20 I wish I could say the same
20
I wish I could say the same
Tristan doesn’t know how to be nervous. Some people bite their nails, chew their cuticles, play with their hair, or jiggle their leg. He shoves his hands in his pockets and hopes. Hopes that nobody will notice and, while you’re at it, that it will pass. That’s why I don’t ask him if he’s nervous or, actually, why he is, because I know him well enough to know he’s trying to get away with it.
There’s something kind of soothing about reliving things you did before you knew who you were. Today, I woke up thinking that if I could choose where to go on this temporal train, I would go much further back. Maybe to when I was fifteen. To all the doors I slammed in my dad’s face because teenagers are the worst. Not to slam the door or cry because he bought the wrong conditioner but just to ask that pubescent girl what she wanted from life and not disappoint her. That’s how I feel about this story. I don’t want to disappoint the Miranda who fell asleep with her chest ripped open after Tristan told her he didn’t want to be with her anymore. That Miranda who was broken enough to not shed a single tear or drop of blood.
Maybe that’s why I don’t care what I’m going to live through today. I provoked my own memory today, maybe actually the key to all this. What if I’m supposed to invent another ending? If you don’t want to end up in the same place…you shouldn’t walk the same path.
Let’s speed things up. Let’s force a memory. Let’s live something we already lived outside its natural date.
It’s a beautiful Sunday in June, and the forecast says it’s not going to be too hot, and Tristan is here. I reserved a table for three in one of the restaurants on the edge of the Casa de Campo lake. So…Tristan is going to meet my father.
“He’s really sweet,” I say, looking at Tristan out of the corner of my eye while we wait to be taken to our table, because I think if he keeps shoving his hands into his pockets that hard, he’s going to make a hole.
“I’m sure he is.”
“He’s not punctual, but he’s very sweet.”
“I think we’re the ones who got here a little early.”
“I’m surprised we didn’t arrive yesterday considering how fast we were walking.”
He laughs. Tristan walks too fast.
“Slow walkers should be illegal.” He laughs.
“Put it on the agenda, Mr. Counselor. It would be good for us to comment on that later.”
He gives me a discreet pat on the ass and then slings his arm around my shoulder. And that’s the moment (pat included) that my father chooses to show up…behind us.
“Hey, hey, hey…you’re gonna be reaching into the breadbasket with that hand.”
Tristan’s eyes are about to pop out of their sockets. The guy who has failed the subject of PDA since kindergarten, caught grabbing my ass. Caught by my father.
“Mr. García, it’s a pleasure to meet you.” He holds out his hand, pushing me away at the same time. “And please excuse the…display. It’s not… Well, it’s just… Ha ha.” He laughs with a more nervous guffaw than I’ve heard in a long time. “Just my luck. I swear I’m not even into PDA.”
My father holds out his hand and laughs. He’s nervous too.
“Well, that’s terrible, Tristan. Life is very short.”
“That’s what your daughter says, Mr. García.”
“Please, call me Isidro.”
“Okay, Isidro.”
They unclasp their hands, and both look at me. My brow is furrowed.
“What?” my father asks. “Why are you making that face?”
“Nothing. The sun was in my eyes.”
They both look out the window, where a perfect and unseasonably warm sun is sparkling off the lake…but the glare is nowhere near my face. And I’m making that face because this is going exactly how it went the first time, even though back then, we lived it the next month.
“Are you okay?”
Tristan puts his hand on my back.
Essentially, I can change things like the how but not the fundamental of what. And that makes me think…
“Excuse me…” The waiter smiles at us. “If you’ll follow me, I’ll show you to your table.”
When the food arrives, Tristan and my father are talking animatedly about my guy’s work. I think it’s the first time I’ve heard him verbalize something I always suspected. Maybe I should have paid more attention to these conversations in the past.
“I actually don’t like being a lawyer, but I’m not sure I’ve ever had a clear vocation, so I wasn’t going to sit at home waiting for the job of my dreams to come find me. All I knew was that I wanted to be successful. Most of my friends didn’t even go to college. They got jobs straight out of high school, and everyone put a lot of faith in me… They were hoping I would be someone, and I…I don’t know.”
I don’t like admitting it, but that comment makes me feel a kind of pity. A condescending pity. I don’t want to feel superior for always having such a clear passion. It doesn’t make sense. Is that what came between us?
“This seems to worry your daughter a lot.”
Both of them start making fun of my expression again, so I immediately force myself to soften it.
“The only thing I’m worried about is the amount of meat they just brought out. Are you two nuts?”
