The Last Bridge Page 13

  Dad put a cigarette in his mouth and pushed in the lighter. The ashtray was overflowing with butts and the cellophane wrappers from new packs.

  “You think I’m a fool, don’t you?” he said as he balanced the unlit cigarette on his lower lip.

  I shook my head.

  “He wouldn’t marry your mother. Just like Addison won’t marry you.”

  “Who?”

  “Shut the fuck up!” he exploded, with a smack that threw me against the passenger door. I felt blood trickling out of my nose. Tears burned my cheeks, and once again I could not see what was in front of me.

  The lighter popped out as Dad turned the radio up louder.

  Janis Joplin was begging a man to take another little piece of her heart.

  The inside of the cab filled with smoke as my father took long careful drags on both his cigarette and stash of Jack. We were traveling down the main road, which could lead anywhere. I shoved my hands between my legs to warm them as the rain beat down on us with a fury matched only by my father’s. If he would only slow down, I’d roll out.

  “I married her. I stayed in this goddamned hellhole. And for what?”

  He looked at me but it wasn’t me he was seeing; it never was. The ticktock of his turn signal synchronized with the swishing of the wipers. My face was expanding. My teeth ached.

  We turned off the main road just as the rain let up.

  There was a rumble in the back of the truck like a log shifting.

  “We built that bridge together. He was like a brother to me.”

  We veered left at the fork; we were heading for Rucker’s Creek. I rolled my window down to get some air. Black spots like tiny crows fluttered in my peripheral vision. Droplets of rain splashed on my face. I stuck my head out the window and vomited. I tasted blood from my nose as it trickled down my throat.

  Dad pulled me back in.

  “Roll it up.”

  He turned onto the path in the woods that his truck had made from so many trips. He didn’t slow down enough for me to jump out. I needed a chance to run if I was going to escape. I couldn’t risk him catching me.

  We pulled up to the clearing with the rope bridge that connected the ravine.

  “Let’s go,” he said as he put the truck in gear, left the headlights on, and came in front of the truck toward me.

  We were going to walk the plank.

  FIFTEEN

  ADDISON’S COFFEE WAS as strong as his grip.

  “Drink up,” he said as I sat at our kitchen table and let Addison slide my boots off. I’d backed into the creek and twisted my ankle trying to get away from him and the words I had traveled great distances not to hear. I would have crawled home if I had been alone but I wasn’t. Before I could get up I felt Addison’s hands reach under my armpits and hoist me up.

  “Lean on me,” he said.

  “Please don’t.” I couldn’t finish the thought. The pain was blinding.

  We hobbled like that the rest of the way home. Neither of us spoke except to communicate direction changes or a need to rest. He held me against him, his arm wrapped around my waist and his shoulder wedged against my own.

  I was too tired to struggle and too drunk to care.

  “Want me to carry you?” he said.

  The last time he carried me he thought he was saving me.

  How wrong he was.

  We made it to the house. He found the key we left on top of the lamppost and unlocked the door. Inside, he helped me to a chair and made a pot of coffee.

  “You can go,” I said as he squatted down in front of me and pulled the boot off my good foot and warmed my toes with his hands.

  “God, Alex, you’re frozen.”

  He stood up and took my mother’s washbasin out from under the sink and filled it with steaming hot water and soap and brought it over.

  “This is going to hurt.” He carefully removed my other boot as he held my calf. He winced before I did. “Sorry,” he said.

  I began to cry as he slipped my wet, holey socks off and gently rolled up my jeans. He placed my feet in the hot, sudsy water and slowly rubbed feeling back into me.

  SIXTEEN

  MY FATHER CAUGHT me by the arm about twenty feet from the car. I screamed and clawed at him with a fierceness that startled me. The sounds emanating from my throat were not human.

  “Let go.” I pushed away from his massive arms.

  “Stop it,” he said in a voice that was so calm I almost relaxed into the sureness of it. Maybe I was wrong about what was happening; maybe we were just going to talk about walking the plank.

