by Jim Nelson
Hanna lingered on these lines, feeling more and more hollowed-out with each rereading of Uncle Rick’s accusations. She didn’t recognize the man who’d penned these caustic words. Playful Uncle Rick liked his dirty jokes and skirt-chasing almost as much as he liked his drink. She never heard a cross word from him. He spoke ill of no one.
She checked the top of the letter again. No date, only the salutation to “Dee.” Not even a signature at the bottom, although the author could only be Uncle Rick. He was drunk when he wrote it, she felt certain now, but so drunk he would’ve stamped it and mailed it to her mother? Uncle Rick might write this at his lowest moment, but Hanna could not see him sending it to his sister. This was the kind of letter a drunk would destroy in the morning while tending to his hangover. For all their differences, Rick and Hanna’s mother were best friends. It just wasn’t in Uncle Rick’s nature to send something so nasty to her.
She waved the page at Ruby. “You read this?”
Ruby nodded unapologetically.
“And you found it in your grandmother’s papers?”
Ruby stepped off the footstool and went to the back of the house. The bedroom door creaked open. After a moment, the bedroom door creaked closed. Ruby returned with a manila envelope, an official-looking one with a red string tying it closed.
“She’s still asleep,” Ruby said, meaning Hanna’s mother.
Hanna turned the manila envelope over in her hands. Where it would normally be addressed for delivery was typed ABNEY, RICHARD M., a San Francisco street address, and S.F.P.D.
“I found the letter in there,” Ruby said, still cradling Ruby Jo.
A thin stack of documents dropped from the envelope with one shake: a photostat of a death notice, an autopsy report, grainy black-and-white photostats of police photos showing a cramped disheveled apartment, and a typewritten list of personal effects. This envelope contained the entirety of Uncle Rick’s legacy: alcohol, barbiturates, and a plea to his sister, which was also his plea to the world.
“Are you okay?” Ruby gently placed her free hand on Hanna’s shaking shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
Hanna crouched over the report and sobbed. She remembered riding on Uncle Rick’s shoulders and she remembered him lifting her up to the cable car’s running boards for an exhilarating ride to Fisherman’s Wharf. She never saw him without a smile. When he came to the farmhouse to work on his motorcycle and fix his sister’s car, Hanna would watch him twist the wrenches and pliers and ask what each mysterious machine part did. He loved to talk about punk bands he’d seen at the Fillmore and in the Tenderloin, although he seemed too old for rock concerts, she thought. Even when he napped off his beer on the couch at the farmhouse, a toothy smile was splitting his thick reddish beard in half.
After the divorce, Hanna all but hated her father. Uncle Rick never attempted to take her father’s place, but he offered Hanna a loose, masculine balance to her mother’s regimented ways. After Uncle Rick’s death, no man visited them at the farm, not until Vaughn came courting seventeen year-old Hanna, her virgin heart bursting at the seams with unspent ardor. But Vaughn was no substitute for Uncle Rick, who was, she realized twenty years after his passing, a near-perfect substitute for her absent father.
Ruby put her cheek to Hanna’s. “What’s wrong?” she whispered. “Why are you sad?”
Ruby didn’t understand the death notice; she could not piece together why the police would take photos of a messy apartment and give them to Grandmother to keep. Ruby didn’t know why adults ask doctors for barbiturates for one reason and take them for other reasons. Hanna did not need a law or a medical degree to understand his death was not accidental. The coroner did not report a heart attack, the explanation Hanna’s mother offered her at Uncle Rick’s funeral. Hanna hated her mother for hiding the truth while telling herself she would hide this from Ruby and Cynthia, and at that moment, crying in the kitchen chair, she saw no contradiction.
The smell of char grew in the air. The sizzling on the stove rose to the level of an old-fashioned television tuned to static. Ruby turned off the burners and plated the hot sandwiches. Hanna took a deep breath, wiped her face dry with her fingers, and looked about.
“Where’s your sister?”
