Bridge of Sighs

by Richard Russo

  When she didn’t immediately respond, it occurred to me that perhaps she’d been thinking the same thing, maybe for years. “Why,” I went on, “is it so important to you that I remember him as you do? That I not love him?”

  And just that quickly she was trembling with rage. “I never wanted you to not love your father,” she declared. “I wanted you to love me.”

  Did I speak then? I don’t remember. I think probably not.

  “Did it ever occur to you, even once during all those years, that you might have taken my side? That I might have needed a friend?”

  How long did we sit there staring silently at the smudge above the sofa, both aware that we’d crossed a new line? Finally my mother said, “Go home, Lou.” As quickly as it had come, her rage had leaked away, and left her hollowed out, almost as if she’d had one of my spells, and of course I wished that I could take back every word. “Sarah will be missing you.”

  “You’ll be all right?”

  “My life is what I made it,” she said. “No fault of yours. I wish it were.”

  At the door I said, “I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you,” and I’m sure I said this partly to give her the opportunity to deny it.

  “I did hope,” she admitted, “you’d see things differently after your father died. Instead, all your beliefs have hardened. But I never wanted you not to love him.”

  Do I believe this? I suppose I do. I know I do.

  And have I, over time, become stubbornly calcified in my beliefs? That, I suppose, is also true.

  AFTER SARAH AND I FINISH the dinner dishes, I go into my study and read over the last few pages of my story, trying to square the past as I remember it with today, this day. Should I continue writing? Is the urge to relive the events of my childhood rooted in the desire to see things clearly, just as my mother has always claimed she wants me to do? Or is my intention merely to etch my hardened conclusions into stone? How does one know? And in the end, what difference does it make? Who cares about a single life beyond the one whose task it is to live it? Am I not as entitled to my life as my mother is to hers? Must there be a version that reconciles all the versions, large or small? Can there be?

  But her accusations trouble me, in part because they’re not new but also because I feel their truth. I wish I could deny that I’ve missed opportunities to be my mother’s friend. And of course I have chosen my father’s side. But at the core of her accusations is the belief that I’m willfully dishonest, always seeing what I want to see rather than what is. My father never once thought this. Did I choose him, his side, because he thought better of me?

  At this particular moment, as I review the events of this day in the dark of night, I incline toward her assessment. There is, after all, recent evidence. Over dinner I told Sarah about our encounter with Buddy Nurt and how it upset my mother, but I said nothing about how we’d argued, nor did I repeat her accusations. I’ve kept them secret because I know my mother will never tell a soul, not even Sarah, of whom she’s extraordinarily fond. They will remain locked safely away unless I myself decide to reveal them, and I’ve already decided I will not.

  It is the nature of some things, I believe, to remain locked away for the simple reason that revealing them serves no earthly purpose. For instance, I’ve never told anyone, even Sarah, what my father confided to me when he was ill. I’ve wanted to. His secret has weighed heavily on me, especially these last few years. I tell myself that he didn’t mean I shouldn’t tell Sarah, whom he loved and whose kind heart he trusted. But his instructions were “Don’t tell nobody,” and so I haven’t. I’ve told no one that when my father entered the voting booth each Election Day, he stayed there for as long as he judged it would take to complete a ballot, then returned his to its protective sleeve, unmarked. Unable or unwilling to follow my mother’s advice, he wasn’t confident enough of his own conclusions to act on them. He felt the burden of democratic responsibility and believed that decisions of such magnitude should not rest with men like him. Because he was a proud American, he knew he had the right to vote. But he also knew he had the right not to, and he exercised both of these rights each Election Day.

  Have I kept his secret so long because I’m ashamed of him, as my mother would’ve been if she’d known? Or because it would break Sarah’s heart to hear it? Or because it broke my own, to know that he considered voting to be something for my mother, and later for me, but not for him? I don’t know, but his secret is mine to keep, and so I will. I am not Buddy Nurt. I don’t mine humiliation for gold. That said, what then can be the point of telling my story? Why scan the past for the shapes and meanings it surrenders so reluctantly if you mean to suppress some and exaggerate others?

