A Narrow Bridge

by J. J. Gesher

  Rosie took Robert home to meet her Uncle Mo in Brent. Since her mother died, Mo had been living in her parents’ house across the street from the church where Rosie’s late father had been pastor for twenty-seven years. Although Robert was a city boy, he knew how to crank up the down-home charm. He complimented Mo’s cooking and dutifully lost to him in chess.

  Mo pulled Rosie aside as they were leaving, making sure Robert was out of earshot. “Robert is a great guy, honey, but be careful. He’s a tomcat.”

  Mo’s opposition was all Rosie needed to cement her feelings. Couldn’t Mo see the truth? Robert read like a philanderer because he was a sexual person. Even though she adored Uncle Mo, Rosie rejected his tomcat warning as self-interest. She knew Mo wanted her to come back to Brent after graduation, and being married to Robert would make that unlikely.

  By senior year, Rosie and Robert were spending all their free time together. Robert was president of his fraternity, and Rosie was treated like royalty. Rosie graduated summa cum laude with a double major in English and education. Robert squeaked through a pre-law major. Somehow, between studying for exams and attending fraternity events, Robert proposed.

  Robert reluctantly agreed to a wedding in Brent. He would have preferred something upscale, an elegant hotel reception. But Rosie insisted on a small wedding at First Baptist. She wanted to honor tradition, right down to jumping the broom, a custom of African origin that was created during slavery. Because slaves could not legally marry, they created their own rituals to honor their unions. Jumping the broom legitimized marriage and the coming together of two families.

  Uncle Mo gave the bride away. Rosie and Robert held hands and laughed as they jumped. They looked like the model of success—stylishly dressed, well educated, and filled with love and potential. The church ladies had clucked and cooked for weeks. The spread in the social hall reception was relaxed and sophisticated all at the same time.

  The young couple found a spacious apartment in a modern building in Birmingham and set up house. Rosie began teaching at one of the finest high schools in a diverse suburb. The principal recognized a gem when he saw one—a highly qualified, dedicated young teacher was a feather in his cap. Robert worked part-time while he applied to law schools.

  Robert struggled through law school. He was a slow reader, and the professors’ expectations for several hundred pages a week overwhelmed him. He became short-tempered and withdrawn. Rosie thought that when he finished school, he’d return to his old self. But Robert, who’d always loved to party, began to drink more. He came home late, alcohol on his breath. She never knew which Robert would appear—the sensitive, fun-loving guy she fell in love with or this bitter, belligerent drunk. Soon enough, the bad days overshadowed the good.

  Rosie stared out the window. She saw nothing but her past. Mo came into the kitchen, interrupting her thoughts.

  “Trees have grown wild since the last time you were here, especially the ones next to the church. Trying my damnedest to keep ’em trimmed. Not enough time to do it all.”

  “First Baptist looks great,” Rosie offered. “I know how hard you work.”

  Rosie took a long, hard look at Mo and acknowledged the signs of his nearly seventy years. His gray hair had become sparse and unruly. He moved deliberately, seeming to calculate the amount of energy required for each step or task.

  “If you want the house to yourself, Rosie, it’s yours. I can move back to the church basement.”

  “No, Uncle Mo, this is your house. Besides, Langston needs to have a cranky old man in his life. Makes things exciting.”

  Rosie took stock of the house. Other than a flat-screen television that she had brought, nothing had changed. Langston had taken over her childhood bedroom, pinning his superhero posters to the walls and finding a special place in the closet for his Legos.

  The day of the move, Langston had asked, “Will Daddy know how to find us?”

  Rosie was confounded. No matter how many times she explained the move, no matter how much love she gave her son, and no matter how many times his father had disappointed him, Langston still craved Robert’s attention.

  “Of course—he knows where we are,” she assured. “You want to call him?”

  Langston ignored her.

  She remembered being in the house when she was a child, interrupting her father when he was composing a sermon, reading on her bed for hours. She had loved watching her mother apply cherry-red lipstick, check her image in the mirror, then fasten her broad-brimmed Sunday hat to cross the street for church. Just the other day, she caught herself looking at that same mirror.

