Bridge of Sighs

by Richard Russo

  It was just such a cab and driver that pulled up in front of Ikey Lubin’s one day about a month after Karen and her mother moved into the flat above our store. The way the vehicle sat there, its motionless driver staring straight ahead, caused my father and me both to wonder if he’d in fact died at our curb, and the angle was such that we couldn’t see whether there was a passenger in the rear seat. My father, who’d been about to go home for supper, was reluctant to leave until he knew what this was about, so he remained behind the register. Finally, there was a lurching movement in the rear seat, as of a man awakening from a dream so dreadful that the sour backseat of a Hudson cab represented a distinct improvement. Whoever it was went into a series of contortions, apparently searching for the fare. In vain, it seemed, because the driver’s head rotated around on his thick neck so he could memorize what his passenger had looked like when he was still alive. From the rear seat a hand pointed vehemently at the store, and an unkempt, pear-shaped man got out. He was still going through his pockets as he came inside. I couldn’t take my eyes off his hair. The man had the most amazing cowlick I’d ever seen, and my father, most days, sported a pretty fine one himself.

  “Hey, big fella,” he said to my father. “Lemme take a five-spot to get rid of this asshole driver. I’ll pay you right back, I swear.”

  “How about watching your language,” my father suggested, indicating me.

  “Oh fuck…yeah, sorry,” he said. Then he stood there, waiting, as if this apology had surely removed the last possible obstacle to a stranger loaning him money.

  “What’s wrong with that in your shirt pocket?” my father asked, since the corner of a bill was sticking out of it.

  The man looked vindicated when he pulled it out. “There you are, you cock—” He stopped, remembering me.

  And with this he turned on his heel and strode out to the cab, handing the bill in through the passenger-side window. Without further ceremony, the driver pulled away from the curb, deaf to the imprecations of the pear-shaped man, who clearly felt he had change coming.

  I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything more hapless looking than the man now standing on the sidewalk, though at that young age I didn’t fully appreciate how hapless anybody looks when trying to summon a cab that has no intention of stopping. Especially when you’re aware of being watched, your circumstance enjoyed. The man didn’t turn around right away, and when he did he bent backward at the waist and gazed up at the Salvatore flat as if to commit its every unremarkable detail to memory. He seemed to wish there were some alternative, which there wasn’t, you could tell. So he finally poked his head back inside and said, “How the fuck do you get up there?” Then, noting my father’s expression, “How do you get up there?”

  My father told him the entrance was around the side of the store.

  “All right then,” he said, this strange placement apparently agreeable to him, provided he was kept fully apprised of its location in the future. Glancing at our fruit bins, he said, “You sell flowers here?” Fruit and flowers being practically the same thing.

  My father said we didn’t.

  The man nodded, as if used to disappointment, then again looked up at the apartment, considering. “Beer?”

  My father indicated the cooler along the back wall.

  Still the man remained where he was, standing in the doorway.

  “You run tabs?”

  “If you live in the neighborhood,” my father said. “If I know you.”

  The man, cheered by this, came inside and let the door swing shut behind him. “Buddy Nurt,” he said, offering to shake my father’s hand, then bouncing from one foot to the other. What he seemed to be waiting for was confirmation that such a straightforward introduction had rendered him tab worthy. “I’ll be living…” His head bobbed up at the ceiling. “Can’t get much more in the neighborhood than that.”

  “With Nancy?” my father said, clearly displeased.

  Buddy Nurt nodded like a man not unaccustomed to provoking displeasure.

  “I’ll have to get the okay from her first,” my father said, and I could see how conflicted he was. On the one hand, he loathed trusting someone about whom he’d already heard so many unflattering things. On the other, he hated getting off on the wrong foot with a new customer. He glanced across the street at our house, as if my mother’s advice would be radiating from it.

  Buddy was eyeing the beer cooler with genuine longing. “She won’t mind,” he said, trying to sound casual. “Her and me, we…” He glanced at me and let his voice trail off, confident his coded message had been received.

