There were no milk deliveries to residences on Saturdays, just to commercial businesses, and there were relatively few of these in the Borough. My father would finish his deliveries early, then swing by the house for Bobby Marconi and me so we could “surf the truck.” The empty metal milk crates were by then stacked and roped off against the side panels to prevent them from sliding and bouncing around when he turned corners. His careful stacking left most of the back empty, and Bobby and I would stand in the space created, our feet planted firmly on the ribbed floor, and pretend to surf, our arms out at our sides to keep our balance as the truck rattled along the wide Borough streets. I always surfed in the forward position, an advantage because you could see the turns coming. Bobby, as athletic in the milk truck as he was elsewhere, surfed more or less blind behind me. Not being able to see what was coming made the game that much more fun, he claimed, though I did help him by calling out “Left!” or “Sharp right!” when a turn approached. The idea was to make it through these turns without grabbing the empty milk crates for balance or the rail that ran the length of the truck, my father chortling appreciatively up front in the driver’s seat as we crashed about.
Of course my father wasn’t supposed to take Bobby and me on his route, but the rules were lax and people did it all the time, was his thinking. There was no passenger seat, since there weren’t supposed to be any passengers, so if my father braked hard, there was nothing to stop Bobby and me but the metal dash. My father would try to grab us as we flew by, and he was good at it, but you never knew what his big fist would grab hold of—an arm, your hair—and being saved from hitting the console sometimes hurt worse than colliding with it.
“No, you ain’t gonna do no surfing today,” he’d tell us first thing each Saturday. “Bobby’s dad don’t want him doing that no more.” Mr. Marconi had made that pretty clear early on. Bobby had come home with a knot on his forehead, and his father had wanted to know why, so he’d explained how we always surfed the milk truck. It was fun, he said, and not really dangerous because my father never went fast. Which was true—you couldn’t go fast in a milk truck if you tried.
But the next Saturday, when we pulled up in the truck, Mr. Marconi came out, too, and took my father aside. “Tell me about this surfing,” he demanded, leaning toward him aggressively, his birthmark a bright purple. Lately, things had gotten a little easier between them, so much so that my father had remarked on it, even speculating that his neighbor had decided to bury the hatchet.
My father explained to him how devoted we were to our surfing on Saturday mornings, how we looked forward to it all week, how Mr. Marconi should hear how we laughed and shouted there in the back of the truck, how we hated it when he finally said that was enough. He said he was sorry about Bobby getting that lump on his noggin last week. “He don’t like to grab on till the last second,” he explained, which was true. It was Bobby’s fearlessness, his refusal to grab on to the rail or the stacked crates to keep from going flying, that had caused the injury. “Don’t worry,” my father assured him. “I keep a pretty good eye on ’em.”
“You better had,” Mr. Marconi said. “Anything happens to my boy in that truck, you’re responsible.”
So the following Saturday, the new rule was No Surfing the Truck, but that made us miserable. There was no reason to be in the truck if we weren’t allowed to surf. “Just a little,” we pleaded. “Just five minutes? Just around this one corner? Pleeeeeease?” And so it was that we wore my father down. Over time we went from No Surfing to No Surfing Till We’re Headed Back Home, thus limiting the amount of time for an injury to occur, to Be Careful, You Two, Because Bobby’s Dad Will Skin Me Alive If He Gets Hurt, and If He Don’t Your Mother Will, because, truth be told, she didn’t like the idea either.
Why so much worry about us getting hurt? Well, because that’s what invariably happened. Otherwise, how would we know the game was over? Of course our injuries were not serious—a jammed finger, a skinned knee, usually—and most Saturdays we surfed until I cried, because Bobby, when he was injured, refused to cry, so my father didn’t know he’d been hurt and the fun could continue. I deeply envied Bobby his self-control and tried my best to emulate him, even as I suspected I’d never master the trick. Why he never cried was an even deeper mystery to me than why he never had to pay the bridge toll back when we lived on Berman Court. Every Saturday I’d tell myself that I wasn’t going to cry, but when the time came and I went crashing into the side of the truck, and my father, hearing the impact, turned around in his seat to check on us, my resolution would dissolve, not so much because of the pain as from his expression, which suggested that he knew I was hurt, that I couldn’t fool him anyway, so why try? And then the tears would just be there, brimming over, no holding them back.
