The Last Bridge Read online

  From the window I watched Jared and Wendy hug. Whatever had been broken between them seemed mended. I wondered if that was possible or something they just wanted to believe.

  I put the key in my pocket and went to the kitchen. At last I was free to smoke and drink as much as I wanted. No more of Wendy watching over me, safeguarding an unborn child that might never come, or Jared with that beaten-dog look begging for forgiveness.

  I poured myself a breakfast of bourbon and lit a cigarette. “Bottoms up.” I took a swig and tossed my head back. “Fuck you all.”

  The phone rang so loudly I thought the receiver would jump off the cradle. I grabbed it to silence it.

  “Cat? Hello? It’s Ruth Igby.”

  I balanced the receiver on my shoulder as I struggled to light a second cigarette, not realizing I had one burning in the ashtray on the table. The cigarette wasn’t the only thing getting lit.

  “Are you there?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Igby.”

  “Call me Ruth.” I refilled the Flintstones jelly-jar glass with the last of the bourbon and made a mental note to make a liquor store run on my way to the bank. I found a backup bottle of vodka under the sink next to my mother’s Playtex Living gloves. I guess she really wasn’t as sober as she pretended to be.

  “Marty and I would like to know if you would come to supper tonight. I’m making pot roast.”

  “No, thanks.”

  “It’s your first night alone; we thought you might like company.” Little did she know I was alone every night.

  “Nope, I’m fine.”

  “Cat, please come. Your mother would want you to.”

  “What the fuck does that mean?” I wiped the sting of liquor from my lips.

  “Nothing. I think she would like to know you were being taken care of.”

  “That’s funny. She didn’t seem to care that much about me when she was alive.”

  Ruth sighed. She was close to giving up. My goal was to make sure she gave up for good.

  “Cat, come for dinner.”

  I pulled at a piece of wallpaper that was coming loose. How hard would I have to tug to peel away this layer? And if I did, what was underneath?

  I felt Ruth’s desire on the phone. Her need to stuff me full of her fatty pot roast and make herself feel better for ignoring us all those years while family atrocities were being committed over hill and dale. I picked up the bottle of vodka and took a long swig of all that was left.

  “At least come for a drink,” she said.

  “Did my mother talk to you?” I asked as I grabbed the wall for support. The floor was moving in waves beneath me.

  “We were neighbors. I found her.”

  Why did everyone speak so cryptically? A simple yes or no would do just fine.

  I smacked my hand against my forehead, a habit I had whenever someone was being obtuse. It was transference, I assumed. I hit myself to keep from punching their face in.

  “Did my mother talk to you before she died?” I asked again as I stared at an old brown water spot on the ceiling that was shaped like a cartoon balloon.

  Ruth put her hand over the receiver and whispered something to Marty and then shushed him.

  “Mrs. Igby, I don’t have time for your—”

  “Dinner is at four P.M.; Marty can come for you if you’re not up to driving.”

  Even though the Igbys were neighbors, you still had to drive to get to their house—unless you crossed the old field and waded across a small stream.

  “I can drive.”

  “See you at four, then.” She hung up before I could say no.

  I woke up on the couch tangled in the lime and olive zigzag afghan my mother crocheted for my father to match the green tweed upholstery on his La-Z-Boy. The late afternoon sun insinuated itself through the venetian blinds that covered the picture window, making vertical prisonlike shadows.

  I stood up and lost my balance.

  The phone screamed. If this is what life was like for my mother, no wonder she killed herself. I let it ring and ring and ring.

  Until it stopped.

  It began ringing again and again and again.

  I ripped it off the receiver.

  “What?”

  “Cat? It’s Ruth—are you coming?” The squirrelly tone of her voice burrowed itself into my ears and reverberated through my head. If a hangover had a sound, it would be Ruth Igby’s voice.

  The kitchen clock read 4:20 P.M. It couldn’t be right. I had just spoken to her a few minutes ago. I lay down for a bit to clear my head before I went to the liquor store and bank.