  The wind was howling. The ground beneath me was slippery and muddy as I scrambled for footing. My father released me and shoved me down on the ground so hard he knocked the wind out of me.

  “You need to grow up, little girl,” he said. “You need to get some balls if you’re going to survive your life.”

  My father was haloed in the headlights from his truck. I struggled to get up but the ground was slick. The best I could manage was getting on all fours.

  “Do you know what it’s like to lose everything?” he said, his thick bear arms waving at the sky. “She was mine and he took her. This farm should have been mine. And you …” He walked to the truck and opened the passenger door.

  He’s getting a gun. He’s going to kill me.

  He rummaged behind the seat as I pushed myself up to a standing position. The high spindly trees lush with summer leaves waved around me like a crowd around a boxer waiting for him to hit the ground. I put my arms out. If I had to, I would feel my way out. I stumbled toward the woods.

  “You think I don’t know?” Each word moved closer to me. I could hear the slapping of his boots on the mud. Even in his funeral suit he wore his steel-toed work boots. He grabbed my shoulder and spun me around. The force threw me back to the ground. He leaned over and lifted my head up.

  He was holding the red sketchbook Addison had given me. It was still in the big plastic bag I kept it in.

  I reached for it. He snatched it away and walked to the ravine.

  “You won’t cross for me; maybe you’ll cross for this.” He threw the book out past the bridge, past the streaks of light from the car, far away from my line of vision.

  “I wanted one thing to be mine. I settled for you,” he said, as he walked back toward me and put his hands under my armpits and pulled me up. “Let’s go.”

  The sky had opened up as we were halfway across the bridge. My father held me by the waist and pushed me across as I trembled and wished for death. We were soaked by the time I slipped on the step up from the bridge and almost fell into the ravine.

  Sadly, my father caught me and dragged me to solid ground. I felt his weight bearing down on me, one hand pressing my head into the smooth mud and the other under my skirt… tearing at my underwear, and then it was inside me, but it wasn’t a hand. No, it wasn’t a hand at all.

  He passed out on top of me. I managed to push him off and pull myself to a dry patch of ground under a pricker bush. My right leg had swollen to twice the size of my left, and judging by the snapping sound it made when my father tackled me as we made the final step on the bridge, I was certain it was broken. I had partial eyesight from the swollen slits each of my eyes had become. My lips were bleeding and swollen. My chest felt like someone had reached in and pulled my heart out with his bare hands.

  My hands were strong, though, and I used them to get away.

  I blacked out once I was under the bush. I felt pain everywhere, and while I had heard it called blinding, this was more vivid. This was pain that had no sound, no voice.

  “Cat.” I was dreaming of my father slicing me in half with his band saw when I felt a hand on my cheek and then two arms lifting me.

  It was Jared.

  It had stopped raining.

  “What did he do to you?” he muttered, as he carried me through the slippery mud and grass away from the bridge and deeper into the clearing. I had made it to the other side, the
one I had never been on. He laid me down on a cot inside a small hunting shack. It smelled like moss and dried leaves.

  “I’m getting help.”

  “Don’t leave me.” I reached for him as I began to cry.

  “I’ll be back.”

  He walked to the door and came back and held my hand.

  “Dad’s gone. You’re safe.”

  Jared carried me back across the bridge slung over his shoulder, like a fireman. My pelvis ached against his shoulder. I wanted to vomit but convinced myself I wouldn’t as there was no way I could get my mouth open wide enough.

  Addison was at the other side with his truck. They made a bed in the back for me out of sleeping bags. I threw up on Addison when he tried to wrap me in a sweater.

  SEVENTEEN

  “DOES IT STILL HURT?” Addison asked, as he massaged feeling back into my legs. His hands felt like a warm salve on my chapped skin as his fingers kneaded my muscles, willing them to respond.

