The Last Bridge Read online

  There are all kinds of ways to hurt someone. The only thing worse than being hurt is the denial of it. In a way, forgiving Jared for watching my small life get destroyed felt like a betrayal of all that was left of me. If I couldn’t have a brother who saved me, a father who protected me, a mother who nurtured me, and a sister who adored me, then I could have my rage.

  “What is worse, Jared? Watching or doing?” I got up off the floor and went to the bathroom and got a glass of lukewarm tap water and drank it.

  “I was nineteen, Cat.”

  “Did you see everything?”

  “I saw him hitting you. I saw him tear your clothes.” Now Jared was getting uncomfortable. If he saw it all, he wasn’t going to say, and I wasn’t going to make him. He must have known. He found me without underwear. He carried me and saw the bruises. And what about Addison? Had they speculated?

  I would never know because I would never ask. There was more to protect than my pride; there was the baby. Who would love him if they knew the possibility?

  I stayed in the room for another week and ended up in an emergency room for alcohol poisoning. Close but no cigar.

  I didn’t see Jared again until my mother died.

  TWENTY-NINE

  I LET GO OF Jared’s tie and went to the refrigerator and opened it, knowing there was nothing I wanted in there. My palms were sweaty and I felt a hard ball of panic in my stomach.

  “I should have stopped him,” Jared said, as if we were still having the conversation in the motel room.

  “Should we order deli platters?”

  I opened the freezer and surveyed the frozen parcels wrapped in white paper and marked by Mom with her black Sharpie pen. “Sunday Roast, 1/26,” it said on a package that looked like a giant Tootsie Roll. The only way to banish my mother from this house would be to burn it down. Jared shifted in his chair and struggled for words. I could feel his stare. Finally, he sighed and summoned the words.

  “Help me, please,” he said. His voice sounded like Alex’s. I turned around. Tears welled in his eyes as his left hand cupped his right fist as if one were a ball and the other a mitt. This was a nervous habit of Jared’s, born from years of playing ball. I had missed it until that moment. I had felt it but could not name it. I had seen the birthmark, the eyelashes, the hair, the ease with people, even the sharp tongue, and had placed the genetic source, me, Addison, my mother, my father, but when I saw him run and the way Alex carried himself and the sureness of his gait, I did not know the source until I saw Jared at the table. My son was like his uncle. He could be like my father without being his child, couldn’t he?

  As hard as I tried to disengage, I couldn’t. There was the openness of his gaze, the way his body relaxed when we made contact, the way his eyes anchored you to him; Alex had Jared in him too.

  “Don’t you need forgiveness?” Jared asked.

  I pictured a portrait of the men who made my son: Addison’s scoundrel father, my monster dad, my weak brother, and the man I hoped was his natural father, Addison. Each of them deeply, terminally flawed. And yet, they made that little boy who may be the best combination of all.

  And if that is true of Alex, is that true of all of us? Of Jared, Wendy? Me? Are we the best of our relations?

  “I would have stopped him if I could,” he said.

  Jared rested his head in his arms and began to weep. He appeared smaller in his sorrow, like a boy being punished in school. More like the brother I used to know. He clenched his right hand into a fist and pounded it into the table. I felt a stirring, an impulse to act. As Jared lifted his fist again I caught it and held it tightly with both of my hands and pulled it to my chest.

  He isn’t who you think he is ….

  “I know,” I said. And I meant it. The sad truth was, he couldn’t; no one could. The words escaped from my mouth before I could take them back. After a moment, his hand relaxed, and we slowly wove our fingers together like we did as kids, lying in the grass watching the clouds.

  I was as surprised by my tenderness as he was. I had been certain there was nothing good left to feel. I was sure the loving part of me had died on the bridge. I sought refuge in that certainty. I lived on one side of the hard line and everyone lived on the other, except the boy. He walked it.

  Jared looked up. I smiled weakly, as if I were trying to remember how to do it.

