Gaspar didn’t know how many hours he spent there. He knew he slept on the floor, that he got hungry, that he peed against the wall in the dark and that the smell in the airless room disgusted him, but he got used to it. He knew he had a dream about school: the walls of his classroom were collapsing slowly and he was running, but the crack in the walls seemed to chase him. He knew that in the darkness he cried and begged to be let out and pounded on the door and screamed for the neighbors and his mother until finally he sat with his back against the wall imagining soccer set pieces while he waited, a spectacular goal, the world’s best-taken corner, or a cross that he headed into the corner of the net, but the smell of sweat and grass couldn’t reach him in that damp room that now stank of piss and tears. When his father opened the door, one or two days or a few hours later, Gaspar ran to the bathroom stumbling because his legs were numb and his eyes had grown used to the dark, he ran to the bathroom because he needed a poo and there, standing in front of the toilet, he had the unmistakable feeling that came before a headache, those black flowers that floated in the air and opened, and then the stabbing in his eye. While he looked for pills in the medicine cabinet, he was grateful the pain was only coming now that he could go to his bed, though it wouldn’t go away if he didn’t eat something first, but his father wasn’t about to feed him and, in those days, he hardly knew how to cook anything, and there was surely nothing to cook in the house anyway. Trembling—from fear, from his wobbly legs, because he could hear his father stomping around the house, obviously still angry—he went downstairs and got a dishcloth from the kitchen, opened the freezer and took out some ice cubes, wrapped them up and pressed them above his eye, and finally checked the time: two o’clock. In the afternoon, because it was daytime. The fridge held only a glass bottle of water. With the makeshift ice pack on his eye, he went outside. It wasn’t cold, and he walked toward Vicky’s house slowly, because if he ran, the pain would become a hammer. And when he got there, he lied. Vicky was still at school but her mother was home: strange, because she worked every day. She’d said something, Gaspar remembered, about taking a furlough. He didn’t know what a furlough was, and between waves of pain he lied, he said his dad didn’t feel well, that he was in bed and Gaspar didn’t want to wake him, that his head hurt and he needed to eat, if he ate it would get a little better, that he could cook but not with that pain, and the supermarket was closed and he couldn’t buy anything, he could pay or they could go somewhere else that was open, he didn’t know, and Vicky’s mother knelt down to look at him. She told him, don’t cry or it’ll hurt worse. She said, I’ll make you a steak, and we have some salad. She said, it’s lucky you caught me at home. She said, later I’ll go by and see how your dad is, and Gaspar wanted to say no, don’t go, but he said nothing, he ate and then lay down in the trundle bed, and when he woke up his head was throbbing softly though his hands were still shaking, the bedroom door was closed so he could rest, Diana the dog was sleeping at his feet, and he never knew whether Vicky’s mom had gone to his house or not, if she’d seen his father, he didn’t ask and no one told tell him, but that night he stayed over to sleep, it was one of the first times, and he couldn’t remember when he’d gone home or anything else, and the hours in the darkness and the days following had gradually faded. But he had never again dared follow his father when he went out in the early morning.
Gaspar pedaled to the woodshop. Though it was only two blocks away, he’d felt like riding his bike. He hadn’t seen his father that morning. He was still mad at him, and scared. It was always the same when he saw, whether by accident or not, some fragment of the secret world his father lived in. Why would he show him those things? Later, Juan would seem remorseful. Or worse: Gaspar felt it was like in those movies about people who were possessed, as though something got inside him and transformed him into someone else; the person who had shown him that box was not his father. He couldn’t explain it. The box with eyelids had been one of the most horrible souvenirs his father had let him see, but, like the others, it gradually transformed into a dream, the memory withdrew to a region where it was hard to access, where it lost strength. Gaspar realized that, even while the numb forgetting was comforting, it was also a strange thing. The incident with the box had not been a dream, that was clear, but he felt it like one, and it was more bearable like that. It was the same way he had almost forgotten the red handprints on the walls upstairs. Or the voice that had resounded in his head one night, so powerful he ran upstairs and banged on his father’s bedroom door until he opened it, disheveled and with something like a film of oil over his eyes. Or when he’d found his dad walking like a sleepwalker through the house with something written on his inner arm, two words he couldn’t forget: Solve and Coagula. He’d looked them up in the dictionary, but it turned out they weren’t Spanish words: they were Latin. There was a Latin dictionary in his school’s library, but it was always checked out. And anyway, sometimes he preferred not to know. His father had disappeared for a week after showing him the box of eyelids. Now he was back, but they hardly saw each other.
