Bridge of Sighs

by Richard Russo

  This part her mother understood at a glance, and she took her daughter in her arms, kissing her feverish forehead with cool lips. “Oh, sweetie,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”

  AT GRAND CENTRAL her mother almost succeeded in cheering her up. They’d boarded the train early, loading her suitcases and the bag of gifts overhead, then sat in facing seats, her mother clutching the portfolio and Sarah wishing she’d put it up with the rest of her stuff, out of sight.

  “Sweetie, don’t you know what this means? It means you have the gift.”

  “What if I don’t want it?”

  “You do. You know you do. Don’t lie.”

  But how could she not, since neither statement—I do want the gift, I don’t want it—was completely true. She wanted the gift on her own terms and didn’t need her mother to tell her that this wasn’t how such gifts were offered. “Will it make me happy?”

  “Oh, sweetie…”

  “Does it make you happy?” Because if it did, what need would she have of Harold Sundry?

  Her mother looked like she might cry. “You don’t understand, do you?”

  Sarah shook her head, panic again rising.

  “I don’t have it. Oh, I have some talent. Enough to get by. More than most. But it’s not the same as yours. What you have comes from some other place.”

  Sarah’s next question was a whisper, so low she wasn’t sure she’d spoken. “What about Lou?” Meaning, was her affection for him a lie? Meaning, how could she love him and draw Bobby? Meaning, could she have her gift and Lou, too?

  Her mother opened her mouth, then shut it again. “Oh, Lord,” she finally said. “I was about to say follow your heart, but I did that and married your father.”

  Sarah forced a smile. “Five yards.”

  “Not fifteen?”

  She shook her head. She was through giving her mother big penalties.

  When the train was at last in motion, it occurred to Sarah that she’d left Thomaston with one secret and was returning with two. Was this how things would go from now on, secrets piling on top of secrets? Was this adult life, or simply the natural consequence of going away in the body of a girl and returning in that of a woman? Would she get used to deceit, like the husband she’d seen coming out of Sundry Gardens with his new girlfriend and her daughter, his face innocent of all misfortune and wrongdoing?

  BY ALBANY, Sarah had decided it was time to focus on the task soon to be at hand: putting her father’s life back in order. Though she wasn’t there to witness them, she knew what his long summer days were like. According to the neighbors, who both awoke and fell asleep to the sound of his typewriter clacking away, she knew he was at his desk at least fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. With Sarah away and no one to please but himself, he did so by dispensing with all social niceties. Rising, he put on a bathrobe to work in, and at night he took it off to go to bed; since he owned two he’d wear one until it was stiff with perspiration before taking it to the cleaners and donning the other. He quit shaving and let his hair grow wild. Last summer, Lou had run into him coming out of Powell’s stationery, where he’d gone to replace his typewriter ribbon, and hadn’t even recognized him. He looked like Ben Gunn, he told Sarah; he’d half expected the man to ask him for a piece of cheese.

  It was true. When she returned over Labor Day, her father’s appearance was always shocking to behold. He looked ten years older, starved and brittle. But his physical condition was only part of it. All summer long words flew off the tips of his fingers and directly onto his typewriter keys, bypassing his larynx entirely, so that by the end of August he was all but incapable of speech. He greeted his daughter with mixed feelings he didn’t even try to conceal, though he instructed Sarah not to take his ambivalence personally, and mostly she didn’t. In fact, she understood more than he knew.

  The book he was writing was an account of his banishment from New York City and his long exile in the wilderness that was upstate in general and Thomaston in particular. Sarah knew all this because one Labor Day, years before, she’d found the manuscript piled neatly on his desk and let her curiosity get the better of her. She recognized her mother in the protagonist’s faithless wife, who abandoned him in “Tannersville” and returned to “the city.” Fragments of the terrible arguments she’d overheard before her mother finally left were reproduced verbatim. About the only imaginative liberty he seemed to have taken was that the protagonist and his wife were childless, an enormous relief to Sarah, who at thirteen hadn’t been anxious to know what her father thought of her. But it did trouble her that Rudy had also been erased. That her father should mimic life’s cruelty seemed unforgivable.

