The Last Bridge Page 9
Addison sat up. “I’m sorry, I …”
I adjusted the skirt of my dress, pushing the memory of his hand away with my own shaking hands.
“I don’t know what I was doing,” I said, looking toward the window, which faced the house.
“What happened?” He came toward me with arms outstretched. I left him.
The house was silent when I came through the back door. Mom had put away the pie and bread and left a set of dirty dishes in the sink. Dad was passed out on the chair with an empty bourbon bottle next to him. Wendy and Jared were in their rooms.
At four I rolled out of bed and slipped into the bathroom, careful not to creak the floorboards. I was unable to sleep. It wasn’t my mind that kept me awake; it was my body. In the short time I had been with Addison, my senses had recorded every detail of the kiss, from his orangey-musk smell to the wet cinnamon taste of his mouth to his smooth hands on my neck and face. The moments replayed over and over, rendering me more awake than I had ever been.
I avoided the bathroom at all costs on most nights. If I could help it, I would hold it until I heard my father go downstairs for his morning coffee. Some nights I couldn’t wait, and I’d make my visit as short as possible. It wasn’t the bathroom that was dangerous; it was passing my parents’ bedroom.
Once I was in the bathroom, I’d put my ear to the door to listen for any movement. After a count of one hundred, I’d relax, throw the lock, and pee in peace. If I was especially concerned about night rustling (that’s what I called Dad’s evening wanderings), I would avoid flushing the toilet or washing my hands, as the water pipes often burped.
I was careless that night and didn’t do the count or check the hallway before I flushed. I ran the water to wash my hands and even wondered how my hair might look pulled off my face. I took a rubber band from the medicine cabinet and made a short ponytail, thinking I might try it that way for the summer dance that was in a couple of days.
My father was standing naked in front of the door when I opened it.
“I’ll get out of your way,” I said quietly.
“What did you do to your hair?” he said, his voice a steel tone of danger. He grabbed my ponytail, found the rubber band, and tugged it until it snapped. I winced. “You do that for some boy?”
“No, sir,” I said as I reached for the door to steady myself. He grabbed a clump of my hair and pulled me into the bathroom with him. I tried not to make eye contact. I learned at an early age that looking into his eyes was the biggest mistake I could make. I imagined there were worse punishments he could bestow on me if I did.
“What are you looking at?”
“Dad, please,” I said, as calmly as I could. My focus was blurred. All I could see was the gleaming white of the floor and wall tiles we had polished so hopefully. The room smelled like a pool from all the bleach we used.
“Please what? Leave you alone so you can run off with some punk?”
“I’m not going anywhere.”
My hand was on his forearm trying to pry it off my neck but it kept slipping as my palms were sweating. I was losing my footing as he pulled me over to the toilet. He dropped the seat cover and sat down as he pushed me to my knees in front of him. Most times he did stuff to me, but sometimes it was me who had to do it to him. I felt the cold sharp edge of the octagonal floor tiles imprinting their shape on my skin as he forced my head closer to his crotch. My mouth went dry.
“We’re going to have a little conversation about who is the boss of you,” he said. Sometimes when we were alone he sounded like he was talking to someone other than me. I didn’t understand what he was saying or what weird thing he was seeing in his mind; I only knew that the monster was out and I was in its throes.
The sound of a door creaking open and footsteps in the hallway brought me back into my body and into the bathroom. Someone going or coming?
Let it be Jared, it’s Jared, it’s Jared, it’s Jared.
“James?” It was my mother.
My father looked toward the door and slightly loosened his grip. I pulled myself up from the hunched position and clawed my father in the face and pushed him with all of my might. He fell toward the tub and screamed, “You cunt!” as I barreled down the stairs and out the door. It wasn’t until I had hidden myself safely in the woods that I realized I had wet myself.
