The Last Bridge Page 6

  He came out a few minutes later with huge bubbling floats. I took a sip and put my head back and closed my eyes. The dark molasses flavor mixed with the sweet vanilla coolness was delicious.

  I opened my eyes. Addison was studying my face. “You’re lovely when you’re smiling,” he said, as I felt that warm rush again and turned away.

  “Let’s drive to the duck pond and finish these.”

  We parked and got out of the truck. Addison jumped up on the hood while I held our floats. He took them as I climbed up next to him, slipping and spilling the drinks in his lap. He slid off the hood and pulled me with him as we both fell to the ground laughing.

  “Oh my God, are you all right?” I said, helping him up. He had root beer all over him, and without thinking, I started blotting it off with my napkins. I accidentally grazed his crotch with my hand and felt a wave of panic so strong I was sure I would go into cardiac arrest.

  “I’m so sorry,” I said. We looked at each other in unison and started laughing again. “Want to try again?” I said, pointing to the hood.

  “Nah. I’m not sure I’m capable of falling for you twice.”

  “That’s funny,” I replied, “I’m not going to fall for you even once.”

  “We’ll see,” he said.

  We got back in the car and sat quietly, watching the sun go down across the field behind the pond.

  “You’re okay,” he said, nudging me, “not half as snotty as I thought.”

  “Thanks,” I said, “I wish I could say the same about you.”

  He threw his head back and laughed so hard I thought it would echo. The skin around his eyes and mouth wrinkled like a nicely worn trail.

  “Will you show me more?” He pointed to the bag where I had put the sketchbook and scraps.

  “I don’t know,” I said, shrugging.

  “I think you will.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Don’t make me tickle you,” he said, waving his fingers in front of me.

  “Okay, okay, just don’t touch me!” I said as he reached over and tickled me until I got hiccups.

  FIVE

  “CAT.”

  Jared stood in the doorway where Addison had been a few hours before. I was still on the floor with my knees to my chest and my head buried in my hands. My mouth was dry with no lingering taste of beer. My throbbing head would soon evolve into a massive hangover. My cheeks were crusty from crying.

  I don’t know how long I had been lost in memory. The coats on the bed were gone.

  “Have you returned to the land of the living?” Jared’s thin frame was backlit against the pale rose-print wallpaper that lined the upstairs hall. He leaned casually against the doorway, wiping his hands with a dish towel.

  “Mom’s dead,” I said as I reawakened to reality.

  Jared turned on the lamp on the side table and sat on the bed next to me. His calf brushed against my shoulder. I felt the heat of him and wanted to rest against his leg for a few moments. It wouldn’t mean I needed him. It would feel so nice.

  His leg began to twitch, repelling the possibility. I pulled away.

  I had gone too far back in my memory to the days when I knew he would protect me. It made me thirsty.

  “You okay?”

  “Fine,” I said as I squinted from the glare of light. “What time is it?”

  “Midnight.”

  Jared stood up. On his left hand I noticed a gold wedding band and wondered why I hadn’t seen it before. I guess he married the woman in the Jag—what was her name? It was a street in New York. Broadway, no, Madison.

  “Everybody gone?”

  Did they have any kids?

  “Just about. Andrew and Hal said to say good-bye. Andrew said to call if you need anything. He seems to think you’re friends.”

  “Why?”

  “Maybe it’s your charm. You have a tendency to be overly warm to people.” Jared made a pistol from his index finger and thumb and pointed it at me, punctuating his sarcasm.

  “I used to be nice,” I said.

  “And that would have been … when?”

  “Funny, Jared. Ever think of taking your act on the road?”

  Jared swept his arm across the bedspread, feeling for something. He lifted the pillows and patted them. I wondered if he was going to strip the sheets.

  “What are you looking for?” I said, scooting away from the bed. Sooner or later I would have to try to stand up. I was holding off as long as I could.

  “Addison called. He left his lighter. Said he’s pretty sure he left it in here.”

