
“Jerk.” He smiles.
He rummages in the pockets of a jacket, cradling the phone between his shoulder and his ear until he finds something.
“Here it is. I’ll take a picture and send it to you.” A pause where he rolls his eyes. Fuck…he’s so good-looking. This week must have been stressful, and that’s why he dedicated all his free time to fucking me and playing sports because… “No, don’t worry. Yeah, it’s Saturday, but I was up already.”
He shakes his head vigorously at me, and I burst out laughing.
“Fine. Yes. No problem. See you Monday.”
He hangs up and hurls the phone dramatically onto the bedside table.
“Remind me why I thought this ‘promotion’ to the capital was such a good idea.”
“Because you had to meet me.”
“Ooh, so romantic,” he jokes. “Listen…what are your plans for today?”
“I told my dad I’d go have lunch with him,” I fib on the spot.
“Ah, do you have time for breakfast?”
“Yeah, yeah. I’ll have a coffee with ham and then go home to take a shower.”
“You can take one here.”
“I’m still not into full-body exfoliation.”
“You’re an idiot.” He raises his eyebrows. “I’ve told you a million times: in my opinion, towels have to be a little scratchy to actually dry you.”
“You’re sick in the head. Why were you asking about my plans?”
“Oh, no reason. It’s just that…” He turns around and pretends to be very busy folding things on top of his chest of drawers. “A few of my friends are in town…well, part of the crew from Vigo. And they asked me if I wanted to grab a drink this afternoon.”
I get out of bed and air out the sheets. I’m wearing one of his shirts. No panties. Whoa, whoa… I didn’t remember last night’s seismic activities.
“Where’s my underwear? Any idea where they ended up?”
He crouches down and tosses them to me. I pull them on without much grace.
“I was just saying, in case you felt like coming,” he goes on, but now he’s looking at his phone.
Anyone who didn’t know him would think he didn’t care, that he was just saying it to be polite. But no.
“What time? Because I was thinking of telling Ivan to come have coffee at my dad’s house, and knowing how ‘punctual’ he usually is…”
He makes a barely perceptible face. I’m fucking up his plan.
“We’re meeting up at six thirty…but I still don’t know where to take them.”
“Take them to the Mercado de…”
“Not the Mercado de San Miguel, it’s full of tourists, and it’s so expensive!” he complains.
“The San Fernando one, you dope, you never let me finish my sentences.”
“Is that the one on Calle de Embajadores?”
“Yes.” I smile.
“Ah…well…”
I make the bed in two nimble flicks of the wrist and head toward the bathroom. His voice reaches me at the door:
“So are you coming?”
“Of course, I’ll stop by for a drink.”
Everything’s so comfortable when you know how it’s going to end.
My father wasn’t expecting me, but he’s as happy to see me as always. He’s surprised when I throw myself into his arms and squeeze him tightly. We’re affectionate, but maybe not that effusively. It feels like we’re reuniting after a war, but he recovers from the surprise quickly and fulfills his duty as a parent: pulling out enough food for a whole army.
“Ay, my sweetheart!” He’s thrilled. “It’s so great you came. Do you know what I made for lunch?”
“Stew!”
It’s Saturday. And on this day of the week, Dad never fails to make stew. Years ago, he stopped opening the store on Saturdays because he was tired and because what he could earn wasn’t worth it. He’s been thinking about retiring for a while now, but we both know he won’t do it as long as he’s still standing.
“Do you want a beer?”
“Yes, but just one. I’m going out for drinks this evening, and I don’t want to show up already hungover.”
“You didn’t brag about being able to drink a Viking under the table, did you?”
“I’m getting too old for that shit, dear father.”
“What an embarrassment of a daughter…” he teases. “Are you going out with the gang from the neighborhood and Ivan this afternoon? Or with the girls from the magazine?”
“No. With Tristan and his friends.”
I study his face as he hands me a beer and a plate with freshly sliced ham (nothing like the packaged stuff sleeping in Tristan’s fridge). There’s a glimmer of recognition in his expression.
