This Expression I Wear
by Ross Davenport Simonini

---I overhear two people talking. The woman wears an open-eyed, open-mouthed expression but I cannot discern whether she is anxious or fearful or maybe even morose. Also, her neck skin saggles and then jigs while she speaks to an older man in a running outfit. She lifts her right arm up to point behind her. She makes other waving-type gestures. One gesture maybe signifies despair or concern but her voice is too distant to discern so I slide down on my bench. ---She says: “Right over there in the parking lot I just walked by a green car and heard a noise. I thought it was a little dog barking but when I looked inside there were two little children, very little, not even a year old if I was to guess, and they were both crying their little heads off. They were both strapped into their car seats with the windows all sealed up. I cannot even imagine doing something like that on such a hot day like this. Those children must be dying of heat and dehydration. It just makes me so damn mad to think of a mother who would do that.” ---“ I am just going to march right into this grocery store and tell someone to call the police because this is just not right. I mean, I guess its just proof that you don’t need any sort of license to be a mother. Maybe I can get someone to call the police. “ Then she is towards the supermarket with choppy steps, a vivacious intensity to all her movements. ---She disappears behind sliding glass doors. She is beautiful. Her deep concern for children is so beautiful and I only want to wrap these fat arms around her and hug, express how very grateful I am for her empathy. Because she and I definitely agree on one thing: children are like little, vulnerable birds. They should not be left alone in heated cars where they could be sick or hurt or dehydrated. They should be nurtured and spoiled, given the potential to feel all of the happiness inherent in this world. There should be a wonderful mother embracing the little birds at all times. The mother should be smiling and should have soft skin and should bring her children into cool, refreshing grocery stores. The children could sit in metal shopping carts, pretend to be driving cars, mischievously pulling strange, canned foods from tall shelves. The mother could laugh and humorously discipline the children saying: “Now kids, Mommy doesn’t want any rice pudding. Put that back where it belongs and then we can go pick out some cookies for dessert.” And the children would just be so soothed by her angelic voice that they could not help but raise this woman to a life-long apotheosis. Maybe they hand over the rice pudding and beam their gummy, toothless smiles. Maybe they all buy chocolate chip cookie batter, go home and bake together in an old and warm wooden kitchen. ---With scanning eyes, the older man is searching for a seat. I scoot over on my bench to give him some room, to maybe imply that he could sit next to me. He doesn’t. Instead, he sits on the ledge of a wooden palm tree planter. He exhales, rubs at his silvery hair. It is quite understandable that he might not want to sit next to me, looking the way I do, smelling the way I do. ---I gaze at him for a long, calm minute. I recognize him. I have seen him here before, in front of this building, castle-like in stature, Bruno’s supermarket. I have seen him here with his wholly perfect life, with his running outfit and that beautiful, nurturing wife. Sometimes he strolls into the supermarket in the mid-evening, wearing an even looking suit. Sometimes his wife is with him and sometimes he carries a tanned briefcase. ---But his does not wear the expression of a man who possesses such precious gifts. It is a serious or distraught expression. Or maybe he and his wife are such caring humans that they cannot help but feel the deepest of pain for helpless children - children screaming inside of heated cars. Maybe they are noble people with hearts that approximate something like light. I can understand that. Their home is filled with love and I can see it radiating off each of them. ---I watch the older man seated on the planter and even though he is really only just seated very casually, there is definitely something like light pouring off of him. The light is thick and grainy like many streams of sand. The light is completely gorgeous and for a moment I wonder whether all this sadness I see on his face is because of his light. Maybe there is just no room for his own happiness, his own expressions of love. He is sacrificing himself to happiness. ---And I only want to make him happy. I only want him to feel the warmth that he should be feeling. I want him to look at me and see how much compassion I am extending towards him; because unlike other people, I understand. He might feel so incredibly alone and helpless and I want him to know how much I completely relate. Because perhaps this expression he is wearing is really just loneliness, an incredibly complex loneliness that only erupts after years of draining yourself of such tremendous love quantities. ---So I aim this not-at-all-feigned smile at him because I know what sorts of things the simple combination of teeth and lips and molded skin can accomplish. I am not speaking about the falsity of most smiles, not the dinner-party, run-into-an-acquaintance smile. I cannot stress this enough. What I am talking about is an honest to goodness smile so strong and forthright that the carrier of that smile feels nothing but a desperate vulnerability, a wild lack of self-control. When a smile like the kind I am talking about traces across someone’s face, who might not expect such a smile, that person is open and susceptible to absolutely anything. They are like a gaping, fleshy hole and they might even laugh or cry because of the intensely unfamiliar feeling. That is