Marcos Giralt Torrente - Father and Son - A Lifetime

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.