—I’m going.
—No, don’t.
—I have to, she said. She wanted to.
—Wait.
—What is it?
He sat up in bed and pushed his long hair out of his eyes. Would you do me a favor? he said.
—Sure. Well, if I can.
—Drive me to New York.
—But you just came. You said you wanted to stay here and think. You haven’t had a minute, with me around.
—Is that why you’re going? So I can be alone?
—No.
—I might come back here after I go to New York, he said, but there’s something I have to do there.
—What is it? Can I do it for you?
—No, he said. I’ll tell you about it. Just wait, I’ll be ready in a minute.
They didn’t turn off the water, but Nelson said it was all right, that there wouldn’t be another hard frost. He had brought a large duffel bag with lots of things in it—maybe all his things. She had to work to get it into her packed car. I like my things, he said. She didn’t think he’d opened it, except maybe to get a toothbrush. He was wearing the same flannel shirt and jeans he had on when she found him there.
They rode down the Northway in silence. Then Nelson said, When people ran away from the mental hospital, they called it eloping.
—That’s funny.
—It was funny. As if they were getting married. You know where it is?
—Where what is?
—The hospital. It’s right near the George Washington Bridge.
—Oh, right, she said. She was changing lanes behind a slow driver.
He went on. With her peripheral vision, she could see that he was gesturing. Nelson had long narrow hands and long oval nails, and his gestures were slow and beautiful. There was a girl I liked, he said. Her name was Susan.
—What was she like?
—Do you have anything to eat? I didn’t eat.
She said, The corn flakes and a couple of other things are in a grocery bag, on top of the shit in the back seat. But we left the milk.
He turned around, and then she heard him crunching corn flakes.
—I still have just a little money, she said. We’ll stop and get something.
—I have money.
—Do you sell drugs? she said.
—Sometimes. He reached into the box for more corn flakes. Want some?
—No. What was Susan like?
—She was little and she had long dark hair. She used to play the guitar and sing. She sang Joan Baez songs.
—She sounds like Joan Baez.
—A little. With curly hair, though. And—do you mind my telling you this?
—Of course not, she said. She thought he might mean she’d be jealous of this Susan. Are you going to see her? Is that why you’re going into the city?
—Something like that. He seemed to have put the box of corn flakes down at his feet, in the space that was already cluttered. He was silent. Then he said, Susan eloped, and she jumped off the George Washington Bridge.
—Oh my God, Brenda said. Oh, honey. Do you want me to get off the road, so I can stop and hold you?
—No. I think about it all the time. Thing is, I have to walk out on the bridge and tell her I love her. I’ve loved her all these years.
—Did you ever do that before? Walk out on the bridge?
—No. Being with you made me know I should do it.
She considered. You want me to drive you to the bridge?
—I won’t be able to do it otherwise.
—And it’s so important, all of a sudden, after all these years?
—She was a really sweet girl, he said.
—Was she your girlfriend?
He considered. Sort of. We didn’t screw, you know—that would have been hard to do there, and we were kids. I didn’t have the nerve to say I didn’t know how. But we used to talk and touch each other. It was touching your hair that made me know I had to go onto the bridge and say good-bye. I never said good-bye. They wouldn’t let me go to the funeral.
She turned on the radio. Here she could find stations that played the music she liked. Over the sound of a Doors song they listened to together, she said, But how do I know—Nelson, you know what I’m thinking.
—You’re thinking I’m going to kill myself.
She waited until the song ended. That’s right. Another song began.
—What can I say? You have to trust me. Don’t you trust me? There was a hint of a whine in his voice.
She didn’t answer. They were still north of Albany. You jumped in front of a train, she said.
—That was years ago. I was shrunk and treated and given a million pills—I’m not that kid now.