  During her marriage, Rosie hadn’t joined a congregation. She’d forgotten how much she loved to be in church. Returning to First Baptist had renewed her spirituality.

  On Tuesday nights, she crossed the street for choir rehearsal. As a girl, she’d joined her mother in the First Baptist Choir. In high school, she was a regular soloist. Since her return to Brent, she hadn’t missed a rehearsal or a Sunday service. The rhythms, the lyrics, and the moving melodies all came back to her. The choir director, Mr. Day, was thrilled to have Rosie’s voice and enthusiasm.

  As promised, Edmond the math teacher showed up at rehearsal. He acknowledged her with momentary eye contact and a nod of his head. She took this as a sign of his interest, but she wasn’t sure. He didn’t look at her again, keeping his eyes on his sheet music or Mr. Day instead. She thought momentarily of inviting him over for coffee after rehearsal but changed her mind. She sent up a silent wish that Edmond would ask her for a date. That’s all she wanted—a date.

  CHAPTER 8

  Jacob wandered Brooklyn, searching for the few street corners in Bensonhurst where heroin was sold years ago. Trench had taught him that only beginners score on the street. Jacob knew better, but he had no choice. He needed that mindless oblivion that comes in the first rush after shooting up. He needed escape from the unceasing pain.

  As he walked, his anger was amplified by a memory of the last moments of his family’s life. He tried to block the images, but fragments popped into his head like funhouse mannequins on a gruesome, repetitive loop. Shut it out.

  He tried to bat away the pictures and concentrate on the streets, but the corners all looked the same. Had he been walking in circles? The images of his family overpowered his consciousness. Shut it out.

  He saw Yossi put the basketball under his arm as he got on the bus. He pictured Julia reaching for Miriam’s hand as they walked through the bus to the back row. Shut it out.

  Sarah waved at him as the bus pulled out of the intersection. He watched the bus explode and vanish. Shut it out.

  Wake up, damn it! Turn off the pain. Close down the feeling. Jacob squeezed his eyes shut, hard enough to blind his soul. Hard enough to narrow the pain, eliminate the memory, remove the injury. Shut. It. Out.

  HIs thoughts had no language, only the combative and familiar war between getting high and staying clean. With a ferocious act of will, he released the craving for chemical deliverance. He would not get high but instead give birth to a new self, a blank self. He stopped in the middle of the sidewalk and held his breath. The longer he starved his lungs, the smaller the terrifying images became. He squeezed all memory out of his mind.

  Keep walking. Jacob concentrated on his gait, on the rhythmic sound of his feet on the city streets. He walked into the night, across the Brooklyn Bridge. He walked through the vacant Financial District, past the new World Trade Center. The city was quiet at this hour. He turned on Broadway and walked through Greenwich Village, swarming with late-night bar hoppers and college students. His feet carried him farther, past the Flatiron District and the chic stores on Third Avenue. By now, it was early morning, and trucks lined up in front of the restaurants and markets with deliveries. But Jacob didn’t notice any of the activity.

  Finally, his feet led him into the vast concourse of Penn Station. He entered a restroom and approached a sink, staring at his face. He tugged at his skin, trying to get
his vision to connect with his brain. No one recognizable looked back.

  A filthy homeless man babbled to himself at the neighboring sink. “You crazy piece of shit. You think you can do that to me? I’ll take a bomb and shove it up your ass. I’ll blow you up from the inside, motherfucker.”

  Jacob froze in fear. For a split second, the word “bomb” penetrated his stupor. Over and over, he saw the last moments of his family: Yossi and Miriam clamoring for the backseat, Sarah waving from the window, the deafening blast.

  The homeless man took a razor out of his shopping bag and squirted a handful of soap from the dispenser. He gave himself a sponge bath, unbuttoning his soiled shirt to wipe his armpits with a wet paper towel.

  Jacob continued to stare at himself in the mirror. He touched his beard. He brought his face to within an inch of the mirror, as if the proximity would bring recognition. He was looking at a stranger.

