Bridge of Sighs

by Richard Russo

  He did his best behind the bar but screwed up one drink after another. “What the hell’s the matter with you tonight?” his father finally asked. Noonan said he was just exhausted from shoveling snow all day, grateful it hadn’t occurred to his father to ask about the scene he’d interrupted back at Ikey’s. At one point, though, Willie, his psychic tuning fork vibrating as usual, came out of the kitchen, tenderly took his hand in his own and rested his broad forehead on Noonan’s shoulder and told him not to worry, that everything would be okay. “Hey, William,” his father called down the bar. “Come here a sec.” Boys didn’t hold hands with boys, Noonan heard his father explain.

  “He was just trying to be nice,” he said later, when Willie was out of earshot.

  “I understand that,” his father said. “Next time, when he kisses you, he’ll be trying to be nice then, too.”

  Max, who’d gone into town to visit her mother in her nursing home, returned at nine-thirty, took one look at Noonan and told him to go home.

  When they pulled up in front of the drugstore, his father turned off the ignition, and as Noonan started to get out, told him to hold on a minute. “So,” he said, “I guess this Berg girl is the one you really like, huh?”

  He was far too exhausted for this or any other conversation with his father. “I guess,” he said. “I don’t know.”

  “But the Beverly girl’s the one you slept with.”

  “It’s kind of hard to explain.”

  His father shook his head. “Not really. You know what I see when I look at you?”

  “Nope.” But he knew what was coming.

  “Me.”

  Noonan swallowed what he felt like saying, but was pleased to feel some of the delicious old loathing return.

  UPSTAIRS, it was cold. Maybe not as cold as it had been the night before, though it felt even colder. As soon as he crawled into the sleeping bag, he smelled Nan, and his stomach lurched. Unzipping, he dragged the bag over to the lamp and used the same washcloth he’d given her that morning to scrub at the spot of her blood that had dried on the fabric, as if by removing that he could undo the act that occasioned it. But all this accomplished was to start his wrist aching again and to turn a small dry spot into a large wet one. The cloying scent of spoiled, petulant little girl remained.

  He tried not to think about how Sarah was lost to him. What he couldn’t help wondering was when, precisely, she’d decided on Lou Lynch and not Bobby Marconi. Something told him that when they’d kissed yesterday, her decision hadn’t yet been made, which meant she hadn’t known for sure until today. Had it become clear only when she learned about her mother? Had she known in that instant of brutal loss whose comforting embrace and genuine kindness she wanted and needed? Or was it when she’d come into Ikey’s? And if he’d been the one out front and Lucy in the back, would that same grief and loss have propelled her into his arms instead? But these were pointless questions. It didn’t matter how or why she’d chosen. She’d just chosen.

  Only when Noonan tried to crawl inside the bottom, closed end did he realize he’d put the top of the sleeping bag facing the back of the building instead of the street, as usual. Not that it made any difference, he thought, getting inside and zipping up. He’d be asleep in a minute anyway. Except he wasn’t. Despite his exhaustion, he lay awake shivering on the wet spot, the pain in his wrist coming in long leisurely waves now. If Sarah had chosen, then the thing to do was not care. Wasn’t that what he’d told Nan last night, that caring was something you could just decide not to do? Hadn’t he mastered that trick long ago? In the morning he would wake up and simply not give a shit.

  He lay there telling himself this and staring at a strange shape—a cloaked man?—at the far end of the room. It took him a while to recognize the triangle at its apex as the point of Sarah’s easel, and for some reason this reminded him of his cathedral dream. He’d thought of it off and on in the intervening months, even considered asking Three Mock if he knew of anybody on the Hill who had a dream book. But that would just give him a number, something he could play, and what he wanted was the dream’s meaning. Tonight, oddly enough, he thought maybe he knew it. If he’d had to sum up in a single word what the cathedral had felt like, it was “home.”

