Bridge of Sighs (51 page)

“Why do you suppose you’re a bit of a doubter and a bit of a believer?”

“I’m still learning?”

“Not a bad answer, Mr. Lynch, even if stated in the form of a question, though I don’t believe it’s true. Do you want to know why? Yes,
excellent,
I knew you would. You may still be learning, as you say, but you aren’t learning much. Which is to say, you aren’t learning at the rate you were when, say, you were two or three years old. That’s when the real learning takes place. By the time we’re seventeen or eighteen our characters and attitudes are mostly formed. We’re basically looking for evidence in support of conclusions we’ve already arrived at regarding the world and our place in it. We like the
idea
of change even though we know it’s an illusion. We keep hoping for new experiences, but we’re frightened, because the next really new experience for us will be death, and we aren’t likely to learn much from that, are we? That little item’s pretty much the end of our education, though it will answer the question whether it’s better to doubt than believe, which reminds me of my original question, Miss Beverly. You and Mr. Lynch have so much in common—I speak here temperamentally—that I wonder if you can think of any other reason why he should be a bit of a doubter and a bit of a believer?”

“Who cares?” Perry said, hoping for a laugh but not getting it.

“Which answer would you prefer?” Noonan said, taking one last mock-thoughtful drag on his cigarette and getting the very laugh that eluded the other boy.

Mr. Berg turned to him, apparently delighted that Noonan had seized upon the sense of play. “You’re Mr. Lynch’s friend, are you not?”

Noonan nodded. “Yeah.”

“You say you are, but there was a slight hesitation to your answer. What made you hesitate?”

“You,” said Noonan, winning another laugh.

“Me? Good heavens. Am I making you nervous?”

“You’re making everybody nervous. About giving the wrong answers.”

“Oh, nonsense. I’m making Miss Beverly nervous, I admit. She’s unused to confrontation, but you, Mr. Marconi? Come now, you wouldn’t shit a shitter.”

Everyone else in the room gasped at this.

“I said we’re friends. I think I know if somebody’s my friend or not.”

“I think you do, but here’s the question, Miss Beverly,” he said, turning abruptly away. “Don’t be nervous. We’d simply like to hear your opinion. Who do you think understands Mr. Lynch best, Mr. Lynch himself or his good friend Mr. Marconi?”

Was it Noonan’s imagination, or did Mr. Berg give the word “good” an odd emphasis that cast some doubt upon whether they were friends at all?

Perry interrupted. “How come you ask the same four people all the questions?”

Mr. Berg raised his arms like a conductor, and the entire class responded in a chorus, led by Noonan, “Which answer would you prefer?” Perry seemed on the verge of spontaneous combustion.

“Bobby,” Nan said, her eyes meeting Noonan’s directly. Ah, he thought. She’s caught on and is fighting back. Also, her aura was ablaze.

“You could be right, Miss Beverly. Like you, I wouldn’t sell Mr. Marconi short. No fool, our Mr. Marconi.”

“Are you going to play favorites?” Perry now wanted to know.

“I’d like to say no, but that would be a lie, wouldn’t it? We all have our favorites. I’m just like you in that respect. I like some people and don’t like others. For instance, you don’t like Mr. Marconi, am I correct?” He waited now, grinning, and Noonan had a pretty good idea what for.

So, apparently, did Lucy, who nudged Perry and whispered, “Which answer would you prefer?”

“Ah, Mr. Lynch, welcome aboard,” Mr. Berg said, then quickly turned his attention back to Noonan. “But Mr. Marconi, I really must insist you tell us why your friend’s a bit of a doubter and a bit of a believer.”

He shrugged. “His dad’s a believer and his mom’s a doubter.”

“Ah,” Mr. Berg sighed theatrically. “What they call a mixed marriage. True, what your friend alleges, Mr. Lynch?”

Lucy allowed that it was.

“And exactly what does your father believe in?”

“America,” Lucy said. “Our town. Our family. That people are basically good.”

“And your mother has her doubts?”

“Not really. She just—”

“Has her doubts, yes, I understand. Thinks people are basically up to no good, as Miss Beverly and I agreed earlier. I hope we aren’t boring you, Mr. Kozlowski,” he said, noting that Perry was sulking in his chair, “since we’re closing in on the subject of our seminar, and I’d hate to think you’re losing interest already, because I, for one, am very,
very
excited.”

T
HAT EVENING
Noonan’s head was still reeling. After football practice he stopped at Ikey’s, where Lucy was manning the register. They took one look at each other and burst out laughing. When Dec Lynch tripped down the back stairs from his apartment, they tried to compose themselves, but it was no use.

“You two giggle like a couple girls,” Dec observed, his head in the meat case, from which he extracted two thick pork chops and a small boat of potato salad for his dinner. “The hell’s wrong with you?”

“Which answer would you prefer?” they said in unison, and cracked up all over again, while he just stood there glaring at them. Finally, they became self-conscious enough to stop.

“Just tell me one thing,” he said, fixing Noonan. “And I want the truth. Do we stand any chance against Mohawk next Saturday?”

It was tempting to give him the Berg response all over again, but Noonan could tell the man was serious. A gambler, he wanted the inside scoop. “Hard to say,” he told him.

“I know it’s hard to say,” Dec countered. “If it was easy, would I be asking
you
?”

“I don’t think they’re any better than we are. They’re at home, though.”

Dec Lynch snorted derisively. “Home?” he said. “Ten miles upstream, you mean. A fifteen-minute bus ride, assuming both traffic lights are red. Hell, it’s the same damn gene pool. If we were any closer there’d be nothing but harelips on both sides of the ball. Is anybody hurt, is what I’d like you to tell me.”