“Outside.” Ruby shrugged without looking back at her mother. “I don’t know.”
Hanna went to the wide front window. She saw no activity in the yard, and she certainly did not see Cynthia when she pedaled up. “When did you last see her?”
“I don’t know,” Ruby said quietly. “I was taking care of Grandmother all morning.”
The rush of panic she’d felt on the bike ride returned. Hanna went from room to room calling out Cynthia’s name, unafraid of waking her mother now. She flung open the bathroom door without knocking and even tried the closets and kitchen pantry. She hurried out the front door and ran across the gravel yard to the barn.
“Cynthia?” she yelled up to the barn rafters. The interior smelled of cat shit and hay. She knew the girls liked to explore its nooks when bored. “Cynthia?” She circled around the chicken coop, stirring up the clucking hens and sending the segregated roosters across their pen in a flurry of brown and red feathers. “Cynthia!”
Ruby remained in the kitchen with wide, shocked eyes, stroking Ruby Jo’s hair.
Hanna went to her bedroom and stripped off her shorts. She pulled on long socks, a pair of old jeans, and running shoes. She slipped her cell phone in her back pocket.
When she returned, Ruby remained standing in place in the kitchen, stunned. “Are you okay?”
“Don’t worry,” she said to Ruby, doing her best to avoid panicking the girl. Hanna knew she was the model of unconvincing calm at the moment. “Watch your grandmother. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“Okay,” Ruby whispered, holding Ruby Jo tight to her chest.
The Audi’s wheels ripped into the gravel, caught purchase, and the car shot down the jutted lane. Hanna pushed on the accelerator and did her best to keep the wheels in the tracks. She hit the bridge without decelerating. It swayed and groaned under the weight of the machine. She gave the car more gas when she reached the other side.
At the main gate, she killed the engine, flung open the door, and hurried through the wild grass toward the flapping yellow strip. She pushed through the branches to the clearing calling Cynthia’s name.
All that remained in the clearing was the yellow strip and the remains of the campfire, now cold. The backpack was gone.
Fifteen
Hanna drove Old Jachsen Road toward Marin City. Seeing no one, not even passing another vehicle, she turned the Audi around and sped back the direction of Highway 101. She slowed when she passed the gate to the farm, looking to see if she could spot Cynthia on the lane to the farmhouse or in the trees, vaguely optimistic she’d returned. Not a soul walked the lane or waited at the gate. Hanna leaned on the accelerator and sped on, searching for any sign of Cynthia or Piper.
Hanna asked herself if she was being paranoid. Her heart beat in her throat. Paranoia or otherwise, Cynthia was missing, she reminded herself. She knew from years growing up on the farm, there were several approaches to the farmhouse. Cynthia could have snuck away on foot without being seen from the jutted road. Hanna could not imagine her doing it on her own, though.
She once again faced the bipolar fatigue of the modern mother. Time and again, Hanna strained not to become the sort of overprotective mother who encased her bridge daughters in bubble wrap to protect them from chance, consequence, and the world. Such mothers were the detriment of their children and everyone around them, usually demanding others to provide the bubble wrap and packing tape.
No matter how hard she attempted to sustain this cool stance, Hanna found herself jumpy when even the slightest unexpected event occurred. Cynthia wandering off in a department store the day after Thanksgiving for example, or when she discovered Ruby talking to Piper at the roadside stand. A primitive protective instinct dwelled within Hanna, one
she cautiously assured herself, time and again, she’d overcome, only to be proven wrong.
These two bridges carried her children. One slip on a wet floor—one step into the crosswalk without looking both ways—a drunk driver, a joyriding motorcyclist, an undercooked hamburger, a playground bully who thinks it’s funny to hit girls in their tummies. Hanna’s imagination could fabricate any number of doomsday scenarios. Her children, the two babies Cynthia and Ruby carried, represented Hanna’s last chance to assemble something approximating a family, and now this damned runaway girl was trying to steal it away.
