The Last Bridge (25 page)

“He loves me.” I looked at her, not sure whom she was talking about. “Willard.” I nodded. Wendy didn’t give me back the cigarette so I lit another. “What was it like to give birth?”

“It was a long time ago.”

“You remember. Tell me.”

And so I did. And while we worked our way down to the last inhale, I told the story of my son’s birth.

“You want a cup of tea? Decaf?” Addison was turning off the lights in the dining room and running through the habitual checklist of duties a homeowner does before he goes to bed. He looked good in his life, his house. I was glad for Alex. Glad he had had Diana to love him at the beginning and glad Addison had stepped in and carried on.

“No, I’m okay.” My voice quivered as I watched him moving around me. I felt like I was visiting a life I could have had but didn’t choose.

Addison walked over to the small hutch in the dining room and opened a drawer. “I have something for you,” he said. He handed me a brown velvet pouch. “I’ve been holding on to these for a while.”

I felt it before I knew for sure. It was my mother’s pearls. The ones I lost the night we were together. I spilled them into my hand and smelled them. The rush of my mother’s scent brought tears to my eyes.

Addison took them and put them on me. “So beautiful,” he said. He smiled. “You and your mother, so beautiful.”

After ten years of running I had arrived back where I started. In that garage apartment with Addison, feeling the magnitude of my
own attraction. I had lost everything but this; it was still as vivid and intense as it had been then.

I followed him up the stairs and into his room, and without saying a word, we undressed and climbed into bed and met each other in the middle as if we had been doing that all along.

I
THREW
A
DDISON OFF
me like a heavy blanket that was suffocating me. The cold air mapped a chill along the perimeter of my body. Addison rolled onto his back, taking care not to touch me. We lay next to each other but not together, like a continent split by a tidal wave of memory. I was an island again.

I never got used to the ways my body betrayed me. When it was beaten it healed, when it was touched it responded without consideration of the consequences, and when it was raped I feared it had made life. A body’s job is to protect the heart, not expose it, not to lead it places it could not hide.

There was no use in covering myself; I was naked.

“It still hurts,” I said. Tears trickled into my ears.

Addison rolled toward me and dammed his body against mine. He brushed the hair away from my face and took my hand.

He isn’t who you think he is …
.

The sun wasn’t up yet and neither were Alex or Addison. I slipped on my clothes and carried my shoes out to the porch before I put them on. My car had been in the driveway since I had turfed the lawn.

It started easily. I felt a surge of panic as I pulled out of the driveway and thought I saw a shadow in the garage window but realized it was probably the morning light.

There was only one place left for me to go and then I would be done with Wilton.

The roads were empty. Except for the occasional delivery truck, I had the town to myself. I drove past the Elks Lodge, where the dance was, and followed the same path my father had taken in his truck. I had never driven to Rucker’s Ravine, but I knew the way.

My hands were clammy as they gripped the steering wheel. I smelled like Addison, that mix of sweat and oranges. I told myself it would protect me. I could still feel him inside me. The way he eased himself in and moved with me, every wave erasing the boundary that separated us. I floated in and out of myself, not me and not him, but something safe in between.

The rope bridge was still there but frayed. Tire tracks were frozen in the ground, and although it was impossible, I imagined they were from my father’s truck. The leaves had abandoned the trees in the small woods, making it seem more like a closet of skeletons than a place where I could have hidden.

I walked to the edge of the ravine and stood staring out over to the other side and took a deep breath. I prayed for the guts to make it over.

I was looking for the sketchbook my father had thrown across, hoping some of it had survived. If I was going to tell my son who I was, I needed him to see the good part too.

I was outside my body, floating high above the ravine. Just like I did that night. I saw myself at the edge reaching for the thick rope knot that connected the bridge to an old tree trunk.

I had no fear of falling anymore. The wooden planks strung between the two rope railings were sparse, and in order to get on the bridge I would have to take a long stride forward. I gripped the rope on both sides and willed my foot onto the first plank. The bridge swayed in the wind as a plank on the other side wiggled loose. I thought about the book flying in the air, the gilded edges twinkling through the storm and landing somewhere over there. Somewhere safe, I hoped.

