The Bridge

by Bill Konigsberg

  She turns.

  She runs. Back toward her father’s office.

  She’s a battering ram. There’s nothing that will keep her from where she needs to go now, and she feels dangerously alive and without a net.

  She charges past the receptionist, who says, “Hey!” and then, “Excuse me, excuse—”

  But Tillie is gone. She finds his nameplate next to a door and pushes.

  Her dad’s receding blond hair blows a bit as he swivels his chair, and Tillie can tell his feet were, moments ago, up on his desk. He was reclined.

  Everything pours into her throat at once, and she drowns in words and feelings.

  And what she says, in the smallest voice possible, when their eyes meet, is “Daddy!”

  He holds her stare like he’s just been caught with another woman. He doesn’t say anything. Until he does.

  “Hey, Till,” he says, his voice casual.

  It’s all she needs to hear to know that he knows. And that he opted out. Which is all she needs to know about her father.

  “How could you?” she says, her voice vulnerable and high, and she wants the other, she wants the one that came out earlier at Amir. But it’s gone. The shattering of the thing next to her heart stole her mojo.

  “Till,” he says.

  “Dad.”

  “What am I supposed to—”

  “So you know,” Tillie says, and some of that mojo returns because her voice is less eight years old and more seventeen now.

  He nods ever so slightly.

  “You know that I went to the bridge. That I ran today. I came to you. And you sent me away.”

  “I don’t do well with—” he says. “I’m sorry.”

  She exhales quickly, almost like a laugh. She stretches out her arms wide, and she doesn’t know why. It’s as if to say, This is me! Me! Your Till! Don’t you see me?

  But he doesn’t, or maybe he can’t, because he looks away and very quietly says, again, “Sorry.”

  She deflates her wide arms. She stands there, feeling inconsequential, feeling like maybe she did when she found out about Santa Claus—she can’t really remember. Something has died and nothing’s there to replace it, and again the drowning—words, feelings—in her throat. She’d gargle them and spit them out but she’s numb there.

  She turns and walks out, and it’s like she can’t see or hear anything.

  She’s vaguely aware of Amir and Molly, but she walks right by them. She ignores them, not because she wants to, but because she can’t not.

  And then she’s on the street, and she’s vaguely aware of them behind her, pulling on her arms, and she’s somewhat aware of the altercation, the “Leave me alone!” that someone else must say through her mouth, because she’s not there.

  And the train is silent but not.

  And her beating heart is the only remaining soundtrack to her sad life, and she has to put a stop to that.

  When Tillie gets off the train at 181st, her hearing is back a little and things feel calmer inside her chest. Every step feels definitive, terminal. She’s okay with that.

  She cannot bear a single second more of this heart pain. There are no other options but to stop it, once and for all, and she’s sorry. Because she knows this will ruin her mom. Ruin her. And Britt, poor Britt! But she tried and she tried and nothing worked.

  This. This will work.

  So she walks, slowly, head down, back toward the bridge, where she was yesterday, at just about this time, actually.

  “So just a question.”

  The voice jolts her back. The vacuum of sound, the silence, dissipates and suddenly there she is, in the urban scene, cars and horns and all that noise.

  She turns around.

  The voice belongs to Molly. Amir is with her.

  “So just a question,” Molly repeats, very calm. “What’s the likelihood your dad will ever be who you want him to be?”

  A tear falls from Tillie’s left eye.

  Then another.

  More tears. A torrent. And then she’s sobbing, louder than she ever has before, and she’s hugging her side like someone’s punched her.

  It hurts worse than anything she could imagine hurting.

  She cries and she cries and she holds herself and she’s aware they’re with her, standing with her, but they’re letting her cry.

  “So what’s the likelihood?” Molly says again, her voice soft, calm.

  When Tillie can finally talk, she says, “He didn’t care that I almost tried to kill myself. He didn’t care. He sent me away.”

  “What’s the likelihood?”

