More than once, I am sure I would have regretted my decision not to keep the photographs in the envelope. Yes, every time my mother stood in my way, every time we confronted each other, I would have made the decision to go back to that building, Thursday after Thursday, until I could take more photographs of her together with that man. She didn’t know it, but I would always have her fate in my hands, and that would make me feel good. Even so, the important thing is that I would not have brought sadness into my house.
—
But instead I chose revenge and took pleasure in it. There was a victim, my father, who would never again be happy.
Was I pleased with myself? Yes, at that moment I was pleased with what I had done, and didn’t regret it. And now it is too late for regrets. It would be hypocritical of me to regret it, and I will not, but I know that the day I sent that envelope I changed the direction of both my parents’ lives.
YOUTH
2
I didn’t have the grades to get into Harvard, so I broke the family tradition that the firstborn son should study at that institution, which shelters the best and the brightest, and eventually take up law there. That honor fell to Jaime, my perfect brother.
My mother was not upset that I would not be able to study at Harvard.
“Jaime will do it,” she said, as my father was bemoaning the fact that I would not be following the family tradition.
“Yes, I know, but I would have liked it if Thomas…” my father insisted.
“He’s never liked studying; it will be difficult to get him into any college. Let him decide what he wants to do.”
“He’s said that he wants to go out to work, but I won’t allow it. There’s no need for him to do so, but he does need to educate himself,” my father replied.
My mother said nothing. She never stood up for me; she thought I had no talent for anything. Or at least that’s what I thought.
Despite my insistence that I didn’t want to keep studying, much less go to college, my father insisted that I do something. “Whatever you want, but make it something you like,” he said.
“I’d like to make ads,” I said, just to say something, although the truth was that ever since I was a child I had tuned out whenever the commercials came on the television.
“Well, that’s not a bad idea…I didn’t think that the life of an adman was something you might like. Well, we’ll find a good place for you to study,” my father said.
“I don’t want to go to college. I’m sick of studying. Can’t you get me a job at some firm one of your friends runs?”
“We’ll try to find a proper place for you to study. If you want to be an adman then you need to work at it.”
There was no way to change his mind. He was inflexible. I could have refused; I was old enough now to go out into the world by myself. I don’t think that anyone, with the possible exception of my father, would have minded if I had gone to the other side of the country.
My paternal grandfather had retired and left the law partnership in my father’s hands, and now he was enjoying traveling with Grandma Dorothy. As for my maternal grandparents, I didn’t care about them, I never treated them with affection and they were always withdrawn with me. They were a mirror in which I did not like to see myself reflected, especially when it came to my uncle, Oswaldo.
I also don’t think that Jaime would have noticed my absence all that much. His only aim was to be like my father, so he spent all his time studying to get into Harvard. I suppose he dreamed of one day taking over my father’s place in the law firm. And my mother…Well, I really don’t know about her, but given that she was always complaining about me, perhaps she would have felt relieved if I had gone to live in Los Angeles, which was something I was always threatening them with.
But in the end I made a practical decision. Had I left, it would have meant trying to find my own way in the world, taking whatever job was necessary to survive, and losing all the privileges that had up to that moment accompanied me through life.
“All right, Dad, I’ll study, but I won’t go to college. I’ve spoken to a training center, a kind of academy; they’ll let me in and I can study advertising there.”
“An academy? What could you possibly learn there?”
“Don’t think it’s the easy option. It’s called the Hard School of Advertising, it doesn’t sound all that bad. It’s in SoHo.”
“That’s a strange location for a school,” my mother murmured.
“Why? It’s a neighborhood where things happen,” I replied defensively.
My father, aware that it was the most he could ask of me, accepted this in the end. My mother seemed indifferent: for all she tried to hide it, I knew that she had no faith in me whatsoever.
The owner of the academy, Paul Hard, seemed a very strange man. A loser who did not give in even though he was aware that his moment had passed. From the start I knew that he was a scrounger, a survivor who would do anything just to keep on living a couple of minutes more. He also saw that, out of all the academy’s students, I was different; all he needed to do was find out how, and why.
Paul had been a successful creative director and, his résumé claimed, he had worked in two of the most important ad agencies in the city. He never told us students why he had been fired, but we found out that after leaving the last agency he had spent several years out of work, finding odd jobs as a traveling salesman, or designing business cards for local shops. This barren period had coincided with his third divorce. That wife did not want to share her life with a failure, so she left him for another creative director, an old friend of Paul’s with his own business in San Francisco.
The Hard School of Advertising brought me into contact with a reality that was very different from the one I had been accustomed to.
We students were a mixed bunch. We weren’t all the outcasts of society. Some of us were poor little lambs who had lost their way, the sons of rich families, who had ended up there because no college worth going to had accepted them; others, like me, were those who had no plans to do even the smallest amount of work, but didn’t want their parents to see that they were doing nothing.