She was silent. She wished the George Washington Bridge were farther away, so she could think. She calculated. Simplest would be to come at it from the Jersey side. But she wasn’t going to do that, and she knew he didn’t mean that. The girl would have walked out from the New York side. And she herself needed the drive through the familiar avenues of New York. She wouldn’t be able to think until she was in New York. I hate this road, she said, and at her next opportunity she got onto Route 9, which would slow them down and would take her right into the city.
—This is the way we used to go when we were kids, he said.
—Us too. I’ll take the Taconic State. She’d drive through the Bronx and onto city streets in Manhattan. Now there were things to look at beside the road. They stopped for coffee and doughnuts. The small shabby businesses were cheering after the speed and mindlessness of the highway.
—What’s your brother like these days? she said, when it began to seem that they had been silent for too long.
—My brother. Well, he smiles all the time, Nelson said. He has tried marijuana exactly once. He’s a kid, but it’s hard to remember he’s a kid. He’s like the mayor. He’s taller than my dad and wider.
—He’s fat?
—No, he’s just got arms and legs like telephone poles. He does everything right. Somebody has to be like that.
—That’s my sister, in my family. She has a husband and a baby.
—No shit. A baby. Do you like it?
—I’ve never seen him, Brenda said. That’s part of why I have to get to New York.
—How old is he?
—Five or six months.
—You didn’t fly east to see him?
—I should have.
—Your sister was nice to me when we were kids, Nelson said. I wasn’t afraid of her.
—She’s still nice.
The next time they spoke, he said, Are you going to take me to the bridge?
—Can’t you take the subway to the bridge?
—You don’t want the responsibility. But look, Brenda, even if I was going to kill myself—isn’t that my business?
—You’re going to kill yourself, I knew it. They were driving through a town, an ugly town. There were traffic lights at every corner, and they were all red.
—I’m not going to kill myself. But why should you care? Isn’t it my business to choose the length of my life? I could get drafted. I could end up in Vietnam and not only die but kill other people. This way I wouldn’t be killing anybody but me.
She missed a corner where the route turned and had to go back. They’re not drafting guys your age, she said.
—At the moment.
—You could go to Canada.
—Well, the army might not want me because I was crazy.
—That’s right, she said. They were finally out of that town. She would never know its name. Soon they’d be on the Taconic State and would be going faster again. The slowness frustrated her, but she didn’t want to speed up.
—And we’ll probably all be dead before too long, from some Russian bomb.
—Look, we survived the Cuban Missile Crisis, she said. We could go on for a while.
—But sooner or later—you have to admit that sooner or later . . .
—Nelson, she said, that doesn’t have a
nything to do with it. It’s not true that if you killed yourself, you wouldn’t kill anybody else. You’d kill your father. I know it would kill your father.
—My father. Professor Father.
—Did you see that piece he wrote about being against the war? About trusting your opinions? I read that over and over. I love your father. She decided that Harold was the only man not related to her that she had ever loved. She clenched her hands on the wheel. Nelson, I forbid you to do this, because of your father.
—That pisses me off.
—Why?
—It’s very establishment, Brenda. It’s not what I thought you were like. It’s like the rest of them. Why bother to be the kind of girl you are if you’re going to say something like that?
—I don’t know what you’re talking about.
There was more silence. You have to trust me, that’s all, he said.
—I trust you not to hurt me, she said. I trust you not to tell anybody what I told you about that guy I screwed. I don’t trust you not to kill yourself.
—So you’re not going to drive me to the bridge? I just need to walk out on the bridge. And I need you to be there when I come back.
She didn’t answer for a long time. For a long while, nobody had needed her to do something she could do. Who was she to be such an advocate for life? I’ll drive you there, she said. Okay.
