Personal Effects

Walter, 24, is a wrestler, competing for a spot on the national team when he learns of his sister's brutal death. He comes home to help his mother; he works out, takes a dead-end job, and goes to the trial of the accused murderer. He becomes friends with Linda, her husband murdered; she's raising a teen son, Clay, who's deaf. Walter gets Clay into wrestling. He accompanies Linda to events at a center where she works. He sees her at the courthouse. They wait for verdicts. Walter's mother takes her daughter's things to a rummage sale. Clay has his father's pistol. How will grief express itself?

Linda, the single mother of a deaf-mute son, volunteers at the Southside Community Center, and organizes weddings there. Her husband was killed by his alcoholic buddy, an incident that still lingers in her son's traumatized mind. She meets with Walter, both become intimate, and he also befriends her son. Walter is awaiting a jury verdict in the homicide case of his sister, who was killed shortly before her wedding. It is this verdict that will have a even more profound impact on all three.

The twenty-four year old wrestler Walter leaves the national team in Iowa and returns to his hometown after the brutal murder of his twin sister Annie, to support his mother Gloria and his niece. When he goes with his mother to therapy, he meets a widow, Linda, whose alcoholic husband was murdered by his friend in a bar. Linda has a deaf and mute son, Clay, who misses his father and has a repressed anger against the killer. She also works in the Southside Community Center organizing weddings for needy people. They befriend each other during the trials and Walter invites Clay to join the local wrestling training. While waiting for the jury verdict of their cases, Linda and Walter have a love affair.