Smile

a man trying to find something

            “Is this the place?” the taxi driver said looking at the man that had been sitting in his cab now for twenty minutes. The man’s eyes were just staring across the street at a brownstone house.

            “Yeah, it is just hold on,” his fare said, a young man of twenty two.

            “First time in New York City?” the cab driver could tell he was out of town; a fearful look of a tourist surrounded his features.

            “Yeah I’m from Pennsylvania actually,”

            “So why aren’t you seeing the sights, taking pictures? Why are you just sitting in this smelly cab?”

            “I’m trying to get the nerve to do something,” the young man whispered.

            “Yeah what’s that?”

            The man sighed, and leaned his head against his hands, “To knock on the door of that brownstone across the street and look into the faces of my parents.”

            “They will probably be happy to see ya.”

            “It’ll be the second time they would see me, that’s if you count the day I was delivered.”

            “What do you mean?”

            “I’m adopted, and these people that live in that house are my real parents.”

            “What are you scared of then?”

            “That they’ll look at me and not want to recognize me, or just reject me again. Or maybe to look at me and be disappointed of who I’ve become,” the man said leaning back in the seat closing his eyes.

            “But you look like a well to do guy, what do you do?”

            “I’m a teacher, and just got married last year, my wife and I just had a baby, a daughter. That’s also slightly why I am here, because when I held my daughter for the first time I never wanted to let her. So really I want to understand how they could let me go?” the cabbie could see the faintest of tears on the young man’s cheeks.

            “Hey, maybe it was complicated; maybe it was for the best. You look like you had a good life even with being adopted. I got kids of my own, and sometimes I wish I could give them a better life, sometimes I wonder if someone else could have given them a better life, so maybe that’s what your parents thought.”

            “Yeah my life was as good as it could get. A mother and a father that loved me, and even brothers and sisters to grow close to. It wasn’t so far from the Brady Bunch. Yet there always seemed to be something missing, it wasn’t huge, it was like as small as a grain of salt. But it was still something missing. It became bigger when my mother told me I was adopted. She thought by telling me I would stop loving her and my father, but it made me love them more. I just want to see if finding my parents will help me with what exactly is this missing part of me.”

            “If you want to find this missing part, why exactly are sitting in this cab so close to what you are here to find?” the cabbie said and stopped when he heard movement.

            Without a word the young man opened the door to the cab feeling the sun shine warm his face, he heard birds chirping, and it seemed all his fear went away as he crossed the street and walked up the steps to the front door. He looked back only once to see the cab still waiting, the cab driver waving him forward. Turning around he pressed the doorbell and waited, and waited. Closing his eyes he heard the sound of locks being unlocked, as he opened his eyes a woman came into his eye sight behind the door. Looking at him he could see they had identical eyes.

            “Hello ma’am, I am Giovanni, your son.”

That’s when the missing part of him went away.

It went away when she,

Smiled.