The One-Way Bridge

by Cathie Pelletier

  “Dude, we gotta hurry,” said Raul. “We need to say happy birthday to Grandma Delgato and mail the package, all in one hour.”

  Jorge selected a brownish bench with an inlay of roses as its design. He sank down on it and stretched out his feet, giving them a rest from the weight. He reached into his pocket and pulled out his flask, unscrewed the cap. Raul frowned.

  “Shit, dude, that’s not cool,” he said. “We’re almost at Grandma Delgato’s grave.”

  “No kidding,” said Jorge. He took a long pull from the flask, then put the cap back. “You show me where her grave is and I’ll respect the fuck out of it.”

  Raul shaded his eyes from the afternoon sun as he scanned the headstones. It was a peach-colored stone with white, pearly flecks in it. He remembered that much. But where was it? It had been many years since the cousins had come to visit their grandmother. They had not always been on the best terms with her given that neither had been an altar boy. And now, both in their thirties, it was clear that any road to the priesthood was blocked with a big NO ENTRY sign.

  But Grandpa Delgato, on his deathbed for the third time that year, had asked this last favor of his grandsons. “It’s your grandmother’s birthday, and this is the first year I can’t go to her grave. Go there for me, I beg of you. Light a candle in her memory.” He said this to Jorge an hour earlier, in his hospital room, when the cousins made the mistake of visiting him. Bad timing, that’s what it had been. Riding down in the hospital elevator, they had every intention of going directly to the post office, and then to dinner, when Raul asked the awful question: What if, this time, he really dies?

  “I can go ask someone inside the church,” said Raul. “They’ll look up her name.”

  “What’s her first name?” asked Jorge. He looked at his cousin.

  “Grandma,” said Raul.

  “Fuck, there must be a lot of Delgatos,” said Jorge. “They been burying family members here since they got off the boat.”

  Raul sat down next to Jorge and reached for the flask. When he had drunk from it, he placed it on the bench between them. Otherwise, it had a good chance of disappearing back into Jorge’s coat pocket. Sometimes, when Raul finally asked to see the flask again, it would be so light it carried only air.

  “We can burn the candle here,” said Raul. “And if we talk loud, maybe she can hear us.” He watched as Jorge pulled the box of utility candles from his coat pocket and selected one. There were always a lot of things in the pockets of Jorge’s trench coat besides the flask. Sunglasses. Gloves. Lifesavers. Condoms.

  “Give me the matches,” Jorge said and held out his hand. When all his cousin did was gaze at it, Jorge said, “You didn’t bring the fucking matches, did you?”

  Raul shook his head. “I figured you’d have a flame thrower in your pocket.”

  Jorge stared at a starling that had flown down to light on the top of a saint’s head. The chiseled face looked familiar, one he’d seen many times in church as a boy. St. Isidore? St. Jude? Maybe St. Anthony. One of those guys. Catholic saints were like ex-girlfriends; it was difficult to keep track of who was who or who had done what. Jorge reached back into his coat and this time pulled out a pack of cigarettes. He knocked one out, put it into his mouth, and looked over at Raul.

  “Gimme your lighter,” he said.

  “If I had my lighter,” said Raul, “we could light the fucking candle.”

  Raul took a second long drink from the flask. He’d been rattled ever since they’d promised Grandpa Delgato to come to his wife’s grave and wish her Feliz Something. Grandma Delgato had been famous in life for her yellow fly swatter, and Raul had felt its sting many times as a child. Sometimes, he was undeserving of the punishment, but even the innocent can forget to duck. And Grandma could swing wildly when she found something amiss in her house, such as the day her wedding ring had been stolen.

  “What do you think he’ll do when he gets the package?” asked Jorge. He had gone back to watching the starling, waiting to see if Isidore or Jude or Anthony might end up with an offering on the top of his head.

  “I think he’ll send us our money,” said Raul. “Billy’s no fool.” He was holding the candle now, staring at its wick, as if maybe that would cause it to light, a trick candle like the ones on birthday cakes.

  “He better send us our money,” said Jorge. “Or we’ll make room for him in Grandma Delgato’s coffin, once we find it.”