As if I didn’t know…it’s not going to be too much. Not the meat, which is splayed pornographically in the middle of a tray, or the potatoes. Steak and fries. That’s our style…Maybe that’s why Tristan felt so at home. Give him good food, and you’re already halfway there.
They talk about the shop, about the memories it holds. My father rambles a little as we eat, waving his glass of red wine and telling Tristan old family stories…all with my mother as the main character and the store as the backdrop. My father, trapped forever in a memory of my mother.
“Miranda never really liked her name, you know?” He points at me with the piece of meat speared on his fork.
“Tell him why you named me that. Let’s see what he thinks…”
“My wife loved Mirinda… Do you remember Mirinda? It was an orange soda…like Fanta.”
Tristan shoots me a side-eye, waiting for me to tell him it isn’t true. I laugh.
“He’s not joking,” I pipe up.
“But her name is Miranda, not Mirinda.”
“Of course, because we didn’t want to fuck over the poor little thing’s whole childhood.”
I’m not giving him any points for that.
“It was that or Gwendolyne.”
“Because of the Julio Iglesias song,” I specify.
“If you had been named Gwendolyne…I don’t know what nicknames I could’ve come up with.”
“You would have called me Amparito because I would’ve changed my name. In Spain in the nineties, being called Gwendolyne would’ve been hard.”
All three of us burst out laughing.
“Interesting…” my father says, focused on cutting up his meat. “Tristan and Miranda.”
Two weird names.
“Two weird people.” Tristan looks at me and smiles.
“I’m happy she found someone like her.” My father nods to himself.
“Someone weird?” I ask him.
“No. Someone special.”
Something makes my stomach clench harder than I’d like.
“Well…we’ll have to start a list of weird names for our children to continue the tradition.” Tristan drops the bomb and then shoves a potato the size of his fist in his mouth.
My father looks at him sidelong and jumps in to my aid.
“First, you have to make a list for the move, right? Or do you already live together and I just don’t know?”
“True, true,” Tristan agrees after he swallows. “To be discussed.”
“Uh-oh. Better leave that discussion for when I’m not here,” I say, trying to be funny.
It works. They both laugh.
After lunch, Tristan’s phone chimes repetitively from his pocket, and after he glances at the screen, he makes a face and excuses himself to answer it.
“Work?”
“Worse. My mother.”
I laugh at him with a slightly tense smile, but he doesn’t sense the tension because he’s already striding away, the phone pressed to his ear.
“You don’t get along with his mother?”
“I don’t know her.” I shrug.
“Ah, you smiled like…”
My father tries to imitate me, baring his teeth like he’s a horse at the dentist.
“Very funny,” I respond sarcastically.
“What’s going on there?”
“Do you want to be a grandfather?”
He smiles, this time without baring his teeth. He smiles like a father who actually already knows exactly what the deal is but is going to force the needed conversation to help you figure it out for yourself.
“Come on, if you’re asking if I want to, of course I do.”
“Sometimes I feel like the saddest part about not wanting kids…is that it means you’re not going to be a grandfather. You were the best dad… Just imagine what you’d be like as a grandfather…”
“Ay, sweetie, that’s a very personal decision. I would never tell you to have kids. Or not to have them.”
“But I’m all you have,” I mutter to myself, fidgeting with my napkin.
“You, the shop, my games on Saturday, and I decided I’m going to sign up for pottery classes.”
“That’s not what I thought you were gonna say.”
“Anyway, Miranda, you should never make a decision based on ‘missing out.’ Do you want to have kids?”
I stare at him. I can’t say that I’ve categorically decided not to be a mother, but I want so many things that aren’t kids that I’ve had to give in to the evidence that maternity isn’t on the list. I want to travel, dedicate myself to my work, read on Sunday morning while records are playing in a calm house and…and the thing is, I wouldn’t be any good at it. I would worry so much, so incredibly much, about this creature that I would probably make them unhappy. They can call me egotistical all they want, a word that is somehow still bandied around when a woman decides not to be a mother. They can call me immature, egotistical, frivolous…whatever they want, but we all have baggage here. It’s not trauma-based from not having a mother in my life. It’s a firm decision, and if I change my mind one day, I’ll embrace that too.
“You should tell him,” my father says. “If you’re pretty sure that being a mother isn’t in your plans…you should tell him.”
“I think he already knows.”
“Well, the whole wanting to make a list of baby names doesn’t sound like he’s very clear on it.”
“I guess he thinks it’s a phase.”
“Well, you have to disabuse him of that error.”
I nod. Shit. Another minefield.
“One step at a time,” I mumble.
