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paints very little, his income is minimal, it distresses him to have missed the boat on the new times that are shaking up the art world, he’s probably drinking too much. At some point between ’82 and ’83, my mother gets worried, and during a conversation one night, after decreeing that his studio isn’t the best place to lead an orderly life, she invites him to come live with us. My mother is still with the writer, but he lives in France, not Madrid, and so for a while my father is once again a daily presence in my life. In the morning he gets up at the same time as I do, shares the bathroom with me, teaches me to shave. I get used to his smell, a sharp smell that I now recognize on myself. One afternoon, during an argument I have with my mother, he takes her side and hits me. At night we sleep in the same room, in separate beds.
    By now it’s ’83. It’s summer. I spend July in Ibiza, the guest of a friend’s father, and August in the Basque Country with my mother and her writer boyfriend. My father is left alone in Madrid. Our stay in the Basque Country, conceived as a kind of test marriage, is a failure. I return to Madrid a few days before the end of August, and my mother arrives three days later, after ending her relationship with the writer. Over the past months I’ve fantasized about the possibility that my parents will get back together, and this might be the ideal moment if it weren’t for the fact that in our absence my father has reconciled with the friend he met in Brazil.
    Still, it’s a while before matters take their course. He’s very grateful to my mother, and I suppose that a sudden exit strikes him as being in poor taste. Until October or November, the days blur. I can’t remember how quickly or slowly the parenthesis is closed. My father appears and disappears, and I’m out almost every weekend with my first girlfriend, the daughter of a friend of my mother’s. We sleep together one night when for whatever reason it’s my father who’s home. He lets me in after midnight as I fumble with my key, and though I don’t say a thing, he jokes that he hopes I haven’t made him a grandfather.
    This will be the last time he spends the night. Everything changes as his visits grow further apart, and he becomes more and more reluctant to participate in family plans not dictated by him. He’s worked things out with the friend he met in Brazil. He has a foot in two worlds, and he gives most where most is demanded of him. His variability increases, as do the silences and the mutual lack of enthusiasm. The times he chooses to see me are dead moments, interruptions of daily routine. My discontent grows gradually, but busy as I am, I don’t have much time for him either. I come and go, see shows on my own, throw myself fully into my romance.
    An unexpected event arrives to change everything, making what was once an occasional rumble of annoyance more cutting. Suddenly we’re broke. My mother’s radio contract expires and the program sponsors don’t renew it. She’s out of work. We have no savings, and our financial situation is worrisome. We give up the maid and get some help from my mother’s father, but it isn’t enough. My mother informs her friends of her situation, and every Sunday she goes through the help wanted sections with me and we send out CVs, but nothing happens. My father is aware of what’s going on, of course. I make sure of that, but the only result is that he makes himself scarce. There’s an element in his attitude of getting his own back, of I told you so , of shamefaced compunction at having no other solution than flight. I don’t know what kind of help I expected from him, but this is definitely not it. For the months that my mother’s troubles last, he vanishes, doesn’t even call. My rage grows. For the first time, I feel full force what it’s like to be left in the