  There it was, his name, spoken aloud. The sound of it as something other than a voice in my head made me feel that rush again. I had to get up. I pushed myself to a crawling position. I couldn’t have Jared, the memory of Addison, and myself in the same room at the same time with no escape. I reached for the bed to steady myself.

  “You do this every night?” Jared said.

  “What?”

  “Drink till you pass out?”

  “I didn’t pass out.”

  “Tell that to Addison.”

  “What does that mean?” I eased myself down on the bed and experimented with keeping my head up.

  “He’s the one who carried you upstairs.”

  “When?”

  “You dropped your beer and hit the floor. Wendy and I told everyone you were tired and hadn’t eaten.”

  “I was tired, and I haven’t eaten.”

  “Whatever,” he said. He was looking under the bed. “Addison carried you up here and put you on the bed. As usual I cleaned up the mess.”

  I resisted the urge to say, “What’s that supposed to mean?” His fixation on the bed was starting to annoy me. Addison told him he left his lighter in my parents’ bedroom, and Jared assumed he left it in the bed.

  “Try the dresser. Christ, what do you think we were doing?”

  “When it comes to you and Addison, it’s hard to say.” He walked over to the dresser and found the lighter. He tossed it in the air as he headed for the door.

  “So you haven’t kept in touch with him?” he said; the edge had left his voice.

  I shook my head.

  “Were you happy to see him?”

  We locked eyes for a moment. I shrugged. If I had the rest of my life, I’m not sure I could find an adequate answer.

  “Were you happy to see me?” His voice cracked with exposure.

  “Define happy.”

  “Jared!” Wendy called from downstairs. Jared’s eyes fixed on me as if I were a map he was trying to decipher.

  “I don’t drink that much,” I said.

  “He’s living at his grandma’s place.” Jared answered as if I had asked. “He’s been back awhile.”

  I reached for my cigarettes that were on my mother’s nightstand.

  “Jared!” Wendy called again. I searched for a match.

  “Just a sec,” he shouted back as he glided toward me, flipping open Addison’s Zippo lighter. He tripped the flame as I guided his hand toward the cigarette. I felt the smooth ridges of his knuckles and the bump of a vein that could be traced all the way to his heart.

  “He’s got a kid.” His tone was cool, like the drag of menthol filling my lungs. I let go of his hand as I pulled on the cigarette and thanked the god of lung cancer for giving me something to steady myself.

  “I know,” I said.

  SIX

  ADDISON STARTED meeting me after school a couple of times a week. He introduced himself to Nell and charmed her in a way that made her blush every time he said hello. She gave up her time with me easily on the condition I told her everything.

  Until Addison, I was not interested in boys. In fact, I had never been on a date. Nell had more luck and went out with anyone who asked. Unfortunately, the boys who liked her were not the ones she liked. Still, she said, a girl couldn’t be too picky and attention was attention.

  I didn’t think I was missing anything. Nell often told me about the guys she went
out with and their roaming hands and slippery kisses. It sounded clinical to me, like she was getting a medical procedure rather than having fun.

  It would be a lie to say I had never been touched by a man. But the truth would be worse. So I found a place to live between a lie and the truth. Until Addison, I got along just fine.

  In a short time I had gone from living deep within myself to seeking the company of another person. I wanted to hear his voice before he spoke, feel his hand on my arm before we touched. I wanted to be with him all the time. When I saw his truck in front of the school, I knew what it felt like to be happy.

  Those days were like a long, slow drunk.

  One night toward the end of spring semester, Addison didn’t show up after school as he had promised. When I got home Mom was making dinner and Dad sat in the family room shouting at the television and drinking.

  “Cat’s home,” Mom called to Dad. I looked at her with a why-did-you-do-that face. She shrugged her shoulders and whispered, “He was asking for you.” Even though Mom was more than happy to turn Dad over to me, she didn’t understand why I was angry with her all the time.

  “Cat!” Dad yelled. I swallowed hard and went to him. He looked me over like I was a toy he was thinking of ordering from a catalog. I instinctively crossed my arms and pushed down the fear.

  “You want something?” I asked as his eyes roamed over my legs.

  “Your ass is getting fat,” he said, smacking it hard. “Get me some ice.”