A mile from the farm, hands clenched on the steering wheel, her focus square on the road ahead, Hanna said aloud, “Stop.” Not stop the car, but stop giving her imagination free rein.
In her worst fears, Cynthia and Piper had hitched a ride and were long gone. If so, she had to return to the farmhouse. With her mother down with the flu, Ruby was without adult supervision. Hanna’s cell phone remained out of service range, meaning her mother’s landline was the best hope for reaching the police.
Yet Hanna was not sure she wanted to involve the police. Depending on how they interpreted her story, she could see Bridge Protective Services becoming involved, meaning Cynthia would be confined in a halfway home while the county considered if Hanna was a fit mother. She’d heard the horror stories, she’d read the newspapers and blogs; she knew she wasn’t being overexcited to imagine the possibilities.
Of course, not involving the police could backfire as well. If they found Cynthia and Hanna had not contacted the authorities, then they’d be in their rights to take a dim view of her. Panicky and of two minds, she gambled phoning the police. She grabbed her smartphone from the cup holder and—
As though a genie had snapped his fingers, Cynthia appeared on the roadway ahead. She sat under a great oak tree on the grassy sloped shoulder of the road. She used a discarded white PVC bucket for a stool, a piece of roadside litter converted to better use. When Cynthia realized the car was slowing, she heaved herself to her feet and raised a hand as though signaling for a ride. Then she recognized the car. She stepped backwards, preparing to bolt.
“Cynthia!” Hanna yelled inside the car, although the windows were up and the air-conditioning was going full-blast. Hanna braked to the edge of the road and flung open the door.
Cynthia turned and started off. Muscular and fit, she still bore a child and was due soon. She ran waddling with her elbows out to balance her precariousness. Hanna was on her in moments, hand on her shoulder, calling out Cynthia.
The laden bridge halted. She remained facing away from her mother. After a moment, she put her face in her hands and began crying. Her shoulders quivered and her head bobbed. She cried so hard, she had trouble breathing. Hanna enwombed Cynthia with a tender hug. She whispered in Cynthia’s ear, It’s okay, it’s okay, it’s all okay.
—
Cynthia needed time to stop crying and catch her breath. She used up the last of the travel tissue pack Hanna kept in the glove compartment. Hanna didn’t ask any questions, thankful she was safe and sound, and gave Cynthia the time she needed to pull herself together.
They stood beneath the great oak, its green billowing leaves shading them from the sun. Beyond the weathered fence lay another wooded property. Somewhere among the trees stood a cabin used as a painting studio when Hanna was young. She didn’t know who lived there now, or even if they were painters. Otherwise, the rolling hills were smooth and green, nature’s bald spot in the forested land, slopes untouched save for a slender mountain bike trail following their contours.
“Am I in trouble?” Cynthia said.
Hanna stroked Cynthia’s hair. Anger had not arrived. Her relief was overflowing.
“Do you want to know what happened?” Cynthia said.
“I’m going to need an explanation at some point,” Hanna said.
Cynthia, face red and eyes swollen, sneered at the balled tissue in her hands. “It’s just so unfair. Why does it have to be this way?”
“Because that’s how the world works,” Hanna said. She placed a comforting hand on Cynthia’s shoulder. “Another age-old excuse, I suppose.”
Cynthia gingerly undid the cauliflower of tissue, looking into it as though an answer waited within. “Piper told me about how I could get a bi-graft,” she said.
“Did she now,” Hanna said.
“She said it doesn’t hurt,” Cynthia said.
“I can assure you it hurts very much.”
“How would you know?” Cynthia snapped.
“Did she tell you a bi-graft involves cutting and stapling?”
“Piper says they’ve been lying to all of us,” Cynthia said. “Like those soap operas where the bridge daughter gets a bi-graft and dies from complications. She says that’s just Hollywood.”
“I know you see Piper as some hero,” Hanna said. “She destroyed the life within her so she could have a few more years of her own. Keep that in mind.”
“Piper said the government is hiding a cure—”
“Cure?” Hanna said. “Cure for what?”
