Nonna says that God exists, the real one. And then there’s another God: my father’s God.
Papà and Nonna disapprove of each other. Nonna says she could never stand people who don’t take care of their own family and insist on saving the world. Zia, in these situations, defends Papà and tells Nonna that Goebbels was an affectionate father and husband but he was a Nazi criminal, and the same with lots of Mafiosi, whereas we know all about what Gandhi did, yet he abandoned his wife.
Nonna asks Mamma, ‘Was your husband there?’ and the answer is always no.
Then she says to Papà, ‘Don’t you ever ask yourself what people think? Your wife, your children, they’re always on their own. People will think you’re invented!’
‘What people?’ my father replies. ‘Who are these people? Does anyone ever phone me up and say, “Hello, I’m People, how are you?”’
With Papà, not even Nonna can help smiling, and she grumbles that he really is good at twisting people’s words.
Then she goes to my brother and tells him that, if he wanted to, he could change Papà, that lots of sons have managed to turn uninterested, distant men into loving fathers. One boy, the grandson of a friend of hers, got his separated parents to make up. ‘Papà, come back home!’ he’d tearfully implore. So you can imagine what a lad my brother’s age could do, talking to him man to man he’d have all the persuasive power to convince our father to go to meetings, to make an appearance once in a while when we have friends around, to take his family on a trip somewhere nice instead of always going alone to some poor, stinking, godforsaken place.
The upshot of this is that when Nonna says she’s come to see us to talk about important matters, my brother holes up in his room to play the piano and if we knock he yells, ‘Not now, this is a difficult bit!’
But when my father is around, you really know he’s around. He plays lively songs on the guitar putting different words to the music, so one time he sang ‘I am easy’, but making up rude lyrics and someone fell off their chair laughing. The guests are entertained and they leave considering him a great friend, but then they come back next time and he’s not there.
It’s left to the rest of us Sevilla Mendozas to play host. But Mamma says it’s just not the same and if Papà’s not around it’s better not to organise anything at all. And since he’s never around, the choice is always not to organise anything at all.