“What could you solve?” asks Darío as he stands next to me in the garden.
I hold the cell phone against my chest. It hurts my soul to know that my sister feels so lonely, heartbroken, and sad. It is true. I am not there with her. I don’t know what she is going through. I don’t know the loneliness she feels in her heart. She was abused by a person who was in my house for a long time. It was my partner, the man with whom I thought I would have my children. Besides, I thought we would live to old age together.
Those wounds are the hardest to heal because you don’t see the abuse coming, you don’t notice the looks, you don’t determine what is in front of your eyes because it is a person you consider your friend, your brother, your partner, your father... someone you carry in your heart and fo
The bag is ready to go on the trip I’ve been planning for a few weeks. I take what I need: a couple of shirts, dress pants, matching shoes and belts. Donatella took care of getting everything ready. She knows I hate this kind of dressing up. It’s not for me. I see people wasting money, bragging about having all the possibilities to buy cars of the year, brand-name clothes, and expensive cell phones. Vanity fills the heart and mind. For me, those material things are totally fleeting. The fondness I feel for those details is a foam that, little by little, dissolves with time.I hand the suitcase to the driver, and he nods as he closes the trunk door.I don’t want to think about Tatiana. Thinking about her makes my soul ache. The confusion day after day has begun to overtake me, and it is more than I can handle. To admit
I hate hospitals.If I could say I hate anything in life, it’s actually going to a medical center with all the people looking at you like you’re hopeless. Maybe I feel that way. The truth is, I’m not ready to leave my son alone. Having brain surgery makes me consider every single option and everything that can go wrong with this. However, I must do it. My responsibility and duty as a parent are to look at every alternative, not to leave my child alone.Since Arianna passed away, I started having memory loss, first forgetting where I put the cell phone, then it increased, and I started to worry. I wondered if I fed the baby or if I ate in all day. Banalities and issues that were not important or noticeable. Donatella has always been there to take care of Dante. She never thought of leaving me. Even from the time I was
A little over a year ago“Tell me something, brother. Anything, but tell me something,” my twin begs.“I’m not going to lash out at you, Dawson.” I take a sip of the scotch in my hand and stare him straight in the face. I’ve never known how to hide my fears. Better to die facing them than to die trying to escape them. “You slept with Arianna.”“I was drunk.” He has no reason to apologize, least of all with that simplicity. “I didn’t know she...”“That she was my wife? Your sister-in-law? Didn’t you know she was the one you were fucking? Let me get this straight... You came to my house, went up to my room, saw an ass on the bed, took off your pants, and nailed her like
I get settled in the apartment I rented just for this week, which is located in the very center of the city, close to the clinic where I will have the surgery in a few days. It is scheduled to leave quickly. If the medical check-up goes well, I will be back at the Magghio Castle in a short week. I try to be as optimistic as possible, even though I know that the chances of getting screwed are greater than those of being saved. I must try because I don’t feel myself forgetting details. I can’t think about what will happen when my son takes his first steps when he goes to school for the first time, and the day it’s his turn to do his music or arts performance. I want to be there. Also, I don’t want to forget him or forget the color of his eyes or how he smiles. The problem with this deficiency in my brain is that it will get worse and worse over time. In a few years, the prognosis is to affect my short-term memory. D
“What are you doing here? Who told you where to find me?” I ask him with one foot in the door, blocking him from entering.“You think you’re the only one who can locate people, brother?” he flashes that smile that was capable of convincing our mother of anything when we were little.Many years ago, we stopped being those boys romping around the castle. We are adults now, masters of our own decisions and guilty of our own mistakes.“There are ways to track down your twin, or do you forget everything we did as teenagers? Now you come with your saintliness, being the most correct of all, believing yourself superior as if you were not capable of making mistakes. We all make mistakes!”“I will go
I wake up with heavy eyes. Gloom surrounds me, and darkness apparently takes control of my vision. I stir, uncomfortable, imprisoned, and immobile in the bed where I am. Attempting to sit up, my body screams at me to stop, aching and pitiful. I grunt with annoyance at being unable to sit up as I always have.“Easy, brother, take it easy. It’s going to be all right. You’ve been asleep for a long time, it’s only fair you feel a little dizzy.” It’s Dawson who positions himself next to me.“What happened?” I question.My brother helps me sit up in bed with my back half straightened. He shakes out the pillow and places it behind me in a smooth, gentle motion.“You had the surgery, but the important thing
A week later...“Careful. Step, another one. We’re almost to the entrance.”“Shut up, please!” I snap at Dawson.I’m annoyed and unhappy with life.It’s been a week since the surgery, and I still haven’t recovered my vision. Expectations for doing so were between 20 and 30%. The odds of staying this way forever were even higher than the odds of fixing it.Why didn’t this happen to a murderer? To a criminal? To a corrupt person? Why, as cliché as it sounds, do bad things happen to good people?While it is true that I have not been a saint, I do not deserve a wreath of flowers, and I do not deserve the
“Are you sure?”I almost want to smash my face against the wall, hit it again and again until my neurons start working again. I stare at Darío. I can’t believe that he is actually blind, that after trying to regain what he lost with the death of his late wife, he is now left in that state for the rest of his life.My heart and mind cannot believe it.I cannot give it up so easily.He cannot give up. I have seen and heard so many miracles. For example, being cured of cancer, a fatal disease. Or diseases like HIV have twenty or thirty years of a healthy life without setbacks through care. Losing your vision is not the same. I know it is not, but it is impossible for me not to consider every option that manifests in m