“Are you a musician?” I asked, intrigued, though musicians were a dime a dozen around here.
She nodded. “I’m a singer. Trying to be anyway.”
“What kind of music?”
“Sertanejo. It’s like Brazilian country….Music about partying and love…and heartbreak…”
I nodded, entranced. “Maybe you’ll sing for me sometime?”
“Maybe,” she said with a slow smile. “And what about you, Thomas? Are you from Nashville?”
“Yep. Born and raised.”
“What part?” she said.
“You’re looking at it,” I said.
She laughed, putting her thumb just inside her lower lip. “You were born in a bar?”
“No,” I said, smiling. “I mean East Nashville. This side of the river.”
She nodded, as if she knew what I meant—that the Cumberland River separated the glitzy downtown from my gritty neighborhood.
“Why aren’t you out on Lower Broad?” I said, silently adding with all the other pretty girls.
“Because I can’t meet boys like you over there.” She smiled, and I smiled back at her. We sat in silence for a few seconds before she said, “And what do you do, Thomas? What’s your job?”
“I’m a carpenter,” I said, staring down at my thumbs as I tapped them on the bar. I braced myself for that look. The one some girls will give you when you tell them you don’t have an office job and went to college for only a year and a half before running out of money, dropping out, and falling into a woodworking gig.
But if she felt at all disappointed, she didn’t show it. She even looked a little intrigued, though maybe that was wishful thinking on my part. I’d been fooled before by girls who insisted they loved a man who worked with his hands. I’m glad she didn’t say this but simply asked, “So you make furniture?”
“Yeah.”
“What kind?”
“All kinds,” I said. “Tables, shelves, dressers, desks. I love drawers.”
She laughed. “Drawers?”
“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).