Bridge of Sighs

by Richard Russo

  “Nice game,” his father said, offering him a cigarette, which he declined.

  “I didn’t see you there.”

  “I was, though.”

  “Whereabouts?”

  “I’ve been to all your games.”

  “Bullshit,” Noonan said—not anger, just an opinion his father could take or leave.

  Leave, apparently. “You know a place called Nell’s?” he said.

  “On the Lake Road?”

  “Meet me there, I’ll buy you a beer.”

  “I’m not eighteen.”

  “I know how old you are. And that you’re sleeping in that rathole above the Rexall and tending bar at Murdick’s on Sundays.”

  “I’m supposed to meet my friends.”

  “Meet them after.”

  “Why?”

  “Why not, son?”

  NELL’S SAT five miles out of town atop a hill at the end of a steep, unpaved road. It appeared to have been built in stages, the early part of brick, then added on to in clapboard. Noonan remembered the original restaurant as being prosperous, its parking lot always full of cars back when he was a boy, but since then it had fallen on hard times and had changed hands again and again over the last decade. Whoever Nell was, her sign was tilting precariously when he roared up the gravel road on his bike. His father’s was one of half a dozen cars in the lot, and Noonan parked off to the side by the dumpster.

  His father was seated at the far end of the bar, talking to a large woman bartender who looked to be in her early forties and might’ve been attractive had she not been so overweight, her expression so glum. She looked like somebody who could easily be named Nell and who’d invested her last nickel in the place.

  When Noonan slid onto the adjacent stool, his father consulted his watch. “I was about to come looking for you,” he said.

  “I told you I’d be here.”

  “I thought maybe you changed your mind.”

  “I don’t do that,” Noonan told him, and he could tell from his smile that they were both referencing the day that spring when he’d warned what would happen if his mother got pregnant again.

  “A person should change his mind occasionally,” his father said.

  “Why?”

  “Situations change.” Then, before Noonan could offer a response, he said, “This is Max,” and nodded vaguely at the woman behind the bar, who was wiping her soapy hands on a towel so they could shake.

  “Maxine,” she clarified.

  “Not Nell?” Noonan said.

  “Nell was my sister. She died of leukemia. We named the place for her.”

  “And this is Willie, Max’s boy,” his father added when the kitchen door swung open and a Down’s syndrome kid came in with a bucket of ice. He looked to be about Noonan’s age, but he was already balding so it was hard to tell. He grinned and emitted a braying sound that might or might not have been a word, then disappeared back into the kitchen.

  “So what kept you?” his father said.

  “I stopped by Ikey Lubin’s.”

  His father nodded. “That Lynch kid figure out he’s a queer yet?”

  “Nice language,” Maxine said, glaring at him. It made Noonan like her, though he couldn’t help wondering why she imagined she had a place in their conversation. She may have sensed this reaction, because after drawing him a draft beer and sliding it in front of him she busied herself at the other end of the bar.

  “He’s got a steady girlfriend, actually,” Noonan said.

  “They’ll do that sometimes.”

  “A person should change his mind now and then,” Noonan said. One of the best things about honors English was that Mr. Berg had taught him the value of using other people’s words against them. In the two months he and the others had been parrying with Sarah’s father, they’d all gotten quicker on their rhetorical feet. They used their new skills outside of class and made short work of anybody who hadn’t learned to survive a withering Berg assault. “When situations change.”

  His father seemed to enjoy the counterthrust himself. “Some situations change. Others don’t.”

  “Have it your way,” Noonan said. “What am I doing here?”

  “Having a beer with your old man. Let’s see your fake ID.” He held out his hand. Noonan paused before handing it over. In another month he’d be eighteen anyway, and besides, he doubted his old man meant to confiscate it now, having just bought him a beer.

  His father looked the card over, nodding in appreciation. “Nice job. How much did it set you back?”

  “Seventy-five.”

  “I could’ve got you one for less if you’d asked.” He added, when Noonan offered no reply. “But Jass was right. It’s a good one.”

  “Jass?”

  “Jasper Englander. Your boss. Why do you think he hired you?”

  The last thing Noonan wanted to do was grant his father the satisfaction of yet another surprise when he still hadn’t figured out what to make of the first. Was it possible he’d really come to all his games and Noonan had just failed to notice him? What would that mean? For that matter, what did it mean that he’d never suspected his influence when, underage, he got a bartending job from a man who’d been looking at fake IDs all his life?

  “You hungry?” his father said.

  “No,” Noonan lied.

  “It’s prime rib night. They do it good here.”

  “I’m not hungry,” he repeated.

  “Suit yourself,” his father said, signaling Maxine, who came down the bar and took his order for a prime rib, medium-rare, just as Noonan would’ve taken his if he wasn’t being so stubborn.

  “They let people eat at the bar?” Noonan said when Maxine went into the kitchen.

  “Normally, no, but they let me.”

  “You’re special?”

  “Well,” he said, “I do own the place.”

  “Right.” Noonan snorted, then realized his father was serious. The surprises were coming too fast now, practically tripping over one another.

