Bridge of Sighs

know was this: her drawing of Bobby Marconi affected everything she did thereafter. It was as if, having been liberated from the blank page, he now had partial control of her pen.
    This part her mother understood at a glance, and she took her daughter in her arms, kissing her feverish forehead with cool lips. “Oh, sweetie,” she said. “I’m so, so sorry.”
             
     
    A T G RAND C ENTRAL her mother almost succeeded in cheering her up. They’d boarded the train early, loading her suitcases and the bag of gifts overhead, then sat in facing seats, her mother clutching the portfolio and Sarah wishing she’d put it up with the rest of her stuff, out of sight.
    “Sweetie, don’t you know what this means? It means you have the gift.”
    “What if I don’t want it?”
    “You do. You know you do. Don’t lie.”
    But how could she not, since neither statement—I
do
want the gift, I
don’t
want it—was completely true. She wanted the gift on her own terms and didn’t need her mother to tell her that this wasn’t how such gifts were offered. “Will it make me happy?”
    “Oh, sweetie…”
    “Does it make
you
happy?” Because if it did, what need would she have of Harold Sundry?
    Her mother looked like she might cry. “You
don’t
understand, do you?”
    Sarah shook her head, panic again rising.
    “I
don’t
have it. Oh, I have some talent. Enough to get by. More than most. But it’s not the same as yours. What you have comes from some other place.”
    Sarah’s next question was a whisper, so low she wasn’t sure she’d spoken. “What about Lou?” Meaning, was her affection for him a lie? Meaning, how could she love him and draw Bobby? Meaning, could she have her gift and Lou, too?
    Her mother opened her mouth, then shut it again. “Oh, Lord,” she finally said. “I was about to say follow your heart, but I did that and married your father.”
    Sarah forced a smile. “Five yards.”
    “Not fifteen?”
    She shook her head. She was through giving her mother big penalties.
    When the train was at last in motion, it occurred to Sarah that she’d left Thomaston with one secret and was returning with two. Was this how things would go from now on, secrets piling on top of secrets? Was this adult life, or simply the natural consequence of going away in the body of a girl and returning in that of a woman? Would she get used to deceit, like the husband she’d seen coming out of Sundry Gardens with his new girlfriend and her daughter, his face innocent of all misfortune and wrongdoing?
             
     
    B Y ALBANY, Sarah had decided it was time to focus on the task soon to be at hand: putting her father’s life back in order. Though she wasn’t there to witness them, she knew what his long summer days were like. According to the neighbors, who both awoke and fell asleep to the sound of his typewriter clacking away, she knew he was at his desk at least fourteen hours a day, seven days a week. With Sarah away and no one to please but himself, he did so by dispensing with all social niceties. Rising, he put on a bathrobe to work in, and at night he took it off to go to bed; since he owned two he’d wear one until it was stiff with perspiration before taking it to the cleaners and donning the other. He quit shaving and let his hair grow wild. Last summer, Lou had run into him coming out of Powell’s stationery, where he’d gone to replace his typewriter ribbon, and hadn’t even recognized him. He looked like Ben Gunn, he told Sarah; he’d half expected the man to ask him for a piece of cheese.
    It was true. When she returned over Labor Day, her father’s appearance was always shocking to behold. He looked ten years older, starved and brittle. But his physical condition was only part of it. All summer long words flew off the tips of his fingers and directly onto his typewriter keys, bypassing his larynx entirely, so that by the end of August he was all but incapable of speech. He greeted his daughter with mixed feelings he didn’t even try to conceal, though he instructed Sarah not to take his ambivalence personally, and mostly she didn’t. In fact, she understood more than he knew.
    The book he was writing was an account of his banishment from New York City and his long exile in the wilderness that was upstate in general and Thomaston in particular. Sarah knew all this because one Labor Day, years before, she’d found the manuscript piled neatly on his desk and let her