Page 77 of The Photograph

When I look up his brow is creased, squinting at me.

“Will you be okay?”

“I have friends in Manhattan. I’ll be fine. Thank you, though, it’s kind of you to ask.”

He nods, face relaxing as he watches his wife reach the top of the stairs and head along the platform.

“These family arguments …” He pauses and chews his lip. “Sometimes parents say all the wrong things.”

“No kidding,” I mutter.

“In the heat of the moment …” He tails off.

Pools of light illuminate the railroad crossing and the parking lot, half empty at this time of night, and I breathe the dust in the air. He seems to want to chat.

“I think it’s more a philosophical difference,” I say.

“I fell out with my son,” he adds, a noticeable tightness in his voice. “The last time he spoke to me was ten years and one month ago.”

“Ten years?”

“Every day I think about that argument and what I said, and I regret it.”

“Can’t you apologize?”

He runs a distracted hand over his bald head. “I have apologized many times, and written to him, too. But sometimes you go too far and speak in the heat of the moment … I said some unforgivable things. I don’t blame him, I blame myself.”

“What did you do? What did he do that got you so angry?”

He harrumphs. “It was stupid, like many arguments. In my mind, there were a lot of matters he was getting wrong.” A derisive laugh huffs out. “For years I had not approved of how he was living his life, and it was all bottled up inside me. And who am I to be so judgmental about him? But your children? As a parent, you cannot let go. They are you, and you build them as a reflection of yourself. You play God, I think. If they do well, you more and more want to believe they are you because they are fulfilling your dream, and you didn’t have the knowledge or theopportunity or the will to do as well as you hoped when you were younger. But in all this you forget they are their own people, with their own decisions, experiences, and problems. You don’t allow them to have their flaws.”

I nod at this.

“I found out he was having an affair, and I was disgusted with him that he would cheat on his wife and destroy his marriage. That he would put his children in that position. It didn’t sit well with my values.”

“Sounds reasonable,” I say.

“Yes, it does, but unfortunately it wasn’t. They were very unhappy. She had had affairs herself and was brutal to him. But of course I knew none of this when I opened my mouth.” He shakes his head, and I’m struck with how weird it is to be having this conversation with a stranger at this time of night at my local station.

The familiar long hoot down the line tells me that the train is approaching, and he gestures toward the stairs.

“Come and sit with us. We will share this journey together, no?” He holds out his hand. “Enrique,” he says.

I take his firm grip in mine. “Alex,” I say.

Sliding into my seat on the train, I listen as they tell me more about their family and pull up photos on their phones. The son they no longer talk to is the eldest, but they have five children and long stories about all of them. And I’m glad to be their audience, glad of the distraction. After the fright and the flight, the sinking tide of adrenaline has left me shaky, and this is like being bathed in a warm bath of parental concern, even if it’s not my own. My racing heartbeat subsides, and I relax into the warmth of the train and their genuine dedication to each other.

When we disembark at Penn Station, I touch his hand as his wife tucks her hand into his elbow. “Don’t stop trying with him. One day he’ll come around,” I say.

He gives me a pained curl of his lips. “I hope so.”

“Don’t give up.” I smile at them both.

“You are a lovely young man. One day, your parents will be very proud of you,” his wife says.

It brings tears to my eyes. I can’t visualize any situation where Mom and Dad would be happy to have a gay son.

When I’m out of the station, I drag my phone out of my pocket, and I can hardly handle my plummeting stomach when there’s still nothing from Des. It’s so fragile what we have; we’re still feeling our way with one another and understanding each other’s lives.

---