“When will he come home?” I asked, because he’d been gone a long time and I couldn’t imagine where he might be.
“Oh, I’m sure that by the time you wake up in the morning, he’ll be back. Don’t worry. He just needs some time to make the world right again. Once he’s got things back the way he wants them…” Her voice trailed off.
Normally such a remark would have sounded like a criticism, which I would’ve resented, but this time my mother didn’t seem angry or annoyed, as she sometimes was, just sad about how things had turned out. And I thought I understood what she meant about him making the world right again so he could live in it. My own world had been out of kilter all day, and I knew why, though I didn’t know what to do about it. Actually, I did know but didn’t want to do it. All day I’d been picturing Bobby on that sofa, pale and sick and not at all like himself, and I couldn’t help remembering how I’d hoped for something like this to happen, how jealous I’d been of his refusal to cry. He still hadn’t cried, and now I felt even worse. And there was more. Finally, I heard myself say, “I didn’t call the turn.”
My mother regarded me seriously. “I don’t understand.”
“It was my fault,” I said, and explained how Bobby always surfed behind me, needed me to call out the turns so he could prepare, and how I always did, except this once. I told her I didn’t know why I hadn’t called that turn, that I never wanted Bobby to get hurt so bad, that it was all my fault and that he’d said as much, so now we’d never be friends again.
“Of course you will,” she said, causing me momentarily to hope she was right, before realizing she wasn’t. “He’ll forgive you.”
I shook my head. “No, he won’t.”
“He will,” she insisted. “You forgave him, didn’t you?”
“For what?”
She was looking right at me, and I couldn’t meet her eye. “You know what.”
“I don’t,” I said, barely able to speak.
“You don’t want to,” she replied, “but you do.”
“I don’t,” I probably shouted.
“Okay,” she said, looking away, disappointed in me. “Okay, Lou.”
My father didn’t come home that night until late. I heard him trip on the front steps, fumble through the door and finally lumber heavily up the stairs and into the bedroom next to mine. My mother was still awake, and I could hear them talking quietly in the dark, though I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Probably she was just telling him to come to bed, that everything would be all right, that he needed to get some sleep, because in a few hours he’d have to get up and go to work. The other possibility was that they were talking about me.
The reason I was awake to hear my father return was that I was still turning over in my mind what my mother had said about what I knew but wouldn’t acknowledge. And there in the dark I’d made up my mind. In the morning I’d tell her again that she was wrong, that there was nothing I knew and didn’t want to know. I would keep on insisting until she had no choice but to agree that Bobby had not been there at the trestle and hadn’t laughed with the others as I pleaded with them not to saw me in two. No, I had not forgiven him. Because there was nothing to forgive.
THE AFTERNOON the Marconis’ possessions were loaded onto the bright yellow moving van, I watched morosely from the front steps, having been specifically instructed not to get in the way of the movers. I kept expecting Bobby to come over and keep me company, on our last day together, but my mother said it was probably his job to look after his little brothers while his parents organized the move. In the middle of the afternoon he appeared at an open window, and I waved, but he didn’t wave back, and when his father passed by the same window a moment later, he drew the shade.
My mother had been right about one thing. Bobby apparently did forgive me for not calling the turn, or at least we never spoke of it again. That last month before they moved, he still came over to our house a few times, but it seemed he’d no sooner arrive than Mrs. Marconi would call and say to send Bobby home. And of course we never again rode in the milk truck.
Since the day Mr. Marconi made us stand in the hall, my father’s good spirits had returned, but the two of them hadn’t spoken. To my surprise, and relief, my father didn’t try to insinuate himself back into his good graces, my mother having apparently convinced him it was a lost cause. During a stretch of hot, humid days when everyone had their windows thrown open, I heard Mr. Marconi remark, his voice suddenly very near, that in his opinion they were getting Bobby away from Third Street just in time. While there’d been no context for this remark, I couldn’t help thinking that they’d been talking about us Lynches. As their move drew closer, I asked Bobby what his new phone number was, but he said he didn’t know yet. As soon as they found out, he’d call, but something in his tone made me think he wasn’t going to. I didn’t even know where their new house was, except that it was somewhere in the Borough.
At any rate I must have looked pretty dejected sitting there all alone as they moved out, because when my father came home for lunch he suggested we go inside and help my mother, something we never did. Meals were her job, and our kitchen was tiny. She didn’t like us in there, underfoot, until she had the food on the table. On this occasion, though, she seemed to understand his reasoning and stopped what she was doing to make us a pitcher of lemonade, remarking that the day was ferociously hot and she felt sorry for the poor moving men.
She set down two tall, sweating glasses in front of my father and me. “You and Bobby wouldn’t be seeing that much of each other in another week or so anyway,” she said. It was only one more week until Labor Day, and once school started, with me at St. Francis and Bobby back at Bridger, we’d have other things to occupy us. “Besides,” she went on. “The Borough isn’t the end of the world.”
That’s what it felt like, though. Since leaving the West End, we’d never once returned there to visit anyone, and the only reason Bobby would have for returning from the Borough to our neighborhood was me, and I was beginning to understand that I wasn’t reason enough.
