The Last Bridge (21 page)

“You need to eat. I’m making lunch.” He ignored my apology and didn’t seem at all surprised I was there or interested in whether or not I had just spoken to my son. He waved me into the kitchen.

Addison had set the small round table that sat by a picture window facing the yard. “Coffee?” he asked. I nodded. There were three plates on the table. He was expecting us to eat together.

“Would you mind if I went outside to smoke?” I asked.

“Use the sliding doors over there,” he said, pointing to the dining room, which overlooked a large deck. “I built that myself.”

“Impressive.” I wasn’t sure who it was that responded to him. It certainly wasn’t the me I had been living with; this person was calmer, almost nice. She reminded me of how I was back before everything started, back when I was seven. I resisted the urge to tell Addison what had happened upstairs, about the deed and Andrew and the notes from my mother. I was full of contradictory impulses; I wanted to go and stay. I wanted to tell him everything and keep it all a secret.

I lit a cigarette and surveyed the yard. There was a swing set in the back that had no swings, only a slide that had gotten rusty. The sun was coming through the clouds and felt warm on my face as I exhaled. The smoke burned as it went down. I felt as light-headed as a teenager taking her first puff. My feet were bare and the deck boards were cold and rough. Still, warmer days were coming.

“Are you coming to my game?” Alex dropped my shoes next to me. “Dad said you forgot these. Your socks are in the dryer.” I slipped them on.

“So it’s just you and your dad here?”

“Pretty much.” He went down the stairs to the yard and gathered up a bat and some balls. The snow had melted enough to leave a wide stretch of grass. Alex wore a baseball jersey that said “Dinizio’s All Stars” on the back. “Sometimes Mrs. Daley comes to babysit, although I think I’m too old for one. Don’t you?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know much about kids.”

He tossed the ball high in the air and spun around to catch it. I got the feeling he was showing off for me.

“My mom’s dead,” he said.

I fell back against the screen door but caught myself before I went through it. Alex came up the stairs. “You okay?”

“Yeah, I think I need to eat.”

“Wait!” He went down to the yard to gather his stuff.

“What did she die of?” I called to him.

“Cancer,” he said. “There’s a picture of her in the dining room holding me.”

Diana was dead. Although there wasn’t a day of my life I didn’t think of her, I never allowed myself to imagine what had become of her. She raised Alex, that much I suspected; but when did she die? And was she a good mother to him? Did she and Addison raise him together?

“Soup’s on,” Addison shouted from the kitchen. Alex bounded back toward me as I put out my cigarette and followed him into the house. I excused myself to use the bathroom, thinking I could collect myself there. The pendulum of emotion had swung back to the leaving side. What made me think I could navigate these waters?

The bathroom was filled with framed photos of Alex through the years. Every picture was a different version of him. He was my father. He was me. He was Addison. I felt a pull in my abdomen, like a contraction. I had missed it all. Thank God. Right?

I needed a shower, clean clothes, a haircut, a different story. I needed somewhere else to go. I needed to read the rest of the papers my mother left, to ask Addison about the deed. I needed a drink, a coffee, some food.

I rinsed my mouth and tried to straighten my hair but that damn wave kept my left side from lying flat. I lifted my shirt and looked at the scars Alex left. The way my skin had stretched to accommodate him and the way it went back when he found his way out. But it didn’t go back all the way; he had left his mark on me, like every other man did.

I came back to the kitchen and stood in front of my empty seat. “I should go, guys. I’ve got stuff to do and you’ve got baseball and …” I was motioning toward the door as I felt my voice crack. Addison and Alex sat at their seats like an old married couple, used to the day-to-day order of meals shared and time well spent. Here I was, a drunken loner infringing on their routine, their lives.

“Dad, help her,” Alex said, looking at me and then at him.

Addison got up and slipped my purse off my shoulder and placed it on the floor. He pulled my seat out and eased me into it. “Stay for lunch; then you can go.”

“Are you okay?” Alex asked.

I pulled the small paper napkin out from under the soup spoon and wiped the tears that had been streaming down my face. I hadn’t realized I was crying until I saw the alarm in Alex’s face.

