Wednesday, February 21, 2007
Keep It Under Your Hat
I was invited to Sarah’s going-away party, but only because she’d sat in the cube across from me for a few months nearly a year ago. Otherwise I probably wouldn’t have known who she was, much less that she was leaving. I don’t have what I’d call close relations to barely anybody at the office other than my actual coworkers and a small handful of affiliated colleagues. I’m not even on a “saying hello” basis with most of the 300 or so people who work for The Man (tm) with me here in our fortified SoMa corporate citadel. That’s why I wasn’t surprised to be ignorant of the names, jobs, and relevant personal details of most everybody at the at little shindig for my departing acquaintence. Of about thirty people there, I’d guess I knew three or four by name, about 10 by department, and one guy better than he intended.
I’ve seen him around the building for years now, though never inside - only on the grim trek in of a morning, or on brief forays into neighboring blocks at lunchtime. He stood out from the general crowd because of a few distinguishing characteristics: his complection - CRT-addict pale, with skin that seemed liable to tear with a sharp glance; his clothes - worn, unfashionable denim pants, humorless sturdy workshirts, a heavy jacket as glum as fog and a broad-brimmed black felt western hat, regardless of weather; and his demeanor - grimly emotionless, as if straining to hold back a powerful feeling that might otherwise wash him clean away. He had always impressed me as a cypher, a man with little he wished to show the world and much he preferred to hide from it.
At Sarah’s bon voyage party he remained as self-contained as ever, his powerful personal restraint and eccentricly plain clothes unrelieved by the the pink-frosted cheer of the cake or the general sense of forced revelry and partly-concealed envy at Sarah’s impending escape. He just stood back from the group and ate his cake and drank his punch and kept his own counsel, an island unto himself. He was maintaining his well-worn image, but I couldn’t help casting back in my mind to a glimpse of him I don’t think he’d meant for me to see:
I’m on my a.m. express bus heading downtown, already tired of my day and staring out the window at a little piece of lower Pac Heights, the less-fashionable south end where Bush Street cuts across on its way downtown. Not many people walk the sidewalks here - mostly they park in off-street garages and drive where they please. Consequently I immediately notice him strolling along under the greenery of the street-verge. He’s wearing his familiar jacket and his invariable hat; over one shoulder he totes a well-stuffed, sunfaded backpack, and his other hand is stretched down to hold that of an eight-year-old girl. She’s in a dark sweater and parochial kilt, a pink backpack tightly secured to her slender shoulders. Her mary-janes are nearly skipping down the hill and she holds on with all her heart to her father’s hand, her face a glory of freshly-minted smiles - and in return, her dour pale dad is smiling back with her, every bit as happy as she, the skip in her step almost reaching to his regular heavy gait. They are together, father and daughter, and the rest of the world is sitting this dance out. It’s not how I’m used to seeing him, but, I recall as I watch him trying to fade into the background at Sarah’s party, now that I have seen him as a devoted and delighted dad, he’ll never fool me into seeing him the same old way again.