really what love is, not something which is good or evil but something like the most beneficial, most teleological feeling any human being can experience. It is moving forward like light and time. ---And I know that my own smile is not so particularly attractive. I have smiled into mirrors and seen that bearded reflection. I can understand how someone might not see my smile as it truly should be seen because there are not so many teeth left and because the remaining ones might be sallow or brownish from when I chewed tobacco in my twenties. So maybe the actual, physical smile is something that could be described as hideous or uncomfortable but the intention is stronger than absolutely anything. Sometimes I might smile for five straight minutes, all the while feeling an insanely wild light pour into my body, a sort of shiver rushing up my spine as the expression is fading, as the light and smile forcefully leave me. Then the deepest feeling of debility will cover me so much so that I am unable to sleep at all. I am only able to lay down on my bench and feel that sand-like consistency flowing where my blood should be. I lay still for an extremely long time, inhale in long, hyper-aware breaths and exhale with relief. ---This is all that I want. All I want is to get rid of this feeling as often as I can. I want to throw it out into the world because the only moments when I feel anything like a complete human are the post-smile feverish moments of pain. And if this man could just see me smile and understand that I am wholly compassionate to all of his troubles, then maybe he can feel some sort of relief, something like temporary happiness. What I am trying to say with my smile is this: “We are the same, you and I. We are fighting the same battles of love and happiness and maybe we can fight them together from now on.” ---He looks over at me. He wears the same expression as before. He looks away. The expression is not happy. It is still concerned or desperate but certainly not happy. ---But maybe, after all, it is only appropriate for this man to be sad about the babies, to be so wholly enwrapped with such compassion that he might miss the obviously direct purpose of my smile. Because I can understand how someone could feel sadness for small children ensnared in some uncomfortable green vehicle, screaming out their tiny brittle lungs, bawling until their delicate throats and supple eyes are very powerfully sore. So I let him sit by himself with his thoughts. Let him aim his head towards the sky and pray for the babies as if they are his own. ---The wife emerges from sliding doors. She holds a cherry-shaped purse and walks with intense purpose. She stands in front of her husband, says: “So I told some bag boy and he said he would call the police and announce the situation over the loudspeaker. He said he would do his best and I guess that’s all we can do right now, isn’t it? We have done what we can. So let’s head out to the parking lot and go home and get ready for tonight. Okay? “ ---The two of them move out towards the gray parking lot, where a crowd of people stirs and surrounds a small, azure car. I want to get a look at the people or the car or the children trapped deep within the car, but I am just too far away. My eyes have gone bad and these glasses are scratched to a blur. I pull them off, rub at them, put them back on, but there is no difference. I squint and there is still no difference. ---So I make the effort to stand up, to walk over to the scene. I hoist myself onto this cane and use the other arm to brace the catheter bag tucked inside my overcoat. The bag makes walking and standing a bit slower but the doctor told me that there was just no other way. Two years ago he handed a deflated, clear bag over like a present. He told me to clean it out regularly. He gave me fair warning about the bag, about the surely repugnant smell that would result if I did not clean it properly. But the truth is, there is just nowhere for me to clean that bag out with any efficiency. I did give it a good cleaning once over in the 3rd Street bathroom. And the Quick Stop on Barrington Avenue pumps out enough hot water so that I can experience something close to a urine free odor - the stalls there being wide and open and utterly apposite to a man of my size. But most places, like the B Street toilets, are just too narrow for a decent cleaning. The stalls are barely large enough for me to turn around, to navigate my boat of a body. ---And it has gone on for too many days now- emptying the urine in filthy toilets, giving a very mild rinsing in uncomfortably small sinks. It may even be too late because I let the urine soak deep into the plastic. I let it become so imbedded that the smell has certainly stained the bag. So now, even with hours of scrubbing and wiping in the public restrooms, the smell lingers bitter and angry. ---I know people do not like the smell of a man soaked in three-day-old urine. When I enter Bruno’s SuperMarket people will painfully inhale something of me. They will sniff in long, exaggerated motions, use their shirt collars as filters, up over their noses, maybe even cough. I will stand in the produce aisle just to feel clean and just to experience how effortless produce smells. There might be water misting on to plump fruit. I love it. I love it even though older blond mothers will give their most subtle glances at my large form. But what can I do? I can only try to make people happy. I can come into the supermarket late in the evening when the crowds are sparse, when there is no one to smell me or see me wandering near their sumptuous food. I can wear this winter coat, this coat which no longer really mutes the acidulous smell. I can even wear it in the sweltering heat. It is the best I can do. ---And the crowd in the parking lot is definitely stirring