Bridge of Sighs (77 page)

What he wanted, desperately, was to dream the cathedral again, because this time he’d be ready. The first time he’d wanted to share its wonders. Now he’d know better than to lose his focus. If he had the dream again, he’d know it was meant for him alone, that some things couldn’t be shared. The magic and beauty of the cathedral, if that’s what it was, could only be revealed to one person at a time, with no distractions. The presence of anyone else, even a loved one, maybe especially a loved one, made it vanish. It was what you got, he now understood, in lieu of a loved one.

As he lay awake staring at the dark, indistinct shape of Sarah’s easel, Noonan could not know that he was looking at his future, his destiny, or that he’d spend his adult life in front of easels, his brush often guided mysteriously by a series of what he would come to think of as “paint dreams.” All of that was too far away. He did, however, sense a more immediate future, dark shapes moving in the middle distance between his sleeping bag and the easel at the other end of the room. He could sense them gathering force, and he found that by squeezing his throbbing wrist he could make them almost visible in the darkness. The months to come—between the blizzard and graduation—would give these dark shapes substance in the physical world, driving events that would surprise everyone but Noonan. Despite what Nan told Lucy, she and her mother would not return to Thomaston from Atlanta. Her parents would arrange for her to finish her course work and take her exams in absentia. Her diploma would be sent to her through the mail. Lucy, predictably, would take this hardest. “How come she doesn’t even write, is what I’d like to know,” he’d say at least once a week, adding, “To you, especially,” hoping Noonan might explain. “Mind your own business, Lou,” his mother would tell him. “You, too,” she’d warn her husband when he opened his mouth to say it didn’t make no sense to him either.

Nor, of course, was Noonan surprised when Sarah’s father was arrested in May for possession of controlled substances. He’d seen that coming back in the fall. The charges were ultimately dropped, though not until Mr. Berg agreed to resign his position. A similar accusation, it was learned, is why he’d left his teaching job in New York and come to Thomaston in the first place. When no substitute could be found so late in the semester, he was told he could finish out the term, but then the story broke in the newspaper, and he never returned to class after that. Everyone in honors was awarded an A. Poor Sarah, Noonan thought, grateful she had Lucy and his family for comfort. “We’ll take care of her,” Tessa had promised when her mother died, and they did.

Of course what shocked people most was what happened between Noonan and his father, but to him, those events, even more than the others, had the feel of a too-familiar story whose plot was set in motion long ago and whose resolution, barring some deus ex machina intervention, was inevitable. David had never stepped foot in the flat above the Rexall, but Noonan wasn’t all that surprised to find him there when he returned after graduation practice that afternoon in early June. Nor was he terribly surprised by what his brother had come to tell him—that their mother was pregnant again. And though he’d safely negotiated the turn onto the gravel road that led up to Nell’s a hundred times before, he wasn’t really surprised that same afternoon when he lost control of the Indian and it slammed into the concrete abutment. All winter long Dec Lynch had been saying that it was just a matter of time before something like that would happen. The only part Dec got wrong was his prediction that Noonan would escape uninjured, because as he rolled clear he felt something give in his wrist. Was there not a beautiful symmetry to this? And of course he wasn’t surprised when the restaurant door flew open and poor, befuddled, prescient Willie came barreling down the long drive to meet him, his arms waving wildly above his head, his face a contorted mask of terror, screaming
“No!”
over and over.

Did his father feel that same inevitability? The futility of attempting to alter events that had been preordained so long ago? Because when Noonan entered, he didn’t even bother to climb down from his barstool. He did rotate to face his son, showing him once more those mocking eyes he’d known so well as a boy, their former rage turned inward now. Back when Noonan’s hatred of his father had been black and pure, he’d looked forward to this day. Now he deeply regretted all those evenings they’d sat on adjacent barstools in an uneasy truce, which had left him more conflicted than he cared to admit, even to himself. But he had warned his father about the consequences if he failed to heed that warning, so what choice did he have? Had Sarah chosen him, he would remember thinking, it might have been different, but she hadn’t. And now the time had come to show her just how wise she’d been.