“Fine. Just tired.” I looked at the plate Addison had put in front of me. He squeezed my shoulder. I cried harder.

“This is my favorite lunch.” Alex smiled as he crumbled saltines into his bowl of tomato soup and bit into a grilled cheese sandwich. “Do you like soup?”

His voice had the beginnings of Jared’s deep rasp. There was that birthmark again. I watched it as he stirred in his crackers.

I nodded as I took a sip. It was Campbell’s from a can, but it was hot and steamy, and it felt almost as good as a drink. I closed my eyes. “I haven’t had tomato soup since I was little,” I said.

“Where did you grow up?” Alex asked.

“Here, in Wilton.” Alex looked at Addison. I wondered who he thought I was and didn’t know how much more I should say.

“She’s Mrs. Rucker’s daughter,” Addison said.

“Oh.” Alex paused and took a sip of soup and thought about what to say next. “Sorry,” Alex said.

“Thanks.”

“So, did you know my dad when he was younger?”

I looked at Addison; he smiled, giving away nothing.

“Yup.”

Outside a horn beeped. “Danny’s mom, let’s go.” Addison stood up.

Alex shoved another bit of sandwich into his mouth, grabbed his equipment, and pulled on his baseball hat. “See you at the game,” he said, and ran out the door, leaving us alone.

I continued to eat. The solidness of the food helped me feel more grounded. The room felt smaller without Alex.

“I didn’t come here on purpose,” I said, after Addison and I had eaten in silence for a few minutes. “I was leaving. I ended up here. I wanted …” I couldn’t say it.

“You threw up on yourself. I washed your clothes.” He didn’t look at me. He took a bite and stared straight ahead. We sat for a while longer. His hands were weathered and freckled as he spooned soup into his thin lips. I pictured him at the dining room table, paying bills or doing whatever it was when I drove up on the lawn and fell against the horn. Did he come out alone or get Alex to help him? And when did I throw up? The only memory I had was of my head hitting something hard, and then the sound of the ball in the mitt and the sight of my son above me.

It was hard to know how they saw me, harder still to feel what it might be like to see me slowly disintegrating in front of their eyes. Part of me was glad they did, glad Alex thought I was weird; that would push his suspicions back further, if he had them. Addison, well, what did I care what he thought?

I felt tired again, like I could push my plate away and rest my head and sleep until I woke up as someone else. The urge to run had been replaced by a desire to get it over with, whatever it was I had been avoiding all these years.

Addison stayed focused on his lunch. I wanted to make contact with him, to thank him for doing what he did for Alex, but I didn’t know what he did. I had been so busy with my own story, I forgot there were other ones that needed telling.

I took a deep breath as if I were preparing to swim underwater and exhaled. “I don’t know how to start,” I said, my voice breaking.

Addison made eye contact with me at last, in that devouring way his son had inherited. I returned his stare and felt something I hadn’t in a long time, keenly, acutely, alive—it made me feel nauseous.

“He thinks of Diana as his mother. She raised him until he was four. I was in and out of his life. I don’t know what I was thinking; I guess I was still trying to prove something, but Diana, she wasn’t trying to do anything except love Alex.”

“Alex,” I said.

“We decided to name him after you. Especially after you left. Diana insisted on it. She said he needed to be connected to you. She always said you would come back. She told him that as well.”

“He thinks of Diana as his mother,” I said.

“Does that bother you?”

“No,” I lied.

Addison took our plates. “This is hard, Alex. Part of me wants to throw you out of here and tell you to go to hell.” He dropped them in the sink and put his hands on his hips. “Do you have any idea how long we looked for you?”

I gripped the table. Addison’s anger actually felt better than his kindness; this I could understand. This would make it easier. Addison took a breath as if he had made a decision and turned the water on in the sink and threw me a dish towel. “You dry,” he said, “then
you’re taking a shower and coming to Alex’s game. We will make dinner and you will spend one evening with us. Then you decide what you tell him. He knows he had a birth mother who left him. He has some information about you.”

I opened my mouth to say I didn’t think I could do that just as he handed me a plate. I did as I was told.

“W
HEN
I
WAS IN
the hospital after my fall, I dreamed about a boy playing baseball. I thought it was me but I think I was dreaming of him before I even knew I was pregnant.”

