disquiet

He sits in front of me, from across the table, like a wax statue: his back straight, unmoving; his gnarled hands cupped over a walking stick pointed at the wooden floor. His eyes straight into mine. He doesn't need rigor mortis to lock his limbs in that pose. His pride will do him in, and as the first-born, I should inherit everything (but he has to die first).

But as the only de la Casta to be cut off (cast off?), I'd get nothing from the old man. Father closed his banks, shut down his factories, and shook other gnarled hands, for the last time, fifteen years ago. I was fifteen.

Business, I always thought, appeared in Alejandro's mind as a means to buy respect. To my two uncles, father's brothers, business legitimated loud nights drinking with the governors, the mayors, the head of police, and actors who brandish guns. Business was, to the other de la Castas, a given. A wallet to open up in public, to draw in envious eyes, to waste and wine.

So when Emerito and Pablo de la Casta stabbed their eldest brother, and left him for dead, mother's heart stopped, right here, on the spot Alejandro's walking stick points at. Like an epitaph.

Father stomps his stick once. It is enough. I raise my eyes, from the floor, to meet his. Is it settled, then? his eyes ask. Father is, always has been, too soft.

There is so much for which he should not forgive me. His brothers. My mother. And soon my own brothers.

Yet he is here. In the house he used to call his home, now my own.

I stare back a long time. Steel against unyielding wood. Steel doesn't blink, doesn't creak. Finally, Alejandro sighs, from across the table. He is amused that I am amused that he is amused.

The man who taught me to trust in others, but plan ahead anyway, leans on his walking stick, as he limps away. He knows that I know that I'd do it anyway. His coming here was his way of giving me a stiff hug. The kind gentlemen of old times gave their sons.

The door closes behind him and I am left alone in the house that raised me.