“You’re going to have to introduce me to this Tristan… You’ve been mentioning his name for quite a while now. Is he your boyfriend?”
“Yes,” I admit.
I don’t know how I did this the first time, but if I’m going to live with him, it’s better to say things as they are. He nods silently and hands me a basket of sliced baguette and then a plate of cheese.
“What?” I prod him.
“Nothing.”
“Stop taking food out.”
“A few mussels and then that’s it. Would you prefer a martini?”
“No, Dad. I’m fine with the beer.”
He nods again. I can’t tell if he seems sad or worried. But there’s no need; he’s going to love Tristan. I have to make this end well, or there will be so much pain all around us… I can’t let this breakup happen.
“Does he treat you well?” he asks slyly.
“He reads the pamphlets from medicine he sees me taking.”
That makes him smile.
“And does he make you laugh?”
“He reads me the side effects in a worried voice. Of course he makes me laugh.”
He seems satisfied when he puts a piece of bread with ham in his mouth.
“Dad, was there a specific moment when you knew you loved Mama?”
“Yes,” he says nostalgically. “She was wearing a green dress. I trotted out that old Spanish saying: ‘She who dares wear green must be beautiful,’ and she answered that I should stop drooling all over her. Then I thought: ‘She’s right, stop drooling, and ask her to marry you.’”
“That’s beautiful, Dad.”
“That’s how it was back in my day. Now you’re all sending each other texts with smiley faces.”
“And eggplants,” I add.
“What?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you want noodles in the soup?”
“What kind of question is that?”
“But you don’t want chickpeas, right? You wouldn’t want to cough and then end up farting in front of your boyfriend’s friends.”
The piece of cheese I’m chewing threatens to spray out of my nose.
Tristan is laughing very animatedly (I would calculate at least three beers, knowing him) when I find them in the “central plaza” that was labeled on the map of the stalls of the Mercado de San Fernando. They’re sitting around a table covered in many empty bottles of beer. In Madrid, we call them “stubbies,” but in other provinces, they’re known as “fifths,” so they haven’t actually drunk that much…yet.
“Hi.” I wave and tuck my hair behind my ears with a gesture of false shyness.
In the original moment, I seemed moderately shy when I met them, so even though over time, we’ve all come to know and trust each other, I repeat what worked for me the first time.
“Hey!” Tristan greets me, coming over.
He kisses me on the cheek, like he did the last time, but this time, it doesn’t bother me; I know he’s learning to manage how he feels. He grabs my waist in an affectionate but not overly committed gesture and gets the group’s attention. And what a group: the girls look friendly, but the dudes look like characters from science fiction. He lists their names, all eight of them, including the baby being held in one of the girl’s arms, and then turns back to me.
“And this is Miranda.”
“The famous Miranda,” one of the girls says slightly snidely.
“Just Miranda,” I joke, smiling at her. “Any similarities to actual persons are pure coincidence.”
They all laugh, and he squeezes my waist affectionately. How nice to relive this day. I feel lucky. Even though it’s kind of annoying to have to perform a me that everyone will like, what a gift to go back, with no nerves, and relive these moments and watch Tristan’s initial unease transform into calm.
And the thing is I always liked how badly his life fit with mine. His seasickness in my storm. His routine with my chaos. His calm with my tornado. Little by little, I surrendered to that image of what a bad couple we made. He was such a handsome little boy that everyone spent half their lives trying to set him up, but he never found the right one. Me, this over-the-top woman unwilling to let love make her feel small. Him, those full lips wrapped up in a well-managed silence. Me, so Jessica Rabbit, just without the red hair, always surrounded by thunder.
I start thinking, as I make small talk with two of his friends, how I probably got caught up in what a bad idea we were. I got hung up on every irresponsible thing we did.
I fell in love without noticing that I was gambling more than I thought. I, who always had a bet on the line and didn’t mind losing it all, going all in, hoping for what seemed like a good hand.
