28 That’s my problem
28
That’s my problem
What I’m about to say doesn’t mean that I’m sick of all this. No. Not at all. But…I miss when days were consecutive, you lived a month all in a row, and you wished for vacations to come sooner because you were tired and totally alive. I’m tired and totally losing my mind, especially when I wake up and realize I’m in Vigo. In Vigo, in the home of Tristan’s parents, who have deigned to change the single bed from his childhood into a bigger one. Full-size, not exactly a double, but at least we can sleep there together and not waste money on a hotel every time we go see them, and that’s cool.
Cough, cough, cough…
Sorry about the cough. I didn’t know how else to make it clear that this was Tristan’s opinion: I would have preferred staying in the hotel.
Tristan’s parents were (well, are) wonderful people, but they’re not my parents, they’re my future in-laws. That means they’re fake family, a “rental” (or bought with a mortgage, depending on how you look at it), which means you have to learn all their traditions from zero. You come from your house, from your relationship with your father, your familial obsessions, and your mutual habits, and now you have to pretend like you belong to their zip code and share their last names. And I don’t see Castro or Souto anywhere on my license.
So when I open my eyes and see the drawn blinds, the old bookshelf, and the wooden artist mannequin, a shiver runs down my spine. Because of where we are and because of my suspicion of when we are. Today is the day that his jerk of a sister is going to try on wedding dresses. And we’re going to get in a fight. A bad one.
Or maybe not. Maybe since I’m rewriting our story, like I did when I met her for the second time, a few days ago, I improved the original conditions and now we’re BFFs. But when Tristan wakes up, that hope dissolves like the cocoa his mother is making. I don’t remember saying I liked cocoa…
“Babe…” Tristan has the exhausted voice of someone who’s just woken up and is already tense, trying to figure out how to say something uncomfortable. “Can you come here for a second?”
“Oy…that’s quite a way to say good morning. Whatever you have to say to the girl, you can say it here, because we’re women, you know that, Tristan? We support each other. Collective spirit.” Tristan’s mother holds up her fist, and I smile at her because I want to kiss her and kill her at the same time.
“Seriously, Mama?”
“Well, of course, with that tone of yours I know so well.”
“What if I have to say something in private to my partner that I don’t want you to hear?” He emphasizes the words he thinks are key and hopes will make his mother react.
“I’ll respect that bond when you put a ring on her finger.”
I wave my hand proudly, especially the finger where the gift he gave me that year glints, but she quickly pushes it down.
“Very pretty, dear, but that doesn’t mean anything. I’m talking about an engagement ring.”
“Well, I want to talk to her about weddings, but not ours. Come here for a second, Miranda?”
And since I’m not that brave, I drag my feet back to his childhood bedroom in my Garfield pajamas. What? Don’t judge me. It’s not like I’m going to strut around his parents’ house in a set of my raunchy ones.
“Talk to me.”
Tristan closes the door behind me and smiles like butter wouldn’t melt in his mouth.
“My love.”
“You’ve never called me ‘my love’ in your life.” I pretend to be shocked. “What do you want?”
“I just want to talk to you. Come here, make yourself comfortable, darling.”
“Ah, no…” I say to him. “You’re really freaking me out now.”
“I just want to ask you for a favor. A small thing.”
He sits me down on the bed, still procrastinating, and kneels in front of me. He refuses to spit it out. All he does is stroke my legs, trying and failing to conceal how nervous he is.
“I need you to try to be patient and…”
“Patience? Is this about your mother? Your mother is a sweetheart. You don’t need to say this stuff to me.”
“No, I’m not talking about her. It’s about Uxia.”
Okay. If I was still harboring a tiny wisp of faith deep down, it just vanished. I didn’t get us to be besties in this timeline either.
“I’m always patient with Uxia, Tristan.”
“She’s more anxious than usual. She’s wedding planning and…”
“Don’t worry,” I say. “But anyway…why are you asking me to be more patient and not her to be more friendly?”
“Well, because…that’s what I’m saying, Miranda. She’s stressed about all the wedding stuff, and you don’t get along at the best of times…but if her little brother shows up in the middle of all this chaos and starts droning on about how she has to treat her future sister-in-law, it’s going to be a mess. I’m trying to achieve the opposite effect.”
