The Last Bridge (10 page)

In the truck, on the way home, I started to drift off. I tried to rest the side of my head against the door, but every bump banged my black eye. Addison pulled me toward him, placing my head on his shoulder. I sat up.

“You want to tell me what happened?”

“It was an accident.”

“I told you my story, so cough it up.”

“My father did it.”

“Not on purpose?”

Now it was my turn to avoid the question. I looked out the window.

“It was an accident, right?”

“Define
accident.”

Addison pulled over and turned toward me, putting his arm on the back of the seat. “Tell me what happened.”

“He didn’t want me to have pie. He said my ass was getting too fat. I said I didn’t want any. He shoved my face in the plate. My head hit the table. My eye got black.”

Through my open window I could hear the gentle snapping of twigs. We sat quietly for a few moments.

“I’m sure he didn’t mean it,” he said finally.

This was his big assessment?

This was why I didn’t tell people. They never believed me. Deep down they wanted to think it wasn’t as awful as it seemed. Instead of feeling bad for me, they’d rather act like I was doing something to deserve the treatment. When I was in fifth grade I told my homeroom teacher how I got the bruises on my wrists (my father had grabbed me too hard when he was punishing me for sneaking out to the woods); she called the principal, who called my parents. Dad rewarded my honesty with a broken wrist and a warning to keep my mouth shut. When the teacher asked me the next day why I was wearing a cast, I told her I fell.

“He’s always been so good to me,” Addison muttered.

“Let’s go,” I said.

“Do you want me to talk to your dad? See if he’ll apologize?” he asked as we pulled off the main road to our farm.

He was delusional. “If you speak to my dad about what happened, I swear I will never talk to you again. I will leave and never come back and you will be the one I blame.”

It wasn’t very much, but that was all I could threaten him with.

“Okay.”

“Okay what?”

“I won’t say a thing on one condition.”

“Addison, you’re pushing your luck.”

“Let me kiss you good night.”

“Oh, please,” I said, feeling a rush in my throat.

He banged the steering wheel in frustration. “It’s just a kiss, Alex …. It doesn’t—”

“I know, it doesn’t mean anything.”

“You should loosen up,” he said as he climbed out of the truck and came around to my door and opened it. He took my arm and helped me out, trying to seize an opportunity to get close to me. I pushed him away. He threw his hands up in defeat and walked me to the door.

Upstairs, the light was on in my parents’ bedroom. The sheer curtains were closed but I could see the shadow of my father standing at the window watching us through the filter of the fabric.

I
VOLUNTEERED TO RETURN
the chafing dishes and deli platters to Sal’s to get our deposit back. Aside from having the opportunity to get away from the madness brewing in the kitchen, it gave me a chance to hit the liquor store and replenish my stash. Willard put Wendy and Jared to work chopping and shredding. One night of planning my future had made fast friends of Jared and Wendy.

The truth was, I had nowhere to go. The months leading up to my mother’s suicide had not been good. I was working as a cocktail waitress in a strip club (gentlemen’s club, titty bar, call it what you will) and had failed out of my last semester of school, postponing my dream of finishing college before I was dead or thirty, whichever came first. If that wasn’t enough, the rent for my tiny Brooklyn apartment had just doubled.

My life had become one long drink service—either I was pouring one for myself or serving them to the miscreants who came looking for T and A in the bowels of the meatpacking district. In spite of my great charm and wit, not to mention my decent legs, I was getting fewer and fewer shifts at work due to an issue the owner called my “inability to come to work in a sober state.” He had a bug up his ass because I wouldn’t blow him.

In the year of my tenth anniversary away from home, I had stopped paying my rent, lost my job, and formed a close bond with
a man named Jack Daniel’s. In this stupor of impending doom, I got the call that Mom had checked out.

Ten years of stuff from twenty jobs, five apartments, a bunch of crappy relationships, and three and a half years of college fit into three boxes. I packed them along with two lawn-and-leaf bags filled with clothes into the trunk of my twenty-year-old powder-blue Honda, which I had bought with stolen money. For the second time in my life I left a place I called home and never looked back.

