Bridge of Sighs

further instruction? No, I think. I love my wife. I do. But I think again of the letter and am too ashamed to face her. The direction I’m traveling in is the right one. I feel sure of this, though I can’t say why. I will cross this Bridge of Sighs even though I now realize Sarah won’t be there to greet me. On the other side of the bridge is profound darkness, but I’m not afraid. Whatever lies beyond the Bridge of Sighs will be my new life.
    I’m in the middle of Sarah’s bridge when I see a man leaning over the railing and staring down at the red water below. I recognize him, of course, and yet again I am ashamed. I try to sneak by, but he says, “Is that you, Louie?” so I go over and stand beside my father. After a moment he says, “You promised,” and of course I know which promise he’s talking about, though I made it long ago. “You promised you’d never do like you’re doing,” he explains, unnecessarily. Allowing myself to just drift away, is what he means. On that long ago day when he gave me a tour of the Borough in his milk truck, I promised him I’d never do that, and here I am breaking my oath.
    “But you’re gone,” I tell him. “You died.” How can I be bound by my promise when my father is dead?
    “You always done good till now,” he says sadly, as if he can’t understand what’s come over me.
    I’d like to tell him no, he’s wrong, that I’ve not always done as I should, that I’ve failed as a son, as a father and especially as a husband, but of course he’d never believe any such thing, any more than he’d have believed I gave Karen Cirillo free cigarettes from Ikey’s. “It’s just that I’d rather stay here with you,” I tell him in my small, whiny child’s voice, hoping he’ll let me have my way, as he so often did when he was alive.
    “I miss you, too,” he tells me. “It ain’t that. It’s just…”
    I wait for him to complete his thought, but instead he reaches down and takes my hand.
    “Here, Lou,” my wife says, her voice close now. “Open your eyes.”
    Are my eyes closed? I don’t think so, but then I open them and there she is, my Sarah, on her knees next to my chair. It’s she, not my father, who’s squeezing my hand. She is, literally, “at hand,” a phrase that takes on a magical new meaning. And I must be saying something—maybe trying to explain that I’ve actually been
inside
her painting, perhaps the finest one she’s ever done, because I can feel words, like pebbles, in my throat.

ALL AND SUNDRY
     
    S ARAH WAS mostly proud of how she’d handled her parents’ breakup. She hadn’t cried or pouted or gotten angry with them. They were, after all, two strong-willed people who’d made up their minds. She herself was not strong-willed, nor was her mind made up as to whether the separation was a good or bad thing, so she quickly recognized the futility of attempting to alter the course of unalterable events. Enduring what couldn’t be cured, she supposed, was what people meant by being adult, though it was ironic that so few of them—including her parents—had mastered the skill themselves. By age twelve she’d already learned to cut her losses and derive what comfort she could from doing so. Generally she was happy or, failing that, reasonably content, though she sometimes wondered if she’d conceded the inevitable too quickly. What if the only thing concessions got you was the habit of conceding?
    Still, what remained after the separation was not nothing. Both her parents cared for her, and she mostly succeeded in trying not to think that their happiness apparently counted for more than her own. She divided her time unequally between them—residing in Thomaston with her father during the school year, on Long Island with her mother every summer, which arrangement hadn’t been discussed with her but worked as well as any she herself might’ve proposed had anyone asked her opinion. By the time she entered junior high she was used to it, the rhythm of her comings and goings feeling natural or at least familiar. The only real difficulty was the transition, when the baton was passed between her father and mother in mid-June and then again over the Labor Day weekend.
    Her parents’ lives couldn’t have been more different. Her father was an ascetic by nature and nurture, and her life with him was regimented and predictable. The hours after school were much the same as those in school, where a glance at the wall clock