The Last Bridge (20 page)

“You called him, didn’t you?” I said. I wasn’t able to look at her. All her talk about choice and freedom, and she needed a man as much as my mother did.

“Sweetie, he’s the father.”

I laughed. Little did she know.

“He has a say,” she continued, but I wasn’t listening. Warm water rushed out between my legs.

“Oh God, something bad is happening,” I said.

Addison followed us to the hospital in his truck. I didn’t want him near me. Diana drove and muttered about breathing and concentrating and all that shit they taught us when she made us go to Lamaze. All I wanted was to rip out the thing tearing at me.

I was in labor for twelve hours. Diana stayed with me and left periodically to give Addison updates. She fed me ice chips from a cup. “Open up,” she said during one of the more quiet times. She took a long cotton-tipped swab and wiped the inside of my mouth. I looked up at her. She shrugged.

“I’m going to make an offering for a happy life for you all,” she said. Diana was always mixing herbs and potions. She claimed
what saved her from cancer was healing, not medicine. I chalked it up to another one of her wacky beliefs.

After six hours of holding my hand, she took a break for coffee.

I knew he would come in. His hair was pushed off his face from handling it too much. His face was tan and clear except for the colony of freckles that danced on his forehead. He had the slow gait and forlorn expression of a man paying his last respects.

“Don’t hate me,” he said when he reached the bed. I turned away. “I didn’t know. I called Diana to find out how you were ….”

A contraction came and I reached for him. I felt the searing burn rising from the bottom of my pelvic bone up to the top, where the wave of pain crested into a feeling of my hips snapping in half. After a count of ten, the peak slowly subsided.

“Let go,” I said. Addison loosened his grip.

Addison and Diana took turns sitting with me. It felt as if they were the real parents and I was the surrogate they hired to birth them a healthy, happy baby. What they didn’t know was that there was a chance this child would be neither.

When the baby came out, everyone sighed at the wonder of it all. They asked Addison if he wanted to cut the cord. He looked as freaked out as I felt. “May I?” Diana asked, and she did.

They cleaned the little boy up and put him on my belly. I stared at the ceiling and fought the urge to look. The doctor said he had ten fingers and ten toes and was perfectly healthy.

That’s what you think
.

When the nurse asked if I wanted to hold him longer, I said I was too tired.

I missed him as soon as they took him away. I replayed the moments. The warm movement when they laid him on me. The way he stopped squirming when our skin made contact. The tiny creature that was swimming in my murky waters had surfaced and landed on the beach of my belly. There was that gasp for air, the gulping urge to take in life and announce his arrival. The way his small
tummy moved in and out as his hands curled into half-fists, not sure if hands were for holding or hitting. And there was that faint creaking sound he made right before he screamed.

Those were the moments I could never drink away—no matter how hard I tried.

I
COULDN’T SEE PAST
the illuminated beams from the headlights. Like with most things, though, I did better if I didn’t see too much. I thought of Andrew and the way he scratched his arms and the cool, even tone of his voice, never wavering or breaking, and how his eyes were still a little dead when he spoke.

He’s still using
.

I thought of him shooting up, shooting hoops, going to school, searching for his mother, seeing me, his half sister, for the first time, and suddenly I felt incredibly sad.

I clutched the wheel and leaned forward, pushing the car deeper into the rain.

I turned on the radio and there was that song, the one they played at the dance about how time could stand still, that a moment could fill a lifetime. The smell of Addison filled the car and summoned the feeling I had as we danced that night that he could stop the world.

The only sound I ever heard that day on the delivery bed was the sound of my son gasping for breath. His tiny voice cackled like the creak in the floorboard on the third step, and then his body shuddered as he let out a wail announcing he was alive and there was no turning back.

Only running away.

My head was swimming. I was becoming engulfed in a deeper
sense of drunkenness than I had when I got into the car. Memories flashed in and out of my mind as quickly as the wipers brushed away sheets of rain.