  Earlier, shoveling snow with Lucy, he’d felt like Ikey Lubin’s might be home, but he now understood that had been merely a yearning. The Lynch store was no more his home than Nell’s was his father’s. Ikey’s was just a place he’d become invested in. A small, good thing, yes, but not his small, good thing. He was welcome there, true, but always as a visitor. In her drawing Sarah had been right to locate him outside, about to enter. Realizing this, Noonan felt, for perhaps the first time, the terrible combination of loss—of something he wasn’t sure he could afford to lose—and fear that there might be nothing to replace it. After all, what did it mean if your only true home was a place that didn’t even exist outside your own head? Wasn’t that just an indication that you didn’t belong anywhere?

  What he wanted, desperately, was to dream the cathedral again, because this time he’d be ready. The first time he’d wanted to share its wonders. Now he’d know better than to lose his focus. If he had the dream again, he’d know it was meant for him alone, that some things couldn’t be shared. The magic and beauty of the cathedral, if that’s what it was, could only be revealed to one person at a time, with no distractions. The presence of anyone else, even a loved one, maybe especially a loved one, made it vanish. It was what you got, he now understood, in lieu of a loved one.

  As he lay awake staring at the dark, indistinct shape of Sarah’s easel, Noonan could not know that he was looking at his future, his destiny, or that he’d spend his adult life in front of easels, his brush often guided mysteriously by a series of what he would come to think of as “paint dreams.” All of that was too far away. He did, however, sense a more immediate future, dark shapes moving in the middle distance between his sleeping bag and the easel at the other end of the room. He could sense them gathering force, and he found that by squeezing his throbbing wrist he could make them almost visible in the darkness. The months to come—between the blizzard and graduation—would give these dark shapes substance in the physical world, driving events that would surprise everyone but Noonan. Despite what Nan told Lucy, she and her mother would not return to Thomaston from Atlanta. Her parents would arrange for her to finish her course work and take her exams in absentia. Her diploma would be sent to her through the mail. Lucy, predictably, would take this hardest. “How come she doesn’t even write, is what I’d like to know,” he’d say at least once a week, adding, “To you, especially,” hoping Noonan might explain. “Mind your own business, Lou,” his mother would tell him. “You, too,” she’d warn her husband when he opened his mouth to say it didn’t make no sense to him either.

  Nor, of course, was Noonan surprised when Sarah’s father was arrested in May for possession of controlled substances. He’d seen that coming back in the fall. The charges were ultimately dropped, though not until Mr. Berg agreed to resign his position. A similar accusation, it was learned, is why he’d left his teaching job in New York and come to Thomaston in the first place. When no substitute could be found so late in the semester, he was told he could finish out the term, but then the story broke in the newspaper, and he never returned to class after that. Everyone in honors was awarded an A. Poor Sarah, Noonan thought, grateful she had Lucy and his family for comfort. “We’ll take care of her,” Tessa had promised when her mother died, and they did.

  Of course what shocked people most was what happened between Noonan and his father, but to him, those events, even more than the others, had the feel of a too-familiar story whose plot was set in motion long ago and whose resolution, barring some deus ex machina intervention, was inevitable. David had never stepped foot in the flat above the Rexall, but Noonan wasn’t all that surprised to find him there when he returned after graduation practice that afternoon in early June. Nor was he terribly surprised b
y what his brother had come to tell him—that their mother was pregnant again. And though he’d safely negotiated the turn onto the gravel road that led up to Nell’s a hundred times before, he wasn’t really surprised that same afternoon when he lost control of the Indian and it slammed into the concrete abutment. All winter long Dec Lynch had been saying that it was just a matter of time before something like that would happen. The only part Dec got wrong was his prediction that Noonan would escape uninjured, because as he rolled clear he felt something give in his wrist. Was there not a beautiful symmetry to this? And of course he wasn’t surprised when the restaurant door flew open and poor, befuddled, prescient Willie came barreling down the long drive to meet him, his arms waving wildly above his head, his face a contorted mask of terror, screaming “No!” over and over.