“It’ll be a mess, yes. But that’s not why. It’s actually because we don’t even have the freedom to ask someone to behave like a normal person and not a rabid animal.”
“Hey, don’t take it too far.” He’s suddenly serious. “That’s my sister. She has her issues, I know, but…”
“But I’m your girlfriend. And even if I weren’t, she should treat me well. Like she would any other human being, jeez. I’m not Pol Pot.”
“Or Mother Teresa.”
I roll my eyes. I can’t with her.
“What’s the problem?”
He sucks in air through pursed lips. He doesn’t know how to tell me, even though I already know. I should make it easier on him…but I don’t feel like it. I was hoping I had changed this “future,” even just a little, when I made such an effort when I met Uxia, but it seems like everything is exactly the same.
Right before I showed up in the kitchen, Tristan had read a message from his sister in which she let slip that maybe it would be better if I didn’t go with them wedding-dress shopping. Could she be more of a coward and a cunt?
If it doesn’t seem that deep, it’s probably because, in order to fathom the depths of my disappointment, I’d have to reset the scene of the moment he proposed the trip to me. I was excited, but at the same time, I felt a little lost. He told me he didn’t know if he was really going to fit in with the whole going to look at dresses, but he wanted to go.
“I don’t know if I’ll be any help really. Will she be expecting me to? It’s just that I don’t get any of this stuff. I don’t know. It all makes me pretty nervous. The good thing is that you’ll be with me, and…when you’re there, I feel safe.”
Even so, knowing how much Uxia hates me, I kept insisting that he should make the trip alone. I told him it was a special thing for siblings, for a family, it was private, that I had nothing to do with it… I repeated it so many times that he ended up getting pissed off and snapped that if doing these things with his family was a pain in the ass for me, all I had to do was admit it. A pain in the ass? I don’t have a mother. I don’t have siblings. I would have loved to do this with them, but I was aware that she, Uxia, didn’t want me there. And she was the star of the day. But still, I went. And when she wrote him that message and he reluctantly asked me to go get a drink and wait, I swallowed my pride and tears of rage and just nodded, and I didn’t even say I told you so.
But here’s the funny part…because she wasn’t happy, the girl, the bride, the star, the biggest sister, she decided to make a scene with me during lunch with her parents. Why? Because I didn’t go with them to the store. Schizophrenia? No. Just a bad temper.
She started with the less offensive bullshit, wondering if the reason I didn’t go was because I was jealous because Tristan was never going to walk down the aisle, not even drunk off his ass, which wasn’t even true. If one of us was more into the traditional path of love, it was him. I didn’t answer, and I tried to change the subject, but because she kept hammering away at it, her brother asked her to shut up. He said it affectionately but firmly, and even though she’s almost two years older than he is, she threw a tantrum like a ten-year-old child who’s not allowed to be the tyrant she normally is:
“The little lady, who works in a fashion magazine in the capital, thinks she’s too good to slum it looking at wedding dresses with a girl from the suburbs. Is that it? Or is it because you know you’re never going to get married in your whole fucking life so it makes your blood boil?”
The more her brother reacted, the more venom she spat and the quieter I was. I don’t remember ever being more embarrassed in my whole life. Her mother burst into tears. Her father’s voice trembled as he asked her to go outside and get some fresh air, and I, bearing the brunt of an attack like that, could do nothing but get up and hide in the bathroom, where I sobbed until Tristan came to get me, put me in the car, and, without even packing our suitcases, headed back to Madrid. He didn’t say a word.
It took three hours before we spoke again, and the whole time, he was too embarrassed to explain that he had never been mad at me, that he didn’t talk to me the whole journey because he was afraid of falling apart, because he didn’t know what to say, and because he was ashamed. I understood, I forgave him, and I hugged him…but I swallowed my rage when I heard him saying goodbye sweetly on the phone to his sister. Sweetly. Tristan. Anyway. Family can bring out the worst in us.
So…that’s the day I’m going to relive if I don’t do anything to change it. And you tell me. Sitting here, in his teenager bedroom, wearing pajamas I bought just to trick his parents into thinking I’m a modest girl who doesn’t usually sleep butt naked (and, whenever possible, spooning their son), I feel like someone who’s handling enriched uranium. This memory is the equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
“Tristan…” I smile, stubbornly staying sweet. “What’s the problem?”
