The Last Bridge Read online

  The letter was facedown and written on a small sheet of lilac stationery that looked as if it had been torn in half. I flipped it over and took a swig of vodka and felt a warm surge of relief flow to the tips of my fingers.

  Through the plastic I recognized the careful script resulting from my mother’s Catholic school education. Whenever I marveled at it, she laughed and said, “Anyone can write nicely if they have the time.” Judging from the penmanship, this was a note my mother had taken her whole life to write.

  February 23rd.

  Cat,

  He isn’t who you think he is.

  Mom xxxooo

  My hands shook as I slid the note out of the bag and held it to the light, not sure of what I hoped to find—a hidden message or a hologram of her smiling as if to say, “Gotcha!”

  He isn’t who you think he is ….

  I counted the words including the hugs and kisses. Ten, minus the date—one for every year I had been gone.

  I worked the note into the bag and tried to press the seal together but could not make it stick. Every time I thought I was on track, I let go and saw the bag creeping open. My fingers became slick and less steady with every attempt to get it back in.

  But there was no getting back.

  I pushed myself from the table, tasting the acid backwash of vodka as I rushed the stairs. Halfway up I stopped, feeling the pull of the bag on the table, imagining it opening and closing, breathing in the air from the kitchen.

  I crept back downstairs and hovered over the table as if I were checking on a sleeping baby. I wiped my palms against my back pockets and reached over and sealed the bag in one swift motion, then grabbed the bottle off the counter and cut the light.

  I finished off the vodka as I waited for sleep. After tossing in my bed for hours, I tried every other bed in the house until I fell asleep in the tub several hours later.

  “Are you going to stay like this forever?” White light punctuated the cool baritone of Jared’s voice as I struggled to keep my eyes open.

  “Turn it off.” I pulled myself up from the semifetal position I had been dreaming in as the room faded back to the blue-gray of morning. “How long—?” I started to speak, but winced at the pain that shot through every miserable muscle in my body.

  “Just got here,” he said as he leaned in and wrapped his massive arms around me and lifted me out of the tub in one swift motion.

  “Christ, Cat… you’re skin and bones.” He hugged me hard, pressing my ribs against his. My cheek brushed the soft cotton of his pressed shirt as I took in his familiar smell of baby powder and sweat. In spite of everything, my body remembered his.

  I pushed away. Jared stepped back and raised his hands in surrender. I caught my reflection in the medicine cabinet mirror and saw what he had seen: dark puffy circles under bloodshot eyes, unwashed hair waving in clumps away from my face, and pale cheeks with hollow indents where dimples used to be. It was hard to believe there weren’t two corpses my brother had come to bury.

  “You alone?” I asked, as I rinsed my mouth with icy water.

  “Yeah,” he said. “You?”

  I nodded. I wiped my mouth with a hand towel cross-stitched with a snowman and then looked over at him. Jared had morphed from a sweatsuited linebacker into a Wall Street banker with starched khakis and a long-sleeved navy polo shirt neatly tucked in and pressed. His chestnut hair was cut short and hugged the sleek curve of his neck. The bow of his front teeth was gone, replaced by flat porcelain white caps. His new smile revealed the teeth he used to hide. His milk chocolate eyes were all that remained unchanged.

  It had been seven years since the night in the motel when he walked away. The rain pounded around him as he pulled a Penn State windbreaker over his head and climbed into his fiancée’s Jag. I watched from the doorway of the room I had been holed up in for three days feeling the ricochet of the raindrops crackle against my face and neck. Jared had tracked me down and had almost convinced me he cared until he explained why he came. I threw him out and made a solemn vow to drink until I forgot. I was still trying.

  “Coffee?” he asked, as I followed him to the kitchen.

  I didn’t want coffee.

  Downstairs, a pot was brewing and a box of Krispy Kreme doughnuts was on the table next to the note he had taken out of the bag.

  The room felt small with Jared, me, and the elephant of our shared history wedged between us. Drinking quieted the elephant.