  Did his father feel that same inevitability? The futility of attempting to alter events that had been preordained so long ago? Because when Noonan entered, he didn’t even bother to climb down from his barstool. He did rotate to face his son, showing him once more those mocking eyes he’d known so well as a boy, their former rage turned inward now. Back when Noonan’s hatred of his father had been black and pure, he’d looked forward to this day. Now he deeply regretted all those evenings they’d sat on adjacent barstools in an uneasy truce, which had left him more conflicted than he cared to admit, even to himself. But he had warned his father about the consequences if he failed to heed that warning, so what choice did he have? Had Sarah chosen him, he would remember thinking, it might have been different, but she hadn’t. And now the time had come to show her just how wise she’d been.

  The details of fights were as hard to recall as kisses, and except for his first punch landing flush, his father’s teeth collapsing against his knuckles, his barstool still spinning after he’d crashed to the floor, all he remembered was a blur of sight and sound. Max calling the police. Willie, shoved roughly aside in the parking lot, beside himself now, kicking and punching him, howling like a wild animal for him to stop, stop, stop. His father’s blood bubbling blackly from his nose and mouth, his eyes no longer mocking, just accepting. Noonan punching with his left fist, his right hanging limp and worthless. He would remember wanting to stop, but not stopping, even when his father’s eyes rolled back in his head. He was too honest to tell himself he was doing this for his mother, who didn’t want it any more than she wanted another pregnancy. He was simply doing it because he said he would, and so his father, who could never quite bring himself to throw that punch he was forever threatening, would understand, once and for all, that his son was a different sort of man entirely.

  LOVE

  BY THE TIME I finally come upstairs Sarah has turned off the light, which may or may not mean she’s been crying and doesn’t want me to see. I undress in the dark, get into my pajamas, then slide into bed next to her. She turns over to let me know she’s awake.

  “I saw Brindy in the West End this afternoon. She told Owen she was going to Albany,” I tell her, because it’s important and has been lost in all the turmoil over me.

  “I’m sorry,” Sarah says, letting her voice fall and leaving me to contemplate exactly what she’s sorry about. To share my suspicion? For Owen? That I witnessed this, because now I’ll worry? That I need to shift the focus from myself onto our son?

  “If he finds out…” I let the thought trail off.

  “He may already know,” my wife says, taking me by surprise. “People know things and pretend not to.” Am I mistaken, or is she speaking not only of our son and me but also herself? Finally she says, “Lou, I’ve decided I need to go away for a while.”

  I’ve been half expecting these words for a very long time. How odd they should take my breath away now, especially given the events of the day. I want desperately to beg her not to, but of course I’ve got this coming. “Where?” I say stupidly. Away, obviously. Away from me.

  “I don’t know. I just…need to be alone, to sort things out. Some time to yourself might do you good, too.”

  “It won’t,” I assure her. “Without you—”

  “I’m not going to lie to you, Lou. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m not even sure I know how to be alone. Or who I’d be if we weren’t together. Maybe I’ll find out. But I want you to understand that I’m not angry. I know how hard you’ve tried. It was wrong of you to do what you did. But you’re not the only one who’s ever done a shameful thing.”

  I wait until she continues.

  “Part of what you said before was true,” she says finally. “I did love him.”

  Of course. We both did.

  “Or maybe just something about him. His…”

  Courage.

  She clears her throat. “He sent me a postcard when I was at Cooper Union. It didn’t say much except that he was in Toronto and all right. He joked about how he’d signed up for an art class and joined a workshop, and I’d better watch out because he planned to catch up to me. I wanted to show you the card, but I knew it would hurt your feelings because he’d written to me, not both of us. I didn’t write him back at first, not until Lou-Lou got sick, and then again when we got married. I could tell him things I couldn’t say to you, partly because he wasn’t here, but also because you take everything to heart so.”

  Oh Lou, why must you be so…

  “I wrote him again after your father died and you…I panicked, I guess, because of how unhappy you were. And I wrote him when I lost the baby, when I was the unhappy one. That was the last letter. After that, I stopped.”

  “Why?”

  “It started to feel like…cheating. He wrote me at a post office box, and I told myself they were just letters, but having that kind of secret didn’t feel right. And by then Bobby was married himself, and it wasn’t really fair to anybody, so I told him I wouldn’t be writing anymore. I said I loved you and I loved our lives, which was true, but mostly it just seemed like it was time to stop. And then Owen came along and we got busy and there wasn’t any need.”