“Perry Kozlowski got his bell rung in practice today,” Noonan told him. Which was the truth but not, to quote Mr. Berg, the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Rather, it was the answer he preferred, since he himself had met Perry helmet to helmet on the fifty-yard line, their collision leaving the other boy dazed and disoriented. Noonan had taken a handoff and run between the tackles, the secondary opening up in front of him. Had he continued left, he might’ve made it all the way to the end zone, but instead he lowered his head into a surprised Perry, the team’s captain and middle linebacker. Noonan’s own fingers and toes were buzzing for the next hour. Coach took him aside after the play. “What is it with you two?” he wanted to know. Noonan just shrugged, not knowing quite what was between him and Perry, or why he thought it might be fun to pin him to the ground with his knees and pop his zits, one by one. Worse, at the satisfying moment of impact, he’d felt some diminishment in the more important loathing he harbored for his father. Was it possible that a person possessed a finite amount of such a valuable commodity?

“Terrific,” Dec said. “The one guy on our team who can tackle. I may have to buy a disguise and drive up to Mohawk and watch them practice.” Before heading back upstairs, he stopped at the cooler and grabbed a beer, letting the door swing shut with a soft thud, and Noonan wondered how having Dec Lynch living above Ikey’s represented an improvement over Buddy Nurt. Hadn’t they just replaced one slow leak with another? According to Lucy his uncle paid no rent and took whatever he needed or wanted from the store. On the plus side, he was paid little more than what he needed to cover his weekend carousing, and that was under the table, so he could still collect unemployment.

“So,” Lucy said, once he’d left, “you going to stick it out with Berg or switch to Summers?”

“Berg,” Noonan said, with no hesitation. “He may be nuts, but he’s not dull.”

In fact, the class had been nothing short of exhilarating. When they’d finally gotten around to discussing the four-line poem on the blackboard, Mr. Berg had unfolded it the way the sun opens a flower, patiently, one petal at a time. The class began by agreeing the words made no sense, that something must be missing or wrong with the poem, so they were shocked to hear that in Mr. Berg’s opinion the poem was perfect as it stood. Indeed, he’d gone so far as to suggest there might be something wrong with them.

“Okay,” Perry challenged him, “then tell us what it means.”

Grinning, Mr. Berg asked a question instead. “What’s a dream book?” They’d all looked at one another. “Nobody knows what a dream book is?”

Clearly nobody did, and Noonan was surprised when a voice said, “It’s where you look it up.”

Everyone had forgotten Three Mock, who, unless there was a ventriloquist in the room, had actually spoken. He sat motionless, as before, still facing the front. To look at him, you wouldn’t have guessed he was wired to any external reality.

“Thank you, Mr. Mock,” Mr. Berg said, apparently not surprised at all. “Would you be willing to elaborate? It’s where you look
what
up?”

“What you dreamin’.”

“So, if I dream of a fish,” Mr. Berg said, “I can look it up in this book?”

The boy nodded.

Berg turned back to the rest of the class. “Interesting. How is it that Mr. Mock knows what a dream book is and the rest of you don’t? How could we account for that?”

“Easy,” Perry said. “You told him before class. To make the rest of us look stupid.”

“Ah,” Mr. Berg said. “The people-are-up-to-no-good thesis again. Mr. Mock, did I tell you what a dream book was before class?”

All eyes now on him, Three Mock shook his head almost imperceptibly.

“Do you believe him, Mr. Kozlowski?”

“No,” Perry said.

“How about you, Mr. Lynch?” When Lucy hesitated, he moved on, “Mr. Marconi?”

“Yes,” Noonan said, partly because he did, but mostly because he wouldn’t agree with Kozlowski unless he had no choice.

“Our resident agnostic believes him.” Mr. Berg chuckled, turning again to Nan. “Funny how that works out sometimes, no? Doubters believing. Believers doubting.”

“What difference does it make?” Perry Kozlowski demanded. “Everybody knows what a fish is. Why would you look it up?”

“Mr. Mock?”

“Dream book give you a number,” he said, and Noonan felt some inner door swing partway open on an unseen hinge, allowing a breeze to blow in. He glanced over at Lucy, who’d felt it, too.

Not Perry, though. “What good would this number do?”

“You could play it,” Lucy said, a little breathlessly, like this sudden realization had left him weak. “You could bet your dream.”

Mr. Berg just grinned his wolfish grin, and the bell rang. As if he’d planned that, too.

“
HE MUST BE TRYING
to get himself fired,” Tessa Lynch speculated.

She’d come into the store with two big tubs of macaroni and potato salad a few minutes after Dec Lynch went upstairs. Taking one look at Noonan, she scooped a generous portion from each into a paper boat, handing it to him along with a plastic spoon. He didn’t bother denying he was famished, as usual. After practice he was always hungry, and he just dug in.

“Nobody feeds you at home?” she said, watching him and looking pleased.

“My mother usually tries to save me something,” he said, which was true. His little brothers had the appetites of young dogs, though, and if he got home late, they’d have grazed through whatever she’d set aside for him. From upstairs came the smell of Dec’s pork chops frying—it would’ve been nice to have one of those to go with the salads—and the sound of the ball game he’d turned on. “Why would he want to get fired?” Noonan said.

“Right off the top of my head, I can think of about a dozen reasons.” Mrs. Lynch gazed around the store. “There’s times I wish somebody’d fire me.”

Noonan noticed his friend’s face cloud over when she said this.

“It’d make sense. He’s always hated it here, and after Sarah graduates there won’t be any reason for him to stay. Sarah says he’s close to finishing that book of his.”