I said to Hiram, “The fact that I haven’t shaved this week means nothing. I only want to help. I want everyone to get along. I want us all to be happy again.”

How did this sound? Woeful? Tender? I should explain that, in spite of antipathy toward our eldest brother, toward his more hateful manifestations, it was still not uncommon—and I believe this has been true for each of us in our relations with the man—to hope for some kindness or gentleness, even a hint of his admiration for the odd opinion or sentiment, whatever. You see, in his presence we felt like children, children caught in precisely those worst moments of growing up, those times of clear and terrifying appreciation of one’s utter smallness in the world; and this smallness is excruciating to feel in adulthood because it is a form of regression and therefore humiliating. For this reason, and in spite of mean feelings—in spite of everything—we all craved our aged brother’s esteem.

He heaved himself up and gasped another painful breath. It hurt to listen to him. “Comport yourself like a man. Take full responsibility for your pernicious thoughts and immoral behavior.”

Hiram could only have been referring to one thing. I believe I mentioned earlier that our brother Andrew, a sweet guy with a heart full of caring for the world’s less fortunate, has lately been in the habit of passing the hat for donations to aid the itinerant people crowded in the open meadow beyond our high stone walls. The “hat” is a well-worn homburg, gray felt with narrow brim and a deep crown lined in dark material stained darker, long ago, by someone’s hair oil. Into this receptacle go the bills and coins from our pockets. The hat travels from hand to hand. Wallets get opened. Andrew’s take can become substantial by night’s end.

Once in a while, the hat of money will rest on a table. Someone might set it down, and it might then be overlooked for an instant if something diverting is happening elsewhere, a quarrel breaking out or Gregory solemnly lighting one of his splendid, cognac-drenched, flaming desserts.

Let’s just say for now that I know exactly the amount that I have borrowed—over time—from the hat, and that it is only just roughly less than eight hundred dollars.

“I’ve been short on cash lately! What’s the big deal? I’m going to pay it back!” I cried at Hiram.

To underscore the point, and to further illustrate the essential humility of my character, I walked forward two steps and, abruptly, dramatically, as if swooning, collapsed before Hiram’s feet. I dropped to my hands and knees and reached out for those broken lilies. As I have, I believe, already observed, several pale blooms had come to rest directly atop Hiram’s large black wing-tip shoes. This banal but evocative white-on-black color symbolism was not lost on me as I plucked up one, then another and another ruined flower. Human beings in stressful relationships will frequently behave in ways that contradict or even reverse their own most certain expectations. The fact remained that I had, in a moment of pride, demolished a gift bouquet. I recollect this now, not to defend my sorrowful deeds, my kneeling, my submission, that night before Hiram, but to articulate a postulate: once an authentic conflict reaches its climax, then time will seem suddenly interrupted and the adrenaline will flow in your blood and your head will feel hot and cold at the same moment, because you’ve got to choose the upright thing to do. I believe that the patriarchal succession leaves in its wake a readable trail—clues to the formation of character and personality—as generation after generation adapts to the pain and suffering of family life.