I know enough English to have answered the plethora of questions tossed at me, and what I didn’t, the hotel security officer, who had been alerted that she was missing, accompanied me, because she clung to my neck and wouldn’t let me pass her to him.
I would have seen to her safe return regardless, because I had caught her when she seemingly blacked out for a brief time.
I feel a bit at ease because none of them seemed shocked at her state, yet she still consumes my thoughts.
I wonder if they know she believes herself a horrible person, a mess with monsters and dark thoughts that consume her. The most heartbreaking uttering was when she said, “I’m ruining their lives, and I just wish they’d leave me alone so I don’t hurt them anymore.”
Their concern, obvious. Their anguish, clear. Their love, undeniable.
She is loved.
“Uncle Matteo,” Catalina calls my name, drawing my attention to her from our seats at the 02 Arena in London, which I secured at my nieces’—all three—requests. “No kissy-kissy tonight.”
My nieces are obsessed with Tris Steel, as are most of the preteens around the globe. I don’t love the name of the band for my twelve-, ten-, and eight-year-old nieces, but I am quite sure they don’t understand it, either. I also hope they don’t realize the artistic representation of the sensual coloring and shape of the band’s branding. Quite honestly, had I looked further into it before purchasing tickets for them to see their favorite singer, Tris Steel, who later apparently formed a band and was joined by three other young women and renamed, I probably would not have purchased them during our now annual uncle/niece holiday in Paris, one that Hugo inserted himself in.
Catalina, Elena, and Martina are the three daughters resulting in three different affairs my brother, Hugo, has had after his wife’s failed fertility treatments. Why she hasn’t left him is obvious—he gave her what she most coveted. She has been the only mother they know because, with Hugo’s allowance, he’s managed to pay off the women who carried his children. I will safely assume that they are better off, and I am content that my three nieces are none the wiser.
Why the insertion after three years? After our mother’s passing, her will revealed that our grandmother had left strict instructions that the family’s fortune would be turned over to the son with the largest amount of assets, and now I am burdened with the responsibility of my older brothers’ allowances.
My grandmother was not a kind woman. In fact, she was as mean as a snake. Even beyond the grave, she was puppeteer to those who she should have wanted to feel comforted in her loss, not tangled up in her hatred.
I shouldn’t know love. I was not raised in its presence. But, when I found my passion at university—sculpting—I was graced with its magnitude.
I fell in love, and when my heart broke, I had to break hers, as well.
“So far from her.” Elena pouts her bottom lip out as she reaches for her like she does the stars in the sky, knowing she can’t reach, yet she still tries.
She still tries.
“Four rows, mi cielito.” I tap her nose, and she grins.
I love them as if they were my own but spending too much time with them exhausts me. I am pleased that they now have Samuel, their niñero, to care for them when they are not away at colegios, their private school.
He is a true and trusted friend, and with an endowment, he’s guaranteed payment as long as he continues to provide the care outlined for them in the agreement that he signed a year ago.
Thankfully, my sobrinas, nieces, also have funds set in place to ensure their father doesn’t spend all their future inheritance on women and worldly travel. I have ensured enough for them to take care of the woman they call mother, the woman who no longer gets out of bed most days because of her crippling depression.
My private lawyer, Andrea, who handles my estate, investments, and the like, found loopholes in the stipulations that our abuela had attempted to ensure held like an iron gate well past her time, and I am at peace with it all.
If things fell apart tomorrow, they would be well taken care of, and the estate that I have believed my entire life to be cursed would eventually bankrupt itself. The mystical blockade that ensures happiness doesn’t penetrate its walls yet manages to entice everyone in its path. A falsity in which people who have never carried the burden nor responsibility of wealth yet hold it to a blinding esteem will one day see that it is all but an illusion.
With the invisible chains no longer being oiled and their strength dwindling at each passing day, it will cease to exist, and the girls will remember times like these and learn to value love and happiness over the burden of wealth and the evil that hides behind walls. They will never know their mother wasn’t by blood, and my final prayer will be that they never realize they were a commodity in a sick ploy to breed power. They will never live without love so long as I can show them what it is. And, as long as I hold the purse straps, I can do just that.
But, one day, I will be gone, and so I must now take the pill, the same one that has poisoned me, in order to ensure they never have to.
The nursery rhymes begin, and I find myself, for once, thinking of my childhood fondly.
You see, Madre never did such things as read bedtime rhymes to her children. When I asked her why she didn’t read to me like other mothers, she told me that she lacked time with all the social engagements she was taxed with. Therefore, I never grew up and wondered why a parent would share stories of children with posies in their pockets, which represented the Great Plague and death.
A silver lining, I suppose.
As each young woman comes out, the crowd’s cheers eventually grow louder, and when Tris slinks onto stage, the roar begins, as does the screeching of my nieces, who are smiling from ear-to-ear. There is nothing more beautiful.
I look away from them and at the stage when she begins her part of the intro, expecting to see her looking into the light as she was the last show, but something draws her attention toward our direction, and our eyes meet.
Her words stumble a bit and, for a brief moment, I wonder if she has a drinking problem and is intoxicated, but then she does something incredibly beautiful. She points to the three people for whom my heart beats and gives them a big wave.
They begin jumping and yelling, “She sees us! She knows us! Oh my God, she knows us!”
Then Tris holds her hand to her mouth, kisses it, and blows it in our direction.
Through the entire performance, I find myself entranced by her act, namely the times I get a glimpse of shyness, pain, sadness, and even anger.
Emotions, so many emotions, come from her. Emotions are another thing I didn’t understand until meeting Isla at university, and feelings became an addiction, something I craved, until it was also something that caused me extreme pain.
However, Tris Steel’s changes so quickly that, instead of feeling a deep stab when she’s emitting pain, she plays it off as but a scratch, and then she’s expressing anger or happiness, or a veiled sensuality.
When the last song begins, I find myself growing agitated, an emotion that takes me by surprise. As the show nears the end, I’m angry that I didn’t pay fifteen thousand euros for the front row seats that were being scalped online, just so I can be the one her lips touch, knowing that I would be deserving of such privilege because my intentions are not to gain anything but the realization that I am of some comfort to her.