  I shook my head. After the bridge, my leg was fractured in three places. I wore a cast for two months and had lingering stiffness whenever it was cold or rained. It wasn’t the leg that hurt.

  “This ankle is larger.” His index finger outlined the bone.

  I pulled away.

  He got up and tossed me a dish towel to dry my feet off. “I’ll help you to bed.”

  “I’m not tired.”

  “I am, and I have to relieve the babysitter. I’ll get you upstairs.”

  “I can crawl.”

  “I don’t want you to.”

  I started to cry again. Addison walked to the counter by the phone and found a piece of scrap paper and a pen and wrote something down and placed the sheet in front of me on the table.

  “This is our address and phone number. Come anytime. I won’t tell him who you are. You can if you want.”

  I tried to say something but it was too late for that. Too late to say, “I have not forgotten him.” Too late to tell him why.

  “I wish I was different,” I said. We looked at each other. He smiled.

  “Put your arm around my shoulder.” He reached for me. “Take it a step at a time.”

  I woke up and knew it was time to go. I didn’t have much to pack. I’d been taking stuff out of the car as I needed it and I didn’t need much.

  On a long shot, I checked my hiding place in the barn to see if my red sketchbook had magically reappeared. It hadn’t. Of all the things I had tried to forget, I couldn’t let go of the image of my drawings flying across the ravine in the blinding rain.

  My ankle was sore, but not so bad that I couldn’t push through the pain. I hobbled to and from the barn and the car. The sun made a brief appearance before retreating behind a gang of nasty-looking rain clouds.

  I had the safe-deposit key in my pocket. I would make my stop at the bank, get the papers, limp to the post office, and mail everything to Jared.

  I was bone-tired and numb. I focused on the relief I would feel after a long pull of something 80 proof and tried not to think about Addison.

  Pam Cassidy, the mousy-haired bank manager, introduced herself after offering her condolences for my loss. “Your mother said you would be coming.”

  “She told you she was going to kill herself?”

  Pam shook her head. “She said she was moving to California and you would be handling her affairs.”

  “California?”

  We walked to the back of the main floor, which was as empty as my stomach. Her spike heels clicked against the marble tiles. The bank, with its dark-paneled walls, big mahogany desks, and sourfaced tellers, was desperately in need of an update.

  “Did she say where in California?”

  Pam stopped and looked at the fluorescent light above her. She shook her head and continued leading me down the long hallway.

  “In here.” I entered a room filled with tightly rowed banks of drawers. Pam scanned the numbered columns, found my mother’s box, slid in our keys, and took out a long tin drawer and put it on the small table in the corner.

  “I’ll be outside if you need me.”

  I opened the box, expecting it to be empty except for the deed, and found it stuffed full of documents in a big ziplock bag. I took out the bag and pulled out the documents. The deed was on top, along with a note.

  Cat,

  Find Addison and ask him about this—he’s in Wilton.

  Mom xxxooo

  My hands began to sweat.

  I opened the deed to the signatory page in the back. I didn’t recognize the handwriting. I looked at the name printed in block letters beneath it:

  JARED ADDISON WATKINS

  Addison’s father owned our farm. He had since 1979, the year my parents were married. I dropped the deed and pressed my palms against my eyes and rocked back and forth. I took a breath and put the bag into my purse and left the room.

  “Jared owns our farm,” I said to my Jared on the phone.

  “I’m sorry, someone is in my office; what did you say?”

  “Jared owns our farm.”

  “He gets a set of copies,” Jared said, away from the receiver.

  “Listen!” I shouted. Pam put her fingers to her lips to shush me. It was bad enough I asked to make a long-distance call, but screaming was not in the charter for good customer relations even if there were no other customers around.

  “I’m sure there’s a reason,” Jared said. “Can’t you sort it out?”

  “There’s nothing to sort out. He owns the farm; call him,” I said, and slammed down the phone.

  I did not go to the post office as planned. I ended up at Walt’s Tavern at a table in the back with a pitcher of beer, four shots, and the pile of my mother’s papers. It was hard to remember the last time food tasted good to me. I took another shot and pounded the table as I swallowed hard.