Paul had rented part of an old warehouse and remodeled it himself. He had taste and imagination, so the inside looked decent despite its shabby exterior. There were other teachers and former stars, just as Paul himself had been.
“You are going to spend the next two years with us, so it’s better for you to make sure things are clear from the start. This isn’t college, but the three of us know more than all the snooty professors at Harvard. We know all the tricks of the trade and that’s something they don’t teach you at any university. You’re going to learn more than you might imagine, but I’d better warn you from the start that the people who survive here are those who manage to forget their goody-goody attitudes. When it comes to getting an account, there are no rules.”
I liked Paul’s welcome. No pretentious words about what our futures held for us. He didn’t feel that he owed us anything. We were just a way for him to pay his bills and survive, but he was going to teach us what he knew.
Paul always wore a jacket. In winter he alternated two worn-out cashmere jackets, souvenirs of the time when he had been a successful executive. In summer, it was crumpled linen jackets, which had seen better days.
The classes started at eight and finished at noon and I must say that I was never bored. The teachers explained what they knew and how they had done their jobs; they explained the campaigns they had taken part in and got us to invent our own campaigns for all kinds of products. There weren’t many of us, no more than fifty, so we were divided into working groups. Each group pretended to be an advertising agency, and we competed against one another to win the accounts, whether they were for sausages or makeup or bathroom cleaner.
There were a few very smart girls in my group, and the hard parts of the tasks always fell on their shoulders, especially on Esther’s, while the three or four boys, like me, tried to avoi
d doing any work at all.
I liked Esther. She was Italian-American. Her family had a restaurant, where her father worked, along with her grandmother, two uncles, and her older brother. But she was not prepared to spend her life sweating over a stove or waiting tables. She knew what she didn’t want to do and she enrolled in the academy because it was the only school her parents could afford.
But I got along better with Lisa. She lived with her parents in a luxurious duplex on Fifth Avenue, facing the park. She had been expelled from several all-girls high schools. She had ended up at the Hard School of Advertising to annoy her parents, who had imagined another future for her. She went there because she had to go somewhere. New York winters were too cold for her to be out on the street, and she couldn’t go to her usual hangouts because she might see someone she knew, so she went to the academy, put on her headphones, and tuned out. Until one day when Esther stood up to her.
“I’m not going to do all the work myself; the guys do little enough as it is, but you don’t do anything. So roll up your sleeves or switch groups.”
Lisa went to complain to Paul about Esther’s attitude, but he didn’t care.
“I don’t mind if you come in and don’t do anything, as long as you pay your tuition, but I’m not here to deal with your whining. Sort it out yourselves.”
She wasn’t used to being treated like that, but she realized that Paul wasn’t going to care about her poor-little-rich-girl complaints. He had accepted her for one reason only, her tuition payments, and as far as everything else was concerned he didn’t care if she came to his classes or sat in the hall. He didn’t care about teaching us anything. He said that he wasn’t our father and that we were old enough to make our own choices. I think that his indifference in fact led lots of us to be interested in what he had to teach us. He didn’t care; he wasn’t going to fight any wars to make us love advertising. We were a group of more or less useless young people and that wasn’t his problem. It was up to us.
If there had been a spark of anything good in me, I would have tried to become Esther’s friend. She was intelligent, dogged, and ambitious, and it was clear she would take any chance as long as it kept her from seeing the family restaurant looming on the horizon.
But birds of a feather flock together, so I spent most of my time with Lisa, in whom I recognized my own darker instincts.
I knew that I would never be able to trust Lisa, that she was capable of any kind of wickedness just for kicks, and that she took revenge on anyone who crossed her. I didn’t doubt for a second that one of these days she would destroy Esther. She pretended not to pay her any attention, but this was her way of blindsiding her. Yes, she was capable of fooling everyone but Paul and me. Paul was not taken in by Lisa and knew how to put her in her place. As for me, it was interesting to have her near me so that I could watch her; also, she was attractive and dressed well, and we had fun together.
My father and Jaime, even María, seemed to approve of my friendship with Lisa. She had come to visit us a couple of times at home, and had been charming and well-mannered. Also, my father knew about Lisa’s father, Mr. Ferguson, a meat magnate. Apparently he owned thousands of head of cattle, reared for the slaughterhouses. I made fun of her and called her a “steak princess.”
Lisa was not able to deceive my mother. They immediately felt antipathy toward each other.
“She’s not a nice girl,” my mother felt brave enough to say on the day they met.
“How do you know? You’ve barely spoken to her and you say she’s not a nice girl. You know what, Mama? You think you’re better than everyone else, that no one’s superior to you.”
“Thomas, don’t talk like that to your mother. She was just giving her opinion,” my father said.
“Right, but you thought she was great,” I replied.
“Yes,” my father admitted, a little flustered because he didn’t want to have a scene on account of Lisa.
“Well, when Mama knows her a little better she might change her mind,” Jaime said, trying to find a happy medium.