  Had it been me, I wouldn’t have given Buddy so much as a stick of gum. His eyes were small and close together and darted from one object to another, refusing to settle anywhere. It made me tired just watching them. When my father shrugged a reluctant acquiescence, Buddy made for the case at a dead run, and he had two six-packs under one arm and was reaching for a third when my father called over that he was only good for one until things had been cleared with Nancy. So Buddy, clearly disappointed, put all three back and selected another, more expensive brand.

  “Kinda steep,” he remarked when my father rang it up. “Your prices.”

  “The kind you had before was cheaper,” my father acknowledged.

  Buddy shrugged. “What the fuck, right?” He grinned at me, clearly hoping he’d found someone who shared his personal philosophy, and then he recalled my father’s injunction. “What the heck, right?” he corrected himself, pleased to have erased the bad word so completely.

  “You gotta sign,” my father said when he started out the door with the six-pack.

  Buddy Nurt cautiously signed his name on the slip my father provided, as if this were the part that might trail unpleasant repercussions. “Got a…?” he said, making a bottle-opener gesture.

  My father handed him one from underneath the counter and he popped the cap off deftly, noticing that the opener was on a string only when he tried to slip it into his pocket. “Whoops,” he said, putting it back on the counter. Then he drained off half the bottle right there in front of us, and this seemed to provide the courage necessary to brave the climb upstairs. We listened to his slow, heavy steps up to the apartment, heard him tap on the door and call, “Hey, babe?”

  It was now safe, my father decided, to go eat his supper, but he hadn’t even made it to the door, when we heard rapidly descending footsteps, and Nancy Salvatore burst inside and slammed the six-pack—well, the five-pack now—down on the counter. “Buddy Nurt doesn’t sign for anything on my ticket, Mr. Lynch,” she said, looking first at him and then at me, as if she suspected I might be the one who’d have to enforce this rule. “Not ever. He’s the reason I had to leave all my friends and move here. He’s why my life’s a crock of shit.”

  My father looked scared, the way he always did around angry women. “Okay. It’s just that he said—”

  “Don’t listen to him,” she said, again fixing the two of us to make sure we understood. “He’s a liar. You believe a word that man says, you deserve what you get.” This statement seemed derived from experience both deep and profound. “Even if I change my mind later and tell you it’s okay? It’s not okay. It’s not ever okay. I’m gonna hold you to that, Mr. Lynch.”

  My father nodded, confused but agreeable.

  “How much for the one beer?”

  When he told her, she took the coins from her purse and handed them over.

  “My advice would be don’t even let him in the store,” she added. “On top of being a liar he’s also a thief.” I thought about pointing out that he’d already tried to pocket our bottle opener, but held my tongue. “In fact, have as little to do with Buddy Nurt as humanly possible.”

  “Okay,” my father agreed. And when she looked over at me, I said okay, too.

  She now calmed down a little. “I ought to have my damn head examined,” she said, massaging her brow. “I don’t know what comes over me with him. He’s up there now, looking
all hangdog. By tonight I’ll be feeding him, by tomorrow I’ll be loaning him money, and by tomorrow night….” She studied me thoughtfully and apparently decided not to say what she’d be doing for Buddy Nurt then. “I had any sense, I’d shoot him. In ten years, I’d be out of prison, a free woman. Whereas now I’m looking at life with Buddy Nurt, no chance of parole.”

  More tramping down the stairs now. Nancy massaged her forehead even more ferociously, though it was already red from her previous exertions. “Here comes the other light of my life.”

  And sure enough, Karen came in and slammed the door shut so hard the glass rattled. You could see how furious she was, but I was still surprised when she pointed an index finger at Nancy and screamed, “This is bullshit, Ma!” I don’t think I’d ever heard anyone my age yell at a grownup before, certainly not in front of other people. In Karen’s defense, I’m not sure she even knew we were there. That’s how beside herself she was. Mother and daughter stood facing each other, a few feet apart, and Ikey Lubin’s might as well have been a stage set. Karen’s hands were clenched tightly into fists. Her mother’s shoulders had slumped, most of her previous energy having leaked away, leaving her unequal to the task of waging this particular battle. “You promised, Ma!” Karen screamed. “You said never again. Don’t pretend you didn’t.”