  I shook off the sting of his slap and brought him a tumbler stuffed with fresh cubes. He patted the armrest of his La-Z-Boy. Over the years I learned the code of his gestures and expressions. I studied it like a language, not for meaning but for warning. If I could read him I could stay ahead of him or at least try to anticipate what was coming and prepare myself.

  I balanced as little of my body as I could on the edge of the armrest. He filled the tumbler with the bourbon he kept nearby and took a long cold pull as his left hand wandered up my skirt.

  The sandpaper scruffiness of his fingers kneaded my thigh. It wasn’t a squeeze so much as a grip, as if I were a chicken and my leg was the drumstick he would tear off and devour. It was warm that day so I wore kneesocks instead of tights. Tights were better for encounters with Dad.

  As his hand sought more of me, I thought of Kitty Kat and the battle she would fight against the Hand. I would draw it tonight. I would make her body a weapon, rage would be her arsenal, and her reward would be a life in Niceville. Wherever the hell that was; sometimes even Kitty forgot.

  “Where’s Addison?” Dad asked as he stumbled to his chair. I had been released from sitting with him to help set the table.

  “He’s visiting a friend and won’t be home until later,” Mom answered as she served Dad steaming spoonfuls of baked macaroni.

  Dad tried to pick fights with all of us during dinner. All except Wendy. He started with Mom about the dinner, saying macaroni was slop for pigs. He threw the plate at her, and after dodging it, she fixed him a ham sandwich and sat back down and pushed a clump of bread crumbs around her plate.

  Jared was next.

  “So how’s that pussy team of yours doing this season?”

  “Fine,” Jared responded, staring blankly into space.

  “How many girls are on the team, besides you?”

  Jared didn’t flinch. “There are none, sir. No girls on the team.”

  “If you ask me, all boys are girls nowadays. When I played ball, you had to be a mean motherfucker to survive out there. You had to have hate in you.” Dad pointed his thick index finger at Jared. “You had to have the desire to kill a man with your bare hands.” He took a long swig of his liquid ammunition. “You have that in you, boy?”

  Jared’s focus shifted from a fixed point on the wall. “Yes, sir,” he answered as he locked eyes with Dad. Jared clenched his butter knife.

  We finished the last few moments of dinner in a silent standoff. After years of mealtime conflict, we had perfected the quick eat. From start to finish, we could get the meal on and off the table and dishes washed in fifteen minutes.

  “What’s for dessert?” Dad asked. He had a thing about sweets; he said he didn’t like them, but at least three or four times a week he asked for dessert.

  As Mom cut pieces of apple pie Mrs. Igby had dropped by earlier, Dad said, “Don’t give Cat any. She doesn’t need it.” My mother looked at me and then at my father and nodded.

  “Keep chubbing up like that and no man will have you,” Dad said. Wendy giggled. “And don’t even think of sneaking a piece up to her room.” He pointed at Mom when she looked my way.

  “I don’t want any!” I said before I could calculate the consequence.

  Dad put his fork down and slid what was left of his pie over to me. Before I knew what was happening, he grabbed my neck with his hand and pushed my face down into the plate. “There—eat your pie, piggy.”

  I felt shards of light smashing against my eyelids as I quickly tried to assess what had happened and what he might do next. Before I could get my bearings, he lifted my head from the plate by my neck and tried to stuff the crust in my face as I swung my arms in front of me to stop him. My nose and mouth were throbbing. My eyes were tearing. The force of his hand caused my chair to tilt onto the back legs. I flailed my arms out like a baby bird trying to fly. I heard Jared’s chair fall behind him as he jumped up and pulled Dad off me.

  I fell forward and tried to keep my head up. I sat in a daze staring at the roosters on my mother’s plastic tablecloth.

  Count the roosters. One, two … Don’t cry …. Count the roosters.

  My nose was bleeding onto the orange-and-brown feathers of the roosters and I let it. My father grabbed the car keys and stormed out of the house.

  “Cat, if he says no dessert just say no,” Wendy said.

