South of Bixby Bridge

by Ryan Winfield

  You know, I added you to my prayer list at church.

  I sip my coffee and force a smile. I say,

  That’s nice, Barb, but I don’t really believe in God.

  Well, he believes in you, she says.

  He never answered any of my prayers.

  Barbara lifts an eyebrow at me. She says,

  You sure about that? You’re here. You survived. You know, Trevor, God hides himself pretty well in the world. If you want to find him, you might have to look left and right—not up. My mother could see things. She used to brew us girls Armenian coffee. Just like this we’re drinking. When we finished a cup, she’d turn it over and let it cool. Then she’d turn it back and read our destinies in the grounds.

  What did yours say?

  I can’t tell you that, she says, but when I read yours just now in the kitchen, it told me you’re on the right path.

  I did lots of bad things, Barbara.

  So has everybody, Trevor.

  I hurt lots of people.

  Yourself most of all.

  She’s right. I think of that little boy and I want to go back, tell him what I know, tell him everything will be okay, spare him the 20 years of hell I’ve put myself through. But I can’t wholly regret the wounds because they made me tough, they helped me survive, they taught me what I know—that I don’t need anything from out there, that I’ve got everything I need right here inside me.

  Barbara sighs. Sometimes I wonder if it’s God’s forgiveness we need, she says. Seems to me he forgives us before we even ask. It’s forgiving ourselves that’s long in coming.

  Thinking about my dad, I look at Barbara and say,

  I don’t want to be like the Christians I know, Barbara.

  Oh, Trevor, she says. You’re already more Christian than most Christians I know.

  No, I say. Just human.

  Barbara smiles at me over her mug of coffee. She says,

  Same thing, Trevor—same thing.

  49 There’ll Be Tomorrow

  The cemetery rises against the blue sky in terraces from the parking lot at the river’s edge. A stand of bigleaf maples, already flush with leaves, follows the river. Above the river on pylons, at the far end of the cemetery, an old-stone pump house with a great wooden waterwheel, pumps river water to the highest terrace where it drips down irrigating the entire cemetery.

  The lower terraces are from a different time and the graves are a maze of broken-winged statues and towering stone crosses that cast long shadows on elaborate marble monuments all edge-worn and shaded by the maples and surrounded by lush, green sun-dappled lawns with tall tufts of headed grass in the corners where the mowers can’t reach.

  I slept at Barbara’s house last night and this morning, she saw me off with a vase of fresh flowers from her garden. She didn’t say it, but I think she knew I was going to see my mom.

  Barbara’s flowers are bright and fragrant in my hand, the vase cool and heavy as I climb the stone steps connecting the terraced levels. The higher I climb the drier the levels. The grass a lighter shade of green with each terrace. The higher I climb the more orderly the graves. The headstones more modest. And at the uppermost terrace, abutting the dry, rocky uphill end of the cemetery, a six-foot wall of blazing crepe myrtles spread their scarlet blooms in a long arc encircling perfect rows of flat stones flush with the grass.

  I haven’t been here in 10 years, but I count my way straight to Mom’s grave. Seventeen stones south, nine stones north, and there she is—Mom.

  Her small headstone is dirty and weathered, covered with dried winter moss. I remember going to see Dad, and I remember him saying it wasn’t cheap keeping up Mom’s flower service, and I remember him asking me for money and saying, You gotta honor your mother, Son. All these years. All that money. It doesn’t look like he or anyone has ever been here.

  I set the vase of flowers down and strip off my jacket. I pull my T-shirt over my head, wad it up, tip the vase, and wet the shirt. Using the wet shirt, I scrub Mom’s stone clean.

  I position the vase of flowers next to the clean stone and stand back to look—

  PATRICIA ROBERTS

  1958–1997

  “SMILE, AND THERE’LL BE TOMORROW.”

  I don’t cry. I’m no longer holding back, I just don’t have any tears left. It took everything to get me here to say goodbye.

