“Why do you treat him like that?” I asked. “Who?” “Alex. It’s as if you don’t even like him.” My father blushed a shade of shame, looking into the mirror of the medicine cabinet for a time before answering. “It’s because he reminds me of me.” Maybe he saw in his sweet, sensitive son the same little boy whose father beat him with a Brooks Brothers belt. The same little boy who was so alien to his father and brothers and sisters that they couldn’t have cared less about the plot of Becky Sharp.
