The Forever Bridge (21 page)

N
essa slips in and out of sleep inside the shack all afternoon. She feels feverish, almost ill. She wonders, vaguely, if somehow her toe has gotten infected and that the infection has spread to her blood. She wonders if it is possible to die from this. If she might just slip into sleep and stay there. Delirious, she waits for Ruby to arrive. But as the sun passes across the sky, changing the shadows inside the dark cool shack, she does not come. What if she never comes?

When the first pain arrives, like a shiver across her abdomen, she recalls the first time she bled: the wrecked feeling of her body, the way the pain gripped her. She remembers being alone in the apartment, the aching, empty feeling of it, her mother out again. Some nights her mom wouldn’t get home until the sun was beginning to rise. Some nights she didn’t come home at all. Nessa had squatted over the toilet with its cracked seat and rust-ringed bowl, touched the damp place between her legs, and thought that she was sick. That she was dying. She was eleven years old, and no one had ever taken the time to tell her that this would happen and not to be afraid. That this terrifying grip of her uterus was just her body’s way of readying itself. She remembers a pilly pink bath mat and the dark, nearly black blood that dripped across it as she crawled to the bathtub where she ran the water so hot that steam filled the bathroom like ghosts. She remembers that she wanted her mother then, more than she had ever wanted her before, this longing the most pure thing she’d ever felt. The need as sharp and exacting as a sword. That when she sank into the tub, the water turning cloudy and pink, she had wished her mother home.

She wonders about her mother now, as her body recollects that first pain, that precursor, that prelude, to this. And then she tries to imagine her mother carrying her like this, about her mother’s body being consumed by her. But it is impossible. Like imagining the future. Or like trying to remember the deep, deep past.

Her mother could be anywhere now. Or nowhere at all. By the time Nessa left Quimby, her mother had lost her job again, and she and Rusty were talking about moving back to the city. But all these months later there could have been a dozen cities, a dozen jobs, a dozen other men. She had been a fool to think she’d find her here. That she would have waited for Nessa to come home.

She lies on her side on the cold floor, studies the green of leaves through the hole in the roof. She cups her hand underneath the swollen flesh of her belly, but the baby does not respond to her touch. And while her body tenses and contracts beneath her fingers, the baby does not stir. Not even a bit. And when the wave of pain washes over her, Nessa wonders if somehow, she has killed her.

S
ometimes, unless Sylvie takes the pills, the only way to make herself sleep is to count. As a little girl, her grandmother, exasperated by Sylvie’s insomnia, suggested that she count sheep. But there were no sheep to count, none outside her window in the pastures beyond their house. There were houses and lowing cows, but not a single sheep for miles and miles. And none inside her imagination. What lived inside her imagination were animals of a different sort. They were faceless, nameless, bleating creatures. She couldn’t bring herself to count them; the numbers didn’t go high enough. Far enough. And counting them, acknowledging them only seemed to make them multiply. There was no lullaby here.

Instead she counted her heartbeats. They were rhythmic and steady and certain, and while seemingly endless, she knew they had a limit. She could count them until she became an old woman, but one day they would cease, the ticking metronome would wind down, and there would be nothing left but silence. Peace. This was the only thing that gave her comfort back then, the only thing that kept the wild thoughts at bay.

And so this is her habit. She lies on her back so that her breasts fall to each side of her, as though parting to make way for her palms. She lifts her nightshirt up so that there is no confusion, no barrier between her heart and her hand. She presses her right palm flat against her flesh, searching for the cadence of her own body. And she wonders if this comfort hearkens back to a time before time, when she lived inside her mother’s womb. When the sound of blood and heart and breath were the only sounds. She has always felt strangely about ushering infants from this dark peace into the violent world. When she was still delivering babies, she insisted that the mothers keep the lights dim, the rooms quiet, the fires in the hearth warm. And as soon as the babies emerged from their mothers’ bodies, she would rush them back to their mothers’ bare chests where they could be close to that sound again. Making the transition from womb to world as painless as possible. She tried not to think about what happened after she left. When the bright light of morning came, the loud day with its smells and sounds. These poor new beings exposed, vulnerable to the everyday assaults. And it made her sad, that this is something they would eventually adapt to. That they might never, ever again in their lives find the safety they once had inside their mothers’ bodies. That this is the only truth of life: you are vulnerable. You are defenseless.

When she tried to call Robert back earlier, her call went straight to voice mail. Not one ring, not even the possibility of connection. He’d said that he and Bunk were leaving in the morning, that they were going to try to beat the storm, to somehow outrun the wind and the rain. But she, of all people, knows that this is foolish. Futile. Because the storm will always catch up to you, no matter how fast you run.