Still, before long we’d forgotten all about Mr. Marconi’s solemn warning, and why not? He had to know we were back at it. One or the other of us always got off the milk truck limping or rubbing an elbow, but we were also in high spirits, laughing and shouting and trying to get my father to promise we’d do it again next Saturday. Which wasn’t hard work, since he enjoyed the whole thing about as much as we did. He never talked about his own childhood, but according to my mother it couldn’t really be called a childhood at all, just an unrelenting series of chores, from sunrise to sunset, bleak and unending, which was why, she explained, he wasn’t anxious for me to have a paper route like Bobby or to be overburdened with responsibilities around the house. I was to keep my room clean and study when I was supposed to, but otherwise I was simply to be the sort of boy my father never had a chance to be. The pleasure he took in our joy when we surfed his milk truck was purely vicarious, and his grin was ear to ear.
My own Saturday morning happiness was more complex. It’s true that I looked forward all week to our surfing. As I said, it was about the only time Bobby and I got to spend together. But as the summer wore on I became troubled by the knowledge that part of me was waiting for, indeed looking forward to, my friend getting hurt. It had, of course, nothing to do with him and everything to do with my own cowardice and jealousy. The jealous part had to do, I think, with my understanding that Bobby’s bravery meant he was having more fun, something that my own cowardly bailing out had robbed me of. Each week I told myself I’d be braver, that this Saturday I wouldn’t reach out and hold on for safety. I’d surrender control and be flung about, laughing and full of joyous abandon. But every outing was the same as the last, and when the moment came, I grabbed on. Gradually, since wishing for courage didn’t work, I began wishing for something else entirely. I never wanted Bobby to be seriously injured, of course. That would have meant the end of everything. But I did wish that just once he’d be hurt bad enough to cry, which would lessen the gulf I perceived between him and me.
And so our milk-truck surfing ended the only way it could. I didn’t actually see Bobby break his wrist when he was flung against the side of the truck. I heard the bone snap, though. What saved me from suffering the same fate was my cowardice. I’d seen the curve coming and at the last second reached out and grabbed one of the tied-off milk crates. Bobby, taken by surprise, went flying.
He must’ve known that his wrist was broken, because he went very pale, and when our eyes met and he saw my shock and fear, he immediately sat down with his back to the panel, cradling his hand in his lap against the truck’s vibrations. I think what my father heard wasn’t the terrible crack of Bobby’s wrist but only the silence that followed, and he immediately called back to us, wanting to know if we were all right. When Bobby refused to speak, I said that we were, but he knew better. If we weren’t whooping and hollering back there, something was wrong, and more seriously wrong than what happened every other Saturday morning. He didn’t just pull over and climb back into the dark interior of the truck, but instead got out, came around and threw the big rear doors wide open so the light could pour in. After one look at the angle of Bobby’s wrist, the blood drained out of my father’s face. While I expecte
d him to get mad, he didn’t, and when he simply closed the doors again, got back into the truck and turned for home, it wasn’t Bobby but me who began to cry.
Mr. Marconi was sitting on their upstairs front porch reading a magazine when we pulled up at the curb, and he seemed to know something had happened even before my father opened the rear doors of the truck. On the ride back from the Borough, Bobby had gotten sick, and the front of his shirt now glistened with vomit.
When Mr. Marconi emerged from the house, my father began “It was an acci—” but Mr. Marconi held up his index finger, as if to say Wait a minute, except that he kept holding it there between them, which altered the meaning of the gesture completely. My father seemed to understand that he was being told to hold his tongue and, for the moment, at least, he held it. Mr. Marconi then reached up into the truck, lifted Bobby down and helped him into the station wagon. “I—” my father began again, but Mr. Marconi again held up that index finger and waited until my father backed up onto the terrace, allowing him to go around to the driver’s side and get in next to Bobby, who was by this time slumped against the door, having finally passed out from the pain.
