Bridge of Sighs

of my last hour before falling asleep trying to envision the complex set of circumstances necessary for me to become Karen’s rescuer. Jerzy Quinn, Karen’s mother and my own parents would all have to be away somewhere. Alone in the store below, I would hear her cries for help. If I was afraid of what might be happening upstairs, and what might happen to me if I interfered, I’d swallow my fear and start up through the darkness. Maybe the pellet gun that put the fear of God into the mangy neighborhood dogs would have the same effect on mangy Buddy Nurt. I could almost form a mental picture of the rescue. Then it would vanish, and I’d be alone in the dark with only my mother’s advice—that I needed to get smarter if I was to survive.
    Ironically, that advice
did
make me suspicious, not of Karen Cirillo but of my mother. She, I realized, would’ve been one step ahead of Karen, not behind, as I’d been. She’d have recognized each devious ploy for what it was. Why? Because, well, she was sly herself. She was both kinds of smart—my kind and Karen’s. Why then, I wondered, did I
not
want to be like my mother? Why did I know that the next time Karen wanted a pack of cigarettes, I’d give them to her, so I could keep believing we were friends?
    Lying there in the dark, I tried over and over to visualize climbing those stairs and rescuing Karen from the pervert Buddy Nurt, my mother’s voice echoing in my head with each upward tread.
Don’t be one of those people who go through life pretending not to know what they know…. Don’t waste time wishing the world is different than it is…. Don’t expect people to be something they can’t….
             
     
    T HAT SPRING the Albany newspaper ran a series of articles about pollution in the Hudson, a river where salmon had once run but that was now contaminated by all manner of industrial waste. The paper had been critical of big polluters like General Electric but also cited smaller, particularly lethal ones that were poisoning the big river’s tributaries. They’d even mentioned our tiny Cayoga Stream, noting there were no longer any fish downstream of the tannery and going so far as to call for a study to determine whether the tannery’s chemical dyes had impacted our groundwater, hinting at a link to the county’s alarming cancer statistics. The
Thomaston Guardian
responded with an editorial ridiculing the Albany paper and stopping just short of claiming the charges were a Communist conspiracy designed to undermine our only viable industry, a conclusion applauded by the majority of Thomaston residents.
    But not long after the Albany series a FOR SALE sign appeared on the terrace of Jack Beverly’s house, the grandest in the Borough, and this news roared through town like a tidal wave. It had long been rumored that the tannery would soon close for good, and it certainly employed fewer workers each year, the seasonal layoffs coming earlier and lasting longer. If the Beverlys were selling their house, then maybe the rumors were accurate. My father, true to form, was more optimistic. He doubted the tannery would close anytime soon, and in support of his hopefulness he marshaled many of the same arguments he’d used for why the dairy wouldn’t discontinue home delivery. After all, leather had been tanned in Thomaston for longer than anybody could remember. Maybe things had been slow for a while, but they were bound to pick up again. Why? Because these things ran in cycles. Up follows down. Has to. He always saved what he considered his most powerful argument for last. “If the tannery closes,” he’d say, pausing for emphasis, “what’re people around here gonna do?” For him, the more disastrous something was, the less likely it would occur.
    Often, after closing the store, he’d repeat these conversations to my mother, though he should have known she’d be a tougher customer. “If that tannery closes, what’s Louie and all his friends gonna do for work around here?” he said one night when we were all watching the end of the Yankees game on TV.
    Usually she just let him talk, but tonight she was in a foul mood after working on Ikey’s books all afternoon. “Keep Lou out of it,” she said, rising from her chair. “For one thing, he doesn’t have any friends. Every minute he’s not in school or doing his homework, he’s helping you at the store.”
    What she’d said was true, and we all knew it. At the beginning the rules