Hesitation flickers across his face for a millisecond, but I catch it.
“I don’t know if Uxia is going to feel comfortable with this…with so many people there. Do you understand?”
Understand you, yes. That piece of dry shit that is your sister, no.
“Did she mention something to you?”
He sighs.
“Tris…” I goad him.
“Ay,” he complains, “please, don’t call me Tris.”
“Then answer me.”
“It’s not that she said anything, Miranda,” he lies, “it’s just that…well, think about it… You work in a fashion magazine in Madrid, and she… I guess she feels insecure.”
“She feels insecure because I work in a fashion magazine in Madrid?”
“I don’t know. I guess she’s scared you’re going to judge her for the dress she picks. Or maybe she’ll get overwhelmed with so many people there.”
“Stop saying ‘I guess’ if you know that’s what’s going to happen.”
“But I don’t know. She just might have mentioned…”
I suck my teeth and stand up from the bed.
“Where are you going?”
“To talk to your mother.”
“Miri… Miri!”
He catches up to me in the kitchen, but I’m already tactfully bringing it up:
“Sabela, I have a question, between us… Tristan thinks Uxia might get uncomfortable if I go with you to look for dresses. I’m not asking you because I want you to say yes, but…don’t you think she’ll get offended if I don’t go?”
His mother, who was slicing up bread for toast, turns around, surprised.
“Ay, no, dear, how could she be uncomfortable if you come with us? She wants you to come. She told me. Her exact words were ‘Tell Tristan to bring Miranda.’”
“Don’t bring her into this,” Tristan warns me gravely.
He skirts around us and heads to the Moka pot and pours himself a cup of coffee.
“I know she did want me to go, and I understand she could have changed her mind. That’s understandable.”
“So then why are you going around in circles about it, for fuck’s sake?” he snarls, annoyed, with his back still turned.
“The ‘for fuck’s sake’ is too much, Tristan,” I snap.
“I totally agree,” his mother backs me up. “ Mina nenina, you’re completely right. If you don’t come, she’ll ask why you didn’t come. I know Uxia because I’m her mother and…look, this is how Tristan came into the world, quiet, chewing his words, but mostly because I think his sister took them all. At least they were good kids.”
“Mama…”
“I adore your sister, Tristan, sweetie, but when you’re a father, you’ll understand. You love your kids more than yourself, but you don’t always understand them. Or approve of them. When you were sixteen, I would’ve happily slapped you silly.”
“She doesn’t want Miranda to come with us,” he fesses up, tired of rehashing the topic.
He slams his coffee cup down on the table nervously and rudely, and some of the liquid sloshes over the edge; a sand-colored stain spreads on the tablecloth around the cup, but he ignores it and keeps going.
“She messaged me and said she’s not sure she’ll feel comfortable. What am I supposed to do?”
You grow some balls, because either way, I’m the one stuck between a rock and a hard place here.
“But, Tristan…do you understand why I’m asking your mother? You can be blind about this. And I just want to do the right thing.”
“Well, if you want to do the right thing, don’t come. I’m telling you. Because if you do, she’s going to flip out on me.”
“No, Tristan,” his mother replies very seriously. “Miranda is completely right. Nothing your sister is saying makes any sense, because if Miranda doesn’t go, she’s not going to like that later. End of story!”
I go into the bathroom while Tristan’s in the shower. He hasn’t said more than a handful of words to me since the thing in the kitchen, so I imagine he’s pissed off, but if all these years have given me anything, it’s patience. I’m not the girl I was that day two years ago anymore.
“Tristan…” I close the door and sit down on the closed toilet.
I can see his body through the beveled glass. Nom nom.
Focus, Miranda.
“What?”
“I just want you to listen to me for a minute, okay? You’re mad that I asked your mother, but I needed…”
“You put me in a pretty good position, eh?” His tone is dripping with more sarcasm than the showerhead is water.
“You think it’s normal to get this mad about asking her when she agrees it could seem like a middle finger if I don’t go? Because you weren’t going to explain to her that it’s because your sister doesn’t want me to, right? I kept saying I shouldn’t come when you asked.”
He shuts off the water and opens the door. Oof. He grabs a towel, dries his face and his hair, and wraps it around his waist. Then he leans against the sink, finally stopping to listen to me intently. At least I have his attention.