After Ruby went to bed, she sat in the kitchen with the volume on the radio turned low, listening to the coverage of the storm. Late tonight, it was expected to reach the coast of North Carolina. A-hundred-mile-an-hour winds, storm surges from six to eleven feet. The president, who was vacationing on Martha’s Vineyard, had cut his vacation short, gone home. In New York, residents of the lower-lying areas had been ordered to evacuate. The subways would close tomorrow. Airports would also be shut down.

She heard Ruby stir in the other room and turned the volume down even lower, until the voice on the radio was only like the patter of rain, the distant rumble of thunder.

Robert.
If she could reach him what would she say? Stay where you are? Hunker down? Wait until the storm has passed? It wouldn’t matter. Because this was always the fundamental difference between them. Her instinct was to seek shelter, but his was to flee.

She presses her hand harder into her chest, momentarily losing the beat of her heart, panicking with the thought that this is when it stops. That this is the night it fails. But her fear kick-starts her heart and it pounds reassuringly against her hand.
I’m here, I’m here.
And she begins to count, starting over where she left off. Thirty-one, thirty-two, thirty-three.

S
ATURDAY

R
uby dreams of bridges.

In Europe there are at least a dozen bridges named The Devil’s Bridge. Most of them are stone arch bridges built during the medieval times, and all of them have some sort of folklore about the Devil associated with them. They traverse mountains, impossible terrains, and the legends arise from the impossibility of their architecture—the suspicion that the Devil himself must have had a hand in building them, that no human could have accomplished such a feat. In Germany, in Romania, in France and Italy and Spain there are Devil’s bridges: Die Teufelsbrücke, Moara Drac-ului, Ponte del Diavolo, Pont du Diable, Puente del Diablo. Each of them is a miracle of masonry and engineering, spanning great divides.

In these stories, in all of these stories, it is said that the townspeople, needing a bridge to reach from one impossible place to another, sought the Devil’s assistance, and the Devil (having no use for payments of livestock or gold) agreed to assist, with the understanding that the first one to cross the bridge would be sacrificed, so that he might add them to his collection of souls. Not wanting to make such a sacrifice, the townspeople would then trick the Devil by sending across goats or other animals in their stead. In most of the stories, the townspeople prevail. In some, they are even able to trick the Devil himself into crossing first.

But Ruby knows that these are just stories. Just myths. Because the Devil, the real Devil, cannot be fooled.

Ruby sleeps deeply, her mother’s owl standing watch over her. And as she sleeps, she dreams of bridges. Of all the bridges of the world. Her mind gathering the materials, rolling the stones and calculating the geometric patterns that will create the miracle she needs. A bridge impervious to storms, to destruction, to accidents. A bridge the Devil himself might build. And in the luminous depths of sleep she dreams of his collection of souls, and searches through the sea of faces, looking for the one she lost.

 

In the morning, she tells her mother she is going into town. Says that if the storm really is coming tomorrow they will need more batteries, another flashlight, supplies. She brings her backpack.

“I’m going to stop by Izzy’s house too.” She hopes that this new peace she and Izzy forged over ice cream under the Arthur Quimby statue is real and not something else she dreamed. While Izzy is being nice again,
herself
again, she hopes she can talk to her about the bridge contest. Convince Izzy that she needs her; that none of this matters if they aren’t able to work on it together. Plus, the storm is coming and once it does, who knows when she’ll be able to talk to her.

Still, outside, the sky is clear and bright. The storm feels like a rumor. A lie. The only intimation of its impending arrival is this odd, hot wind. But she rides headlong into it all the way to Izzy’s house, lets it sting her eyes and skin.

At Izzy’s house, Ruby sits on her bed, and it feels almost like the last week hasn’t happened. Ruby even notices that there is a pile of dirty clothes on the floor, a plate with the crusts of a peanut butter sandwich on the nightstand. A glass with a hard disc of milk in the bottom.

Marcy has gone across the street to her house to get something she’s forgotten. Ruby knows she doesn’t have long.

Marcy’s suitcase sits open on the window seat, her clothes tidily folded inside. When Izzy gets up to go to the bathroom, Ruby has to resist the urge to rummage through them, as though she could find some sort of explanation in the skinny jeans and chiffon blouses. As though Marcy’s socks and underwear and tiny padded bras could somehow explain how it is that Ruby almost lost her best friend this week.