  Maxine returned with a setup and a salad with blue-cheese dressing—also Noonan’s favorite—in a small wooden bowl.

  “You,” he said. “You own this place.”

  His father dug in. “Well, it’s my name on the lease, put it like that. What?”

  “Nothing,” he said. “I was just thinking about the budget you keep Mom on.”

  “Your mother’s a child. If I treated her like an adult, we’d all be broke.”

  “You’re the one who keeps her a child,” Noonan said. “You never let her do anything.”

  “She can’t do anything. It’s not a question of letting her or not letting her.”

  Noonan shook his head in disbelief. “And you were at the game today?”

  “I told you. I’ve been to all of them.”

  “Would it have killed you to sit with her? Make her happy for once?”

  “Trust me, she was far happier with your brothers.”

  The prime rib came then, beautifully red, swimming in au jus. Noonan’s stomach began to growl. “You sure you don’t want one of these?” his father said. “It’s not too late.”

  “I’m not hungry,” he said, certain that by now his lie was transparent. “It’s those pills. She can’t function.”

  “They don’t help,” his father admitted, chewing thoughtfully. “They aren’t the problem, though.” He’d separated the leaner meat from the fatty tail. Even the fat made Noonan’s mouth water. “Suppose you’re right that I should be around more, act nicer to your mother. What about you? These days, you aren’t around much more than I am. If you really cared about her, you wouldn’t be living downtown. You’d be home helping out, making things better. Except you know there’s no way to make things better, right?”

  “I live downtown so I don’t run into you. If we lived under the same roof, she’d be even worse off.”

  “But I don’t live under that roof. I visit. Just like you.” His father pushed his plate away, having eaten, Noon
an judged, about half. “Look, I don’t give a shit if you lie to me. Say you aren’t hungry when you are, that’s no skin off my ass. But don’t lie to yourself.”

  “How am I doing that?”

  Maxine came over and cleared the plate away. Noonan told himself not to watch it go, but he did anyway.

  “Here’s what I think. When you were a kid, you saw things a certain way,” his father continued. “Who knows? Maybe you were right. But you keep wanting to see things the same way now, even though they aren’t. You know they aren’t, but you’re in the habit. You feel better about things if I’m the bad guy.”

  “You are the bad guy.”

  “See what I mean?” his father said. “You didn’t even have to think about it, and you should’ve.” He called down the bar, “Max, am I a bad guy?”

  “Nope.”

  “Call Willie out here a minute,” he suggested, and when the boy appeared in the doorway he said, “William, tell the truth now. Am I a good guy or a bad guy?”

  “A good guy,” Willie said with no more hesitation than Noonan and even more pleased to have gotten the answer right. “The best guy.”

  “There you go,” his father said, as if only the most unreasonable person could dispute such unblemished testimony.

  Noonan chuckled. “I guess that settles it.”

  “Oh,” his father said, “he’s not smart like you, so he must be wrong?”

  “I didn’t say that.” He’d implied it, though.

  “Okay,” his father said, conceding the point. “You tell me. What should I be doing different?”

  “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”

  “Begin anywhere. Maybe I should be more like you. Go through life pretending I’m not hungry when I am. Should I make like there’s nothing wrong with your mother…pretend she’s the woman of my dreams?”

  “Not a bad idea,” Noonan said, mostly out of frustration. “You made her the way she is. Bullying her. Scaring her out of her wits.”

  “What wits?”

  Noonan ignored this. “And you call yourself a man?” His father’s birthmark darkened a shade, and Noonan thought, Okay, so we’ll do this, right here, right now. Come on. Throw that punch, old man. You know you want to.

  But the kitchen door flew open just then, and Willie reappeared, his face contorted and body trembling with what looked like fear. But neither one of them had raised his voice. Had the boy been listening at the door?

  “It’s okay, Will,” Noonan’s father said. “Everything’s all right.”

  The boy didn’t move. He studied Noonan’s father, then Noonan himself, still visibly trembling.

  “He doesn’t like for people to be angry, do you, Will?”

  The boy shook his head violently. His mother came down the bar, put a hand on his shoulder and said, “Shhhh.”

  His father looked at Noonan. “Tell him everything’s fine.”

  “Everything’s fine,” he said.

  “Try meaning it,” his father suggested, the boy still staring at Noonan.

  “Everything’s okay,” he said, sincerely this time, and sure enough, the kid stopped trembling, gave them all a big smile and returned to the kitchen.

  “Don’t ask,” his father said once Maxine was again out of earshot. “I have no idea how he knows, but he does. If you made a fist right now, he’d be back out here before it landed.”

  “Maybe we should go someplace else.”

  His father shrugged. “The beer’s free here, unless you don’t think you can control yourself.”

  “I guess I was thinking more about you.”

  He ignored this, signaling to Maxine for two more drafts. “So, you know all about being a man now?”

  “How would I? All I’ve ever known is you.”

  “But you haven’t known me.”

  When Maxine came down the bar, Noonan waved away the beer.

  “Leave it,” his father told her. “He can drink it or not, his choice. He’s a man.” When she was gone again, his father changed the subject. “So, tell me about this Beverly girl.”

