The Truth Behind a Smile

Chapter Ten

Setsunai

The hatch of the of the old 1990 Chrysler Imperial squeaked open as Stephen placed rustling plastic bags filled groceries in the trunk. He reached into the shopping cart and grabbed the remaining bags. Although he may have been able to carry the three bags out of the store, Stephen preferred using a cart. It might have been for the additional stability that four unoiled wheels gave him as compared with the worn-out rubber sole of his cane.

Closing the trunk, Stephen rattled his cart to the return area, grabbed his cane out of it, and walked back to his car. Even after noticing he’d forgotten to close the trunk, he did not rush back to close it. When he reached the car, he put one hand on his cane for support and the other on the sun-stained lid that once shined a brilliant midnight blue but now had more spots than the night sky, and slammed it closed. His sweater, a plain beige linen material, almost caught between the trunk and the lid as the corner pulled on the loose extra fabric by his waist. A dusting of rust fell from underneath the rear bumper onto the hem of Stephen’s plaid brown pants and his unshined shoes. He scoffed at the state of his vehicle as it had been with him for almost 25 years now since he first purchased it used when Emily went off to college.

As Stephen bent down to wipe off rust, which made his dull clothes appear even duller, he heard a child call out, “Daddy, no! My balloon!”

Stephen looked up to see a little girl, maybe five or six years old, holding her father’s hand. They were about forty feet away. The little girl was pointing with a tiny arm at a pink foil balloon with some sort of cartoon character on it, which had floated away. Her father, distracted by his phone, turned around late; the balloon had already drifted too far to be recovered, and tears filled the little girl’s eyes. While the balloon floated farther and farther away from her, her screams got louder and her pleas sharper. By now the balloon was floating in Stephen’s direction.

Watching the child’s balloon dancing over to him, Stephen’s heart raced faster than it had in years. As if controlled by a puppeteer, his muscles began to move of their own accord in an unnatural manner, and Stephen somehow was chasing after the balloon himself. His cane had fallen beside his car, and his old injury ceased to be as much of impediment as it usually was. Running as fast as he could, Stephen chased the balloon that passed in front of him, clapping shoe soles against the blacktop. He reached out with arm, his entire torso straining toward the dangling string. The string undulated like an exotic dancer, flirting with the tips of his fingers as he came closer and closer. His heart pounded and his lungs almost collapsed on themselves as he worked them harder than they’d been worked in years. Stephen pushed through, determined to get the balloon back for this little girl—the feeling of being useful, was just within his grasp.

When Stephen could finally just about reach the string, he had no strength left. Feeling the ticklish tracing of the string on his palm, he snapped his fist closed, but the string slithered out of his old hand. The sensation of the cord going from finger to finger, climbing up and out of his hand until it was beyond his grasp haunted Stephen for years.

He watched in horror as the pink balloon and its string danced into the sky, taunting him with each elusive swaying, waving goodbye, never to be seen again. An ear-piercing scream, as if someone had just been murdered, caught his attention. Turning around, he saw the little girl. Tears covered her bright red face, as her father picked her up to console her.

Stephen was so disgusted with his failure; he was on the verge of tears himself. The father of the little girl looked over at him with a blank look on his face.

“I’m sorry!” Stephen shouted with a shaky voice and waved to the father and daughter.

The little girl, too distraught to notice Stephen, plunged her face into her father’s chest, muffling her cries. The father gave Stephen a tight-lipped smile and waved back before shrugging his shoulders and turning around to go into the store.

Stephen’s arm fell to his side, and he stood there in the middle of the parking lot staring at the store entrance. A car behind him tapped its horn, urging him to move to the side. Stephen snapped out of his reverie and stepped aside, so the impatient driver could pass. He walked back to car, picked up his cane and got into the driver seat.