I watched for lights to come on in the house, but nothing happened. The full moon cast a cool light on the night. I sat alone, shivering from cold and the memory of his grip while everyone slept. My nightgown smelled like a cat’s litter box. I sat for hours, staring at the house and thinking about that cold, dark hand reaching out for me—even when he wasn’t there, it was still reaching for me. I pulled my sketchbook from under the stump and began to draw furiously as tears streamed onto the page and made my bold lines soften like watercolors. “Kitty Kat makes a final stand against the Hand,” I wrote as I had her slice, dice, karate-chop, and use all of her powers to defeat the Hand.
The kitchen light came on in the first rays of dawn. I walked quietly to the clearing and saw my mother at the sink washing dishes as she looked out into the yard.
I waited and hoped she would find me and take us away. I wanted her to be willing to lose another finger for me. I wanted her to be someone else.
“We all have our crosses to bear,” was her answer the last time I tried to tell her what was happening.
After a while, my mother crossed over to Addison’s apartment and climbed the stairs to his door. The lights came on and his shadow passed between the two windows. He opened the door and spoke to my mother, who pointed to the woods. He grabbed a jacket and followed her to the house. She went back to the kitchen window as Addison headed into the woods.
I felt my breath against my knees and a cold chill swoop under my nightgown. I shut my eyes and tried to make myself disappear. Sometimes I could do it: I would float above my body and watch as an impartial observer of my own life. I wanted to be gone by the time Addison found me. I was certain I would dissolve from the humiliation.
“Alex …” I heard the twig-snapping walk mixed in with his whispers. “Alex … it’s me.” Snap, shuffle, breeze, birds chirping, “Alex … Alex …”
“I’m over here,” I shouted back, and startled myself at the anger in my voice. “What do you want?”
“Your mother is worried ….”
“Yeah, I bet,” I said, still holding my knees.
“Have you been here all night?”
I nodded.
“What happened?”
He knelt down and put his hand on top of mine. “Alex?”
I pulled away, embarrassed by my own smell. I rocked back and forth, holding my knees to my chest. Finally, he stood up and took my hand, pulling me up to him.
“Come on, you need some rest,” he said, as he led me toward the house.
I broke away. “I can’t go back in there. He’s going to kill me.”
“He’s passed out… it’s fine … I’ll walk you back.”
“How do you know it’s fine when you don’t even know what happened?”
“Look, it can’t be that bad. Did he hit you?” I shifted focus and relaxed a little.
“No. I’m fine. You can let go.” As soon as he did, I ran. My bare feet pounded the cold ground littered with sharp twigs that jabbed my soles and slowed me down. In the distance was the clearing that bordered our property with the Igbys’. I would go to them and see if they would help.
Addison’s steps mirrored my own but were surer in their mission. He caught me around the waist and lifted me in the air. “Stop!” he said, huffing. His grip was strong as I tried to pry his arm from my waist.
“Let me go!” I shouted so loud a gathering of sparrows fled from their nest.
“Tell me what happened!”
We struggled together, trying to catch our breath as we hunched over. I could feel the pulse of Addison’s rapidly beating heart against my shoulder and imagined my own responding back in the Morse code of the body.<
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“Come back to my apartment. We’ll go the back way.”
“He’ll kill you if he knows you helped me.”
Addison looked at me as if I were crazy and then reconsidered as he stepped back and saw my tear-stained cheeks and wet nightgown. “I’ll take the chance. Let’s go.”
He took my hand and led me back. Aside from my mother, there were no other signs of life at the house.
In a few hours the apartment had changed. Maybe it was the way the morning light hardened the edges of everything in the same way the dusk softened them. “Can I take a shower?”
“Sure. There’s a towel in there. I’ll find you a shirt.” He searched the pile of clothes on the chair.
The hot water felt good on my back. I washed my hair with his orange-ginger shampoo and used the suds to wash my body without looking at it. When I had cleaned everything once, I lathered up and did it again.