“Mama doesn’t like anything that I like and she’s perfectly capable of condemning someone after knowing them for five minutes,” I insisted.
“You’re right, it was a hasty opinion. I’m sure she’s a good kid, but those eyes, her way of looking at people…I don’t like it. I don’t know why. I’m sorry I annoyed you, Thomas,” my mother said, which satisfied me.
“Well, the important thing is that Thomas likes her, and we’ll get to know her as time goes by. She could come sailing with us in Newport one weekend. Would that be a good idea, son?” my father suggested.
“Yes, that would be great. The Fergusons have a house in Newport as well. Oh yes, they’ve invited me to a benefit dinner at the Plaza this weekend. Lisa’s mother runs a charity that raises money for African children.”
“At the Plaza? Excellent,” my father said, who seemed satisfied that I had been invited to an important social engagement outside our normal group of friends.
“I’ll tell María to take your tuxedo to the cleaners,” my mother said, in an attempt to appear conciliatory.
—
I enjoyed the benefit dinner. Lisa made up a game where we had to decide what animals all the friends of her family were like. Every new comparison made us burst out laughing, and I must admit that we were both very witty.
If my mother didn’t like Lisa, then I didn’t like hers either. Her mother saw what was obvious, that we were too alike for any good to come from our connection. But just like my mother, Lisa’s mother didn’t dare put obstacles in the way of our friendship: she knew her daughter well and was aware that if she criticized me too much she would only push us closer together. So she tried not to make it too obvious how much she disliked me.
Although we had already slept together several times, that night Lisa wanted to have sex in one of the women’s restrooms at the hotel.
“It’ll be exciting,” she said as she dragged me by the hand.
I didn’t think there was anything exciting about locking ourselves in a stall—quite the opposite, in fact—but what Lisa really wanted was for someone to find us and for all her mother’s friends to hear about it.
I followed along. We entered the restroom at just the right moment, while a friend of Lisa’s mother was touching up her makeup and chatting with a friend of hers.
Lisa pretended she hadn’t seen them and pushed me into a stall. She started to whisper obscenities while she unzipped her dress and pushed me up against the wall. I wasn’t capable of fully inhabiting my role. Not just because of the scandalized whispers of the ladies who were still outside, but because I didn’t feel completely comfortable in the situation. I did what I could, which was not much.
“You’re a fag,” Lisa whispered in my ear.
Then she started to moan as though we were really having unforgettable sex. Well, it was definitely going to be unforgettable, because all her parents’ friends and mine would find out about our exploits.
Lisa opened the door while she was still half out of her dress and I was crouched down looking for my bow tie, which she had thrown onto the floor. The women scolded me for coming into the ladies’ room, and were scandalized by Lisa’s attitude. She didn’t bother replying; she zipped up her dress, touched up her lipstick, smiled, and took me by the hand to lead me out of there.
“We’ve gone a bit far,” I ventured.
“Don’t be stupid. We’ve done something they’d love to do but aren’t brave enough to go through with.”
I wasn’t sure she was right, but I said nothing. Although I didn’t want to admit it, she controlled our relationship.
When we got back to the table, her mother looked at us so angrily I thought she was going to hit us or throw us out. Mr. Ferguson grabbed his wife’s arm in an attempt to hold her back, and couldn’t meet Lisa’s eyes as she stared at him defiantly. The rest of the guests at our table were so uncomfortable they didn’t dare look at us.
> But Lisa still had not finished embarrassing her parents. As soon as we sat down in the midst of an ominous silence, she got up again and looked at everyone scornfully.
“Let’s go, Thomas, these old farts bore me. Don’t complain, Mother dear, I’ve done my bit and come to your dull party. I hope next time you won’t insist on my accompanying you to fulfill your social obligations.”
Lisa’s mother stood up and was still for a moment as she looked at her daughter. Then she gave Lisa a slap that sounded as though someone had broken a glass. All the guests looked on in shock. I didn’t know what to do, but Lisa decided for me: she took hold of my hand and made me follow her. I didn’t dare say goodbye to the Fergusons.
I know that I blushed. I had not until this moment been capable of making a show of myself in public. Yes, I had done a few things I was embarrassed of, but these had always stayed private or, at the very least, had occurred in such a way that none of the witnesses could accuse me directly, or have anything to pin on me apart from their suspicions. But the scene that had just played out left us both exposed.
We left the Plaza, followed by the recriminatory gazes of everyone we passed. She smiled defiantly, but I felt too confused to do anything other than look straight ahead and walk faster as I tried to escape.
It was cold in the street and snowing. All the cabs that passed us were taken. Lisa held me tighter by the arm, scared of slipping. Her feet sank into the snow. It was not easy to walk in those fragile high heels.
“This is hopeless.”
“Well, what now, then? I can’t walk in these. My feet are soaked,” she said angrily.
At this moment I would have gladly abandoned her in the street, but I didn’t dare. We walked until we spotted a café and I suggested we go in.