I spent the deposit money on booze and bought a bottle of wine to say that’s where it went. I drove to the 7-Eleven to buy smokes and sat in the parking lot and drank while I watched women in sweatpants coming out with milk and Wonder bread. I wondered if their homes were worth returning to.

There was a brown Ford Bronco in the driveway when I pulled up. I drank half a bottle of bourbon on the way and was feeling more prepared for a last supper with my siblings.

“So we need to find those papers,” Wendy said as I came through the door, stumbling on the uneven top step.

“Oh, God,” Jared mumbled as I caught the wine before it slipped out of my hands. Wendy liberated the bottle from me.

“Cat, you’ve been …”

“Hey, there.” Andrew Reilly, County Coroner, stood up from the table and came toward me.

“What is he doing here?”

“I ran into Andrew at the hospital. We got to talking about Dad and he had some good advice so I invited him to dinner,” Wendy said.

“I want to help,” Andrew said as he put his hands in his pockets and shrugged his shoulders.

“Yeah, I get that. What I don’t get is why.” I stumbled over to the sink and poured myself a glass of water.

Willard was standing over the stove stirring tomato sauce. To his left, on the back burner, was a cauldron of sputtering steam. “Spaghetti Bolognese,” he said. “It will put some meat on you.”

Willard’s thick black glasses steamed over from the pasta, giving him the look of Sherman from the Peabody cartoons we used to watch on Sunday mornings when Mom and Dad slept in. He was so short he almost needed a step stool to reach the stove. Everything about Willard screamed harmless, from his small quick hands to his quiet voice. He was so innocuous it was hard to tell he was even there.

Behind me, Jared, Wendy, and Andrew talked about the house and Dad. I fought the urge to lie down on the floor and sleep and joined them at the table.

“So if they decide to move him to a nursing home, you’ll have to use his assets first before the state will pay for anything.”

“What if he doesn’t have any assets?” Wendy asked, passing up Jared’s offer of wine. He moved on to Andrew and then to Willard, ignoring my empty glass.

“If the house and land are in both your parents’ names—it’s all his now. Do you know where the deed is?”

Jared and Wendy shook their heads and looked at me. “I don’t even know where the sugar is,” I said.

“That’s your first assignment,” Wendy said. “Find the deed so we can figure out how to take care of Dad.”

“Pulling the plug would be the best way to take care of Dad.”

Jared smiled.

“Cat! Pull it together; this is important.”

“If we can figure out where they kept their important papers, we may be able to find out what your father’s feelings were about being left in this state.”

“What’s the ‘we’ thing?” I said.

“Be nice,” Wendy said.

“It’s okay. I understand,” Andrew answered.

“You do? How big of you.”

“Would it matter if I told you I promised your mother I would help?”

“She talked to you about this?”

Andrew nodded.

He isn’t who you think he is …
.

S
PRING CAME AND
went, along with the final days of my junior year. I celebrated my seventeenth birthday quietly at the end of May with chocolate cake and no bruises.

After that night at the Omega diner, Addison and I kept our distance. If I had learned anything, I knew when it was safe to be around a man. The events of that night and everything that led up to it convinced me it was best to stay away.

It wasn’t as hard as I thought. I suspected Addison had drawn the same conclusion. I was pretty sure my father had seen me getting out of Addison’s truck and had warned him off me.

Addison was busy putting the final touches on the renovations to his grandma’s house and was planning on heading back to California in a few weeks. My father had pitched in to help and together they had managed to get the work done without spending any money on labor. Dad and Addison took pride in their accomplishment and I suspected both were excited at the prospect of pleasing Addison’s father, Jared, who was coming for a visit.

Dad was so focused on getting ready for Jared, he neglected his real job of being the family terror and drunk.

The news of Jared’s arrival made everyone come alive. My mother embarked on a serious cleaning campaign that forced Wendy and me to dust behind our beds, dressers, and wardrobes,
and sweep and polish the floors. Mom was on a mission to eliminate all dirt from our lives; but no matter how hard she tried, the dirt beneath the surface could not be buffed away.

