“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 again and ask you: what are you doing here? What the hell do you want?” I ignore how he turns the situation in his favor.
I don’t care if he wants to apologize. It’s too late for regrets. If maybe months ago he had told me that he was interested in my wife, perhaps I would probably think everything differently. If he had been honest and told me that he made the mistake of sleeping with her because he was under the influence of alcohol, I would have forgiven him, maybe not the next day, perhaps not even in a week, but I would have. But, instead, he waited two days for me to return from my trip, and it was Arianna who confessed to me, funny and accomplished.
How much damage did I cause my wife to do something like that and feel satisfied with what she did?
I’m not in the mood for games. My mood is to lie down with my eyes closed and wait for the sentence. It is absurd to think that I can laugh at the jokes of someone who stabbed me in the back at a time like this. No, it wasn’t in the back. It was in the very front, in my face: he slept with my wife. So now he comes with his wolfish grin and glowing eyes wanting to be the brother he wasn’t a while ago.
“You’re not going to have surgery and wake up alone in a hospital room. I don’t care how the situation between us is. I’m not going to leave you alone, Darío.”
“I don’t need you, and I don’t want you here, so, as eagerly as you came, you can get the hell out right now before I slam the door in your face.”
“You can close it a thousand times, and I’ll still be out here until tomorrow when you decide to leave. I’ll be back the next day if I have to and the day after that.” He shoves his hands into his pockets and rolls his shoulders up, unconcerned. “However, if you’ll allow me to accompany you in surgery, we can probably work out what we have unfinished.”
I almost spit in his face the words that for months I have kept, not in my heart, instead in my mind, in my conscience, for my heart long ago stopped beating for my brother. It has been months since I have thought of him in the same way.
How is it possible that someone who is your half, who understands you the most, is capable of betraying you for an ass? A woman is worth so much to destroy the relationship with your family? With your only brother?
“What we have unfinished? You and I have absolutely nothing unfinished, Dawson.”
“It’s time we got over Arianna.”
I let out a laugh, more out of pain than happiness.
“You seriously think talking after over a year we’re going to get over this? You think after fucking my wife. We’re going to get over a situation like this?” I question him angrily.
I can’t take any more of his arrogance and shameless appearance. His closeness, his desire to be forgiven, provokes me to hit him. He remains silent. He dedicates himself to observing me with his hands in his pockets; his attitude is carefree. He stands in front of me as if we were talking about the weather. I don’t move away from the door. I don’t move for a second, not a millimeter, neither to the right nor to the left. I’m not going to give him the space to enter the apartment because God knows I don’t know what I’m capable of if I let him in. I have tried to hold on for all these months for my son and Donatella. I have controlled my anger and the shame he caused me in front of the same servants of the castle who noticed his affair of a few hours with my wife.
“Wait,” I say to him when I see that he doesn’t say a word, “let me get this straight. You get here, stand in the doorway and tell me you want to be in my surgery. I’m not going to ask you how you found out. I won’t anymore. Yet you come in and pretend that the days before I lay on a table, anesthetized, not knowing if I’m going to wake up, I’m going to get into a discussion about my late wife with you. What’s wrong with you, dammit?!”
“You don’t know what’s going to happen in surgery,” he mumbles.
“Is that why you’re here, for fear that I’ll die and not forgive you? I’ll take the blame off you, then!” I add the last part full of sarcasm. “Go in peace and quiet. You fucked my wife, but I’ve already forgiven you.”
A movement captures my attention, and I’m stunned to see a tear sliding slowly down my brother’s cheek.
“You’re an idiot. I’ve been trying. For months I’ve been trying. I’ve tried to get your forgiveness, and I’ve begged for it in every way possible.” I fall completely silent. The words don’t come out of me. I just stand static in the middle of the doorway. “I will hate myself for the rest of my life for what happened with Arianna. I, and no one else, am responsible for her death.”
“Dawson…” Something inside me cracks, and I want to reach out to him, but I don’t know how.
“She threw herself off that balcony because of me, you went after her because of my bad decisions, and now…” His voice breaks, and I determine tears are falling from his gray eyes, the same as mine. “Now you’re going to have surgery to try to fix what I screwed up. I understand. I swear I understand when you say you can’t forgive me, even I can’t forgive myself.”
“Brother…”
“No, it’s okay. I understand. I’ll pray for you and wait for you to call me when you get well.” He turns.
I see the weight on his shoulders, the pain he has carried for so long since Arianna’s death. I only worried about how I felt, about my son’s health and care. I never thought about Dawson. My brother is the representation of playfulness and unrestraint, never thinking about what others might think of him, never stopping to consider whether his actions will affect the lives of others, never calculating the level of stupidity and impulsiveness when making a decision. My twin is the opposite of me. For such a reason, it is painful for me to see him like this, so broken, so lost… so me.
“You know…” he stands with his back turned with his gaze fixed on the hallway he came down, the only one leading to my apartment, which is located on the top floor of the building, “I’ve tried. I swear there isn’t a day that goes by that I regret sleeping with Arianna.”
“I think you could use a drink.” I step aside and give him room to come in.
He watches me out of the corner of his eye without moving. I don’t know why I changed my mind. All I feel is that I don’t want to go into the OR without giving my brother a chance to talk.
“If you don’t want it, I’ll take it for both of us,” I comment when I see that he still won’t go in.
And with his reasons.
With the rage I’ve been holding in all this time, lamenting over Arianna’s death. I don’t want to be alone with myself. I walk to give him a chance to decide, to think about it. I pour myself a shot of Evan Williams that I sent to put in the freezer before I got to town. I’ve always been organized and practical. I pour two glasses, just in case my twin decides to come in and stops believing I’m going to murder him at any moment. I take a sip. I close my eyes to enjoy the light caramelized, warm taste of the bourbon.
“I guess a drink would be nice,” I hear Dawson’s voice as he enters and closes the door behind him.
It’s a start. It’s the start of something I may not be able to enjoy.
I hope it’s not too late to settle our past.