That was the excuse that made it possible for me not to burn the bridges between us.
That was my escape route back to him.
And that’s why I could admire him, even though sometimes I despised him.
And I did admire him.
Because it was all a mistake. Because it’s likely that if I hadn’t needed him so much, if I hadn’t missed him so much, if I hadn’t been so conscious of my mother’s and my vulnerability, I wouldn’t have been hurt in the same way by his desertions.
All I wanted was more of him; all I wanted was to spend more time with him.
Because I liked him, because I needed him, because since I was very little I remember adopting his opinions and making them my own; because if I know how to travel, if I know how to cook, if I know how to hang a painting, if I know how to fix a lamp, if I know how to walk into an antique store or a furniture store and distinguish the authentic from the fake, if I know that the world is round and that nature (nature: I owe that to him too) doesn’t make some languages better than others or some countries better than others or some religions better than others, if I know how wrong it is not to rise above one’s situation, I owe it in part to him.
All of this though I may have considered myself to be better at everything he taught me, though I may have girded myself in the material hardship of my daily life and intimately despised the comforts for which I believed he had betrayed me.
I inherited his toolbox, and after he left home I had to stand in for him in every instance where domestic equilibrium demanded it, but I never got used to his absence. If I had, who can say whether he would matter to me as much as he does? If I had lived with him every day, I might not have felt such lasting admiration for him.
I wonder, too, whether, in my perpetual anger at him, I didn’t blame him for things that weren’t his fault; I wonder whether in fact he really was the only one responsible for the rift between us; I wonder whether adversity drove me to make unreasonable demands; I wonder why, considering that I believed myself to be superior to him in nearly every way, I couldn’t have taken the crucial step sooner.
But I was weak, I felt alone, and until my life was more or less on track, I couldn’t forgive and forget. I had to grow up. I had to accept the way things were, stop thinking about my mother and me, stop worrying about what would happen to us.
The rage I would have saved myself.
And the yearning.
I liked to listen to him talk about painting, go to shows with him; I liked to tag along with him at flea markets, stop in at antique shops or almost any kind of shop, guess what would catch his eye and what he would sneer at; I liked to catch even the slightest remark that he let slip when his guard was down, learn what stimuli he responded to; I liked to watch him with his friends, to delight in the provocative firmness with which he expressed his almost always heterodox views; I liked to listen to music, go to the movies, and drink at the bar with him; I liked to watch television, to walk with him; I liked it when he considered me an equal, an artist, when he let me in on his secrets, when he included me in his plans; I liked to match his dilettantish hedonism, his omnivorous tastes; I liked it when he instructed me, valued my judgment, asked my advice; I liked it when he noticed seeds in me that he had sown, liked to surprise him with my assimilation of his teachings; I liked it that he had in me a listener whose interest increased the less he confided; I liked him to celebrate my successes; I liked to invade his territory, buy something he had bought, go somewhere he would have liked to go, do something he would never have done.
I needed his recognition.
I wanted to learn, to be like him, and I imitated him; of course I did. I tried to emulate him.
But I hardly ever succeeded. I lacked so much of the knowledge that I know he possessed. We squandered so many opportunities. We hardly ever permitted ourselves to be together, and most of those times we were so paralyzed that all we could focus on was outmaneuvering each other. We hardly ever went to restaurants or record stores or out for walks, hardly ever traveled together, hardly ever spent time at the beach (absurd even to mention it).
His fault and mine. His fault for not realizing that this was what I most desired, his fault for doling it out by the dropperful, sheepishly, secretly, in the shadow of his other life, his married life, and my fault for choking the already scanty flow with my perennial anger.
I almost never saw him cook, except for very basic dishes, but the one time he invited me to a dinner at his house he served tzatziki and hummus as an appetizer, and days later I asked for the recipe so that I could make it myself. Another time I discovered a jar of mango chutney in his refrigerator, and soon afterward there was an identical jar in mine.
I didn’t have the money to buy a house for myself, but when I played the lottery, the houses that my imagination bought were modeled after his.
When he asked me for the jointed wooden mannequin of the Virgin Mary, a piece he had left at my mother’s house, I returned it to him, of course, but it wasn’t long before I got one for myself that was as much like his as possible.
We might not talk for weeks, but each morning when I sat down at my desk, I imagined him in his studio, faced with difficulties similar to mine.
And I competed with him.
And I wanted to be better than he was, to show him that I could write and have fun and be a good son and look after my mother without giving up anything, that life didn’t scare me.
Too much intensity.
* * *
The migratory life. My migratory life will continue until July 2006. Every seven days, on average, I’m back in Madrid. After the difficult month of February, in which we accustom ourselves to the routine of treatment, my father keeping watch over himself and I keeping watch over him, in March everything improves. He tolerates the chemotherapy well, he’s strong and optimistic, and as a result, he’s able to lead a more or less normal life. When I’m in Madrid, I accompany him to the hospital; we invent nicknames for the people we’ve come to recognize (Miss Dearly Beloved, a patient who comes with her husband and brother; Miss Dynamo, a nurse who does everything eagerly and enthusiastically); we see shows; we go for walks; we go to the movies (Brokeback Mountain, Crash) … Even his relationship with the friend he met in Brazil, though shaky and punctuated with clashes, seems calmer.
Around this time, on an impulse after a chemotherapy session, he buys himself an ergonomic recliner, which he later nearly returns for being too ugly, but which, with my encouragement, he ends up holding on to throughout his illness. Nestled into it, chewing his fingernails, his feet hooked around the footrest, he’ll spend infinite hours each day watching television. Which is all he’s able to do later, when his mind and body give out.
But that state of collapse has yet to come. He’s still active and alert, and at the end of March his final show goes up. The day of the opening, as always, the friend he met in Brazil makes it her job to take pictures of all those present, and as always, she avoids taking my picture, something that he uses as ammunition in one of their subsequent spats. Though the opening is well attended, sales are modest. Three or four paintings, if I remember correctly, none of them very big. To make matters worse, one of the most important arts sections doesn’t publish a review at all, and even after I make the requisite phone calls, the paper I write for gives the show scarcely half a column of type, with a misleading headline, and the painting featured in the accompanying illustration is printed backward. He’s greatly disappointed, and so am I. I blame myself for not having insisted more, for not knowing how to get around the editor’s lack of enthusiasm. I try to make up for it by bringing people, by seeking out buyers. About one of them, a famous model I know through friends, my father permits himself to boast to the gallery owners without mentioning that the contact is mine. He tells me this himself with a laugh, flaunting his naked vanity. In a way, he acts like a child who’s forbidden nothing, as if his pranks and misbehavior were my idea. For the first time, I’m fully the accomplice I never was before.