Father and Son Read online

  In 1985 I spend two weeks with my father and the friend he met in Brazil, our only vacation together. This is the summer that people start to talk about AIDS, and when we get back, I come down with a summer flu that I become convinced is a symptom of the disease. My father visits me one afternoon and puts an end to my delusions by taking me for some tests. That same summer, on the beach, I win his startled respect when I hook up with the one girl who catches his eye. What I don’t tell him is that both times we watched the sun come up together, all we did was make out.

  In 1985 my cat has to be put to sleep. It’s my father who takes care of it.

  In 1985 we put my mother’s place up for sale in order to move downtown. Afraid that we’ll squander the money, my father won’t help us in the search for a new apartment until the operation is irreversible, and feeling overwhelmed, I demand his help.

  In 1986 there’s the NATO referendum, and my mother, my father, and I go to vote at the polling place in our old neighborhood, where my father is still registered. He does it grudgingly, as if it pains him to accompany my mother and me.

  In 1986 my grandfather on my father’s side dies without knowing that my parents have been separated for ten years or being aware of the existence of the friend my father met in Brazil.

  In 1986, the day before my father leaves for Warsaw for an artists’ conference in Eastern Europe, he informs us that in his absence my mother will receive a petition for divorce. We let him know that we’re unhappy that he’s chosen to do it this way rather than opting for a consensual divorce, and after my mother informs him that given the circumstances, she won’t make it easy for him, I walk him to the Metro in silence. My mother’s resolve lasts scarcely a few weeks. After discussing it with me, she calls a lawyer and gives him the go-ahead to take my father for all she can get, but when we have my father on the ropes, we relent. Before this, I write him a letter that the friend he met in Brazil intercepts and that earns me her deepest hostility, in which, with a temerity that ashames me now, I ask him not to marry her.

  In 1987, when I happen to be in my father’s neighborhood with a friend who’s an aspiring painter, I stop by his place to ask him to show us his paintings. No one answers the buzzer, but just as I’m about to give up, he comes walking down the street with the friend he met in Brazil. They’re dressed up; he’s nervous and she’s beaming. I immediately guess that they’ve gotten married, which he confirms days later.

  In 1987 I take my college entrance exam, and in the fall I begin my degree in philosophy. My father doesn’t hide his surprise when I tell him and asks how I plan to make a living.

  In 1987 I have a girlfriend and she’s a writer. She’s older than I am and pretty wild, which means that neither my mother nor my father likes her, and although my mother pretends otherwise, my father doesn’t bother. During Easter, when the friend he met in Brazil is out of town, he invites my girlfriend and me to spend a few days with him in his country house. He makes fun of everything she says, sets traps for her, is condescending to me, and tells unflattering stories about when I was little. At some point I get the sense that he’s competing with me.

  In 1987 my father and the friend he met in Brazil buy a place together and for the first time both of their names are on the title. My father explains that neither I nor her children will be given the keys, and he promises that everyone will be treated equally. In the same conversation he tells me that they’re going to draw up a document in which both of them will agree which household items, paintings, and furniture belong to each. When he gives it to me weeks later, I discover that what was hers is still hers and the only things that will now be shared are his.

  In 1988 I spend two months in London, staying with an old girlfriend of his. I’m there to learn English, but all I do is sit at a library, where I read the Iliad and the Odyssey in Spanish and try in vain to write.

  In 1988 my dog has to be put to sleep. Again it’s my father who takes care of it, though this time my mother and I are with him.

  In 1988 my writer girlfriend cheats on me with a friend of my mother’s whom we put up when he comes to Madrid, and months later she leaves me to go to America with an ex-boyfriend. I find out that my father, who got the news from me, has told the whole story to some friends, and when I get upset, he defends himself by attacking her so harshly that I’m deeply offended and abandon him in the middle of the street.

  In 1989 he presents me with a painting from a recent exhibition, giving it to me behind the back of the friend he met in Brazil.

  In 1989 I ask him to teach me to drive. He gives me one lesson, and days later, explaining why he can’t give me more, he says that the friend he met in Brazil has told him that it could be bad for the car.

  In 1989, during the summer, while my father and the friend he met in Brazil are away, her son moves into their place. When my father finds this out from me, he sends me the keys and asks me to make an appearance there. Days later, when he gets back, he tells me that he’s changed the lock and I don’t need to return the keys. He assures me that there will be no more unequal treatment.

  In 1990 my mother leaves the publicity agency where she’s worked since 1984 and opens a graphic design studio.

  In 1990 the friend my father met in Brazil goes away on a trip and I see my father a number of times. One afternoon I introduce him to a friend I’ve fooled around with a time or two and whom I’ve tried to steer in his direction. Shortly afterward my friend tells me that they’re having a clandestine affair, and a few days later, in need of an alibi, it’s my father who brings me up to date. The friend he met in Brazil suspects, and he’s given me as the unlikely excuse for his constant absences. At one point he asks me to call her and confirm that he’s with me; at another point it’s she who calls in tears to try to get information out of me. Meanwhile, when these difficulties cause the relationship to languish, one night I run into my father’s lover and we end up in bed. I can’t relax, I’m beset by a kind of vague remorse, but I let her fellate me and in the morning I penetrate her briefly.

