Bridge of Sighs

by men you meant white landowners. All American patriots, in Mr. Berg’s view, were hypocrites by definition.
    “My father has a lot of opinions.” Sarah had sighed, sucking the last of her soda noisily through her straw, and I had to agree with her. When I said, hoping to impress her, that I might take a class with him anyway, she warned me that he wouldn’t like me. “You like it here in Thomaston, so he’ll think you’re a fool. Besides, he only likes angry people.”
    “You’re not angry,” I’d pointed out.
    “I don’t count,” she’d shrugged, and at first I assumed she meant that of course he loved her anyway, since she was his daughter. But something about her tone suggested another possibility—that her father really didn’t think of her as someone who counted.
    Back when her little brother was alive and Sarah’s mother still lived with them, the Bergs had rented a house on Seventh Avenue, near the Borough. But now that it was just the two of them, they rented a smaller, less expensive house a couple of blocks from Division Street, technically in the East End, but close to the gin mills and the YMCA. Until recently, her best friend had been a girl named Sally Doyle, who lived next door, and they’d always gone to the dances and Saturday matinees together. But after young Gabriel Mock showed up at the door to take Sarah to the matinee, the other girl’s mother didn’t want them to be friends anymore, which seemed to please Mr. Berg, who saw the whole experience as a teaching opportunity. His daughter would have lots of friends, good ones, he told her, once she got to college. They’d be different, by which he meant better. (Though I didn’t say so, I was reminded of my grandparents, who’d had a similar ambition for my mother.) Sarah would then go to Columbia University, it had been decided, where Mr. Berg had himself spent two years before transferring to the state teachers college, where he’d met Sarah’s mother. His reason for leaving Columbia, he maintained, was that his family had suffered a financial reversal, though Sarah’s mother claimed he’d been asked to leave to avoid the indignity of flunking out.
    I told Sarah that my mother was adamant that I attend college, too, though we hadn’t decided where, as well as my father’s doubts that we could afford it, an opinion he was not allowed to voice openly, which made Sarah smile. And, so she wouldn’t feel so bad, I told her I’d also lost my best friend. I described how Bobby Marconi and I had surfed my father’s milk truck on Saturday mornings, and I must have done a pretty good job describing Bobby, his courage and his refusal to cry even though his broken wrist hurt so bad he’d thrown up, and when I finished she said it was too bad she’d never have the opportunity to meet him, and I admitted I sometimes still missed him, though of course that wasn’t nearly as bad as having your little brother die or your mother move away, so I supposed I was pretty lucky. I’d meant this observation to be sympathetic, but knew it was stupid when Sarah’s eyes filled with tears. I’d walked her home, then, trying to make the conversation easy and fun again, but it was like her dead brother and departed mother were there with us, and walking back to Ikey’s I kicked myself for saying the wrong thing. Now she wouldn’t ever want to draw Ikey’s or go out Dutch treat at Woolworth’s again.
    But here she was, scratching away with her special pen, a gift, I would later learn, from her mother, who was herself some kind of artist. Her good spirits had returned, and Ikey’s was coming to life on the page. She was just about done when my mother came out of the house with two stainless-steel tubs of macaroni and potato salad for the store. I met her on the sidewalk and took one of the bowls, then helped her fit them into the far end of the meat case next to the ground beef. Sarah was tearing the completed drawing out of the sketch pad when my mother and I arrived back at the curb.
    “This is my friend Sarah,” I told her, glad that I could say this without fear of contradiction. I wouldn’t have dared say such a thing about Karen Cirillo, who probably would’ve said,
We’re friends, Lou? When did that happen?
    “She won second prize in the art show,” I continued.
    “I
see,
” my mother said, amazed, like anybody would be, at how good the drawing was. Ikey’s looked like a place even my mother would be proud to own, the