The Last Bridge Page 17

  “He thinks of Diana as his mother. She raised him until he was four. I was in and out of his life. I don’t know what I was thinking; I guess I was still trying to prove something, but Diana, she wasn’t trying to do anything except love Alex.”

  “Alex,” I said.

  “We decided to name him after you. Especially after you left. Diana insisted on it. She said he needed to be connected to you. She always said you would come back. She told him that as well.”

  “He thinks of Diana as his mother,” I said.

  “Does that bother you?”

  “No,” I lied.

  Addison took our plates. “This is hard, Alex. Part of me wants to throw you out of here and tell you to go to hell.” He dropped them in the sink and put his hands on his hips. “Do you have any idea how long we looked for you?”

  I gripped the table. Addison’s anger actually felt better than his kindness; this I could understand. This would make it easier. Addison took a breath as if he had made a decision and turned the water on in the sink and threw me a dish towel. “You dry,” he said, “then you’re taking a shower and coming to Alex’s game. We will make dinner and you will spend one evening with us. Then you decide what you tell him. He knows he had a birth mother who left him. He has some information about you.”

  I opened my mouth to say I didn’t think I could do that just as he handed me a plate. I did as I was told.

  TWENTY-FOUR

  “WHEN I WAS IN the hospital after my fall, I dreamed about a boy playing baseball. I thought it was me but I think I was dreaming of him before I even knew I was pregnant.”

  “He’s good, isn’t he?”

  “Amazing,” I said. You didn’t need to know much about baseball to know Alex had a gift. He held the mitt as if it were an extension of his hand and rounded the bases and worked the field as if it were his natural habitat. Joy exuded out of him with every pitch he threw. “He’s so …”

  “Happy?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I know.”

  The inning was over. Alex spotted us and waved. Addison lifted my hand. “He’s waving at us,” he said. His hand lingered. I felt a rush. How did he still have this effect on me?

  I showed Addison the deed and the note from my mother during the game. He said my father had told him about the house a long time ago and had told him my mother was in love with his father.

  “He wanted me to stay away from you,” Addison said.

  “If anyone should have stayed away, it was him,” I said.

  “Andrew is her son, isn’t he?” Addison asked. I looked at him. “Come on, he looks like your mother and a little like me.”

  I nodded. “She still loved your dad. I think that’s why she killed herself. She couldn’t bear it anymore.”

  “I don’t know. Knowing her grandson was without his mother seemed pretty rough on her. Maybe it was a little of both or maybe …”

  I knew what he was going to say. He was right. “Maybe we’ll never really know.”

  Back at the house I watched Addison and Alex move through their dinner prep like a comedy team. Alex would set up a story and Addison would finish it. Then Addison would tell me something about Alex and he would jump in with embellishments and details.

  I wasn’t sure how it was possible to be with them so easily, especially when it seemed there was more that needed to be said.

  “So you knew my dad a long time ago?” Alex asked, as we ate our spaghetti. Addison had become a good cook.

  Addison and I exchanged looks.

  “I knew him back when he was a stud,” I said. Addison flinched, surprised.

  “Dad? A stud? Hardly.” Alex laughed. “He never goes out with anyone. He says relationships are too complicated.”

  “You don’t go out with anyone?” I laughed.

  “I had my fun,” he said. “What about you, Alex?”

  I was about to answer when I heard Alex jump in; I forgot he didn’t know my name.

  “Dad, I’m almost ten; I don’t think I need to date yet.” He blushed, and when he did, he looked exactly like Addison.

  “How about hitting the books? Cat and I will do the dishes, and then we’ll have dessert.”

  “I just want to ask Cat one more question. Dad said you lived in New York. Is that true?”

  I nodded.

  “I want to live there. I want to be an artist.”

  “I thought you wanted to be a baseball player,” I said.

  “Both,” Addison and Alex said in unison.

  “New York is great. It’s easy to get lost there.”

  “Do you still live there?”

  I wiped my mouth with my napkin and stepped back into the immediate past, where I was the woman with the boxes in the backseat, the beat-up car, and a drinking habit. I wasn’t this woman my son was imagining in his mind.

  “I don’t know,” I answered. “I’m not sure where I’m living right now.”

  Alex went to do homework as Addison and I cleared the table.

  “So you don’t date? That seems so out of character for you,” I said, as I scraped the leftovers into the garbage.

  “Not really.”

  “But you used to be such a … a …”

  “Player?”

  I laughed. “Yeah.”

  “Having a child sobered me up. Not at first; I left right after you did. I managed to stick around for a week and then I slipped out in the night and left Alex with Diana. I wasn’t ready for a baby, wasn’t even ready for a relationship. Maybe if Diana hadn’t been there I would have stepped up; I would like to think I would have. What about you?”

  “What about me?”

  “Would you have stayed with him if Diana hadn’t been there?”

  The real answer was “No, I wasn’t going to raise that freak of nature,” but I couldn’t say that, especially now, when it was clear this boy was no freak. Even if he was, did that make him less deserving of love?

  “It’s hard to say.”

  “You panicked, didn’t you?”