Izzy comes back into the room, and Ruby feels proud of herself for not spying. For not being the snoop she wanted to be.

 

“Iz?” Ruby starts.

“Yeah?”

“I was hoping we could maybe still . . .”

Ruby can hear the front door opening, knows that it must be Marcy and wonders at what point she stopped ringing the Sinclairs’ doorbell. She’s only been staying here a week. Even Ruby, who has known Izzy and her parents her whole life, still rings the doorbell.

She hears Marcy and Gloria downstairs talking.

“I was thinking maybe . . .”

“I’m sorry about the fair,” Izzy says suddenly, interrupting her.

Ruby feels her apology ping in her chest like a plucked string on a guitar. It reverberates.

“It’s okay,” she says. “I get it.” And she
does
get it, sort of. And she wonders if she would have done the same thing if it had been her instead of Izzy who Marcy decided to make her new best friend.

Ruby notices that Izzy’s hair is starting to tangle again. There is a sort of dreadlock starting to form behind her ear. Something about this makes Ruby feel better. The old Izzy is still here. She hasn’t disappeared.

“When do Marcy’s parents come back from Boston?” Ruby asks.

“Supposedly tomorrow, but Mom’s worried about the storm messing up the flight.”

“Oh,” Ruby says, and tries to imagine what would happen if Marcy’s parents’ plane crashed. What if they died and she was an orphan? Would she have to stay with Izzy and Gloria and Neil forever? “I kind of can’t wait,” Ruby tries, testing these waters.

“I know, right?” Izzy says, breaking into a smile. She looks toward the door; they can both still hear Marcy and Gloria talking downstairs.

“She snores,” Izzy whispers, like a gift. “Louder than Grover.”

This makes Ruby giggle.

But before she can ask her about the bridge, Marcy stomps up the stairs and Ruby looks at Izzy to try to read what might happen next. She fears that this quiet truce, this return to normalcy, will slip away as quickly as it was returned to her. Once, her mother lost an earring from a pair her dad gave her down the kitchen drain. She reached her hand into the garbage disposal and was able to fish it out, but then she dropped it again. And this time she wasn’t able to get it back. This time it had slipped past the carrot peels and lemon rinds, somehow disappearing into one of the holes in the mechanism. For a whole week her mother couldn’t bring herself to turn the garbage disposal on, holding out hope that she’d be able to figure out a way to get the earring back. But finally, fruit flies started to gather in swarms at the lip of the drain and the house started to smell like garbage and she had no choice. It feels like this. Precarious. Like she’d better hold on tight or she might just lose Izzy for good.

“What are
you
guys talking about?” Marcy asks, in a way that makes it sound as though whatever their answer is, she’ll think it’s childish. She flops on Izzy’s bed like she owns the place, and picks up the pillow that Izzy’s grandmother cross-stitched for her (
It’s Not Easy Being a Princess
), clutching it to her chest. “Is it about that stupid bridge contest?”

Ruby studies Izzy, waiting to see what she does, how she responds.

Izzy fiddles with a Rubik’s Cube that used to belong to her dad that she keeps on her bureau, and Ruby feels sick to her stomach. Marcy starts to pluck at a loose thread on the second
s
in
Princess
in the cross-stitch. It’s been loose forever, but Gloria doesn’t sew, and so Izzy has just been careful with it. Ruby watches as the thread starts to unravel from the fabric. As
Princess
becomes
Princes.

Izzy lunges forward then and swipes the pillow out of Marcy’s hands. “That’s not yours,” she says. “And the bridge contest isn’t stupid. The winner gets to go to Seattle for the national competition. You said you wanted to do it with me.”

Marcy relinquishes the pillow and rolls her eyes. “Sounds like a nerd festival to me,” she says.

Ruby feels her face flushing red. She wishes she could snap her fingers and disappear.

“Well, I’d rather be a nerd than a stuck-up b—” Izzy starts, Marcy’s jaw falls open, and then there is a horrible sound from downstairs. It’s actually two sounds, which seem to happen at almost the same time: first, there is an enormous crash, and then there is Gloria screaming.

Izzy and Ruby leave Marcy sitting dumbstruck and wordless on the bed and rush down the stairs, flying down the creaky boards, clinging to the rickety banister so as not to slip. Gloria is still screaming. “Neil! Neil! Come here quick!!”

They follow the sound of her voice to the kitchen where they see Grover spread out across the kitchen floor, all six feet four of him, like Gulliver. Izzy’s dad comes into the kitchen from the back where he has been mowing the yard. He hasn’t heard Gloria screaming and doesn’t see Grover right away. “What’s going on?” he asks and then says, “Oh shit.”

