Bridge of Sighs

time until we leave. I need to remember it all. I don’t want to be confused.”
    “About what?”
    “Our lives. What happened to us. Why we’ve lived as we have, instead of some other way.”
    “Oh, Lou,” my wife said, taking my hand. “I wish you wouldn’t take things to heart so.”
    Exactly what my mother always said to my father.
    “If we don’t hear from Bobby soon—”
    “There’s still time,” I told her, though my heart sank to see hers so set.
    “His studio’s here,” she pointed. The map of Venice was spread out on our bed. “Somewhere around here.” Her index finger traveled lightly over the whole of Giudecca Island, suggesting—sadly, I thought—that Bobby could be anywhere, that without explicit directions we’d never find him.
             
     
    B ACK IN I KEY’S —the real one—Owen says, “You’re driving Mom nuts. You know that, right?”
    “I am?”
    “She’s all packed. You haven’t even started.”
    “It won’t take long.”
    “Is it true you threw your passport away last week?”
    “It came in an unmarked envelope. I didn’t know what it was.”
    The look he gives me implies he isn’t buying that explanation any more than his mother did. “You think I threw it away on purpose?” I ask once again. “Why would I do that?”
    What have I done to merit such unkind suspicion? We have our airline tickets, our hotel reservations, all of it paid for, a small fortune.
    “It’s not something you’d do up here,” Sarah had conceded, kissing the spot on my forehead that didn’t worry her. “It’s what goes on back
here,
” she explained, playfully fixing with her thumb the very spot on my skull beneath which I’ve always imagined my spells originate, small and dark, a single bent gene at first, then a cluster of twisted cells growing like a migraine until they overload and shut me down. “It’s the part you don’t have access to, that I’m keeping an eye on.” My son, too, apparently.
    He and I switch places now, Owen coming around the counter just as my father and I used to, and the pleasure of this simple act is so overwhelming, so intense, that I’d like to share it with him. But I know I should control this impulse, and so I do, though it leaves me momentarily without purpose, on the wrong side of the counter, while my son opens the register and checks the drawer to make sure he has everything he needs. He does. I made sure.
    “Have you been to the studio?” he says, lips continuing to move as he counts.
    “The where?” I say, remembering how his mother’s fingertips floated over Venice in search of Bobby’s studio.
    “The art room. At the junior high. Mom’s finishing a new painting, and it’s pretty good. You should stop by.”
    I tell him I will and make a mental note to follow through later today. It will please Sarah to know I’ve taken the trouble when I could’ve just waited for her to bring it home. Earlier in the week she said something about “the painting going well,” and I’m afraid I looked blank for a second, trying to guess what she meant. I was thinking of rooms, of course, one of ours in the Borough or maybe the Third Street house or one of the West End apartments. I covered my mistake as quickly as I could, but not quickly enough, and I saw the hurt register, just a flicker, across her face. So later today I’ll not only visit the studio but also take time to memorize this new work, so we can discuss it in detail over dinner.
    “Where’s Brindy?” it occurs to me to ask. She’s listed on Ikey’s schedule for today, not Owen.
    “She’s in Albany,” he explains, or half explains, telling me where she is but not why. Perhaps consulting the doctor who told her she was unlikely to get pregnant again. Or maybe a specialist who can tell her something different. Or else she just went shopping.
    “Does she dislike me?” I hear myself ask. Owen’s still counting, the change now, and it takes him a while to respond.
    He squints at me, and I can’t tell if it’s the oddness of the question or just that it’s come out of left field, surprising even me. “Why would she dislike you?”
    “She just seems impatient sometimes. I try not to meddle, but—”
    “That’s just her way, Dad,” he reassures me. “You should know by now. You should see how she is with me.”
    Not the response I was hoping for. “Do you think she’s unhappy?”
    “About what?”
    I shrug. “I don’t know.”
    “It’s