  I wasn’t ready to talk about this. Did he think I left because I couldn’t handle the burden of a child? God, that made me sound so weak. How could anyone forgive me if that’s what they thought? But that’s all they could ever think, so it would have to be. No one would ever know I would have stayed if I knew Addison was his father.

  “Yeah. It was complicated,” I said.

  “Weren’t you curious?”

  I dropped a plate and it smashed on the floor in front of my bare feet. Addison stepped forward and grabbed me by the waist to pull me away. “Watch yourself,” he said, as we collided together in an embrace.

  We were dancing again. At least that’s what it felt like, his body pressed against mine as my hands reached for his shoulders to steady myself. He smelled so good.

  “Alex,” he whispered.

  The elephants of the past were sleeping, but they would be awake soon and I would return to my job as keeper of the herd. Not yet, though. For a moment I was that girl in the apartment above the garage, the one who wanted him beyond anything I had let myself desire.

  “I missed,” I said, as I looked down, afraid of the power of my own words. He lifted my head and kissed me as we stood away from the broken glass.

  “Cat!” Alex called from upstairs. Addison and I jumped apart. His shoes crunched on the shards of plate as I slammed my elbow against the counter and howled. We both laughed. “Cat!”

  “Maybe now you understand why I don’t date that much,” he said.

  “Yes?” I answered, following the sound to the stairs.

  “Come see my room,” he said.

  I looked to Addison for approval. “That’s big. He doesn’t even let me in it.”

  I went upstairs and followed him down the hallway to his door. “It’s a little messy.” He let me in.

  Pieces of paper were taped to every square inch of the room. There were sketches on them, comic-style, with frames and action and dialogue. Something w
as familiar about the drawings, the characters. I felt my heart beating rapidly, my pulse throbbing in my throat.

  This is not possible.

  “Dad gave me this book last year when he was cleaning out the garage. He said it belonged to a friend.” He held up the black sketchbook I had left behind in my backpack. The red one he had given me was thrown across the ravine but this one had been saved. He handed it to me. My hands started to shake.

  “I started to read it. I loved it so much I figured I’d draw some adventures of my own. These are my adventures of Kitty Kat.” I looked at the drawings on the walls. He had captured the essence of Kitty Kat, but had added something different, a strength in her eyes that mine did not have, and the definition of line was sleeker, more skilled. He was drawing my story, making it up as he went. I felt the room spinning and needed to sit down.

  “When you told me your name was Cat, I wondered if it was you.”

  I cleared off some space on his bed and sat down with the book. My drawings. I hadn’t seen them for so long. His drawings, so vibrant and alive, I never imagined.

  “It is me,” I said, stroking the book. I didn’t know where to look; my desire to see his work was as strong as the one to see mine.

  I heard a phone ring and Addison walk to get it. I wanted to stay in the room filled with our drawings forever. I wanted to read his version of my life. I wanted to be the woman in his drawings.

  Addison opened the door.

  “It’s Wendy. She needs to speak with you. Your father woke up.”

  TWENTY-FIVE

  I RAN AS FAST as I could. Through Alex’s bedroom, down the hall, where I slipped on a rug, and then bolted down the stairs, out the door, across the lawn, and over the divot I put in the grass. I tripped on the curb but caught myself and hit my stride in the middle of the street. I was running again, this time with no car or money or purse. The air was cold, black, and razor sharp. Every breath felt like I was inhaling shards of glass. I prayed for the stamina to get me somewhere.

  I ran from the sound of Wendy’s voice saying the words “Dad woke up. He wants to see you.” I ran from Alex’s drawings, so close to mine and yet filled with more soul, more life, more of everything. I ran from Wilton and the papers in my purse and the deed and Andrew Reilly with that hunger to connect.

  I ran because that is what I do. In all the years, the bus and train stations, the seedy hotels where I holed up for days drinking and lying on dirty sheets staring at water stains on ceilings, at all the crappy jobs where I served drinks, fending off the pawing hands of desperate drunks while gulping down their free cocktails, knowing full well that you can never get something for nothing—all those years, I knew I was running. I knew I wasn’t living a life but avoiding one.

  The ground beneath me was hard and every step I took shot a splinter of pain through my bad ankle. Ahead of me was nothing but blacktop leading to another street and another road I had to travel.

  The hardest part of leaving isn’t the looking back; it isn’t the loss you feel for a place or people; it’s the fear that what you intended to leave isn’t ever going to go, and that what you really want, you’re never going to get.

  My hands clenched into fists as I tried to keep up the pace I had established as I tore out of Addison’s house. I did not want to see my father—did not want to touch, know, or feel him. Which would be worse—if he was sorry or if he wasn’t? And what is sorry anyway? What does remorse get you?

  “He’s not going to make it,” Wendy had said on the phone. “This could be your last chance to say good-bye.”

  “Alex!”

  Behind me was the sound of other footsteps and voices calling my name. I turned as I ran and saw Addison and Alex coming after me. Addison was ahead, closing in as he moved from darkness to light. His stride was sure and seemed more practiced than mine. Alex lingered behind, waving. His call was weaker, but I heard it. “Cat,” he cried, “come back.”

  I kept going.