“I warned you I shouldn’t come, you took it badly, and I gave in, for you, because I love you. And now your sister turns on a dime and decides it’d be better if I don’t, and you throw me to the wolves. And I don’t have the right to ask your mother, who is part of all this too, what she thinks? And on top of all that, you get mad at me. Well, you’ll have to forgive me, but I’m not going to end up on bad terms with your mother all because of your sister.”
He bites his upper lip but doesn’t say anything.
“And you wanna know the worst part?” I insist. “If it weren’t for me, your parents wouldn’t even know that it’s your sister who doesn’t want me to go. Because you’re used to covering up for her all the time, even all the shit she puts me through.”
He hangs his head, looking downtrodden, which is difficult to see in Tristan, and after a few more seconds in silence, he nods. When he turns back to look at me, he seems regretful.
“It’s just that I don’t know how to finesse this stuff so she doesn’t have it in for you even more,” he confesses.
“I know. But the way you’re trying to solve it is cowardly.”
“Okay.”
“And when you do it like that, you’re not respecting me. You’re prioritizing her. If that’s what you want, fine. I can accept it and stay or reject it and leave. But if that’s not what you want…”
“It’s not what I want.”
“Then you’re making a mistake.”
He sighs, overwhelmed, and I stand up and go over to him.
“She’s the one putting you in this situation. You know that, right?”
“But it wouldn’t be that hard for you to make it easier. The thing with my mother…”
“I’m sorry you didn’t like it. I didn’t know what else to do.”
“Okay.”
I give him a kiss and pat his damp forearms.
“Look, why don’t we try this: I’ll get dressed and go with you. I’ll give your sister a kiss, I’ll gauge her face when she sees me, and if she’s pouting, then I’ll say dress shopping is very intimate and just for family and that…”
“But you’re going to be part of this family.”
“Yeah, well, she’s not that into that idea.”
We both chuckle softly.
“You’ll see. We’re going to fix this.”
When Uxia sees me show up with her parents and her brother, she doesn’t look like she’s going to have a stroke. But she doesn’t have a good poker face, and everyone can see it. Miranda: 1, Uxia: O.
I go over politely, kiss her on both cheeks, and give her a brief, affectionate hug, faker than a wooden euro. I want to cackle and have the lightning strike the sidewalk behind me to make the scene more theatrical, but it’s fine how it is. She glares at me the whole time she greets her family until she gets to Tristan and pinches him on the arm.
“Ow!” he yelps, not understanding where the aggression is coming from.
“Uxia…” I go back over. “Listen…your brother and I were talking, and I said to him I feel like this going dress-hunting thing is very intimate… I don’t know. You’d probably be overwhelmed having all of us crammed in there. So what do you think about me going to grab a drink and waiting for you all?” I wave at the busy street full of cafés next to us. “But if your brother gets stubborn about his opinions or you need a tiebreaker…I’ll be happy to run right over and be on your side.”
I wink at her, smiling.
“Miranda…” their mother begs.
“No, really, Sabela, I think she’s going to be calmer this way. And that’s what’s most important. You have bridal store appointments, right? Well, I’ll wait for you here, and then we can go celebrate when you’ve found your dress. And if not, we’ll buy some magazines and you can flip through them. You still have plenty of time.”
“The truth is I’m a little nervous; The fewer people, the less noise,” Uxia says. “I really appreciate it.”
“No problem. Totally understandable. Plus…I don’t really know much about wedding dresses, and I’m sure you’ll look great in all of them.”
Impeccable performance. The Oscar goes to…me!
She spits out a thank-you that even makes her brother smile as he leans over to give me a kiss.
“I’ll see you really soon.”
“No rush.”
I wave a smiley goodbye and head toward my destination, a martini and a plate of fries, but Tristan pulls me back to whisper:
“You’re the best.”
They come in looking happy after two long hours I spent engrossed in reading a book I grabbed from Tristan’s room and I only understand half of because I’ve always had trouble staying focused when I read nonfiction. But I’ve been entertained and serene, especially with the expectation of a peaceful lunch and the certainty that they’re going to find exactly the tacky thing his sister is looking for, tighter than Ned Flanders’s ski suit and more sparkles than all the weddings in My Big Fat Gypsy Wedding put together.
