Sept. 21 Friday meanderings

I finished this piece last night, but as always needed a few hours to let it breath. I wonder if I will ever write another thing that doesn't have goodbye in it.

VISIT

He hadn’t seen any of them for ten years—no, make that fifteen. The last time was so clear he could play it like a video on the enormous window in front of him.

He sat in the boarding lounge at gate 32 in the LA airport, no ticket in his pocket and listened to the monotonous voices of the gate stewards announce arrivals and departures. He watched people struggle with their carry-on luggage, some expertly flipping open laptops to check their emails then banging them shut when their flights were called. His eyes flicked back and forth from the window to the folks around him. A little boy came up by his right knee and watched his face intently. “What’re you doing?” the boy asked.

“Watching a movie,” he said.

“Is it about planes?” the boy said.

“Yep. It is.”

“Good, cause that’s all you can see out there, you know.” Allen knew by the tone it was sort of a question to see if he was crazy or not.

He looked straight into the boy’s dark eyes and said, “I know.”

“Okay,” the boy patted his knee, not unkindly, and walked over to the center aisle and up three rows to where his mother was digging through her purse.

Allen looked back at the window at the scene that was playing. There he sat next to his father, drumming his fingers on the seat back, waiting for their plane. The old man had insisted they get there an hour and a half early. It wasn’t just that he was scared of flying, though he was. It was the lack of control that he hated.

When the old man was on his own turf he was used to keeping the reins of control wrapped twice through his clenched fist. Then age had narrowed his boundaries and weakened his grip and his control had become more a matter of reminiscence than fact. The family still carried that taste of his fierceness to govern them. But strangers only saw an angry old man, whacking furniture with his cane and shouting. A ripple of annoyance followed in his wake whenever he left his house.

Allen fast-forwarded his video, watching all the actors jerking around in a penguin waddle: boarding the plane, settling in seats, the flight routine grinding along, waddling off the plane. He’d turned the sound off in his brain and was chuckling at how ridiculous it looked until he picked his brother’s face out of the videos waiting crowd and pushed the play button again.

He could still feel that insincere hug. Then he watched his brother, sister-in-law, and their kids mob the old man, and he saw himself standing alone holding the baggage stubs in his left hand, the saddest expression on his face.

He pushed fast-forward again but didn’t watch himself retrieve the luggage or be excluded. Instead he glanced up and saw the little boy kneeling backwards in a chair waving at him. He smiled back and then looked down so the kid wouldn’t see him cry.

The video had moved right along to his brother’s living room and into the fight scene. He’d seen this part too many times. The old man had stomped off to the kitchen, the rest of the tribe trailing him like baby ducks. Aunts, uncles, and cousins had fled to the neutral zone of the patio while Allen and Bill went through round one and two. Their faces were stretched in fury and arms gesticulated furiously. He didn’t need the sound on to hear all the words that could not be unsaid.

He fast-forwarded through the punches, his dramatic exit, the taxi ride to the airport and his lonely flight home. Margaret and the kids had still been with him, so he actually relished the next few scenes on the video. He put it on stop and skipped the bad times when she left after the kids went to college, no need to go through that again.

He looked around waiting for it to get past that part, and saw that the little boy and his mom were now in line to board their plane. The boy peeked out between his mother’s legs and grinned at him, then he stuck out his tongue, put his thumbs in his ears and wiggled both his hands in good-bye. Allen had to laugh. He remembered when he had been that young and done the same thing. Then his son had, then his grandson; some things never changed.

He glanced back at the window, pushing the play button. Ah, this was the part where he and Margaret had made peace. They hadn’t reconciled, but had managed to resurrect a cautious friendship and build on it, thank God. He knew their kids Rebecca, and Allen Jr., had been happy about it. It’d made things easier for the grandkids too, less stress at family gatherings. Too bad he and his brother couldn’t have done that.

But there were too many of those fight scenes on the video, too many times when the difference between his brother’s words and his actions had been ungainly and immense. As with the insincere hug, there’d finally come a time when Allen could no longer bear Bill’s hypocrisy.

And so he’d stepped away. He’d bought a phone with an answering machine and screened his calls. He’d listened to his brother’s voice leaving irate messages, but never returned them. His father left threats and then pleas, his voice getting thin and scratchy over the years, and those Allen listened to again and again.

But every time he’d started to pick up the phone to call back, he would see his father’s face looking at Bill with an odd sort of parental lust, and know in his heart that it would do no good. No words could change what was. Christmas’ and birthdays went by with no words from either side, and the silence settled like insulating snow.

Margaret married a gentle man named Kenneth and Allen was surprisingly glad for her. Allen Jr. and his wife Marilyn had three boys and then announced there were to be no more. Rebecca had a high-powered job on Wall Street and one girl with her husband Teddy. The family got together regularly and got along well, which was a great relief to Allen.

Over the years, the wound of his split with his father and brother began to heal, like the hole in your mouth will after an impacted wisdom tooth has been pulled. Sometimes Allen would imagine running his tongue over the toughened meat of the scar and shake his head, sad at the loss, but not sorry for the rot being gone. Yesterday a cousin who had managed to stay in contact with both sides had called Allen to tell him the old man was dying. Allen had sat up all night thinking about the family he hadn’t seen in so many years, and toying with the idea of flying there to say goodbye.

Which is how he came to be in the LA airport today, staring at a window filled with the past and thinking about why he had no ticket or bags. He stopped the video and his hands fell limply into his lap. The airplane the boy was on was pulling away from the gate now, and if Allen looked straight through the window he thought he could see the little boy staring back at him. Allen walked to the window and pressed his face against the glass, hands on either side of his face. He wanted the boy to see him.

He stood there while the plane taxied to the runway, and barreled up into the sky. The words he couldn’t tell his father or his brother made a mist on the glass.

Then he went home.