  He smiled back.

  We sat like that until the headlights from Wendy’s car illuminated the back wall of the kitchen.

  Jared, Wendy, and I stood alone at the top of the hill and watched as my father’s casket was lowered into the ground next to my mother’s. The wind whipped across the long yawn of cemetery, rattling the leaves on the trees behind us. The sun stood high in the sky, teasing the day with the brightness of spring and its imminent arrival. As the minister said his last prayer, I imagined the world turned upside down, with the dead watching us and wondering if we were the lost souls.

  Without the thread of my parents tying us together, Wendy, Jared, and I seemed like lonely strangers crashing an old man’s funeral. Walking back to Jared’s car, I wondered if we would have liked one another if we had met outside of Wilton. If there was something more between us than genetics and time poorly spent.

  THIRTY

  WILLARD AND ADDISON were at the house setting up when we pulled into the driveway from the cemetery. Wendy was unusually quiet.

  At breakfast Willard told me Wendy had lost another baby a few weeks before and had not rebounded like she usually did. Wendy had miscarried three times in the last three years. I couldn’t imagine wanting anything that badly.

  “Are you okay?” I asked as we walked from the car to the house. Wendy’s dress hung on her like a shiny black pillowcase. Her eyes were sallow and bloodshot, and in spite of expertly applied makeup, she had no color. She shook her head and walked ahead. “What?” I said.

  “I can’t remember the last time you asked me how I was.” Her legs wobbled on the gravel as she made her way to the back door. “Come to think of it, I’m not sure you ever did.”

  We were at the stoop and she continued up the stairs while I stayed back and felt my pockets for a cigarette. Wendy did not turn to see if she had stung me, nor did she hold the door. She stepped into the kitchen and took off her coat as if she were the mistress of the manor.

  I sat on the step and lit up. She was right; I never asked. She never asked either.

  “Andrew’s on his way.” Addison came out and sat close to me and took a long drag from my cigarette.

  “Anyone tell you these will kill you?”

  “Really? Liquor is quicker.”

  It was getting dark, although it was only four P.M. We were expecting a few people to stop by to pay their respects, but not many. No Bundt cakes for Dad, that’s for sure.

  “How are you doing?” Addison asked, nudging me with his shoulder. I took the cigarette back from him.

  “Same.”

  “As what?”

  “As before. I’m fine. No regrets.”

  “None?”

  “Not with my father. Don’t worry, I’ve got a pile over you and Alex.”

  “So now it’s me and Alex?” He smiled and nudged me again.

  “Don’t flatter yourself. You know what I meant.”

  A car pulled into the driveway. Andrew got out. He was wearing an open trench coat and a dress shirt and tie that had been loosened. His hair was ruffled and framed his face. He looked like a cross between Addison and Jared, with my mother’s eyes. I wondered if he was nervous. At Addison’s urging, I had called Andrew and invited him to the wake. I had also promised him I would tell Wendy and Jared.

  Addison got up and shook Andrew’s hand. Although they had met at the park, this was the first time they had acknowledged their connection.

  The kitchen smelled like strong black coffee. Willard had brought his espresso maker. He said that aside from Wendy, it was the only thing he could not live without. He wrapped my palm around a hot mug of
it when I came back in, “You look better holding this,” he said. Wendy and Jared were taking the deli platters out of the refrigerator. Addison went into the living room to set up folding chairs. Andrew hung up his coat.

  I looked at the people around me and wondered who they were. What made us a family? Certainly not a common experience, as each of us had a different story, and although we shared characters, the villain in mine might be the hero in Wendy’s. Was it DNA? That invisible thread that made Wendy and I have the same patch of spider veins above our knees? What was the bond and when, if ever, did I feel it?