  Otherwise, however, she understood. The fictional reality of her father’s summer, during which he had no daughter either on the page or in the house, was difficult to surrender, and her return—always sudden because he’d managed to lose all track of time—was startling enough to give him the bends. Until he could accustom himself to the reality, she would remain, albeit physically present and undeniable, somehow inconclusive. Over Labor Day she would become conclusive, and this painful transition was for her the saddest part of reentry: her father’s realization that summer was over, that he had a daughter, that he made his living as a high school teacher in a backwater burg, that he wasn’t a writer, not really, and couldn’t even pretend to be one again until he completed yet another long season in purgatory. Sarah herself, she came to understand, was her father’s discontent personified. These three months in front of his typewriter had convinced him that this was his realest, truest life, and her return each September reminded him—very dramatically—that it was only a vivid illusion. He actually locked the door to his study, refusing to enter the room during the school year lest it remind him of his real work, his real life, that he was cheated out of for nine months of the year. On Tuesday, he always took the stack of pages he’d written to the Thomaston Savings and Loan, placing them with the others in a large safety-deposit box. That nothing in his life was more valuable than the contents of that box couldn’t have been more clear.

  The good news was that his transformation from writer to teacher, from bachelor to father, though dramatic, was never prolonged. Sarah always returned on Sunday afternoon, and by Tuesday morning he had to appear at the high school prepared to teach another crop of sullen, militantly uneducable Thomaston teens, so for the both of them, Labor Day Monday was full of unremitting labor. Having refused even to think about school during the summer, her father had to generate or modify lesson plans for all his courses. The morning after his daughter’s return, he’d rise early, take a long shower, shampoo his mane, shave his beard and actually dress. His trousers would demonstrate that he’d again lost weight and would have to pay another visit to his only friend at the high school, the shop teacher, and ask him to punch an additional hole in his belt. Over breakfast he’d test his vocal cords by quizzing his daughter about her summer, how babysitting had gone, if she’d made any friends, how her mother was faring, and if she’d made any friends, and hoping, Sarah could tell, to be told that she was still struggling, still losing accounts to her competitors, still had no man in her life and was therefore closer to admitting she couldn’t make it on her own, closer to returning to their lives.

  When she was younger, Sarah had worried that the lies she told about her mother’s life at the Sundry Arms weren’t convincing. After all, when she fudged the truth about her father, her mother’s arched eyebrow always let her know she knew better. But her father never seemed suspicious, accepting her bland falsehoods and equivocations as if no daughter of his would know how to lie. “He doesn’t want to know the truth,” her mother once explained. “He likes his version of things, and what you tell him allows him to believe what he wants. Think of it as a kindness,” she suggested. “Why burst his bubble?” Sarah had never quite gotten the hang of considering lies kindness, but did allow that her mother must be right about why this man with such a questioning mind, a perfect terrier
when it came to rooting out the falsehoods of politicians and advertisers and other professional liars, never grilled her or begged details. Normally rational, he craved fantasy where his ex-wife was concerned. Even the fact of their divorce didn’t strike him as conclusive. It just meant she was still angry at him. She’d return when she couldn’t afford not to.

  Sarah’s Labor Day was even more laborious, for it fell to her to put their house back in order, throwing open all the windows to air the place out, doing laundry and ironing a week’s worth of his dingy, short-sleeved shirts, which no amount of Clorox ever truly whitened, and his black trousers, which would whiten if she wasn’t careful. She also had to pick up his mess from room to room, then go to the store and replace whatever he’d run out of midsummer and decided to do without. Usually at least half of the lightbulbs in the house had blown, but except for those in the den he hadn’t noticed. And once there was light to see by, she’d go through the mail to find out exactly when the electric, phone and water companies were threatening to cut off service, typically right about now.

