Bridge of Sighs

idea that his father had kissed a white girl and gotten punished for it. Had he, like me, little or no understanding of the line he’d crossed, of where exactly he’d crossed it? Was he sitting next to this white girl on impulse, like I’d done with Karen Cirillo, realizing only when people turned to stare what a foolish and dangerous thing he was doing? Or was he perversely determined to do exactly what his father had done before him? And what of the girl? Was she just foolish and kind, like my mother had been, or was she actually his girlfriend?
    “I mean, he’s gotta know, right?
That
kind of shit you keep secret, man. You bury it with a shovel, then you bury the shovel. Out there in plain sight? You’re
making
people give a shit. Maybe all they want to do is mind their own business, if you’d let them, but you don’t.”
    I would have liked to hear more about this, but Perry abruptly lost interest in the subject. “So, you live where in the East End?”
    “Third Street?”
    “Near Ikey Lubin’s?”
    “We own Ikey Lubin’s.”
    “No shit. Hey, we might end up being neighbors,” Perry said, sounding more pleased than I would’ve predicted. “My old man got on at GE.”
    He didn’t have to explain the rest. A job at General Electric in Schenectady meant your ticket out. Out of the tannery. Out of perpetual low wages. Out of the Gut. Out of the whole West End.
    “This time next year I’ll be wearing plaid shirts, I guess,” he said with great sadness, indicating my own. He himself was dressed in his West End uniform: pegged black pants, thin white T-shirt, worn black boots. “Probably get promoted into the advanced classes, too.”
    I didn’t think there was any danger of that, but didn’t say so. I’d come to understand that Karen’s most cherished conviction—that our teachers had our fates all worked out in advance, based on who had money and who didn’t—was widespread in the West End. The idea that Perry’s teachers might suddenly find him worthy of their attention because his family moved across Division Street struck me as comical, but he seemed to think it followed as naturally and unavoidably as the necessity of wearing plaid shirts. There was more to say, of course, but the movie caught our attention, and we fell silent until, with about fifteen minutes left, Perry announced he had to visit “the shitter.” When he was gone, I took the opportunity to peer over the railing at Karen and Jerzy below. They were still holding hands, and she leaned over to whisper something in his ear, but otherwise nothing was going on. Down front, Nan Beverly’s head was resting on her boyfriend-of-the-moment’s shoulder, and I cocked my head to see what it was like to view a movie sideways.
    Nan’s presence at the matinee each Saturday afternoon was enormously reassuring. The FOR SALE sign was still up outside the Beverly home. My father and I drove out to the Borough to check every Sunday. He never said that’s what we were doing, but I knew. We didn’t park across the street, and he never commented on the sign again, but when we rounded the corner I could see his eyes search it out, anxious and relieved at the same time when he saw it was still there, which was bad, but no SOLD sign attached, which was good. “Who around here can afford a house like that?” he was fond of asking his coffee drinkers at Ikey’s. Answer: nobody, he hoped.
    That very week Mrs. Beverly, the slender woman we’d seen getting into the Cadillac, had come into Ikey’s, and Uncle Dec had cut her a standing rib roast. “Now let’s hope she knows how to cook it,” he said when the door swung shut behind her. “If she leaves it in too long, it’ll be our fault and that’ll be the last we’ll ever see of her or her friends.” When I asked why that should be our fault, he just looked at me, and I understood now that he’d been trying to tell me pretty much the same thing Perry was saying in the balcony—that things just were the way they were and that it was your job to figure out
how
they worked, not why.
    Speaking of Perry, I noticed he’d slid into the back row next to Karen and Jerzy, who shrugged at whatever he was whispering to him. Then both boys rose half out of their seats and Perry pointed in the general direction of Three Mock and the white girl. An on-screen gunshot drew my attention to the movie’s climax right then, and by the time I looked back Perry had moved over to the other side of