“Yeah. Drawers,” I said. “Not the cheap kind that rattle along metal tracks…but smooth, polished wood on wood…drawers with hand-cut dovetail joints that whisper when you glide ’em open.” I gave her a low, breathy whistle.
She leaned toward me, nodding as if she understood I was talking about craftsmanship. Artistry. Furniture that might become a family heirloom—though I wasn’t that good. Yet. I had finished my apprenticeship but was still learning so much.
“Like antiques? Before they become antiques?” She leaned closer, her breath warm on my cheek.
“Yeah,” I said. She was a magnet, an absolute force field, and I couldn’t stop myself from kissing her. I brushed my lips against hers, tasting lime and liquor. Her lips were perfect, and my heart exploded in my chest. After several dizzying seconds, she pulled away, just far enough to tell me that I might not know how to dance, but I sure could kiss.
I caught my breath and managed to say back, “So can you.”
“May I ask you a question, Thomas?” she whispered into my ear.
I nodded, my vision blurry.
“Do you make love the way you dance?…Or how you kiss?”
My skin on fire, I looked into her eyes and told her she could find that one out for herself.
* * *
—
A FEW HOURS and drinks and even some dancing later, we were back in my crappy studio apartment having ridiculously good sex. I was twenty-nine and single, so it wasn’t the first time I’d slept with a girl I’d just met, but this was different. This was making love. Before I met Beatriz, I would’ve said that instantaneous love was impossible. But all rules and logic went out the window with her. She was that amazing. She was magic.
* * *
—
BARELY THREE MONTHS later, we were married and she was pregnant, though it actually happened in the reverse order. It didn’t matter; I would have asked her to marry me anyway, though her pregnancy expedited things and also threw a few curves (no pun intended) our way. For one, my mother was wary of Beatriz, questioning her motives for “getting pregnant,” clearly suggesting that she was using me to stay in the country. I made the mistake of sharing this with Beatriz, who was understandably hurt, and I found out the hard way that forgiveness wasn’t her strong suit. It was a trait she’d apparently inherited from her father, an orthopedist for the Brazilian national soccer team, who was already pissed at Beatriz for moving to the States to pursue a singing career. Her getting knocked up by a carpenter didn’t help their relationship any, though her stepmother—the only mother Beatriz had ever known—was mostly to blame for that turbulence. It was classic Cinderella shit.
So, anyway, things were strained with both of our families, and we blew off most of our friends, spending every minute together. It was probably unhealthy but felt like us against the world. We were insatiable and invincible—or so we thought. Even after Lyla burst onto the scene in all her colicky glory, and Beatriz fought the baby blues and gave up her singing dreams, and I had to work odd menial jobs to make ends meet, we still kept the passion going.
But at some point, around Lyla’s second birthday, things began to change with us. Love began to feel more like lust—and it stopped conquering all. Although we’d always had something of a turbulent dynamic, both of us prone to jealousy, the fighting got worse. Or maybe we were just having less sex, which made the fighting seem worse. In any event, Beatriz blamed me, saying that I was always stressed out and never wanted to go out or “do anything.” For a while, I believed her theory and felt guilty and neglectful. I kept promising her that I’d work a little less and try to be more fun. But I slowly began to see that Beatriz’s sole version of fun had become partying. Hard. It wasn’t that I didn’t see the merits of unwinding with a few beers. But more and more, Beatriz was always tying one on, her hangovers making her more depressed and totally useless the next day. Sometimes she was so out of it that I had to stay home from work and take care of Lyla. Which meant we were more broke than ever.
Even worse, she started to hide things from me. Not big things, just random shady shit with her phone and laptop. But it was enough to make me stop trusting her, then begin to dislike her. I still loved her, though, because she was Beatriz, and also the mother of our child.
Then, one summer night, just after we’d moved into our Craftsman bungalow on Avondale Drive (where Lyla and I still live), everything exploded. Our argument started that morning when I suggested we do something as a family, just the three of us. Maybe go to the zoo or have a picnic in Cumberland Park or visit my mother (whom Beatriz still couldn’t stand but had learned to tolerate because of free childcare).
I was trying hard to salvage things between us, but Beatriz quickly shot me down, saying she’d already committed to a cookout with friends. Which friends, I asked. She told me. I said I didn’t like those people—or the person she became around them. She more or less fired back, tough shit, she was going, and she would be taking Lyla with her.
“Am I even invited?” I asked, which, crazily enough, didn’t seem to be a given.
She shrugged, then said sure, I could come if I wanted, but she understood if I didn’t. I took it as my cue to head to the workshop, where increasingly I’d been finding peace. But later that afternoon, as I put my tools away, I got a funny feeling in my gut that something was wrong. So I tracked down her friends’ Inglewood address and drove over to the party.
The second I pulled up, I could see Beatriz on the front porch, dancing with some loser I recognized from her MySpace page. Both of his hands were on her ass, and it didn’t look like it was the first time they’d been there. Lyla was nowhere to be seen. Enraged, I jumped out of my car and walked over to the house, climbing the porch steps. “Where’s Lyla?” I said, doing my best not to knock the guy out. He dropped his hands right away, looking guilty as hell. I waited for the same expression to cross my wife’s face, but she was shameless and glazed, clearly drunk or high, probably both.
“Where’s Lyla?” I shouted this time.
Everyone got quiet, staring at me, except for Beatriz, who said, “God, Thomas. Chill out. She was right here. Just a few seconds ago.”
I looked at her, and it suddenly hit me that she was wearing a bikini under her tank top—and her hair was wrapped into a wet bun. So she’d been swimming. Which meant that these fucking idiots had a swimming pool. I panicked, pushing past everyone, tearing through the house, then onto the back porch. It was one of those elevated decks with a long flight of stairs down to the lawn. I did a quick scan of the yard and, sure enough, there was the pool. Beyond a group of older kids playing Marco Polo was Lyla, all alone, perched on the edge of it. A black 3 FEET was painted on the side—shallow but still way too deep for a four-year-old who had only taken a couple of swim lessons in her life.
I sprinted down the stairs and over to her, calling her name. Logically I could see that she was safe, but I had the irrational feeling that something bad might still happen while I watched. My voice scared her—probably because she thought she was in trouble—and she tipped forward, nearly falling into the water. I scooped her up and covered her face with kisses. I knew I was traumatizing her, but I couldn’t stop. I held her in my arms and ran back to my car, this time going the long way around the house. I didn’t know if Beatriz was still on the porch, or whether she saw us, but if she did, she didn’t follow me. I strapped Lyla into her car seat, drove her home, gave her a bath and a snack, reliving the fear over and over. I finally put her in bed with me, both of us falling asleep. Beatriz never called to check in.
I don’t know what time it was when she finally stumbled home, only that it felt like the middle of the night. “Get out,” I told her. “You’re not sleeping here.”
“This is my bed, too.”
“Not tonight it’s not.”
“Where do you want me to sleep?” she said.