The Last Bridge Read online

TWENTY-SIX

  MY FATHER WAS moved out of intensive care and into the same small room I was in ten years ago. The corridor walls were still the blue-green color of bathroom cleaner and the floors were scuffed and mopped to a finish a few years beyond a shine.

  Addison walked ahead of me, reading the signs and asking for directions as I followed numbly. If there had been an empty stretcher I would have lain on it and slept until I woke up or was left for dead and rolled to the morgue.

  On the drive over, the reality of what I was doing settled in. Even if I forgot, my body had a memory of its own. The shooting pain in the base of my pelvis reminded me of that.

  “Are you okay?” Addison had asked in the car. My palms were open and resting in my lap as if I were waiting for a heavy load to drop from the sky.

  For the first time Addison looked at me with something other than pity. My choice to see my father had garnered a small amount of respect from him. The tone of his voice was more familiar, like he was with a friend rather than a crazy woman he was talking off a ledge. Not many people treated me with regard. I was either too young or too drunk. Diana was the only one. While I dismissed it while it was happening, I recognized its absence when it was gone.

  “It won’t change anything,” I said finally.

  “Do you want it to?”

  His skin still seemed so smooth. I imagined it would be warm to the touch if I reached across the armrest and traced the line of his jaw down to his Adam’s apple, which bobbed when he laughed. I could travel the muscles of his arm as it gripped the gearshift and place my palm over his hand and wait for him to hold it. I could change it all by reaching out.

  “I’d really like a drink.”

  “Yeah. I would too.”

  We sat in silence until he turned into the visitors’ parking lot.

  “Here we are,” he said as he put the car in park and turned off the ignition. I reached for his arm and squeezed it. He took my hand and warmed it between his palms.

  “What if he’s not done with me?” I said.

  “You said he destroyed you that night. You need to find out if that’s true.”

  “Come on, Mr. Rucker, lift up. There, good boy.”

  A bag of bones lay in the bed struggling for breath as clear tubes tethered him to oxygen tanks against the wall. A nurse hovered, trying to get a pillow under his shoulders.

  I stood in the doorway and surveyed what was left of my father. He was gray, from the ashen tone of his complexion to the silver strands of his hair to the beard struggling to hang on to his crumbling face. Where was the man who pounded the life out of me in a blinding rage?

  “Are you family?” the nurse asked, as she wiped his mouth with a wet cloth.

  “Sort of,” I answered. “I’m his daughter.”

  “Alex?”

  I nodded.

  “He’s been asking for you.”

  “How is he?” Addison asked as he stood behind me with his hand on my back, gently guiding me over the threshold.

  “He’s pretty alert now but he fades in and out. I’ll be at the nurses’ station if you need me.”

  In spite of the cold, the window was open, no doubt at my father’s request in one of his lucid moments. My father needed cold like a vampire needs blood.

  A pair of green striped pajamas hung over the back of one of the guest chairs. I had a vision of my mother bringing him clean things before she killed herself. Did she tell him what she was going to do as he lay in a coma? Was he finally forced to listen to her? And if so, what did she say?

  You ruined everything.

  That wouldn’t cover it.

  Watching my father labor for air, it was difficult to say which was harder, breathing in or breathing out. The effort required his full concentration as he stared at the ceiling.

  “Dad,” I said, my voice as hollow as it was the night I begged him to stop. My legs felt unsteady, as if the ground beneath me was moving. I gripped the railing at his side.

  He turned his head toward the sound of my voice and locked his eyes on mine. The fire in his pupils was still there. The slow disintegration of his body could not extinguish it. I jumped back as if I had been shocked.

  “You’re too thin,” he said in the voice that looped in my head my whole life.

  I looked at Addison for permission to go. He urged me on with his hands.

  “What do you want?” I said, as I remained a few steps away from the bed.

  “I want our daughter,” he said.

  “We don’t have a daughter.”

