“What happened? Was it my fault?”

“Nothing is your fault, Gaspar, please,” said Luis.

“It makes sense she wouldn’t want to be with you now that you’re taking care of me.”

“I didn’t really know what the story was with you,” explained Julieta, smiling. “Your uncle left me before he explained. Take it easy. Men just don’t know how to handle two crises at the same time.”

“What do you do? Do you work?”

“I’m a lawyer. But I’m not an asshole.”

“Most lawyers are assholes, right?”

“Unfortunately.”

Then Gaspar turned on the TV and stopped paying attention to them. Julieta tried to start another conversation, but now his replies were curt.

“What are you watching?”

“Nothing.”

“Do you like TV?”

“I don’t like anything.”

“Everyone likes something.”

“Not me.”

“Come on, you have to like something. Tell me or I won’t leave you alone.”

Gaspar looked at her, and Julieta thought that in a few years, if his growth spurt and adolescence didn’t deform him too much, that look was going to drive women crazy. Or men, if the kid preferred men. Whoever.

“I like to swim. And to run, play soccer.”

“Does your uncle know that?”

“I don’t know if I told him. I don’t think so.”

“So why don’t you swim, if you like it? There are several clubs with pools in this neighborhood.”

“Because I’m tired all day.”

And with that he put an end to the conversation and turned up the volume on the TV. Julieta went to help in the kitchen. That night she stayed over to sleep with Luis, who got up several times during the night to smoke on the patio. On the way back to his room, he always paused a few seconds in front of Gaspar’s door.

It wasn’t easy to convince Gaspar to go to another psychiatrist. Julieta had recommended one who specialized in children with serious problems—with psychosis, but that word wasn’t mentioned. She was the sister of a famous pediatrician in La Plata, a leftist but very anti-Perón, and very sweet. Luis went to meet her himself before making an appointment for his nephew: he liked everything he saw, the house with its wooden stairs, the simple decorations on the tables—handicrafts, family photos—and the cats who barely opened their eyes when they sensed movement. And he especially liked the doctor herself, short and a little stooped, a woman over sixty years old who hugged him as if they were friends and seemed to understand him immediately: he didn’t need to tell her about the weeks of withdrawal after the first, failed treatment, with Gaspar screaming that he saw Adela in the corners of the house or his father beside him in bed. That’s how the boy woke up: he opened his eyes and saw his father lying down, his head on the same pillow. Sometimes he saw Juan dead, other times alive, but the day always started with those screams, sometimes followed by hours that Gaspar spent motionless in bed with his eyes open and his pupils dilated. Luis talked to him and the boy didn’t respond, didn’t seem to hear him, just blinked and furrowed his brow; he was somewhere else.