  “Quit shouting at me, Karen,” she said. “You make my head hurt. He only turned up this minute. I haven’t made my mind up what to do yet.”

  “Then make it up now,” Karen said.

  “Karen—”

  “Right now, Ma. I’m not going to wonder every time I take a bath if that shithead’s on his knees outside the door with his beady little eye to the keyhole.”

  “Buddy wouldn’t do that,” Nancy said weakly, more to us than to her daughter.

  “Don’t lie, you stupid bitch! You caught him yourself. And what about that night I woke up and he was standing next to my bed?”

  “He sleepwalks, Karen.”

  “Right. With that thing in his hand, straight into my bedroom.”

  “Karen—”

  “Him or me, Ma.”

  This ultimatum stiffened her. “Where you gonna go, Karen?”

  The question hit her daughter hard, I could tell, implying as it did that the decision had already been made.

  “Who’d put up with you, besides me?”

  Karen’s eyes were suddenly full, but she refused to cry. “Besides you and Buddy, you mean?”

  And just that quickly it was her mother sobbing. “I need something in my goddamn life, Karen. I’m sorry, but I do. Even if it’s only Buddy Nurt. You’ll understand that one day. Soon, probably, the way you’re going.”

  “Fuck you, Ma,” Karen said, a whisper almost. And then she was gone, this time leaving the door wide open. Her mother didn’t move for a long time, while my father and I studied our shoes.

  “Guess I’ll take those other five beers after all,” she said finally. When my father handed them to her, she studied me sadly. “Don’t grow up,” she muttered, then left.

  Anxious as he’d been to go, my father now seemed reluctant to leave me alone in the store, even briefly. “I warned your mother something like this would happen,” he said, putting Nancy’s tab back under the cash drawer. There was no bitterness to the observation, though, not like there always was when my mother said her I-told-you-so’s.

  After my father finally went across the street, a truck driven by one of the brothers pulled up in front. Jerzy Quinn was with him. They went upstairs and returned a few minutes later with Karen, Buddy Nurt following at a respectful distance. There was no sign of Nancy. With the door closed I couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, but Buddy seemed to be arguing that Karen didn’t have to run off on his account. She was lugging an old cardboard suitcase, and when she tried shoving it behind the pickup’s seat, the clasp sprang open, spilling clothes into the gutter. Only then did she begin to cry. When Buddy came over to help, she screamed at him to keep away. I couldn’t tell if Jerzy and the brother felt the same admonition applied to them, or whether they just weren’t sure she wanted them touching her underthings, but at any rate they just stood there watching her cram things back into the suitcase. When she was finished, of course, it wouldn’t close, and she had to hold it shut as best she could on her lap. I hoped that maybe she’d remember I was there and look over at me, but she stared straight ahead as her uncle and boyfriend climbed in on either side of her. Buddy waved as the truck pulled away, though nobody waved back.

  I actually felt kind of sorry for him, standing there alone at the curb, knowing, as he surely must’ve, that his mere appearance was enough to make people scatter. But then he turned toward Ikey Lubin’s, and the expression on his face scared me. It wasn’t anything like he’d looked when he was trying to borrow his cab fare. This face was sneaky and mean, and looking right at me. For a moment the irrational thought entered my mind that for some reason Buddy Nurt blamed me for what had just happened.

  When he was gone, though, I went outside where he’d been standing, because by then it had occurred to me that he probably hadn’t been looking at me at all. In the early evening it was still bright enough outside for the windows to reflect light. Was it possible that the cold, contemptuous and frightening expression was the one that greeted him every day in the mirror? This was somehow even scarier than thinking it was me he’d been mad at. My own face, I couldn’t help noticing, had unconsciously mimicked Buddy’s expression.