  “Do you need a ride?”

  “Oh, crap.” I grabbed the counter to hold myself steady. “I can’t come … I’m not…”

  There’s nothing to drink. You need something.

  “Can Marty come and get me?”

  “What can I offer you … coffee, soda?” Ruth asked, as I stumbled into her living room.

  Didn’t she mention cocktails?

  “Wine or beer?”

  There we go.

  “Beer’s fine,” I replied nonchalantly.

  Marty handed me a semichilled bottle of Rolling Rock with a cocktail napkin wrapped around it. I tried to sip it as I fought the temptation to guzzle it. Ruth brought out a cheese ball with saltines on a silver-toned plastic platter. She had carefully placed the cheese over a paper doily, believing everything looked better with lace.

  Marty offered mixed nuts from an opened can he had resting on the TV tray next to his brown recliner with duct tape patches on the armrests. It didn’t take Columbo to notice he had eaten all of the cashews and peanuts. All that were left were Brazil nuts. I politely refused and prayed there was another, colder beer waiting for me.

  Shirley, the Igbys’ severely overweight basset hound, waddled her way into the living room and plopped herself on top of my feet.

  “You remember Cat… don’t you, Shirley?” Ruth said. I looked at Shirley snoring on my feet and half-expected her to respond.

  “I can’t believe she’s still alive. How old is she?”

  “Fourteen,” Ruth replied icily. I wished the beer was as cold as her stare. I guess I offended her. She probably thought the damn dog would live forever.

  Marty turned on the television. I asked to use the bathroom and took a detour through the kitchen and checked the fridge for beer. There were five shoved on top of a bakery box. I grabbed one, stuck it in my shirt, and headed upstairs, where I at last fulfilled my desire to guzzle away the boredom of a night with the Igbys. When I was finished, I sunk the empty bottle in the toilet tank and headed back to the fun.

  A couple more beers would be enough to get me to sleep through the night. Tomorrow, I’d go to the bank and liquor store and settle everything and move on.

  There was a rustling in the hall as I came down the steps. Ruth was hanging up a toffee-colored barn jacket in the hall closet. She looked up and smiled for the first time all evening.

  “Come down and greet our guest.”

  No one said anything about visitors. Christ, I was barely up for the Igbys and now I had to be nice to some yahoo they invited to keep us all from sitting in silence?

  I walked into the living room prepared to take my leave and saw Addison standing with Marty, watching what sounded like a hockey game on the big-screen TV. His cheeks were rosy from the cold, his hair more rusty than I remembered and shorter, with long, tousled bangs that framed his freckled-tanned face. He was wearing a teal flannel shirt and a white turtleneck with jeans and work boots.

  He looked at me and smiled sweetly, as if we were still in that apartment above the garage, trying to finish what we started.

  I felt light-headed and reached for the wall to steady myself as my senses registered the moment. The booming baritone of the announcer on the television. The smell of pot roast burning in the kitchen. The dust fairies dancing around the doily-covered furniture. The faint hint of citrus coming from Addison. My mind raced, taking inventory of the moment.
He’s here, I’m here, she’s there, he’s there, pot roast is for dinner, the couch is old, Shirley should be dead.

  “Hey,” was all he said as he turned back to the TV.

  “Hey,” I answered, adding a lame wave.

  I looked at Ruth, hoping for some explanation, and then at Marty and waited. Addison watched the game and glimpsed me from the corner of his eye as we all stood in a semicircle around the altar of the TV and prayed for someone to say something.

  “You didn’t tell me you invited other guests,” I said to Ruth.

  “Not guests, friends.”

  Addison is a friend of the Igbys?

  “Right, okay. Listen, I think I’m feeling a little—”

  “Drunk?” she said as she turned away and headed for the kitchen.

  “What?” I said as I followed.

  “You’re a little drunk? Is that what you were trying to say?”

  “No. I was going to say I’m under the weather and I’d like to go.”

