Bridge of Sighs

here and get drunk with you, Gabriel, so you can put that right out of your mind.”
    “Why not? Maybe they not like you. Maybe they ain’t prejudice against short people.”
    “They’re underage. You supply them with alcohol, you go to jail.”
    “Supply
them
?” Gabriel Mock seemed to think this was about the funniest idea he’d ever heard. “They supply
me,
the way it gon work. Besides. Who my suppose to howl wit’ out here? Tell me that. Man don’t like to howl by hisself all the time. Gets lonesome.”
    “I imagine it does,” Mrs. Lynch conceded. “How’s your boy doing, Gabriel?”
    “Don’t know,” he said, straightening up, suddenly sober. “Never say a word to me.”
    “It was a terrible thing.”
    “World full of terrible things. Maybe you noticed.”
    “Oh, I have, Gabriel. I have,” she said. “I still remember the day you and your father appeared on our front porch.” Her eyes, Noonan saw, were glistening.
    “Wadn’t your fault, none of it,” Gabriel told her. “’Cept for not likin’ short people, you all right. Always was. Shouldn’t pay that day no mind. All in the past.” He paused, staring off in the dark. He was still holding the bottle, but he’d yet to bring it to his lips. “Guess that teacher lookin’ after him now. Thinks he’s the boy’s father or some such. Talks to him, people say. Converse, the two of ’em. Teacher observe somethin’ and my boy tell him he agree or don’t agree. What you make of that?”
    “I think any son of yours would be foolish not to talk to his father.”
    Gabriel shook his head, but seemed to appreciate her vote of confidence. “Nah, I don’t know nothin’, come right down to it. Guess he figure that out and decide not to waste his time talkin’ to a man who don’t make sense, that waste all his time howlin’ and other nonsense. Anyhow, good night, Teresa. Okay if I call you Teresa?”
    “Call me Gizzard if you want.” Mrs. Lynch smiled, putting the car in reverse. Only when they’d turned around and she put the car in drive did the little man lift the bottle to his lips.
    Back on the highway, heading into town, Mrs. Lynch shook her head and glanced over at him. “Look in that man’s eyes sometime and tell me the world’s a good place.” But then she chuckled. “Teresa Lupino. My maiden name. Nobody’s called me that in twenty years. It might as well have belonged to another person entirely.”
    “Wasn’t it you who just said people don’t change,” Noonan reminded her, pleased to be able to lob her own conviction back at her.
    “Touché,” she said, shooting him a wry smile.
    “What happened on the porch?” Noonan thought to ask.
    “Oh, maybe I’ll tell you someday when I’m not feeling so blue. I don’t need to remember that tonight.” She
was
remembering it, though, he could tell. By the time they pulled into the Marconi driveway, a full moon had risen, illuminating his mother where she stood, pale and ghostlike, at the front window, looking out into the street. Waiting for Noonan? His father? Mrs. Lynch rolled down her window and waved, but she must not have recognized who it was because she didn’t wave back.
             
     
    O VER THE SUMMER Noonan found himself spending more and more time at Ikey Lubin’s. In the beginning he went there to avoid going home, but in truth the place had grown on him. He discovered, as Sarah apparently had before him, that you couldn’t have a relationship with just one Lynch, and she seemed to have a deep affection for the whole clan. It was like she was going steady with Ikey Lubin’s, with the entire Lynch family, and they with her. She completed them, somehow. That’s what her drawing of the market seemed to mean, not just to her but to all of them.
    And now, as the drawing had predicted, Noonan himself had rung that tiny bell over the front door and entered Lynch World, as he’d come to think of Ikey Lubin’s. By now he’d discovered that it didn’t really matter whether Lucy was working or not, since he hung out at the store regardless. “Bobby Macaroni,” the ever jovial Big Lou would announce whenever Noonan appeared on the premises, even if it was for the third time that day. This, to him, was the best joke ever. “Have your dad drop by sometime,” he suggested at least once a week, as if the Lynches and the Marconis had remained the best of friends down through the years, without so much as a cross word between them. “You don’t