The Last Bridge Read online

  The smell of ammonia and piss perfumed the air, one attempting to disguise the other. Beeps and intercom sounds came from the ceiling. “Dr. Kramer, Dr. Kramer, please call extension twelve.” Sometimes it was clear, and other times it sounded like marbles rolling across cobblestones.

  My mouth felt like it had been wiped dry with steel wool. The insides of my cheeks were scraped as if I had been gnawing at myself in my sleep. My teeth throbbed and felt confined in my gums. My upper lip was split.

  He beat the shit out of me.

  I curled my fingers into fists and felt a strain of soreness between my legs. My body felt dense from my neck to my pelvis, like I had been deboned and prepped for butchering. My hips resisted movement when I tried to shift my weight. At first I thought I was restrained, until I saw a cast covering my right leg from my toes to the middle of my thigh.

  “Bad break,” a voice said from the doorway. I looked toward it, unable to lift my head more than a few inches off the pillow. “I’m Dr. Kramer,” he said as he walked into the room.

  “You need to dial extension twelve.” The dryness of my mouth combined with my puffy lips made it sound like I said “You bead tension hell.” Dr. Kramer smiled as he came into view. He was old, with dark, kind eyes couched by baggy eyelids. He looked like a basset hound with a stethoscope. His hair was silver and combed neatly off his face with what might have been the aid of VO5.

  “There seems to be some discrepancy about what happened to you.” His tone was friendly, as if he were asking me my favorite color. I didn’t know what Addison or Jared had said when they brought me in.

  “I fell,” I said, making a conscious effort to speak clearly.

  He reached for the bed controls and pressed a few buttons to adjust me to a sitting position. “There,” he said, as he put his stethoscope in his ears and warmed the bottom with his hands. He put it into my gown and listened while staring at the wall in front of him.

  “Did you fall on a fist?” he asked, as he moved the stethoscope to different places on my chest and then gently eased me forward and held me as he checked my back. I was too weary to care about anyone touching me. He lifted the sheet and looked at my leg, touching my cast. “It’s almost dry. What’s your name?” he said as he moved around the bed checking different parts of me. It was hard to swallow.

  “Why is my throat so sore?” I said. My eyes watered from the pain of speaking.

  Dr. Kramer took a mirror from the nightstand drawer and held it in front of me. “There’s your trouble,” he said, pointing to two hand-shaped bruises around my neck.

  The mirror reflected a face I did not recognize. I gazed into my own eyes and did not feel the visual handshake that happens when you see yourself. My face had morphed into someone different. I turned away.

  “Name?”

  “Alex.” Cat was gone. I would never see her face again when I looked in the mirror. All I would see were the dead eyes and split lips.

  “Age?” Dr. Kramer lifted my hand and felt for my pulse. His fingers warmed my wrist as he counted my heartbeats to the second hand on his watch. He smelled like licorice.

  “Seventeen.”

  He put my wrist down. “You have a strong heart,” he said.

  I shook my head and turned away from him. A beating heart is not necessarily a strong one.

  He pulled up the chair and sat down and cradled my hand between his; maybe he was trying to heal me, but I was through being touched. Through with men trespassing on my body.

  “Let me help you. You’re a minor.”

  Dr. Kramer handed me a cup with a bendy straw and lifted me by the shoulders to get a better angle for drinking. The water was warm and wet on my lips and tasted a little like the inside of the plastic pitcher it had resided in for God knows how long. I wanted ice-cold water that sweated down the sides of a glass. I wanted lemonade with extra sugar, iced tea with mint and honey; I wanted something to burn away the flashes of memory I had been having since I opened my eyes. I wanted something to take away the taste of blood that ran down my throat as he pressed my head into the ground.

  “Hello, Bug,” my mother’s voice rang from the doorway. She hadn’t called me Bug since I was a little girl. “Can I come in?”