  Ruth grabbed a potholder from a hook that was shaped like a cow’s head and opened the oven and pulled out a giant hunk of black smoking meat.

  “There’s beer in the fridge, dear.”

  I walked away, determined to show her just how much I needed to drink to be friendly.

  “Why don’t you go back in the living room and visit with the boys?” Ruth said.

  I grabbed the thigh of my jeans and scrunched a handful into a fist. God, I wanted to punch that smirk off her face. I would be goddamned if I was going to give her the satisfaction of knowing how awful this was. The coat rack was on the way to the living room—I would grab my jacket and slip out the side door. I would pack the car when I got home and leave town after I went to the bank in the morning.

  “Where are you going?”

  Addison had slipped behind me and was standing so close I could feel his breath on my neck.

  “I can’t do this,” I said as I grabbed my coat.

  “I came alone.”

  “Did you know I was going to be here?” I turned around and moved a few steps back.

  He nodded. “I asked Ruth to invite you. I couldn’t think of another way of seeing you.”

  “Did you try knocking on the door? Calling?”

  “I thought it would be better with other people around.”

  “Did you get my mom to kill herself so I would come back?” I snapped.

  “Wow, you’ve gotten—”

  “Mean? Bitter?”

  “You were never …” He shook his head. I guess it was hard to see that that hopeful little kitten that purred when he touched me was gone.

  “That’s right; you were the mean one back then.”

  “Not mean, stupid. There’s a difference. I think you know that.”

  “What I know is that I should go. I don’t belong here.”

  “Nobody really belongs at the Igbys’,” he tried, smiling.

  “In Wilton, Addison. I don’t belong in Wilton.” I reached for my coat again.

  “Stay.”

  He put his hand on top of mine and pressed it against the hook.

  I pulled away but the warmth lingered.

  “Dinner, kids,” Ruth yelled from the kitchen.

  “Come on, you’re not going to make me eat with them all by myself, are you?”

  “You promised you’d leave me alone,” I said.

  “I never said anything. You took off, remember?”

  I took a breath and tried to collect myself. The only way to get any of them off me was to be far away. If my goddamned mother hadn’t… shit. My hands were shaking. Why couldn’t I go?

  “You coming? Ruth’s got the chow on,” Marty said as he passed through the hall to the dining room. Marty had grown to look more like Ruth every year. Even his nose had taken on her hawklike shape. Like most old married couples, they looked more like brother and sister than husband and wife.

  “What’s going on out there?” I heard Ruth whisper as Marty entered the dining room.

  “For the love of God, Ruth, leave them alone for a minute.”

  “Stay. Eat. Go. I won’t come after you, I promise.”

  “Did you really think this would work? That I’d come to the Igbys’ and make small talk with all of you?”

  “You came, didn’t you?”

  “Shut up.”

  I wanted to slump to the floor and put my head in my hands and cry. Just like I did the night of my mom’s funeral when all he was to me was a shadow on the wall.

  “Come on,” he said, in a voice so sure of its desire that it was hard not to follow. He led me by the hand to the table.

  The dining room was filled with so much furniture that sitting and standing had to be synchronized. God forbid you had to go to the bathroom. Ruth was a collector, all right. She had knickknacks and the furniture to hold them. Everything on the table, from the pewter candlesticks to the cut crystal butter dish, had a doily underneath it.

  Ruth put Addison and me across from each other. I tried not to look at him during the meal, but occasionally he asked me to pass something and I had no choice. I was hoping that it would get easier being around him but it didn’t.

  The black meat wasn’t pot roast at all, this much I knew. It was roast beef or some other kind of beast. The mashed potatoes were bland and starchy. I imagined I could use them to paste the loose wallpaper in our kitchen. Canned peas were the green vegetable; apparently Birds Eye technology had not invaded the Igby house.

  I washed the first three forkfuls down with the last of my beer.