The details of fights were as hard to recall as kisses, and except for his first punch landing flush, his father’s teeth collapsing against his knuckles, his barstool still spinning after he’d crashed to the floor, all he remembered was a blur of sight and sound. Max calling the police. Willie, shoved roughly aside in the parking lot, beside himself now, kicking and punching him, howling like a wild animal for him to stop, stop, stop. His father’s blood bubbling blackly from his nose and mouth, his eyes no longer mocking, just accepting. Noonan punching with his left fist, his right hanging limp and worthless. He would remember wanting to stop, but not stopping, even when his father’s eyes rolled back in his head. He was too honest to tell himself he was doing this for his mother, who didn’t want it any more than she wanted another pregnancy. He was simply doing it because he said he would, and so his father, who could never quite bring himself to throw that punch he was forever threatening, would understand, once and for all, that his son was a different sort of man entirely.

LOVE

B
Y THE TIME
I finally come upstairs Sarah has turned off the light, which may or may not mean she’s been crying and doesn’t want me to see. I undress in the dark, get into my pajamas, then slide into bed next to her. She turns over to let me know she’s awake.

“I saw Brindy in the West End this afternoon. She told Owen she was going to Albany,” I tell her, because it’s important and has been lost in all the turmoil over me.

“I’m sorry,” Sarah says, letting her voice fall and leaving me to contemplate exactly what she’s sorry about. To share my suspicion? For Owen? That I witnessed this, because now I’ll worry? That I need to shift the focus from myself onto our son?

“If he finds out…” I let the thought trail off.

“He may already know,” my wife says, taking me by surprise. “People know things and pretend not to.” Am I mistaken, or is she speaking not only of our son and me but also herself? Finally she says, “Lou, I’ve decided I need to go away for a while.”

I’ve been half expecting these words for a very long time. How odd they should take my breath away now, especially given the events of the day. I want desperately to beg her not to, but of course I’ve got this coming. “Where?” I say stupidly. Away, obviously. Away from me.

“I don’t know. I just…need to be alone, to sort things out. Some time to yourself might do you good, too.”

“It won’t,” I assure her. “Without you—”

“I’m not going to lie to you, Lou. I don’t know what I’m going to do. I’m not even sure I know how to be alone. Or who I’d be if we weren’t together. Maybe I’ll find out. But I want you to understand that I’m not angry. I know how hard you’ve tried. It was wrong of you to do what you did. But you’re not the only one who’s ever done a shameful thing.”

I wait until she continues.

“Part of what you said before was true,” she says finally. “I did love him.”

Of course. We both did.

“Or maybe just something about him. His…”

Courage.

She clears her throat. “He sent me a postcard when I was at Cooper Union. It didn’t say much except that he was in Toronto and all right. He joked about how he’d signed up for an art class and joined a workshop, and I’d better watch out because he planned to catch up to me. I wanted to show you the card, but I knew it would hurt your feelings because he’d written to me, not both of us. I didn’t write him back at first, not until Lou-Lou got sick, and then again when we got married. I could tell him things I couldn’t say to you, partly because he wasn’t here, but also because you take everything to heart so.”

Oh Lou, why must you be so…

“I wrote him again after your father died and you…I panicked, I guess, because of how unhappy you were. And I wrote him when I lost the baby, when I was the unhappy one. That was the last letter. After that, I stopped.”

“Why?”

“It started to feel like…cheating. He wrote me at a post office box, and I told myself they were just letters, but having that kind of secret didn’t feel right. And by then Bobby was married himself, and it wasn’t really fair to anybody, so I told him I wouldn’t be writing anymore. I said I loved you and I loved our lives, which was true, but mostly it just seemed like it was time to stop. And then Owen came along and we got busy and there wasn’t any need.”

“Then why start again? Why now?”

My eyes have adjusted to the dark. There’s just enough light in the room for me to make out her smile, the same sweet smile that’s been such a blessing all these years. “Because it was finally safe. Can’t you see that? Maybe it was all of us getting older. I don’t know, but at some point I realized the danger was past and Bobby was just an old friend. And after so many years, that’s also how Bobby would think of me. But it had something to do with my cancer, too. After the operation I wanted to talk to someone who only knew me from before, as I used to be. The person I really wanted to talk to was my mother, but she was gone, and then for some reason I thought of Bobby, remembering how we used to talk.”

