Bridge over Icy Water

by Jeff Isaacson

  Bottom line, I would be done by eleven or earlier. I would be done in plenty of time to visit a lovely family for lunch.

  The family that I was visiting was the family of Faith Nguyen. I had managed to track them down and was eager to speak with them. It was hard to believe that I was about to meet with the parents and sister of the woman that I had watched stagger to the edge of the Third Avenue Bridge over and over again in that little snippet of video the police released to try to help identify her. I wondered if the family knew that Faith was unconscious after she took that final lunge over the edge of the bridge and tumbled into the river in the semi-suicide that started everything.

  I had done a small amount of journalism, a modicum of journalism, and I had found Faith’s family. I was a little bit proud of that. Maybe I’m not so bad at this reporting thing. Maybe a Peabody is in my future. Let’s see those journalists try to build a bridge!

  I take that back. I don’t want to cross a bridge that was built by journalists.

  But all that was set for Monday, two days away. It was the weekend and I felt like I could finally, finally relax a little. So I spent the weekend doing what I love to do.

  I love to watch football.

  I don’t mean that sport with oversized meatheads full of traumatic brain injuries and the straight up racist way that Colin Kaepernick was treated. Kaepernick dared to shine a light on the injustices that still linger in America. He challenged us to live up to the ideals in our national anthem, ideals that were true for some but not all. I’ve had every conceivable advantage in life, yet I’ve experienced varying degrees of racism almost every day of my life. But rather than seeing a player protest as an opportunity to talk about the race problem in America and begin to work on it, American football just basically blackballed Kaepernick. It was disgusting but predictable.

  That’s why the football that I watch is European football, what we call soccer.

  Why do I watch football? I watch it, in part, because I used to play it, and I think that the players are awesome.

  But I believe that there is one main reason why every woman should watch football. The reason used to be Cristiano Ronaldo Then he got accused of rape, and I don’t want to be that woman who doesn’t believe the victim. Which is hard, because Cristiano Ronaldo is an Iberian sex god. It was tough, but I even got rid of my Juventus app over the accusation. (Ronaldo plays in the Italian league for Juventus.) But there are still a host of good looking guys who have never been accused of raping anybody on the pitch Saturday and Sunday mornings in the Premier League or the Bundesliga, both of which are available with a fairly standard cable package.

  If you’ve cut the cord, it might be time to find it and duct tape it back together. These guys are cute.

  Who wants an American football man? They’re like the Incredible Hulk. They are so swollen with muscle they look like a distended tick that you can finally see, green and ready to burst, in the mane of a long haired dog. It’s disgusting.

  European football men are exactly what I like. They are tall and strong but not so strong that they could accidentally break you in half with a hug. They run with speed, style, athleticism, and grace.

  I’ve always liked athletes. My most successful relationship ever lasted three years. It started in my senior year of college. I started dating this junior who was the University of Minnesota’s number one singles player in tennis. (Tennis is another sport that has a lot of cute guys.) It was going well. I thought that it was even heading towards marriage which filled me with trepidation but at the same time seemed like the logical next step, like it was a place that we either had to get to or split. Spoiler alert, we split. He cheated on me…and his cousin when he slept with his cousin’s wife.

  I still like athletes. I mean, come on, I’m athletic. I’m in shape. Do you think that I really want to go out with the shapeless men who are fascinated with rivets that I have to spend most of my time with?

  I deserve someone like Sané.

  I just deserve a version of Sané who doesn’t play for a Manchester team. No offense to Manchester. I’m sure that the city is great, but I can’t stand either Manchester City or Manchester United. Sané is just too cute, but he plays for Manchester City. Although even I must admit that I love the phrase “Man City”. (Manchester City is sometimes abbreviated as Man City.) Who wouldn’t want to go to Man City? It sounds urbane and suave and hot as hell. It’s much better than Man U. (Manchester United is sometimes referred to as Man U.) Man U sounds like a safety school where nothing but date rape happens.

  My point is that I deserve an athletic man.

  I’ve tried.

  Three years ago, I made the desperate gambit of signing up for coed community soccer. Part of it was that I thought it would be fun to play soccer again. Most of it was because I thought it would be a way to meet athletic guys.

  So I signed up as a free agent. A team picked me up. It was the worst case scenario for a confirmed agnostic who was looking for an exciting romantic relationship, with all that entails.

  I ended up getting picked up by a team representing St. John of the Bleeding Ears of Jesus Catholic Church. (I don’t want to pick on the actual church. They were really nice people.)

  But they were terrible at soccer. They played like five year olds. They all chased the ball at the same time the way a cat chases a laser pointer. Except with less grace and athleticism.

  So we played a couple of teams. And yeah, there were a couple of cute guys, but they were cute little guys. You have to be taller than me if you want to date me.

  Then our third game was against a really good team, the best team in the league. They had the cutest guy.

  We were down five to nothing when one of my teammates finally broke out of the ball hive and saw me all alone on the edge. Even more surprisingly, he made an excellent pass and caught me at full speed.

  I realized that I had a step. So I took a sharp angle toward goal and was just outside the penalty area when I lifted up a leg to score our first goal all season.

