His death will fall on 9th February, always two days before my birthday. Alejandro will be thirty-one years old in the early morning of that day whose light he will never see, the day we'll go from being four siblings to three. I, the oldest son, will be about to turn thirty-eight. That same morning, Mum (sixty-four), sitting beside me in dark glasses, says: 'Why him, when he liked life so much? Why Ale, when so many other people go around complaining about things all the time?' On the back porch of my parents' house, while Dad (sixty-nine) and Marcos (twenty-seven) are on their way to Playa Grande to identify the body, I brew mate for the guests: the cousins, the aunts and uncles, several neighbours. Since no one sits still I have trouble remembering the order the gourd should be passed around in. Mum wasn't far off the mark. You're right, I tell her. It should have been me. She huffs. She didn't mean that. But I tell her that it would have been entirely fitting. Right? After all, who's the pessimist around here? I ask her. 'Why does everything always have to be about you? The truth is, I don't know what's got into you lately. You were better, but lately I just don't know.' I ask her when the last time she saw me happy was. But happy like Alejandro, I say: bursting with happiness. Every stew he ate was the best stew he'd ever had, remember? If he rode a wave, it was the best wave of his life. Have you ever seen me completely happy? Mum looks at me for a few seconds. I can't see her eyes behind the glasses. Her hands are resting on her knees and her foot taps a nervous rhythm. 'I can't think right now,' she says. Because it's not easy to remember, I tell her. But when was the last time you saw Alejandro happy? I'm sure Ale was happy the last time you saw him. And the time before that, too, and the time before that... Wasn't he the happiest guy you knew? 'Yes and no. I always thought that Ale had a sadness deep inside him. The life he led, no commitments...' But who doesn't have that? Who isn't always a little sad, deep down? Really, though, you can't argue that Alejandro wasn't the best equipped for life out of all of us. Who else had those shoulders? You remember how broad his chest was? He was a lion. He was solar. 'I remember his hugs. I remember how he used to call me Mumsy,' says Mum. Everyone remembered his hugs. Alejandro hugged everyone. He liked to wrap you in the immensity of his body. He did it to show off. He'd hug you so you'd feel his muscles. He'd hug you till you felt the bulge through his trousers. Once, when I was four years old, I'd knelt down beside my mother's bed where she lay with the flu, and I'd started to pray for her to get well. She likes to say that it made her feel better immediately. It's one of her classic memories of me. I always liked to hear her recall that moment, even during our most difficult times. She told that story so often - was she asking me, in a way, to never stop praying for her? I'd never known how to help her. She had never asked me for help. As far as I knew, she'd never asked anyone for help. She doesn't like mate . I pass her one anyway. When she finds herself holding the gourd she hands it back to me, gets up, and goes inside without another word, pulling the sliding glass door behind her. Excerpted from The Older Brother by Daniel Mella, Megan McDowell All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