  Dr. Kramer nodded. “Please.” He stood up and motioned for her to sit as he inched out of her way. “Perhaps you can convince your daughter to tell me what happened so I can help her.”

  My mother looked down at the floor.

  “Or maybe you can tell me,” he said to her.

  “I fell,” I tried to say, but it sounded like “I hell.”

  Mom clutched her handbag as if it were stuffed with cash. Her hair was pinned back off her face the way she wore it to church. She looked peaceful, as if she knew everything was going to be all right.

  Dr. Kramer hung my chart back up on the end of my bed and squeezed my good foot. “I’ll be back later. Get some rest.”

  My mother smiled.

  “I think we’re going to have a mild summer.”

  I stared at her.

  “Your father is thinking if the weather holds, he might try to paint the barn. I don’t think it’s been painted since I was your age. Only problem is, once you paint the barn it will make the house look shabby.”

  “Mommy,” I said as I began to cry. I felt my stomach convulse. I needed her to hold me. I reached my hand to her as I called, “Mommy,” over and over again.

  She did nothing. The more I cried, the more I wanted to. I was crying for all of it, for everything they had taken from me and everything they put in its place.

  Through my black eyes and tears, it was hard to make out the look on her face as she sat there. Her head was down as if she were lost in prayer, or as if, like me, she had learned how to vacate her body at will.

  There wasn’t a lot left. I could still feel the warmth of a human hand on mine, still wiggle my toes, and still see what was in front of me. I could also still feel something—and listening to my mother as she spun her conversation away from the truth, away from me and toward her carefully manufactured view of the world, I felt the black oil of rage bubble up inside me.

  “I hope he kills you,” I said in a gravelly tone.

  Her body relaxed as her purse dropped to her lap. She looked above me at what I guessed was a crucifix because she blessed herself and said a prayer to herself and started to cry.

  We locked eyes. I made sure with all my might she saw that cauldron boiling inside me. This is what I would need to live now.

  “You can’t stay here,” she said evenly. “You have to leave.” She stood up and stepped closer to the bed. I felt my fingers curl into fists under the sheets. She reached over and pushed my hair out of my face. “You’ll die here,” she said. “Just like I did.”

  She took a tissue from the box and wiped my eyes.

  That was the last time I saw my mother.

  That night I dreamed I was a boy playing baseball. I hit a home run and was floating around the bases. My body was strong and lean and powerful. I woke up feeling a cool breeze coming from the open window. Outside there was a ballpark across the parking lot of the hospital. I could hear the clonking of bats making contact with a ball but could not see anything but the floodlights turning night into day if only for a few hours.

  “Dr. Kramer says she needs to stay for another day for observation.” I heard voices outside my door.

  “He wants to know what happened.” That was Addison’s voice.

  “My father is going to end up killing her,” Jared’s voice replied.

  “Not if he’s arrested, he won’t.”

  “Trust me, he’ll kill her first,” Jared said.

  I felt them looking at me. I closed my eyes.

  “She say anything to you?” Addison asked.

  “No. You?”

  “She slept the whole time I was with her. She looks …”

  “Different.”

  Wendy came for a visit and sat next to me and cried the whole time,
like it had happened to her. “I can’t believe he did this to you,” she said, over and over, as if she were trying to believe it as truth and not a fiction I made up to get attention.

  “Promise you won’t tell anyone what he did,” she said. “What will people think about us?”

  Jared snuck into the hospital after visiting hours and carried me out. There was no point in staying. We didn’t have health insurance and no amount of nursing would change anything. Addison was waiting in the truck and drove me to his grandma’s house. He and Jared had gotten an air mattress at a camping store and made up a bed for me in the dining room, which was close to the powder room.

  The plan was for me to rest for a few days and then leave Wilton with Addison.

  By the third day I was able to walk on crutches and the swelling in my face came down. The pain had become more localized, a twinge here, a pang there. My body had become a stranger to me; its ability to be beaten felt like a betrayal. I wondered how I could live out my life in a shell that was so easily broken.