Gaspar had to pick up his present for Adela at the woodshop. He’d found the diagram in a book in the library at his house, and he’d torn out the page and given it to the carpenter so he could copy the design. The workshop was open but there was no one at the counter; Gaspar clapped and the sound of his hands echoed in the warehouse. Then he heard a door open, and when Don Sixto saw him, he shouted: Oh, wait just a sec, kiddo. And then he came from the back with the diagram and the box.
“Let’s see if it’s what you wanted,” he said.
Gaspar looked first at the diagram to be sure it was at least similar.
It was. The mirror in the middle, separating the two compartments, a hole in each of them. Gaspar stuck his own arm in the right-side hole: it fit comfortably. The box was pretty big, but Don Sixto had used a light wood and Gaspar could lift it effortlessly. The mirror has to be a little heavy, Sixto said, but pine doesn’t weigh a thing. Is it what you wanted?
Yes, replied Gaspar, and he looked at his own arm in the mirror. The box was perfect.
Adela was celebrating her birthday at her house. The Peiranos, of course, had offered theirs, but Adela had said no thanks, and later she’d admitted to Gaspar that she didn’t want to use that big yard for her party, which would have so few guests. It’d be more noticeable that no one had come, she said, and Gaspar understood. It was better to do something simple at Adela and Betty’s small but pleasant apartment, because one particular absence was always felt: her father’s, whom no one knew. Once, while they were washing dishes, Vicky had asked her mom if it was true that Adela’s dad had been taken away, and Gaspar, who was drying the silverware, had heard the reply: The truth is, Vicky, Betty was already alone when I met her. I don’t know who Adela’s father is and I never asked. You don’t ask about those things unless the person tells you first.
Betty had decorated the house quite well. There were streamers hung all down the passageway to the last door, the one to Adela and Betty’s apartment, which was hung with a Sarah Kay poster that said “Happy Birthday!” beside a picture of a girl smelling a rose. Adela’s grandparents were already there when Gaspar arrived, plus Vicky, and Virginia with her water game she never put down, Lucrecia, a classmate who was quite tight with the girls, and that was it. They were only waiting on Pablo, who was always late. He finally showed up with a thousand-piece jigsaw puzzle of a German castle with an unpronounceable name; Adela thanked him with a hug: she liked puzzles, but she liked castles even more. Betty seemed pleased and excited; the grandparents, on the other hand, sipped their sodas in silence. They were taciturn in general, not at all affectionate, not your typical grandparents. They only appeared at birthdays, and when they did speak, it was only to Betty. Adela, though, assured her friends she had a great time with them every summer when she went to their vacation home in San Isidro. The cake was very good: a sponge cake filled with dulce de leche and custard, with chocolate icing decorated with little silver sprinkles. Gaspar ate a piece after clapping during “Happy Birthday”—he never sang out loud in public—and he felt full; he’d eaten a lot of hot dogs. The grandparents asked Adela to try on the dress they’d given her; it was white, like a First Communion dress, and she modelled it with a fake smile—it was obvious she didn’t like it, but didn’t want to offend them. They left soon after. The kids waved goodbye to them and then, finally alone, they felt relieved. There was something about the grandparents that made them uncomfortable: they seemed to be there out of obligation, like they were following orders. Lucrecia also had to leave early, and then Adela sprawled out theatrically on the sofa. Pablo, who was finishing a piece of cake, offered to cut her another, and she accepted. Then, with her lips smeared with dulce de leche—it wasn’t easy for her to hold the napkin and eat neatly with only one hand—she told Gaspar: “I want my present!”