  In 1990 I travel to Russia by train. When I return by plane, my mother and my father are waiting for me at the airport. My mother is eager to see me, and my father can’t wait to hear what I have to tell. That same evening, back at home, I take a phone call in front of both of them from a Russian woman, and my father makes fun of me when he hears me call her “love.”

  From 1984 to 1990 and for years to come, the feelings are all the same; nothing changes.

  I live with my mother. I see her morning, noon, and night. She’s the one who pays for my education, who clothes me, feeds me. She’s the one who notices when I lack something, who comes up with solutions and tries to grant my wishes. She’s the one who teaches me how to behave in public, who sets me on the right path, who convinces me otherwise when I announce that I don’t want to go to college. Very little that happens to me goes unnoticed by her. She’s the one who straightens me out, who rallies me when I need it, and I do the same for her when I can. We face setbacks together, without help. My father isn’t around; my father is an intermittent presence. My father creates capsules of time outside of daily life. If I manage to get past his defenses, I can share my worries with him, but without his knowing what my life is really like and without the fortification of material assistance, his advice is out of place, inadequate. I don’t even grant him the authority to offer it to me in the first place. Most of the time I don’t ask for it. I keep him at arm’s length.

  Bitterness and resentment plague me constantly. What do I blame him for? For everything. For not seeing me enough, not calling enough, not remembering my birthday, not giving me presents, for vanishing when he knows that my mother and I are in trouble, for spending the summers away and traveling when I don’t get to, for failing to keep his promises, for believing that he has more cause for complaint than I do, for thinking that this excuses him, for settling, for presuming that I should accept his capitulation, for seeing me in secret, for giving me things in s
ecret, for giving me money in secret, for thinking that his love is enough, for removing himself from the picture, for delegating everything that concerns me to my mother, for not setting himself up as an alternative to her, for giving me no option, for letting my mother be the sole center of my little life.

  Though he does make some effort. Impulsive efforts that he almost always abandons. He’s aware of the problem between us and he’s jealous of the preference I show for my mother, but he isn’t able to put things right. The same old strategies don’t work anymore. He tries to have me come and visit him, but I feel strange at his house. He tries to have me spend the occasional weekend with him in the country, but it’s the same there. In both places, not only am I conscious that my presence is an inconvenience for the friend he met in Brazil, and not only are restrictions imposed on me that don’t apply to her children and that he doesn’t protest, but in addition I sense an underlying tension that makes it even more difficult for me to fit in. At home, with my mother, I’m independent, almost an adult. My mother counts on me, relies on me for almost everything, and I assume responsibilities, look out for our mutual interests, and, as a result, enjoy a certain standing. As far as my father is concerned, though, I’m still a child. He hasn’t watched me grow up, he casts around for the right tone to take with me, and the friend he met in Brazil is no help. Any difference of opinion or complaint that I voice, no matter how fair, is easier to deflect if it can be chalked up to immaturity. Immaturity and my mother’s influence. This is the equation to which I see myself constantly reduced. So I ignore his invitations, which anyway aren’t as frequent as they should be.

  In eighteen years we spend only part of a summer together: the two weeks previously mentioned, which he asks me to book months in advance. Those two weeks aside, we spend no more than ten nights under the same roof. Gone are the days when he picked me up from school. Now our life is reduced to a lunch or two a month. Except for the dinners he has with friends after his openings, I don’t know what he’s like at an evening meal. I haven’t seen him drunk. Or first thing in the morning. We meet when the day has already begun. He usually chooses Tuesdays because that’s when he meets some of his painter friends for drinks. He picks me up and we go to a neighborhood restaurant. Then he naps in a chair at my apartment, with the TV on, and leaves around five. We never have dinner. At most, if we’re on very good terms, we spend part of the evening together. Once or twice—hardly ever—we go to the movies. Once or twice—if it’s been a long time since we’ve seen each other—I go out for drinks with him and his friends.

  In many ways we’re two strangers. He doesn’t know me outside of our contrived lunch dates, and I have a very limited idea of his life. I get tiny snatches of it, isolated instants over a plate of food. I don’t know what he does for fun. I don’t know what he’s like at home before he goes to bed, what he does, whether he reads or watches television. I don’t know who most of his new friends are, what his plans are until they aren’t plans anymore but realities. I don’t know anything about him, and I have to fill in the gaps with stolen glimpses. Because of this, and because I often have the feeling that he hides information from me so as not to hurt me, I don’t miss a thing when we’re together. I’m alert to body language, to a hand reaching too often for the bread, to a clearing of the throat, to lips pasted together. I retain everything he says, and it’s easy for me to detect contradictions.

  And then, too, there are long stretches during which no news is exchanged, during which we don’t call each other. It happens when I’m nursing a grudge about something and he—rather than confronting me, getting me to talk, defending himself—beats a retreat. He doesn’t call me and I don’t call him. And so on, until one of us relents and takes the first step. Usually, he’s the one. The phone rings and I hear his voice. The tension is palpable. It’s clear that there are a thousand other things he’d rather be doing, clear that he has no intention of trying to address the cause of our impasse, that he intends to leave things as they are, not advance them, only resume the interrupted status quo, clear that he’s afraid of my reaction, aware that only the smallest recrimination, the tiniest sarcastic remark would be enough to prompt a new outburst and a new standoff.