  “Why?” Noonan said, setting his beer down, realizing as he did so that he’d taken a swig without meaning to. He’d never mentioned Nan to his father—or mother, for that matter—but somehow he knew.

  “She’s cute. Marry her and you’re set for life,” his father said.

  “Maybe, but that’s not the plan.”

  “What is?”

  Sex, Noonan thought, though she hadn’t yet surrendered to him, mostly because he hadn’t pressed. And why was that? Sarah, probably. Now that they were all hanging out together, she and Nan had become confidantes, and for some reason she seemed to have concluded that Nan was vulnerable and needed protecting. “She really likes you, you know,” Sarah kept telling him, as if affection caused vulnerability. To Noonan it just meant they’d eventually have sex. That Sarah should consider it the reason they shouldn’t seemed beyond perverse.

  “College, maybe,” Noonan said, a trial balloon more than anything, curious to see what the old man would think.

  “Why not?” his father said, a surprise. Noonan had expected him to recommend the army. “I could maybe help, if that’s what you decide.”

  “Thanks.”

  His father noticed the tone. “Thanks, but no thanks? Is that what you’re saying? Thanks, but I’m not hungry? Thanks, but I’m not thirsty?” He nodded at Noonan’s glass, which somehow was empty now.

  “So what’s this about? We’re supposed to be friends, all of a sudden?”

  His father shrugged. “Any reason we shouldn’t be?”

  “Only the last seventeen years.”

  “We could start the next seventeen tonight.”

  Could he be serious? “I’ll think about it.”

  “But you don’t like the idea.”

  “Well, it’s the timing. Now that you don’t scare me anymore, you want to be friends.”

  “That’s one way to look at it.”

  “What’s the other way?”

  “Maybe it’s not all of a sudden. Maybe you haven’t been paying attention. Maybe you’re not as smart as you think. Maybe you just prefer what you’re used to. Maybe you’re afraid something new will throw you off kilter.”

  “You’re saying you’ve changed.”

  “I’m saying if you decide to go to college, maybe I can help a little. I’m saying the next time I offer to buy you dinner, you should take me up on it. There’s one more thing I’m saying, too, but it’ll have to wait, because right now I’ve got to pee. You must have to take a leak yourself.”

  “No, I’m fine,” he lied.

  His father just grinned at him. “Hard to do things different, isn’t it.”

  Once he was gone, Maxine came down the bar. “So how’s tending bar down in the Gut?”

  “Not bad,” Noonan said. And was it any of her business, he’d have liked to ask.

  “Murdick’s can get a little rough.”

  “It’s pretty quiet on Sundays,” Noonan said. “I’ve only had to eighty-six one guy. He called me a name, but then passed out before I could punch him.”

  “Well, when you get tired serving beers and bumps to rummies, let me know. I could use a night off every now and then. Sunday would work as well as any other damn day, if that’s the only one you can work.”

  “Now that football season’s over, I’m a little more flexible.”

  “I could teach you how to make a cocktail. Give you a skill. Bartenders don’t starve in America,” she said, “of course they don’t get rich either.”

  “Thanks. I’ll think about it,” Noonan told her.

  “That’s the second time you’ve said that,” Maxine remarked.

  And when she smiled, Noonan was surprised. For a woman with such a hard face, her smile was soft and warm. “Tell my old man I said thanks for the beer,” he said, sliding off his stool. But then he heard the door to the men’s room swing open. When he turned and saw his father returning, he could only stare.
In the time it had taken him to empty his bladder, he’d aged ten years.

  “What?” his father said.

  “Nothing,” he said, squinting at him. “You look different.”

  “Different from what?”

  Noonan was about to say From how you always look, but stopped. Was it possible that his father was right, that somehow he wasn’t paying attention? If the old man suddenly looked a decade older, did that mean that it had been a decade since Noonan had really looked at him? Was this how he’d managed not to see him at all those football games, or failed to recognize him that afternoon, when he was leaning against Dec’s bike?

  “I’ll be back in a minute,” his father told Maxine. “My son’s a little slow putting two and two together, so I need to bring him up to speed.”

  Outside, they walked over to the motorcycle. Noonan swung a leg over the saddle and waited for whatever his father wanted to say, so he could leave, but for some reason he seemed reluctant. “Look, I should’ve met my friends by now,” he told him. “If you want to tell me something, shoot.”

  His father nodded thoughtfully, as if searching for the right words. “It’s not something I want to tell you, exactly. I just thought you might like to meet Max.”

  Noonan blinked at this and was on the verge of asking why on earth he’d want to do that when he understood. “That’s her,” Noonan said. This was the woman his father had been involved with all these years?

  “Careful,” his father said, as if he was about to say the one thing that could provoke hostilities between them. “I just thought you might like to know she’s not a bad person. She’s had a pretty rough time of it, actually.”

  “As rough as Mom?”

  “Plus, she wanted to meet you.”

  “Why?”

  “She thought it’d do you good. We’ve been kind of having an argument about you. She said the day would come when you’d wake up and wonder who the hell your old man really was.”