  The last time I felt their hands in mine, my left in my father’s and my right in my mother’s, I was five. They were swinging me back and forth in the front yard. It was summer and almost dusk. Sheets and towels hung from the clothesline and were gently lifted by the cool rush of evening air sneaking up behind us. We laughed as they lifted me higher while they walked toward the house. I was so filled with love for them, I thought I would bleed from it. I was theirs, they were mine. We were connected.

  By the time I was seven, I was afraid of many things, including storms. I should have been asleep. It was dark and quiet between the smack of thunder and searing flash of lightning. I was whimpering into my pillow, afraid to make a sound. “Come to me,” Wendy called from across the room. In the quick snap of lightning, I saw her lifting her covers, patting the warm spot next to her. “Run,” she said and I did. I covered the space between us in three jumps and landed in her arms. Our laughter muted the thunder.

  At seventeen Jared carried me. He lifted me from the bushes and tried not to slip on the mud. I couldn’t see, my eyes were so swollen. I reached for his cheek. It was wet. He was crying and saying how sorry he was. I didn’t want to hold on but he made me. He told me I was going to be okay. He told me he was sorry. He held on when I didn’t want to.

  Addison and Diana placed the baby on my eighteen-year-old belly. He was so warm and I was so cold. He was slippery and gurgling and reaching for me with that half-fist. He didn’t roll off; he knew how to balance himself on me. “Hello,” I whispered, hoping he didn’t know that I was really saying good-bye.

  “Jared and Wendy,” I said. No one heard me. My chest felt like hot stones were resting on both lungs. Although the coffee was warm in my hands, my lips were cold and stiff, as if the words would freeze into slivers of ice before they came out. “Jared, Wendy,” I said again, louder. “I need to tell you something.”

  Alex was asleep when Addison and I got back to their house. Although I was hoarse from talking, I had one more thing I needed to do.

  “I think you should wait until morning,” Addison said. “You can stay here.”

  I could have dropped where I was standing and slept for five days. We had left Jared, Wendy, and Andrew sitting together, picking at the otherwise untouched deli platters. No one but the Igbys and Burt the mailman had shown up to pay their respects. I shocked the Igbys by introducing Andrew as my brother. They didn’t believe me until I asked them to look at Addison and Jared and compare. Andrew was what you got when you mixed our genes. You got Alex too, but the Igbys may have known that all along.

  Jared and Wendy did.

  “Isn’t it funny,” Wendy said, out on the porch as I took a cigarette break, “that what you were good at was getting pregnant.”

  I was glad to see her spunk had returned. I had suspected, or rather, I had always known, that what made Wendy feel best about herself was knowing I was worse off. She wasn’t much of a sister, and something told me she wouldn’t be much of a mother either. Just because you want a child doesn’t mean you deserve one.

  “And drinking. Don’t forget how good I am at that,” I said. She took the cigarette from my mouth and sucked it down like she had been having an affair with smoking for years. She crossed her arms and looked out into the long, dark blanket of land in front of us. Jared would have to sort out the paperwork, just as Addison would have to introduce Andrew to his, or rather, their, father. Addison and Andrew had promised to try to get the farm turned over to all of us. I had extracted some promises of my own.

  “He loves me.” I looked at her, not sure whom she was talking about. “Willard.” I nodded. Wendy didn’t give me back the cigarette so I lit another. “What was it like to give birth?”

  “It was a long time ago.”

  “You remember. Tell me.”

  And so I did. And while we worked our way down to the last inhale, I told the story of my son’s birth.

  “You want a cup of tea? Decaf?” Addison was turning off the lights in the dining room and running through the habitual checklist of duties a homeowner does before he goes to bed. He looked good in his life, his house. I was glad for Alex. Glad he had had Diana to love him at the beginning and glad Addison had stepped in and carried on.

  “No, I’m okay.” My voice quivered as I watched him moving around me. I felt like I was visiting a life I could have had but didn’t choose.

  Addison walked over to the small hutch in the dining room and opened a drawer. “I have something for you,” he said. He handed me a brown velvet pouch. “I’ve been holding on to these for a while.”

