Bridge of Sighs

I’m wrong, I’m no worse off than I was, right? Please say yes, so I can go to sleep.”
    That night, as sometimes happened when she had too much to think about, Sarah fell immediately into a deep and dreamless sleep, awaking with a guilty start at first light, the events of the previous day both surreal and immediate. Her
mother
was
marrying
Harold
Sundry
? This ending made the whole summer seem implausible, as did the fact that by late afternoon she’d be back in Thomaston living her other life. Her stomach knotted at the thought. Outside her mother’s bedroom window it was still gray, almost black. How long before the sun actually came up? They’d set the alarm for seven-thirty, still almost two hours away. She’d packed everything the night before, even her sketch pad. Her suitcases, portfolio and the bag containing gifts for her father and Lou and the other Lynches was sitting in the front room near the door. Sarah closed her eyes, feeling them spill over, and tried to imagine Ikey Lubin’s, telling herself she’d be there soon, soothed by both the store and the Lynches, but the image refused to form.
Concentrate,
she told herself. You know it. You know everything about it. Where the register is and the meat counter, too, and the big coolers full of milk and beer along the back wall, though she was arguing with herself in words and could feel the panic rising in her chest until, in the next room, she heard her mother stir. Had she fallen asleep?
    Rolling over, she saw a crease of light beneath the bedroom door. Was there a lamp on in the front room? Then a sound like the page of a book turning, except louder. And finally she knew what her mother was doing.
    “These are wonderful!” she said when Sarah sat down beside her on the sofa she’d apparently not bothered to unfold that night. All of Sarah’s recent drawings and watercolors lay spread out on the coffee table. The sheer volume would have been impressive enough; in just the last few weeks she’d doubled her entire output, and this no doubt contributed to her mother’s stunned disbelief. But what she was really responding to, Sarah understood, was the quality. These most recent efforts represented a quantum leap forward, every single one better, far better, than the very best ones from earlier in the summer. “My God, they’re
all
wonderful.” She was studying Sarah now, with an expression that was almost fearful, as if she suspected that her daughter had made a pact with the devil. “Weren’t you going to show them to me?”
    She’d meant to, of course, when they returned from dinner last night, or maybe this morning before they headed into the city, when there’d be less time for questions, for explanations. A miscalculation, she now saw. Maybe someone who didn’t know any better wouldn’t intuit the questions this new work raised, but her mother
did
know better, and she also knew there were reasons for such quantum leaps, even if the artist herself couldn’t explain them. While Sarah could pretend not to understand what had happened, at the very least her mother would want to know why she’d been so secretive about work as good as this, when normally she was so open. “I don’t understand,” she said now, scrutinizing Sarah so closely that her cheeks began to burn with an emotion that seemed equal parts pride and embarrassment.
    “I know,” she whispered.
    “Tell me,” her mother said, taking her hand. “How did this happen?”
    Her portfolio was leaning up against the coffee table, so Sarah unzipped the inner sleeve and took out the drawing of Bobby she’d finally done back in early August. Feeling guilty in advance, she’d allowed herself just half an hour for his portrait, though she hadn’t needed even that long. It was as if the boy already existed on the blank page of her sketchbook and had been patiently waiting there for her pen to locate him. He’d appeared before her so quickly, so effortlessly, that she was almost as startled as she would’ve been to look up and find him standing there in the flesh. She’d immediately hidden the sketch away in the zippered compartment where she knew her mother wouldn’t look, nor would she look at it herself. That was the promise she made and then broke, time and again, slipping it out whenever she had a private moment to study what she’d done, trying to account for what had happened. Had the magic been in her hand or in the subject? There was no telling. What she did