  “Did you see the bologna and cheese?” I asked, as he pulled the milk from the fridge without looking, just as he did every morning growing up. I was expecting him to take a swig from the carton but he didn’t.

  “Creepy,” he said, shaking his head, checking the milk label. “Whole milk; you’d think she would have bumped down to low-fat at some point.”

  Outside the wind whipped the screen door open and shut. Inside, the coffee bubbled in the percolator on the stove, releasing its throaty aroma.

  Jared poured the coffee, holding the handle and the lid with pot holders, the way my mother did. In the light of the kitchen I saw how much like her he was, from the almond shape of his mouth to the hesitant way he pulled the cup toward him, blew, and then licked his lips before sipping gently. He even closed his eyes and tilted his head back, savoring the rush of caffeine like she did. Jared and I sat quietly, sneaking looks at each other, assessing the impact of time.

  His hair was a salt-and-pepper mix of dark brown and gray. His complexion was smooth and worn, like the leather on the underside of my purse. He was handsome with my mother’s plain oval features and my father’s strong bones and hands. As a child I spent hours lying in the grass studying his face. Whenever Dad got rough Jared would take me to the flat patch of field behind the barn and make up stories from the shapes of the clouds. “My hero,” I’d exclaim when he’d slay the dragon in his cloud tales. Sometimes I’d trace shapes on his cheeks with a blade of grass. I knew the geography of his face better than I knew my own.

  “I never thought I’d see you again,” he said, breaking the silence. His fingers circled the rim of his cup. “I miss you.”

  I got up and poured myself a cup of coffee and looked out the window. “When is Wendy coming?”

  “Cat?” he said.

  “Wendy?”

  “This afternoon.” I could feel his stare as he waited for me to turn around so he could give me another imploring look. I refused to turn around.

  “Who called her?”

  “I did.”

  “You talk?”

  “Sometimes.”

  “Mom?”

  “Sometimes.”

  I nodded. So everyone kept in touch. My leaving hadn’t changed anything for them. Good to know. Jared tapped his fingers against his mug. I imagined myself running in the fields barefoot and numb.

  “Why did you come?” Jared said.

  “Mom left me the note.”

  “So?” he said.

  “She knew where I was; she gave Ruth my number.”

  When I got the call, it took a while for me to place the voice. I had been sleeping off a binge and had the cloudy half-awake sense that I was dreaming the conversation. Her words were strong: shotgun, blood, and stroke. A note addressed to me. It wasn’t until I was on the George Washington Bridge that I realized I was going back.

  “I gave Ruth your number,” he said.

  “I thought Mom—” I gripped the edge of the counter.

  “No.”

  I dropped my cup in the sink as tears filled my eyes. The idea that she knew where I was had gotten me here. I should have known better. What kind of mother lets her daughter go and never looks for her?

  “I’m tired. I’m going to take a bath,” I said.

  “That’s all you have to say?” he said.

  I turned from the stairs and looked at Jared, who had moved to the sink and was looking at me. His expression was a replica of one my mother had mastered, with pleading eyes, open mouth, and desperate restraint. “Forgive me,�
�� it seemed to say.

  “Call me when Wendy gets here,” I said, taking the steps two at a time.

  Wendy arrived as I was drying my hair. I heard a car door slam and looked out the window. She was standing by the open trunk of a car barking orders at an old bald guy as she loaded him down with suitcases and bags. “Get this. Your hands aren’t full yet. Where are you going? There’s more stuff to carry!”

  “Has anyone called the hospital to see if Dad is all right?” Wendy asked as I came down the stairs. Jared sat staring into space, wincing at the piercing tone of her voice as his leg twitched a mile a minute under the table. Wendy eyed me up and down, taking me in as if I were a contestant in a beauty pageant she was judging. Wendy works with what she has and thinks everyone is obligated to make themselves as attractive as possible. I could tell by the way she pursed her lips that I was not obliging my looks. She was right. I had lost the habit of caring for myself. Like Jared’s, my hair was filled with streaks of gray that looked like fine flecks of white paint. The shape was vaguely reminiscent of a haircut I had more than a year ago, with bangs that had grown past my nose. Even with makeup, which I didn’t bother with much, my eyes had permanent dark puffy circles under them. I was underweight by about ten pounds, which was unusual, as I tended to be fat. My clothes hung on me. Heavy drinking was my diet of choice; it shed the pounds and numbed the senses; all in all, not a bad program.