  Oh, God, did he know about Alex?

  “We have three children,” he said, trying to hold up three fingers.

  “It’s Alex.”

  “He’s never going to be with you.”

  I walked to the edge of the bed so he could get a closer look at me.

  “Dad, it’s Alex, your daughter.”

  He turned toward the intravenous bag dripping into him. I wondered if it was morphine and imagined myself ripping it out of his arm and sticking it in mine. He closed his eyes and his mouth and his jaw slackened as if he were asleep.

  I looked around the room searching for a sign to tell me what to do. This was useless. How could he be asking for me when he didn’t even recognize me? I didn’t feel anything close to what I imagined I would feel. This was annoying and frustrating. All the years I thought about him drinking in his chair with no one to sit next to him. The way he pushed what he did out of his mind, day after day, drink after drink, until he didn’t have to think about whether or not it was right to touch me the way he did; all he knew was that it was necessary, like pissing.

  He opened his eyes and looked right at me.

  “You look old,” he said. “Not as pretty.”

  “You look like you’re about to die.”

  “Good,” he said. He pointed to the cup of water on the nightstand next to a picture he had propped up against the reading light. It was a photo of me when I was five. I’m wearing a crown my mother had made for my birthday and leaning over a cake covered in strawberries with five candles flickering. My father, Jared, and Wendy are around me and we’re all looking at my mother, who was crouching in front of the table taking the picture. My mother was shouting for us to say “Cheese,” and for some reason I thought that was funny and was laughing as I tried to blow out my candles. My whole face was smiling, from my open mouth to the twinkle of my eyes. I was holding Jared’s and Wendy’s hands as Dad leaned closer to help me blow out my candles. The picture captured the moment right before the lights went out.

  I placed the photo facedown and picked up the cup and brought it to his mouth. He could not get the straw in on the first attempt, and as hard as I tried, I could not force myself to touch him. He struggled as I steadied my aim.

  “Hold still, for Christ sake,” I snapped. His mouth made contact and he took a long pull on the straw. Water dribbled down his chin. Seeing him as helpless as he was almost made me wish for the stronger version of him.

  Addison took the cup from my hand.

  “You’re still fucking him?” Dad said, when Addison removed the straw from his mouth.

  “You and your mother can’t keep your hands off those Watkins men.”

  Addison looked at me.

  “You’d think you would have learned from your mother. I tried to teach you.”

  “How did you do that, Dad?”

  “I never laid a hand on you or your sister.” He lifted a bony index finger and pointed at me. His fingernails were yellow and long. “If it weren’t for me your mother would be in a home somewhere. She is a disgrace.”

  “You treated her like garbage.”

  “She is lucky I forgave her.”

  “What part did you forgive her for, Dad, getting pregnant or not loving you?”

  Before I could finish he reached out and grabbed my wrist and squeezed it tightly. “You’re just like her. What did you do with his baby?” My father looked at Addison. “Like father, like son.”
r />   I pulled away but his grip was too tight. “Did he promise to take care of you? Did he give you the farm too? Did he ask his best friend to marry you so you wouldn’t be alone? Did he help you find a family for the baby?” His voice made a gurgling sound as he spoke.

  “Let go of me,” I said. I was feeling the old rage again, the good kind that helped me get away more times than not. The kind that helped me crawl to a bush that night at the ravine. I reached down to pull his hand off me and saw the birthmark. The one I saw on Alex’s hand.

  The monitor above my father’s bed began to beep rapidly as my father’s grip tightened on me.

  “Your mother is a whore,” he said. “She still doesn’t know for sure whose baby it was. I had her first, just like …” I grabbed my father’s wrist and squeezed harder, forcing him to let go. He gasped for air.

  A nurse’s voice came over the intercom. “Mr. Rucker? Are you okay?” The beeping grew louder as my father’s breathing became more labored.