  “Eat shit, Wendy,” I said. “I hope he dies.”

  “You don’t mean that, Cat.” Mom held my head back and cleared the crumbs and blood off the table.

  As soon as the room stopped spinning, I left the house for the woods.

  I sat alone on the stump for a while before Jared came out with a washcloth and a bag of ice. “I thought you might have a bit of a shiner.” I nodded. He knelt next to me and dabbed the dried blood off my face. “There, that’s better,” he said. I rolled my eyes and felt tears flowing down my cheeks. “You know Dad’s mean to you because you’re so much smarter and prettier than Wendy or Mom.”

  “I’d settle for being dumb and ugly if it meant he’d keep his paws off me.”

  We stared at the stars that appeared through a small clearing of trees. The wind rustled the leaves, making them sound like skirts swirling at a dance.

  “Thanks for getting him off me.”

  “No problem,” he said, taking my hand.

  After a few minutes he got up. “So how about coming back to the house with me and we’ll have some pie.” I looked at him and smiled.

  “I’ve got some on my sleeve here,” I said.

  “And a little on your blouse.” He kissed the top of my head and walked back.

  I kept the ice on my eye until my fingers grew numb, then tossed the cubes on the ground in front of me and told myself I would go back when the last one melted. I pulled out my black book and tried to sketch the fight I had mapped out in my mind, but my eye throbbed too much for me to concentrate. Some nights I couldn’t draw my way out.

  It was around midnight when I headed back. As I made my way out of the woods, I saw the headlights of a truck pull around the barn toward the garage and figured it was Dad. I waited some time before going in to make sure he had a chance to pass out in bed or in front of the TV.

  I heard talking by the barn and thought maybe it was Addison and my father, until I caught the crackle of a giggle. I followed the driveway that led to the garage away from the house and saw Addison against his truck with a tall blond woman wearing a loose peasant skirt and a white sheer cotton top that was lifted u
p over her breasts.

  “Let’s go upstairs,” she said as Addison buried his head in her neck as his hands inched her skirt up her thighs. I stepped into the shadow between the pools of light from the garage and the side porch.

  “No one can see us,” he moaned, without looking to see if that were true.

  She looked around as he whispered something in her ear that made her tip her head back and sigh, responding to his touch.

  Addison’s hands worked her skirt up and pulled her underwear down. His focus was absolute, his mission clear. The woman reached for his pants and unbuttoned his fly.

  I had seen animals doing it before and watched in fascination at the quick and awkward way a male and a female came together. I had imagined sex between people to be different, less frantic. This did not appear to be the case, at least with Addison. His intensity was no different than that of a bull.

  Their sounds were more guttural than tender. She grunted as Addison banged his hips against her. Their rhythm increased rapidly as she gripped his back. Addison grabbed the truck like he was afraid his thrusts were going to topple it over.

  I watched them in full view. All Addison had to do was look up and he would have seen me standing there, hands clenched into fists and feet apart as if I were ready to fight. What I was fighting for was painfully unclear.

  I watched until a final grunt signaled the finish. Addison moved away and buttoned his pants.

  “I’ll take you home,” he said.

  She pulled her blouse down and fluffed her skirt as if they had finished searching for something she had lost. “You promised me that drink,” she said as she reached under the truck and picked up her panties and shook the dirt off.

  “One drink. I have to get up early,” he said, as he walked up the stairs to the apartment without checking to see if she was following.

  I felt my hands uncurl from fists and my body go limp like a boxer down for the count.

  SEVEN

  THE SOUND OF the phone ringing reverberated inside my head. I shot up in bed and looked frantically around the strange room. Amnesia was a by-product of the black edge of sleep I drank myself into most nights. My mother’s dressing table, the four bedposts—I was in my parents’ room and my mother was still dead. The clock said 9:00 A.M., but outside it was rainy and dismal and looked like it could have been evening. My head ached, my chest was tight from too much smoking, and my feet were sore from wearing pumps all day. I was wrapped in my mother’s bedspread and still wearing the black dress and stockings but had managed to take my mom’s earrings off and put them on the nightstand.