The One-Way Bridge

by Cathie Pelletier

  “Let’s take a cigarette break,” Billy said to Buck.

  They leaned against the Mustang, Billy to smoke his cigarette and Buck to insert a fresh plug of tobacco beneath his lip. With the sweat of their morning work now growing cold beneath their jackets and shirts, Billy threw the Winston on the ground and stomped it out. He looked at Buck, whose face was pinched, as if some unseen force were drawing it inward.

  “My stomach don’t feel so good,” Buck said. “We had Polynesian Sweet and Sour Fish for supper.”

  “Do you even know where Polynesia is?” asked Billy.

  “No and I don’t want to,” said Buck, “not if that’s how they cook their fish.”

  “Come on,” said Billy. “We need a few minutes inside to warm up.”

  And this is what he told Lydia herself when she answered the door to his knock. Billy saw a quick flash of indecision.

  “Otherwise,” he said, “it may take longer than we figured.”

  “I guess you can sit a few minutes in the kitchen,” Lydia said.

  The kitchen was warm, with something good still baking in the oven. Buck sat on a chair, and Billy leaned against the counter. That’s when he noticed a boy sitting at the table, his back to Billy as he drew on a sheet of paper. He looked to be about twelve years old. Atop the table were oil paints and colored pens.

  “That’s Owl,” he heard Buck whisper as Lydia stepped into the kitchen and folded her arms. Billy waited. The smell of cake or cookies or whatever she had in the oven was making his mouth water.

  “I hear you’re related to the Fennelsons,” said Lydia, giving him a good Mattagash look over.

  “Yes, ma’am,” said Billy. “I’m Abigail Fennelson’s son.” It was definitely a cake, maybe one of those marble kinds that had swirls in them. He wondered if she’d made a frosting for it or if she intended to leave it plain. Either way, it wouldn’t matter.

  “I was a Fitzgerald before I married a Hatch,” Lydia said, as if Billy gave a flying fuck. “You’ll soon learn to tell the Lace Curtain Irish here in town from the Shanty Irish. Good breeding gets passed on, and the Fitzgeralds were Lace Curtain Irish.”

  Owl stopped drawing and turned to look at his grandmother. That was when Billy understood the boy’s nickname. The eyes didn’t move. Instead, the head turned, taking the eyes with it. Owl. Lydia saw Billy staring.

  “That’s my grandson, Horace,” she said. “Horace is a genius.”

  “No kidding,” said Billy. If she offered him ice cream with the cake, he would decline, it being so damn cold outside and all. But maybe, in passing up the ice cream, he would be offered a second piece of warm cake. Buck was rigid in his chair, back straight, saying nothing. Billy figured his posture had something to do with Polynesia. Lydia had gone to Owl’s chair and was now tousling the boy’s straight yellow hair.

  “All the Fitzgeralds have natural curls,” said Lydia. “I’ve read that the poet John Keats had ringlets and so did the Lindbergh baby.” She tried to wrap a strand of her grandson’s hair around her index finger but no amount of twisting could create a curl. Billy looked at the spray of freckles across the bridge of the boy’s nose, some light brown, others darker, some black as moles.

  “I never met a genius before,” Billy said. He wasn’t even certain if this were true, nor did he care. On an average day, he would have pegged Owl as the village idiot. But on this day, he was cold and he wanted a piece of cake. And he needed to keep Lydia talking. If he could make friends with her, he and Buck might get work for the rest of the week. But there was no doubt, from his own nonprofessional observation, that Horace had fallen from the top of the half-wit tree. Or he had been thrown from his nest by the smarter owls.

  “He’s what they call a sa-VONT,” said Lydia, raising her voice high on the last syllable. “You know, an artistic genius.” She pulled a folder of papers out of a kitchen drawer and opened it. She gave the top sheet to Billy, who took it and stared down at the drawing before him. Blue and gray swirls, an eyeball here and there, what looked like an arm, a hand with two fingers. All the time he studied what he figured was some kind of animal body with a human head, he was aware that the pale face was turned toward him, the piercing owl eyes staring at him from beneath the straw hair. Lydia also stared, waiting.