I was remembering what he’d said to me a few minutes before as we sat together in the back of the truck, everything quiet now aside from the rattling of the milk crates. “You didn’t call the turn.” He seemed less angry than curious, but it was an accusation just the same. I didn’t know what to say, though as soon as he spoke those words, I realized they were true.
ODD, HOW WE MISREMEMBER the events of childhood, not just the sequence but also the cause and effect. It wasn’t long after Bobby broke his wrist that the Marconis moved again. My own recollection, until I discussed this with my mother, was that what happened in the milk truck had somehow caused the Marconis to leave the East End. According to her, though, we’d known for months that they were moving. That entire summer I’d been dreading being separated from my one real friend, knowing all too well that our Saturday mornings were numbered. That was why they’d gotten me the new bicycle—to lessen the blow of the Marconis’ leaving and to provide me, at least in theory, with a means of visiting them in their new neighborhood.
They were moving because the post office had unexpectedly promoted Bobby’s father. Normally it took years to move up through the postal ranks, but that spring there’d been some sort of scandal that resulted in a general housecleaning. The new postmaster brought in from downstate had replaced most of the staff, including several senior letter carriers. Mr. Marconi had been promoted precisely because he’d remained aloof from everyone else and was thus untainted. Some people whispered that he’d ratted out his fellow workers.
According to my mother, the reason Mr. Marconi had been so livid about Bobby’s broken wrist wasn’t that my father had ignored his warning but that he suspected he’d done it on purpose, out of jealousy at their good fortune. This charge was ridiculous, of course, though it may be true that Mr. Marconi’s promotion and his decision not just to move but to buy a house in the Borough—on my father’s route!—may have upset their delicate equilibrium. My mother remembers that instead of simply congratulating him, my father let on that he didn’t think we Lynches would ever move to the Borough even if we could afford to. We liked the East End just fine, he said, and guessed we had everything we needed right where we were. Mr. Marconi made no secret of his opinion that my father’s attitude was nothing but sour grapes. This simmering animosity, according to my mother, was the backdrop to the surfing accident.
One thing was certain. Mr. Marconi’s fury had not diminished a jot the next day. We’d seen Bobby return from the hospital that morning with his right forearm in a cast up almost to his elbow. My mother advised my father to wait before going next door, but he argued that would make it look like we didn’t care. I suspected, though, that he was anxious to convey what he’d started to say twice the day before, when Mr. Marconi had held up his index finger. That he’d warned us over and over to be careful or somebody’d get hurt, that he hadn’t been driving fast, that, hell, he never meant for nothing like that to happen, that a freak accident like that could just as well have happened to me as Bobby, that he hoped there wouldn’t be no hard feelings—all the wrong things.
That there were going to be hard feelings was obvious from the moment Mr. Marconi opened the door and saw who was standing outside in the hall. Bobby was lying on the sofa, looking weak and pale, his cast resting heavily on his chest. He made no attempt to rise when he saw who his visitors were. I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Marconi’s ashen, frightened face, peering in from the kitchen. I fully expected her husband to address my father insolently, with something like What the hell do you want? Instead, he looked him up and down, then me, then my father again. “Good, it’s you,” he said. “Wait here.” Then he closed the door in our faces.
We didn’t have to wait long before he returned. He had several sheets of pale green paper, and he handed these to my father. When he unfolded them, I saw the THOMASTON REGIONAL HOSPITAL letterhead, with a column of numbers down the right side of the page, and my father swallowed hard. “Hell, I’ll take care of it, if that’s what you want,” he said, looking past Mr. Marconi to where Bobby lay on the sofa. I think the “if you want” reflected my father’s surprise. It was this man, after all, who worked for the government and had such great medical benefits.
