Marcos Giralt Torrente - Father and Son - A Lifetime

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 secret, 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.