  Billy suspected an important response was needed for the occasion. He wanted to answer, and correctly, so that the cake, which smelled so damn good, would be his just reward. He heard Buck fidget on his chair, then cough lightly.

  “Now I get it,” Billy said. He released a great sigh of relief. “It’s a clown riding an elephant. I can see the trunk and the tusks, and there’s the clown’s face and eyes.”

  Lydia Hatch grabbed the drawing, and so quickly Billy hardly realized what had happened. He looked at Horace. The owl eyes burned brightly as they stared back.

  “No, it isn’t,” Lydia said. “It’s a self-portrait.” Before Billy could say anything, maybe mention how good that baking cake smelled or even apologize, Lydia Hatch opened the kitchen door and was waiting for her workers to leave. “Don’t forget to pile the firewood along the lower side of the shed,” she said.

  Out in the backyard again, Buck was beside himself.

  “You shouldn’t have said anything but that it was beauty-ful and handed it back,” he said. He was putting his gloves on one at a time, slow and easy like he always did.

  “You don’t understand,” said Billy. “I did see a fucking clown riding an elephant.”

  ***

  Bertina was wearing a lavender housecoat over a thin nightgown. Edna had already taken her flannel pajamas down from her closet shelf, washed them, and now they were packed into her dresser drawer for the cold nights ahead. A thin nightgown belonged in Florida, not Mattagash.

  “Roberta, my best friend from Tampa, gave me the funniest plaque as a going-away gift,” Bertina said. She had her manicure set opened on the kitchen table. “As soon as my boxes arrive, I’m gonna put it up on the wall.”

  Edna was looking at Venice by daylight and wondering if all the folks in those Italian houses had gone off to work. It didn’t look like much of anything went on in Venice during the day. The buildings were quiet and black, waiting for night and that invisible surge of electricity. Without those tiny lights, Venice wasn’t much more than Mattagash, Maine.

  “It says divorce in big letters at the top of the plaque,” said Bertina. “In smaller letters below it says: The legal alternative to axe murder. Isn’t that funny?”

  Edna had no idea why she had left the breakfast dishes in the sink to drive straight back to Bertina’s trailer. But there she was. She pulled one of the rickety chairs out from the oval table and sat down.

  “I don’t think divorce is funny,” she said. She watched as Bertina patted her cuticles with cuticle remover, doing a careful, almost professional job on her nails. On the first visit, she had considered asking Bertina some big questions, such as why she was back in Mattagash and still not forty, about how her left eye, with those shades of bluish-purple showing through the pancake makeup, might have been a black eye a couple weeks earlier. But Bertina would consider that prying.

  “Want me to do your nails?” Bertina asked.

  Edna shook her head. She wished her fingernails weren’t so short, the skin of her hands so rough. But she had always hated gardening gloves and never wore a pair when she planted seeds or weeded and pruned. And that past summer she had grown her biggest and best garden in years. Her hands always kept busy. There was the housework, the cooking, Monday washdays, and canning vegetables for the winter months. Edna had even been proud of her hands, knowing how useful they were to her and her family. But now, seeing them next to her sister’s, she was aware of how she’d neglected them.

  “A manicure is the first thing I do for myself on Wednesdays,” said Bertina. “You should do something for yourself every day when you fir
st wake up.”

  “But I always have to get up and pack Roderick his lunch,” Edna said. “If I make it the night before, he complains that the sandwiches are soggy by lunchtime.”

  “You been packing Roderick’s lunch all these years?” Bertina asked. “Shame on you.” She reached under the table and Edna heard a snap. That’s when she realized that Bertina had her feet in an electric foot massage. That’s what the faint humming had been.

  “But who else would do it?” Edna asked.

  “A chimpanzee could pack its own lunch,” said Bertina. She blew on a fingernail. “Course, that don’t mean Roderick can.”

  “Don’t be mean now,” said Edna.

  Bertina nodded at a small window, the only one in the trailer that framed the scraggly backyard. Edna saw dead weeds and grasses that grew up around the previous tenant’s leftovers, which included a rusted swing set tilted to one side and a broken tricycle.