now. There are several people mulling about, speaking. Several people are on cell phones. Several people are conversing in sedated tones, coughing. But above the murmur of everything is a child’s scream, a scream which is not held back or calculated in any way. It is the frequency of cracked church bells. ---As I approach, I can see that there are more people than I expected. There are eleven or twelve people wearing tired sorts of expressions. They are waiting for resolution. And even though the whole scene is truly horrific, the scene with the babies like animals inside cages, there is also something completely enthralling about this assembly, this united compassionate love. It almost, in some ways, feels like a celebration of human sympathy and joyousness. So I am filled with a very concentrated sort of contentment when I think about walking towards these people and somehow being a part of this collective feeling. My desire is only to help, to be a part of it all. My desire is really to lay down in the center of this crowd and fall asleep as sandy streams pour into the sky. And also maybe I can get those children out of that cooking oven of a car, calm them down. Because they are just too young to know that getting all worked up about a situation is not going to do anybody any bit of good. Don’t cry little children, I wish I could tell them that. ---The intensity of the crying increases as I approach. The older man is standing with his sweet wife and when I get close enough, he turns around to glance at me with the same sad or upset look he gave me before. ---When I get close enough to the crowd, when I am in the appropriate proximity to reach out and jiggle the handle of the car door, a fat man pats my shoulder and says: “Hey, let’s just all wait around for the police to arrive. Okay. We don’t want to cause any trouble.” ---So I back off. I sit on the ground like an Indian and gawk at all these gorgeous, magnanimous people. ---A young man in a blue apron moves toward the crowd. He looks at me first when he glances over the assembly. He gives me an obsessive or tired look, turns to the older woman and says: “Excuse me. Ma’am. I just wanted to tell you that I called the police department and they should be on their way. They said that maybe they had a squad car in the nearby area and that it shouldn’t take too long for someone to get over here. I also made an announcement on the intercom about the crying babies and the green car. I said something like: ‘Will the owner of a green sedan please come to the counter? Will the owner of a green sedan please come to the counter? There is a problem with your car.’ But no one responded. And I tried to avoid saying anything about babies but it didn’t seem to make any difference. Okay? Well I guess that’s all I can do for now. Right? But like I said, if you need anything else you can just tell me. I’ll be at the same checkout counter. Counter 5.” ---And the woman nods her head, says: “Thank you so, so much.” ---And the blue aproned man says: “I’m happy I could help,” Just before he moves away, back into the gorgeous supermarket. ---And even though their words carried the sound of such gracious, altruistic people, neither person appeared happy. The woman appeared afraid or furious. The boy looked nervous but I can picture how wonderful he would look with a full, loud smile across that face. I have seen him working in the market on weekday nights. Sometimes he smokes a cigarette in the courtyard with a very intense or irritated sort of look across his face; a brown strand of longish hair usually dangles in front of his eyes. I always want him to sit down next to me. He never does. He normally stands or leans and only stays outside for as long as it takes to smoke the long and noisome cigarette. His breaths are deep, held, serious. And the next time he is there, in the courtyard on some extremely cold night, I will tell him how beautiful he is when he smiles. Then he will let a diffident little grin shine. ---The children are still crying. It is boisterous and everyone in this crowd is anticipating the police car. They are trying to ignore the children’s ripping screams. They are waiting for the sound of sirens. ---I stand up. I walk towards the car and these people move out of the way because they want me to help now. They realize that maybe someone needs to, that maybe the police officers will not be here for twenty minutes, that these children need help this very minute. So I give the window a smack. I put my weight into it and with the butt of my palm I give that window a strong, healthy punch. The glass does not break and there is no pain in my hand but the children scream louder. I do not want them to cry. I think this might be the only way. ---So again I give the window a knocking and the glass cracks a little bit. I smile because it is working and when I turn around and look at the crowd of people I say: “I knew this would work.” ---No one says anything but the young man grabs my arm and says: -----“Hey, hey buddy, calm down, okay, you’re gonna hurt yourself.” ---“Don’t Worry” I say “It’s all right because I just need to get these children out of here. Just let me try something.” ---The young man holds onto my left hand firmly. He says: “Stop, please.” ---So I use my right hand and I give the window a wrap with the end of the wooden cane. The crack is perfect and clean sounding. The glass shatters like snow and out flows the children’s thin, oboe tones and a stale heat. An alarm sounds in ups and downs. I only want to help these children, to get them out of the prison of a car and so I gently push the young man off of me, open the door and reach into the car to save the vulnerable birds. On my face, I wear a magnificent smile. ---I crawl over the leather car seat and unbuckle the small boy from his car seat. He is