I moved slowly and focused on each step. The cold air stung my chapped hands and cut across my cheeks, like the rain that night.

I had to jump at the other side to land, as the boards were too flimsy to risk. My foot slipped on the smooth slope that led up to the grassy landing. The same place I fell before. This time I caught myself.

There were frozen footprints on the path to the meadow and, like the tire tracks, I wondered if the last two people who had been here were my father and me.

I searched the brittle grass, which had grown waist-high and flourished in spite of a winter filled with storms. As I trudged through half-frozen, muddy puddles and tried to imagine where the book might have landed, I began to realize how foolish it was to think it had survived.

Still I kept looking, hoping something remained. Although I had not sketched anything beyond a doodle since that night, I continued to experience my life in frames. I drew in my head, mapping out story lines and adventures. Drinking occupied my hands now. I couldn’t do both.

Drinking. God, I wanted to be alone in a bed with a remote in one hand and a bottle in the other, holed up for the duration of the cold weather.

“Cat!” I heard a voice coming from the bridge. “Help!”

I turned toward the sound, wondering if I had imagined it. “Help!” It was clear and loud and very real. It sounded like a child. I started running.

Alex was halfway across the bridge, gripping the rope with both hands and struggling to stay still. His bike was turned over near the entrance on the other side as if he had jumped off and run across the bridge. He had been the shadow in the garage. He had followed me.

“I can’t move,” he yelled. His face was pale and open, as if he were frozen in place.

“Are you stuck?”

He shook his head.

“Hurt?”

“I’m going to fall. Oh, God, I’m going to fall.”

My knees started shaking as I moved as close as I could to the bridge. I wiped my hands on my jeans and reached out to him. “No, you’re not. Look at me.”

He looked down.

“Alex, look at me.” I was pointing at my eyes. He focused on me. I nodded. “Good. Now think about taking a step toward me.”

“I can’t. Oh, God, Dad is going to kill me.” He turned toward his bike as if Addison were standing there.

“Alex, me.” He looked back.

“You have to come for me. I’m scared.”

The bridge swayed. Alex screamed. My legs buckled as if I were the one on the bridge struggling to stay still, as if I were Alex and he were me or we were the same. I did not feel my feet, only my pulse beating in my throat, as I leaped to the first plank and made my way toward him.

“Stay still,” I said. “I’m coming.”

He was whimpering but holding steady with his eyes locked on mine as I worked my way toward him inch by inch. The bridge was rocking wildly. The ropes were creaking as they grew taut from our weight. I looked down.

“Me!” Alex said.

Our eyes connected as I moved more swiftly. When I reached him, he let go of the ropes and wrapped his arms around my waist. I felt the bridge give way, or was I imagining it? I gripped the ropes and tried to maneuver myself into a more steady position. “Thank you,” he said into my belly, his head resting between my breasts.

“Don’t thank me yet; we have to get back.”

I talked him across. When his foot almost slipped through a plank, I told him to put his feet on top of mine and I walked us to solid ground.

“Okay. We’re good now,” I said, trying to pry him off. He
wouldn’t let go. He hugged me tightly and cried. I could feel him breathing against me. He smelled like oranges and talcum powder. I stroked his hair and said, “Shhh,” like Addison had done for me the night before.

“I don’t want you to go,” he said.

I thought about saying I wasn’t going anywhere, but that was a lie and there had been too many of those. I pushed him away from me and wiped the tears off his cheeks with my shirtsleeve.

“You okay?”

He nodded.

“Good. That was a bad idea.”

“I followed you.”

“I figured.”

“You’re leaving, aren’t you?”

“Yeah. For a while.”

I picked up his bike and pushed it to my car as we walked. I opened the back door, and with his help we got it in the backseat. We got in and I started the car and put the heat on high. We sat together, watching the bridge twist in the wind. I turned the heat down. Alex and I were both sitting with our palms open and resting on our knees with our index fingers curled slightly.