Instead of starting the car however, he sat there, cane on passenger seat and both hands on the wheel, staring into the worn-out Chrysler emblem on his steering wheel. With his heart slowing and his lungs still laboring, he began to remember all the things he’d forgotten about—the ritualistic training his father had him do, the sports he abhorred but was forced to play, the death of his first friend Kane, the last time he saw his parents, meeting and losing Ana, all the time he’d spent raising Emily just to lose her so abruptly. All these memories that he had suppressed for years—some of them for decades—came flooding back, and he broke down in his car seat, crying. The images in his head so clear and vivid that it was almost as if he were living through the horrific events a second time.

Stephen’s mind had been a blank shell just going through the monotony that was the day- to-day life of an old, retired widower since Emily’s passing. He’d forced himself to remember only the good times and hid the traumatic events in the recesses of his mind, putting off the undeniable fact that one day he would have to face them again. Never did he think, though, that he’d have to face all these memories at once, and all alone. The years he spent pushing everyone away, suddenly felt like time of just empty memories of no significance.

After a few hours Stephen had stopped crying, and the tears that had stained his face and pants had dried, leaving a strangely textured feeling behind. Though he’d ran out of tears, Stephen still sat in his car in the parking lot, hands on the wheel, but now his head rested on his forearms. After wallowing alone for so long in everything he’d ignored, after all the sadness and anger had gone, all that was left was disgust. Disgust with the life he had been given, the things he had been forced to live through, but mainly, disgust with himself for not having been strong enough to prevent any of it and then the choices he made as a result.

A knock on the passenger-side window startled him. Jumping up sharply, Stephen saw a security guard with a flashlight looking into his car. Stephen rolled down the window.

“Hello, h-how can I help you?” Stephen asked.

“Oh, good you’re alive! I just wanted to check up on you because you’ve been parked out here for a few hours now sir, and the store’s already closed. Wanted to make sure this wasn’t an abandoned vehicle, and when I saw you hunched over like that, barely breathing, I thought something terrible might have happened.”

“Oh no, no I’m fine.” Stephen laughed. “I was just taking a little nap, and I guess I dozed off for longer than expected.”

“Oh … okay, sir. Well, umm, I’m sorry, but I am going to have to ask you to leave. We aren’t supposed to let anyone park here overnight. Uhh, if you aren’t feeling well enough to drive, I can call someone to come pick you up if you’d like. Do you have anyone you’d want me to call?”

Mouth slightly open, Stephen began to think even though he knew well enough that he had no one in his life that could help him at that point, only himself.

“No, no it’s, uhh … it’s fine. I’m good to take myself home. Now that I’m all well-rested, I might even take a little road trip.” Stephen laughed again trying, to dispel the tension.

“Okay, well, if you say so, sir,” the guard said, a trace of suspicion remaining in his voice. “Have a nice night.”

Stephen waved to the guard and gave him a quick smile before starting his car and driving away. He glanced quickly at the digital clock on his dashboard and notice the time at 8:42 pm. The second he was out of the guard’s sight, he reverted to his expressionless state and dwelled again on his disgust. Unwilling to go back to a home filled with memories that would work to only increase how weak he felt, Stephen drove down the highway until his stomach grumbled. He pulled into a rest stop with only two fuel pumps and a dingy mini mart.

Stephen parked on the side even though there were no other cars to be seen.

He pushed through the door of the mini mart and was greeted with a warm “Hello!” and a pretty smile from the female clerk, who must have been half his age and exhausted from a late shift. Stephen managed a little wave and half a smile before he began browsing the aisles for something to eat, but everything he saw made him feel sick. Even the meals that he usually enjoyed looked spoiled to him and left a bad taste in his mouth. This, he guessed, was his own doing: unconsciously, he believed he didn’t deserve to eat. He’d failed as a man too many times.

Stephen spent so much time scanning the shelves in the store, that the store clerk seemed to have forgotten he came in. No one else had come in while he was there, leaving the clerk free to scroll through her phone.

The bell on the door dinged.

The clerk looked up from her phone and gave the new customer the same warm welcome she’d given Stephen. She met with a very different response.