  “Hey,” said Raul. He was feeling an enlightenment, the kind humans often feel in graveyards, as if they are being watched by pietàs and saints and ghosts, and maybe even the Big Guy himself. “Wanna know something?”

  “What, now you’re ready to touch my tits?” said Jorge.

  “Remember when Grandma Delgato died and all of us grandchildren were sent into the chapel, one by one, to tell her good-bye?”

  Jorge remembered. Grandma Delgato had a sweet look on her face the first time he’d ever seen her smile. Maybe she was happy to be leaving her family behind, especially her grandsons. He found the flask and uncapped it. They would tell Grandpa Delgato the grave was lovely, covered with fresh flowers, and they had lit a whole box of candles. They would mail the package and go straight to Murray’s Restaurant & Bar for a few drinks before they ordered their nightly steaks. All in all, it had been a good outing, a bit of exercise on a sunny autumn day with birds and flowers.

  “Well, guess what?” said Raul. “I put the yellow fly swatter by her side, before they closed her coffin.”

  The starling lifted its wings and circled the statue’s head, the sun catching its translucent spots. Jorge smiled as the bird flew upward, up over all the angels and Madonnas, all the saints and sinners, until it was gone.

  4

  WEDNESDAY MORNING

  AND AFTERNOON

  During the night, a cold wind swept across northern Maine, a gift from the Canadian plains. Winter was now bearing down on the town in earnest. Unable to sleep, Edna stared up at the ceiling and thought about her future. When Roderick reached out and clamped off the alarm clock, it was four-thirty and the sky black, still two hours before it would break to daylight. She heard him rise in the darkness, his hands searching for his pants fallen from the chair, his woolen socks, his work shirt. She pretended to be asleep as she snuggled down so deep that guilt couldn’t find her. Guilt had always ruined Edna’s best-laid plans. Being a lumberjack was a tough job, no doubt about it. But Roderick had no interest in the real estate classes at the high school, or the beginning computer classes. Edna was the one who read the Continuing Education schedule every time it appeared in the local paper. There were even some gardening and nature classes that they could take together. It would give them something to talk about as a couple. Maybe she would feel more like a teammate and companion, not just a wife and mother. “Listen to this,” Edna had said that past August, when the fall schedule was published. “‘Shopping for Dinner in Your Own Backyard.’ Don’t that sound interesting?” But all she got from Roderick was, “Sure, if you’re a goat.” Still, she had not given up. She wanted to be certain she had tried to save her marriage before she walked away from it. “It’s about edible plants that grow wild. And since they grow right in our backyard, that could save us dollars on our grocery bill.” She thought that last part might jar Roderick toward an appreciation of botany. “You’ll be picking shit that might kill me,” was what he said. “If you put a mushroom on my plate, I wanna see the can it came in.”

  Edna had finally given up. The marriage was over, and she proved it by not packing Roderick’s lunch that morning for the first time since she was laid up giving birth to the twins. As cupboard doors opened and closed in the kitchen below, she lay in bed and listened to the wind beating away outside. The noise in the kitchen was Roderick searching for the mustard, the bread, the bologna. Edna heard a frantic rattling as drawers slid open and then slammed shut. He must be looking for the can
dy bars. Ever since the doctor told Roderick to lose weight, she had hidden them in the canister that said Rice.

  But what if Roderick was right? “It’s your autumn depression,” he said the night before as he set the alarm clock. “You get this way every year when the days shorten. I heard doctors talking about it on television. Some folks in Alaska even commit suicide.” And he had made the sign of the cross, briskly, as though he were shooing flies. Seasonal Affective Disorder. Had he forgotten that Edna was sitting on the sofa and watching the program right along with him? Whether her mood was caused by SAD or not, Edna couldn’t argue with him about one thing: she was not a happy woman.