BUT MY MOTHER was right about life moving on. I had just that last week of August to mope around and feel sorry for myself, after which school started again. Such, at least, is my recollection.
What my mother recalls is the worst autumn of my young life, that after the Marconis left I remained militantly inconsolable. I also had several spells in September and October, and they lasted longer than the ones I’d had over the summer, leaving me both exhausted and despondent. The buoyant optimism and sense of empowerment that had accompanied that first one in the trunk were missing from these latest ones, which left me dull witted and lethargic for days. According to my mother, as soon as I felt better, I’d hop on my bike and ride through the Borough streets looking for the Marconis’ new home, determined to renew my friendship with Bobby. She even recalls getting a frightened phone call from Mrs. Marconi telling her that her husband was getting angry. Every time he looked out their front window, there I’d be, sitting on my bike and staring dejectedly at their house.
This last part simply cannot have been true. For one thing, had I indulged in any such behavior, I’d be unlikely to forget it, but for another, I didn’t learn until the following spring exactly where the Marconis had moved because, as I feared, Bobby never called with his phone number and address. It’s true I did ride my bike through the Borough that last week in August and early September, hoping I’d “accidentally” run into him or see him playing outside, perhaps with his new friends, so I suppose it’s possible that Mr. Marconi may have looked out his front window one afternoon and been surprised to see me ride by, but the idea that I haunted them that autumn is ludicrous.
What my mother may be remembering is one Saturday afternoon when I was out riding. My own very vague memory was that I’d been visiting Gabriel Mock, and the most direct route home from Whitcombe Park was through the Borough. At any rate when I came around a corner I was surprised to see my father’s milk
truck pull up alongside. Since he would’ve finished his collections late that morning, my first panicky thought was that something must be wrong—either he was inexplicably angry with me or something had happened to my mother and he’d come to fetch me home. I must have appeared frightened, because when he stepped out of the truck, he looked as if in his mind he’d arrived in the nick of time.
“Louie?” he said—awkwardly, I thought, his voice not falling quite right, as if there were some other boy here in the Borough who was a dead ringer for his East End kid, and he didn’t want to commit to anything until he was sure who I was. “Whatcha doin’ way over here?”
I shrugged. Why shouldn’t I be here?
“You want to ride home with me?” He opened up the back of the truck, and we lifted my bike inside, where I leaned it up against the tied-off crates.
As I said, milk trucks in those days had no passenger seats. Usually, if I was alone with my father in the truck, I’d tip a couple crates upside down and perch myself on top, to the right of the big stick shift that stuck out of a hole in the floor. That day, though, when I started to grab a crate, my father patted his seat cushion, and when I balanced myself on its edge he put his arm around my shoulder, and I felt good for the first time in what seemed like weeks.
“You know who lives in all these houses?” he said.
When I admitted I had no idea, he put the truck in gear and took me on a slow tour of the Borough streets that until recently Bobby and I had surfed on Saturday morning, pointing out houses on either side of the street and telling me what doctor lived here, what lawyer there, which one belonged to the owner of the Bijou Theater and where the Beverlys, who owned the tannery, lived. This was his route, the best route in town, and I could tell how proud he was to know all this. He said many of these people had so much money they didn’t have to work anymore if they didn’t want to, though I found this hard to believe. A few Borough residents waved to my father as we passed, which clearly pleased him. Others, though, failed to return his wave, didn’t even appear to see us as we inched by, going slow, so he could keep his arm around me and not have to shift gears.
“Thing is, people are the same everywheres,” he said, as if to explain the ones who didn’t wave back. “They’re just the way they are, and you can’t do nothin’ about it either.” Was he thinking about Mr. Marconi, too?
I nodded.
“You know how some folks in our neighborhood don’t like it when people from the West End come around?”
I knew what he was talking about, of course. The Spinnarkle sisters in particular were adamant in their disapproval of visitors who didn’t belong there.
“People are the same way here. They see somebody who don’t live in the Borough, and they say, What’s he doin’ here? Even if you ain’t botherin’ nobody. You understand?”
“I shouldn’t ride my bike over here?” I said, thinking this was what he was trying to tell me.
“It ain’t that exactly,” he said, reluctant now. “This is America. You got a right to go wherever you want. Anybody ever tells you that you don’t belong somewheres, you just remind them what country they’re in.”
I nodded, confused.
“Except sometimes it’s better not to upset people. If they think you don’t belong, the hell with ’em, is how I look at it. I mean, it’s nice where we are too, right? Third Street?”
I said I thought Third Street was fine.
“Same with friends,” he went on. “Better to be friends with people who want to be friends with you.”
“Bobby wants to be friends,” I said, knowing what he was getting at. “It’s just his dad won’t let him.”