“I’m your mother,” I said finally.

He nodded.

“Something bad happened to me here. That’s why I left.”

“Was it me?” he asked.

I finally knew the answer.

“No,” I said, as I began to cry. “It had nothing to do with you.”

He reached for my hand. I looked down and rubbed my thumb against his coffee-colored birthmark.

“I miss Diana,” he said.

“Me too.”

I
T WAS THE AFTERNOON
of my son’s eleventh birthday. I was leaning against the Grover Cleveland statue and waiting for school to let out. It was one of those luscious spring days when the sun’s light makes everything appear crisper, more focused.

I had been sober for one year, twelve days, and eighteen hours. The waistband on my jeans was cutting a ridge in my once flat, and now rounder, stomach. Without alcohol I needed something, so food comforted me. Double Stuf Oreos took the edge off. I carried a dozen or so around with me in a ziplock bag in my purse next to a copy of my mother’s note—her message in a bottle cast from an island of regret.

He isn’t who you think he is …
.

My palms were sweaty, and I had that odd, new feeling of not quite fitting in my own skin. One of the downsides to being sober is you get to feel uncomfortable most of the time.

I’d been gone for ten years.

I knew I would leave Wilton and Alex again. What I didn’t know is if I would ever come back. Addison was right; if I was to go I needed to get gone, and if I were to stay? I wasn’t sure how to do that.

Alex and I sat in the car for hours that day at Rucker’s Ravine and talked about his life. He told me he missed me, even though he never knew me. “Does that sound stupid?” he asked.

“No,” I said.

We went to breakfast at the Omega diner and discovered our mutual love for onion rings and chocolate milkshakes. I began to feel woefully incapable of sustaining a presence in his life. I wanted to drink more than I wanted to be with him.

I called Addison from the pay phone by the restroom and asked him to come get us. I didn’t tell him he was only taking Alex until he got there.

Addison wasn’t surprised. He acted as if he had known all along that this was how it would go. Instead of feeling relieved, I was disappointed. Perhaps I had hoped he would fight for me to stay. Alex wasn’t as accommodating, and insisted on understanding why I had to go.

“I’m not a good person,” I said, as he turned away to hide his tears.

“How can you say that? You’re my mother,” he said. I didn’t understand that in his mind, if I was not a good person, then neither was he. It wouldn’t have mattered to explain that I was sure he had more of Addison in him than me and more of me than my father.

“That’s not what she means,” Addison said. “She means she doesn’t feel good. She needs to get better.”

Alex looked at me as if I had a big tumor coming out of my head that he hadn’t noticed before.

“I haven’t been myself for a long time,” I said, as I brushed my hand through Alex’s flannel-soft hair. It would have been easy to love a boy with hair that smooth.

In the end, Addison and Alex let me go. Alex made me promise to come back as soon as I felt better. “There are worse things than leaving,” Addison said, as he walked me to the car. I wondered what he meant. The only thing worse than leaving is coming back?

Alex stood rigidly by Addison’s truck like a good soldier and watched me leave for the second time in his short life.

I drove through the night and found myself in Pittsburgh just as
the sun was coming up. I found my way to Diana’s old house and fell asleep in my car. A neighbor told me where she was buried and made me a hot cup of coffee to go.

I told Diana everything that day. I started standing up, and as I got deeper into the story, I sat on her grave and leaned against her headstone and talked until I was hoarse. I found words to describe what had happened that night. Words I had never spoken to a living soul. Words I could only say to the woman who had mothered my child and who tried to mother me. I needed her to know there was a reason I did what I did.

I got halfway back to the car before I realized I had not said the one thing I needed to say. I went back and kneeled next to her headstone and got close to the earth and whispered, “Thank you.” Maybe it was the wind, or the way the branch of the oak tree that stood guard beside her grave gave way, or maybe it was the ground beneath me releasing the cold, but I felt a shift, a slow turning.