I dried myself in the shower with the curtain drawn. Addison knocked on the door and opened it.
“Here,” he said, “you can sleep in this.” I peeked behind the curtain and saw he was holding a faded denim shirt and a pair of sweatpants.
“Drop them,” I said.
I took in his smell as I put the shirt on, musky with the sweetness of Old Spice. I pressed my face to the sleeve and felt the smoothness of the denim and pulled on the sweatpants and tied the drawstring as tight as it would go. I felt small in his clothes.
Addison was sitting at the kitchen table drinking instant coffee. His hair was rumpled from sleeping and he was wearing the clothes from the night before. His jeans had been pulled on in a rush, as the last two buttons of his fly were open. His feet were bare and bony. He jumped up when I came out.
“Better?”
I nodded. He came and led me to the bed.
“This is the plan. I’ll see what’s going on. If everything is okay I’ll let you sleep and go do some chores. If it isn’t okay, like your dad’s looking for you or something, I’ll find a way to warn you.”
“I need clothes.”
He nodded. “I’ll get some.”
While he was talking he gently pushed me down on the bed and pulled the covers around me. I rolled over, with my back to him as he sat on the edge of the bed.
“About last night…” he started.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” I said, beginning to drift off.
I don’t know how long I had been sleeping when I felt a hand on my cheek. I jumped to the farthest corner of the bed.
“I didn’t mean to scare you.” Addison was holding a pile of clothes. “Everyone left for Rucker’s Ravine to walk the plank and they won’t be back tonight.” He shrugged, not fully understanding what that meant.
“It’s a place we go to … a game. It’s hard to describe,” I said. Addison sat next to me on the bed and put his hand on my leg as he listened. I was embarrassed by the way he was studying me. He subtly glanced down at my chest and then back up to my face. I looked down and saw that the shirt had come unbuttoned and one of my breasts was pushing its way out. I wanted to button it, but I didn’t want him to know I had noticed or cared. I pulled the covers up around me and pretended I was cold.
“Did anyone—?” I said, avoiding his gaze.
“I told them you were okay.”
“What about Dad … did he ask about me?”
“No,” he said. “He didn’t mention you at all. He was in a good mood. Couldn’t wait to get everyone together to go.”
“He didn’t say anything?”
“Why do you care?”
“Tell me.”
“He said he would have his time with you at the ravine later.”
A shiver rushed down my spine. The kind that Mom said meant a goose walked on your grave.
“So it’s just us …”
“He didn’t ask where I was?”
Addison moved through the apartment picking up things, hanging up a towel, sidestepping himself from my question.
“Addison …”
He came out of the bathroom and leaned against the doorway of the bedroom. “He said, and this is quoting him directly, he didn’t care if you ever came back. Are you happy now?”
“Why are you getting so mad?”
“’Cause I don’t know what you do that makes—”
“You think I’m doing something?”
“Well, it always seems like you’re on his shit list. At least since I’ve been here. He doesn’t seem to bother Wendy or Jared.”
“So it’s me … I’m causing it?”
“I didn’t say that …. I just want to know what’s with you two.”
“Nothing is with us, you asshole.” I jumped out of bed and peeled his sweats off as I reached for the jeans he brought and pulled them on. I was so angry I forgot I wasn’t wearing any underwear. I scooped up the rest of my clothes and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?”
“Back to the house. I don’t want to be with you.”
“Hey …” He grabbed my wrists.
“Don’t touch me …. I may be his property but I’m not yours.”
Addison let go of me and I walked out into the afternoon light toward home.
I made a bologna and cheese sandwich and poured myself a glass of lemonade and sat on the swing on the front porch. My mother hadn’t left a note this time. I didn’t expect anyone to be back until lunchtime tomorrow. Walking the plank was always an overnight adventure.
“Are you going to ignore me all day?” Addison stood at the bottom of the porch stairs an hour or so later.
“I’m not ignoring you.”