With the windows open and adorned with freshly starched white curtains, it was hard to think of the dark days we had endured. My mother’s smile was a welcome treat at breakfast, as were my father’s kind words for her efforts. Even the lines on Dad’s weatherworn face softened in anticipation of the praise he would get from the only man he had ever admired.

I was happy to clean, scrub, sew, haul, toss, or do whatever was necessary to bring some polish to our lives. And like my parents and Addison, Wendy, Jared, and I looked forward to Jared’s arrival with joyous expectation. I was dying to be in the company of the man who elicited such devotion from the people I cared about.

Jared was to arrive on Flag Day, June fourteenth, and in honor of both, my father hung a new American flag from our front porch. My mother baked fresh bread, made strawberry preserves and apple pie (all Jared’s favorites), and laundered and pressed our Sunday best.

According to Addison and Dad’s calculations, Jared would arrive from the airport (which was a two-hour drive) by lunchtime. We were washed, dressed, and sitting on the porch by ten
A.M
.

We waited in silence, interrupted by occasional bouts of “Get your feet off the furniture,” “No food until Jared arrives,” and speculative talk about how he would look and what he would say. Our Jared fell asleep on the porch swing. He had been up with Dad and Addison hanging molding until three
A.M.
Addison had the lethargic posture that comes from being too tired, but his eyes were alert and gleamed with a look I understood to be the love he had been saving for his dad.

By four Mom broke down and let us have a slice of bread with butter and preserves. By six, Dad started drinking and Addison said he would be in his apartment if anyone needed him. At seven the phone rang with word that Jared wasn’t coming. Mom took the
call, twirling in the phone cord like she was wrapping herself in someone’s arms. Her fingers fluttered as she gesticulated and blushed her way through his disappointing news. She kept the conversation going as long as possible, savoring second best.

After hanging up, she adjusted her dress, smoothed back her hair, and exhaled, letting go of whatever dream she had of Jared’s visit. She walked to the living room and told my father he had urgent business and was sorry he couldn’t come.

“I wonder what her name is,” Dad said as he turned the volume up and swallowed his disappointment in long burning pulls of bourbon. Mom retreated to the laundry room, where she spent the evening meticulously ironing my father’s work shirts.

“Tell Addison,” Mom said. “Take him some pie.” Wendy offered, but Mom, in a surprising bout of strength, told Wendy to go to her room and mind her own business.

I walked barefoot to Addison’s apartment. The hem from my best summer dress tickled the back of my calf. My mother made it as a birthday present. It was cotton, with a pattern of wild strawberries in honor of my favorite fruit, and had a scooped-neck bodice with a full skirt that fell below my knee. I felt the cool grass between my toes as day eased its way into evening.

The kitchen light was on as I climbed the wooden stairs. The apartment also had a screen door that did not stay shut. It clapped against the jamb. I knocked. All I needed were pearls and a cardigan and I’d look like a lady from the church welcome wagon.

“Addison?”

No answer. I looked over the landing and saw his truck. If he had gone for a walk, I would leave the pie and a note. I went into the kitchen.

It had been years since I had been in the apartment. As a girl I spent many afternoons here with my grandma watching TV and hiding from my father. After Grandpa died, Grandma took to her bed and stayed there for almost ten years before my mother found
her asleep for good. The apartment was left as is after that. Mom said she didn’t see the reason to change anything.

The kitchen was sparse; an empty jelly-jar glass sat on a small round table next to a crumpled paper napkin. The white linoleum counter that bridged the small stove and half-refrigerator was bare and yellowed from too many bleaches. The porcelain sink had a thin rust stain that snaked from the edge of the faucet to the drain. In the second of the two rooms, the glow from a mute television illuminated a chair covered with discarded clothes and the dulled footboard of the brass bed my grandparents got as a wedding present more than half a century ago.

“Hello?”

I put the pie on the table next to the glass and walked into the main room. Addison was lying on the bed. His arms were crossed in front of his eyes, blocking the late afternoon sun that lit his half of the bed. His good khaki pants and starched white shirt were abandoned to the chair in favor of torn jeans and his “Stinky’s” T-shirt. His feet were bare and pale.