Bridge of Sighs

drawing come true. His presence had completed something, though he wasn’t sure what. It felt dangerously like he’d just gotten a new family. It felt good.
             
     
    L ATER, when they were in the back room tearing down a mountain of cardboard boxes, Lucy said, “So, what do you think?”
    About his having a girlfriend? Or about Sarah? Noonan decided he must mean the latter, but in truth, he didn’t know what to think about Sarah Berg. She was no great beauty, though neither was there anything obviously wrong with her, as he’d feared there might be. Back in the front of the store the girl had somehow commanded his attention, whereas now he couldn’t imagine how she’d done it. Bony and angular, she wasn’t the sort of girl he normally looked at twice, and now that she was gone he had a hard time remembering her facial features. It was her attitude, her sense of play, that lingered like a sweet scent in the air. She’d seemed almost to be laughing at him, and girls didn’t usually do that. She also had a natural grace that wasn’t particularly feminine or studied, and a forthrightness and vulnerability that had made him feel protective, though he couldn’t imagine what she might need protecting from. Without being able to put his finger on why, he was disappointed she was leaving tomorrow, sorry that he wouldn’t be seeing her again until September.
    “My father offered her a summer job here at Ikey’s,” Lucy explained, “but she’s saving for college and she’ll make a lot more money babysitting for summer people on Long Island. Plus it’s the only time she gets to see her mother. Her parents have been separated for years, and now her mother’s filing for divorce.” This last he said as if it were an unspeakable tragedy.
    “Good for her,” Noonan replied, thinking of his own mother. Then, when he saw the stricken look on Lucy’s face, “Why stay together when everybody’s miserable?”
    “I don’t think Sarah was miserable,” Lucy said. It was the death of her brother, Rudy, he believed, that caused their separation. Her mother had moved back to Long Island, where she hustled work as a freelance commercial artist, while looking for long-term projects, but mostly settling for scraps—designing logos and pamphlets and restaurant menus. Her father had predicted that in the end she’d fail and have no choice but to return, and they’d all be a family again, but so far that hadn’t happened. Her mother was making a go of it. Sarah’s father, in addition to being the town’s eccentric English teacher, spent his summers working on the novel he’d been writing for over a decade. His book was another reason Sarah couldn’t stay there for the summer. It required the deepest of solitudes.
    As they tore down boxes, Lucy chattered on, bringing Noonan up to speed on all things Thomaston, all things Lynch. He explained how they’d come to buy Ikey Lubin’s, and then to expand it, how his mother, who’d been reluctant at first, became a partner and why they’d brought his uncle Dec in. He told Noonan that his second cousin, Karen Cirillo, had lived upstairs for a while, and how Jerzy Quinn had ruled junior high, and what had happened to Three Mock and how he’d come to meet Sarah. And he wasn’t having his spells anymore, which was really great. He told Noonan his father had become a hero for rescuing the Spinnarkles and that he’d had a small cyst removed from under his right arm last year. Everybody had been alarmed, but the biopsy had proved negative. Some of the cells didn’t look quite right, though, and the fact that the cyst was so near the lymph glands had worried the Albany oncologist. As did the fact that his patient lived in Thomaston, so now Big Lou was getting blood work done every other month, just to be sure.
    As Lucy rattled on Noonan felt some of the ease of their old friendship return. Odd, how he’d vividly remembered every one of his irritating habits and forgotten his virtues entirely. Always good-hearted, he now seemed less needy, not so inward gazing as before, which was good. If the Lynches were determined to adopt Noonan this summer, at least it wouldn’t be painful. In fact, he was glad he’d stopped by. Noonan kept hoping Sarah might join them, but Lucy told him today was salad day, which meant that his girlfriend was busy helping his mother make fresh salads to stock the deli portion of his uncle’s meat case for the weekend. The weather