Bridge of Sighs

then forgotten all about it, allowing the water to boil off. “Don’t,” she warned me when I started to chide her for such dangerous inattention. “Just because you’re invaluable doesn’t mean you’re…”
    “Doesn’t mean I’m what?” I said, amused that she’d begun a sentence she couldn’t complete.
    “I don’t know,” she admitted, her eyes suddenly moist.
    I wasn’t officially on the payroll, but the tips I received for deliveries gave me walking-around money, and my mother had opened an account at Thomaston Savings and Loan in my name—my college fund, she called it—into which she deposited, every Friday afternoon, the money I would’ve earned if I’d been an actual employee. She wrote all of Ikey Lubin’s checks, paying not just the vendors but also my uncle, my father and, when we could afford it, herself. “God only knows what the IRS will make of this,” she’d say after writing them out each week. “If they ever take us to court and put you on the stand,” she told me, “you
don’t
work for us.”
    “What if they make me swear?” I asked.
    “Call ’em any names you want,” she said. “Just don’t tell the truth.”
             
     
    T HOMASTON C ONGREGATIONAL’S HALL was located on upper Division Street. The church itself had been razed a decade earlier, but its bell tower, deemed to be of historical significance, still stood. Ironically, it was the bell that had caused the church itself to be condemned when the rotting timber that held it collapsed one Sunday at the conclusion of services, the bell crashing down with a sound so richly horrifying that several parishioners were converted in that ringing moment to Catholicism. A subsequent inspection concluded that the entire structure was unsound, so the Congregationalists found a site across town and immediately broke ground for a new church. Now permanently padlocked to prevent high school kids from climbing up into the belfry for drinking and sex, the tower stood alone on the lot, looking every bit as foolish as people had predicted it would. Though the Congregationalists planned to build a hall next to their new church, they’d run out of funds and were still using the old one for church-related socials and renting it for civic functions like the annual art show.
    The latter always occupied both levels of the hall. Upstairs featured the work of the adult artists of greater Thomaston County, while the basement exhibited student artists, grades one through twelve, who’d been coerced into submission by their teachers. That year, my last in junior high, I’d submitted a pencil drawing of Ikey’s that I’d slaved over for the better part of a week. I’d started out thinking it was going to be good, but the more I worked on it, carefully shading, darker here, lighter there, the worse it had gotten, though I couldn’t say how or why. My father said it looked just like the store, which made me feel good, and my mother agreed, but I could tell she harbored misgivings she couldn’t put into words either, which made me resentful. I’d hoped to be present when the awards were handed out, but I’d been needed at the actual store, so the following day was my first chance to see if the judges had given my drawing a prize.
    The sign on the door of the church hall said the student exhibit would remain up for the rest of the month, and I expected plenty of curious people would be milling around admiring our efforts, but the room I entered was empty. A few paper plates with cake crumbs and plastic Dixie cups from yesterday’s festivities remained on folding metal chairs. The room, windowless and low ceilinged, was lit by bright fluorescent bulbs. The outer walls, along with several temporary cork partitions set up in the center of the room, were crowded with first-, second-and third-place winners, plus honorable mentions for all twelve grades. I could see at a glance that my drawing of Ikey Lubin’s hadn’t placed in the eighth grade, and I probably would’ve left right then if I hadn’t noticed the bins marked OTHER along the far wall. These, too, were arranged by grade, and I found my drawing halfway down the stack. In the harsh fluorescent light it looked smudgy, and all at once I was sick with embarrassment.
    Technically the drawing wasn’t that bad, especially compared with those done by other boys in my class, most of whom had drawn New York Giant football players or stock cars. But there was something