  But is the living of life so different from the telling of it? Do we not, a hundred times a day, decide not to bear witness? Do we not deny and suppress even at the level of instinct? Today, for instance, my mother and I both saw something in that haunted alley that was almost certainly responsible for our bitter quarrel over my father, though neither of us acknowledged it then or afterward. My mother may be old, but her vision remains sharp, and I’m sure she noticed the old moth-eaten varsity jacket Buddy was wearing, saw that the threads used to stitch the original owner’s name below the cloth collar had been removed, leaving behind a ghostly reminder like the smudge that manages to seep through repeated paintings of the wall behind her sofa—that the jacket had once been the proud possession of someone who announced himself to the world as BIG LOU. Are we not complicit in each other’s secrets?

  I will have to make a concerted effort not to brood about the fact that Buddy’s walking around Thomaston in my father’s old coat. After all, things like this happen all the time in small towns. When I was growing up it wasn’t difficult to trace the provenance of a particular item of clothing. A blue blazer, for instance, might be purchased for a junior high or high school boy by his Borough parents; by the following summer he would have outgrown it, and the blazer would then be donated to their church’s clothing drive, after which it would reappear on the back of some East End kid, whose parents would take it the following year to Goodwill, where a West End mother would purchase it for her son. Nor will I ever forget the senior prom when a Borough girl, a friend of Nan Beverly’s, came over specifically to tell Sarah how pretty she looked, that the dress she was wearing really looked much better on Sarah than it had on her at last year’s junior prom.

  Is it any wonder our adult lives should be so haunted? Over and over we go up and down the alley between the theater and the dime store, as my mother and I did today, moving through space, yes, but also through time, meeting ourselves, as Owen always says, coming and going. How beautiful Sarah looked in that dress. How important it must have been to that Borough girl, who wasn’t pretty, to undermine her beauty. How she must have wanted to tear the dress right off her.

  When I see Buddy Nurt again, I’ll offer him money for my father’s jacket. I don’t want him wearing it.

  ONE SATURDAY AFTERNOON a month or so later I was standing in the popcorn line at Newberry’s when I felt something pillowy soft on my elbow and heard a familiar voice say, “So, Lou, do you miss me?” The pillow, of course, was Karen Cirillo’s breast. She was accompanied by the two girls who’d shoplifted at Ikey’s—pale, skinny apparitions compared with Karen, who was voluptuous as ever. I was amazed she’d acknowledged me in front of them, and in Newberry’s of all places.

  I stammered that, yes, I did miss her, which was true, though it was also true I didn’t miss her cadging me for free cigarettes. Now that Buddy wasn’t stealing from us anymore, Ikey’s was doing better. The renovation was well under way, and next week we’d close for a couple days so the old exterior wall could be knocked down and the meat cases from Manucci’s installed. My uncle was supervising, to make sure it was all done right, claiming things had always been messed up at Manucci’s. Then, my mother said, we would reopen with a flourish.

  So far, to my surprise, Uncle Dec had been dependable, show
ing up on time—no great challenge, now that he was living upstairs—and prepared to help out. I hadn’t expected him to be a good worker, but he was. He still referred to my father as Biggy and me as Bub, though otherwise he’d toned down the relentless kidding. For his own part, my father seemed to have drawn a mental line down the middle of the market, granting each of them a separate realm of responsibility. While he was still distrustful, I could tell that he, too, was impressed by how seriously his brother was taking things, and he appreciated it when he consulted my mother on important matters, even if that courtesy was seldom extended to himself. They seemed to have agreed that she was the brains of the operation, as well as a natural go-between.

  My uncle continued to regard me warily. I’d had two more spells since the first one he witnessed, and it was as if he’d concluded I was having them on purpose, to gain attention. At the very least I was shirking my duty to figure out what was causing them. I’d have gotten about as much sympathy if I’d been a bed wetter. “Quit drinking out of the crick, Bub,” was Uncle Dec’s advice each time he learned I’d had another episode. “He’s fine,” my father would assure him. “Don’t you worry none about our Louie.” To which my mother would add that the Cayoga was poisoning everyone in town, not just me, and then the subject would turn to cancer and who else had been diagnosed recently. The Albany newspaper was running cancer stories every week now, articles our local paper continued to dismiss as rabble-rousing.