screaming and he is flailing his little arms. There is snot pouring from his nose and he doesn’t look older than six months. ---I pull him close to my chest and he is wailing and writhing inside of my arms. I keep his body held tight, pet the top of his head because I know how to hold a baby with cradled arms. I smile at him, pet his head and look to the crowd of people wearing surprised and scared expressions. ---There is a strong pain in my hand. The webbed area between my fingers bleeds in opaque beads. I try not to bleed onto the baby but his overalls are already smeared in darkish stains. I get no blood on his skin. I hum tunelessly into his ear to calm his hysterical crying. ---The older woman runs past me and into the car. She grabs the second child, a girl dressed in red. She unbuckles the car seat, pulls the baby up and out, holds him close to her chest in the same way I hold my baby. She makes a shushing sound with her mouth, purses her lips and sometimes says “There, there.” ---I am using my arms to gently rock the baby. I am leaning against the car to brace myself and their screams are calming into sniffles. The one in my arms plays with the stringy ends of my beard. He feels substantial and right. This warm body is definitely alive and filled with motion. ---Then the fat man is coming towards me. He says: “All right pal, can you hand the baby over. C’mon. We all just want the baby to be okay and well. Okay?” ---I smile at him until he eventually backs off, wearing a tight-mouthed, tight-eyed expression. ---And the sounds of sirens are close now. They are so close and the babies descend back into that tormented hysteria when two black and white police cars pull into the parking lot. The sirens are dangerously loud and if I had my hands free, I might cup them over this child’s ears. ---Uniformed men are immediately out of cars wearing belts with guns and clubs. Two of them walk towards me. A third officer is investigating the broken window, the open door, the shattered spray of glass on the back seat. They ask me to hand over the child. An elliptical stain of blood dilates on the back of the overalls where my hand rests. ---The hatless officer grabs me by the shoulders, tells me to let go. The officer with a hat tries to pry the baby away from my hands. The baby is bawling, making very uncontrolled sounds, half-choking because of the intense velocity of his own hoarse yawp. And I am still holding on, clenching a handful of the infant’s soft and white clothing. I am trying to save the baby from this officer who does not know how to handle a small child. You must treat a baby with delicacy and patience. You must never pull a child. ---But he slips free from my hands and the hatted officer smashes the bundle against his large, cold chest. He pats the head violently with a hungry hand, a hand large enough to swallow that fragile weight. However, I know he is only filled with good intentions. I know the officer’s primary interest is the well being of the defenseless. Because it is why he is here, in this parking lot, on this Thursday afternoon. He is here only to help, to serve. At some point in his life he made the decision to join the police academy. He only wanted to protect others. He spent so much time in training - educating himself in the myriad of potentially dangerous situations and years later, patrolling in the newest of squad cars, he received a dispatch regarding some defenseless children in a heated car. So he threw on the siren and moved with celerity, always actuating himself with powerful commiseration. He could not stop himself because he felt the ferocious undertow pulling him towards the distance. He could not help but push his car as fast as it could possibly go. He desperately wanted to find and eradicate anything like suffering. It is a beautiful image. So I let him take the victim, hold him in awkwardly large hands, handle him like a melon. ---And there is still an officer behind me. I am not struggling. I am still and calm and completely complacent. He guides me to the ground with brawny arms until I am sitting on this gray asphalt again. “Do not move.” He says. “Stay there and just relax.” And I am nodding because I want no trouble. I only want these children to feel satiated by life. That is all I want. ---Now is when a short-haired brunette bursts into this parking lot, throws her limp, servile body towards the car, the police officers, me. We all hear her distorted screaming, her jumbled string of consonants, and we point our heads in unison. Her right hand clutches onto a serrated shopping bag. She stumbles towards the car and her eyes are very open. When she sees the baby in the arms of the older woman, she screams. She screams violently and I imagine a pool of blood collecting in her throat. I watch her eyes as they frenetically take in broken glass and police officers and a sea of people, a sea of extremely judgmental eyes upon her like duress. ---The third police officer (neither the hatless nor hatted officer) approaches her. He advances with rehearsed and placid movements. His arms are casually at his pleated sides. He is approaching for an informal chat. She is shaking and maybe crying and repeating: “My babies, my babies” . There is an unsteady tremolo to her voice and when the police officer asks her a question: “Is this you car, ma’am?” she explodes in tears, cups her hands over her mouth, squints her eyes with force and points toward her babies - one in the older woman’s arms, one in brawny, police arms. ---It is not long before Child Services pulls into the parking lot in a white but dirt tickled van. Out of doors are two of them with clipboards, wriggling fingers and skirts. There are two blond woman in conservative uniforms. They are immediately on her, the neglecting mother, with heated questions, with stern, hungry