  Heading back inside, I saw the three dogs my mother had shot at, loping up the street toward me. Inside, I found the gun under the counter and took it back outside with me. All three stopped in their tracks when they saw me, and when I raised the gun they turned and hightailed it back toward the West End. For all I knew they were East End dogs, but I thought of them that day as West End mutts and, because they had no business in our neighborhood, I filled the air around them with pellets.

  THE NEXT EVENING my mother was working on her books, which she did when there was nothing good on TV and it was quiet and my father was at the store. Eyes fixed on her open ledger, her fingers flew over the keys of the adding machine she always set up in the middle of the kitchen table. At times like these her powers of concentration were so great that I suspected she wasn’t really listening to anything I said, which was why I sometimes tried to slip in awkward bits of information—a poor performance on a math test, say, or a B on a science project—when she was so engaged, though the strategy seldom worked. That particular night I had something on my mind, so I joined her there at the table. I’d been thinking about what Nancy Salvatore had said, how in no time, even though she knew better, she’d be loaning Buddy Nurt money and falling back into the very habits she’d hoped to escape by moving to the East End with her daughter. It struck me that anybody smart enough to figure out what the future held ought to be smart enough to avoid it. In Nancy’s case it seemed merely an issue of self-control, a concept the nuns of St. Francis had famously drummed into us. If Nancy knew that Buddy Nurt was bad for both her and Karen, then it was simply a matter of acting upon that knowledge. Hadn’t she sat right here in our kitchen the day after her brothers moved her in, proclaiming loudly that she’d finally learned her lesson and was done with Buddy Nurt, that if he ever showed up in the East End she wouldn’t even let him in the door? What good did it do, I asked my mother, to talk like that if you were just going to give in without a fight later? I’d looked Buddy over pretty carefully and concluded that any woman in her right mind should’ve been able to resist his charms. In fact, I couldn’t even imagine what his charms might be. My mother let me go on like this for some time before she stopped pounding numbers and regarded me critically.

  “You’re going to have to get smarter about people if you want to survive in the world, Louie,” she said, so seriously that my feelings were hurt. “You don’t really think just because somebody says they’re going to do something, that means they’re going to do it?”

 
; “But why?” I said. “Why would she take him back?”

  “You know the answer, Lou.”

  “I don’t,” I said, peevish now. In truth I was puzzled not just by Nancy Salvatore but by adult behavior in general. Though Gabriel Mock had expressed what I took to be genuine contrition about his drunkenness in the library parking lot, I’d seen him drunk twice since then, once outside the pool hall and again across the street from the Y after the dance let out. My parents’ ongoing disagreements were annoying, too. If I could predict what each would say on any given topic, why couldn’t they? Why did they feel it necessary to repeat themselves, to stake out the same positions time after time? Would I become like that when I got older, retracing my steps over and over, unaware that I was doing so or, worse, not caring?

  My mother raised her eyebrow at me like she always did when she suspected willful incomprehension. “Look, when the Marconis moved, Bobby promised you he’d call, right? But he didn’t. That wasn’t very nice, and you were mad at him.”

  I shrugged, unwilling to admit that, yes, I had been mad at him.

  “But if he showed up tomorrow wanting to be friends, you’d forgive him, wouldn’t you?”

  I shrugged again.

  “Why?” she said, and when I didn’t answer, she continued, “Because there’s nothing worse than being alone. In your heart you know that’s true, don’t you?”

  I nodded reluctantly. “But Buddy Nurt?”

  She was having none of it. “What’s worse, bad friends or no friends?”

  I said I didn’t know.

  “Yes, you do. Don’t be one of those people who go through life pretending not to know what they know.” The implication was Like your father, who’d known for a full year he was going to lose his milk route but pretended not to. I wanted to object, but then the fingers of her right hand were racing over the adding machine keys, while those of her left tracked figures up and down the columns.