“Well, I should hope so,” Mr. Marconi said.
“I ain’t saying I can do the whole thing right now,” my father admitted, regarding the long column of numbers sadly.
“Why’s that?” Mr. Marconi said. “You’re always going on about you’re gonna buy this and that, and go here and there. To hear you talk, any-body’d think you could just take it out of petty cash.”
“If they could work with me…,” he said.
“Work with you? Why would they do that?”
“I ain’t saying they won’t get their money. In a few months—”
“How many months, do you figure?”
My father shrugged, as if it was impossible to say, that simple subdivision was woefully inadequate to such complex financing. What he needed, of course, was to consult my mother, who could figure exactly how long it would take, but he wasn’t about to say that. “If they’ll work with me…”
Mr. Marconi grabbed the hospital bill back and shook his head in disgust. “Tell you what,” he said. “Go home.”
My father weakly held his hand out for the bill. “Hell, I ain’t sayin’—”
“It’s paid for,” Mr. Marconi said. “It’s all taken care of.”
“You ain’t gotta—”
“Just go home.”
I wanted to, desperately, but he wouldn’t. My father just stood there, looking about half his normal size. He still hadn’t met Mr. Marconi’s eye and was peering in at Bobby with an expression of terrible longing. He hated being on the outside of anything, and right now he wanted to be inside that flat, not out in the hall. What he couldn’t figure out was how to get Mr. Marconi to, if not welcome him, at least step aside. What he’d planned on, I realized, was having the opportunity to talk to Bobby. He was good with boys, and in no time he’d have had him laughing and remembering how much fun we always had in the truck, and telling him it wouldn’t be no time before the cast came off, and Bobby would admit it didn’t hurt so bad now that the bone was set and immobilized. Before long, my father imagined, we’d all be friends again. Maybe we’d be first to sign Bobby’s cast. He was an amiable man who believed in amiable solutions, who forgave easily and couldn’t understand that other people derived pleasure from withholding the very thing he always gave so freely.
Which probably was why he didn’t notice me pulling on his sleeve, trying to make him understand that even though we hadn’t gotten what we came for, we should leave. It embarrassed me to comprehend so clearly what my father couldn’t seem to grasp, that he could stand there forever and Mr. Marconi still wouldn’t let him in, or take pity, or relent in any way. Even when the door
finally closed, with the two of us standing there on the welcome mat, he didn’t budge, and when he opened his mouth to speak, my first thought was that he hadn’t realized Mr. Marconi wasn’t there anymore. Because he just stood there staring at the closed door, I didn’t immediately understand he was talking to me. “Don’t never be like that, Louie.”
I said I wouldn’t.
“You ain’t gotta treat nobody like that, is what I’m saying,” he continued.
Anxious for us to be gone, I said I understood.
“Don’t never treat people like you wish they were dead.”
Afraid that my responses were rooting us to the spot, I said nothing this time, because I couldn’t bear to stand there one more second.
Downstairs on the porch we met the Spinnarkle sisters returning from church. “Why, hello, Mr. Lynch. Good morning, Louie,” they said in tandem.
“Isn’t this just…,” one of them began.
“…the most glorious day?” the other finished.
They both beamed at us, neither registering that anything was wrong.
“Yes, it is,” my father agreed, because he liked to agree with people, especially about the weather, or that people were mostly good, or that things were bound to work out okay in the end.
HE WAS QUIET the rest of the day and, after dinner, said he was going out for a while, something he never did on Sunday night, which was Ed Sullivan, whose show we watched religiously, though we rarely agreed on which acts were the good ones. My mother and I watched the show listlessly without him, and when it was over she got up and turned the set off. “So what happened over there?” she said, and I told her how mean Mr. Marconi had been, how when my father had offered to pay he’d snatched the hospital bill right out of his hand. None of which seemed to surprise her. When I finished, she was quiet for a bit, then said, “Your father…,” but fell silent again, apparently having thought better of whatever she’d been about to impart.
Bridge of Sighs Page 10