  “He had his receptionist send me away on my worst-ever day. He had to know I might do it again, and he sent me away.”

  “What’s the likelihood?”

  “Stop asking me that, okay? Nil! Zero! Okay?”

  “Okay,” Molly says.

  “He’s a shit dad. I’m not the daughter he wants, I guess, or whatever, and no good person would ever do that to another person, obviously. So he’s a shit dad.”

  “Yeah,” says Molly. “My dad, too. Maybe he loves me in his own way. I don’t know. He’s not there. I don’t know. And one day, my therapist asked me that question, and I was like, oh.”

  “I don’t know my dad,” Amir says. “I hate not knowing him and I hate that I don’t have a dad who loves me. It hurts.”

  Tillie has tears, still, but the heaving has gone for the moment, and she does a thing that surprises even her. She opens her arms. And these two people, these two people who were almost terminal for her, step in and hold her.

  “You have to, like, I don’t know. What’s something else you could want?” Molly says, her voice like syrup, calming. “Besides that from your dad. Because he can’t, obviously.”

  Nothing has ever made more sense to Tillie than these words, and where no option existed, where the word terminal had been posted in her brain, something opens up and options appear, and the word fades.

  It hurts. Bad. Unbearably. But she’s not so alone with it anymore. So it’s no longer terminal.

  She turns and she takes a hand in each of hers, and the three walk back toward the subway. She says, “Take me home,” and no answer is needed, because that’s where they’re going.

  The sun is almost fully set across the Hudson, putting to rest the longest fucking day of his life, when Michael comes back out to the living room to see Morris, seated in the window seat, working away on his laptop.

  “Hey,” Michael says lamely.

  “Hey.”

  Michael sits down on the couch. Morris walks over and points to the couch across the way. “Here, or where you are?”

  “There’s fine,” Michael says.

  They sit in silence for a bit.

  “I keep waiting. For him to come home from school. Every time I hear a noise, I think it’s him, messing with his keys. The door’s about to open.”

  “Sure, sure,” Morris says.

  Morris stares intently at Michael. He holds the space.

  “The gay thing? I mean, he knew that was totally okay. That I loved him exactly as he is. Exactly.”

  Morris gets up, goes to the kitchen, and returns with two glasses of water. Michael downs his and starts talking before he’s even taken his mouth off the glass.

  “I mean. The first thirteen years of his life I was focused elsewhere, and I know that. But I feel like I was making up for it. I feel like I was giving him what he needed, and we checked in every night, and I told him. I told him he could say anything to me. I knew he was a little depressed. So was I as a kid. I was giving him space. I was letting him have space to experience things for himself, and look what I—look what I did.”

  “You didn’t do this,” Morris says.

  Michael shakes his head, his whole body beginning to shake. “How did I not see this? How stupid—”

  “No,” Morris says calmly. “No. I’m good to sit with you in sadness. Anger is fine. But I’m not going to cosign this bullshit.”
<
br />   Michael swallows. The anger is right there, lightning fast. Who the fuck says something like that to a man who’s lost his kid? Who the fuck does Morris think he is?

  “What? Say it,” Morris prods.

  “Fuck you!”

  “Okay.”

  “Fuck you fuck you fuck you and fuck your touchy-feely fucking shit and fuck fuck fuck FUCK!”

  Morris smiles despite himself and then readjusts himself to a more neutral face. “Better?”

  Michael exhales and leans back. “A little. Thanks.”

  “No problem. You’d do the same for me.”

  Tillie’s mother isn’t mad. Or if she is, she’s decided it’s better not to lead with it. Tillie is welcomed with a big hug, and then Amir and Molly get embraced, too.

  “You I haven’t met, but I’ve heard about you,” Tillie’s mom says to Amir, a slight eyebrow raised.

  “And you, I haven’t seen in years. How are you, sweetheart?” she says to Molly.

  “Hi, Mrs. Stanley.”

  “Thank you so much for returning my lovely daughter to me.”

