I awoke with a jerk… yanked back into consciousness… sweating… it was a dream; a dream within a dream, eh? Damn, spiritual banter… “I came home to get away from that crap.”
It was cold. I’d left a window open last night before I passed out wearing only light cotton pajamas. Off to the side, over the garage, a light cast a glow onto the lawn from the servant’s quarters. Other than that the house was as empty as it was large. I needed to talk with somebody and Gotson... Gotson, a Basque name for angel, he had been a guardian angel to me throughout my tumultuous and awkward teens. He was there, when Papa wasn’t, to console me as well after the tragedy…, the lingering death of my younger brother, Eder. Now, it only seemed fitting that I should find comfort in the company of this single-most dependable man in my life now that Papa is gone.I tapped lightly at his door, “Gotson… are you awake? It is me, Adriane.”
The door swung open as though he’d been standing at it as I approached, “Of course, Adriane, please come in.”
I could see the loom of the light of the morning sun rising above the hills from the window of his small but comfortable room. “I see why you didn’t take a bigger room in the house when Pere offered.”
“Yes, I have room enough to take care of here.” He moved some magazines and books off the chair at his desk and motioned for me to sit. “How are you doing, my sparrow?”
I looked around the room. A picture of me is framed on the wall next to his writing desk. I am fourteen, naked in the surf with my arms stretched above to the heavens. He’d snapped that picture in better days… before the incident with Robert. Next to it was one of Gotson with an arm over Papa’s shoulder from the days before Madrid fell. They cut dashing figures as they stood in berets… boyish grins… like they were going to bite-off Franco’s balls. Papa’s eyes were raised to the taller, hardened veteran, as though he were a fan standing next to a soccer star. Papa was eighteen, Gotson was sixteen, looking much older than Papa, but neither showed a hint of the reticence of age… yet.
“You are always up before dawn even when no one is here.” I stood by the window.
“Yes, but you know that… how are you?”
“Oh, I don’t know… things are so strange. Robert is in charge of everything. Mother is content to let him run all our affairs… what have I to do?”
“And this is not okay with you?”
“I can’t complain… I am hardly ever here anyway. Robert can handle all the lawyers and banks… the estate. I counted on being here for Mama, and that’s all, but Robert swooped in and scooped her up before I could do anything.”
“You could have come for the funeral, perhaps?”
“”The burial services were nauseous enough for me.” It is a sore subject for me since the village wouldn’t allow my little brother, Eder, to be entered on church grounds. Memories of the fucking village assholes, so afraid of queers and AIDS, sitting with the bishop in his office while Papa and I pled, still brings up a taste… the bitterness of bile from my guts.”
“Understood, so, what is it you plan to do now?” he held both my hands. It was a comfortable gesture and a fatherly one I’d missed from my real father. Eder too was like a son to him as he was named after Gotson’s father. The once jet-black hair of the Spanish Civil War vet was completely white now but time had been kinder to his gentle features. The lines on his face now have the contours of laughter and kindness, and hardly at all from hard chiseled revolutionary fevers his face showed in the old photographs. He and my father had survived the Hitler, Franco, Stalinist partisans and the hungry years that followed the war. Papa, an Italian with good business instincts, had amassed tremendous wealth and had become one of the powerhouses of France’s recovery after the war. He’d been instrumental in helping Charles De Gaulle found what would become the Fifth French Republic in ‘58’ while Gotzon suffered in Franco’s prisons after leading a small band of Basque Separatists in the Pyrenees. Still, to his credit, Papa managed to bribe, maneuver and otherwise wrangle, the Franco government into releasing the Basque Terrorist, Gotson, in time for my Christening.
“I don’t know.”
“You don’t look well… are you… again?”
“Is it that obvious?” I was sweating and I was cold. Every cell in my body ached.
“Please, little Sparrow…” his brow knitted before he spoke, “There is a spa in Switzerland; Edelweiss… I believe.”
“No, no Gotson… don’t go on like my brother. Robert taunts me all the time. I can’t go through that again.”
“But you are so sick, my Sparrow…”
“”Yes, but I can get through this. I’ve done it several times already.” I knew that I could too. It wasn’t just bravado. “You know, Robert wanted to have me declared incompetent the last time…”
“No, even your dad never told me… though I did suspect something was troubling him after you left that last one.”
“No way am I going to grant him another opportunity. I am going to take this respite to get clean and go back to California where Robert won’t be watching every move I make.”
“Suddenly, the odor of fresh coffee caused my stomach to turn, “Please excuse me Gotson, I have to …”
Gotson put a trash can under my chin just in time.
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