About things she couldn’t say to me.

She takes my hand. “It’s sweet that you think of me as a woman another man would want, but—”

“Sarah,” I say, my voice barely audible even to me.

“Try not to think of what I’m telling you as a love story, Lou. You and I are the love story, not Bobby and me.”

“You’ll never come back,” I say, surprising myself by the force of my conviction.

Perhaps because she knows me so well, and knows that she’ll never convince me on this point, at least not tonight, she doesn’t try. “There’s one other thing I need to tell you. I want you to understand that writing those letters to Bobby all those years ago isn’t the only dishonest thing I’ve ever done. I’ve been reading your story, Lou. All this week. I shouldn’t have done that without asking you, but I was so frightened. I was scared of something even worse than what happened today.”

That I would cross the Bridge of Sighs. That I wouldn’t turn back. She doesn’t have to spell this out. “Not much of it’s true, I suppose. I started out trying to stick to the facts, but I kept getting lost.”

“The way you felt about Lou-Lou was true. The way you feel about Ikey’s. And I liked what you wrote about me. But will you explain one thing? Why did you say it was some other girl, the one you describe on the stairs at the Y? The one who looked so frightened at being left behind? It
was
me, you know.”

“No, that was—” I start to tell her who, because there’s no doubt in my mind, but I stop. For some reason I’m having trouble picturing that girl as clearly as I did when I wrote about the incident. Nor can I remember her name.

“You were a step below me on the stair. I knew who you were, but you hadn’t met me yet. I wasn’t the kind of girl boys noticed. I turned and there you were and—”

“No,” I say again, not wanting to get confused. “No, I remember—”

“I was with my best friend, Sally Doyle. She and I went to all the dances together. You were with that poor boy who hanged himself. David.”

“No,” I say again. I’m literally shaking my head in the dark.

“Lou,” Sarah says, sensing my upset. “It’s okay, Lou.”

I
SLEEP FITFULLY,
waking an hour before dawn with the certain knowledge that of course Sarah’s right. It
was
her on that stair so long ago. I now see the hope and longing in that girl’s eyes and recognize them as belonging to the woman sleeping beside me, whose life I’ve intertwined with my own. Out our bedroom window the eastern sky shows a thin band of gray. I remember waking as a boy during these darkest of hours and being comforted by the clinking of milk bottles. Even though my father never handled our route, that sound told me he was out there making us proud, providing people with what they needed, dependable and sure in all weathers. He was, I believed, an important man with an important job. The sort of job you wouldn’t trust to just anybody.

Poor David, I think. How many times have I denied him? This last is the worst. Because Sarah was right about that, too. David
had
been there, standing quietly beside me that Friday night. For moral support we always went to those dances together. His family had recently moved to Thomaston, and he was in desperate need of a friend, and so, as usual, was I. Finally I got to be the mentor and protector, much as Bobby Marconi had been for me, and I remember enjoying that new role. Living on opposite sides of the East End, David and I took turns walking each other home. One Friday after the dance, we went to David’s house, and there in the dark driveway he shocked me by kissing me full on the lips, then hurrying inside. The next day, at the theater, he seemed as embarrassed by what he’d done as I was, and neither of us referred to the previous night. But after the movie he walked me home and did it again, this time in broad daylight, right in front of my house. I remember thinking my father was across the street watching, and so I shoved David away and told him I didn’t want to be friends anymore. I can still see the look on his face.

I might have let him into my story, explaining that kiss and what followed, the day at school when we learned poor David had hanged himself. No official announcement was made, but by midmorning everybody knew he was dead, that his father had found him dangling in the garage that morning. I might have written about how our stricken teachers had whispered in the halls, and how for the rest of the day both they and the other kids watched me closely, David’s only friend, as if they suspected something—that I’d known what he intended, maybe, or that now I’d be next. After school I rode my bike out to Whitcombe Park, gripped Gabriel Mock’s fence with white-knuckled fists and indulged my grief, sobbing loudly and with purpose, trying to drain the sorrow from my body, so that when I returned home I wouldn’t seem any more distraught than the rest of my classmates.