  “Stay there!”

  I turned. Addison was motioning for Alex to stay put as he held his hand out for me to stop. My body responded before my brain could process what was happening. I felt myself winding down, and although I was still moving, I knew I wasn’t going anywhere.

  Addison caught up to me and grabbed the back of my shirt and pulled me to a stop. I bent over and put my hands on my knees and struggled to get my breath back. He did the same as he balled the piece of my shirt into his fist and panted.

  “Goddamn you,” he huffed.

  I tried to pry his hand loose but it wouldn’t budge. I was so winded it wouldn’t have surprised me if I started coughing blood.

  “Let me go,” I begged.

  “Dad, are you okay?” Alex called. “Cat?”

  “Go back to the house,” Addison shouted. “We’re fine.”

  Alex lingered in the street with his hands on his hips, hopping from foot to foot in worry.

  “You should go back with him,” I said.

  Addison looked up and held his ribs. “You need to stop running.”

  “You don’t know what I need,” I said, as I wiped my mouth.

  He tugged on my shirt in frustration, pulling me closer. I tried again to push his hand away but his grip was too strong, so I shoved him, hoping he would fall, and he did, taking me with him. We fell together like two fugitives handcuffed together. He did not loosen his hold on me.

  “Let me go!” I shouted as we struggled to get up. “You want me to say I’m sorry? I’m sorry. You want me to jump into his life and be his mother? I can’t do that. It’s too late. You think I can stop running? How am I going to do that? Everywhere I look I remember that night. Every day for the last ten years I think of those hands reaching into me, taking parts of me he had no right to take. He destroyed me.”

  Addison let go and I fell over, not realizing that his grip was all that had been holding me up.

  “No, you did that.”

  “Does it make you feel better to think I did this to myself?” I stood up and steadied myself against the rush of dizziness that came over me.

  “This isn’t about what makes me feel better,” Addison said.

  “Really? Was it easier for you to swoop down and save the day when Diana died, knowing I would always be more irresponsible than you? It must be great to have me to measure yourself against. As long as I’m the big fuckup, you can be the hero.”

  “This is how you do it, isn’t it? This is how you justify your choices? Everyone else is to blame for your misery.”

  “So you’re the model of responsibility? Please. You took advantage of my and Diana’s feelings for you and then you left. You’re no different than my father. You were a destroyer too. So you came back. So you did the right thing. You were the one who made the mess. It was yours to clean up. I was the one who was messed with. There’s a difference.”

  “So you’re a victim and that excuses you? Look at you, you’re a drunk. You have no life, no friends, no connection to anything, including your son. Your father didn’t do that, you did. You’re a destroyer too, Alex. You have a son you neglected. Maybe you’re more like your father than you know.”

  I looked up into the winter sky, so dark and bleak. February, the worst month of the year, short days, unbearable chill followed by enough warmth to make you think spring might come, though it’s still so far away. I hated my life the most in the winter.

  Addison was right. There was no defense. If my father had told me he had been beaten every day as a child, it still wouldn’t excuse what he did to me. Even my mother’s loneliness could not undo the pain of her choices. And rape did not excuse abandoning that baby.

  It did not.

  I looked away and began to cry.

  Addison pulled me to him and wrapped his arms around me. I fell into his chest and smelled the orange musk of his body. I wanted to wrap my arms around him and hold on for life. I wanted it to be over, however it ended.

  I pulled away.

  Addison
released me like he was pushing a boat away from a dock. I fell back on my heels and tried to find my footing.

  “You want to go, go. This time make sure you get gone.” He reached into his pocket and threw my car keys in the street next to my feet and walked away.

  It was cold again—this time the chill came from the inside out. My mouth opened to say the words “Come back,” but nothing came out.

  I thought of those drawings, of the way Alex drew Kitty Kat, the sureness of her jaw, the righteous look in her eye, and of how he seemed to know her better than I did. How determined she had been to stop the Hand. To win her fight.

  I thought of Diana holding Alex as a baby night after night as he cried, missing something but not knowing what. Over time he forgot about what was missing and reached toward what was there, someone who stayed, someone who loved him completely.

  Down the street past the silhouette of Addison, in the doorway of their house, Alex stood and watched the scene of his father chasing his mother. Whether he knew it consciously or not, he would one day know that that was what he saw. How did it end? With his father not being able to hold her, with them not being enough for her to stay?

  And who would know my story? Who would tell him the truth?

  There were different ways to feel pain, and not even the physical beatings or the touching could match the shame I felt for leaving Alex. Even if he was my father’s son, the very painful truth was, I was his mother.

  I looked at the road ahead and at the ground I had covered since leaving, and, as always, I had not gone as far as I had thought. I picked up the keys and starting moving. This time I went back.

  The door was closed when I got to the house. I knocked. My hands were shaking as I waited and hoped it was not too late. Addison opened the door, and after a moment of looking at me, he motioned for me to come in. I felt tears welling as I struggled to find the courage to speak.

  “Will you come with me?”

  “Let me see if I can get Mrs. Daley to watch Alex,” he said without hesitating, as if he had been waiting for ten years for me to ask him.