The Forever Bridge

by T. Greenwood

  “Coming into the water today?” she asks Ruby (as she has asked Ruby every single day this summer). And Ruby shakes her head.

  “Okay, you let me know if you change your mind,” she says and moves on to the next kid. Ruby knows Nora has given up on her, which should be a relief, but her lack of effort today makes her feel even more like a lost cause.

  From here Ruby watches Izzy and Marcy in their matching red suits, and feels her heart sink. The friendship bracelet that Ruby gave Izzy for her ninth birthday, the one she made (their favorite colors—purple and green—woven together with little wooden heart beads with their initials), the one that Izzy hasn’t taken off once for the last two years, is gone. Her brown wrist is bare, leaving only the fluorescent white tan line where the bracelet used to be. She thinks for a minute that it must have finally broken, that the threads, eaten away by chlorine, finally snapped. But she knows how strong it was. Her dad let her use some of his fishing line to reinforce the delicate threads. She also knows that when it started to break before, Gloria helped her fix it. Izzy never takes it off. Not ever.

  Ruby stares at Izzy as if she could communicate how mad and sad she is through telepathy (they used to practice reading each other’s minds back in the fourth grade too). But Izzy is busy with Marcy. She doesn’t even look Ruby’s way. Ruby feels her eyes begin to sting and suddenly she realizes she can’t sit through another swimming lesson. Not today. Not any day.

  Besides, her dad is gone, and what can her mom do to stop her from just leaving? They might call her father, but he’s in North Carolina. And the phone at her mom’s is still out. She can leave. She can just go. And so that is exactly what she does.

  She stands up, wraps the towel around her waist again, and walks to the kid at the gate. “I don’t feel good. I’m going home,” she says. It’s as easy as that.

  He looks at her, still grinning that stupid, pimply grin, but he doesn’t stop her. And she wonders why she didn’t think of this sooner.

  She untangles her bike from the pile, kicking the pedal loose from somebody else’s chain, and then takes off, wobbling until she gets momentum and then rights herself. She pedals furiously, realizing she forgot to wet down her hair, but doesn’t care. She’s leaving. But to where? She can’t go home, not yet. She cranks her head around to look back toward the pool, on the off chance that Izzy might have noticed and decided to come after her. But she can’t see anything except for a blur of red bathing suits, all trying to bring that stupid dummy back to life.

  She doesn’t have any other friends she can go to, not really. There are plenty of girls she gets along with at school, but in the summertime it’s just her and Izzy. Which was fine until now.

  With her dad and Bunk gone, she really only has one other place she can go. And so she rides her bike to the library. It’s not open yet, but she knows the children’s librarian, Christine, sometimes comes early. And if she knocks, she’ll let her in.

  “Well, good morning, Ruby,” Effie, the lady who drives the bookmobile, says, smiling at her. She can see she’s got one of her daughters with her today. Plum, that’s her name. She’s in the first grade at Ruby’s school. “Go ahead downstairs. Christine should be here any minute. I’ll let her know you’re down there. Do you know how to turn on the lights?”

  Ruby nods and smiles, moving past them to the stairs. Downstairs in the quiet children’s room, she immediately begins to feel calmer. More rational. She finds her favorite spot in the computer area and writes her name in careful cursive on the sign-in sheet even though there isn’t anyone else here. The computers aren’t on yet, so she turns each one on. She knows the password to get online and so she makes sure all of the computers are ready for when the library opens. Christine told her she’s always welcome in the library, that she trusts her. This makes her feel grown-up, important. She doubts there’s a single kid her age that has the same privilege.

  It is here, in the musty children’s room, all summer long, she’s studied the world’s most famous bridges, examined the photos, read about their designs. She’s spent hours at the long counter of computers, exploring: traversing the great bodies of water via the most beautiful structures of all time. She’s sat in the library for hours, clicking through the images of bridges, reading their specifications, their histories, their myths. Christine lets her print out some of the pictures, which she takes home and hangs in her room. The wall behind her desk is pocked with thumbtack holes from the photos. There must be a thousand bridges by now. She thinks about the One Direction poster on Izzy’s door, and she feels that sinking awful feeling again. Maybe she should have seen this coming sooner. Maybe she should have realized that Izzy wasn’t nearly as excited about bridges as she was. Is.