She was right about one thing: I was going to judge her choice, but silently and smiling, with the pleasure you get from watching your enemy look like a sledgehammer on one of the most beautiful days of her life. Anyway, I won’t be able to go to her wedding, because someone in Wuhan is going to start coughing and feeling under the weather, and the rest of the world is going to have to wait at home for a global pandemic to end. And I’m not trying to make light of it; it’s going to be the most fucked-up thing I can ever remember living through.
When Tristan and I break up, Uxia and her boyfriend still aren’t married.
We get the car again and go to a restaurant to celebrate the snake finding her dress with her future husband, the weirdest guy I’ve ever met in my whole life, who I’ve barely heard string two words together, but…listen, all that matters is that they understand each other. Tristan and I go get our rental car, and she goes with her parents in their gray sedan.
Tristan is surprised I’m so happy on the way there, but all I’m thinking about is stuffing myself to the gills with seafood and white wine and then taking a nap on the sofa at his parents’ house, snug as a bug in a rug. He tells me everything, and he seems happy too, even emotional, which is a lot for someone as restrained as Tristan.
I can’t believe I dodged this bullet.
When he was planning this trip, Tristan asked me if it was all right if he treated them all to lunch. I told him of course, he didn’t need to check with me, and he proudly reserved a table for six at Silabario, a restaurant with a Michelin star on the sixth floor of a very central building in Vigo, which is crowned by a pretty spectacular avant-garde dome of glass and steel. The view of the city from there is incredible, and his parents insist that I sit by the window (more like a glass wall) so that I can enjoy it because I’m the guest. Opposite me, Uxia has been bestowed the same honor because it’s her day.
We order a couple of bottles of white wine and toast to the future bride and groom with joy, a joy that is becoming increasingly tense because, honestly, it seems like the “happy bride” is pissed off by my smile. But I think, naively, that the amount of food Tristan ordered would relax anyone…although judging by his sister’s sour face, you might think that instead of eating it, someone suggested shoving all this seafood up her ass. I take my chance when the groom goes to the bathroom to try to win her over by broaching the topic of the day:
“So…tell me about the dress! What’s it like?”
“Um…it’s white,” she says, passing it off as a joke and not just her being rude as usual.
“Ah…but white white or off-white?”
“It’s white, silk, and body-con.” She shrugs. “I was going to choose a princess cut, but then I thought about how a lot of women would die to be able to wear a mermaid cut and not have to hide their big hips with a poofy skirt, so since I can…”
I let it go. I make like I don’t know that these “big hips” she’s talking about are probably mine.
“Well, sounds like you did great. Are you going to wear a veil?”
“I haven’t decided yet.”
“She has one from my beautiful mother,” Sabela pipes up, very emotionally. “That way, her bare shoulders won’t be exposed in the church.”
“Is it sleeveless?” I ask.
“No. It has a neckline…what did the girl call it?” Their mother can’t find the word.
“Hunter,” Uxia says like a smartass.
I stifle my laughter, because what she means to say with that air of superiority toward her mother, who doesn’t remember the term, is halter , not hunter . But I stay quiet as a mouse.
The groom comes back.
“Okay, quick, let’s change the subject,” her mother says. “We don’t want to ruin the surprise.”
Her mother winks at me from across the table, and I wink back. Judging by her glare, it seems to turn Uxia’s stomach. They bring the first plates over, and the table is groaning under all the delicious food. There are few things that make me as happy as having Tristan, white wine, and good food all in the same place, and you can tell. That and knowing I’m safe from her making a scene this time. Finally, I’m going to be able to enjoy this restaurant.
Or not.
“So…do you want to get married?” Uxia asks me.
“Me?” I’m surprised.
“Yes. I already know my brother’s opinion. Asking you is more fun.”
I can sense that Tristan is signaling frantically at her but she’s ignoring him.
“Well…we haven’t discussed it, right?” I look at him with the most neutral face I can find in my repertoire, which transforms into a smile when one spreads across his face. “Ay, you devil, don’t look at me like that.”
“But do you want to?” Uxia insists.
“Well, it’s just that…” It’s just that my opinion is very different from yours, you little shit stirrer, and I don’t want you to use it to start a fight, can’t you see that? “The truth is I’ve never put much thought into it.”
“Come on!” she teases. “This is a safe space. You can say it… We’re not going to laugh.”
It’s not like you have a record.