  “Oh shit,” Tillie says. “My phone. I need to—”

  Her mother puts up her hands. “Got it,” she says.

  “And am I going to get it back?”

  “We’ll talk.”

  And then it’s the world’s most awkward goodbyes, first to the ex-boyfriend who did her wrong but has his own shit to deal with, and then to her best friend from five years ago. And it’s unclear where this all will go, these—friendships? Not exactly. They saved her life, so there’s that. But friendship might not be the word.

  “Stay in touch,” Molly says, and Tillie nods but she’s pretty sure she won’t.

  Amir doesn’t say that, but he does say, “I still owe you like a hundred apologies.”

  Tillie, in return, says, “Let me know you’re okay when you tell your mom. If.”

  And then she’s alone with her mom. Britt is in her room, and Tillie is glad. She doesn’t want her sister to know any of this, ever.

  “So I went to see Dad,” Tillie says.

  “You did? He didn’t tell me that.”

  “Mom, will you promise to tell me the truth about something?”

  “Of course.”

  “Did you call Dad after I ran off? Did he know?”

  Her mom is still for a moment. Then she slowly nods. “I did.”

  “I thought so. He sent me away.”

  Her mother’s face registers this with a flinch and a shutting of her eyes.

  “I’m so sorry, Till,” her mom finally says, and there are tears in her eyes.

  She says, “Eh.” Which she doesn’t mean, but sometimes enough is enough for a day.

  They’re quiet for a while, and then Tillie says, before she can stop herself, “I saw a boy jump.”

  “What?”

  Tillie takes a deep breath and nods. “Yesterday when I was on the bridge. A boy was there. We looked at each other. And …”

  “Oh, Till!” her mother says, and she puts her arms around her, and she squeezes, and Tillie isn’t sure if it’s an admonishment or what until her mother says, “What that must have been like for you, all this time. Holding that in.”

  Tillie doesn’t need to say any more. She’s glad she’s told. And no, she doesn’t know if that information is useful, or if, like, the police should know or something, but one thing she does know is that her mom will take care of it.

  And it’s decided. Tillie’s going to Vermont. No, she has no say in the matter, but yes, something about the day she’s just had lets her accept that it’s happening, and also that it probably should.

  “I’m sorry, by the way.”

  “Another time,” her mom says. “I just … You are so loved, Tillie. So loved.”

  “Okay,” she says. “I know, I guess. You are, too, for what it’s worth.”

  “I know,” her mom says, a gentle smile across her face. “I do.”

  Michael’s ex, Erica, comes over in the evening, and as they stand in the doorway of Aaron’s still-messy room, he watches her take the room in with utterly lost eyes.

  He pictures her from back in college, and he thinks, This isn’t what a girl whose son will one day die by suicide looks like. He’s not sure what that looks like, but not the girl with the slightly uneven smile who loved SweeTarts and Smash Mouth. That girl has a different path.

  She sits on Aaron’s unmade bed. His smelly robe lies on the floor next to it. An empty bowl next to his Xbox controller. Fish food box open and sitting on the radiator.

  “You think he’s alive if we’re still together?” she asks. Her posture is perfect, like it used to be.

  Michael breathes in the question. It doesn’t matter, really. He’s not alive.

  “I think he is,” she says. “I think this is basically on us. I think—”

  “Please,” Michael says. “I beg of you. Please.”

  She nods, absently. And suddenly he has to leave. Like nothing he’s ever felt before. He gets it. She needs to process. It just can’t be with him. He literally can’t.

  He stands, a bit unsteady on his feet.

  “Stay as long as you want,” he says, his voice jittery. “I’m not mad. I just need—” And he walks out.

  He gets to his room and collapses on his bed and lets his body shake like he’s the victim of a biological attack, like some chemical is sweeping through him and he’s powerless. This is just day one, he realizes. There are more, more coming, and sometimes the rain falls and it’s good, and it’s a Vermont stream, and other times the rain just comes and comes and it seems like it will never, ever end.