She got lost three times and spent nearly all her remaining money on gas. They stopped for lunch because Nelson said he’d pay again, and she ordered a roast beef sandwich, the most substantial meal she’d had for a while. She and Nelson seemed to be children, unable to make judgments. She could turn around and drive back to the cabin—except that they’d starve there. She could drive straight to her parents’ apartment or Harold’s, finding an excuse to stop at a phone booth and look up his address. But she owed Nelson more than that. He was making a claim: that he wasn’t a child, that he was making a judgment, that he should be listened to. She was older than he, but she was not doing much better at growing up. If she was wrong—if he jumped from the bridge into the Hudson—she could never justify her decision to anyone. But, at present, driving Nelson Abramovitz (he’d told her he had not changed his name when Harold did) to the George Washington Bridge seemed like the only possible expression of trust and friendship. His touch on her hair had been gentle—gentle by habit, gentle by conviction—and it made Richie less: farther away and less powerful.
By the time she reached the neighborhood of the bridge, it was chilly and windy, almost evening, with the sun just a white circle through the clouds. A line of poetry came into her head: The sun was white, as though chidden of God. There was no place to park anywhere near the bridge, though she drove everywhere through that neighborhood. She could see it above her, huge. She saw the hospital where Nelson had been imprisoned. He said nothing. Finally, he spoke. You could wait at a hydrant and keep the flashers on. If a cop comes, you could drive around the block. If I come back and don’t see you, I’ll wait.
She had thought she might go with him, whether he wanted her to or not. Now she was trapped. All right, she said. She pulled up to a fire hydrant. The bridge was several blocks north. She didn’t know how he’d find the walkway. Will you be okay?
—I can find it from here. I just need to say good-bye, he said.
She turned, her hands still on the wheel. Okay. She didn’t want to make it a farewell—partly because she couldn’t, partly so he’d feel he had to come back. She would treat it as if he was getting out of the car to ask directions, or to buy a bottle of milk.
But he put his long arms and long hands around her and hugged her, pressing his long sweet hair—it had to be dirty, but it smelled good—into her face. She hugged him tightly. She got out of the car and hugged him again, and he walked away, his flannel shirt flapping and the wind billowing it in back. It was blue and green plaid, and she remembered what it was called: Black Watch plaid. It had been popular a few years before, and Carol had owned a skirt in that plaid.
Brenda got back into the car and turned on the radio. She couldn’t concentrate on the songs and couldn’t remember, when a song was over, what she’d heard. Soon the radio became intolerable because no matter what station she tried, the DJs kept saying what time it was, and she didn’t want to know. It was getting dark. She didn’t know where the walkway to the bridge was or how long it would take to walk there. It was not far. From where she sat, she could hear the rumble of cars on the bridge. The girl who looked like Joan Baez had found the will to climb over whatever barrier there was and let herself go. She didn’t know what it would feel like, whether one would be unconscious before the killing slap of the water, whether death would be from trauma or drowning. She imagined Nelson jumping, his flannel shirt billowing like an ineffectual sail. She thought she should leave the car and walk until she found a pay phone and call Harold, who would take a taxi to this terrible place and save his son. What if she couldn’t find a pay phone? What if Harold wasn’t home? She reached behind her to find something to read, something to do, but all she had within reach was dirty laundry.
She wished she could call her parents, and for the first time she felt sorry for them, waiting to hear from her, becoming scared. Until now she had mostly been angry that they had talked to her landlord, that they had not respected her privacy and hung up. But here she was, respecting privacy, and what did it get her? Nelson might be dead by now, and she wondered if she’d hear anything—a splash, any sound, any commotion—if someone jumped from the bridge. Probably people who wanted to jump waited until there was a break in traffic and slipped down without being seen. Their bodies washed up days later—that’s how people found out what had happened. If Nelson was dead, nobody would ever know that she had helped him die unless she told on herself, and she wondered whether she’d do that. It would be a hard secret to keep for a lifetime.
But it was his business, as he’d pointed out. She had loved that valley in California when she arrived there amid the peach and apricot harvest, and yet her life there had ended up valueless, maybe harmful to others. Why should she try to keep Nelson—or anyone—alive? She had spoiled her own life yet again. If she were braver, she’d jump with him.
