The Last Bridge (8 page)

One night toward the end of spring semester, Addison didn’t show up after school as he had promised. When I got home Mom was making dinner and Dad sat in the family room shouting at the television and drinking.

“Cat’s home,” Mom called to Dad. I looked at her with a why-did-you-do-that face. She shrugged her shoulders and whispered, “He was asking for you.” Even though Mom was more than happy to turn Dad over to me, she didn’t understand why I was angry with her all the time.

“Cat!” Dad yelled. I swallowed hard and went to him. He looked me over like I was a toy he was thinking of ordering from a catalog. I instinctively crossed my arms and pushed down the fear.

“You want something?” I asked as his eyes roamed over my legs.

“Your ass is getting fat,” he said, smacking it hard. “Get me some ice.”

I shook off the sting of his slap and brought him a tumbler stuffed with fresh cubes. He patted the armrest of his La-Z-Boy. Over the years I learned the code of his gestures and expressions. I studied it like a language, not for meaning but for warning. If I could read him I could stay ahead of him or at least try to anticipate what was coming and prepare myself.

I balanced as little of my body as I could on the edge of the armrest. He filled the tumbler with the bourbon he kept nearby and took a long cold pull as his left hand wandered up my skirt.

The sandpaper scruffiness of his fingers kneaded my thigh. It wasn’t a squeeze so much as a grip, as if I were a chicken and my leg was the drumstick he would tear off and devour. It was warm that day so I wore kneesocks instead of tights. Tights were better for encounters with Dad.

As his hand sought more of me, I thought of Kitty Kat and the battle she would fight against the Hand. I would draw it tonight. I would make her body a weapon, rage would be her arsenal, and her
reward would be a life in Niceville. Wherever the hell that was; sometimes even Kitty forgot.

“Where’s Addison?” Dad asked as he stumbled to his chair. I had been released from sitting with him to help set the table.

“He’s visiting a friend and won’t be home until later,” Mom answered as she served Dad steaming spoonfuls of baked macaroni.

Dad tried to pick fights with all of us during dinner. All except Wendy. He started with Mom about the dinner, saying macaroni was slop for pigs. He threw the plate at her, and after dodging it, she fixed him a ham sandwich and sat back down and pushed a clump of bread crumbs around her plate.

Jared was next.

“So how’s that pussy team of yours doing this season?”

“Fine,” Jared responded, staring blankly into space.

“How many girls are on the team, besides you?”

Jared didn’t flinch. “There are none, sir. No girls on the team.”

“If you ask me, all boys are girls nowadays. When I played ball, you had to be a mean motherfucker to survive out there. You had to have hate in you.” Dad pointed his thick index finger at Jared. “You had to have the desire to kill a man with your bare hands.” He took a long swig of his liquid ammunition. “You have that in you, boy?”

Jared’s focus shifted from a fixed point on the wall. “Yes, sir,” he answered as he locked eyes with Dad. Jared clenched his butter knife.

We finished the last few moments of dinner in a silent standoff. After years of mealtime conflict, we had perfected the quick eat. From start to finish, we could get the meal on and off the table and dishes washed in fifteen minutes.

“What’s for dessert?” Dad asked. He had a thing about sweets; he said he didn’t like them, but at least three or four times a week he asked for dessert.

As Mom cut pieces of apple pie Mrs. Igby had dropped by earlier, Dad said, “Don’t give Cat any. She doesn’t need it.” My mother looked at me and then at my father and nodded.

“Keep chubbing up like that and no man will have you,” Dad said. Wendy giggled. “And don’t even think of sneaking a piece up to her room.” He pointed at Mom when she looked my way.

“I don’t want any!” I said before I could calculate the consequence.

Dad put his fork down and slid what was left of his pie over to me. Before I knew what was happening, he grabbed my neck with his hand and pushed my face down into the plate. “There—eat your pie, piggy.”

I felt shards of light smashing against my eyelids as I quickly tried to assess what had happened and what he might do next. Before I could get my bearings, he lifted my head from the plate by my neck and tried to stuff the crust in my face as I swung my arms in front of me to stop him. My nose and mouth were throbbing. My eyes were tearing. The force of his hand caused my chair to tilt onto the back legs. I flailed my arms out like a baby bird trying to fly. I heard Jared’s chair fall behind him as he jumped up and pulled Dad off me.

I fell forward and tried to keep my head up. I sat in a daze staring at the roosters on my mother’s plastic tablecloth.

Count the roosters. One, two … Don’t cry …. Count the roosters
.

My nose was bleeding onto the orange-and-brown feathers of the roosters and I let it. My father grabbed the car keys and stormed out of the house.

“Cat, if he says no dessert just say no,” Wendy said.

“Eat shit, Wendy,” I said. “I hope he dies.”

“You don’t mean that, Cat.” Mom held my head back and cleared the crumbs and blood off the table.

As soon as the room stopped spinning, I left the house for the woods.

I sat alone on the stump for a while before Jared came out with a washcloth and a bag of ice. “I thought you might have a bit of a shiner.” I nodded. He knelt next to me and dabbed the dried blood
off my face. “There, that’s better,” he said. I rolled my eyes and felt tears flowing down my cheeks. “You know Dad’s mean to you because you’re so much smarter and prettier than Wendy or Mom.”

“I’d settle for being dumb and ugly if it meant he’d keep his paws off me.”

We stared at the stars that appeared through a small clearing of trees. The wind rustled the leaves, making them sound like skirts swirling at a dance.

“Thanks for getting him off me.”

“No problem,” he said, taking my hand.

After a few minutes he got up. “So how about coming back to the house with me and we’ll have some pie.” I looked at him and smiled.

“I’ve got some on my sleeve here,” I said.