“You’ll do whatever’s best, I have no doubt about that. But let me play the role of the annoying father and tell you that…if you’re both clear on your positions, it wouldn’t be smart to try to convince the other. Or convince yourself.”
“Maybe he’s right and it is a phase.”
“Maybe, but timing is important too, and no one should have to experience feeling like they’re waiting for the other.” There’s a pause, and he smiles at someone behind me. “Tristan, would you like a coffee?”
“Yes.”
Tristan appears right behind me and pulls out his chair. I glance at my father, trying to glean whether he could tell if Tristan heard our conversation. He makes a pacifying gesture at me.
“Well, let’s have a coffee, and then I’ll leave you two to enjoy the setting. It’s pretty, eh?”
The sunset surprises Tristan and me strolling around the banks of the lake. There are some pesky mosquitoes buzzing around too close, but everything else is perfect. The colors of the Madrid sky when the sun hides itself. The temperature. The affectionate way he’s holding my waist. The smell of his neck.
“In Galicia, the sunsets are different,” he says suddenly.
“Because of the sea?”
“I don’t know. The colors are different.”
“And which is more beautiful?” I ask.
“Don’t make me choose between my homeland and my girl.”
“I’m not Madrid.”
“For me, you kind of are.”
“Are you a little bit Vigo then? Because if so, you’ll have to take me there.”
“Soon,” he says and nods. “First, we should stop wasting money on two apartments. I’m sick of having half my stuff one place and half in the other and spending my mornings like a nomad, packing up camp.”
“When they gave you your law degree, they must have given you another degree in hyperbole that you should frame.”
“I have it at my parents’ house, right next to my graduation photo.”
I laugh and nod.
“Okay. When your lease is up, does that sound good? How long do you have left?”
“Seven months…” he says, and I get the feeling that he’s been thinking about this a lot already.
“Ah. That’s a long time, right? Could you break it sooner?”
“Do you want me to?”
“I don’t know. You’re the one who understands the law. Check it over, and see if there’s a clause that will let you break it early.”
“There is.” His fingers squeeze my waist.
I wish he were capable of leaning down, kissing my temple, giving me a cuddle. Maybe “capable” isn’t the right word. This is his code. This is the way that he communicates. I can’t ask him to do something for me that’s not him.
“Tristan…”
My tone makes him stop.
“What?” he asks, sounding worried.
“I think I don’t want to have kids. Actually, I don’t think I’ve ever wanted to. I can’t even picture it.”
“Uh-huh.” He nods slowly.
“It’s possible that it’s not a phase. What if I don’t ever want to have them?”
“ Never is a word that… Do you think we could figure it out? I mean…I believe you. I believe you when you tell me you might never want them. But your never is really a now. There’s no way to know you’ll never end up wanting them a few years down the line.”
Ay…
The minefields.
Fucking Ivan. What if he was right when he said that the Tristan and Miranda who broke up are exactly the same people walking around the lake today? What if there’s never anything that can make us prevent it? What if the only thing I destroy is the weight of time on the decisions we end up postponing?
“You know what?” he says, grabbing my hand again, a smile spreading across his face. “We don’t even live together yet. You haven’t even met my family. Maybe it’s a little early to be worrying about this, right?”
“Of course…”
“Plus, we might move in together and then never want to see each other again after six months. Imagine all the energy we would’ve wasted talking about all this.”
Ay…
“Wanna get ice cream?” he proposes.
“Yes.”
Yes, I want ice cream. And you. So much, so much…that I’m wondering if I shouldn’t just say yes right now, despite what my father thinks, to make you really happy.
“Lemon?” he guesses, heading to the kiosk with me tucked under his arm.
“Of course.”
“Okay, so lemon…ah, and, Miranda…” He stops again and looks at me. He looks at me like a knight in shining armor in a movie. I look at him like I must be falling in love. Like I wasn’t already crazy about him. “I’ll work out the stuff with my apartment, we’ll move in together, and we can think about where to escape on vacation.”
“I thought you were going to say: ‘And we’ll think about when I introduce you to my parents.’”
“There’s no rush.”
“Are your parents the kraken? It’s kinda weird that you’re going to live with someone you’ve never even brought home.”
He laughs.
“They trust my taste. But yes…you’ll meet them. They’re…terribly friendly.”
“Friendlier than their son?”
“Even more.”
“Will you kiss me?”
Hesitation shines in his eyes, but he leans in and gives me the quickest, most chaste kiss of our lives.
“I love you,” I tell him.
“I love you too, Miri. I really do. And I’m not worried about a thing.”
I wish I could say the same.