Free The Sum of Our Days by Isabel Allende Page B

would have ended up like his father. Only now, after reaching sixty, has he learned to limit himself to a single glass of white wine and feel satisfied. It is said that we cannot duck our heritage, and his three children—all drug addicts—seem to confirm that. They do not have the same mother, but in the family lines of his first and second wives there is also addiction, handed down from their grandfathers. The only child who has never waged war against Willie is Jason, his second wife’s son by another man, whom he loves as if he were his own. “Jason doesn’t have my blood; that’s why he’s normal,” Willie tends to comment in the tone of someone reporting a natural event like the tides or the migration of wild ducks.
    When I met him, Jason was a boy of eighteen, with a lot of talent for writing but lacking discipline, though I was sure that sooner or later he would acquire it. That’s what it takes to deal with the rigors of life. He planned to be a writer some day, but in the meantime he was contemplating his navel. He would write two or three lines and come running to ask me if maybe there was potential there for a story, but it never went any further than that. I myself pushed him out of the house to go study at a college in southern California, where he graduated with honors, and when he returned to live with us he brought his girlfriend, Sally. Jason’s biological father had a volatile temperament that tended to explode with unpredictable consequences. When Jason was only a few weeks old, there was an accident that was never clarified. His father said that the baby had fallen off the changing table, but his mother and the physicians suspected that he had been struck on the head, denting his skull. They had to operate, and by some miracle the baby came out sound—after spending a lot of time in the hospital while his parents were getting a divorce. From the hospital he was passed to the care of the state; then his mother took him to live with an aunt and uncle who according to Jason were true saints, and finally she brought him to California. When he was three, the boy went to live with his father because it seems that the building where his mother lived did not accept children. What kind of building would that be? When she married Willie, she reclaimed the boy. Later, when they were divorced, the child picked up his belongings and without hesitation went to live with Willie. In the meantime, his biological father made sporadic appearances, and on occasion again mistreated him—until Jason was old enough, and had the physical presence to defend himself. One night of heavy drinking and recriminations in his father’s cabin in the mountains, where they’d gone for a few days’ vacation, the man starting hitting Jason, who had promised himself he would never again allow himself to be victimized, and he responded with all the fear and rage that had accumulated for years, and used his father’s face for a punching bag. Horrified, he drove several hours through a stormy night to get home; his shirt was stained with blood and he was nearly sick with guilt. Willie congratulated him; it was time to lay out the ground rules, he said. That distressing incident established an accord of respect between father and son. The violence was never repeated, and now they have a good relationship.
    T HAT YEAR OF MOURNING , of too much work, of financial difficulties and problems with my stepchildren, was undermining the foundation of my relationship with Willie. There was too much chaos in our lives. I wasn’t adapting to the United States. I felt that my heart was growing cold, that it wasn’t worth the effort to keep on rowing against the current; the energy needed to keep us afloat was disproportionate. I thought about leaving, running away, taking Nico and his family to Chile, where at last, after sixteen years of military dictatorship, democracy had been restored,