  We never manage to get past the problem between us. It’s always there beneath the surface. Catastrophe looms. It’s not relaxing for us to be together. We study each other, measure our words, speak in generalities, talk about the weather, talk about family, talk about our work, talk about politics, and almost never talk about ourselves, he striving to keep the conversation on neutral ground, and I tongue-tied, testing ways to obliquely introduce my demands. Most of the time I don’t address them head-on. When I do, he lets a second or two go by, his displeasure evident in the longer silence, in his change of expression, and if I persist, there might be a confrontation. Confrontations are always the same: after my initial complaint, he parries with an excuse, I ratchet up the pressure, he defends himself heatedly, and I respond in kind until it becomes impossible to take things any further without making a scene and we’re silent for the rest of the meal. When we leave the restaurant, either each of us goes his own way, or, if I’m feeling remorseful, I walk him to the Metro trying to pretend that nothing has happened.

  And we part. Upset, both of us. I let off steam at home and he probably works out his frustration by subjecting the friend he met in Brazil to an afternoon of ill humor. Though sometimes he must not be able to avoid talking, it’s hard for me to imagine that he tells her everything; he can’t want to make trouble. A vicious circle—my father, the friend he met in Brazil, and me; the grudges of each constantly feeding off those of the others.

  After a fight, I know that it’s on his mind for days, but I have no idea to what extent it affects his life. I suffer the effects hugely. I work myself up; I egg myself on. Alone, I envision revenge; when I’m out, I’m carried away by euphoria. I talk more than ever, I drink more than ever, I’m always the last to leave, I contrast myself to him in the arrogance of my youth. But if I feel vulnerable, at a loss, I do none of this, instead lapsing into a state of tortured apathy; sometimes I cry. Or I alternate between the two states, euphoria and prostration. Or I throw myself into writing as if I’m competing with him in a stupid race.

  The rope is always taut. There’s never a slackening of tension. He suffers and I suffer, but we can’t let it snap, can’t do without each other.

  More often than I should, I think about his death. I wonder whether anything will have changed by then. I wonder whether he’ll be capable for once of acting according to the convention between fathers and sons. What will happen to his things? What will happen to his paintings? If he can’t do right by me while he’s alive, he won’t do right by me in death either. And I get angry. Especially because I know that he’s simply blind to the risks. He takes it for granted that everything will turn out right without any effort on his part. I get angry because he doesn’t realize that if, as he argues, his failure to comply with his paternal responsibilities has some unfathomable cause rather than being due to neglect or disregard, he should at least make sure that what he has to leave—his paintings, his belongings—will reach my hands.

  He says that the friend he met in Brazil covers most of their common expenses, but I do the math and it seems to me that ever since he gave up renovation work, he makes enough from painting to support himself.

  He says that the friend he met in Brazil put down more money on the house where they live, but I include as part of his contribution all the unpaid work he’s done for her and all the sought-after paintings by other artists that he’s sold, paintings that back in the day he was savvy enough to buy or that were given to him by their more established creators.

  He says that the friend he met in Brazil is generous with him, but I’m convinced that while his own money is frittered away on their daily necessities, she’s saving for herself. If the family car breaks down, it’s he who buys the next one. If there are repairs to be made at home,
he pays for them; ditto if they take a trip. As I see it, she squeezes him, controls him, and manipulates him, but my father doesn’t realize it, and what’s worse, since he’s oblivious to how the money is used, he feels permanently in debt. It doesn’t surprise him, or at least he doesn’t show it, that she makes him sign papers. It doesn’t surprise him, or at least he doesn’t show it, that they’re always short of cash.

  All of this, accurate or not, runs repeatedly through my head when I’m frustrated with him; and because it’s my view of things and not his, if at any point I make some mention of it, he gets irritated, cuts short the conversation, and obliquely accuses me of self-interest. What he refuses to see is that what I want is for him to stop feeling indebted, because it’s his indebtedness that comes between us. What he refuses to see is that even when I talk about money, what I’m really talking about is feelings. What he refuses to see is that I need to have proof that I matter to him.

  I don’t trust anything, and that’s also part of the problem between us.

  There’s only one area, in fact, in which there is no risk of conflict: I’m proud that he’s a painter; I admire his work. Where it’s concerned, I’m always ready for a temporary truce. He knows this and appreciates it, and in his own way he takes advantage of it. If he has a show coming up and we’re not on terrible terms, he often asks me to come to his studio. He suggests it timidly, but he makes it plain that I’ll be letting him down if I don’t come. It’s not a tactic to bring us together; I think he really does value my judgment. I deduce this from the unhurried way he shows me the paintings, waiting silently to hear what I have to say, taking his time to respond. It’s a tradition that dates back to his crisis, when I insisted that he return to painting and I even permitted myself to be tough on the initial results. I’m careful, I never offer a solely negative opinion, but I don’t hide what I think.