  The homeless man used his disposable razor to shave his stubble. Jacob stared at him, like a child watching his father’s daily ritual. The man whistled as he cleaned up the remnants of soap and whiskers in the sink. Then he threw away his razor, gathered his belongings, and left.

  Jacob retrieved the razor from the trash can. He removed his jacket, fringed undergarment, and skullcap and deliberately placed them in the trash. He pumped the soap dispenser, lathered his face, and began to shave. Shaving hurt. He had to pull hard on his skin to cut through the thicket on his face. The old razor left his face raw. The skin underneath the beard hadn’t seen the light of day in twelve years. It looked almost translucent.

  When Jacob left the restroom, he was a different man. His beardless face looked young and innocent. In his white shirt and dark pants, he blended easily with the crowd of travelers arriving in Penn Station. He bore little resemblance to the Orthodox cantor he’d been only hours before.

  Jacob descended to the train platforms. Loudspeakers announced the arrival and departure of local and express trains. The PA system crackled, “The Crescent Line will be departing in ten minutes from Platform 19. Stops in New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Virginia, the Carolinas, Georgia, Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana.”

  Jacob boarded a train. He walked through the cars until he found an empty row. He was weary to the bone, nearly catatonic. As the train pulled out, the sound of the wheels on the track quickly lulled him into sleep—his first sleep in days.

  The train moved out of the city and into the vast countryside. At the stop in Philadelphia, an elderly woman came down the aisle with a roller suitcase. She was about to sit down next to Jacob, but when he made whimpering noises in his sleep, she continued to the next row. He curled up in a ball like a child and slept deeply.

  A conductor patrolled the car checking tickets. He nudged Jacob into wakefulness. “Ticket?”

  Jacob didn’t respond.

  “Where you headin’?”

  Jacob shrugged.

  The conductor raised his voice as if the louder tone would penetrate this man’s daze, “Where you goin’?”

  Jacob still didn’t respond.

  “If you don’t know where you’re going, I have to charge you for the end of the line.”

  Jacob stared at him. The conductor’s walkie-talkie squawked, “Anybody speak Spanish? I need help in car five.”

  The conductor unclipped the walkie-talkie from his belt, “Hablo español. I’ll be right there.”

  As soon as the conductor stepped away, Jacob turned toward the window and fell asleep again. When the conductor returned, he was unable to wake him. Jacob slept through seven states.

  Jacob awoke twenty-two hours later as the train pulled into Tuscaloosa, Alabama. He stumbled off the train, blinking at the bright sun. After all those hours in the air-conditioned train, he began to sweat heavily. The triple-digit temperature and the weighty blanket of humidity overpowered him. He gagged from the stink of a hot dog stand mingling with body odor and rancid perfume. There was no way he’d get back on that train.

  He walked across the station to the Trailways bus stop, where a bus sat idling with the doors open. Jacob watched the driver get off the bus and head toward the station office. He used the opportunity to board the bus and take an empty seat.

  Thirty-five miles later, Jacob got off in Brent, Alabama. Brent was once a proud and thriving Southern town that had serviced the surrounding agricultural community. Now it was struggling to hold its head up.

  As he left the bus station, he walked through downtown and noticed that many of the businesses had been boarded up. The shuttered shops still revealed their faded names: Johnson Hardware, Stardust Cinema, and Beverly’s Dress Shop. They had been replaced by the corporate entities he had passed on the interstate: Walmart, a multiplex movie theater, and Sears. Jacob kept walking, going through the affluent section of town, where magnolia trees lined the streets and houses sat back on graceful lawns.

  Eventually, he entered the poor part of town. He wandered through a neighborhood made of former company houses—identical, boxy wooden two bedrooms, now dilapidated. He was dizzy from hunger and thirst. He stopped at the steps of an old clapboard church. He sat down, leaned against the building, and put his head back. Once again, he surrendered to a deep sleep.