“Well, look…” I grab my glass and pluck up my courage. “The thing is I’ve always thought romantic stuff is a very personal matter. I understand the traditional discourse around weddings as a symbolic act of the culmination of love, but…it’s just not that important to me.”
“You don’t want to marry my brother?”
I scratch my head. She’s making me nervous. Of course I want to marry him. Not in a wedding like the one she would plan, but still. Even though he never asked me. And I never asked him.
“I wouldn’t hate it, but it’s not something I’m losing sleep over,” I reply, feeling a stab of pain.
“You heard her, Tristan.”
“You didn’t have to goad her into saying that. I already know. I’ve been dating her for three years, and we live together. I know her.”
“But you gave her a ring…and it’s not an engagement ring.”
“No. It’s an oval-shaped aquamarine.” I’m trying to be funny.
“It’s beautiful,” Tristan’s mother says, trying to settle the subject. Poor thing.
Uxia keeps going.
“And how did you figure out a way to give it to her without her thinking it was a proposal?”
“Uxia, why aren’t you eating?” Tristan snaps.
“Take a breath, dude.” She grins at him.
Trying to make me uncomfortable is actually just annoying her brother, and she just noticed. That’s the only thing that could stop her, and I’m relieved, but the sharpness of Tristan’s voice left even me speechless.
“We had already talked about it,” I explain to her, because it leaves a bad taste in my mouth to leave her hanging. “Your brother has his own way of being romantic too…and he’s even more practical than me. So… I told him that if he ever wanted to propose, he had to…”
“Don’t…” He laughs.
“We’re so dumb.” I laugh back.
“Totally.”
We fall into complicit giggles, but everyone else is waiting for the answer.
“I told him he had to do it with a ring made of a coin and a pair of wires. You know? Those coins that have a hole in the middle. And he accepted. So when I opened the box and saw this ring, I just thought how…how incredibly thoughtful your brother is and how much I love him and some other stuff about how he must have bought it at auction. He knew I would go crazy for it. It’s from 1929, and it’s been passed down for years. My father is an antiques dealer and…”
“Your brother is a romantic in his own way. I couldn’t escape your peer pressure entirely.” Tristan puts a piece of duck and sea urchin croquette in his mouth and waggles his eyebrows at his sister.
They both smile.
I sigh. Come on, come on…please let us get out of this unscathed.
“Your brother told me your wedding is going to be in a really beautiful manor house.”
“Yes,” she replies, refusing to make eye contact. “The ceremony’s going to be in a tiny chapel and then the reception in the garden. We’ll put some marquees up, but hopefully we’ll get lucky with the rain, like today.”
“Hopefully,” I add, ready to shut my mouth for the rest of the lunch.
“You’d like a manor house, right?” Tristan asks me.
“For my wedding?”
“Our wedding.”
The whole family is looking at us slyly, and I swallow.
“If there’s a ring made of coins, wherever you want, playboy.”
A general chuckle relaxes me. Oh my god. I’m clenching my ass so hard from nerves that I don’t know where I’ll wake up tomorrow, but I know I’ll be sore. But no, Tristan, not in a manor house. I want to get married in an open field. And I want Ivan to marry us. Or my father. Nothing over our heads but verbena bulbs and the moon, and just a handful of good friends and close family. You, dressed in jeans and one of those T-shirts that look so good on you; and me, with some nice cleavage and red lips. No rings. And for the wedding dance, “Sesenta memorias perdidas” by Love of Lesbian. We’ll eat delicious food, and we won’t care whether it’s on trend, and we’ll drink Coke from glass bottles and sparkling wine in coupes. And we’ll be the happiest couple anyone has ever seen get married. Why haven’t I ever told you? Why haven’t we ever talked about this?
“Hey…” Tristan wakes me from my reverie with a soft elbow.
“Yes…what?”
“You were in la-la land,” he whispers.
“I went to my own planet for a minute.”
“And what did they tell you there?”
I kiss his shoulder to disguise a sigh and focus on the conversation at the table again. My future mother-in-law is talking about the wedding planning…the real one, not the one I was imagining that will probably never happen.
