Ties that blind

It's a mild winter day in San Fernando Valley. I'm driving back from a run in the park when the sobbing begins in the middle of traffic somewhere on Balboa Boulevard.

I cry for my grandfather, a man whose face I've never seen or thought about until Aunt Margie pulls his picture out of a crumbling photo album the night before. For the first time in 38 years, I lay eyes on the face of my mother's father. I have lived a lifetime without his presence. Aunt Margie gives me a wallet-sized copy of the last picture ever taken of him. It's a studio shot. He wears a double-breasted suit, a felt fedora and brand-new teeth. There is one word written in pencil on the back.

"Dad."

The song of my family is pitted with silences, the kind that generations passed considered necessary to survive. But the secrets in those empty spaces fester with shame and build like tension in a fault line. The more delayed the release, the greater the quake. I am my family's San Andreas, but also the rock that withstands the shaking. I cry all my tears in the rental car on Balboa and start thinking about work.

A few days that are really a lifetime later I'm in the Delta terminal at LAX waiting for the red-eye back to New York. Two men begin fighting in the aisle. A man in a red jacket knocks a taller man in a blue shirt to the floor, where the stricken man makes no move to retaliate or defend himself.

"You don't care about anyone but yourself," the aggressor yells, walking away with an older man. The police soon arrive to question blue-shirted man, who is now sitting near me in El Cholo Cantina next to Gate 54B. The man in the red jacket is Beto, his brother. They have both been drinking, probably for years.

"We don't want any trouble," one of the officers says. Blue man apologizes. "Please," he implores, "I just want to go home. My daughter is waiting for me."

After a few questions, the officers soften and arrange separate flights for the warring brothers. One brings over a plastic grocery bag sounding of glass jars and trinkets from the now remorseful Beto. Blue man refuses it. He will not look at the bag of glass things. The officer retreats with it. Soon, the older man, an uncle, comes to blue man carrying the bag. The nephew, a grown man, smiles and curls for a moment into the arm of his uncle.

"This is your flight," the uncle explains, handing blue man the ticket.

"Call my daughter," blue man says. The uncle agrees, sets the bag of shattered hearts at the feet of his nephew and moves off to join Beto.

I look once more in my backpack to make sure my grandfather's picture is at my side, in the greeting card that says "Follow your heart, absolutely." Blue man is suddenly inspired to find his gate. Gathering his things, he stops for a moment, looking at the plastic bag, picking it up, then hesitating.

He doesn't realize just yet that it's just a bag of glass baubles if he takes it. It's an earthquake in the heart of the daughter that awaits him if he leaves it.

"Take it," I say, looking him square in the face. "Take it."

"Take it?" he says.

"Yes," I say, still locked on his eyes.

"Thank you," he says, and smiles. Without looking back, he walks away carrying a harmless bag of glass.

Monday, February 7, 2000

Copyright 2010 by Deborah McAdams. All Rights Reserved. For Reprint Rights, click here.