“He’s good, isn’t he?”

“Amazing,” I said. You didn’t need to know much about baseball to know Alex had a gift. He held the mitt as if it were an extension of his hand and rounded the bases and worked the field as if it were his natural habitat. Joy exuded out of him with every pitch he threw. “He’s so …”

“Happy?”

“Yeah.”

“I know.”

The inning was over. Alex spotted us and waved. Addison lifted my hand. “He’s waving at us,” he said. His hand lingered. I felt a rush. How did he still have this effect on me?

I showed Addison the deed and the note from my mother during the game. He said my father had told him about the house a long time ago and had told him my mother was in love with his father.

“He wanted me to stay away from you,” Addison said.

“If anyone should have stayed away, it was him,” I said.

“Andrew is her son, isn’t he?” Addison asked. I looked at him. “Come on, he looks like your mother and a little like me.”

I nodded. “She still loved your dad. I think that’s why she killed herself. She couldn’t bear it anymore.”

“I don’t know. Knowing her grandson was without his mother seemed pretty rough on her. Maybe it was a little of both or maybe …”

I knew what he was going to say. He was right. “Maybe we’ll never really know.”

Back at the house I watched Addison and Alex move through their dinner prep like a comedy team. Alex would set up a story and Addison would finish it. Then Addison would tell me something about Alex and he would jump in with embellishments and details.

I wasn’t sure how it was possible to be with them so easily, especially when it seemed there was more that needed to be said.

“So you knew my dad a long time ago?” Alex asked, as we ate our spaghetti. Addison had become a good cook.

Addison and I exchanged looks.

“I knew him back when he was a stud,” I said. Addison flinched, surprised.

“Dad? A stud? Hardly.” Alex laughed. “He never goes out with anyone. He says relationships are too complicated.”

“You don’t go out with anyone?” I laughed.

“I had my fun,” he said. “What about you, Alex?”

I was about to answer when I heard Alex jump in; I forgot he didn’t know my name.

“Dad, I’m almost ten; I don’t think I need to date yet.” He blushed, and when he did, he looked exactly like Addison.

“How about hitting the books? Cat and I will do the dishes, and then we’ll have dessert.”

“I just want to ask Cat one more question. Dad said you lived in New York. Is that true?”

I nodded.

“I want to live there. I want to be an artist.”

“I thought you wanted to be a baseball player,” I said.

“Both,” Addison and Alex said in unison.

“New York is great. It’s easy to get lost there.”

“Do you still live there?”

I wiped my mouth with my napkin and stepped back into the immediate past, where I was the woman with the boxes in the backseat, the beat-up car, and a drinking habit. I wasn’t this woman my son was imagining in his mind.

“I don’t know,” I answered. “I’m not sure where I’m living right now.”

Alex went to do homework as Addison and I cleared the table.

“So you don’t date? That seems so out of character for you,” I said, as I scraped the leftovers into the garbage.

“Not really.”

“But you used to be such a … a …”

“Player?”

I laughed. “Yeah.”

“Having a child sobered me up. Not at first; I left right after you did. I managed to stick around for a week and then I slipped out in the night and left Alex with Diana. I wasn’t ready for a baby, wasn’t even ready for a relationship. Maybe if Diana hadn’t been there I would have stepped up; I would like to think I would have. What about you?”

“What about me?”

“Would you have stayed with him if Diana hadn’t been there?”

The real answer was “No, I wasn’t going to raise that freak of nature,” but I couldn’t say that, especially now, when it was clear this boy was no freak. Even if he was, did that make him less deserving of love?

“It’s hard to say.”

“You panicked, didn’t you?”

I wasn’t ready to talk about this. Did he think I left because I couldn’t handle the burden of a child? God, that made me sound so weak. How could anyone forgive me if that’s what they thought? But that’s all they could ever think, so it would have to be. No one
would ever know I would have stayed if I knew Addison was his father.

“Yeah. It was complicated,” I said.

“Weren’t you curious?”

I dropped a plate and it smashed on the floor in front of my bare feet. Addison stepped forward and grabbed me by the waist to pull me away. “Watch yourself,” he said, as we collided together in an embrace.