  By suppertime her father was usually a little more like himself, more talkative, more cheerful, more resigned to their life together and the school year that would begin in the morning. Generating his course syllabi tended to raise his spirits, and he’d explain some of his more diabolical plans for testing the critical acuity of Thomaston youth, or for proving how woefully lacking it was. After supper, Sarah would find the scissors and give him a haircut, during which he’d ask if she’d read any good books over the summer, hoping she’d say yes and want to discuss them. But he was far cleverer at talking about ideas, and she didn’t want to disappoint him, so she always claimed to have forgotten the authors’ names and the book titles, which disappointed him even more, that she should disregard authorship so casually. His worst fear was that she discussed books with her mother, and he was greatly relieved when she assured him that she didn’t.

  By the time they finished their day of labors and were ready for bed, her father, fully himself at last, would give her a hug and say, “What would I do without you?” and she could tell he meant it, and meant by it that he loved her. Still, it was hard not to view the question as rhetorical. What he did without her couldn’t have been clearer. Emotionally and physically exhausted, she would fall asleep, pleased and proud to have removed the evidence.

  THIS, THEN, was what Sarah had to look forward to in a normal year, with just her mother’s secrets to keep. Those empty gin bottles and late-night visits from the men of the Sundry Arms had always been sufficient to tie her stomach in knots. This year, though, with the additional weight of Harold Sundry and the drawing of Bobby Marconi still hidden in her portfolio, she understood how light that burden had been. In half an hour her train would pull into Fulton and her shaggy father, a scarecrow, all skin and bones, would be standing there on the platform to greet her, and then the lies would begin.

  If he remembered her. Last year, cramming as many words as he could onto blank pages in those last precious hours, he’d lost track of time and Sarah had waited at the tiny train station for over an hour before finally calling a cab. She’d first tried calling home, of course, but her father hadn’t yet reconnected the phone. A thunderous Hudson cab arrived twenty minutes later, its rusted muffler dangling precariously. The driver, a scruffy, pear-shaped man with dark, beady eyes, kept checking her out in the rearview mirror. Did she have a boyfriend, he wanted to know. She said yes, because that seemed like a good idea, but then he’d asked who it was, and when she said Lou Lynch, he blurted, “You mean Lucy?” Most everyone referred to him as Lucy, but Sarah never did and was angry that this strange man should do so. “Last I knew,” he said, his beady eyes still fixing her in the mirror, “it was Karen Cirillo pulling him around by his…” He let the thought trail off. “You know her?”

  Sarah didn’t answer. It was beyond strange to hear a middle-aged man speaking with such authority about kids her age, as if he were really sixteen himself and merely disguised as a derelict. “Her ma and me used to be friends,” he continued, emphasizing “friends” so as to clarify their relationship. “Karen and me never got along too good. Your Lucy, he used to do cartwheels every time she went into that store. Give her free cigarettes and anything else she wanted.” Sarah did remember Karen Cirillo from junior high, beautiful in a cheap sort of way, at thirteen exuding sex from every pore. She supposed it was possible for a girl like Karen to steamroll a boy as shy and awkward around girls as Lucy had been, and still was. But she doubted he’d ever have given her free merchandise from Ikey’s.

  The driver shrugged, having apparently read her mind. “You don’t believe me, ask him.” Again he studied her in the mirror. “So now he does cartwheels over you, huh? Gives you all that free stuff.” Sarah said she paid for everything at Ikey Lubin’s, just like she would at any other store, but she could tell he didn’t believe her, that he harbored a deep conviction that most everyone else was afforded all manner of advantages expressly denied him. “He never give me nothin’ free,” he said darkly. “Her mom and me spent all kinds of money in that store, and they never give us nothin’.”

  Suddenly Sarah knew who she was talking to. Lou had told her all about Buddy Nurt, who’d robbed Ikey’s years earlier, and now here he was driving her home, his dark little eyes darting back and forth between the road and the rearview mirror. When she shifted her position in the rear seat so she wasn’t in his line of sight, he just grinned and adjusted the mirror so she was again.