  “I thought you’d be gone by now.” Andrew Reilly sat on the bench across from me holding a frosty draft.

  “Are you following me?” I asked.

  “I saw your car in the parking lot.”

  “It’s two o’clock; aren’t there toes that need tags?” I said. I lifted my mug and chugged it.

  “I need to talk to you,” he said, lifting his mug in the air. “There is something I’ve been meaning to tell you.”

  Great. Bring it on. I leaned forward but Andrew said nothing. He looked at his mug and slid farther down in his seat. I surveyed the stack of papers and wondered if I had the balls to go through them. I took a shot and waited for him to speak.

  “I miss her,” he said, in the confessional tone of afternoon drunks at a bar. “Your mom was …” He hung his head and shook it back and forth. “I don’t mean to make you uncomfortable.”

  I laughed. “You’re not even in the zone.”

  His eyes met mine and studied my face.

  “You look like her.”

  I struggled to steady my hands long enough to light a cigarette.

  “I saw pictures of both of you when you were younger. You could have been sisters. You probably knew that.”

  “You sure know a lot about my family.” I exhaled and felt the heat of menthol in my throat. As much as I smoked, I never got used to the initial burn.

  “We got close toward the end.”

  The wind blew the front door open. The bartender asked one of the regulars to close it. He shielded his eyes from the light as he walked to the door. Daylight and bars don’t mix; drinking is best done in the dark.

  “Did she tell you she was going to kill herself?” I asked, trying to sound as nonchalant as possible.

  “No. She said she was going to—”

  “California?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did she say why?”

  He shrugged. “She said she wanted to be somewhere nice. I told her it was. I grew up there.”

  She wanted to be somewhere nice? Since when? I wanted to puke.

  One of the barflies put a dollar in the jukebox and queued up more country songs about cheating
lovers and wasting time.

  “I’m adopted!” Andrew leaned over and shouted over the song as it ended. The jukebox stopped; a barfly kicked it to start it up again.

  “Recovering junkies aren’t supposed to drink,” I said as I watched him sip his beer. “It’s not part of the twelve steps, is it?”

  “No.”

  I took a pull of my own and stared at the brown paneling lining the wall behind Andrew.

  “Did you hear me? I said I’m adopted.”

  Our eyes met. His searched mine for recognition as if he were communicating to me in code. I wasn’t sure what that meant. I watched him.

  “You weren’t her sponsor, were you?” I said, as a picture started to form in my head.

  “No.”

  I took another shot.

  “I got transferred to Wilton on purpose.”

  He took a long pull on his beer. The frosty crust of his mug had long ago melted, forming a sweat that dripped on the table when he drank.

  “I was looking for my father,” he said, as he put the mug down.

  He isn’t who you think he is ….

  “I’m going to throw up.” I tried to stand but landed back on my seat. It wasn’t the drink that was making me dizzy.

  “What does that have to do with me?” I said. “Oh, God, is it my father?”

  “No,” he said, in a way that felt more like a precursor than a resolution.

  “Her,” he said, after a pause.

  He reached across the table and grabbed my wrist as if he were trying to stop me from spinning away. I looked at the peach complexion of his slender, delicate fingers and followed the line of his wrist to his arm and shoulder across the hollow crevice of his collarbone up to his chin and the pencil-sharp edges of his nose. The left side of his smile creased down rather than up. I scanned the small details that made a body part of one family and not another. I had missed them until that moment.

  “She was my mother,” he said.

  EIGHTEEN

  I WOKE UP IN A hospital bed. My eyelids were swollen, leaving just enough room to see the pale green paint peeling off the ceiling and dangling above me like tongues wagging. My room contained a bed, a nightstand, and a chair to my right that was pushed against the only part of the wall not covered by a picture-frame window. It had the cozy institutional feel of a janitor’s closet.