  “Like what, Dad? Go ahead and say it.” I leaned in close and shouted in his face. I didn’t care that Addison was there, I wanted him to say it. I wanted him to shout it from the rooftops to tell the world what he did to me. I wanted his last words to be the admission. I was tired of being the only one who knew the truth.

  “Tell him what you did.”

  The nurse rushed in as Addison pried my hand off my father. “Alex, let go.”

  “Get her out of here!” the nurse said as she and Addison looked at me like I was the monster.

  “He isn’t who you think he is,” I shouted as Addison pulled me out of the room.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  THE OFFICIAL CAUSE of death was heart failure.

  I called Wendy and Jared and told them to get to the hospital as quickly as possible, as they were trying to revive him. He had used up his last reserve of energy to spew one final round of bile my way.

  Wendy came and they let her spend a few moments alone with him before they took him away. She was distraught. “He only wanted you,” she said as Willard consoled her. Lucky me.

  Addison drove me back to the house. We rode most of the way in silence. I felt pressure to pretend that an evil spell had been finally broken with his passing. Addison wanted me to feel better and that made me feel worse. My father’s death did not kill the monster in my head.

  “I’ll stay if you want me to,” he said as we pulled off the main road.

  “I’ll be okay,” I said.

  Jared was sitting at the kitchen table, resting his head in his hands. His white, starched shirtsleeves were rolled up, and his blue pinstriped suit jacket was resting on the back of the chair. There was coffee on the stove and an empty mug next to it.

  “Is this for me?” I asked as I dropped my bag on the table.

  He nodded.

  The coffee pot holder was worn into the shape of the handle. On the counter it was misshapen and frayed, but in my hand it fit the curve of the percolator perfectly, keeping the heat at bay. The handle was still loose; it had been my whole life. I held the glass bulb of the lid and poured a steaming cup, just like my mother had all the years of her life.

  I had her delicate fingers and his rough palms.

  “I thought you’d be gone.” Jared wiped tears from his eyes.

  “So did I.”

  I took the photo out of my pocket and slid it across the table toward Jared. After they wheeled my father out and stripped the bed, I slipped back into his room and took it. On the back my father had written “My family,” and in the spots where our heads appeared on the other side he had written our names and drawn a circle around mine and added rays to make it look like the sun.

  “It was on his nightstand.”

  I got up and found what was left of a bottle under the sink and poured myself a tall one. “Want one?”

  Jared studied the photo as if someone had told him there was a clue hidden somewhere in our faces. “He’s really dead?” he said, as I quelled my shaking hands with a shot.

  “Yup.” I poured another.

  “I’m glad,” Jared said. I drank to that.

  “I just wish the end had been more painful.” I moved too quickly and lost my footing. “Oops.”

  Jared helped me to my chair.

  We sat in silence and sipped our coffee. What if having them gone was worse, not better? Now all that was left was the past bearing down on all of us.

  “Now that he’s dead, do you feel better?” Jared asked. He had the same look he gave me that night in the motel, the trembling lip, the glassy stare, the naked plea for forgiveness. I grabbed Jared’s tie and pulled him to me.

  “Nothing helps. You should know that.”

  And just like that, we were back where our story had ended seven years ago, in the motel in Massachusetts.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  IT WAS FEBRUARY, and it was pouring. Large blankets of rain crackled like hot oil against the small picture window that overlooked the parking lot.

  Jared had tracked me down outside of Boston after he called the bar where I was working. Tony, the owner, told him where he might find me.

  He looked so different from the last time I had seen him, so grown up and altered. As if he came from a different family, a different place. His clothing was expensive and dry-cleaner-pressed. His manner was formal, as if he were administering charity to the lame and anxious to get back to the club for lunch.

  I thought the knock on the door was Dan’s Liquor Emporium or the Domino’s Pizza guy. At first I didn’t recognize him. Perhaps it was because I was coming off a three-day drinking binge that dulled my senses or maybe it was something more truthful. The person at the door was my real brother. The one I remembered was a figment of my imagination.