  Karen took the Jules Verne book I’d been reading in the popcorn line and quickly scanned its pages, pausing briefly at the illustration of the giant squid, then handed it back to me, her curiosity, as always, completely satisfied. “You going to the show?”

  I said yes and asked if she was, too.

  “Probably,” she said. “You want to sit with me, Lou? I’m all alone.” I glanced at her girlfriends, puzzled. Weren’t they going to the show? Neither seemed to object to Karen’s rather loose definition of solitude, though it struck me as vaguely insulting. And where was Jerzy? Had his house arrest been extended to weekends now? Or had the two of them broken up? When I offered to buy Karen’s popcorn, she said, “Sure, Lou,” like she wondered why it had taken me so long to offer. “Them, too?” she said, indicating her girlfriends. When I opened my wallet to take out another dollar, I felt the pillowy softness at my elbow again and saw that she’d leaned forward to see how many other dollars might be in there. “Lou’s rich,” she told her friends. “He works like a hundred hours a week.”

  Popcorn in hand, we headed next door to the theater, joining the long line there. “You gonna pay for me, Lou? Like on a date, or some shit like that?”

  I did a quick calculation and was relieved to conclude that I had just enough, though I wouldn’t be able to get the soda I’d counted on. A small price to pay. That I might actually be “on a date, or some shit like that” with Karen Cirillo took my breath away.

  “Them, too?” she said, again indicating her girlfriends.

  I said no, I had just enough for us, feigning greater regret than I felt, because being on a date with all three of them was a far lesser thing than being with Karen alone. Only when I showed them did they reluctantly dig into their purses.

  Preferring not to watch them fish for quarters, I turned away, just in time to see Perry Kozlowski, Jerzy Quinn’s best friend, come slouching up the street toward us. Only now, seeing Perry, did it occur to me that my being with Karen at the matinee would be reported to Jerzy. I turned back to my companions, but not before noticing an odd thing. Perry seemed to be talking to someone who wasn’t there, a fact he himself seemed to realize at that same instant. Stopping in his tracks, he retreated a few steps and appeared to study something in a shopwindow with urgent interest. I might have accepted all this—“at face value,” to use my mother’s favorite expression—had the window in question not belonged to a dress shop.

  Inside the theater, I followed Karen and her girlfriends to the very back row, where she and Jerzy always sat. It was understood that this row was reserved for them and that once the lights went down and the movie began you weren’t permitted to turn around and watch them make out. As I said, Jerzy seldom showed Karen any sign of public affection, but the dark theater on Saturday afternoons was the exception. The speculation about just how far those two went in that back row was endless, but nobody dared more than glance. Nan Beverly and whatever boy she was with always sat down front and when their heads came together for their first kiss there were as many interested spectators as there were for any kisses enacted on-screen.

  We were no sooner settled in the back row than I noticed we’d drawn the attention of kids throughout the theater, who were turning around in their seats to stare. Was that Lucy Lynch sitting with Karen Cirillo? The envy of the East End boys would have been deeply pleasurable had it been envy alone, without the fear I also recognized in their expressions. One East End boy actually got up and came over to where we sat, leaning down the row and whispering, loud enough that Karen and her friends could hear as well, “What’re you doing, man?”

  “Nothing,” I said, adding weakly, “we’re just friends. She used to live upstairs over our store.” And I was glad now that I’d bought popcorn for all three girls, not just Karen. That was the point I’d emphasize if anyone misunderstood. Still, I thought it might be wise to ask where Jerzy was, which I did now, trying to sound casual, like I was hoping he’d show up, in which case I wouldn’t mind moving down the row to sit between Karen’s girlfriends.

  “Who knows?” Karen said, like it wasn’t her job to keep track of her boyfriend. “Why? You afraid he’ll show up and find us here alone?”

  The girlfriends were leaning forward to grin at me now, and again I marveled that they seemed not to mind that their physical presence counted for so little.

  “Big guy like you,” Karen went on. “I bet you could take Jerz, no problem.”