We can’t lie to ourselves and paint the fantasy that we were always a perfect couple, because we’re a bad idea that ended up materializing into a kind of pure magic. We’re a pipe dream gone right. We’re a crumpled, wet postcard that somehow arrives at its destination still legible. We’re a staticky voicemail message. We are this relationship that ended a week ago but that I’m reluctant to let go of because it’s too good to give up. Perfect in its fucking imperfection. I’ll make him see it.
They ask questions about my job, and even though I love it and think it’s the best, I downplay the glamour with subtle false modesty lurking under comments like “It’s still a job,” “There’s a lot of hype,” “Sometimes I feel frivolous,” things I don’t actually feel at all. Because for life to be bearable, you have to appreciate the beautiful, the frivolous. Because hype doesn’t matter when you’re passionate about what you do. Because it’s a job, but it makes me happy.
And there I am, surrounded by his friends, being nice, liking them, taking an interest in their lives, when it happens again. It comes back…but just like the first time. It comes back, as if something wants to make it clear to me how small I am in the face of all this: everything I felt, everything that is still churning in my stomach. The arrow comes back, and it’s more accurate than I remember it, jabbing into my forehead, right between my eyes, and making a throbbing pain radiate all the way down to my chest.
And it passes as if it were just a blip, because in reality, the world keeps turning, and we don’t mean anything to it or its future. It looks, to everyone else, like exactly what it is: a completely insignificant act. A man picking up a child who was grizzling in his stroller. It’s a man talking to the child’s parents as he does it. It’s a man searching for me with his eyes as if he could wordlessly tell me everything he doesn’t yet know but that will pull us apart in the end:
I want to be a father, and I want to experience this with you. I want our life to be exactly like this. But you won’t.
Tristan scoops the quietly whimpering baby up deftly. And the scene seems to be unfolding almost in slow motion. He straightens up with the baby in his arms, one hand holding his little body and the other his little head, which makes the bomb of certainty explode in my chest once again. Because people say a lot of stuff about love, and they’re probably all true, but for me, love means dispelling all doubts, believing blindly.
Over the past few years, he has pushed me to the limit with his stupidity, his weirdnesses, how passive-aggressive he is in arguments, his lack of initiative or interest. I would have slapped him a million times…because over time, that silence I first fell in love with started to exasperate me. I would have pulled my hair out strand by strand out of frustration and despair when I saw him holding his breath instead of saying what he felt. Because he may be unbearable, impassive, cold, Martian, but I can’t live without him. Fuck, I mean, I can, but I don’t want to.
And there, in his green plaid shirt, his jeans, his battered brown boots, his finger-combed hair, his ten-day-old beard, his crazy mouth, and his hazy eyes… There…holding a baby, cradling him…even I, as someone who’s pretty sure I don’t want to be a mother, feel my uterus blossom at the sight, just as strongly as I felt it the first time. And a love explodes inside me that’s so deep, so pure, so innocent…that with a word half dangling from my lips, I apologize to the people I’m talking to and go over to him. When I reach his side, he smiles at me.
“Are you having a good time?” he murmurs so quietly only I can hear him.
I grab his face in my hands and draw him to my mouth. And it’s a soft, discreet kiss without fanfare or passion. A true love’s kiss, like they talk about in fairy tales, except instead of breaking the spell, it casts it. I can see it on his face when I pull away. He’s the restrained one who said he would never hold hands with anyone in the street again, who made fun of couples who kiss in public. But he’s just realized that he loves me too. That he’s deeply in love. That he doesn’t believe in the future if it’s not conjugated in the plural we of Tristan and Miranda’s story. And here, looking at each other, with a baby who is not our baby cradled between us, we silently sign our love. And everyone around us disappears. And there’s no market. And there’s no hustle and bustle. And there’s no beer. There is just us and the certainty that this us exists.
He smiles. I do too.
“Shit,” he murmurs.
“What?”
“You were right. I am falling in love.”
He murmurs the words like he’s scared they’ll stray too far from his lips, but I gather them up with my lips and swallow them. It doesn’t matter to me anymore. Never more.
We’re going to rebuild it, and…it will be beautiful.