  “Then why start again? Why now?”

  My eyes have adjusted to the dark. There’s just enough light in the room for me to make out her smile, the same sweet smile that’s been such a blessing all these years. “Because it was finally safe. Can’t you see that? Maybe it was all of us getting older. I don’t know, but at some point I realized the danger was past and Bobby was just an old friend. And after so many years, that’s also how Bobby would think of me. But it had something to do with my cancer, too. After the operation I wanted to talk to someone who only knew me from before, as I used to be. The person I really wanted to talk to was my mother, but she was gone, and then for some reason I thought of Bobby, remembering how we used to talk.”

  About things she couldn’t say to me.

  She takes my hand. “It’s sweet that you think of me as a woman another man would want, but—”

  “Sarah,” I say, my voice barely audible even to me.

  “Try not to think of what I’m telling you as a love story, Lou. You and I are the love story, not Bobby and me.”

  “You’ll never come back,” I say, surprising myself by the force of my conviction.

  Perhaps because she knows me so well, and knows that she’ll never convince me on this point, at least not tonight, she doesn’t try. “There’s one other thing I need to tell you. I want you to understand that writing those letters to Bobby all those years ago isn’t the only dishonest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve been reading your story, Lou. All this week. I shouldn’t have done that without asking you, but I was so frightened. I was scared of something even worse than what happened today.”

  That I would cross the Bridge of Sighs. That I wouldn’t turn back. She doesn’t have to spell this out. “Not much of it’s true, I suppose. I started out trying to stick to the facts, but I kept getting lost.”

  “The way you felt about Lou-Lou was true. The way you feel about Ikey’s. And I liked what you wrote about me. But will you explain one thing? Why did you say it was so
me other girl, the one you describe on the stairs at the Y? The one who looked so frightened at being left behind? It was me, you know.”

  “No, that was—” I start to tell her who, because there’s no doubt in my mind, but I stop. For some reason I’m having trouble picturing that girl as clearly as I did when I wrote about the incident. Nor can I remember her name.

  “You were a step below me on the stair. I knew who you were, but you hadn’t met me yet. I wasn’t the kind of girl boys noticed. I turned and there you were and—”

  “No,” I say again, not wanting to get confused. “No, I remember—”

  “I was with my best friend, Sally Doyle. She and I went to all the dances together. You were with that poor boy who hanged himself. David.”

  “No,” I say again. I’m literally shaking my head in the dark.

  “Lou,” Sarah says, sensing my upset. “It’s okay, Lou.”

  I SLEEP FITFULLY, waking an hour before dawn with the certain knowledge that of course Sarah’s right. It was her on that stair so long ago. I now see the hope and longing in that girl’s eyes and recognize them as belonging to the woman sleeping beside me, whose life I’ve intertwined with my own. Out our bedroom window the eastern sky shows a thin band of gray. I remember waking as a boy during these darkest of hours and being comforted by the clinking of milk bottles. Even though my father never handled our route, that sound told me he was out there making us proud, providing people with what they needed, dependable and sure in all weathers. He was, I believed, an important man with an important job. The sort of job you wouldn’t trust to just anybody.

  Poor David, I think. How many times have I denied him? This last is the worst. Because Sarah was right about that, too. David had been there, standing quietly beside me that Friday night. For moral support we always went to those dances together. His family had recently moved to Thomaston, and he was in desperate need of a friend, and so, as usual, was I. Finally I got to be the mentor and protector, much as Bobby Marconi had been for me, and I remember enjoying that new role. Living on opposite sides of the East End, David and I took turns walking each other home. One Friday after the dance, we went to David’s house, and there in the dark driveway he shocked me by kissing me full on the lips, then hurrying inside. The next day, at the theater, he seemed as embarrassed by what he’d done as I was, and neither of us referred to the previous night. But after the movie he walked me home and did it again, this time in broad daylight, right in front of my house. I remember thinking my father was across the street watching, and so I shoved David away and told him I didn’t want to be friends anymore. I can still see the look on his face.