expressions, with furiously moving pencils and eyes. She is still crying and her bawling is almost more caustic and boisterous than her children’s. The officers are all calm though. They are used to scenes in a parking lots. This is common and regular. ---And although she is almost hyperventilating, her children are actually calming again. They are making subdued satiated guttural sounds every so often. The police officer thumbs the baby’s happy mouth. The old woman is feeding her child from a clear bottle. No one is smiling though. No one but the mother is showing any sort of expression at all. ---And it is now when I feel this mother’s altruism, her deep maternal nature. She only wants her children back into her arms. She only wants to feel the symbiotic love between mother and child. Her mistake is obvious. It is obvious. She knows this. The crowd knows this. She has made a horrifically foul and, in some senses, unforgivable mistake. But she can move on now. She can learn from this mistake because, after all, there is no instruction manual for motherhood. There is no license or set of basic parental rules or any sort of parameters at all. They just give over the children. Pull the little things out of you, hand ‘em over and send you on your merry way. And I can see the deepest of regret and fear and confusion in her eyes, the way her body looks almost magnetically drawn to those children. I believe her. I believe how desperately hard she is trying to remain calm and serious for Child Services, her lower lip quivering wildly, hot tears streaming down her face in forked rivers. “There are no answers.” she must be thinking over and over in a drone. ---We all know these things. We all know these very self-evident but ambiguous truths regarding the task of motherhood. And look at her. Look at the swarm of light around her. She is trying and we are all trying so incredibly hard. She just wants happiness for those children. She just wants the best for them, for them to grow up in a sumptuous yet compassionately humane neighborhood like this one, for them to experience all the light and ubiquitous happiness in this world. She smiles at them every morning when they wake, smiles when she thinks about those incredibly condensed little balls of joy. But now something has been severed and she is so completely empty and she only wants this feeling to go away, all these officers to go away and just leave her with her children so she can sit on this ground, hold the babies in her arms, look at them with strong, apologetic eyes and tell them she is not perfect. She is filled with faults but her intentions are truly benevolent. Her guiding force is nothing but virtuous. There is that ebullient light-like ether inside of her. It is bursting from her all the time and she is only trying to pass it on to these children, to give them this intense emotional feeling at all times, this amazing set of eyes through which the world looks soft and comforting like clouds of cotton. ---But now the two officials from Child Services take the babies in their arms. The older woman has handed her baby over with stiff, reluctant arms and now both the white suited officers are rocking the children, holding them like thin glass commodities. They are stepping into their van effortlessly, silently. ---And with wide-open eyes, tiny fingers in mouths and wet bubbles of saliva lining their pink lips, the children are oblivious. The children are radiating goodness and they cannot comprehend this whole scene in terms of laws or ramifications. Their world is only a black and white palette of good and bad, a world of unabashed tears and violent smiles. Nothing in between. I wish I could take both of them out of this parking lot, away from the mess of these starkly shaded people, and carry them to the beach where the heated sand is a warm bed. I would shower them with smiles. ---She is leaning against her car, doubled over. Her head is a tear-soaked sponge. She does not look up. She seems unaware of the three navy-suited officers beside her, speaking to each other, waiting for her to collect herself. ---The crowd is dissipating. The older woman and the man in the running outfit are ducking heads into a gleaming car, donning their respective sunglasses, settling into car seats. The wife pats her hair very gently and glances herself over in the rearview mirror. The car exits the parking lot with ease. ---And when everyone is gone but the muttering police and the mother, I move towards her. I try to glide, to show her how beautifully I can make motion appear. With my body I want her to know my intentions, my offering of open arms, an open smile. This smile is not perfect. It may be deflated at the edges, stiff at the center. I can admit that it may be a mediocre smile because I am tired, wet with torpor, and there is little energy left today. I am dragging this cane with one outstretched arm. I am bracing the catheter bag with an elbow. This what I have left to give but I know she needs it. I know I can sympathize with her maternal instincts and her sense of loss. If she will just accept my embrace and tired grin she will know. ---But before I can get close to this mother and console her, the hatted police officer takes me by the hand and says: “Excuse me, if you could just stay seated over there, on that curb there, then that would make everything a lot easier. We’ve got a couple of questions for you. A Mrs. Herrington said that you might be the one responsible for this broken window here and we just have a couple of questions about it. Okay? So just have a seat for a few minutes.” ---So I do. I sit on the lip of a red painted curb and wait for the officer to approach me with uniformed arms. I wait for him to approach me like the light-filled being he is.

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