  By eight o’clock, the twins had disappeared on the rumbling school bus, and the cats had gone out into the fields in search of mice, and the morning quiet that Edna knew so well had settled about the kitchen like a fine snow. She was still in bed. What would Mama Sal say if she knew? Edna wished one of the twins would tattle to their grandmother, just to see what the backlash might bring. She wished they’d also tell Mama Sal how she hadn’t bothered to fix breakfast for her sons, not to mention her husband. “That silver box sitting on the counter is called a toaster,” Edna said, when first Ricky and then Roddy had come to lean in the jamb of her bedroom door in order to whine. “There’s milk and orange juice in the fridge. And don’t forget to let the cats out.”

  With the children gone and the cats hunting and Roderick not due home for hours, Edna stood at her kitchen sink and stared out the window. She was drinking coffee and thinking about the woman in Bangor who had shot and killed her husband as he slept. How bad does a marriage have to get? Edna doubted “Shopping for Dinner in Your Own Backyard” could have helped that couple. An awful thought bounced into her head, the way awful thoughts can sometimes do before a rational mind shoves them back out. “I wonder if poison mushrooms would show up in a police report?” The truth was that Edna couldn’t hurt anyone, especially Roderick. For all his faults, she knew he loved her dearly. But for the past year, she couldn’t find a love inside her heart to give back to him. Her marriage to Roderick had happened so fast. It was as if she went overnight from being a schoolgirl to a wife. Other girls in her class had thrown fun engagement parties with Pin the Tail on the Donkey games and then big weddings to follow. Lots of flowers and organdy and silk. Two days after Roderick proposed to her, Edna had bought a sensible blue skirt and jacket, with a white blouse. The next day, she and Roderick stood before a Justice of the Peace in Watertown, his wife and grown son as their witnesses. After cake and coffee at her mother’s house, they untied the one tin can that someone had attached to the bumper of Roderick’s car. But before they could pull away for a quick honeymoon trip to Bangor, Mama Sal had put Aunt Mildred’s suitcase into the trunk and Aunt Mildred in the backseat. “They’re expecting her at the nut house,” Mama Sal had whispered. “She’s talking again to Jesus and Christopher Columbus.” Three days is a short time to change your life forever. There should be a halfway house for young girls who have been proposed to—not a mental institute, but a quiet place where they can sit alone and think before they jump and grab that gold ring of a wedding band. Aunt Mildred was Edna’s father’s sister, and Mama Sal had never liked her in-laws. No one in the family doubted that Mildred Gifford was of unsound mind. But it wasn’t Edna’s idea of a honeymoon trip.

  Edna looked up at the clock that had been on her kitchen wall since the summer day she put it there, twenty years earlier, a wedding gift from some relative. Already past nine. Surely Bertina would be up by now.

  ***

  Billy couldn’t believe how fast the cold had arrived and with what seemed like very little warning. The old-timers in town were predicting an early winter, but they were basing this prediction on something the squirrels were doing and Billy couldn’t see any science in that. He crawled out of his sleeping bag, which lay beneath three heavy blankets, and peered out the camper’s window. A pale sun had ridden up from the horizon of trees beyond the bridge. No snow had fallen, but it might as well have. With snow on the ground, the day might even be warmer. At least he had borrowed a canvas tarp from Harry Plunkett to cover the Mustang. Harry promised he’d have time later in the week to work on the apparatus that raised the top.

  Billy turned up the knob on his small electric heater and heard the coils rustling inside. He dressed fast and then dumped a package of hot chocolate mix into the one cup that came with the camper. Inside the miniature refrigerator that sat on the countertop, he found a carton of milk. It had been two weeks since he unplugged the refrigerator. Nothing would spoil inside the camper now, not even in daytime. He poured cold milk over the cocoa in his cup and put it in the microwave. He wished the camper had a real stove. A real stove would mean real heat emanating from its coiled burners.