Over dinner that night, I thought I did a pretty good job of pretending to suffer some lesser version of grief and loss than the one I was feeling. But my mother knew better, as she so often did, knew that I was hurting worse than I let on, because after I’d gone to bed she came into my room with tears in her eyes and told me how sorry she was, and I learned then that no matter how hard you try, you can never empty yourself of tears. “It’s a mean old world, sweetie,” she said. “It never lets up either. I wish I had better news for you, but I don’t.”

A month after he took his life, his father came into Ikey’s. Apparently David had left a note that mentioned me. I happened to be working in the back room, but I heard my father say, “My Louie ain’t that way.” Later, after Mr. Entleman left, he came out back and found me sitting on a crate and staring at nothing. “You ain’t that way, are you, Louie?” he asked, and I assured him I wasn’t. “Boys ain’t supposed to like boys that way,” he explained patiently. I told him I knew that, and that when David had tried to kiss me I’d pushed him away, that we hadn’t been friends since, which reassured him.

Except for what happened in the voting booth, my father had no secrets from my mother, so that night at dinner he told her about the terrible things David’s father had said. “The poor boy,” my mother sighed, looking at me.

“That don’t mean you got to be mean to him or nothin’,” my father told me, as if he’d forgotten that David was dead. Probably he just meant that if something like that ever happened again, with some other boy, I wasn’t obligated to be cruel, but my mother looked at him as if he’d just sunk to a new low, stupiditywise. “Jesus, Lou,” she said, shaking her head in disbelief. “Christ on a crutch.”

Was
I, as my father put it, “that way”? I didn’t know. I did not. Was David? I didn’t know that either. He was just a boy. I knew only that he was frightened to be in a strange new place and terribly grateful I’d befriended him. He felt about me like I’d once felt about Bobby. “Adoration” is probably not too strong a word to describe that heady mingling of intense affection and dependence. Back when we lived at Berman Court, and even later on Third Street, during that summer when we surfed my father’s truck, I’d
wanted
to kiss Bobby. I had. I’d known it wasn’t permitted, but what, I thought, was so wrong about it? I remember thinking about little Gabriel Mock kissing my mother so long ago. How powerful his feelings for her must have been to risk the consequences that were sure to follow. And, like David, he’d done it in broad daylight. Could it be that acts committed in the privacy of darkness became wrong only in the public light of day? Wasn’t that the very adult wisdom Perry Kozlowski had tried to convey to me in the balcony of the movie theater shortly before he went out into the brilliant afternoon sunlight and beat Three Mock half to death?

I might have written all this, but did not. Why? The answer to that question, I suspect, can be found in that photo of my father hanging on the wall of my study. My story was written under his watchful eye, and if I’ve told it dishonestly, it’s because I didn’t want to embarrass him. To write about David would have meant admitting to my deepest thoughts about what my mother described so accurately as the “mean old world” we share, that its meanness resides deep within each of us. It would’ve revealed what I’ve always known to be true, though I’ve denied it to my mother, my father and myself—that I’m as much her son as his. For my father, the world wasn’t a complicated place. Its rules mostly made sense and they were for our own good. I’ve always wanted to be the person he believed me to be, which at times has kept me from being a better one. A terrible realization, this.

I look over at Sarah and wonder how I’ll manage without her, absent her ability to see what’s there instead of what I prefer to see. I’ll have to make sense of things for myself. She’ll wake up soon and then be gone, so for a while I’ll watch her breathe and dream. So lovely. She’s wearing a cotton nightgown, modest and opaque, but of course it reveals what isn’t there, the breast she surrendered last year to save her life, and looking at her now, knowing the small secrets she’s kept in her good heart, I feel a little better about my own. Perhaps we are all entitled to keep a small place that’s our own.

The line of gray along the horizon is brighter now, and with the coming light I feel a certainty: that there is, despite our wild imaginings, only one life. The ghostly others, no matter how real they seem, no matter how badly we need them, are phantoms. The one life we’re left with is sufficient to fill and refill our imperfect hearts with joy, and then to shatter them. And it never, ever lets up.