  In a way, cancer was the best thing that ever happened to my mom. After her mastectomy, she stopped letting Dad control her. She volunteered with a local mission and found some friends. Together they collected clothes and made lunches for the homeless, setting up every Thursday in the kitchen of the old Grange Hall. My mother never looked more alive.

  I remember helping her one day. A stinky vagrant shuffled down the lunch line and when Mom asked him what he wanted on his sandwich, he snarled at her and said he’d rather make it himself—he said he didn’t know where her filthy hands had been. I stepped over to rescue her, but Mom just smiled, handed him a pair of latex gloves and let him make his own sandwich.

  My freshman year at Sac State, Mom started losing weight. She went to the hospital for a checkup. I wheeled her out of the hospital three weeks later to attend her own memorial service. We held it at the Grange Hall and we called it a celebration of life. Her friends gathered photos and put together a slideshow. There were no photos of her from before the mastectomy except a few that I found stuck together in a mildewed whiskey box in Dad’s closet. It was as if her life hadn’t begun until the cancer told her life was ending.

  Dad pulled himself off his barstool and came to the service but he didn’t speak. He just limped around telling everyone how hard it was on him to see his wife suffer. How no one could imagine his terrible grief. How God always has a plan and if it were God’s plan for him to outlive his wife, then he’d just have to call on the patience of Job until he could join her in heaven.

  Mom sat in her wheelchair and welcomed everything with a halcyon smile. It must be a curious thing to be at your own memorial service, even if it is called a celebration of life. I didn’t know what to say. I sat next to Mom holding her hand and whenever a photo of us together flashed on the slideshow screen, she would squeeze my hand and I’d look over and see tears in her eyes.

  A week later, she was dead. I had expected the world to stop spinning. It didn’t. I saw most of the same people again at the funeral but they were less approachable now that our connection was buried.

  I never once visited Mom’s grave. I wanted to remember her alive, not cold and lonely buried beneath the dirt.

  I would give anything to be reunited with my mom. Not in my dad’s heaven, but maybe in the paradise I saw that day through the storm clouds South of Bixby Bridge.

  A plump, red-breasted robin flutters to the ground behind Mom’s headstone and pecks at the grass. The first robin of spring—my mom used to say whoever saw the first robin would have a year of good luck.

  A lawn edger buzzes in the distance. I feel a cool breeze on my bare back, smell the fresh-cut grass. I look down the terraced hillside. The waterwheel turns. The silver river flows. The maples stir. I smile for my mom—the long and honest happy-to-see-you way she used to smile at me.

  I love you, Mom.

  50 Stay, Son

  The open door pours a gold shaft of dusty daylight into the dim bar. A winter’s worth of spilt beer and piss and puke rises in a shimmering stench from the floorboards. Hank watches a daytime soap on a small TV behind the bar. Dad sits on his personal stool under the yellow glow of the CARL’S BAR sign squinting to see who has come in. The door bangs shut. Dad recognizes me. He says,

  Sonny boy, am I glad to see you. Hank! Get your head outta that trash TV and get us a round of Bourbon here to celebrate my son!

  The kid here can have whatever he wants, Hank says, but your tab’s no good, Carl.

  I take a stool next to my dad. I say,

  I’ll buy a round, Hank, but just coffee for me.

  Hank nods. He uncorks a bottle of B
ourbon, slides a glass in front of Dad and fills it. Dad gulps the Bourbon down, slams the empty glass on the bar, nods in my direction and says,

  I’ll have his Bourbon too.

  Hank sighs and refills Dad’s glass. Then he pours two mugs of steaming black coffee, hands one to me. I hold out $20. Hank shakes his head and waves it away. He smiles. He says,

  It’s nice to see you, Trevor. You look different. You look good.

  Hank takes his mug of coffee and returns to his soap. Dad blows a string of snot onto the floor and stares after him. He says,

  Hank’s got no right treating me this way in front of my son.