  Replying to this comment was tricky, of course. If I gave the slightest indication I agreed with her, by Monday morning everybody in school would know I’d claimed I could whip Jerzy Quinn, and then there’d have to be a fight.

  “So, where are you living now?” I said, pretending the subject of who was tougher didn’t interest me.

  “Some dump,” Karen confessed cheerfully. “You wouldn’t know the place.”

  “I might,” I said, though I thought she was probably right.

  “You know Berman Court?”

  I sat up straight. “I used to live on Berman Court. Number seven.”

  Now Karen turned to regard me, as if curious why I’d lie about a thing like this. There was no doubt she was looking at me either, not some point over my shoulder. “That’s where we live,” she said. “Seven Berman Court.”

  I felt a chill, like you do when you encounter a coincidence that doesn’t really feel like one. I was almost afraid to ask the next obvious question. “Ours was the flat on the third floor.”

  “You’re shitting me,” she said. “Which room was yours?”

  I described my old room, with its small, high window overlooking the stream below.

  “That’s the one they gave me, too. Kids always get the worst one.”

  The idea that we’d both been naked in the same room and now were sitting together in a dark theater caused my heart to skip a beat. It was all incredibly intimate and scary, and I again felt the need to change the subject. “Who’s ‘they’?”

  “Buddy and my old lady. Who else?”

  “Buddy’s back?” I said, astonished.

  “He went someplace?”

  “I thought he went away. The police—”

  “Buddy won’t be gone till he’s dead.”

  Just then the lights in the theater began to dim, and when I faced the front I became aware, to my surprise, that the seat on my right was now occupied.

  “You remember Lou?” Karen said, leaning forward so she could talk directly to her boyfriend. “From the store?”

  Perry Kozlowski must have stopp
ed at the snack bar for a soda, because he now sidled down the row in front of ours, stopping at the seat directly in front of me. Handing the soda to Jerzy, he knelt in the seat, facing me. “How come you’re sitting next to Karen?” he said. “She’s not your girlfriend.”

  “Lou bought my ticket,” Karen said, sounding bored. “Also my popcorn. Which is more than I can say for some people.”

  The coming attractions were on now, and Jerzy, the apparent object of Karen’s remark, seemed totally engrossed in them. He took a sip of soda, then passed it across me to Karen, who took a sip and passed it back, ignoring her girlfriends. I knew better than to take a sip myself, though the popcorn was suddenly dry as dust in my throat.

  “So you think if you buy her ticket, she’s your girlfriend?” Perry said.

  I told him no, that wasn’t what I thought.

  “You think if you buy her a bag of popcorn, she’s gonna what? Let you feel her up or something?”

  I assured him that this wasn’t what I thought either. I was hoping Karen would come to my defense, but she also seemed engrossed in the coming attractions, so for the longest time Perry just knelt there staring at me.

  Karen finally said, “Lou’s not that kind of guy.”

  “That true?” he said, smiling at me thinly. “What kind of guy are you?”

  “I don’t know,” I told him, the safest reply I could think of under the circumstances.

  An usher appeared in the aisle then, fixing Perry in the beam of his flashlight and motioning for him to turn around in his seat, which he did until the usher left, then he resumed his former posture. “Let’s you and me take a walk, Lucy.”

  “See you later,” Karen said, without actually looking at me, when I got up. “Thanks for the popcorn.”

  Jerzy stood to let me by, his attention still on the screen, then settled into the seat next to Karen. Perry motioned for me to follow him, which I did, figuring he intended to take me out into the alley, but instead we went out into the lobby. There he lifted up the velvet rope, with its KEEP OUT sign dangling, and led me up to the balcony, then down to the front row of the creaky, condemned structure. From our perch we could track the usher below by his flashlight. Directly below us were Jerzy and Karen, her girlfriends also having moved off somewhere. He was holding Karen’s hand, and the two had slumped down in their seats, but to my surprise they weren’t up to anything. Perry noticed where I was looking and elbowed me. “If you’re still thinking about Big Tits, forget it,” he said, his voice low, confidential, almost friendly. I’d just about concluded he meant this to be a warning, then he added, “Nobody home.”