  Sarah was trying to think of how to make him quit looking at her when he sat up straight and said, “Gotcha!” his expression triumphant. “Berg,” he said. “That’s your daddy. Mr. Berg.” She couldn’t help wincing. Hearing him say her surname was obscene. “What? You think I don’t know him?”

  Sarah said she had no idea if he did or didn’t.

  “Know all about Mr. Berg,” Buddy Nurt assured her. “Know more about him than you do, probably. Drive a cab, you learn all about people. You think I’m lyin’?”

  Before Sarah could answer there was a loud bang followed by an ungodly screech of metal, causing Buddy Nurt to use his rearview for its intended purpose. “Son of a bitch,” he said. When Sarah turned around, she saw that the cab’s muffler was dragging along the macadam and sending off sparks.

  Buddy Nurt pulled over onto the shoulder and turned off the engine. “Cocksucker,” he said, before getting out. When he popped the trunk, Sarah was able to see what was happening next through the gap. Rudely shoving her suitcases aside, he began rummaging through the clutter of old blankets, greasy rags, cardboard boxes, yellowed, curling newspapers, a tire iron, a case of motor oil, searching for she couldn’t imagine what and clearly not finding it. “Motherfucker,” he barked before slamming the trunk shut. An idea must have occurred to him, though, because he popped it open again and this time, to Sarah’s astonishment, he opened one of her suitcases and rooted around until he found a wire hanger, tossed the dress it was holding aside and went about the task of straightening the hanger. He then disappeared underneath the car, where he must have touched something hot because he yelped and uttered another foul oath. He was directly below her seat, grunting like a pig, his nearness disconcerting even with the undercarriage between them. She was certain those beady little eyes would be looking up her skirt if they could.

  Fifteen minutes later they were back on the highway, Buddy Nurt’s satisfied expression suggesting that he considered the coat hanger a permanent solution to his muffler problem. “I had to borrow one of your hangers,” he told her, as if the maintenance of his cab was their shared responsibility. “You had a bunch of them,” he added, so she wouldn’t feel ill used. Which, when she thought about it, was probably how he viewed the beer and cigarettes he’d stolen from Ikey’s.

  His little ferret eyes were back in the rearview now. “So how come you like him?” he said, confusing Sarah, in part because the reference to Lou was by then so remote, but also because she happened j
ust then to look out the window and see her father flying by, hunched over the wheel of their Chevy and heading in the opposite direction, toward Fulton, to meet her train.

  “There goes your daddy now.” Buddy Nurt chuckled. “Guess he don’t know I already got you.” Nodding at her in the mirror, he was pleased, she could tell, to know something he thought no one else did, no matter what it was. She was hoping with all her heart that this creep would never know anything worth knowing about her when he said, “Sarah, right? Sarah Berg.”

  WOULD HER FATHER FORGET her again today? If so, how tempting it would be to just stay on the train. Not because she’d have to call Hudson Cab and risk another ride with Buddy Nurt, but rather because she suddenly felt homeless, adrift. Which made exactly no sense. After all, wasn’t she rich in homes—her father’s, the Sundry Arms, Ikey Lubin’s? Why feel as if she didn’t truly belong in any of them when there were people in all three who loved her? Yet how grand it would be to ride on for a few more hours and get off somewhere she’d never heard of and begin a new life there. But her mother was probably right. She was just anticipating the big changes that were going to come in another year. She and Lou would go off to the university, maybe Bobby, too. By then her mother would have remarried. Her father, his book finally finished, would quit his teaching job and return to the city. In a sense, this train was rattling toward a place that was already receding into the distance. Before she knew it Ikey Lubin’s, the elder Lynches, her father’s house and Thomaston itself would all be reduced to memory. Buddy Nurt, convinced he knew things worth knowing, would continue to drive the eternal Hudson cab, its muffler attached by means of someone else’s coat hanger. She would forget and in turn be forgotten. All of this, she told herself, was normal. Certainly nothing to cry about. Sarah closed her eyes, surrendering herself to the rhythm of the rails, and let the stupid, stupid tears fall.