The Bridge

by Ali Mehdi

  Chapter 4

  Christina

  Her cold fingers rested inside the large palms of the old man's hand. His hands were rough and his voice was raspy and hollow, like a man that was on the last steps of his life. The warmth of his palms echoed through her fragile body as she thought about what just happened. She saw her mother's face, could see the graceful smile on her lips, and hear the gentle sound of her voice welcoming her into her arms. She felt a terrible rage brew up inside her towards the man who stopped her, but she calmed down shortly afterwards. She remembered the moment she felt the railing slip under her arms was when the feeling grew inside of her: regret. Regret is one of the most powerful emotions because of the fact that it only appears once its too late. We regret the things we could have done, the words we could have said, and the feelings we should have felt. Christana was being torn with guilt and regret, because she realized the moment she jumped, that all her problems that she thought could not be solved, were solvable, and that her problems weren't as big as she thought. But she wouldn't realize the depth of her folly until later that evening. Right now she had the old man by her side.

  "Why would you bother saving me?" She asked, staring at a loose hair that was glittering in the dying sun. His eyes were a piercing shade of sky blue.

  "Why would I bother saving you? I was walking on the pavement, when I caught a young girl climbing the railing out of the corner of my eye. What would you do in my position?"

  He was gazing off into the distance, a troubled look in his eyes. He continued without waiting for my answer "I know what you were planning to do, I saw that look in your eyes, that told me everything about you" she glanced shyly away as he picked up his pace "Look at everyone around us, nobody around us is watching us, this reminds me of when I was young, restless, wild and free. When I look back, everything seemed so fragile, without meaning, all my goals seemed so far away. My father left us before I could manage to take my first steps, my single mother, working till late at night in a fast food restaurant to support me and my younger sister. She would come home early in the morning, and I would have a hot cup of coffee waiting for her on the scratched kitchen counter. Then the teenage years came" he spat some phlegm onto the street, probably suffering from a cold and cleared out his throat while scratching his beard. "Those days were rough, not only on my poor mother, but on myself. I had this belief that my father left us because of a mistake I had committed. I know the idea sounds stupid, but thats just how the mind of a teenager processes information. I was also the school fool and scapegoat, almost every kid that would pass by would remark on my torn jeans, or my old cotton top with loose thread coming out of the sides. The kids who didn't make fun of me were too scared to, because the larger kids would intimidate anyone who stood by me. Thats just how school was, and then one day, something bad happened. I was sitting down on the kitchen counter one evening, preparing a cup of coffee, black, no sugar added, just the way she liked it, when the phone rang. The phone would almost never ring in our house. My mother didn't have the time or effort to put into friends, she kept to herself, reading a novel lying down on the couch with our dog on her lap. The nights she was exhausted, she would take a sleep pill and sit down emptily watching a rerun on TV or just stare at the wall and wait for the pill to work its magic. So thats why it seemed strange when the phone rang that fateful night, and it changed the way I would live my life forever, it would change the dreams I had, of a better life, and lock them up in a closet with a steel padlock that would never open itself again."

  He wiped a couple tears out of the corner with his worn handkerchief, turned yellow with use. She was afraid to ask how long it has been since it was last washed, but her mind was on more important issues. Why was this man opening himself up to her like this? What was his reason to confine his details to her? She felt that the old man was opening up old wounds. Old wounds that haven't been opened since his childhood, and she could sense that he had a broken soul, twisted and torn with guilt, but she didn't know why, it was just her gut feeling.

  He started coughing harshly and she jumped, caught off guard, noticing small red marks appearing on his handkerchief. "Sir, are you okay? I think you coughed out some blood-" He cut her off by raising his arm, signaling her to ignore it, and continued his story "I walked towards that phone, it was an old spin SIC phone, that hadn't been changed in the last dozen years. The phone company has been threatening to pull out our phone line for the past couple months, and we expected the phone company representative to disconnect the line at any moment. I picked up the line, and heard a man tell me to stay home, and that a police officer would be with me in ten minutes. He wouldn't tell me what happened, only that she was in the intensive care unit of the hospital and that the doctors were doing the best they could with what they had. I started sobbing into the line while my little sister came up to me and sat in my lap, pulling my hand towards her face and asking me why I was crying. What was a teenager supposed to do with something like that? I put the phone back slowly, and grabbed her with both my arms, only she didn't realize that she was comforting me, not the other way around. We spent a bit of time like that until we heard a loud knock on the door. I hesitated for a moment, wondering if I could solve the problem by not answering the door, and that my worries would just suddenly vanish, and my mother would come walking through the door, a tired but joyous smile on her face, welcoming us with arms wide open. Thats not reality, and you can just run away from your problems like that, so I did the only thing I could and opened the door. A middle aged female police officer stood in our doorway, a faint smile on her face. She said hello and asked if she could come in, but words didn't come out of my mouth, I just held the door wider and moved aside. She took the cue and sat down on one of our flimsy yellow couches. The pair of couches were an ugly mustard yellow and were picked from the dump a while back. My mother would always complain about how rich people could afford to be that careless with their stuff, and throw away anything that they didn't need. But that wasn't an inconvenience when it came to her benefitting from their "trash". She asked me to sit next to her and looked me in the eyes, firmly but at the same time gently. She told me that my mother was in the intensive care unit due to a stroke she experienced at the restaurant. She was working overtime, and her body couldn't keep up with the workload, after her manager asked her to stay past the legal work time allocation, she collapsed only thirty minutes into her new shift. Her co-workers, a bunch of teenagers only a bit older than me, splashed water on her face while the manager contacted emergency services. She was quickly rushed to the hospital, while the manager was brought into custody to be held accountable for his decisions. He pressured my mother into taking the overtime, reminding her that he had half a dozen work applications from fit teenagers who would gladly replace her tiring forty year old body." He spent a couple minutes watching the black sky while the street lights got turned on.

