The Other Side of the Bridge

by Mary Lawson

  “I’ve done fine without it,” Jake went on. “A formal education’s not much use in the real world.” He was using little hummocks of grass as stepping-stones, searching for the next one, but he spared a moment to glance at Ian. “But I imagine you’re the academic type. You off to college soon?”

  “Yes,” Ian said, feeling vaguely ashamed of being so predictable. “In the fall.”

  “To do what?” Jake asked.

  “I’m not sure yet.”

  “Well, it doesn’t make much difference. Just get out of here, that’s the important thing.” He waved a hand at the surrounding landscape. “Out of Struan! Out of the North! Out of the goddamned bush!”

  Ian grinned at him and Jake grinned back. “You know what I mean?”

  “Definitely.”

  There was a big clump of grass beside the path and Jake stepped onto it and wiped his shoes. “Where are you thinking of going?”

  “Probably Toronto.” All these questions. Jake had asked more questions in ten minutes than Arthur had asked in three years.

  Jake frowned. “Seems a bit of a waste, doesn’t it?”

  “Um, does it? In what way?”

  “Well, it’s a bit…safe, don’t you think? Toronto’s nothing. How about somewhere a little more exciting? How about New York? Los Angeles? Hell, why not go to China? They have universities there. See the world!”

  Ian stared at him, and Jake laughed. “Got you thinking, haven’t I? I’m serious though. You could go anywhere, smart kid like you. Grab your chance in both hands, buddy, and run!”

  They’d come over the brow of the hill now and the ten-acre spread out before them. Arthur was on the far side of the field. The horses were at a standstill and he was squatting down beside the seed drill, fiddling with something. Probably it was jammed—you had to keep an eye on it. “The man himself!” Jake said. “And he still has the horses! Incredible!”

  Arthur must have heard something, because he straightened up and looked in their direction. He stood for a moment or two, evidently trying to figure out who the stranger was, and then he must have worked it out—maybe he saw the limp—because he started across the field to meet them.

  Jake speeded up as much as the limp would allow, hurrying toward his brother. Ian followed slowly, thinking about what Jake had said. It was true: he could go anywhere. No one had ever said that before. The teachers asked such limiting questions and made such limited suggestions. They said, “What do you want to do?” by which they simply meant what subject do you want to study, and when you replied they said things like, “Oh, Sudbury is close, and it has a good course in that,” or if you were lucky, “Toronto has a good reputation in that field.” In their thinking they never left the province, far less the country. It would cost more to go further, but probably not that much more. Maybe it took someone from outside to point out that there was a world out there.

  Jake and Arthur were walking toward him across the field and Ian realized that he’d missed the reunion. He’d wanted to see Arthur’s reaction to this brother turning up out of nowhere, but he’d forgotten to watch. They were walking side by side, Jake talking animatedly, gesturing with his hands, glancing sideways up at Arthur while at the same time picking his way across the muddy field. He looked very slight beside Arthur, very sharp, in his suit and his city shoes. Sharper than his brother, in every way.

  Arthur wasn’t saying much, but there was nothing new in that. As for whether he was pleased to see Jake, it was impossible to tell.

  Ian would have liked to go fishing with Pete that evening—he hadn’t spoken to him since their discussion after the math exam and he wanted to get things straightened out. But he and Cathy were back to going steady again and he’d promised her they’d go for a cheeseburger at Harper’s when he got back from the farm. So he had a bath and changed into clean jeans and a T-shirt and then got back on his bike.

  Cathy was sitting cross-legged on the porch of her parents’ house, waiting for him. Her mother was in the kitchen—Ian saw her at the window and waved and she gave him a wave back. She and Cathy’s father approved of him, according to Cathy, even though he went to the wrong church, but Ian suspected that was because of who his father was. Being the doctor’s son gave you a head start with people’s parents.