The marker for the highway was a clear sign from God. The overpass above me was well lit, and from the turnoff at the light where I sat, it seemed as if it were raining only where I was. I put on my turn signal to merge onto the interstate and thought of Addison’s hands on my feet, washing them, and the way he still looked at me.

And the papers and the deed and the son.

The light changed. I drove past the turnoff for the highway out of town and headed across Main Street, over the railroad tracks, past the high school and the football field and Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow, and made a left onto Elm.

The living room light was on and the blinds were open. Through the picture window I could see Addison sitting at the dining room table hunched over a stack of papers. For a moment I forgot I was driving and lost control of the steering wheel and swerved over the curb and onto Addison’s front lawn.

I slammed on the brake and flew forward, smashing my head against the steering wheel, feeling the hard smack of the horn against my forehead, and hearing the blare wailing like a siren just as everything went black.

I
STOLE THE MONEY
from Diana’s wallet when she and Addison went to the nursery to see the baby. I had left Jared’s money back at the house. The nurse said I would be able to leave in the morning and get on with being a mother. Addison said we would talk about what to do next. Diana said she would get the spare room ready. I wasn’t sure how much more ready it could be; she had been decorating it for months. Before she left, she took a picture of me and smiled. “Just in case you forget what this day was like.”

I called a Yellow Cab from the waiting area and asked them to meet me in front of the convenience store across the street from the hospital. I was sore and woozy but not too weak to stand. The beatings had prepared me for this. It was two in the morning when I slipped down the stairs and out the door with three hundred dollars and the maternity clothes I came in with. I got into the cab and asked the driver to take me to the bus station.

I bought a six-pack of beer at the 7-Eleven and drank it as I waited for the next bus out of Pittsburgh. It was going to Altoona.

It was the first of many stops I made on the road back to Wilton.

I
OPENED MY EYES
and saw a younger, male version of myself standing next to my bed tossing a baseball into a mitt.

“You snore,” he said. I lifted my head off the pillow to confirm I was awake and realized this was exactly what I thought it was—my second encounter with my son. His hair was dark auburn and thick like mine, with a bold wave running through the middle of his head right above his ears. He wore it short with buzzed spikes sticking up off his forehead. His eyes were chocolate brown and big. The rest of his face dimmed in contrast to their boldness. Even his eyebrows arched naturally in the middle like mine. I looked better as a boy.

“I’m Alex,” he said. “Who are you?” I fell back on the pillow. His name was Alex?

“Cat,” I said. I wasn’t quite ready to spring the news on him that he was exchanging pleasantries with his namesake.

“That’s a strange name.” He whipped the baseball into the mitt so hard it made me flinch. He laughed. “You’re jumpy,” he said.

“I need coffee and a …” I looked around the room for my purse while making a smoking gesture with my hand. As I sat up, I realized I was in my bra and underwear. I covered myself.

“Cigarette?” he asked. I nodded. “Your clothes are on the chair. Dad washed them for you. Purse is here.” He pointed to the
floor next to my side of the bed. “There’s no smoking in the house. Besides, it’s a bad habit, you should stop.”

“Right.” I couldn’t take my eyes off him as he tossed the ball and circled the bed. His energy radiated everywhere. His smooth pale skin was unscarred and perfect. His demeanor suggested he was a happy boy. “How old are you?”

“Nine, almost ten. How old are you?”

“Twenty-seven, almost twenty-eight. Can you get me my clothes?”

He looked at the chair and paused. I wondered what he was thinking. If he saw the resemblance or if finding women in their underwear was something he was used to from having Addison for a father. He walked to the chair and used his mitt to scoop up the clothes and dropped them next to me. He was lean and wore his jeans loose and off his hips, like Addison.

The room was filled with granny antiques, big dark furniture that would dwarf anyone who stood next to it. The bed was a high four-poster style with fluffy pillows and a crocheted bedspread pushed down to the foot. It smelled like moth balls and the sweetness of old perfume. On the mirrored bureau was a framed photograph of a young woman holding a baby.

“That’s my granny holding Dad when he was a baby. We look alike.”