He rushes to the phone and calls 911. Gloria drops down to her knees and presses her ear against Grover’s broad chest. “He’s not breathing. Tell them to come quick.”

Ruby and Marcy stand in the doorway, afraid to move.

Izzy says, “I know CPR. I can use CPR.”

Ruby thinks of the mannequin at the pool, and wonders how you ever go from that to this. This is a
real
man. A man with gray prickly whiskers and thick knuckles. He’s a man who can beat anybody at Chinese Checkers and likes to drink his coffee mixed with vanilla ice cream. Grover has lived here since Izzy and Ruby were only three or four. He’s been like a grandfather to Izzy. To them both.

As Izzy kneels down next to him and starts to go through the procedures she’s learned at the pool, Marcy leans into Ruby and whispers, “Is he dead?”

“Oh, shut up,” Ruby hisses, and Marcy pouts.

Luckily, the firehouse is right around the corner from Miss Piggy, and so it only takes about two minutes for the ambulance to arrive. The paramedics rush into the kitchen and Ruby and Marcy press themselves against the wall so as to not get in their way. He is breathing; his heart is beating. One of the paramedics pats Izzy on the back and says, “Good work. You may have saved his life.”

Izzy still looks like a ghost of herself.

“Girls, why don’t you go outside. Get some fresh air,” Neil says, ushering them toward the front door. They obey, but once outside they aren’t sure what to do. Marcy sits on the porch swing. Izzy and Ruby go sit by the giant oak tree, plucking whirlybirds off the ground.

“Do you think he’ll be okay?” Ruby asks Izzy softly.

Izzy shrugs. “I hope so.”

“I can’t believe you know how to do that,” Ruby says, but Izzy just nods.

Ruby recalls the night the ambulance came to get her mom last spring. She has tried to put this memory away, to push it to the back of her mind, but sometimes, it haunts her. She’d been in her room reading before bed, listening to her mother pacing in the other room. For hours her mom had been circling the house, checking the windows, the doors. Ruby knew something was wrong when the sound of her mother’s feet shuffling across the wooden floors ceased. Still, she waited. She clutched her book, tried hard to focus on the words that were blurred and swimmy across the page. But the house just got quieter and quieter until the silence was nearly deafening. Terrified, she’d opened her door and gone to look for her mother.

The bathroom door was closed, and so she gently knocked, pressing her cheek against the cool wood.

“Mom?”

When there was no answer, she felt panic, like something liquid and hot, spreading from her chest out across her whole body. And so she turned the doorknob, which she was surprised to find unlocked. There was the sound of something falling to the floor; it startled her.

Her mother was crouched in the empty tub, clutching the sides, her eyes wild and terrified. But when Ruby reached out to her, she’d only cowered. Like an animal. Like something trapped. Ruby had been all alone.

“Should I call Daddy?” Ruby had asked, but her mother shook her head.

“I’m scared,” Ruby said then, and her mother started to cry. Her entire body was trembling, quivering. “Mama?”

“I need . . .” her mother said, quaking. “I just need a doctor.”

Ruby nodded and nodded. “Okay, okay.” And then she ran to the kitchen and dialed 911.

She didn’t tell anyone about the gun that had been sitting next to the bathtub. Before the paramedics arrived, she’d gingerly picked it up and returned it to the drawer where it belonged. And she wondered what would have happened if she hadn’t found her in time. If she’d left her mother alone in the bathroom. Only she knows what her mother was thinking that night. It seems sometimes that her entire world is made of secrets, like swollen dangerous things she carries in her heart.

The paramedics are only inside Izzy’s house for a few minutes before they push the stretcher outside, lifting it down the steps. Gloria follows behind, wringing her hands. As they load him into the back of the ambulance, Gloria answers the paramedic’s questions.

“How old is he?” the guy asks, writing her answers down on a clipboard.

“Eighty-one,” she says. “He’ll be eighty-two next week.”

“You his daughter?”

“Oh no, he just lives with us,” she says. “He’s our tenant. He rents a room.”

“Any next of kin?” the paramedic asks, and it sounds like he’s reading off a checklist.

Gloria shakes her head. “Just us. We’re like his family. Is he going to be okay?”

“What’s his name?” he asks.

“Grover,” she says, but then pauses, shakes her head and laughs awkwardly. “But that’s just a nickname, sorry.”

The paramedic looks impatient.

“His real name is George. George Downs.”