When three hours had passed and it was completely dark—and maybe Nelson had been waiting for dark to jump, so it was less likely he’d be seen—she could bear it no longer. What she had been thinking made no sense, no sense at all. She got out of the car, considered leaving it unlocked for him but then locked it—it contained everything she owned—and set out for the bridge.
The walkway was hard to find from the place where she’d parked. She was frantic now, hurrying, confused. Maybe Nelson had not been able to find it either. Maybe he’d given up and had gone in search of a cup of coffee. Or a glass of milk. No. It was not that hard to find, and eventually she did find it. She was freezing. She walked out on the walkway. She’d been unprepared for the size of it, for how long it took just to be away from the land, over the water. But he would have gone out there, where Susan had gone. The wind was so strong she was afraid—afraid she might be blown in—and she clutched the railing. Cars swept past her. She saw nobody. Maybe she’d missed him in the streets around the bridge. Maybe he hadn’t jumped but was trying to find the car again. She kept walking. It was dark. She saw nobody. He was gone. He had jumped.
Then she saw something, a bulge in the shadow of a cluster of the uprights that held the thick cables supporting the bridge. She willed herself not to get excited. It could be anything—or anybody. She kept walking, and then she saw that it was someone; it was someone with long hair. She was afraid Nelson would jump as she watched, climb over the railing and jump. If she cried out, that might give him the nerve he’d been seeking, the nerve to do it. She kept walking, keeping her head down so she wouldn’t see. Then she made herself lift her head because she had to see. He saw her when she was yards away and her legs trembled as she hurried, not knowing what he’d do. He did nothing, just stood where he
was. She came up to him. She was larger and heavier than Nelson Abramovitz, and she knew that now, at least for the moment, he was safe. She put her arms around him and held him tightly, and after a long time Nelson raised his arms and put them around her too. She had done something right. She did know how. She would lead her life.
Part Two
The Next Thirty-five Years: Not So Many Arguments
Chapter 7
A Fool and His Principles
1973–2002
1
A man, Ted, had moved on. It was November 1973, and Carol’s children were four and two. Brenda didn’t live near them now, and sometimes her hands and arms ached with the wish to hold them. First, she had glumly followed Carol around, gingerly helping with Gabriel. She had a one-room apartment and a job waiting tables, sure she’d screw up anything in which she had to do with people for more than an hour at a time. She babysat Gabe and then his sister, Ruthie. A teacher left their day-care center without warning, and Brenda was hired part-time, then full-time. By then she’d met Ted.
She moved to Concord, New Hampshire, to live with him and work in the business where he had just gotten a job, and the business had come to interest her more than it interested Ted, more than either of them interested each other. So it was not terrible that he was gone. And not terrible—still hard to believe, though—that she was six months pregnant. A child she hadn’t known about until weeks after he left now kicked steadily in Brenda’s belly.
Her laundry luxuriated in gray suds, diving and rising on the other side of a round glass door framed in steel, and she had nothing to do but look at it. She’d forgotten to bring a book, and there were no magazines. She owned three pairs of men’s overalls, and two were in the washing machine. The buckles clicked on the window. Her shoulders hurt after a day at work, wearing her third pair of overalls. Next time she did laundry, she’d wear one of the other pairs and wash this one, the time after that the third pair, and she saw that she could count out her life in the movement of overalls—or other clothing—into and out of washing machines. She’d worn skirts to teach in California, jeans or overalls at the day-care center, where she could get dirty at work: there was mud outside, paint in the art room, sticky children at meals and snacks. Maybe her present overalls wouldn’t fit during her last weeks of pregnancy and she’d need a larger size. The baby would make a division in her life, a before and after. Still, whatever happened, as long as you had the wherewithal to acquire and wash clothing, you could describe a life as so many pairs of clean underpants, so many pairs of socks, washed and worn again, washed again.
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