Cynthia appeared mildly shocked. “For being a bridge daughter.”
“It’s not a disease,” Hanna said.
“Piper says we can live as long as you can—”
“Piper will be dead before she’s thirty,” Hanna said. Spittle came from her mouth when she said Piper. “Bridge daughters were not built for a long life.”
Cynthia looked as though she would start crying again. “What are you saying?”
“I’m sorry—“
It was too late. Cynthia began crying again.
Hanna took Cynthia by both hands. “Straighten up,” Hanna said. She shook Cynthia’s arms as though testing rope.
“What are you doing?”
“If you’re so tough, then toughen up,” Hanna said.
Cynthia took in a deep breath and straightened herself. Hanna found herself feeling diminutive and petite compared to her bridge daughter. Cynthia was nearly Hanna’s height and wider in the shoulders. Up close, with this much tension in the air, the difference felt doubly pronounced. She could’ve been a boxer, Hanna thought, recalling Vaughn at the gym working the heavy bag. She was the leanest bridge Hanna had ever seen. Although she bore the masculine features of the boy within her, the crying and wailing had softened them. The musculature gradually returned, tense and rigid and firm.
“You miss Dad,” Cynthia said bitingly. “You need him.”
“What makes you think that?” Hanna asked.
“Because you’re a woman,” Cynthia said.
“Well,” Hanna said, making a quick laugh, “so are you.”
“No I’m not,” Cynthia said.
“You’re a bridge daughter,” Hanna said, “but you’re a woman all the same.”
“Look at me,” Cynthia said. She presented her wide jutting jaw. “You really think I’m just another woman?” She held forward one arm and clenched. Thick blue veins rose to the surface, as though on command.
“I’m not weak,” Hanna said. “Don’t you think I’m weak because I’m a woman.”
Cynthia took in a deep breath, her rib cage swelling. Her neck was lined with cabling like the base of a suspension bridge under strain. Her cheekbones were high and sharp, ready to cut through the supple face skin made soft and fatty by the baby growing within her.
“The difference between Ruby and me,” Cynthia said, “is I don’t want a baby. That’s why I went with Piper. She said she’d show me how to live on my own. I want to make my own way through this world.”
“Empty promises,” Hanna said.
“But I’m not going to be like my father,” Cynthia said with a bitter wash across her face. “I hate him for what he did to us.”
“I don’t want that,” Hanna said. “Your father’s decision had nothing to do with you.”
“Will you listen to me?” Cynthia said. “I hate him because he was a coward. He, he, he—” She swept her arm as though sweeping p
aperwork off an imaginary desk. “He got scared and ran away like a little girl. He was a pussy.”
“Cynthia,” Hanna said. “You know I don’t like that language.”
“I’ll say whatever I want to say,” Cynthia said. “He can go to hell.”
“Not as long as you live under my roof,” Hanna said.
Cynthia, huffing from adrenaline and boiling with testosterone, swabbed a spread hand over her distended belly. “Who’s living under whose roof?” Cynthia slapped the bulge. “I’m not even charging you rent.”
Hanna stepped back. “Excuse me?” she said, stifling a laugh. The adrenaline high was fading, leaving a giddiness within her.
Cynthia nodded at the car. “You looked pretty scared when you pulled up,” she said.
“So you’re going to start making threats?” Hanna said with a slight smirk.
“I could’ve had the procedure,” Cynthia said. “I told Piper to stop and let me off here. We could be in San Francisco by now if I didn’t stop her.”
“Good for you,” Hanna said. She didn’t feel she owed gratitude, but said it to placate her bridge daughter. It was time to get in the car. It was time to return to the farmhouse.
“I have a month to live,” Cynthia said. “The way I see things, I’m the man of the house.”
Hanna smirked again. “Did Piper tell you this too?”
Cynthia took one large step forward and gripped her mother by the forearm. “I’m tired of you interrupting me.”
Hanna tried to snap her wrist away. She found she could not.
