Bridge of Sighs

there’s nothing to be done about it. He’s still hot tempered, of course, still willing to mix it up, and even men my son’s age know better than to trifle with him. Though they know nothing of his legendary battle with Jerzy Quinn, they have only to look at him to know he’s brave and willing, a dangerous combatant.
    I don’t
dwell
in this alternate world, or even on it. I’m not crazy. But at odd moments I do sense its existence, and more frequently of late, I’ll admit, but for a very good reason. I’ve been living in the past these weeks, working long hours to write my story, and Bobby will return to it soon, if I continue. I’d hoped to be finished before we left for Italy, but I’m not sure that’s possible.
    My point about the alternative Ikey’s is that, as a narrative, it holds together. It makes sense. Though untrue as regards its facts, it has the
ring
of truth—Bobby still here, swinging by the store after work on Friday with a hearty “Hello, you Lynches” and introducing the new girl to my father, who jokingly warns her against him. By contrast, it’s reality that feels far-fetched—Bobby running off like he did, taking his mother’s surname, drifting and brawling his way from London to Paris, Barcelona to Rome and, finally, to Venice, through a maze of marriages and affairs, finding fame and disgrace in equal measure and (to me the strangest part) never returning, not once, to those of us who cared for him. How plausible is that?
    I’m not sure what I was thinking when I tried to explain all this to Sarah. I certainly didn’t expect her to believe literally in this other Ikey’s. I guess I just hoped she’d see the story’s inner truth and beauty. Even taken as pure whimsy, wouldn’t my Sarah have as much reason as I to indulge it? Seen in a certain light, didn’t Bobby hijack a destiny that was rightfully hers? It was she who went off to study art at Cooper Union in New York, all expenses paid; she who got scholarship offers from so many universities; she whose talent was so large, so full of the most extraordinary promise. When Bobby fled Thomaston, he’d put neither pencil to paper nor brush to canvas. What would be more natural than for Sarah to look at our old friend’s life and conclude that somehow their destinies had been switched, like babies in adjacent bassinets? But as Sarah was quick to point out, once a thing has happened, the
odds
of its happening become moot. Realism and plausibility aren’t reality’s poor cousins. No doubt this was what all those arguments between my parents were about. No wonder my father lost them all.
    “What happens in this story you’re writing?” Sarah asked me earlier this week as we lay in bed, catching each other up on our day. I could hear the worry in her voice. “Does Lou-Lou live?” Lou-Lou. Her fond name for my father.
    “No, he dies,” I assured her. Our bedtime conversations are mostly playful and tender, and this was the tone I adopted, or tried to. “Bobby leaves and never returns. He becomes a famous painter and lives in Venice. We visit him there. Except I haven’t gotten to any of that yet.”
    She seemed relieved to hear that I’m sticking to the facts, though still worried about something, probably that I’m obsessing about my story despite my promise not to. It’s true I’ve already spent more time than I ever imagined would be necessary to recount the particulars of a life as uneventful as mine, and also that I’ve far exceeded the hundred pages I judged would be sufficient to my purpose. I go into my den and close the door behind me so I won’t hear the telephone or the TV. Sarah can’t help recalling what we now refer to as my Map Days, and they were dark indeed. I’ve tried to reassure her that this is different, but I can’t blame her for worrying. My surprising devotion to this enterprise probably also reminds her of her father, the poor man. Forever writing a story with no ending, a story that consumed instead of enriching. But of course I don’t have her father’s ambition. He thought his story was important, that fame and fortune would be its natural consequence, whereas I’m doing this only for my own amusement and edification. For Sarah’s father only the grandest dreams were worth the effort of dreaming. Ikey’s wouldn’t have counted. Moreover, far from making my mind uneasy, my narrative journey has proven therapeutic, I think, a welcome diversion. “I’m just passing the