  “What kept you so long?” Cathy said severely. She was wearing a blouse the same pale pink as her cheeks. Each time Ian saw her afresh he was reminded of why the other guys at school envied him. Maybe she wasn’t all that deep a thinker, but she made up for it in other ways, like looks, and general amenability.

  “Some of us have to work,” he said, parking his bike against the side of the porch.

  “Did you plant lots of corn?”

  “No, but I weeded lots of weeds.”

  “I’ll forgive you, then.” She got to her feet and came down the steps and slipped her arm through his. Then she turned and waved to her mother.

  “Where should we go?” she said.

  Ian said, “I was thinking of the Ritz.”

  “Oh, I’m tired of the Ritz. Can’t we go somewhere else?”

  “Well, let’s think. There’s a place called Harper’s that’s supposed to be really ‘in’ at the moment.”

  “Oh, yes! Let’s go there!”

  She was so happy since they’d got back together. So easy to please.

  “One more exam,” she said, taking his hand and swinging it high. “Just one. And then our school days are over forever and our real lives begin! Can you believe it? I can hardly believe it!”

  “I know,” Ian said. All the exams finished on Monday—geography, which Cathy took, in the morning; and chemistry, which he took, in the afternoon. That was it. Less than two days, and they’d be finished. The whole class was going out to Low Down Point in the evening for the celebration to end all celebrations.

  “Aren’t you excited?” Cathy demanded. “I’m so excited about next year I can hardly sleep anymore.”

  “Yeah,” Ian said. “Me too.”

  She pouted at him. “You don’t sound very excited.”

  “I am, though.” She was so enthusiastic, that was the problem. Her enthusiasm wore him out.

  Ron Atkinson and Fats Fitzpatrick were already at Harper’s when they arrived, hunkered down in the booth by the door. Fats had his foot up on the opposite bench. He’d tried to pull a sock on over the bandages but they were too fat, so the sock was just crammed over his toes like a little hat.

  “It’s the man himself!” Ron said. “With the woman herself! Whaddaya know!”

  Fats said, “Hey, I’m glad to see you, Christopherson. I need to ask you something. When I want to have a bath or a shower or something, do I take off the bandage or leave it on?”

  “Whichever you like, Fats,” Ian said. “I don’t mind a bit.” He steered Cathy toward a booth at the far end of the room.

  “But I need to know!” Fats yelled after him.

  “Just keep it dry!” Ian yelled back.

  “Your dad must get so tired of that sort of thing,” Cathy said under her breath, sliding into her seat. “Everywhere he goes, people must ask him questions about their health. I wish there was somewhere else we could go. Somewhere we could be more private.”

  Susan Jankowitz came over to their table—she worked in Harper’s on Saturdays. She had been in tears after the math exam but she seemed to have recovered. “What will it be, children?” she said, her pencil poised over her notepad. She was wearing a white blouse that needed more buttons.

  “Are you going to order?” Cathy said, raising her eyebrows at him. He was neglecting his duty.

  “Oh. Sure. Two cheeseburgers with everything except onions”—Cathy thought onion breath was revolting—“one milkshake….” He looked at her. “Strawberry or chocolate?”

  “Chocolate.”

  “And one Coke. And a double portion of fries.”

  Susan nodded, scribbling fast. When she left, Cathy looked around as if she’d never been here before. She
was wearing a wistful expression.

  “We’re going to miss it, you know,” she said.

  “Miss what?”

  “All this.” She gestured at the dark wooden booths with their stained red plastic-cushioned seats, the red Formica tables, the walls festooned with photos of happy fishermen holding up big fish. Paper place mats with more fish swirling about the edges, fishing lines coming out of their mouths. Above the door to the toilets there was a three-foot-long muskie, stuffed and nailed to the wall.

  “When we’re older, we’ll look back on this place and realize it was beautiful.”

  “Harper’s?” Ian said.

  “Even Harper’s,” Cathy said earnestly. “We’ll look back and we’ll realize that our childhoods were beautiful, and everything in them was beautiful, right down to”—she looked about her—“right down to the holes in these cushions. We’ll realize that Struan was the most wonderful place in the world to grow up in. We’ll realize that wherever we go, wherever we live for the rest of our lives, it will never be as perfect as here.”