I wasn’t sure if he meant he and I or he and his dad, so I didn’t say anything. My forehead was throbbing. At first I thought it was from the drink. I touched it.

“You beaned it on the steering wheel,” he said.

“Excuse me?”

“Beaned it. Hit it. You passed out after you turfed our lawn.”

“I didn’t do it on purpose.”

He laughed. His eyes and mouth widened in an expression just short of pure joy. “Which part? Turfing our lawn or banging your head?”

I couldn’t help myself; I laughed too. “Neither.”

“Good, because I’d wonder about someone who’d do something that stupid.”

I needed to put on my clothes but I did not want him to leave just yet. “Can you turn around so I can get dressed?”

“I can go,” he mumbled, as he turned his flushed cheeks away. “I’m not even supposed to be in here. Dad said I shouldn’t bother you.”

I made a motion for him to spin around. “You’re not, stay a minute.” I reached for my blouse, holding the blanket to my chest, and dropped it when I knew I could slip the sleeves on and cover myself as quickly as possible. I swung my legs over the side and did the same with my pants. “All done.” I was standing, feeling as shaky sober as I did drunk. Now I could see how tall he was. He came up to my shoulders. If he walked toward me and hugged me, his head would fit perfectly in the crook of my shoulder. I leaned back against the bed and touched my stomach in the same place where he had been both inside and then outside, resting and reaching for me as he gasped for life so long ago.

He turned around and looked me up and down with the same intensity that Addison did.

“You’re weird,” he said finally.

“Gee, thanks.”

“I didn’t mean you’re weird like it was bad, just…”

“I know, weird.”

“Yeah.”

We sized each other up for a few more moments. His hands were thick and solid, like my father’s, not at all like mine or Addison’s, and upon closer inspection the line of his mouth was my dad’s as well.

“Shoes?” I asked.

“Downstairs.”

I reached for my purse and rifled through it for a cigarette. The papers and the deed fell out along with keys and empty cigarette
packs. Alex came to help me. That’s when I saw it: the kidney-shaped birthmark on his right hand in the small curve between his thumb and index finger. The light-brown mark that set my father’s hand apart from all others.

I pulled away. I felt like I was going to faint. As I tried to focus on getting everything back in the bag, I could feel his eyes on me. I stopped and looked up at the wall in front of me. There was a dime-store painting of a doe-eyed girl swinging under a weeping willow in a white lacy party dress as a man and a woman stood by watching in their Victorian finest. Everyone was smiling and enjoying the day as a happy family.

“Cat?”

I turned to him. That face, open and wanting to be adored. Was mine like that at that age? “I’m …” Tears began to well.

“Weird?” he said, half-smiling.

“Yeah.”

“I play baseball,” he said.

“You any good?” I asked, throwing my purse on my shoulder and walking toward the door. The floor was cold on my bare feet. I hoped my socks were downstairs as well. This would hold me, this small encounter. I could go back now, back to New York or wherever, and forget all this.

“Yeah, I have a practice game this afternoon. Want to come?”

“It’s February. Isn’t it a little early for baseball?”

“I’m on a traveling team; we start the regular season at the end of March.”

I opened the door as he followed, tossing the ball in the air.

“Alex, come have lunch before you go.” Addison’s voice came from downstairs. I followed the sound to the stairway. “And put your jersey on. Danny’s mom is picking you up.”

“Danny’s my best friend.” He went back down the hall past the room I was in and into his. I felt dizzy and gripped the stairwell as I slowly came down to face Addison.

The stairs ended in a small alcove joining the living and dining
rooms. The front door was in front of me. I wondered if I could sneak out.

Addison was standing in the doorway of the kitchen facing me. The house was simply decorated with sturdy pine furniture and warmly painted walls. On the wall above the table was a large, framed black-and-white photograph of Diana holding a small baby in the air; both are laughing and looking at the camera. Alex was right: he and Addison looked alike as babies. They were beautiful.

He isn’t who you think he is …
.

“Hungry?” Addison asked.

“Not really.” Actually, I was starving. “Sorry about the lawn.”