  "Ever since that day, she hasn't been the same. Every day that passed onwards, was a game of dice with rushing her in and out of hospitals, until she just gave up. That was the moment that changed her life, in the beginning of her strokes she put up with the pain and misery and kept fighting on, determined to come out the victor, like those shows they had on TV where they would show a person that has been fighting a disease for a dozen years and came out without a scratch. They failed to show the toll that it had on a person's body, and as strong as my mother was, she couldn't keep up with everything, so she became a shell of a human being, always sitting in her rocking chair in the corner starting at the walls and waiting to die."

  He seemed to pause for a minute, and Christina sensed that his story was nearing its end. He went on to talk about his time in art school, which opened a whole new perspective on viewing life and the importance of beauty, it was there that he got his view on the unimportance of materialistic objects and that the only thing that kept humans going was the beauty that the few artistic people managed to create and tender to. Then he talked ab
out his moving to business school, where he became the school's prodigy, always being invited to business meetings in large corporations. He finally came to the point where he was now in life, "And now here I am, a lost, old and man without a reason to keep going. Thats the worse moment a human being can feel, is to be stuck in a spot and know that there is no way to keep moving ahead, the only way to move is backwards. I lost my purpose in life and thats why I came to walk here today, but i'll leave that part of my story for later on."

  Christina was slowly opening up to the man, she didn't realize it, but before long she was telling the man her deepest secrets, sobbing into her hands while the man rubbed her back. But yet there was something strange about their talks, each time she would near the event that brought them together, the old man would change the conversation and ask her about previous events in her lifestyle, which was weird because she thought that that would be the first topic that someone who saved a little girl's life would bring up, only he did the complete opposite, avoiding the topic at every opportunity that it came up. She was grateful to him for doing that, she also felt like she had made a new friend, and the the thought struck her: what would happen after this night? She hadn't made those plans yet, she couldn't return to her father and she sure as hell didn't want to go to child services and be placed in a foster home. She had heard terrible stories of horrible foster parents that abused their children, and she didn't want to leave one abusive home only to be put in another. She felt like she had made a connection with this man, but she didn't know how he felt in return, she was afraid that if she told him how she wanted to be a part of his life, and that for the first time in her life, she felt like she had a father figure, he would get up and leave her. In class she would remember all the other kids parents, how they would smile and laugh, especially the fathers, and pick up their children with one arm while tickling them with the other. Her father was passed out drunk in the living room during those times. Some parents would come up to her and ask her where her parents were. She would have to explain to them that her mother was at work, which was true, because her mother was the main provider in their household, and that her father was out of the country, also on a business trip. She liked to dream up the perfect father, a wide shoulder man with dark hair and a perfect smile, rough hands and tough forearms with rolled up sleeves. She would tell her friends about her father, and his wild adventures in south america, protecting exotic animal species and acting as the local hero. Only her problem was, her story changed every time she told one of her friends, and they soon caught on to her lie and began humiliating her. If only they knew what her father actually was, she would probably of had to change school due to the embarrassment. Thats the reason she never had any friends over to the house, bringing them home would have been chaotic, if her parents had let her in the first place. Their house was a dump anyways, and she knew that because her parents didn't seem to have a problem with her spending the afternoons at her friends, eating from their food and sleeping under their roofs. And what she saw made her bubble with jealousy, the complete opposite spectrum of emotions that was at her house could be found here: love, harmony, gratitude and joy. Every member of their family helping each other when they were needed. There was also the respect and politeness that was an ordinary exchange between them, not a "get off your lazy ass and fetch me", but a nice and clean "if you didn't mind, could you please".

  Thats why she felt like she couldn't lose this man, even with all his imperfections, she felt like she had found the perfect person to take care of her and be there whenever she needed someone, he was someone that she could picture herself living with, so she took a deep breathe and interrupted him during his talk, "Sir, I wanted to bring up something..."" He paused and locked eyes with her, which caused her to stutter as she continued, " I've been thinking while you've been talking to me, but what am I supposed to do after this? Where am I supposed to go or do? I can't go back home if thats what you are planning on doing and i'll just run away." She waited for a reply while he scratched his beard.