  Unfortunately, before that happened, that cute guy tackled me with a leg whip. I know that people think that soccer players flop and feign injury, and certainly that happens. But I dare any one of you to go out on a field, run full blast for about fifty yards, and have someone leg whip you at full speed with a tackle.

  It was so painful. That cute guy got a yellow card and lost any chance that he ever had with me.

  I stumbled as I got up. I had to be helped off the field by two of my teammates because it was too painful to put any weight on my left leg.

  The next day I had to work. My leg was still sore. And I was on my feet inspecting for twelve hours.

  I had to take a week off running.

  Fortunately it healed up. I went to the doctor and she told me that it was just a bone bruise on the ankle. Just.

  The whole experience made me wonder. I had just heard about another employee at MNDOT. He worked on the roads. He broke his right leg and had to miss a bunch of work. In fact, I donated a whole sick day to him to help him out. He finally came back to work. He broke his left leg on the weekend after his first week back at work. At that point, he had missed too much time. So he got fired.

  I realized that I cannot be playing sports with pricks who’ll stop at nothing to preserve the shutout including viciously injuring a woman. Imagine me having to tell MNDOT that I can’t come in because I got injured playing football.

  So I really struck out. I didn’t get to even so much as go on a date with one tall, athletic guy. And I didn’t really even get to play football.

  So I shifted my strategy about meeting guys. I run three marathons a year. I try to meet guys at two of the marathons.

  The reason that I don’t try at the third one is because I travel somewhere new every year for my third marathon. This year it was Eugene, Oregon, beautiful area. Obviously I was unlikely to be able to start up anything but a very long distance relationship with somebody at Eugene, Oregon.
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br />   But I run the same two marathons in the area each year. I run Grandma’s Marathon in Duluth, Minnesota. Duluth is not close, but a lot of Twin Cities runners run in it. Then, obviously, I run in the Twin Cities Marathon.

  I struck out at both this year. At Duluth I made the mistake of thinking that a man from Superior, Wisconsin probably lived in the Cities. In the Twin Cities Marathon I made the mistake of choosing a married man who had understandably taken his wedding ring off for the race.

  (Everything rubs you the wrong way after twenty-six point two miles. People can get bloody nipples from their shirts.)

  But I didn’t mean to bring up my dating woes. I wanted to celebrate the cuteness of European footballers the way that Michelangelo celebrated David. That’s what football is really all about.

  That and the games are great. There are no commercials. It’s running time. And if you watch the Premier League like me, it’s the only way to independently confirm that the Brits do indeed have emotions.

  European football is a bigger deal in Europe than American football is in America. So it’s got all the soap opera dram. Will José Mourinho get fired? Can Unai Emery lead Arsenal to glory after PSG gave up on him? The managers are just as much a part of the drama as the players.

  You could read about things like that for hours.

  So I spent the weekend doing what I like best, watching football and running.

  The running was outstanding. The football was good too.

  Tottenham Hotspur F.C won over Newcastle. I had been rooting for Tottenham because I’m trying to work up a crush for Harry Kane. He may be the best goal scorer in the Premier League. So I’m trying to focus on his tall, athletic body and ignore the fact that his face makes it look like he’s part of a royal family with centuries of inbreeding and hemophilia.

  God I wish that Harry Kane looked like Sané.

  It was a pretty good weekend, but my thoughts kept leaping ahead. I couldn’t wait to meet the Nguyen family.

  The Monday morning meeting was as dull, pointless, and bereft of strategy as essentially all strategy meetings are. The people who run them are like a bride who feels that she has to make a show of including everyone in the wedding planning. She may ask this relative for some suggestions for music during the dance. She may consult with this friend about what kind of champagne everyone is going to toast with. She may ask for requests for the dinner menu from a parent. But at the end of the day a wedding is not a democracy. It’s the bride’s special day and it’s an autocracy. Thanks for all your suggestions, but all will be done her way. The bride is queen for a day. And an acting administrator is queen until her reign ends. And an acting administrator has never agreed to implement even a single suggestion out of all of the suggestions that I have ever heard at all the strategy meetings that I’ve ever been to.

  Just let me sleep in and give me my marching orders when you make up your gal darn mind.

  Of course the meeting ran long, but only a half hour long. Why don’t the rest of the people realize how pointless it is?

  Of course I know it’s enticing. Tell me about your job. What do you like about it, and what could we improve? We’d like to consider that as we consider strategy.

  And everyone wants their job to improve. And even if it doesn’t improve, everyone at least wants someone to listen to their many and varied complaints about it.

  It’s possible that these strategy sessions are really cleverly disguised complaint sessions designed to create a catharsis. They are something like the group therapy that will enable us to continue to work together as a team. Even when, perhaps especially when, we go back to the work of inspecting bridges in the spring (or in a winter emergency situation) and nothing has changed. Or if anything has changed, it has changed for the worse.

  No matter. I went out to the bus stop to get the things that I had to bring to the Nguyen house.

