The Forever Bridge (30 page)

I
t is hard to remember each other. It is hard to recollect the ease and familiarity with which they used to interact. It is nearly impossible to capture the way they used to take each other for granted. The way they used to make each other feel safe.

Robert is damaged. His body ravaged by the accident. He has lost so much, and must be reminded of the absence each time he looks at the place where his legs used to be. At the things he can no longer do. At the cruelties of a world that rarely compensates or complies with his new needs.

“What do you want?” she asks him, wondering when the last time was that anyone asked him this. “Do you want to move to North Carolina?”

He studies her as though he is leery of her sincerity. This distrust is something she will never get used to, but she is the one who has brought it about. She is the one to blame for his inability to believe in her.

“No,” he says. “I thought I did.”

And so she nods.

Robert has always run away. This is what he does. He flees. He seeks. And she hunkers down. She stays; she closes herself up. What they need is a compromise. What they need is to meet somewhere in between. They need to find this bridge, the one that will traverse the chasm that has grown between them.

For now, what this means is that she lives in a rented house in town while he stays three streets over at Bunk’s. Ruby passes between them, spending every other night with her. Robert comes over those nights for dinner. And they sit together around the small wooden table, big enough only for three. And after Ruby goes to bed, they talk. Sometimes, they talk about the future. About where to go from here. But most of the time, they talk about the past. The waters between, the
now,
are treacherous, they both know this and they are still looking for the materials to use to build this bridge. It is not something to be thrown together haphazardly. Bridges built in haste are never safe. This is something that Ruby has taught them both.

One night in October when the moon outside is as bright as the sun, they sit together on the porch, looking out at the leaves that rush across the street like a river. Sylvie turns to Robert. And she wonders at how he can be both so familiar and so unknowable at the same time. How have they grown so far apart?

“I need you,” Sylvie says, feeling her heart pulsing in her throat.

He turns to look at her. She thinks it is the first time he has looked at her, really looked at her since Jess died. And she wonders what he sees. For a moment, she is afraid. Terrified that she has made a terrible mistake. That exposing her vulnerability like this will ruin her. That he could destroy her now.

But his eyes are bright, reflecting the harvest moon that looms in the sky. And he takes her hand, rubs his thumb along the veins that run like rivers on her flesh. And he nods. “I’m here, Sylvie. I’m not going anywhere.”

 

The night of the contest, Sylvie and Robert go together to the middle school. They park in the brightly lit parking lot and she helps him out of the car and into his chair. He doesn’t need her to push his chair, and so she walks beside him, noting the ease with which he navigates the sidewalks and walkways and ramps. They nod and smile at the other parents who have come to watch their children compete, and Sylvie focuses on each moment. On each breath. She is learning to listen to her body’s responses and to use both her breath and her logic to calm herself. It is not easy, but it helps. She has a long, long way to go. But each outing like this, each trip to the grocery store that ends well, each visit with Gloria, feels like an accomplishment.

Ruby is here already. She’s been here all afternoon with the other competitors. She and Izzy have repaired what was broken in their friendship, but Ruby has insisted on doing this alone. Gloria and Neil and Izzy are sitting in the front row. They have saved the aisle seat for her, and there is room for Robert’s chair next to it.

“Hi,” Gloria says, standing up and reaching out for Sylvie. And Sylvie lets her in, lets her hold her. She imagines Gloria’s arms as something designed to support her, to hold her up. The architecture of elbows and shoulders as something built for support. All of these tricks help.

When it is Ruby’s turn to present her bridge, Sylvie feels something strange in the pit of her stomach. It is not fear exactly, not the crippling anxiety to which she has grown accustomed, but rather a happy sort of tension. Anticipation? It is difficult to locate this emotion on a map that has been dominated by fear. Identify and let go, her therapist says.
I am nervous for her,
Sylvie thinks.
I am excited for her.

As she watches Ruby explain about load, about suspension, about the importance of the design, Sylvie marvels at Ruby’s patience, at her attention to detail. It makes her think of the birds, and she wonders if maybe this is one other gift she has given her.

Ruby stands in front of her model bridge, this impossibly gorgeous and delicate construction, and Sylvie holds her breath as the judge places first one brick on its slight deck and then another and another. And
this
feeling, the one swelling inside the place where the chasm used to be, like a flood, like a rushing river, is not fear but rather
wonder
and
pride.
Because their daughter, despite everything, has built something both beautiful and indestructible.

T
here are a million stories and poems about bridges. Mrs. Jenkins, her sixth-grade English teacher, says that writers and poets have always been drawn to bridges to help them explain the distance between people and places and how those gaps can be traversed. There is a mystery about bridges. A good bridge evokes both respect and wonder.

Ruby reads about the people who built the bridges. She studies their lives, reads about their dreams. Santiago Calatrava, Thomas Telford, Christian Menn, Gustave Eiffel. She studies not only their architecture, their designs, but their lives. She thinks that everything that has happened to them influences the way they solve the problem of how to traverse a chasm. How their lives are the beams and trusses, the cantilevers and arches.

She imagines herself one day building a bridge that floats across a large body of water. A bridge that is both beautiful and indestructible, that relies on nothing but the water beneath it. She thinks about the people that will walk across its deck, who will drive over its incredible expanse. She imagines how it will connect one place to another, make the journey one that people will talk about long after they have crossed the bridge.

She reads the poems about bridges as well. Nessa gave her a Longfellow poem she found, and she told her to read it aloud. To feel the way the words trip across your tongue. Sitting on the edge of Nessa’s bed as she feeds the baby, Ruby reads aloud to her. Wren is quiet, suckling and cooing, and the air is still around them:

 

She thinks about a procession of men, each with their own sorrow, what sort of design might help bear that impossible load. She dreams the architecture of forgiveness, of understanding required to endure those burdens. This is the kind of bridge she’ll make one day, she thinks, as both Nessa and the baby drift off to sleep. This one, right here.

 

 

 

T. Greenwood

 

 

The following discussion questions are included to enhance your group’s reading of
The Forever Bridge.

Have you read all of T. Greenwood’s critically acclaimed novels?

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