  The only sounds were the clanking of the utensils against the two-for-one china that was given away down at the local Kroger years ago. Ruth had also gotten the matching plastic goblets, which were scratched up and dulled from years spent trying to be crystal.

  Shirley Basset was lying at my feet and farting in that toxic way the near dead do. I expected the little gnome figurines would talk before anyone at the table did. Finally, Ruth spoke, with her butter knife pointed at me for emphasis.

  “Why don’t you tell us what you’ve been up to all these years?”

  I looked around the table. Addison was acting casually, eating his peas, hacking away at his roast beast, while Marty shoveled food into his mouth and stared at his plate. The truth was, no one but Ruth was really interested, and the truth was not something she had an intimate relationship with, so I chose to lie.

  “Oh, this and that,” I said, trying to imitate the tone of someone who was nice. “I live in New York now and work as a bartender on the West Side. I’m going to school at night and trying to get a nursing degree. My dream in life is to take care of people.”

  I drank my water as if it were booze and looked at Addison. He rolled his eyes, releasing another small burst of all that disappointment he had been brewing for ten years.

  Ruth put her utensils down and wove her hands together in front of her as if she were about to lead us in prayer.

  “Whatever your path, you are welcome here.”

  Addison looked at Ruth and then at me, and we both laughed. Certainly he could have come up with a better way to see me again than dinner at this crazy woman’s house.

  “If you’re going to laugh at me …” Ruth hung her head.

  “No, no.” Addison reached for her arm to pat it. He still had that effortless charm. The natural ease with women that made them bend to him.

  “Good dinner, Ruth,” I said, surprised at my own burst of kindness.

  “Thanks,” she said, as she studied me as if she were wondering how I would look on top of a doily.

  The cake and coffee part was painful. Marty jumped in with sports talk. He and Addison kicked the usual set of stats back and forth as I studied the hundreds of dirt-colored Hummel figurines jammed in the breakfront behind him.

  “Tell us about your little one,” Ruth interrupted when the conversation lagged after Addison confirmed that he too believed the Browns had a chance for the championship next season.

  “
He’s fine,” Addison said.

  “How old is he now?”

  “Going on ten,” Addison mumbled. He got up and tried clearing the table but he was boxed in by Marty.

  If I could have jumped from my skin I would have—here it was at last—the words we had not uttered since my return. The mention of the baby who had become a boy.

  “Have you met Addison’s son yet? He’s delightful,” Ruth said to me.

  “I have to go.” I leaped up and realized I was boxed in by Ruth. My knees buckled as I struggled to keep myself from flipping the table over to get out.

  “Everybody, stand the fuck up!” I shouted.

  “Alex, wait.” Addison was running after me. I was taking the hard way home—through the fields and eventually over the creek—but I didn’t care. The air was bitter cold and the ground was quilted in patches of snow and muddy puddles that seeped into a small hole in one of my cowboy boots.

  Behind me Addison’s footsteps crunched in the same path a few paces behind.

  “For God’s sake, Alex, stop before I have a heart attack!”

  I kept walking but turned. “You planned that. You can’t leave well enough alone, can you? I don’t want to see him!”

  “I’m not asking you to,” he shouted as he closed in on me. Christ, why did I always have to be so goddamned drunk? I could move better sober—it was the standing still that was hard. “Don’t you want to know if he’s happy? If he asks about—”

  “Does he have a mother?” I shouted. The words rushed out before I could stop them. This was the hardest part of being back—the way my own feelings betrayed me.

  And yet, in that instant it made sense to ask. Surely Addison had found a mother for him. What was the point of all that charm if he couldn’t conjure a Mother and Wife?

  Addison stopped and put his hands on his knees and caught his breath. He shook his head.

  “I’m not married, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “I’m not asking about you. I’m asking about him. Does he have a mother?”

  God, I wanted him to say yes. To say he didn’t even know about me. To say he had a wonderful mother who took care of him from birth, someone he called “Mom.” Someone who couldn’t tell him anything about me except this: “I don’t know why your real mother left you.”