He told her what he knew about his brother’s final years. He told her about Rosario’s death, about the psychiatrist and how Gaspar couldn’t go to school because the pills gave him a headache and a terrible exhaustion and there he was, at thirteen years old, doing nothing all day but thinking about himself, banging his head against the wall when he couldn’t stand the guilt about his friend Adela anymore; it’s obscene, Luis told Julieta, it’s obscene to see this in a boy of his age.
What do you want me to do? she asked.
I want you to meet him and help me find a good professional, not this son of a bitch who just wants to put him on drugs, lock him up, or whatever the hell else.
Let’s go now, she said, take me to see him. Let’s all have dinner together. Do something normal. I don’t understand how you could leave him with Negro. Negro is the most loyal person in the world, said Luis. Sure, but he doesn’t know how to take care of a kid with problems. No one does, said Luis.
On the way there they talked about the political situation, to relax; they had met through politics, and Luis had avoided talking about his family situation in their first meetings. He was still bitter that Menem had won the primary. Alfonsín is going to hold the elections early, Julieta said, and Menem will be president. You’re going to have to accept it. She had supported the Riojan governor in the primary. What we’re all going to have to accept is what a disaster the next few months will be. Luckily, I have dollars, and Gaspar gets an allowance, in dollars too.
The house in Villa Elisa, with its red tiled roof and white walls, looked pretty ruined, and it was. The restoration was going to take a long time if the economy didn’t improve, but Luis had managed to fix up the kitchen. Gaspar’s room was in good shape, though the parquet floor needed replacing or months of waxing and polishing. The most difficult problem was the seeping damp, but for now he couldn’t pay for repairs and he’d have to live with it. After a very good contract that had allowed him to buy the house, he hadn’t found any more work. He still had some savings and had finally managed to finish the cumbersome process of separating his money from his ex-wife’s in Brazil. Hoping for a job in March of 1987 seemed crazy. Hoping to find a good psychologist did too. Everyone was scared, impoverished, worried about only themselves.
Gaspar and Negro Sánchez were in the kitchen, kneading pizza dough. Luis was visibly relieved—his shoulders slackened, he relaxed the fingers of his left hand that he always unconsciously squeezed into a fist—when he saw Gaspar look up from sprinkling flour. It was just a flash of normalcy, he well knew; but it was those flashes, so clear and fresh, that made him hopeful he would eventually see Gaspar healthy, or at least suffering a little less.
Negro Sánchez greeted Julieta and looked at the two of them curiously; Luis made a movement with his head that could either mean be patient or shut up. He took Julieta out to the garden to show her the progress he’d made. He was a dedicated gardener, and a good one.
You’re all good-looking in this family, she said. That kid’s straight out of a fairy tale.
She grabbed Luis’s face between her hands and kissed him, but said nothing more. He knew then, though, that she wasn’t angry, that now she understood why he couldn’t see her for all that time, and that his predicament had overwhelmed him.
They ate the pizza in the kitchen: it was still March, but already a little cold. Gaspar managed to choke down a slice and a half—Luis kept track obsessively—and asked a lot of questions in that direct, slightly brutal manner he sometimes adopted, and that alternated with periods of muteness.
“Are you my uncle’s girlfriend?”
“We haven’t seen each other in a while.”
“What happened? Was it my fault?”
“Nothing is your fault, Gaspar, please,” said Luis.
“It makes sense she wouldn’t want to be with you now that you’re taking care of me.”
“I didn’t really know what the story was with you,” explained Julieta, smiling. “Your uncle left me before he explained. Take it easy. Men just don’t know how to handle two crises at the same time.”
“What do you do? Do you work?”
“I’m a lawyer. But I’m not an asshole.”
“Most lawyers are assholes, right?”
“Unfortunately.”
Then Gaspar turned on the TV and stopped paying attention to them. Julieta tried to start another conversation, but now his replies were curt.
“What are you watching?”
“Nothing.”
“Do you like TV?”
“I don’t like anything.”
“Everyone likes something.”
“Not me.”
“Come on, you have to like something. Tell me or I won’t leave you alone.”
Gaspar looked at her, and Julieta thought that in a few years, if his growth spurt and adolescence didn’t deform him too much, that look was going to drive women crazy. Or men, if the kid preferred men. Whoever.
“I like to swim. And to run, play soccer.”
“Does your uncle know that?”
“I don’t know if I told him. I don’t think so.”
“So why don’t you swim, if you like it? There are several clubs with pools in this neighborhood.”
“Because I’m tired all day.”
And with that he put an end to the conversation and turned up the volume on the TV. Julieta went to help in the kitchen. That night she stayed over to sleep with Luis, who got up several times during the night to smoke on the patio. On the way back to his room, he always paused a few seconds in front of Gaspar’s door.
It wasn’t easy to convince Gaspar to go to another psychiatrist. Julieta had recommended one who specialized in children with serious problems—with psychosis, but that word wasn’t mentioned. She was the sister of a famous pediatrician in La Plata, a leftist but very anti-Perón, and very sweet. Luis went to meet her himself before making an appointment for his nephew: he liked everything he saw, the house with its wooden stairs, the simple decorations on the tables—handicrafts, family photos—and the cats who barely opened their eyes when they sensed movement. And he especially liked the doctor herself, short and a little stooped, a woman over sixty years old who hugged him as if they were friends and seemed to understand him immediately: he didn’t need to tell her about the weeks of withdrawal after the first, failed treatment, with Gaspar screaming that he saw Adela in the corners of the house or his father beside him in bed. That’s how the boy woke up: he opened his eyes and saw his father lying down, his head on the same pillow. Sometimes he saw Juan dead, other times alive, but the day always started with those screams, sometimes followed by hours that Gaspar spent motionless in bed with his eyes open and his pupils dilated. Luis talked to him and the boy didn’t respond, didn’t seem to hear him, just blinked and furrowed his brow; he was somewhere else.
“Another psychiatrist told me hallucinations can be common after a trauma.”
“That’s what we’re going to evaluate. Go on, tell me about it. It must have been atrocious for him, being there when his friend disappeared. Does Gaspar talk about death?”