  A little worm of irritation rose up in Ian from somewhere about mid-chest. “Maybe we’d better not go,” he said, twisting his mouth in a smile. He reminded himself about her looks and her general amenability. It didn’t work. The fact was, her sentimentality had really started to get on his nerves lately. It was too much; it struck him as fake. And her expectation that he would feel the same made it more irritating still. It made him want to swing in the other direction, deny feeling things that he actually felt.

  “But we have to go.” Cathy leaned toward him earnestly.

  “We don’t have to go. Most of the kids we started school with aren’t going.”

  “Yes, but people like us have to go. You know that.”

  Susan set down their cheeseburgers and the drinks and Cathy smiled up at her.

  Ian bit into his cheeseburger. It was very good. He wouldn’t remember Harper’s for its beauty, he’d remember it for its cheeseburgers.

  “You of all people,” Cathy was saying. “You have so much potential, Ian. You couldn’t develop it here. You need to spread your wings. We both do.”

  He wished she would stop talking. If she would just shut up, it would all be fine.

  “Don’t you think it’s amazing that we found each other?” she said. “I mean, what are the chances, really? In a town this size? We’re so lucky!”

  “Um…” he said around the cheeseburger. Cathy still hadn’t touched hers. “Of…finding each other?” Surely it was the chances of missing each other that were remote.

  “The chances of finding the person you want to spend your life with! In a little tiny town! Out of all the people in the world, and all the places in the world, that one person happens to grow up in the same town as you.” She sighed. “You know what my mother said? She said she’d never seen me look so happy as I’ve looked since we got back together. Don’t you think that’s lovely?”

  Ian nodded. He picked up a fistful of fries and stuck them in this mouth. Cathy leaned across the table toward him. She was looking very serious all at once.

  “I had a talk with them last night—with my parents. They were saying they thought it was time I decided where I’m going next year. Which school of nursing. They think I should get my application in.” She took his hand and turned it palm-upward and studied it. It was greasy from the fries and she frowned, and pulled a napkin out of the dispenser on the table and began cleaning each finger in turn.

  Ian chewed his fries very thoroughly and swallowed them. The conversation was making him uneasy. “Haven’t you decided?” he said. With his other hand he gathered more fries. He had a sudden urge to stuff the whole plateful in his mouth.

  “Well, no.” She crumpled up the napkin and pulled out another. “I can’t, can I? Until you do. Your career is more important than mine. Mum and Dad understand that—they completely understand that. I can do nursing anywhere, so it doesn’t really matter. But they think it’s time we decided. You know, so we’re sure to get our first choice.”

  Ian paused, the fries halfway to his mouth. He put them down again and looked at them. It was as if she had opened a door in her head and showed him everything that was going on in there. The picture she was working on.

  She said, “Ian?” Her voice was puzzled. She released her hold on his hand and he withdrew it carefully. He began aligning the fries in a neat little row on the side of the plate, prodding them this way and that until they were level along the bottom. He pushed one end of the row of fries together so that they made a fan shape.

  After a while he heard her get up from the table. He saw the movement at the periphery of his vision. She slid out of the booth and he heard her footsteps receding down the aisle. He got to his feet and dug a fistful of coins out of his pocket and put them down beside the plates—hers still untouched—and followed her out. As he passed their booth, Fats and Ron Atkinson whistled slowly and Ron said, “Hey, lover-boy. What’ve you done now?”