  “See that yard? When spring comes, I’m gonna think of myself first and plant an orange tree.”

  “This far north, you can’t get a watermelon to grow bigger than a cucumber,” said Edna. “The cold stunts their growth.”

  “I don’t care,” Bertina said. “All that matters is that I thought of myself first when spring comes.”

  Edna wondered if her own growth were stunted by the cold. She remembered what Roderick said the night before, that she did this every year and that it was her autumn depression. But that wasn’t true. She had never even considered asking Roderick for a divorce, much less asking Mama Sal’s permission to do so. She thought of housewives in Alaska who at that very moment had opened a bottle of sleeping pills or fitted a noose around their necks or unwrapped a shiny razor blade, who were sitting in automobiles in frozen garages, cars that were turning misty gray inside as they filled with carbon monoxide.

  “By the way, Mama Sal called,” said Bertina. She was now snipping at the softened cuticles. “She said when you get here, I’m to send you home.”

  “How does she do it?” Edna asked. “She wasn’t in her window when I drove by.”

  “If you want privacy from Mama Sal, you should buy a canoe.” Bertina selected a different tool from the manicure kit. “She can’t see the river from her chair.”

  Sunlight came in through Bertina’s kitchen window and lit up the pretty bottles of nail polish, all waiting in a row for Bertina to select one. It was past ten o’clock, and Bertina was still doing something to please herself first. Edna wondered how life might have turned out if she had been the daughter to live in far-off Florida. Here in Mattagash, Mama Sal even inspected and often criticized Edna’s garden. There were days she would come home from shopping to see little holes punched in the ground around her cucumber beds, little holes up and down the rows of carrots and beans, proof that Mama Sal had been there with her aluminum walker. In far-away Florida, Edna could have grown oranges in peace.

  Bertina selected Cranberry Frost and loaded her brush with a thick burst of its polish. Edna watched as the black bristles swept cranberry across Bertina’s nails. She wanted to change the subject before an argument came like a boomerang out of the past, as it often had done in their growing up years. Bertina always said Mama Sal favored Edna. But Edna had paid a price for that favoritism, hadn’t she? It was Edna who looked out for Mama Sal, who drove her to Watertown to the doctor’s office, who took her Christmas shopping, who picked up her pills at the drugstore. Moving away shouldn’t mean disappearing.

  “I think I’ll give myself a facial,” said Bertina. “You want one too?” In the autumn sunlight, her nails emerged cranberry red and she held them high as she blew on them with her warm Florida breath.

  “But you just did your nails,” Edna said. “You just did something for yourself already.” She decided not to mention the foot massage.

  “Really?” asked Bertina. “Well, watch me do something else.”

  The phone rang, a soft bleat that bounced about the tinny walls of the trailer. Bertina answered and Edna saw her frown.

  “The kids get their breakfast at school, Mama Sal. So why should I get up at the crack of dawn and fry bacon?”

  “Don’t tell her I’m here,” Edna whispered.

  “She’s not here,” said Bertina. Her housecoat had fallen open, revealing the thin gown beneath, and beneath the gown the outline of a breast. Bertina had admitted to implants and a lift. Edna wondered how much new breasts would cost down in Florida. They were apparently items that one could keep in a divorce battle.

  Bertina hung up the phone and reached for her cigarettes.

  “What did she say?” Edna asked.

  “She said you’re suffering from autumn depression. And I’m to tell you to quit acting like a fool and go home.”

  Edna looked down at the brown mole on her hand. It seemed to be growing, like a mushroom, the malignant kind, the kind that could kill your hardworking, never-harm-a-flea husband. She looked over at all the frosted bottles of Florida nail polish. Crimson Sky. Midnight Mauve. Purple Dare. Amber Autumn. Purely Pink.

  “You ever had an affair?” Edna asked. “You know, while you were still married to one of your husbands?”

  Bertina arched both eyebrows in perfect disbelief.

  “You have, really?” said Edna. “How did you not get caught?”

  “I don’t recall ever marrying an Einstein,” said Bertina.

