said the secret ingredient was simply that the chef never cleaned the grill, then I left a message on Mai’s voicemail - she was the scatty one - to remind her that I couldn’t pick our son up from school that afternoon, since it was my turn to ‘keep an eye on things’, as my mother put it, at her house.
It had been a little less than a month since my father’s death, and I quickly worked out that she had previously delegated the task to my two brothers, working down the list by age and leaving out the women, as she always did. I did not know how my brothers had felt going back to a house that inevitably still bore traces of Papá, his things still strewn over his desk, his favourite chair still turned to face the television, because we were all at that autistic, considerate stage of mourning, when everyone tries to avoid burdening others with his own grief and hopes they will do the same. Almost every afternoon, we spent some time with my mother, so we saw a lot more of each other than usual, but by virtue of the strict but tacit agreement between us, we avoided discussing the recent memories of our adult lives, settling instead for the shared memories of childhood, which were sweet and easier to digest.
In peacetime, I got along well with my brothers, when there were no external conflicts to trouble the comfortable, routine topics of conversation - the weather, the football, the kids. But lately, things had been anything but peaceful and a number of family meals, children’s birthday parties, even Christmas 2003, had degenerated into blazing rows. Whereas previously, Papá’s distaste for talking politics had put a brake on such things, now we found ourselves re-enacting on a smaller scale the tensions that divided the whole country. Divisions in the dining room echoed the balance of power in government, with the right wing holding an overall majority, while the opposition - my mother, my brother-in-law Adolfo and me, with the passive support of my sister Angélica - was zealous and argumentative. The radicalism of one side fuelled radicalism on the other, to the point where I found myself haranguing my pupils about the evils of the government before the 2002 general strike, even though I had joined a union only to support my friend Fernando, and until then had adopted political views more out of instinct than necessity. My family had been at daggers drawn until that first day in March 2005, when collective grief at our father’s death had brought us together. Now, however, the fault-lines had once more begun to show.
As happens in almost all large families, ours had been divided into two groups, the elders - Rafa, Angélica, Julio - and the ‘little ones’, my sister Clara and me. The fact that I was only four years younger than Julio but five years older than Clara had never seemed to matter, but over time, other factors had complicated this web of rifts and alliances for everyone but me.
Rafa and Julio worked together. Both had bowed to my father’s wishes. He had wanted his firstborn to study business, his second to study law and would have liked me to become an architect so that he could parcel out his various companies between his three sons. When I told him architecture didn’t appeal to me, and that I was thinking of doing physics, he gave me a long and detailed lecture outlining the advantages of his strategy. Though he never reproached me for my decision, I still felt as though I had disappointed him. Angélica’s vocation as a doctor, in a family with no paramedical precedents, appealed to him, and Clara’s unpredictability in embarking on two careers and finishing neither frustrated rather than upset him.
Faced with the professional common ground my brothers had shared almost since university, my sisters slowly began to forge an alliance based entirely on gender. For their part, Angélica and Julio shared the fact that both had divorced and remarried, and had had children by both partners.
It had been a little less than a month since my father’s death, and I quickly worked out that she had previously delegated the task to my two brothers, working down the list by age and leaving out the women, as she always did. I did not know how my brothers had felt going back to a house that inevitably still bore traces of Papá, his things still strewn over his desk, his favourite chair still turned to face the television, because we were all at that autistic, considerate stage of mourning, when everyone tries to avoid burdening others with his own grief and hopes they will do the same. Almost every afternoon, we spent some time with my mother, so we saw a lot more of each other than usual, but by virtue of the strict but tacit agreement between us, we avoided discussing the recent memories of our adult lives, settling instead for the shared memories of childhood, which were sweet and easier to digest.
In peacetime, I got along well with my brothers, when there were no external conflicts to trouble the comfortable, routine topics of conversation - the weather, the football, the kids. But lately, things had been anything but peaceful and a number of family meals, children’s birthday parties, even Christmas 2003, had degenerated into blazing rows. Whereas previously, Papá’s distaste for talking politics had put a brake on such things, now we found ourselves re-enacting on a smaller scale the tensions that divided the whole country. Divisions in the dining room echoed the balance of power in government, with the right wing holding an overall majority, while the opposition - my mother, my brother-in-law Adolfo and me, with the passive support of my sister Angélica - was zealous and argumentative. The radicalism of one side fuelled radicalism on the other, to the point where I found myself haranguing my pupils about the evils of the government before the 2002 general strike, even though I had joined a union only to support my friend Fernando, and until then had adopted political views more out of instinct than necessity. My family had been at daggers drawn until that first day in March 2005, when collective grief at our father’s death had brought us together. Now, however, the fault-lines had once more begun to show.
As happens in almost all large families, ours had been divided into two groups, the elders - Rafa, Angélica, Julio - and the ‘little ones’, my sister Clara and me. The fact that I was only four years younger than Julio but five years older than Clara had never seemed to matter, but over time, other factors had complicated this web of rifts and alliances for everyone but me.
Rafa and Julio worked together. Both had bowed to my father’s wishes. He had wanted his firstborn to study business, his second to study law and would have liked me to become an architect so that he could parcel out his various companies between his three sons. When I told him architecture didn’t appeal to me, and that I was thinking of doing physics, he gave me a long and detailed lecture outlining the advantages of his strategy. Though he never reproached me for my decision, I still felt as though I had disappointed him. Angélica’s vocation as a doctor, in a family with no paramedical precedents, appealed to him, and Clara’s unpredictability in embarking on two careers and finishing neither frustrated rather than upset him.
Faced with the professional common ground my brothers had shared almost since university, my sisters slowly began to forge an alliance based entirely on gender. For their part, Angélica and Julio shared the fact that both had divorced and remarried, and had had children by both partners.
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