  I felt it before I knew for sure. It was my mother’s pearls. The ones I lost the night we were together. I spilled them into my hand and smelled them. The rush of my mother’s scent brought tears to my eyes.

  Addison took them and put them on me. “So beautiful,” he said. He smiled. “You and your mother, so beautiful.”

  After ten years of running I had arrived back where I started. In that garage apartment with Addison, feeling the magnitude of my own attraction. I had lost everything but this; it was still as vivid and intense as it had been then.

  I followed him up the stairs and into his room, and without saying a word, we undressed and climbed into bed and met each other in the middle as if we had been doing that all along.

  THIRTY-ONE

  I THREW ADDISON OFF me like a heavy blanket that was suffocating me. The cold air mapped a chill along the perimeter of my body. Addison rolled onto his back, taking care not to touch me. We lay next to each other but not together, like a continent split by a tidal wave of memory. I was an island again.

  I never got used to the ways my body betrayed me. When it was beaten it healed, when it was touched it responded without consideration of the consequences, and when it was raped I feared it had made life. A body’s job is to protect the heart, not expose it, not to lead it places it could not hide.

  There was no use in covering myself; I was naked.

  “It still hurts,” I said. Tears trickled into my ears.

  Addison rolled toward me and dammed his body against mine. He brushed the hair away from my face and took my hand.

  He isn’t who you think he is ….

  The sun wasn’t up yet and neither were Alex or Addison. I slipped on my clothes and carried my shoes out to the porch before I put them on. My car had been in the driveway since I had turfed the lawn.

  It started easily. I felt a surge of panic as I pulled out of the driveway and thought I saw a shadow in the garage window but realized it was probably the morning light.

  There was only one place left for me to go and then I would be done with Wilton.

  The roads were empty. Except for the occasional delivery truck, I had the town to myself. I drove past the Elks Lodge, where the dance was, and followed the same path my father had taken in his truck. I had never driven to Rucker’s Ravine, but I knew the way.

  My hands were clammy as they gripped the steering wheel. I smelled like Addison, that mix of sweat and oranges. I told myself it would protect me. I could still feel him inside me. The way he eased himself in and moved with me, every wave erasing the boundary that separated us. I floated in and out of myself, not me and not him, but something safe in between.

  The rope bridge was still there but frayed. Tire tracks were frozen in the ground, and although it was impossible, I imagined they were from my father’s truck. The
leaves had abandoned the trees in the small woods, making it seem more like a closet of skeletons than a place where I could have hidden.

  I walked to the edge of the ravine and stood staring out over to the other side and took a deep breath. I prayed for the guts to make it over.

  I was looking for the sketchbook my father had thrown across, hoping some of it had survived. If I was going to tell my son who I was, I needed him to see the good part too.

  I was outside my body, floating high above the ravine. Just like I did that night. I saw myself at the edge reaching for the thick rope knot that connected the bridge to an old tree trunk.

  I had no fear of falling anymore. The wooden planks strung between the two rope railings were sparse, and in order to get on the bridge I would have to take a long stride forward. I gripped the rope on both sides and willed my foot onto the first plank. The bridge swayed in the wind as a plank on the other side wiggled loose. I thought about the book flying in the air, the gilded edges twinkling through the storm and landing somewhere over there. Somewhere safe, I hoped.

  I moved slowly and focused on each step. The cold air stung my chapped hands and cut across my cheeks, like the rain that night.

  I had to jump at the other side to land, as the boards were too flimsy to risk. My foot slipped on the smooth slope that led up to the grassy landing. The same place I fell before. This time I caught myself.

  There were frozen footprints on the path to the meadow and, like the tire tracks, I wondered if the last two people who had been here were my father and me.

  I searched the brittle grass, which had grown waist-high and flourished in spite of a winter filled with storms. As I trudged through half-frozen, muddy puddles and tried to imagine where the book might have landed, I began to realize how foolish it was to think it had survived.