FAVORITE SON: By Paul Magnan
Friday, November 5th, 2010I pushed the brass hook out of the eyehole and opened the tintype cover.
There he is, the man who had been the pride and hope of the Roldem line. What an ugly bastard. I was the better looking one. Mother always said so. But Roderick was Father’s favorite, partly because of the value Father placed on primogeniture, but mostly because Roderick’s temperament and greed matched that of the bitter old man.
I was Father’s disappointment. I did not have, nor cared to have, the business sense of my older brother, that ferocious capitalist streak that Father prized above all else. The accumulation of banks and investment firms was the meaning of Father’s life to the exclusion of all else, including Mother and myself. Only Roderick shared his life’s vision. Only Roderick mattered.
My interests lay in the arts, in poetry, music, and painting. Life-wasting frivolity, Father called it. Not the proper pursuit of a man, and certainly not the proper pursuit of a Roldem. I still remember the back of his hand striking my face when I was a boy, when I had read aloud a poem I had written for him. That is a path to failure, he had thundered. Not a path to success! My brother Roderick had smirked when I rubbed the tears from my eyes.
Mother supported my dreams. She held me, encouraged me. When the sickness took her I tried to draw the bad spirits out of her with poems dedicated to God, beseeching Him to make her well again. God, like Father, cared not for my earnest words. Mother died, and neither Father nor Roderick shed a tear at her funeral.
Mother had left me. God had turned His back to me. Father, having everything he wanted, rejected me. I resolved that Father should experience loss. Maybe then he would better appreciate what he had left.
I invited Roderick to my home to share a meal. I had an aptitude for food preparation. My brother enjoyed a stew I made with a sweet, meaty variety of Portobello mushrooms. He dined at my table, savoring every bite, not once noticing the off-color pieces of Amanita phalloides, also known as death cap, that I had included in his portion.
Less than a week later, after much diarrhea and vomiting, my brother Roderick passed away.
Father, devastated, wanted a tintype done of his favorite son. As the emerging art of photography had grasped my interest, he turned to me for its creation.
I arrived at the mortician’s parlor. I insisted on privacy with my dear, deceased brother. The mortician, a thin, taciturn man whose temperament befitted his profession, bowed his head and left the room. Once I was alone I located some spirit gum and dabbed a bit to each eyelid, ensuring they would stick to the rims of each socket. I wanted Roderick’s eyes open.
I applied a collodion-nitrocellulose solution to the thin black enameled metal plate for the camera and took the photograph. Once it was developed I trimmed it to fit in the black frame within the hinged, patterned cover.
Father would have the tintype of his precious Roderick, whose dead, open eyes would always be a reminder of the emptiness of the materialistic vision they had shared. Now there is only me, Father. Your banks will turn on you when you no longer have the power to control them. Accept me, Father, or we shall both be bereft of our humanity.
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©2010 Paul Magnan