  Edna was excited, as if maybe listening to Bertina’s life experiences would be enough, would get her through SAD, through the long winter and into the spring sunshine. Vicarious: to experience pleasure through another’s experiences.

  “I think I’ll have that facial after all,” Edna said. “Then you can do my nails.”

  ***

  Three hours later, Billy had split enough of the hardwood blocks that his hands, arms, and lower back ached in unison. Buck’s stomach had been acting up again and so Billy—head contractor, field boss, and fourth or fifth or sixth cousin—had done the most work in wielding the axe. Buck promised to make up for it by carrying and stacking the firewood himself. He had made a few trips, with many loads to go, when his culinary lifestyle caught up with him.

  “You hear that?” he asked. Billy had been ignoring the growling sound, but now the growl had turned into a thump, the same thump a tapped watermelon emits if it’s ripe.

  “What’s the problem now?” Billy asked. He stopped to wipe sweat from his brow, but if he stopped for long, he’d lose all the body warmth he was building up.

  “I’m feeling a little cantankerous,” said Buck.

  Billy stared up at white clouds that were holding pink flecks of sunlight as they floated toward the mountain. He had always known that Florence Walker’s grand plan to educate the masses would have a major flaw in it, and now that flaw had reared its ugly head. He looked back at Buck.

  “You’re feeling nauseous is what you’re feeling, Buck,” he said. Buck seemed relieved, as if nauseous wasn’t as serious as cantankerous.

  “I got past the fish from supper last night,” said Buck, “so I must be dealing with breakfast now.” He looked at Billy, who was waiting for an explanation.

  “Mexican omelet,” said Buck. “Did you know peppers ain’t just green? They also come in red and yellow. But then, I never could hold my cheese and spices.”

  “Ignore it,” said Billy. He glanced again at the sky. The day was disappearing fast. “We’re almost done here.”

  Buck got that look on his face again that meant he would like to cry, but he went back to work. Five minutes later, he was staring hard at Billy.

  “I better go find me a place behind the shed,” he said.

  “We got work to do,” said Billy. “If we don’t get the rest of this wood stacked by sunset, that old biddy won’t pay us.” He wanted to punch Buck. Why would any man, even a fool man, eat something called a “Mexican omelet” for brea
kfast, at the end of the road in northern Maine, cooked by a girl whose two eyes resembled those on a cod fish? And this was not to mention Polynesia. “Can’t you hold it until we finish here?”

  Buck reached around and pushed a gloved hand against his backside.

  “I can feel the pressure,” he said. It sounded like a news commentary, as if maybe Wolf Blitzer was embedded in his pants.

  “Damn it, go on then,” said Billy. “I’ll finish this myself.” He watched as Buck hurried past the shed and disappeared into the bushes above the riverbank.

  Billy was wearing his earmuffs and had finished stacking the last pieces of firewood when Buck returned. He stood staring at the rows of neatly piled wood as he put his gloves back on. He’d been gone for an hour, doing God only knew what. Billy had no intentions of asking for details. It had taken him twice as long to finish, what with Buck in the bulrushes.

  “You think she’s gonna pay us good for this?” asked Buck.

  “She said she’d pay what we’re worth,” Billy answered. He reached down on the ground behind the woodpile for his can of beer and knocked off the last of it, icy foam and all. He had felt no responsibility in alerting Buck to the fact that when he went to get his earmuffs from the Mustang, he’d found a six-pack of icy beer in the trunk, knowing American beer wouldn’t go well with a Mexican omelet or Polynesian fish.

  “Is that what she said?” asked Buck. “Then we’re up shit creek without a paddle. Word’s out around town that I’m not worth much.”

  Billy shoved his gloves into his jacket pocket. He spit on the ground next to where Buck’s two big, burgundy boots with the yellow tips were parked.

  “We were already up shit creek when you ate a Mexican omelet,” said Billy.

  As he headed for Lydia Hatch’s front door, Billy wondered what he might say in defense of himself if Lydia didn’t think he was worth much either. He could hear Buck crunching along on the cold ground behind him, imagined the burgundy boots coming at him like two snowplows.

  “You gonna use the Grateful Elvis on her?” Buck asked.