Page 188 of Two Marlboros

I heard Jimmy’s little voice in the distance, and it was there, however, that I had an insight. The chill inside barely melted, and I moved toward the pantry. I opened it and immediately found what I was looking for, in the exact spot where I had found it last time. I grabbed the pancake mix and jotted down in my mind that I only needed to add eggs and milk.

I opened the refrigerator and grabbed what I needed, plus a bowl for working the eggs. I laid everything on the kitchen counter and got busy; armed with a fork, I tilted the bowl and with a flick of my wrist mixed yolks and whites, again and again, until I thought they were well blended. I added the mixture and milk a little at a time, always stirring with the fork, with which I took care to pick up even that dough that had decided to run away over the edges.

A sudden rustling of papers made me barely flinch, but I kept on mixing - the watchword was “indifference”, after all. The sound of paper slamming on the table - no, it wasn’t paper, it was the newspaper - made me stop for a moment, however. Shit. I clenched my fork and resumed mixing mechanically, unconcerned about the dough on the edges of the bowl, my ears straining to catch any movement.

I heard him move his chair and get up, then he began to walk, and the sound of his footsteps became more intense moment by moment, until I felt his presence behind me. My pulse quickened and I was shot through with a shiver that went up my entire back and stopped at the nape of my neck. I felt helpless, with an enemy behind me that I could not control.

However, when I noticed my father beside me casting a glance at what I was doing, my heart leapt out of my chest, in the face of indifference. The stirring hand began to shake. I felt the full weight of his betrayed expectations, and it felt like thatpreparation was almost a make-up exam. The little voice of the 18-year-old me suggested that I had to do well, otherwise my father would never love me again. Soon after, that of the 21-year-old me also popped up, saying he didn’t need to prove a damn thing and who told me that a father’s affection for a son didn’t need pancakes.

In spite of this, the hand with which I held the bowl also began to shake. My whole body stiffened and so did my face, which became tense and contracted. I could feel my father’s eyes still there. They were there. And my body was actually waiting for punishment, and my face on alert not to be overcome by emotion.

But just as my legs were starting to get soft, out of the corner of my eye I saw him open the cabinet above his head and take something out of it, something he took out of the box and attached to the power socket. The next moment he slipped the bowl out from under me and put that something in there - the electric whips. He operated them at minimum speed and began to stir in slow, circular motions.

It couldn’t be true. Was he... helping me? Was he doing something nice for me? Maybe he had hit his head as well as the eggs?

I shot him a look, but he was focused on what he was doing, and the next moment I wondered if he had noticed me staring at him. Obviously. Why had I been staring at him? I cast my gaze back to my fork, which in the meantime had begun to drip onto the countertop, and wondered what he was thinking about. Why was he doing this? It wasn’t a display of force. It wasn’t even a declaration of war. It was something else that I didn’t understand and that was making my pulse race.

Were we doing something together, as father and son? I couldn’t believe it. He, who for so many years had fed me on bread and insults, was now standing there with whips in hishand helping me with pancakes. I was afraid to trust that image, the one in which I seemed to see again the father he had been. I did not want to delude myself, because I knew that if I did, even for a moment, that would be the end of it. Yet I could not hold back an unnatural and unexpected instinct, the instinct to be his son again, the Nathan he had loved so much. If he turned around, even for a moment, I was sure he would read in my eyes all that I felt for him and perhaps he would reveal to me what he felt for me.

I looked at him again, but my father continued to watch the mixture stir, indifferent, just as I had promised myself to be with him. I lingered on his hinted beard and that eye shape we shared, then on the concentrated gaze, the furrowed brow. I thought back to all the people who had told me my father was a jerk and that I should not waste my time on him; yet that was not what reason told me, nor that newfound instinct.

I wished for a moment that he would look at me, that he would see that beloved son in me again, but nothing happened. I continued to watch him for another moment more, and finally my eyes surrendered to his ignoring me and lowered to follow the circular movement of his whip-guided hands. I sighed again, and that breath took thoughts and words away with it.

Do you love me, dad?

...But nothing came out. Just air and a lost pulse.

A good minute passed, maybe more, maybe less, then he turned off the whips, slammed them down on the bowl to free them from the concoction, unplugged them, and put them in the sink. Without saying a word, I heard him sit down at the table and start reading the paper again. I cast a glance at the preparation and as I looked at it, I felt a knot go up my throat and stop right in the middle. I brought the bowl back in front of me and grasped it with both hands; I ran my fingertips over its rough surface, just like my relationship with my father, until theknot in my throat melted away, as did the chill I felt inside. Silent tears streamed down my face, so I squinted my eyes to try to hold them back, but it was all to no avail: they kept falling, slow and steady as snowflakes, and I let them reach my chin and fall to the ground, as if to get rid of a burden I had been carrying too long.

I finished making the pancakes without any more intervention from my father, who had continued undaunted to read the newspaper without uttering a word. I put everything in the sink, after which I thought about what to wash first.

I cast a glance at the bowl, but a sudden thought stopped me.

...Could it be that his gesture was the answer to that question I had only thought?

I couldn’t even remember when was the last time we had all had breakfast together as a real family. Well, gosh, maybe “real family” was a bit of an exaggeration, since my father ignored me knowingly in both looks and speech, yet I knew I would not easily forget what had happened. Perhaps he would not forget it either.

I cast glances at my father and kept wondering why he had helped me make pancakes and what was behind his stubbornness in not interacting with me. I thought back to what had happened in the past few weeks and all I could think of was the beating and the fight with my mother. Could it be that either of these things - or both - had caused him to change his attitude toward me?

I looked again at that almost unreal picture, with my mother passing maple syrup to my father and Jimmy clutching at me contentedly whenever his mouth was not full. I felt for the first time something akin to warmth and affection, a tentative hint of happiness after all the shit in spades that life had thrown at me;and because I had learned to live for the day, I didn’t let it slip away and caught it.

“So, you’re really leaving?”

I was just finishing tying my shoes when my mother burst in with this question. I stood up and rearranged my jacket, then nodded.

“I need to put things in order here and there. But I’ll be back, don’t worry.”

I actually wasn’t so sure, but I knew that was what she wanted to hear. Immediately afterwards she hugged me and held me tightly to her, and I did the same. In squeezing her I was invaded by the feeling of peace that a closing chapter gives, a line drawn on the ground demarcating the past from the present. That departure, which had begun as an idea to escape my problems, was becoming an opportunity to start something new, to learn how to be in the world.

We dissolved from the embrace, and she threw me a little slap, followed by a smile that was perhaps meant to hold back tears.

“I’m going to miss you, honey.”

“I’ll miss you, too.”

From the stairs came the sound of quick footsteps, so I turned around and saw Jimmy fully dressed, with a backpack on his shoulders. Our mother approached him and squatted down to his height.

“Honey, what are you doing all dressed up at this hour? You don’t have to go to school today.”

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