“And a little on your blouse.” He kissed the top of my head and walked back.

I kept the ice on my eye until my fingers grew numb, then tossed the cubes on the ground in front of me and told myself I would go back when the last one melted. I pulled out my black book and tried to sketch the fight I had mapped out in my mind, but my eye throbbed too much for me to concentrate. Some nights I couldn’t draw my way out.

It was around midnight when I headed back. As I made my way out of the woods, I saw the headlights of a truck pull around the barn toward the garage and figured it was Dad. I waited some time before going in to make sure he had a chance to pass out in bed or in front of the TV.

I heard talking by the barn and thought maybe it was Addison and my father, until I caught the crackle of a giggle. I followed the driveway that led to the garage away from the house and saw Addison against his truck with a tall blond woman wearing a loose peasant skirt and a white sheer cotton top that was lifted up over her breasts.

“Let’s go upstairs,” she said as Addison buried his head in her neck as his hands inched her skirt up her thighs. I stepped into the
shadow between the pools of light from the garage and the side porch.

“No one can see us,” he moaned, without looking to see if that were true.

She looked around as he whispered something in her ear that made her tip her head back and sigh, responding to his touch.

Addison’s hands worked her skirt up and pulled her underwear down. His focus was absolute, his mission clear. The woman reached for his pants and unbuttoned his fly.

I had seen animals doing it before and watched in fascination at the quick and awkward way a male and a female came together. I had imagined sex between people to be different, less frantic. This did not appear to be the case, at least with Addison. His intensity was no different than that of a bull.

Their sounds were more guttural than tender. She grunted as Addison banged his hips against her. Their rhythm increased rapidly as she gripped his back. Addison grabbed the truck like he was afraid his thrusts were going to topple it over.

I watched them in full view. All Addison had to do was look up and he would have seen me standing there, hands clenched into fists and feet apart as if I were ready to fight. What I was fighting for was painfully unclear.

I watched until a final grunt signaled the finish. Addison moved away and buttoned his pants.

“I’ll take you home,” he said.

She pulled her blouse down and fluffed her skirt as if they had finished searching for something she had lost. “You promised me that drink,” she said as she reached under the truck and picked up her panties and shook the dirt off.

“One drink. I have to get up early,” he said, as he walked up the stairs to the apartment without checking to see if she was following.

I felt my hands uncurl from fists and my body go limp like a boxer down for the count.

T
HE SOUND OF
the phone ringing reverberated inside my head. I shot up in bed and looked frantically around the strange room. Amnesia was a by-product of the black edge of sleep I drank myself into most nights. My mother’s dressing table, the four bedposts—I was in my parents’ room and my mother was still dead. The clock said 9:00
A.M.,
but outside it was rainy and dismal and looked like it could have been evening. My head ached, my chest was tight from too much smoking, and my feet were sore from wearing pumps all day. I was wrapped in my mother’s bedspread and still wearing the black dress and stockings but had managed to take my mom’s earrings off and put them on the nightstand.

I slid to standing and groped my way to the mirror. My face was pale and sallow. I had finally mastered the perfect marriage of emaciated and bloated. My mascara had raccooned my eyes and left tiny polka dots along the edge of my lower eyelids. My hair was as smooth and silky as the head of a mop.

I should have crawled into the casket with her.

I shuffled to the bathroom and restarted my bladder and kidneys through intense concentration and focus, then brushed my teeth and spilled cold water on my face. I left tracks of black mascara on my mother’s crisp white guest towels.

The upstairs was empty, with open doors revealing made beds and packed bags.

I made my way down the creaky back stairs. The harvest-gold telephone cord stretched past the landing. Jared was mumbling into the receiver as I limboed under and faced the blinding fluorescent light of the kitchen.

“Yes, I understand.” His back was to me as he tried to untwist the long phone cord.

He caught my eye and waved. “Madison,” he mouthed, as if I had asked.

There was a fresh pot of coffee on the stove. No Mr. Coffee for my mom. We were a farm family and that meant fresh coffee from a percolator all day for whomever stopped by. Farmers drink coffee like teenagers drink Coke.

Jared pointed to the store-bought muffins and juice on the table. A fresh pack of cigarettes sat on top of my car keys.

I checked the driveway for cars; Wendy’s was missing.

I poured a tumbler of coffee, grabbed a muffin and my cigs, and headed to the stairs en route to a bath.

Jared poked me and then held his finger out as if to say, “One second.”

“Yes, I know. I’m going to speak to her about it. Maybe tomorrow. I love you too.”

Jared finally said good-bye and untangled himself as he hung up the phone.

“You’d think she would have gotten a new cord,” he said.

“Why? It went everywhere she needed.” I lit up a cigarette.

“Wendy went to see Dad before they head back.”

“They’re leaving?”

He nodded.

“Doesn’t she have to take care of stuff?”

I assumed Wendy would stay to deal with whatever it is one does when your mother kills herself and your father is practically dead in the hospital.

“She’s got to get back. Willard’s got work and she’s got treatments.”

“What’s wrong?”

“She and Willard are trying to get pregnant.”

“I thought you and Wendy didn’t talk that often.” I walked to the sink and flicked my ashes in the drain.

“We talked last night—after you passed out.”

“Fell asleep.”

“Whatever. They’ve been trying for years.”

“I didn’t realize people actually tried to have children,” I said as I took a long drag. Nothing like the first nicotine rush of the day.

“Some people try to get over their problems,” Jared said, with just enough edge to his voice to make my skin crawl. He had taken a seat at the table and was picking at a muffin.

“Are we talking about Wendy or me?”

“I’m talking about all of us. Don’t you think it’s time?” He took a deep breath that looked as if it were more effort to hold in his words than to let them out. “Look, you’ve been MIA for how many years? Eight, nine?”