“And who fed you?”
“I know how to cook. And there was a lady who cooked for us. Otherwise, I’d go to Pablo’s or Vicky’s or the café in the park. Dad would also leave. Sometimes he’d be gone a whole week. I don’t know where he went, he never told me. I miss him a lot.”
Now Gaspar was sitting up and his eyes were filled with tears. Luis was afraid something would happen to him, a panic attack, an episode. But Gaspar only said:
“I’d like to see them again, Pablo and Vicky. But I don’t know if I can.”
“How about we wait until after New Year’s.”
“Sure. Have they ever called?”
“Kiddo, they call all the time. Your friend Victoria cussed me out once, she’s a real handful.”
Now Gaspar was smiling, and his face had changed so much that Luis didn’t recognize him.
“Tell them to wait for me, because I think I’m getting better.”
“See? What’d I tell you.”
On New Year’s Eve, Luis let Gaspar have a glass of champagne. That summer of 1988 they went with Julieta to a house in Mar del Tuyú. Gaspar went fishing with Luis and ate the cornalitos they caught; he swam with Julieta, and when he raced the other kids on the beach, he left them panting on their knees or half-dead. They didn’t need to call Isabel even once because of a crisis. Gaspar asked Julieta for a book of poetry. She was surprised, and Gaspar told her simply that his dad had a lot of books and the two of them had read a lot; he said he wanted to go back to their old house to get some books. His uncle had only gotten his albums, and he liked music a lot, sure, but he liked reading more. One afternoon, when Luis and Negro were taking a nap and the two of them were drinking mate on the beach, Gaspar told Julieta that he wanted to “know things,” that being sick had “made him dumb.” That when he was with his friends, they’d listened to music, watched movies. And that he missed them.
“You just say the word and we’ll work it out for you to see them. You want some toast?”
“I want it with dulce de leche, but this damned sand sticks to everything.”
“I brought churros. Are you sick of being around old folks, Gaspar?”
“Sick of it, no. But I think I should go to school.”
Gaspar started classes at an evening high school in La Plata; it was less demanding, and the teachers, who were used to working with adults and problem students, were less strict and more understanding. After the first day, when he went to pick him up in the car, Luis promised that now he was going to look for work. That’s going to be even harder than dealing with my insanity, I think, Gaspar told him. We’ve got to be optimistic, laughed Luis.
The school was across from a plaza, and many of Gaspar’s classmates—mostly older than him—arrived early and would sit on the grass before class and smoke pot and listen to music. On his first days everyone ignored him, but one Friday, when they were told classes would start late because the history teacher couldn’t make it, they offered him a beer. Gaspar accepted, but he only took a couple of sips and he refused the joint. Don’t even think about drinking or doing drugs, his uncle had told him recently while the two of them were trying to fix the bathroom door, which didn’t close right. You know it’s not a question of morals, I couldn’t give a damn and I’m certainly no saint, but you’re taking pills. And last year was really rough. For now, Gaspar had decided to listen to him. The others didn’t say anything, didn’t make fun of him. They wanted to know why he’d come to “night school.” Gaspar half-lied, saying he’d been recovering from an accident almost the whole previous year. The scar on his arm, which was large and hard to miss, backed up his excuse.
He and Isabel had talked a lot about what he should do if he was recognized. If someone realized he was one of the kids from Adela’s House. She had told him that if they asked, he didn’t have to answer. He could just say: I don’t talk about that. It wasn’t so easy for him to flatly refuse to talk, but he had an advantage: people hadn’t seen his face. When the cameras came to the neighborhood, they hadn’t filmed him: he had spent almost all that time at the hospital with his father. People did know what Vicky, Pablo, and Betty looked like. Adela too, thanks to the photos that were shown during the futile search. People knew he existed, they knew his name, but they hadn’t seen him, and names don’t resonate the same way.
Plus, there were other things happening. Supermarkets looted; people in the slums so poor they ate cats; a truck full of cows had turned over and some local people, with no shame at all, had butchered the animals for the barbecues they’d been missing. Adela’s House was old news. Not for Gaspar, though—every time he dreamed of her, he woke up to vomit and then kept throwing up all night, entire nights spent in the bathroom, where his uncle brought him a pillow and sat down beside the bathtub to wait for it to pass. At least he didn’t see her when he was awake anymore.
He couldn’t talk about that with his classmates.
Nor did he need to. The kids in the plaza were nice to him and always invited him to play soccer. Gaspar told them that he was awful and no one would want him on their team, but that he’d play if they wanted. It’s just a little field close by here, and we’ve got a few klutzes, said the owner of the cassette player. He went, and as usual, he played very badly but had a great time, laughing hard at the other kids’ jokes. The field was close to the school and to a rugby club that had a pool and a track. Gaspar joined so he could get back to running and swimming. He got along well with the people who went to the club. He ran or swam every day if he could, if it didn’t rain; often he went after class and before eating dinner, alone, accompanied only by the light of the club’s buffet and the owner of the restaurant, who listened to music behind the bar. At the club, late, he’d smoke a few cigarettes sitting on the grass; when he ran, he’d leave the pack beside the track along with his keys, his water bottle, and the hoodie he put on once he was sweaty. His uncle and Julieta didn’t know he smoked. Isabel did: she let him smoke during their sessions, but never more than two cigarettes.
As night fell he would smoke in silence, and he’d often watch the fireflies as they blinked among the eucalyptus trees and above the dirt path that led to the pools and the tennis courts and rugby fields. They were especially pretty when there was still a little light: at sunset they seemed like sparks given off by the sun. But after it was fully night, Gaspar wasn’t sure if he liked them or not: they reminded him of eyes that blinked and were suddenly gone, or else were too close to see. And yet they were beautiful, flickering like that among the tall grass and tree trunks.
The house in Villa Elisa was so different from the house Gaspar had shared with his father that it felt deeply foreign to him, even while he enjoyed it and loved it as if its walls were a careful person who always thought before speaking. And it was never silent: his uncle tended to keep the radio on, and other times, when Julieta would stay over for several days—she was ever closer to moving in—she listened to music on a boombox she’d brought over or turned up the volume on the TV, saying it kept her company. They both got up early, even when they stayed up late—and they often stayed up late, the empty wine bottles like green glass decorations on the patio and kitchen tables—and opened the blinds to let the sun in. At first the light bothered Gaspar, but once he got used to it, he ate breakfast outside at the patio table unless it was very cold.