  “Cat!” Wendy came toward me and hooked her hand in the crook of my elbow.

  “This is Willard.” She walked me to him and whispered, “Be nice.”

  I put out my hand. He smiled and nodded as if he didn’t understand the gesture. I looked at Wendy.

  “He’s hard of hearing. You have to speak up.” She raised her voice to demonstrate. “Not circumcised either,” she whispered in my ear. Willard looked like I was about to punish him. He was painfully bald. The kind that makes you wonder if the guy ever had any hair. His glasses were Coke-bottle thick with frames that covered most of his face. His blank expression evoked the name Dullard.

  “Has anyone seen Dad?”

  Wendy’s nonchalance caught me off guard. It hadn’t occurred to me until that moment that Dad would be a subject anyone would bring up around me. The mention of his name and the nearness of Jared and Wendy brought it all back. My body’s memory betrayed me first. The muscles in my thighs gave way, causing me to lose my balance. I grabbed the back of a chair.

  “We were focusing on the arrangements for Mom,” Jared said. “Cat identified her and filled out the paperwork. I’m planning the service.”

  “I’d like to know where Dad is.”

  I went to the pantry and found a copy of last year’s Yellow Pages and handed it to her.

  “You don’t even know what hospital he’s in?”

  “No. The only person who knew was Mom, and she blew her head off before we could ask. Besides, there are only two hospitals, Mercy and Our Lady of Perpetual Sorrow. Pick one.”

  “Don’t be so dramatic.” She rolled her eyes and passed the directory to Willard and shouted, in what I presumed was his good ear, “Look for hospital … HOS-PEE-TALL … H-O-S … here.” She opened her fake Chanel bag and took out a pen and grabbed the lilac stationery off the table. Jared pulled it out of her hands.

  “What?”

  “That’s Mom’s suicide note,” Jared said.

  “Oh … sorry,” she said, as if we had told her she was stepping on a dog’s tail. “Do you have something else?”

  “Here,” I said. I ripped a loose piece of wallpaper off the wall and handed it to her.

  Wendy and Willard left for the hospital later that afternoon. Wendy had been able to ascertain from the nurse on duty that my father was still in a coma. The nurse said that it didn’t look too promising.

  I was relieved. Although he had been dead to me for years, part of me knew he was still alive and haunting the lives of anyone who cared about him. It was a bitter irony that he survived my mother, especially since no one thought he would live as long as he did. He was a heavyset man with a weakness for drinking and smoking. That combination, along with his lethal temper, made many people think he was living on borrowed time. Not me. I believed he would outlive all of us. Monsters always do.

  Wendy was Dad’s favorite. He called her his princess and showered her with gifts whenever he went to town. She forgave his outbursts and quickly forgot how afraid she was of him when presented with a new dress or pair of shoes. I suppose Wendy understood Dad in a way the rest of us didn’t. Or perhaps it was Dad who understood that giving to Wendy bought her acceptance.

  I wasn’t sure if there was anything Dad could do to turn Wendy away. Even after he cut off the tip of my mother’s finger, she defended his right to be angry. (I’m guessing the charm bracelet he bought her didn’t hurt either.) The night he did it we lay in bed while she told me I could never understand how hard it had been for someone of Dad’s intelligence to end up on this farm. She said he was like the lion that had the thorn in his paw in the story my mother used to tell us. She said he just needed someone to take it out and he wouldn’t be so angry anymore. I asked her why she didn’t do it. She said it was up to Mom to keep him happy. A lion with a thorn in its paw—he was a lot more than that.

  While Wendy and Willard visited my father, Jared went out to make last-minute preparations for the service. He picked up deli platters and beer in case people stopped by afterward. He asked me to go with him, as he was planning on taking a drive around town to see how much it had changed. I told him I needed to rest. I put on my coat, grabbed a pack of cigarettes, and headed down toward the lake.

