Bridge of Sighs

just then she saw Harold Sundry talking to the hostess, who was pointing, she could’ve sworn, toward their table. “Sarah?” her mother said. “Did you hear me?”
    “Yes,” Sarah lied, trying to scroll back.
    “Well, I wish you’d say something.”
    And now Harold was rolling toward them, sweating profusely in his dark wool, hopelessly out-of-season sport coat, his shirt collar buttoned so tight that his face was beet red.
    “
There
you are,” her mother said.
    “Sorry,” Harold said. “I had to stop for gas.”
    “Well, sit down. This isn’t going well.”
    “I warned you,” Harold said, looking right at Sarah, who, already confused, felt a strong impulse to deny that he’d issued her any warnings whatsoever. They’d barely spoken half a dozen words all summer.
Marry?
Had her mother used that word?
    “It’s okay, honey,” Harold said, speaking to her for real this time. “I’m not such a bad fella once you get to know me.”
    For the rest of her life Sarah would be thankful she didn’t say what was on the tip of her tongue, that she already had a boyfriend, that she was too young to marry, that in any case her father wouldn’t stand for anyone except a graduate student in English from Columbia University. She’d actually opened her mouth to say these things when the facts reconfigured themselves in her head. No, her mother wasn’t angry with her for growing up and becoming a woman, nor had she arranged for her to marry Harold Sundry as a punishment. How could such a ridiculous notion have taken root even for a second? Was it because the truth was only slightly less bizarre? Sarah turned to her mother, but she refused to come into focus. There was a loud bang—a single shot to a snare drum—that seemed to originate inside her skull. Then nothing.
             
     
    “W ELL,
that’s
an evening I won’t soon forget,” her mother said when they were safely back in the apartment. She touched Sarah’s cheek with the back of her fingers. “You’re still clammy. You should lie down.”
    “I’m okay now.” She felt suddenly incapable of uttering anything that wasn’t completely false. She felt yet another lie already forming on her lips when the phone rang.
    “She’s okay, Harold,” her mother said. “Nothing’s happened in the two minutes since we saw you last.” Sarah recognized this tone of voice as the same one she’d used on her father. “I will. I will, Harold. Drink a beer and relax. Oh, one won’t kill you. All right, go to a movie then. Do whatever. Go across the street and tell Elaine, see if she faints. I know you feel bad. Sarah does, too, and I feel worse than either of you, believe me. You’re absolutely right about that, Harold. It
is
a crummy way to begin. No, she likes you fine. Plus you’ll grow on her, just like you did on me. I didn’t like you at all in the beginning, remember? Well, I didn’t, but now I do. We’ll talk tomorrow, okay? No, I haven’t changed my mind. Don’t forget what we talked about, what you said you were going to work on. Being needy, right. Now’d be a good time to start. No, breakfast isn’t a great idea. Tomorrow’s our last day together. I will, Harold. I promise. Just as soon as I get back from the city.”
    She hung up, came over and took her daughter gently by the chin. “Oh, sweetie, I hope you aren’t going to come out of this with two black eyes.”
    That snare drum in her head, Sarah now understood, had been her forehead hitting the table. According to her mother, she’d been out only a few seconds, but when she’d awakened she was flat on her back staring up at a ring of faces, her mother’s in the foreground, Harold Sundry’s among the others, looking like he hoped she’d be able to pick him out of the lineup. Though bathed in perspiration, she otherwise felt fine and in fact was hungry and would’ve liked to have eaten something. But an ambulance had been called and her mother thought she should get checked out. Harold followed the ambulance in his Buick, and afterward they’d returned to the restaurant for her mother’s car. “I’m famished,” Sarah told them. “Can we order something?”
    “No way I’m walking back in that restaurant,” her mother said. “Ever.” Back at the Sundry Arms, she ordered a pizza. “Was it really that much of a shock?”
    “No,” Sarah said.
Liar.
“I mean, sort of. You hate marriage. You’re always making fun of people who get married. You say