  I’m sober now, Dad.

  This whole place used to be mine.

  It’s been over a month since I had a drink, Dad.

  My health ain’t been none too good—

  I went to see Mom, Dad.

  I ain’t seen no money for a while.

  Some of that money I’ve been sending you all these years was for flower service, Dad. I didn’t see any flowers, Dad.

  Dad reaches for his Bible. He says,

  Scripture says that the flower fadeth, but the word of our God shall stand forever.

  I strip the Bible from his hands, slide it down the bar. I say,

  You wanna know why you look so hard in that Bible but still can’t find God?

  Dad sips his Bourbon. His hands shake. I say,

  You can’t find him because God isn’t lost.

  His head snaps toward me. His soapy eyes narrow. His lips quiver. Goddamn church turned me out, son, he says. Turned me out in the goddamn cold!

  I had planned to confront my dad about his abuse, planned to tell him that I remember what he did to me in that dark bedroom when Mom was working at the cannery. But now that I see him hunched over, cradling his precious glass of Bourbon, I wonder if he even knows what he did when he was drunk. He looks pathetic and powerless and impotent slumped on his ass-worn stool and in that instant, I forgive him. I forgive him and like water draining from the sand after a wave, the power he held over me disappears. A slow smile rises on my face. I look my dad right in the eye. I say,

  I came to say goodbye, Dad.

  I see the shock in my dad’s face—the fear that appears there as I hold his stare—his eyes well up—he looks like he’s about to cry. Pleading, he says,

  Stay, Son. Just a little while. Play that old song? The one your mother liked. She sang it all the time. Even had us etch it on her stone. Remember? It’s on the box over there. Play it, will ya? Please.

  I walk to the jukebox and pump in a quarter. Flipping through the old list of records, I find Judy Garland and press the button. The album lifts onto the turntable and “Smile” plays.

  All this time, I’ve been afraid of my dad but he’s nothing to fear. He doesn’t have any power over me I don’t give him. Truth is he wouldn’t have had any power over Mom either if she’d just been able to take it away—if she’d just kept driving and drove her Porsche over Bixby Bridge that day.

  I walk back to the bar and sit down. I look at my dad and try to remember the good times. There were a few. He taught me to catch a football, throw a perfect spiral. He taught me to drive a stick and he didn’t yell when I ran over my own bicycle. Most of all, without even knowing it, he taught me what I never want to become.

  I lift my mug and stop short of taking a sip—I smell the liquid smoke and molasses of Bourbon. Dad poured Bourbon in my coffee while my back was turned to the jukebox. I set the mug down.

  Standing, I reach out and press my hand on my dad’s shoulder and when he looks away from me, I walk out of the bar.

  51 The Other Side

  The Pacific Coast Highway opens up before me at dawn. The big blue sobriety book sits on the seat next to me. I realize now that Jared was right—everyone is afraid of something.

  When he wasn’t afraid anymore, Jared died to be with his mom. Now that I’m not afraid anymore, I’m living for my mom.

  Yes, something terrible happened to me when I was 10, and I got stuck right there, 10 years old, in my dad’s dark bedroom living through it again and again until I could face what he did to me. When I did face it, I found that little boy hiding inside me. I found the dad that the boy needs hiding there too. Now it’s time to move on.

  I taped the photo of the boy who looks just like me to my rearview mirror because I never want to forget.

  JUST AS SUNRISE touches the cliff tops, I pull the Porsche off the highway on the north side of Bixby Bridge.

  I remember sitting in this same car, in this same spot, looking at this same sign 20 years ago—BIXBY BRIDGE 1932.

  The canyon is deep, but not as deep as I remember. The narrow bridge is tall, but not as tall as I remember. And the south side of Bixby Bridge looks nothing like the paradise I remember.

  I remember Mom crying, reaching over, touching my bruised cheek. I remember the apology in her eyes. I remember the rain that came flooding down. I look at the passenger seat and I know the boy is still there waiting to cross this bridge.