It makes me sad to think about how disappointed she’ll be when she has to postpone all this for more than two years because of COVID. Uxia will want to get married when restrictions on these kinds of events are lifted, so it will take a long time. But honestly, it makes me sadder to think that despite loving each other as much as I know we do now, Tristan and I never daydreamed out loud about getting married, and somehow the moment passed us by. And even though he doesn’t know it, after this year, we’ll be mercilessly mowed down by the grayest part of this relationship, and we won’t have any time to make plans first.
Miranda…eat. Focus on enjoying yourself in the most hedonistic way possible. Eat, drink, and then try to seduce Tristan into having a drink. Enjoy everything you couldn’t that day. The Galician steak tartare is to die for. And the anchovies from Castro Urdiales. The oysters. And the cockles. I’m going to get some. Langoustines, beware. Somebody stop me with the crab. By the time the meat arrives, I’m about to go into a permanent coma.
And one piece of advice…never let the enemy see you weak…even if it is due to a massive seafood intake. Make sure to never let your guard down, because when you least expect it, right then is when the final blow will fall.
“Hey, squirt.” Uxia turns to Tristan. “Fine, you’re not going to have a wedding, but aren’t you going to make me an auntie?”
Dumb bitch.
Tristan side-eyes me for a split second before he takes his napkin and elegantly dabs at his lips.
“Well…” he mumbles.
“Well, what? Ay! Don’t tell me you’re pregnant!” she says to me. “I knew it!”
The big dumb bitch.
“No, no…that’s just the kilo of cockles I ate.” I pat my stomach.
“Can’t you see she’s drinking wine?” pipes up her brother, who’s starting to blush, I don’t know why.
“Ah, sorry, sorry. It’s just that…the way you said that ‘well’…”
“No. I said ‘well’ because time will tell with these things, right?”
“Miranda, how old are you?”
I sigh. I’m done hiding how sick I am of her trolling me. I finally make it clear that this question is a huge pain in the ass for me. Especially because I have to calculate how old I was at that point…
“Thirty-one.”
“Well, you have some time…but you’re not exactly a teenager.”
I resist the urge to ask her how old she is, because I’m not like that. What worries me isn’t my biological age; what worries me is that I don’t care at all. Tristan knows without a doubt that he wants to be a father. As much time as I’ve asked for to figure it out, all I’ve found is internal silence and panic. I think the last year and a half of our relationship was based solely on the hope that I would suddenly get some clarity on it.
“I always thought he would have kids before me, you know? You can’t imagine how good with kids he is. They love him. Whenever we meet up with the crew, he ends up with some friend’s kid in his arms. Or he’s down on the floor playing with them all at once. He’s like…the Pied Piper. He’s gonna be a great father.”
“Uxi…” Tristan mutters. When she looks at him, he wrinkles his nose affectionately. “Leave it.”
“Ah, you don’t like them anymore? You changed your mind? You don’t want to be a dad anymore?”
Tristan looks at me out of the corner of his eye, trying to gauge how uncomfortable I am.
“Yes. Yes, I still want to, Uxia.”
“So? Come on, kids. Repopulate the planet! There aren’t enough children, everything is terrible, and kids always make everyone happy.”
She’s doing it on purpose, that’s obvious. I don’t know when he must have told her that I’m not sure I want to be a mother, but I’d bet my right hand that they’ve already had this conversation and she’s reminding her brother the reasons why letting this drag on with me doesn’t make sense. I hate her. And I know that haters are the worst, but I’m going to allow myself this indulgence for today.
“Well, Uxia, the two of us will see about that, don’t you think?” he retorts.
“Yeah, yeah. I’m not saying anything.”
She mimes zipping her mouth shut, and I wish I could sew it like that with my own hands.
I should say something, something like “there’s no rush,” but nothing comes out. My face falls, probably like hers did this morning when she saw me show up at the store. And just like Julieta Venegas sang, or close enough: I don’t know if I deserve it, but I don’t want it.
After lunch, there’s no siesta. His witch of a sister and her flying monkey of a fiancé go home, and Tristan says he wants to show me something. I guess he wants to shake off the lingering feeling after the clusterfuck of a conversation about kids. And I get it.
“It’s a half-hour drive, but it’s beautiful.”
“Of course,” I say and nod, even though I don’t know if I actually care anymore.
“Ay, I know where he’s taking you. You’re going to love it, girlie. You’re going to love it,” his mother says, her eyes shining.
