Bridge of Sighs

the following Monday much interested in them. It was my father they’d come to see. He was, at best, a reluctant hero, one who needed to be talked into giving interviews by my mother. His reluctance was born less of modesty than acute embarrassment over what had transpired inside the Spinnarkles’ flat, which he feared was bound to come out if he talked to reporters.
    For one thing, the Spinnarkles had as much rescued him as he them. By the time he managed to awaken them in the back of the house, their bedroom filling with smoke, he’d become disoriented. The sisters, of course, could’ve found their way blindfolded, which, with the black smoke billowing, was precisely what was required. And one of them apparently knew enough to get down and crawl along the floor. But somewhere my father encountered an obstacle of some sort, and one of the sisters actually had to go back to get him, and this was what shamed him.
    “What if they find out?” he asked my mother, meaning the reporters.
    “You saved their lives, Lou,” she reminded him. “Who led who doesn’t matter. If you hadn’t gone in after them, they’d have burned alive.”
    “But they were the ones—”
    “No, Lou.
You
were the one. That’s why they want to talk to you. People want you to be a hero.”
    But his embarrassment had another source as well, though I was much older before I was able to piece together the surprising nakedness of the Spinnarkles when they emerged from the burning house, my mother’s “I’m not that surprised” comment later that same night and the fact that afterward, instead of finding a new place in Thomaston, the sisters moved away. Because my father was in many ways an innocent himself, I’ve often wondered how much of what he’d witnessed he understood and how much my mother had to explain. A trusting man, he must’ve found it difficult to believe that people could not just
tell
but actually
live
so profound a lie. “Face value,” she was always saying. “Why do you insist on taking things at face value?” Perhaps it was his innocence that I loved most, and the reason I’ve been reluctant, all my life, to hear a word spoken against him, and why I’ve not only kept that heroic photo safe under glass all these years, but also, when I show it to people, always explain that it doesn’t do him justice.
             
     
    K AREN C IRILLO’S MOTHER WAS right. A month after shoving her ruptured suitcase into her uncle’s pickup, Karen was back. I was alone at Ikey Lubin’s, immersed in a book, the front door propped open to catch a breeze, so I never heard her come in.
    “So, Lou,” she said, “did you miss me?”
    “Sure,” I said, setting my book facedown and taking her in. If anything she was more breathtakingly beautiful than before. Wearing her usual bored expression, she picked up my book, riffled through its pages as if to see how many there were, then set it back down, her curiosity completely satisfied, losing my page in the process, not that I cared.
    “What?” she said. “I got a booger dangling?”
    “No,” I said, startled. This image was simply too incongruous to visualize.
    “Why you looking at me like that?”
    Having no idea what she meant, I said, “I’m not.”
    “Are too.”
    It was the kind of conversation she liked best, full of unresolvable conflict. If I continued to deny looking at her funny, she’d just keep saying “are too” forever. “Okay,” I said, “you’ve got a booger dangling.”
    “Funny,” she said. “Wait till I tell Jerz what you said.” I must have blanched then, because she quickly added, “Don’t piss yourself, Lou. I was just kidding.”
    “Oh,” I said, “right.”
    “There’s all kinds of shit I don’t tell Jerz,” she said, provocatively.
    “Like what?”
    “You know, secrets.”
    “What kind of secrets?” I said, my heart pounding at the possibility she might share one with me.
    “Why would I tell you if I don’t tell him?”
    I had no ready answer for this.
    “You’re saying what? I could trust you?”
    “I guess.” I shrugged.
    For a long moment, she seemed to consider this. “Okay, you first.”
    “Me first what?”
    “Tell me a secret, then I’ll tell you one.”
    “I don’t have any.”
    “Everybody’s got secrets. I bet you got a ton of ’em.”
    “Why?”
    “You got the look,” she informed me. “Okay, I’ll start. Ask me anything, and I’ll tell you the truth.”
    “How come you came