  I thought about Dad and what would happen if he found me. My feeling for him had progressed way beyond fear. There was no point in trying to get him punished. No point in speaking out; he lived in my head now, as the force of defeat. Part of me hoped he would come for me and finish what he started.

  That night on the rope bridge, at the edge of the ravine, the “Amazing Adventures of Kitty Kat” came to an end.

  By the second week, I felt strong enough to travel. Addison and I left together. We drove to Pittsburgh, where he had a friend he said we could stay with until we figured out what to do. There wasn’t a lot to say and no one, not even Jared, managed more than a good-bye and a hug. He didn’t even look me in the eye. I wondered if this was how it would be with us forever.

  Jared gave me all the money he had saved for school—it came to twelve hundred dollars. He also gave me the watch he got for graduation, and although he wanted me to sell it, I couldn’t. I wore it like a Saint Christopher medal—hoping it would protect me against further harm. Twelve hundred dollars seemed like a lot of money to me, enough to get lost, and for that I was grateful.

  After helping me to the truck, he reached for me and tried to scoop me in his arms like he did that day at the ravine when the look of despair on his face was almost worse than the beating. I couldn’t tolerate being hugged. I had developed a sensitivity to human touch. I tried to hide it whenever either of them came near me, but I didn’t pull away very elegantly.

  “Let me say good-bye.” Jared coaxed me back into his arms. The burden was too heavy to avoid; he had rescued me and needed assurance.

  I had no plans for myself. Going to Pittsburgh with Addison seemed as good an idea as driving off a bridge or smothering myself with a pillow. Jared promised he would never tell where I went. It wouldn’t be hard to keep a secret from people who didn’t care.

  On the drive, Addison tried small talk, but I had no interest in the three rivers that converge in Pittsburgh or whether or not it was going to be hot. We drove through the night. Addison offered to get a hotel room so we could rest. He was relieved when I said I could keep going.

  We pulled up to a small two-family house in Mt. Lebanon, a suburb of Pittsburgh. Addison honked his horn and a tall, slim woman with long, straight, jet-black hair came out of the house on the right. From a distance she looked like a shopworn version of Cher. Her wrists and fingers were adorned with turquoise and silver jewelry. She wore cutoff jeans that frayed mid-thigh and a loose embroidered gauze shirt. I hadn’t been in Pittsburgh very long, but I sensed she was too cool for most places. As she came closer, I realized she was at least ten years older than Addison.

  Addison jumped out of the car and lifted her in his arms in a big hug. Her hair flew in the air as she laughed and held on to him. He put her down as she held his face in her hands and shook her head in a “I can’t believe it’s you” fashion.

  I was crippled and could not leave or else I would have. This was my fate, to watch others connect while I waited. I thought of the boy in my dream, the strong-in-his-body boy who floated on the bases. I wanted to be him.

  They walked toward the truck holding hands. Addison was smiling for the first time since the dance.

  “Diana, this is Cat.” Since the “accident,” as Jared and Addison started calling it, Addison had taken to calling me only Cat.

  Diana put her bejeweled hand out to me and stopped as if she sensed my desire to not be touched. She nodded and waved. “Welcome to Pittsburgh and to my house.”

  I nodded and said nothing.

  “Let’s get you settled,” she said. Her smile revealed a set of perfectly matched white teeth. Her slightly tan skin complemented her warm green eyes.

  As Diana opened my door to help me out of the car, she leaned forward, giving me a clear view inside her shirt. Her right breast was missing. In its place was a long ropelike scar. I pulled back. She caught me staring, stood straight, and placed her hand on the empty part of her chest.

  “Cancer,” she said. “About three years ago.”

  I nodded.

  “I know what it feels like to lose a part of yourself.”