He climbed the stairs and walked tentatively over to the railing closest to the swing and looked out over the front yard toward the road.
“Want to go for a swim?”
“I can’t swim,” I replied.
“I could teach you,” he said, not looking away from the road.
“I don’t need you to teach me anything,” I said, between the creaking of the swing.
“You’re a hard one, Alex.”
“Well, life is hard,” I replied.
We stayed like that for a while. A million opposing thoughts passed through my mind; I wanted him to stay so I could tell him what happened as much as I wanted him to go.
A warm breeze brushed against my neck. Addison closed his eyes and leaned his head back.
“My father left,” he said, fixing his eyes back on the yard. “My mother didn’t want us telling anyone. He left about a year ago. Just walked out. Business was bad, he’d lost almost everything, except the house. Ran off with my girlfriend. One day I left for school, I was trying college again, came home and there was a note from her, we were sort of living together. She said she had gone away with someone. Took us a while to put the pieces together.”
“How do you know? It could have been a coincidence.”
“That’s what I thought, until we got a letter that said they were together, not to go looking for them, you know, the usual.”
“Did you love her?” I asked as nonchalantly as I could.
“I’m not sure I know what that is, but I liked her. She was kind—”
“Of mean,” I interrupted.
He turned back to the yard. I continued to rock myself and waited for him to speak again.
“Anyway, I quit school and got a job as a carpenter. I moved in with my mom to help with expenses. I felt obligated. I was planning on staying. And then, I found out she was pregnant and they wanted the house.”
“Pregnant, who, your father and his girlfriend?”
“Yeah …” he said, lowering his head.
“Oh, God. Why did they want the house? Wasn’t it your mother’s?”
“No, it was both of theirs, but my mother just gave up when he came back. She couldn’t bear to fight him so she said they could move in.”
“Where’d your mother go?”
“She lives in the basement. They rigged up an apartment for her.”
“Where is she going to go, Alex? She’s never had a job. She doesn’t have a high school diploma and she still depends on my father for everything. Where the hell was she going to go?” he said, yelling at me.
“I don’t know,” I yelled back.
We sat still for a few moments.
“My parents worked out an agreement that my mother could live off the rent on my grandma’s house if I fixed it up and found a tenant.
“Why don’t you sell the house so your mom can live on her own?”
“My mother thinks if they sell it, my father will leave with the money.”
“So why did you want your father to come?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. I wanted him to see the work I did on his mother’s house and be proud of me, I guess.”
“Bad idea.”
He laughed. “Frightfully bad idea.”
“So where are you going after the house is rented?”
“I don’t know. My mother thinks my father is going to come around eventually.”
“He’s not,” I said as Addison turned toward me. “He’s not going to come to his senses any more than my dad is.”
“This isn’t the same thing. Your dad isn’t like my dad,” Addison responded. “At least your dad stayed with the family. At least he takes care of you guys. He loves you.”
I jumped off of the swing. “Do you really want a father so much that you would delude yourself into thinking that my father is actually better than yours? Have you seen anything since you got here?”
“Okay, so he drinks a little. I can see that, but—”
“Addison, he does more than drink a little.”
He shook his head, refusing to hear what I was trying to tell him. “When I was five my father burned the bottoms of my feet with his cigarette because I complained that my church shoes gave me blisters. He said that would take away the pain of the blisters. When I was seven, he threw my mother down a flight of stairs and broke her arm. When I was ten, he smashed a plate over Jared’s head and wouldn’t take him to the hospital for stitches. Jared has a scar this thick on his head that no hair will grow on. Ask him, he’ll show it to you. The first and only time my mother tried to leave him, he cut the tip of her finger off with an ax and made us watch ….” Addison tried to pull away from the words but I grabbed his hands and wouldn’t let go. The more he resisted the louder I spoke. “You want to hear about what happened in the bathroom?” But I couldn’t say it. I swallowed it down.