And she’s right, even though I know it already because I’ve been there, even though he already showed me on another trip to Vigo. I remember how that day when his sister made me cry, he was planning to take me to spend the afternoon there. Today, he’s finally going to pull it off, even though Uxia left her mark in a different way.
There’s something special about the Enchanted Forest of Aldán, beyond the lush greenery and the crumbling castle. Beyond the families with children playing and shouting war cries, pretending to be pirates from another century attacking each other. There’s something about it. A halo of magic that envelops people in love. That and a damp that gets in your bones. It’s like nineteenth-century ghost stories…creepy and romantic at the same time.
Tristan wraps his arm around me and rubs mine like he can sense how the cold is already burrowing into my flesh and soaking in deep. He walks along quietly, though I know him; he’s ruminating. He chews on his words like cows chewing cud because it’s the only way he understands how to carve out sentences without leaving scorched earth in his wake. I don’t know if I’m making sense.
It takes him a while to work up to it. It takes him a while, but when he does, he hits the bull’s-eye.
“My sister’s a dick.”
“She is.” I smile.
“Sometimes I feel like you provoke her, like you’re in a duel, but I have to be fair and recognize that today, you didn’t… Today had nothing to do with you.”
“I appreciate that. But?”
“But?”
“There’s a but.”
He smiles sadly.
“There is, but you already know it.”
“Yes.”
We keep walking arm in arm, in silence, scared. Sometimes if you don’t put a tagged collar on your fear, if you let it run free, it gets away from you. But you’re still responsible if it bites someone, because it’s up to you to muzzle it.
“Miranda…we never talked about it again since back then.”
“Yeah, I know.”
“But I haven’t changed my mind. I understand that you haven’t either.”
I don’t answer. I keep my eyes trained on the ground covered in soggy leaves and branches. I swallow.
“Sometimes I wonder if we’re not sweeping it under the rug on purpose because we don’t want to make a decision about it. I worry that if we let too much time pass, we’ll end up getting hurt.”
He stops.
“I want to be a father. It doesn’t have to be now, but if it were up to me, I would. I would do it with you right now. But if you’re never going to want to be a mother, maybe we should reconsider things.”
“That day at the lake, I told you. You were the one who didn’t want to look at it, who swept it under the rug.”
“I know. But now that Uxia brought it up… I don’t know. I have to be honest…I think about it sometimes.”
“I do too.”
God…I feel like I’m swallowing handfuls of pointy rocks.
“And?” he asks with a trace of hope.
“I can’t help feeling like this is an ultimatum.”
“It’s not. It’s just that…when you love someone, sometimes you have to let go even if it tears you up inside, because to love someone is also to let them go.”
I furrow my brow. What? “Are you dumping me?”
“No. No, no, fuck. I don’t want to. It’s just that…” He shrugs and sighs. “I feel like if you’re dead set on not being a mother, you should say so. And we’ll have to talk about it, put it all on the table…and there are a lot of other things…like our pace of life and how long we’re going to stay in Madrid. It wouldn’t be fair for either of us to give up when it comes to this. It’s too important.”
And he’s right. I nod. I swallow another fistful of rocks.
“So?”
“So…”
The first time we had this conversation, when he brought it up again, I asked him for time. I told him that I thought I might not change my mind, that I was sorry, but I asked him to give me time.
“Time for what?” he asked me.
I had no idea, but he gave it to me. And I’m sure that was the day we started to die. Maybe not us, but our “us,” yes.
“Okay,” I hear myself say.
“Okay?” He’s surprised.
“Yes. Okay.”
“But okay…to what plan? Okay, it’s too important for either of us to give in? Or okay, let’s be parents?”
“Okay, let’s be parents.”
“Okay, that’s it?”
A giggle slips out. It’s a terrified giggle, sad but tender, because I love him.
I would do anything so I won’t lose him. Even fail myself, my word, my will, the way I understand myself and the world around me.
“Okay…just give me…give me a little time.”
“A little time? Eh…” Tristan moves a little nervously. “Fuck, yes, of course. But…” He laughs. “This is amazing. I…I wasn’t expecting this. Will you kiss me?”
And I kiss him, clinging to him like this is the last memory I’m going to have of him. In a way I wish everything could stay frozen here. But it can’t.
Once again, I’m holding a fistful of time that I don’t know what to do with.
Convince myself. Resign myself. I don’t know.
Time…that’s my problem.