Bridge of Sighs

he belonged? He was relieved when she spoke, revealing another agenda entirely.
    “How’s your mother?” she asked, taking her eyes off the road to watch him answer.
    “Okay,” he said. “You should give her a call sometime.”
    “I went out to the hospital,” she said, “but your father sent me packing. I called the house last week, but apparently she promised him not to talk to me.”
    Noonan nodded but offered no comment. Had he wanted to talk about his parents, Mrs. Lynch wouldn’t have been a bad person to confide in. But he
didn’t
want to talk to anybody.
    “You don’t have to say anything,” she said, apparently reading his reluctance. “I want you to promise me, though, that if things get bad you’ll tell me. Your mother’s endured about as much as she can, and I might be able to help. Don’t tell my husband or Louie. Tell me.”
    “Nothing’s going to happen,” Noonan assured her.
    “Really? And why’s that?”
    “I’m home now.”
    She turned to look at him again. They’d come to a stop sign and were about to cross the Boulevard, which unofficially separated the East End from the Borough. They were just a couple blocks from the Marconis’ home, but Mrs. Lynch put on her blinker and turned right, heading out of town. “Look, I know you’re game,” she said after a few moments’ silence, “and I’m sure you’d try your best—”
    “Where are we—?”
    “—but you’re only seventeen, and you might not have the kind of help your mother needs.”
    “Like what?”
    “Like someone to talk to. She and I have been good friends since Berman Court. You probably didn’t know that.”
    “What good has talking done her?”
    “A lot. More than you know. Not just her. Our talks go both ways. We listen to each other.”
    Noonan thought again about what he’d seen earlier, or imagined seeing, Dec Lynch’s hand grazing hers.
    Suddenly she looked concerned, almost frightened, as if considering something that had until that moment escaped her. “I hope you don’t think there’s a solution to your mother’s problems,” she said, glancing down at his lap, where Noonan’s hands, to his surprise, were balled into fists.
    He quickly relaxed them before speaking. “Why shouldn’t there be?” After all, he’d been congratulating himself that the solution had already been found. He’d served notice to his father, hadn’t he? The old man knew he was onto him. Things were already different.
    “Because people don’t change. You
do
know that, right?”
    Noonan shrugged, not wanting to disagree openly with something she clearly was adamant about. But people
did
change, didn’t they? He himself wasn’t the same person he’d been five years ago, before going to the academy. And a couple of hours in Lucy’s company suggested that he’d changed, too, as much as Noonan or even more.
    “Don’t confuse growing up with changing,” Tessa Lynch said, reading his mind again. “I’m talking about what’s inside, not the fact that you shave your chin.”
    That seemed to Noonan an uncomfortably personal observation. What was Lucy’s mother doing looking at his chin? Suddenly there was an undercurrent of electricity in the car, and it was amped up a moment later when she turned onto the gravel drive and stopped at the main gate to the old Whitcombe estate, a spot that served, unless things had changed, as a lovers’ lane. It was almost full dark now, and the headlights sliced through the night, illuminating the dark outline of the Hall in the distance. He was relieved when Mrs. Lynch put the wagon in reverse, suggesting she just meant to turn around and head back.
    But then she thought better of it, put the car in park and turned to face him. “Tell me what you mean to do,” she said, fixing him.
    “Do? What do you mean, in the future?”
    “Okay. Start there if you want. We can work backwards.”
    “Graduate. After that, maybe move out west. I don’t know.”
    “You plan to bring your mother out there with you?”
    “No!” he blurted, the word escaping like a hiccup.
    Mrs. Lynch smiled, not unkindly. “Right. So when you said there was nothing to worry about because you were home, you meant for the next year.”
    “That’s not—”
    “What about college?”
    “Maybe. I’ll apply.”
    “You’ve heard of Vietnam, right? You know what a word like ‘maybe’ means in that context? It could mean finding yourself in the jungle on the other side of the world for no