Bridge of Sighs

original argument. “One day wouldn’t hurt none,” he said.
    “How would you know, Biggy?” his brother chimed in. “You haven’t even read a book, much less written one.”
    Big Lou ignored this insult, just as he did most of what his brother had to offer. “He could ride down with you, meet your ma and ride right back again.”
    “But then they’d have an argument in Grand Central. Don’t worry, Lou-Lou. I meet my mom in the same place every year. She’s always there.” Taking him by the elbows, she said, “Promise me you’ll keep your appointment.”
    “
I
promise you,” Tessa Lynch said.
    “I just wish you didn’t have to go,” Big Lou said, his eyes, to Noonan’s astonishment, filling with tears. “You could work here this summer.”
    “Cut it out, Lou,” his wife warned him, pulling open the door to the walk-in. “We’ve been through this. Sarah’s doing what she needs to do.”
    “I ain’t sayin’ that—”
    “Yes, you were, Lou. We all heard you.
Don’t go.
That’s what you were saying.”
    “I’m just saying I wish she didn’t
have
to,” he explained, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
    “Well, she does have to,” Tessa said, and disappeared into the walk-in.
    “I know,” Big Lou conceded, more to Sarah than his wife.
    “I’m going upstairs,” Dec said, though he made no move to go anywhere. “I’ve enjoyed about as much of this conversation as I can stand.”
    Sarah pulled on her jacket. “You two can walk me home if you like,” she said, meaning, apparently, Lucy and Noonan.
    Noonan would have liked to, but he assumed that neither one of them probably wanted him along to witness their goodbye, so he was surprised that both Sarah and Lucy seemed disappointed when he declined.
    “You have a good summer, sexy,” Dec said, coming over for his own goodbye hug. “I’m not as old as I look, you know. A lot of girls your age think I’m cute.”
    “Name three,” Sarah said, making Noonan smile at the ease with which she handled him and, really, all of the Lynches.
    “That’d be bragging.”
    Tessa Lynch returned from the walk-in then, carrying a heavy tub of potato salad and regarded her brother-in-law with chagrin. “Quit fondling that girl and open the case, will you?”
    “Yes, ma’am,” Dec said, going back around the counter to help her.
    “Most women my age think you’ve seen better days,” Tessa told him.
    Was it Noonan’s imagination, what he witnessed then? The glass of the display case was thick and curved, magnifying and distorting the purple roasts and troughs of ground meat within, so probably it was just a trick of the eye. Yet when Tessa Lynch stepped away, it seemed to Noonan that Dec Lynch reached out and grazed the back of her hand with his.
             
     
    L ATER, walking home, he talked himself out of it. The fact that his own parents’ marriage was a tangle of deceit didn’t mean other people’s marriages were similarly flawed. In truth, he was quite taken with the world the Lynches had created for themselves and how easily they all moved within that sphere. Not just them—Sarah, too. It was clear she loved not only the Lynches but also Ikey Lubin’s, as if the store satisfied some deep craving, and everything she could ever imagine wanting was right there on the shelves, whereas all the things she didn’t want or weren’t good for her had been thoughtfully removed. Though Noonan was pretty sure that much of what he himself wanted out of life was not for sale at Ikey Lubin’s, he had to admit the attraction of the place, its warmth, camaraderie and generosity. Would he have felt that way if it had been just the Lynches, if Sarah hadn’t been there? He supposed the coming months would tell.
    He was halfway home, dusk falling, when a horn tooted, and the Lynch station wagon, Lucy’s mother at the wheel, pulled alongside the curb. “Get in,” she called across the seat, “and I’ll give you a lift.”
    Since her phrasing was more an order than an offer, he did as he was told, sliding onto the big bench seat and closing the door. He’d never been alone with Mrs. Lynch before, and while he had no particular reason to be uncomfortable, he was. Had she followed him, and if so, for what purpose? To warn him away from their world, from Ikey Lubin’s, from her son? He thought again of Sarah’s drawing, where he was pictured outside, about to enter. Was Tessa Lynch there to tell him that outside was where