All We Ever Wanted

by Emily Giffin

  “And that’s not a pickup line?” she said, as I noticed a trace of an accent. Even better.

  I shook my head and stammered, “No….Well, maybe it is….But I don’t want to just pick you up. I want to know you…everything about you….”

  She laughed that laugh again. “Everything?”

  “Everything,” I said, then rattled off questions. “What’s your name? How old are you? Where are you from?”

  “Beatriz. Twenty-five. Rio,” she said, the last word rolling from her full lips, stained the exact shade of her dress.

  “In Brazil?”

  She smiled and asked if I knew of another Rio as the bartender approached her. Without hesitating like most girls do, she ordered a drink I’d never heard of, rolling more r’s. She did the reach for her oversize woven bag that looked like it should smell of pot, or at least incense, as I put my hand on hers. “I have a tab,” I said.

  She smiled, staring into my eyes. “Do you also have a name?”

  “Tommy…Tom…Thomas,” I said—because people called me all three.

  “Which do you prefer?” she asked.

  “Whichever you prefer,” I said.

  “I want to dance, Thomas,” she said, throwing her shoulders and hair back.

  I was pretty stoked that she picked my full name, but I shook my head on the dancing. “Anything but that,” I said with a laugh.

  She gave me a fake pout, and I said a prayer that someday soon we’d be close enough for real pouting, explosive fights, and passionate making up. “Please?” she said with a tilt of her head.

  “I can’t dance,” I confessed as the bartender finished making her drink and placed it in front of her.

  “Everyone can dance,” she said, swaying her shoulders to “Free Bird.” “It’s just moving to music.” She squeezed the lime into her drink, then stirred it with her skinny straw before taking her first sip. As I watched her lips curve around the glass and her hair fall forward around her face, I had a little trouble breathing. I glanced away, contemplating another drink for myself. I already had a decent buzz but could’ve used a little more liquid courage. I decided against it, though, wanting to remember everything about our conversation, and asked what she was doing in Nashville. She told me she was an au pair for twin toddlers in Brentwood but had the weekend off. She said she’d chosen Nashville because of the music scene.

  “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, sa
ying 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.

  “I don’t care. Sleep on the couch. Anywhere but here.”

  We began to fight. There were no apologies, only accusations and sorry-ass excuses. I’d embarrassed her. I’d overreacted. I was a paranoid, jealous dick. She’d left Lyla alone for only a few minutes.

  “It takes three minutes to drown!” I shouted back at her. “One hundred and eighty seconds to lose her. Forever.”

  We went round in circles, making the same points again and again. At some point, I called her a drunk. She asked me what had I expected? I’d fallen in love with a girl at a bar. Like it was something to be proud of.

  “Yeah. Well, you’re a fucking mother now,” I shouted.

  “It doesn’t change who I am,” she said, raising her chin defiantly.

  “And who are you?” I asked. “Other than a party girl who fucks on the first night?”

  She couldn’t have looked more stunned if I had slapped her across the face. “Is that how you really feel about me?” she asked, her accent thick, the way I once adored and now couldn’t stand.

  I said yes, wanting to punish her for the image I couldn’t shake of Lyla sitting on the edge of the pool. I told her I had no respect for her, that she was a terrible mother, and that Lyla would be better off without her. That it was better to have no mother than to have a mother like her. I braced myself for more fighting, but she only bit her lip and said, “Well. I’m glad I finally know what you really think of me. Tom.”

  As I watched her turn and walk out of the bedroom, closing the door behind her, I panicked a little, knowing I’d gone too far. That I’d been both cruel and hypocritical—after all, I’d fucked on the first night, too. I knew that part of me still loved her and would always love her, but I also knew that we were heading down a road to divorce. A lifetime of shuffling our child around between two places we couldn’t afford. I pictured stepparents and half siblings, fighting and bitterness. I pictured hate.

  But in my wildest, worst imagination, I didn’t expect what I found the next morning: a sloppy note on the kitchen table telling me she was leaving us. I told myself that she didn’t actually mean it. That surely she would come home.

  But days turned to weeks turned to months. I called and emailed and left her messages—some concerned, most angry—but there was no word back from her. It was infuriating and confounding and humiliating, but mostly it was just sad. I was sad for myself—and devastated for Lyla.

  The fact that I had no answers for my daughter made it even harder. I tried to convince myself that Beatriz was dead, remembering my words the night she left, thinking that it actually might be better. Besides, it was the only explanation I could really wrap my head around. I mean, I got the leaving part. Hell, there were times I almost beat her to the punch—or at least fantasized about taking off. It was the not coming back that didn’t make sense, especially for a mother. Dads picked up and left all the time, whether to start a new family or just to be alone. But mothers always seemed to stay in the picture, somehow.

  She’s gone was the simple explanation I always gave Lyla.

  “Gone where?” Lyla would ask, sometimes through tears, though usually she would be crying about something else first.

  At which point, I would answer vaguely, referencing a beautiful place (heaven? a beach in Brazil?), always careful not to lie. She was going to need enough therapy as it was without adding her father’s deceit to the equation.

  Over time, Ly
la’s memories of her mother became diluted, and the subject of “Mommy” arose less and less. My own mother stepped in to fill the void, helping with Lyla’s haircuts and clothing, the nuts and bolts of being a girl. That helped. But at the end of the day, I was a single parent, raising a child alone. I cooked and cleaned, drove her to the bus stop in the morning, met the bus in the afternoon, and put her to bed at night. I arranged my work schedule around her activities and virtually eliminated my own social life. I eventually dated a bit here and there—my mother was always willing to babysit so I could go out—but nothing ever got serious. In part because I never met anyone that great, but also because I didn’t have the time, energy, or extra cash for anything other than Lyla. If that sounds like I’m complaining, it’s because I am. Parenting can be a real drain, even when sharing the misery with a spouse. Alone it was hard as fuck.

  But we got by just fine, and I took great pride in the fact that I was raising such a good kid. Lyla was beautiful, smart, and kind, and my world revolved around her. We both got over Beatriz and moved on with our lives.

  Then, five years later, with no warning at all, she came back. It was Lyla’s ninth birthday. The timing was so messed up that it made me want to issue a memo to deadbeat parents everywhere, advising them to please make contact before or after their child’s birthday. To reappear on the actual day, or any other day of significance, was both narcissistic and wildly disruptive, particularly when there had been no expectations of your coming back whatsoever. When you’d been gone so long there wasn’t even a thought of you in the kid’s head.

  Such was the case that year. I was hit or miss with the party thing, mostly because I had trouble planning in advance, but also because venue parties were too expensive. But I’d gotten it together and allowed Lyla to invite three friends for a sleepover. With a June birthday, she usually had nice weather, but this evening was especially idyllic. The girls ran around in the backyard and played in the sprinkler while I grilled hot dogs and hamburgers. Afterward, we had a chocolate cake, compliments of my mom, and Lyla opened her presents. The girls then hunkered down in their sleeping bags to watch a movie that looked a little bit scary for their age. I remember checking the rating and asking if all their parents were okay with a PG-13 movie (they said they were), and feeling pretty damn good about my competence as a single dad before I turned in for the night.