  It was storming and he said he couldn’t stay. His fiancée was waiting in the car. They were on their way to meet her parents in Cambridge.

  “I need to tell you something.” I was sitting on the bed trying to stay upright. As hard as I tried to push away from the intensity of seeing him, I couldn’t manage it very well. I hadn’t showered in days, nor had I changed out of the ratty T-shirt and torn sweatpants I had been wearing when I checked in. This was my pattern. I’d work in a bar, save whatever cash I didn’t drink, get into a fight with the manager, get fired, and drink until I was numb. I believed every binge would be my last. I wasn’t praying for salvation, I was looking for peace. Peace never came, but the motel bill always did. When the money ran out, I took a shower, paid my bill, packed the car, and started over. Some stops were better than others, some jobs paid more, and some people tried to help, but the only thing that quieted the memories was amber, and it burned going down.

  My love for Jared was something that had sustained me in those days and seemed to float above any feelings I had about anyone, except of course that baby gurgling on my belly. I wasn’t sure that was love, though; it was more like something a notch beyond it, some emotion I was not equipped to access. But Jared, he was love for me. A man who did me no harm, who made me feel safe.

  Jared took off his wet Penn State windbreaker and put it on the chair by the door. He turned away from me and looked out the window as he crossed his arms. His shoulders tensed. He still had the sturdy build of a football player, but the bulk had been replaced with an elegant sleekness. I wasn’t sure if it was his body or the cut of his clothes that made him seem so tailored for a different life. I looked even worse next to him. I smelled.

  “I was there that night. I was in the back of the truck.” His voice boomed like thunder over the rush of rain. I could hear the trickle of a stream of water coming from somewhere close and wondered how long it would take before the storm would be inside.

  “I don’t think so,” I said. I wished the liquor would get here. I looked through my duffel for a clean T-shirt.

  “I came after you when Dad took you out of the dance.”

  I dropped the T-shirt and looked at him. I picked at the skin at the base of my right thumbnail. It was
calloused after all the years of tearing. When the blood came, I sucked on it, seeking solace in the rusty iron flavor. I resisted anything that took me back to that night. I avoided trucks, dances, dresses, men, ravines, hope, love, sex. My leg started to twitch.

  “I don’t want to talk about this,” I said.

  “I was there the whole time.” His measured tone was cracking. He moved closer, as if he were prepared to force the words into me if he had to. “I jumped in the back and rolled toward the cab so no one would see me. It was storming. I couldn’t hear anything but I knew something bad was going to happen. I rode in the back to the ravine and I waited until he dragged you to the bridge.”

  “Stop it,” I said, getting up and walking to the window, hoping to see a delivery truck. Maybe there was something left in a glass or bottle somewhere.

  I remembered that thud in the back as we were pulling out of the parking lot. Dad pulled at me before I could look back to see what made the noise.

  “I wanted to help you. That’s why I went, but when I saw his face, I—”

  “Enough,” I said, searching the room. He didn’t hear me.

  “He was hitting you and shouting about how he wasn’t going to let another Watkins man steal from him. You were trying to get away…”

  I charged at him and pushed him back over the plastic table and chairs. We came crashing down onto the floor. I was straddling his hips and swinging my fists at his chest. “Shut up!” It was too late; I was on the bridge with the mud in my face and the weight of my father bearing down and crushing me. And now there was more to know.

  “I wanted to do something, Cat. I wanted to save you but I … God, I don’t know. I’ve played that scene out every day trying to understand why I froze. I guess I was afraid. I was afraid he would kill me.”

  I buried my head in the mildewed green carpet and wailed. He reached for me.

  “Don’t touch me,” I growled, as I wiped snot from my nose with the back of my hand.

  “I’m so sorry.”

  This was the whole point, wasn’t it? I had learned there is always more to feel even when you think you have gotten to the bottom; it’s just a resting place on the downward spiral.