Bridge of Sighs

fantasy where his ex-wife was concerned. Even the fact of their divorce didn’t strike him as conclusive. It just meant she was still angry at him. She’d return when she couldn’t afford not to.
    Sarah’s Labor Day was even more laborious, for it fell to her to put their house back in order, throwing open all the windows to air the place out, doing laundry and ironing a week’s worth of his dingy, short-sleeved shirts, which no amount of Clorox ever truly whitened, and his black trousers, which
would
whiten if she wasn’t careful. She also had to pick up his mess from room to room, then go to the store and replace whatever he’d run out of midsummer and decided to do without. Usually at least half of the lightbulbs in the house had blown, but except for those in the den he hadn’t noticed. And once there was light to see by, she’d go through the mail to find out exactly when the electric, phone and water companies were threatening to cut off service, typically right about now.
    By suppertime her father was usually a little more like himself, more talkative, more cheerful, more resigned to their life together and the school year that would begin in the morning. Generating his course syllabi tended to raise his spirits, and he’d explain some of his more diabolical plans for testing the critical acuity of Thomaston youth, or for proving how woefully lacking it was. After supper, Sarah would find the scissors and give him a haircut, during which he’d ask if she’d read any good books over the summer, hoping she’d say yes and want to discuss them. But he was far cleverer at talking about ideas, and she didn’t want to disappoint him, so she always claimed to have forgotten the authors’ names and the book titles, which disappointed him even more, that she should disregard authorship so casually. His worst fear was that she discussed books with her mother, and he was greatly relieved when she assured him that she didn’t.
    By the time they finished their day of labors and were ready for bed, her father, fully himself at last, would give her a hug and say, “What would I do without you?” and she could tell he meant it, and meant
by
it that he loved her. Still, it was hard not to view the question as rhetorical. What he did without her couldn’t have been clearer. Emotionally and physically exhausted, she would fall asleep, pleased and proud to have removed the evidence.
             
     
    T HIS, THEN, was what Sarah had to look forward to in a normal year, with just her mother’s secrets to keep. Those empty gin bottles and late-night visits from the men of the Sundry Arms had always been sufficient to tie her stomach in knots. This year, though, with the additional weight of Harold Sundry and the drawing of Bobby Marconi still hidden in her portfolio, she understood how light that burden had been. In half an hour her train would pull into Fulton and her shaggy father, a scarecrow, all skin and bones, would be standing there on the platform to greet her, and then the lies would begin.
    If
he remembered her. Last year, cramming as many words as he could onto blank pages in those last precious hours, he’d lost track of time and Sarah had waited at the tiny train station for over an hour before finally calling a cab. She’d first tried calling home, of course, but her father hadn’t yet reconnected the phone. A thunderous Hudson cab arrived twenty minutes later, its rusted muffler dangling precariously. The driver, a scruffy, pear-shaped man with dark, beady eyes, kept checking her out in the rearview mirror. Did she have a boyfriend, he wanted to know. She said yes, because that seemed like a good idea, but then he’d asked who it was, and when she said Lou Lynch, he blurted, “You mean Lucy?” Most everyone referred to him as Lucy, but Sarah never did and was angry that this strange man should do so. “Last I knew,” he said, his beady eyes still fixing her in the mirror, “it was Karen Cirillo pulling him around by his…” He let the thought trail off. “You know her?”
    Sarah didn’t answer. It was beyond strange to hear a middle-aged man speaking with such authority about kids her age, as if he were really sixteen himself and merely disguised as a derelict. “Her ma and me used to be friends,” he continued, emphasizing “friends” so as to clarify their relationship. “Karen and me never got along too good. Your Lucy, he used to do cartwheels every time she went into