Bridge of Sighs

didn’t quite know what to make of her presence either.
    “Well,” she finally said, “at least he’s gone.”
    “What about the money?” my father said, referring, I supposed, to the cost of all the stolen beer and cigarettes.
    “Think of that as gone, too, since it is.”
    “Maybe they’ll catch him,” I ventured. Buddy didn’t strike me as the sort of person who’d have much luck evading the police.
    “What good would that do?” she said. “You’d sooner get blood from a turnip than restitution from Buddy Nurt.”
    “What about her?” my father said, nodding at the ceiling.
    It was my mother’s turn to shrug now. “She claims she had no idea what he was up to.”
    Outside, the dogs my mother had shot with the pellet gun came trotting up the street. When they got close, all three actually crossed the street and continued to watch the store nervously out of the corners of their eyes, a sight that seemed to cheer her up, and I have to admit it cheered me, too. Thinking about Buddy, I’d just about concluded that everything was pretty pointless, but these dogs suggested otherwise. Their behavior had changed as a direct result of their experience. True, they were probably smarter than Buddy, but still.
    “Anyway,” my mother said, turning to my father, “you wanted a partner in this venture. I guess you got one.”
    My father looked like he might cry. “How come he has to be my partner? How come I can’t just pay him, like they do down at Manucci’s?”
    She rubbed her temples vigorously. “I’m not talking about your brother, Lou. I’m talking about me.”
             
     
    A FTER LUNCH I was left in charge of the store while my parents went to the West End to look over Manucci’s meat case and the other equipment we’d need if we were going to install Uncle Dec as our new specialty butcher. The next day they’d meet with a contractor to discuss how much it would cost to expand into the parking lot.
    Early afternoon was usually the slowest time of the day at Ikey’s, but I kept busy with the steady stream of neighbors who ostensibly came in for a half gallon of milk but were actually curious about the police cruiser that had been parked outside for so long that morning. Around two, a battered pickup truck squealed to a halt at the curb out front, and then another, and then a third, the brothers all piling out and lumbering up the stairs to Nancy’s apartment. Ten minutes later a crushed beer can rattled into one of the truck beds and bounced out onto the street, followed by a second that managed to stay in and a third that missed altogether. Fortified in this fashion for physical labor, they began hauling down the same possessions they’d hauled up to their sister’s apartment less than a year ago. Nancy herself came down to supervise and, seeing I was alone in the store, came in to buy a pack of cigarettes. Her eyes were red and swollen, but she’d clearly made a successful transition from shame to anger.
    “I hope nobody thinks it’s gonna break my heart to leave,” she said, as if she suspected I might be such a person. “People around here seem to think their shit don’t stink.”
    I gathered that by “here” she meant the whole East End, not just our immediate neighborhood. As to our shit not stinking, it was my impression we just thought ours probably didn’t stink as bad as Buddy Nurt’s, but I held my tongue.
    “I could tell you a thing or two about that mother of yours if I felt like it,” she continued, “but I don’t. You think my Karen’s wild? You should’ve known your mother back when. Your father never knew what hit him. He wasn’t the only one either, just the least prepared. You don’t believe me, ask your uncle.”
    But then she made a zipping motion across her lips to suggest that she’d said too much and I couldn’t get anything further out of her. She went over to the door and shouted at her brothers, who were balancing her box spring and mattress in the back of one of the pickups, “You’re joking, right?”
    I was surprised to see the fattest of the brothers turn around and
un
zip an imaginary zipper of his own, this one at his crotch, from which he yanked an imaginary penis and began stroking it feverishly.
    Nancy seemed to make no connection between the two zippers and turned back to me. “Then on top of it she’s got the nerve to make out like I knew Buddy was stealing beer and shit from this so-called store. Like I didn’t