We’d come to the end of the Borough now, and my father turned left into the East End, our part of town. It occurred to me that in our leisurely tour we must have driven right by the Marconis’ new house. It was on his route, after all, so he had to know which one it was. He no doubt put quart bottles of milk in their tin container twice a week, collected the money they left there and made change. Had they spoken to him, or he to them? Did Mrs. Marconi cower inside when he knocked on their door? Had he tried to get invited inside for a look? I’d been so absorbed in my own disappointment that it hadn’t occurred to me to imagine the effect their leaving had on him. He could no longer think of himself as being in competition with “Mr. Macaroni.” If it had been a contest, he’d lost. And he’d accepted the fact; that’s what he was trying to tell me now.
“Them spells you get,” he said, catching me by surprise. “Are you thinking about Bobby when they come on?”
I told him no, that I could be thinking about anything or nothing. My spells always began with things getting so fuzzy and remote that I felt almost sleepy. It wasn’t a bad feeling, really. I wasn’t scared. It was more like I was outside myself, an observer, like I was light enough to just float away. Actually, that part felt kind of good, as if I’d been released from something.
I’ll never forget the look on his face when I explained this. “You wouldn’t do that, would you, Louie? Just let yourself float away?”
I told him I wouldn’t.
“Not ever?”
“Never,” I promised, and this seemed to reassure us both. Because even though the sensation of floating away did feel good, so did returning. In fact, driving back to our East End neighborhood that afternoon in my father’s milk truck felt a little like returning from one of my spells. Our house looked pretty small after our tour of the Borough, but for some reason, when we pulled up at the curb, it looked just right for us, for who we were. I did like our street, with Ikey Lubin’s store at one end and Tommy Flynn’s at the other. I liked living next door to the Spinnarkle sisters, even if they were quick to turn off the television when I visited. Only one thing bothered me.
“I just wish he’d do like he said,” I told my father. “He said he’d call and give me his new phone number.”
“They probably just kept their old number,” he said, surprising me again. I’d thought that you always got a new number when you moved, and that whoever moved into the Marconis’ apartment above the Spinnarkles would inherit their old one.
I didn’t get a chance until later that evening, after my mother finished doing the dishes and joined my father and me out on the porch, where a cool breeze had sprung up. Once they both looked settled I went inside—to use the bathroom, I told them—and quickly dialed the number I still knew by heart. Bobby himself answered on the third ring, but I hadn’t thought things through. He must have said hello half a dozen times while I stood there, frozen, mute, trying to think of something to say. But how could I ask if his wrist had completely healed, if the cast had come off? Or say I was sorry I hadn’t called the turn and that I wanted him and his family to move back to Third Street and for things to be the way they were. That this new arrangement might be okay for them, but not for me.
Only when Mr. Marconi took the phone from him and barked “Who the hell is this?” did I gently return the receiver to its cradle.
A SHOT TO THE HEART
HEY,” Evangeline said. She was poking Noonan as one would a dangerous animal that looked dead but might not be. Fully dressed and standing next to the bed, she was clearly prepared to run should the need arise. “Talk to me, Noonan.”
“About what?” he said groggily, rising up on his elbows. At the sound of his voice, modulated and sane, she visibly relaxed. Flight wouldn’t be necessary after all.
So far she was the only person to witness one of his night terrors. This was now over a month ago, but the experience was still fresh in her mind. Half an hour after falling asleep, he’d awakened in a paroxysm of rage. When she made the mistake of trying to calm him down, he lashed out, not even recognizing her, really, and punched her in the face, hard. The resulting black eye had been hard to explain to her husband, and since then they’d agreed not to risk a repetition. They’d continued their sporadic, desultory sex, but when it was over either she or Noonan went home before postcoital sleepin
ess could descend. The last thing she’d done tonight before drifting off was ask him if he felt sleepy. He’d said no, thinking he’d be able to stay awake, but then fell asleep anyway.
“I suppose you could tell me what you’re sorry about.”
“I was talking in my sleep?”
She sat on the edge of the bed now, holding the back of her hand gently to his cheek. “You kept saying how sorry you were. Didn’t sound like you at all.”
“It didn’t sound like my voice?”
“No, it was your voice, all right. Just not the sort of thing that comes out of your mouth, if you know what I mean. Sort of like Hugh Morgan saying I don’t know. Anyway, I accept your apology, even if it was meant for someone else.”
Noonan swung his feet out of bed. “I gather you’re leaving?”
“It’s almost midnight.”
“If you can wait till I put my pants on, I’ll walk you home.”
“We really shouldn’t be seen together,” she said, but he could tell this objection was his to override.
As it turned out, they had both the vaporetto and the streets to themselves. Even San Marco was deserted, except for the last of the musicians putting away their instruments outside Caffè Florian and some waiters stacking chairs on a gurney.
“When does Todd get back?” he asked when they arrived in Campo San Stefano, off of which her gallery was located, their living quarters above.
“Tomorrow,” she said. A failed novelist turned travel writer, Todd Lichtner was often away on assignment for one of a half-dozen magazines. “Speaking of which, will you see Hugh again?”
“It’s possible. I got the impression he wasn’t finished badgering me.”
“Remind him he promised to stop by the gallery?”
“If he promised, he won’t need to be reminded.”
Bridge of Sighs Page 11