  The night before, Billy had bought his employee and himself a six-pack of Cokes and a box of donuts for a quick energy snack. He needed a pack of Winstons, so why not get Buck a can of Redman? Since he couldn’t work bare-handed, he threw a pair of Monkey Face gloves on the counter. Over thirty dollars spent of the last fifty he had to his name, and the workday had yet to begin. But as field boss to the operation, Billy felt it was his responsibility to oversee expenses. True, this was money that could have gone toward a bigger and fancier heater, but Billy saw it as a sound investment in his future. He only owed the idiots down in Portland a few thousand bucks, give or take a couple hundred. With steady handyman work, he could pay them back in a few months and then things would return to normal. It wasn’t his fault that he’d fallen behind on the payments. It was the fault of the women he dated in Watertown, all girls who insisted on eating supper at the Golden Dragon instead of getting a quick hotdog and a bag of chips at Rock’s Diner. Girls who expected mixed drinks instead of beers, who smoked Canadian cigarettes and played the poker machine at Bert’s Lounge. These were girls who knew how to have a good time. And they knew how to recognize the better ilk of men who had the means to show them that good time. It was Mr. Thunder’s charisma that had set him back on his heels financially.

  Billy turned the heater down to low. As he waited for Buck to arrive, he decided to call Portland again, and again he had no choice but to speak to a machine. But this time, there was a bit more hope in the message he left.

  “I got a day job now, so I can catch up on my back bill with you boys,” Billy said, a professional lilt in his voice. “So go ahead and send me another Christmas package. No worries about me falling behind on my payments again.” He listened as the machine clicked itself off, as if deliberately hanging up on him. If they’d trust him with one more shipment, he could make an even greater profit since his northern clientele was growing not just restless but impoverished.

  When he saw Buck’s old pickup driving down the path that led from the main road, Billy grabbed the grocery bag from the table. It would be good to crawl into Buck’s warm truck for the ride over to their work site. But when he turned from locking the camper’s door, he saw Buck standing by the Mustang, the pickup disappearing back up the path.

  “Where’s your truck going?” Billy asked.

  Buck’s face got that childlike look it always got when he felt like crying.

  “Mona needed it,” he said. “She’s gotta take Frankie to the vet.”

  Billy wanted to curse Buck. They needed the truck and he had told him so the night before. Without it, they’d have to carry all those heavy blocks from where Tommy Gifford had dumped them on Lydia’s lawn over to where she now wanted her wood stored for winter. He wanted to lambaste his employee, but how could he do that before Buck had even put on his work gloves?

  All four windows up, the topless Mustang was on its way to Lydia Hatch’s place. Buck had all but disappeared in the front seat, scrunched down as he was to avoid the cold wind coming at him over the top of the windshield. Billy was also crouched in his seat, his head high enough that he could see to steer. The Mustang crossed the Mattagash b
ridge, where cold air assaulted it from the front, back, and sides. They met a few curious townspeople on the way, and all had ample time to get in a good stare since the Mustang was only traveling at fifteen miles an hour. But Billy figured less speed meant less wind chill.

  Meg Craft was getting out of her warm car when the Mustang rolled past her house, looking like a boat that lost its sail.

  “What in heaven’s name?” Meg asked, only to realize that two men were inside the car. She could see the top of a head on the passenger side and a definite head behind the steering wheel. “It’s that foolish boy from Portland with the foul mouth,” Meg said, then went inside to call her niece Lillian.

  At the old McKinnon homestead, Amy Joy Lawler was at her computer when she glanced up to see the white Mustang coming slowly down the road. It looked as if it was driving itself. She watched as it passed her house, its driver keeping a low eye on the road, his head barely noticeable above the steering wheel.

  A quarter mile past the McKinnon house, the Mustang pulled into Lydia Hatch’s yard and braked before it hit Lydia’s dried lilac bush.

  “Are we there yet?” asked Buck.

  Billy turned off the ignition. He was still mad at Buck, but he was now colder than he was mad.

  “Get your Redman out of the bag,” said Billy, “and let’s get to work before we freeze to death.”

  Billy didn’t bother to knock on Lydia’s door. It was still early, and she’d told him the night before exactly what the job would entail. They were to split into chunks of firewood the mountain of hardwood blocks Tommy had rolled off his truck above her house. Then, they were to carry the firewood over to the shed and stack it on the lower side. At ten o’clock, Billy was hoping that the old biddy might come out and offer them a hot chocolate or a bread crumb. He was wrong on both counts. Instead, she’d been keeping a close watch on their work from behind her kitchen curtain.