  Diana settled me on the couch while Addison carried our stuff upstairs. Her living room was filled with mismatched furniture that individually looked out of place but in the context of the room all seemed to go together. Her walls were filled with masks, paintings, photographs, and shelves lined with tokens, dolls, plates, pitchers, bowls, and other assorted objects picked up from God-knows-where. There was more life in her living room than in all of Wilton. To the left was a fireplace with a furry pink stuffed pig sitting on the hearth. On the mantel was a photograph of Diana, standing in a doorway resting her arms above her head. She was illuminated from behind and smiling at the photographer. She was naked and stunning in the bold way she presented herself to the camera, as if she knew her own beauty.

  “Addison took that before the cancer.” She was standing behind me holding a glass of iced tea. “I taught photography at UCLA—he was a freshman.” She handed me the glass.

  “You fucked him?” I said, surprised at the anger in my tone.

  She nodded. “Not the best idea I ever had. He was eighteen, a little bit older than you are. I was … am much older.”

  I started to cry. This happened a lot. For no reason I would start weeping. When it first happened in the hospital, I thought it was a by-product of my black eyes, but even after they started to heal it continued.

  Diana sat on the armrest next to me and, using the sleeve of her blouse, dabbed my cheeks.

  “I won’t bother you,” she said.

  Diana stood in the doorway of my bedroom holding a breakfast tray. It had been three days since I arrived. I had slept for most of them, as I was tired all the time. Diana woke me to eat and to help me to the bathroom, but other than that she made good on her promise not to bother me.

  “He’s gone,” she said, as she put the tray down on the end of the bed to help prop me up. “I don’t think he’s coming back.” She put the tray in front of me and walked to the window and crossed her arms in front of her. She was wearing a red embroidered kimono and baggy white socks. Her hair was pulled up in a knot on top of her head.

  “Did he leave a note?” I asked. Since we had arrived Addison and I hadn’t had much contact. Between my long naps and his need to “go for walks” we managed to steer clear of each other.

  Diana laughed. “Addison, leave a note? I don’t think so.” She opened the blinds and looked out into the yard, which was filled with the exotic flowers she spent hours cultivating.

  “They’re strange creatures, aren’t they?” she said.

  “Who?”

  “Men.”

  “Brutal.”

  “Yes, they can be.”

  The summer was hot. Some days my cast itched so badly I thought it might be easier to saw my leg off. Other days the heat made me feel like I was in a slow cooker, waiting to be taken out and served as a no
t-too-tasty treat to a hungry monster.

  Diana brought me food and often sat with me and watched General Hospital on an old black-and-white television she brought up from the basement. Channel 7 was the only one that came through clearly, and, sadly, General Hospital was the only show we agreed on. I didn’t like game shows and she hated the news—that’s about all there was before eight o’clock.

  Diana taught photography at Point Park College. She had eager students who often stopped by for advice, or, as I soon discovered, to share some of their stash. Sometimes one or more of her students would wander down the hall after using her bathroom and try to engage me in conversation. I saw it as a chance to hone my talents at repelling people. I was quite good at it.

  Two months after I arrived Diana took me to the hospital to get my cast taken off. She said her doctor friend would take care of me. Diana had a friend in every walk of life.

  Melissa Worthy was even more exotic-looking than Diana. After an intern who didn’t look much older than me removed my cast, Dr. Worthy took me into an examination room to talk while we waited for the results of my X-ray. She helped lift me onto the table.

  “So I hear you had quite a fall.” She looked into my eyes and my ears and even up my nose.

  I nodded.

  “You still have some shadowing from the bruises. Never saw rocks shaped like hands before, but hey, I’ve also never been to …” She looked at my chart. “Ohio. So what do I know?”

  “I don’t feel well,” I said.

  “Lean back.” She sandwiched my shoulder with her hands and helped me lie down. She brushed my hair out of my face. I started to cry again.

  “I’m going to give you an internal exam, if that’s okay.” She said that after she felt my abdomen. “You say you’re tired?”

  “Yes.”