  Ruby loves the great suspension bridges, of course. Everybody does. The Golden Gate Bridge. The Tsing Ma. The Ikuchi in Japan. She wonders at the cable-stayed bridges with their fans or harp designs: the Zhivopisny, the Machang, the Queen Elizabeth II. She is awed by the architecture of arches, the magical geometry of cantilevers and trusses. She has dreamed herself across rivers and lakes, bays and inlets, estuaries and straits. In that musty, dark basement she has stood in the pavilions of the most beautiful wind and river bridges of China. She has peered down from the deck of the Millau Viaduct in France to the River Tarn below. She has walked through the caterpillar-like Henderson Waves in Singapore, felt dizzy atop the Trift Bridge in the Swiss Alps and the Hussaini Hanging Bridge in Pakistan.

  The language of bridges sounds like poetry to her. Bascule, brace, caisson. Camber, cantilever, catwalk. She recites the terms like words on her vocabulary lists from school, as if there might be a test and that these are the answers: diaphragm, gabion, lattice pylon. This is her lullaby at night. It is her song. Riprap, roller nest, strut, truss, vault.

  She hates Izzy for ditching her. There’s no way they can get the bridge design done in time if Izzy is busy with Marcy Davidson. She’s going to have to do this one alone. The bridge she wants to build is one that’s never been made before. At least she doesn’t think it has. Izzy says there’s no way of knowing. With all the bodies of water and all the bridges in the world, there’s bound to be one like the one in her dreams. But she doesn’t think so. Because it feels like it belongs to her. Like it’s hers alone. There aren’t many things she can say that about, but this is one of them. She doesn’t have a brother anymore. She doesn’t really have her mother. Now she doesn’t even have Izzy. But she does have this. This magical bridge, a bridge that will traverse any body of water. That combines the strength of the best suspension bridges with the beauty of the wind and rain bridges. That will seem to break the laws of physics, even as it depends on them. It will be a structural miracle.

  By the time Christine comes down the stairs to the children’s room, Ruby knows swimming lessons are over, and she has printed out three new bridges to consider as she finalizes her designs.

  “You leaving already?” Christine asks as Ruby makes her way toward the stairs.

  “Yeah,” she says. “I’m staying at my mom’s, and she needs me home.”

  “Oh,” Christine says, and Ruby wonders how much she knows about her mom. It seems like the whole town knows about the accident. About what happened. But not everybody knows about all the stuff that happened afterwards. That’s a secret that they’ve managed to keep.

  “Well, have a nice day. Looks like that hurricane, Irene, is going to bring some rain. Hopefully it’ll hold off until after the fair,” Christine says. “Are you going this year?”

  Ruby nods, but remembering Izzy and Marcy and thinking about going with them to the fair brings back all those bad feelings and so she just nods and says, “See ya.”

  Bridges, like ladders and cats and cemeteries, have their own set of superstitions. Hold your breath as you cross a bridge and make a wish. The only way to reverse the bad luck of a broken mirror is to throw the shards into rushing water beneath a bridge. Never say good-bye to a friend on a bridge, or you will never
see them again.

  There are only two bridges in Quimby: the wide concrete bridge and the covered bridge out by the old mill. The quickest way back to her mom’s house from town is across the covered bridge. And that was the route she used to take, they all used to take. She didn’t used to think about it at all. She hardly even noticed it back then, other than remembering that she should always stop and listen to make sure there wasn’t a car coming from the other direction. The bridge can only hold one car at a time, so you’re supposed to honk to let pedestrians and bicyclists and other cars know you’re coming. She would fly across that bridge coming and going without noticing the trusses or portals, the wing walls or decks. Without understanding the physics of a bridge, how a bridge’s design depends on the laws of motion: on the irrefutable concepts of compression and tension and load. She didn’t think. She didn’t have to. She just crossed the bridge.