  He followed Cathy down the street at a distance. He didn’t want to catch up with her while there were still people about. When she turned down the road she lived on, he caught up with her. She tried to walk away but he got in front of her, saying, “Wait, Cath, wait.” She stepped this way and that, trying to get around him, and then gave up and just stood there, her arms at her sides. He took her hand and led her over to the side of the road. A tree had come down in a storm earlier in the year and the trunk was still lying there, waiting to be cut up; he sat on it and gently pulled her down beside him. He told her he wasn’t ready to make decisions about his future yet. He said maybe he was very immature or something, but he really wasn’t ready for that. So he thought it would be best if they broke it off. She was crying. She asked if it was something she’d done, something she’d said, and he said no, it wasn’t her at all, it was him. She said she’d try to be different, she loved him so much that she’d be anything he wanted, and he shook his head, appalled. She said she didn’t want to tie him down but couldn’t they just go on as they were; and he said no, he was sorry. He was really sorry.

  It was a while before she pulled herself together, but finally she did. She took a deep breath and wiped her face with her fingers, looking straight in front of her, chin raised. Then she stood up. Ian stood up too, and asked if she wanted him to walk the rest of the way home with her. She said no, so he stayed where he was and watched her walk away.

  Once when he was a small child a Sunday school teacher had taught a lesson on being good. She’d said it was sometimes difficult to know the right thing to do; it could be hard to tell good from bad, right from wrong. But, she had added, speaking in the hushed but cheerful voice that Sunday school teachers always seemed to use, there was one foolproof way to tell. All you had to do was ask yourself what Jesus would have done. You worked out what Jesus would do in any situation and then you did it, and it was sure to be right.

  He’d forgotten the lesson the minute the class was over, but now it came back to him. He saw that for the past three years he had been working on a variation of that idea: in any tricky personal situation he had asked himself what his mother would have done, and then he had done the opposite. It seemed to him that she was the perfect anti–role model: she hadn’t cared how much she hurt the people who loved and depended on her; she had put her own desires above those of everyone else; she had lied and pretended and deceived. He had made it part of his own personal code of behavior never to behave as she had done, and yet when it came to it, he had treated Cathy much the same. He hadn’t exactly cheated on her, unless you counted loving Laura from afar, but he had allowed her to think he loved her when he didn’t, which amounted to the same thing.

  It scared him that he’d ended up behaving like his mother. It made him wonder if at some deep, unalterable level, he resembled her.

  He went home. He had left his bike at Cathy’s; he’d have to pick it up sometime when she wasn’t around. When he got in, there was a note from his fat
her on the kitchen table with the name Lefebvre and a phone number—he always left a note in case of emergencies—and the words yet another scribbled at the bottom, by which he meant another baby. He seemed to be delivering babies every other night at the moment; it was practically an epidemic.

  Ian went down to the dock. It was very peaceful there. It wasn’t dark yet and the low clouds gave the lake a metallic sheen. He flipped the canoe over, slid it into the water, and climbed in.

  He paddled down the shore, keeping close in, the canoe sliding silently through the water. There was a cold mist stealing across the lake ahead of the night. Ian laid his paddle across the canoe and did up his jacket. The canoe was drifting toward the old beaver lodge at the entrance to Low Down Bay. It had been abandoned for a number of years but the beavers had returned the previous fall and the stark white branches of the birches they’d brought down were sticking up out of the water like bones. He sat motionless for a while, wondering if he’d catch sight of a beaver, but there was no sign of them. Spring wasn’t their busy time—they did most of their building in the fall. The females would be having their young about now, curled up safe and dry in the depths of the lodge.

  He turned the canoe and paddled out around the point. He thought about the year to come, saw himself walking down a city street, cars roaring past, the stink of exhaust fumes, people jostling against him. No silence, anywhere. He thought about Arthur’s brother waving his arm and saying, “Out of Struan! Out of the North! Out of the goddamned bush!” On one level he agreed with him completely. On another level he wasn’t sure he would survive.

  He rounded the point that formed the eastern shore of Hopeless Inlet, and sure enough, the Queen Mary was there, Pete hunched over his fishing line like always. Ian came up slowly, careful not to disturb the water.

  “How’s it going?” he said quietly.

  “So-so,” Pete said.

  There were half a dozen trout in the bottom of the boat. “Doesn’t look too bad,” Ian said, nodding at them.