  That thought petrifies him, like he’s skydiving and can’t find the cord to his parachute.

  Tillie knocks on Britt’s door.

  “Come in,” her sister says.

  Tillie enters. Britt is lying in her bed playing Candy Crush. Tillie wonders if her mom told her something. She hopes not. Britt shouldn’t have to carry that around. That’s Tillie’s stuff.

  “Hey,” Tillie says.

  “Hey, Tillie Face.”

  Tillie stares at her sister until her sister looks up. She smiles and puts her phone down. “Did you hear about the guy whose left side was cut off?” Britt asks.

  “No.”

  “He was all right.”

  Tillie giggles. “You’re silly.”

  “You’re silly,” says Britt, poking her sister.

  “So I need to tell you something.”

  “You’re a goblin?”

  “What? No, silly.”

  Britt giggles. “You’re a backup dancer in the new Cardi B video?”

  “I have to tell you I’m going away for a while. It’s all gonna be okay. I just have to go for a bit, okay?”

  Britt’s eyes search the room. “Do you have to?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  “I know. Me neither. It won’t be long, though. And I’ll call you all the time.”

  Britt nods. “Okay.”

  Tillie leans down and kisses her sister. “I love you a lot, did you know that?”

  “I love you, Tillie Face.”

  Michael awakens to the sound of someone in his room. He turns over, looks up, and sees his ex-wife standing there in a violet nightgown, hugging herself as if she’s cold.

  “Our son,” she says.

  He exhales and rubs his eyes. “Yeah.”

  “It’s not supposed to be like this.”

  “I know.”

  “Why on earth did he do this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  She scratches her chin. He sits up a bit.

  “Come here,” he says, and there are about a million questions that could be asked, but they don’t ask any of them. He doesn’t know what it is. He doesn’t have to. He just knows that he needs it like oxygen. She gets under the sheets with him in her robe, and he spoons her, putting his arms around her.

  “Can we make a deal?” he a
sks.

  She nods and he feels her wipe her right eye.

  “I won’t blame me if you don’t blame you, okay?”

  She expels a laugh. Even though she’s facing the other way, he catches a whiff of her breath, a bit stale and a bit cinnamon toothpaste. It takes him back.

  “Easier said than done.”

  “Promise?” he says.

  She says, softly, “Promise.”

  CHAPTER 3B: APRIL 19

  Tillie sits in yet another therapist’s office. This one is a little different, though. Instead of a view of people’s elegant shoes and lower legs tromping down Park Avenue, she is looking at a floor-to-ceiling window view of the Vermont countryside. Pine trees, tall and noble, congregate in a far-off forest, and beyond, a hazy mountain range, gray and blue and eternal. And instead of Dr. Brown and her well-tanned arms, here’s a light-skinned Black woman whose eyes immediately pierce into Tillie in an unnerving way. So yeah, a little different, at least on the surface.

  She hopes it’s different, anyway. But if she were a betting girl? Her money would be on it being exactly the same.

  “Tillie,” the woman says. “I’m so glad you’re here.”

  Tillie shrugs and rolls her eyes playfully, as if to say, Not my choice, and the woman smiles.

  “I want you to use this time. I want you to take the time while you’re here to breathe.”

  Tillie holds in a laugh. She’s like, So I went to this place, and I just stopped breathing and I died. In retrospect, going to Vermont was not the best choice for keeping me alive and safe.

  “Also, I want you to know that you’re not alone. That’s one thing group therapy is going to do for you, and you’ll be doing that. It’ll help you see that the feelings you have are feelings other people have, too, and that your pain is welcome here. And finally, I want to give you permission to feel whatever the heck it is you feel.”

  It’s all a little New Agey to Tillie, but at the same time, she can see that the woman means what she says, and it’s kinda sweet.

  “So. Tell me everything.”

  “Everything?”

  “I want to know Tillie Stanley. The things she loves. The things that make her fume. The things that led her to the George Washington Bridge.”