  I was hoping that I could bring dal when I said that I could bring a dish for lunch. I have honed my Indian cooking. I know how to make perfect ghee. I know just how long to cook the lentils. I even found a specialty store where I can find the spices that are really difficult to find in grocery stores. Not every place carries garam masala for example.

  Instead, I was informed that Faith’s dad, Ninh would be cooking his signature pho. He’d be creating everything from scratch from his signature licorice scented broth to his specially marinated brisket. That specially marinated brisket would be served swimming in lemongrass, herbs, and vegetables that he grew in his own garden.

  Maria was going to be preparing her chorizo tacos. As in, Maria was going to be cooking the chorizo sausages that she had cured and smoked herself in a smokehouse in their backyard. She told me that she was going to make a milder salsa for gringos. She didn’t think that I could handle Mexican level heat.

  I challenged that. I said that I was part Indian. And Indian food is all about heat.

  That quickly escalated into an Indian food versus Mexican food argument. Maria said that I would weep tears that burned if I ever traveled to Mexico on a culinary tour. I said that the same thing would happen to her in India. She refused to believe me.

  So she said that what they really needed was dessert.

  Dessert is my weakest area.

  But I couldn’t say no. They were willing to talk to a faux journalist just a scant several months after their daughter’s mysterious death. I had to oblige.

  Then I realized that I never promised to make the dessert. I could buy something.

  I decided to take the 18 bus down to Quang’s and pick up three desserts that I didn’t know the name of. They looked like layered gelatin and pudding. (I’ve had good luck at Quang’s with everything though. So I trusted them.) Then I stopped over across the street at Marissa’s Bakery and bought three churros.

  I took the 18 back downtown and got on the 10.

  The Nguyen home was in a little suburb just outside of Minneapolis called Columbia Heights, my dear, hippy friend Maya’s old stomping grounds. I got off the bus right by a fast food restaurant that smelled like it hadn’t changed the oil in their fryer since the Eisenhower administration.

  I walked down the street past ugly little houses. I walked by a house with faded, blue aluminum siding, unkempt shrubbery out front, and fast food wrappers climbing the fence on the edge of the property like greasy, wax paper vines. I walked by stucco homes, crumbling, flaking off. I walked by nondescript duplexes with so little style they seemed to be inspired by one of Stalin’s five year plans.

  Eventually I made it to the Nguyen house. After walking by all of those houses with presumably great personalities, I was delighted to see the Nguyen house.

  It was a bright, tropical orange house. Just the color made me want to dance. The front door was a brilliant yellow with an insert of blue and red stained glass.

  I walked up to that bright yellow door, suddenly in a better mood. I knocked on the door.

  Maria answered. She was short, probably under five feet in height. But her face retained an amazing vitality and youth. I knew that she had to be at least middle aged to have a daughter in college, but I saw no visible lines or wrinkles on her face until she smiled or laughed, which she did infrequently.

  Ninh was a towering figure who walked with a slight limp. Ninh was almost two feet taller than Maria. It made me wonder what they did when they posed for pictures together.

  Ninh had alert brown eyes. He had a complexion that was a bit leathery. It was the skin of a man who had spent a lot of time in the sun. He had a soulful laugh. He was as expressive as Maria was reserved.

  Maria was delighted that I had brought churros, and she insisted that I needed to heat up some chocolate for the churros. She provided the chocolate and the direction on how to heat it up.

  But she insisted that I didn’t start until after we had finished the rest of our lunch.

  The chorizo tacos were outstanding. The pho was also delicious.

  “Maria’s family owns a Mexican res
taurant,” Ninh explained. “She used to cook there.”

  After the lunch, I melted some chocolate. We had churros and chocolate and desserts that I can’t name from Quang’s. Ninh and Maria seemed satisfied.

  I was relieved.

  I sat back. I looked around the kitchen. I was sitting in a bright red wooden chair. The kitchen table was old, pressed wood. The wallpaper in the kitchen was lines of Tigger from Winnie the Pooh bouncing on his tail.

  I decided to start on my course gently.

  “Did Faith love Tigger?” I asked.

  “Oh yes,” Maria nodded. “Both of our girls loved Tigger. We put this wallpaper in the kitchen here and in their rooms.”

  It was odd. How many people who’ve ever been involved in even a semi-suicide have Tigger as their spirit animal?

  We talked in a general way about Faith for a while. Then I tried to dig in.

  “Did Faith contact you the night that she…disappeared?” I asked.

  Maria opened her mouth. She closed it. It looked like she was about to cry, but she didn’t.

  Ninh responded, “She contacted her sister. Hope says that you have to wait until she can get here.

  But no, she didn’t contact us.”

  “Do you know where she went or what she did before her…death?” I asked.

  Ninh paused before saying, “We know that she went out to go to a club with a friend of hers, a Christine. They went to Club Canoodle. Christine left with a man shortly after they arrived there. Witnesses remember seeing Faith talking with a guy named David Sanborn for a couple of hours. David has been thoroughly investigated. He has confirmed that he talked with Faith for almost exactly two hours. But he says that he went outside to smoke a cigarette in the designated smoking area by the rear exit, and he couldn’t find Faith when he came back in.