  She is so angry with Izzy. She wishes she could rewind the last twenty-four hours. Rewind the entire last two years as a matter of fact. If she could do that then she’d just hit pause at the place before everything changed. She wants the feeling of the boards of the bridge deck beneath her tires again, feel the cool shade the roof makes. She wants to hear the river rushing beneath her. She wants to pause back at a time when her mom didn’t live like this, back when everything was normal. Maybe she’d pause at a night when she was cooking something good for dinner in the kitchen. The homemade mac ‘n’ cheese she used to make with the buttery cracker top or the pot roast that would cook all day in the slow cooker, making the house smell like a holiday. Back when Jess would use her Legos without asking because she wasn’t home and couldn’t say no and they’d wind up wrestling on the living room floor until neither one of them could remember how it started. When their hearts pounded with the effort and despite the brawl, there was this untamed happiness. Pause: the grassy smell of his hair, the soft worn corduroys he wore torn at the knee, the smell of dinner and hungry stomachs. Back when her daddy was still a hero, instead of half a man, before the glossy stumps of his knees made her cheeks flush and her stomach turn, when he used to carry them, one under each strong arm, as though they were footballs instead of kids. Pause. When their mother would shake her head, but smile, smile, smile. Back when she could ride her bike across that stupid bridge without thinking about anything but getting home. When home was a place she actually wanted to be. Pause. Just linger for a few minutes longer in this suspended place.

  But there’s no pause in real life. There’s also no rewind. And there’s definitely no delete. There’s just now running on and on, and you can’t ever stop it, no matter what you do.

  Besides, she’s not allowed to go that way anymore, by either her father or her mother. And so she takes the long way home, or what used to be home, and arrives at the house breathless, her legs trembling.

  Nessa wakes up and for a few scattered, fractured moments, she has no idea where she is. She struggles to recollect all the places she has slept, all the beds she has shared, all of the floors and couches she has crashed on. Then she remembers Mica and rolls toward him, recalling the certain slant of his bed, the depth and breadth of it. But instead of a body, the hot hollow of his back or the soft skin of his stomach, she is greeted by something wet. Has he just taken a shower? Disoriented, now rising to the surface of consciousness like a diver ascending, she realizes the dampness is dew on grass.

  When she opens her eyes, the first thing she sees is the silvery shimmery filament of a spider’s web. She blinks and blinks, trying to focus, to make sense, and then her eyes adjust, bringing the images into sharp relief. The bright red of her sleeping bag, a large willow tree making a canopy of branches and leaves around her, sun struggling through the green. She pulls her arm out of the sleeping bag and stares at the face of her grandfather’s watch. It is enormous on her tiny wrist, like a cartoon watch. It is almost nine o’clock. She cannot believe she was able to sleep so late, especially outside. Especially curled up in a sleeping bag under a tree.

  When she hears the sound of tires crushing gravel in the distance, she starts and struggles to get out of the sleeping bag. Her instinct is to run. Her instinct is always to run. But she is stuck, a fat caterpillar inside this bloodred cocoon, and so instead of trying to escape she burrows deeper, clutching the hard round pouch of her stomach, and feels the baby stir, just the small flutters she started to feel months ago. Like an insect’s wings beating against her insides.

  Inside the closed sleeping bag, she can smell herself, the impossible funk of her own flesh. She remembers the last shower she had at Mica’s, the day before she left. She recalls the delicious heat of the water, the way it massaged her aching shoulders and back. She remembers the clean minty scent of the shampoo, working it into her dreads, and then rinsing them clean. She remembers the steam filling her chest, as though even her insides were getting clean. But she also remembers the dirty grout between the cracked tiles, the filthy washcloth draped over the faucet, the missing COLD handle. And she remembers the pubic hair, the black hair curled on the sliver of soap. That comma, causing her to pause for a moment, to hold her breath.

  She is blonde. So is Mica. And yet.

  The whole summer had been a series of and yets. Speculations, silent accusations, explanations. Until this dark hair, this private punctuation mark causing her this one final, awful, lingering pause. It was the last straw, so to speak, this tiny little hair, this private thing shed from who-knows-whose who-knows-what. It really was as simple as that: a black, wiry anonymous hair on a bar of Ivory soap. It was enough to send her packing again. Onward.