  I don’t know what lies South of Bixby Bridge for me, but I know I’m headed in the right direction. And I know next time I visit Mom, I’ll be able to tell her I made it to San Diego at last. I don’t know when that will be, the next time I’ll be back—maybe not until it’s time to bury Dad.

  I turn 30 next month. I still can’t picture the rest of my life without a drink, but I can picture the rest of today. I don’t know where I’ll live, I don’t know what I’ll do for work—I do know I’m done with the money business. Who knows, Highway 1 takes me right past Malibu on my way south—maybe Tara still needs a live-in gardener. Nah . . . I’m sure I’ll just drive by without stopping. Maybe Stephanie will return from her trip to Turkey and call me one day.

  I look in the rearview mirror at all that’s behind me now. Releasing the convertible latch for the first time in 20 years, I press the top down. I pull back onto the highway and drive my mother’s Porsche across the bridge.

  South of Bixby Bridge, I thread the Pacific Coast Highway cliffs, between the towering redwoods of Big Sur and the big, blue Pacific.

  I feel the wind in my hair and it feels good.

  For the first time in my life, I’m not afraid anymore.

  THE END

  Descending Mount Rainier, July 2008

  Photo by Todd Stone

  About the Author

  Ryan Winfield is a novelist, poet, and screenwriter.

  When he’s not climbing mountains or traveling in search of new stories, he’s writing in his downtown Seattle home.

  South of Bixby Bridge is his first novel.

  For more information go to:

  www.RyanWinfield.com

  I found a paper plane today.

  I flew it home, across a sea of time

  where morning mist glides

  over old man Ikeard’s pond,

  climbs the willow where I hide

  to hear his lonely rowing song

  into shadows—

  licked away by midday sun

  wading now in shady shallows.

  Run perch, run—fingerlings

  memories swim beyond my grip

  flare and fade forever from the tip

  of my marshmallow stick—

  when twilight oaks shiver

  their fallen brothers burn the wind

  distant campfires spark

  the world mysterious again,

  I hear mother’s call

  echo across pond and time

  tuck me in—

  my pillow smells of pine

  fold the day up in goodnight.

  Sleep son, sleep—dreams

  paper planes sent to the night,

  what any of it means

  I’ll forget by morning light.

  A Q&A with Ryan Winfield, Author of South of Bixby Bridge

  Q: South of Bixby Bridge is your first novel. Have you always wanted to be a writer, and how did you get your start?

  A: I
always dreamed of being a writer, yes. As far back as I can remember I have been interested in people—more precisely, interested in what it would be like to be other people. To see what they see, feel what they feel. Writing allows me to explore that.

  Q: You explore some interesting characters in the book, but it’s hard not to see similarities between you and your protagonist, Trevor. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “Write what you know.” Is Trevor like you in any way?

  A: There’s a Hemingway quote that I love and it goes something like: “All good books have one thing in common – they are truer than if they had actually happened.” I believe that for fiction to be compelling, the characters must have flaws. They must have wounds that need healing, lessons that need learning. I certainly have many flaws and I put some of them into Trevor. In that way, the writing was very cathartic, but also very scary.

  Q: That leads me to my next question. At the heart of the book is a story about getting sober. How much of that struggle does Trevor share with you?

  A: And here I thought I was going to wiggle off the hook by quoting Papa. I guess I did do a lot of research without knowing I was doing research. My background and family of origin are very different from Trevor’s, but we do share common struggles. I got sober when I was 29, just like Trevor. When I sat down to write about it, one of the things gnawing at me was this idea of hitting bottom. What if you discover this disease working in you, this thing that wants to destroy you, and what if that discovery is just the beginning? What if you think you’ve hit rock bottom but then a trap door opens and you plunge into even lower levels of living hell? What if treatment isn’t the magic elixir but merely a warning sign you pass on your way down? And so it was for me, and so it is for Trevor.