  We called the huge pond on our property “the lake.” I think we did it because it irritated Dad and Wendy so much. “It’s not a lake,” they’d shout. We knew it wasn’t a lake; in fact, it was barely a pond. As far as I could tell nothing ever lived in it. There were no ducks, no fish, no beavers, just algae and cloudy water. During the hot days of summer, Jared and my mother would go in to cool off. I never waded in; I didn’t like the feel of the mud squishing between my toes. I also didn’t know how to swim and was deathly afraid of drowning. I did like to sit at the edge and stare out onto the vast horizon of our property.

  Now, looking out, I was struck by how familiar everything felt. Like the house, the yard was an extension of my mother. It was filled with her touches, from the long clothesline that ran the width of the driveway to the carefully pruned rosebushes along the back of the house. This mother, the one who gardened and tended and threw outdoor parties for us when we were kids, was the one I wanted to remember. This was the twenty-six-year-old woman who wore capri pants with a matching halter top that she copied from a picture she saw in a magazine. “I made this for your party,” she said days before I celebrated my fifth birthday in high Rucker style. “We’ll invite everyone from your class, so no one feels left out,” she said from behind her sewing machine. And we did. When the day arrived, she moved around the yard giving out prizes to all of my friends from school. “This one is for you.” She squatted down to be eye level with my playmates. “Thank you, Mrs. Rucker,” they replied as my mother smiled a beautiful, brilliant, happy-to-be-alive smile that made everyone giggle. She made everything for that party, from the decorations down to the cake we decorated together. We covered it with strawberries and good wishes for me. She even made me a crown so I could be a princess for the day. At the end of the party, we stood together on the front porch holding hands and waving good-bye to everyone. She lifted me into her arms and hugged me. I could feel her warm breath on my neck tickling me. She smelled of coffee and cigarettes and White Shoulders perfume. “I love you,” I whispered in her ear. It was the last time I said it. We laughed as she sang, “You smell like a monkey, and you act like one too,” into my ear. She was my good mother. She was not the woman who closed the bedroom door when my father went roaming. Not the one who let me go and never tried to find me. Not the one lying half-faced and naked on a metal slab.

/>   He isn’t who you think he is ….

  It was getting dark and a cold wind was rolling up the hill. I could see the lights in the house come on and Willard’s car in the drive. I got up and brushed the cold mud from my pants, feeling the chill and desperately craving a drink.

  I snuck to my car without getting their attention. I saw Wendy through the kitchen window as I pulled out of the driveway. Her hands were covered in Mom’s Playtex Living gloves as she scrubbed down the windowsill while Willard pulled masking tape off the cupboards. Apparently the cleanup that was done did not meet with her approval.

  I headed out Connor’s Road to Walt’s Tavern. I figured it was far enough out of town that I wouldn’t run into anyone I used to know. Just to be safe, though, I took a booth in the back and sat with my back to the door. After several beers I was beginning to feel the numbness I had been longing for all day.

  “So … what brings you to these parts?” a ratty-haired fool of a man asked, as he leaned his stinking face into mine.

  “Get the fuck away from me,” I said, loudly but slow enough for him to understand.

  “Cripes … can’t a guy buy a lady a drink?”

  “Get lost.”

  The jukebox was playing some sappy half-country half-rock song with lyrics like “I’m gonna love you forever.” Yeah, right. There was a couple snuggling up on the dance floor groping each other as they moved back and forth to some alien rhythm. The girl couldn’t have been more than eighteen while the guy must have been in his forties. In spite of the age difference, they both looked old. In fact, everybody in the bar looked old and tired, including me. The only difference between them and the rest of us was that they looked old and tired and happy. Maybe their happiness had something to do with the fact that she had her hand on his dick.

  “That pitcher for sharing?”

  I looked up at the man who was blocking my view of the hand-on-dick dancers. The face was familiar but not recognizable until I saw the silver pen in his shirt pocket. I signed my mother’s papers with it. It was Andrew Reilly, County Coroner.