  But as she shoved her dirty T-shirts and crinkly long skirts into her backpack, she realized that her whole life she has been nothing but a ball stuck inside a pinball machine, racing intently toward nothing, meeting obstacle after obstacle along the way, walls she smashed into. Bouncing from one place to the next—never resting long before being thrust from whatever small comfort she has found. This comfort, that comfort, each no more permanent or reliable than the next.

  But she had no money, none of her own anyway. And so in a fit of rage and desperation, she’d raided Mica’s drawers, where she knew he kept his cash. He’d gotten the idea earlier that summer to grow weed in the attic of the rented house. There was a hidden crawlspace upstairs near the bathroom. And so he’d bought some seeds from some guy he knew, magic beans he called them, and spent every last cent he had on grow lights and timers, some primitive hydroponic equipment. Ten plants under hot lights hidden in the recesses of the house. And soon, the entire house smelled like Christmas. The pungent green scent seeped into the air, the misty air that filled the upstairs where they slept. All summer long he’d cared for them. At the worst moments, she was jealous of the plants, envied the way he nurtured them, the gentleness of his touch. At night he would check on them as though they were sleeping children. (She had even been foolish enough to think that this was evidence that he might make a good father.)

  It took eight weeks before they were ready to harvest. And now, all that tenderness had offered its rewards. He’d harvested nearly three pounds of weed, which he’d hung to dry in their closet. Every item of clothing she owned was saturated with the scent of it. Earlier that week she knew he’d sold at least a pound of it, but he hadn’t told her how much he got. “Enough to pay the rent,” he’d said. “And the electricity bill.” He’d laughed, the grow lights pulsing like something alive through the cracks in the attic crawl space door.

  He was still sleeping, so she went quietly back into the bedroom, trailing water across the dusty floor, and she told herself that he owed her this. That she had somehow earned it. Stupid cheating motherfucker.

  There should be at least a couple thousand dollars, she thought. But when she reached stealthily into the drawer, pushing aside the ragged pairs of boxer shorts and threadbare socks, just four hundred dollars remained. The rest of it was already gone. And this, almost more than anything, infuriated her. The first of the mo
nth when all the bills came due was weeks away, but he’d already spent it.

  Only four hundred bucks, but it was enough to pay for a bus ticket. Enough to go home.

  She’d been running away when she left Vermont. But no one had followed. Though it killed her to think about it, her mother had probably been relieved. She was caught up in so much of her own shit back then, dealing with Nessa was just one more headache. But it had been two years; maybe things had changed with her mom, wherever she is. Nessa is practically an adult now. She’d be eighteen in just two more months. She wasn’t a child anymore.

  She’d walked out of Mica’s, clutching the fistful of cash, not even glancing back up at that falling-down house as she made her way to the bus stop. She knew she didn’t have long. As soon as Mica woke up and realized she’d stolen the money, he was certain to try to find her at all their haunts. She didn’t have a single friend in Portland who wouldn’t tell Mica exactly where she was. She had nowhere to go. No one to go to. The realization of this should have hit her in the gut like a fist, but instead she felt nothing. Her whole life, just bounced around like a pinball, aimless, pointless. Ding, ding, ding. She cupped the growing mound of her stomach and hung her head down to her chest. She felt nothing. No fear. No sadness. Not even any anger anymore.

  She’d stood in the bus station at Pioneer Courthouse Square watching as each bus screeched to a halt, huffing in a strange exasperation, its doors opening, one impatient driver after the next waiting for her to make up her mind. And then she’d reached into her bag and pulled out the note. It was tattered now, worn from sitting in the bottom of her purse. The ink smudged. She touched her fingers to his name and tried not to think about the last time she’d been thrown out, hurled into the darkness by someone with such carelessness and thoughtlessness.

  Maybe all of this, the pubic hair, the money, the baby, were all signs that it was time to go back home and deal with this. To go back to her mom. To find him. To make things right. She didn’t believe in fate, but she did believe in being a decent human being.