  CHAPTER 9

  Rosie used her dishtowel to swat a fly buzzing its final death throe in the corner of her kitchen window. It was a blazing Alabama afternoon—Indian summer—the kind of day that made you think cool would never happen again. The sun heated the earth to the point where the temperature outside a body matched the one on the inside. Rosie splashed cold water on her face for the few minutes of relief that evaporation would grant. Through the window, she noticed a man curled up on the steps of the church. She could clearly see that he was white. Judging by his wrinkled clothes and stubble, he was a derelict of some kind. He looked to be sleeping. The sun was beating down on him, but he appeared unaware. Surely that man would blister.

  The phone rang, intruding on her surveillance.

  “Hello?”

  “Yes, this is Rose Yarber, but I don’t have an account at Bank of the South.”

  She sighed. She knew what was coming.

  “I don’t know where Robert Yarber is right now. We’ve been divorced for a long time.”

  Rosie cut the voice off. “Welcome to my world. He doesn’t return my phone calls, and he owes me money, too.” Exasperated, she slammed down the receiver.

  “Not my drama,” she said to herself. “Son of a bitch.”

  Rosie remembered when her marriage began to crumble. After Robert’s admission of “meaningless infidelity,” they had worked diligently on their relationship. He tried to engage with Langston when he was home and be more helpful with household chores. When Langston was in kindergarten and had a terrible bout with flu, Robert stayed home to care for him. As soon as Langston was well enough to go back to school, Rosie got sick. When she woke at three in the morning drenched in sweat, Robert was just coming in. He claimed he’d been at the office, but even in her delirious state, she knew something was very wrong.

  The wrong came in the form of another woman. One of the partners in the firm, a woman eight years Robert’s senior, had started to invite him for drinks after work. She was sexy in her high heels and Chanel suits. Having a mentor protected him from the other lawyers in the firm. His inefficiencies and lack of drive were safe from criticism as long as he hid behind a senior partner’s metaphoric skirt. Robert didn’t object to her six-figure income or her vacation home on the beach, either.

  Not long after Langston’s sixth birthday, Robert moved out. Rosie and Langston stayed in the apartment. Rosie did what she could to limit the damage of the separation, but Langston whined and clung and had difficulty falling asleep. She assured him of her love constantly. She planned weekend activities, made play dates for him, and, despite her own hurt, encouraged Robert’s visits.

  In their Sunday phone calls, Mo could hear his niece was in pain. He resisted the urge to lecture or berate, instead
reminding her that staying busy was the best antidote to self-pity. Rosie threw herself into work. She became chair of the English department at her school. When Langston began playing T-ball, she became the team parent. Although there were men who’d expressed interest in her, men she met through mutual friends or at the gym, she used Langston as an excuse not to date.

  Rosie was never one to whine. The months passed, and there was no hope of reconciliation. They used a mediator for the divorce. He gave her primary custody, as long as he could stay in Langston’s life. He’d pick up Langston from school one afternoon a week and spend a weekend with him once a month.

  Soon enough, Robert and his new lover began to quarrel—at first over restaurant choices and golf dates, but eventually over Robert’s spending habits and poor performance at work. Losing his job was inevitable, as was falling behind in child support, defaulting on his student loans, and maxing out his credit cards. He drank heavily, convincing himself that if he drank only when he went out, he was not an alcoholic. But there was always a reason to go out, like there was always an excuse for not spending the afternoon or the weekend with Langston. He often made promises to his son, promises as empty as his bank account.

  Rosie distracted herself. She wiped down the kitchen counter even though it was spotless, opened the tap again, and filled a glass with water. As she drank, she once again focused on the man asleep on the church steps. The sun had moved off his face, so his body was partially in shadow.

  Rosie double-bolted the front door. She’d never seen an unfamiliar drifter in this part of Brent. She’d seen locals who were crazy, drunk, or high, but not a stranger. She observed the man three more times that night, once again from the kitchen, once when she turned the TV off before she went upstairs, and once more from her bathroom window before she went to sleep. He was out cold. She would have thought him dead, but his body had rearranged itself ever so slightly between her check-ins.