Bridge of Sighs

gonna tell on me?” Bobby said.
    “I might. You could pay me not to, though.”
    “How much do you want?”
    “A quarter.”
    He fished in his pocket, found a quarter and handed it to her.
    “Okay,” she said. “Now your secret’s safe.”
    And so, strangely, were her own. On the train she’d been terrified of them, by her inability to keep them, by their seeming desire to reveal themselves. Now they hardly seemed to matter. Bobby had taken on a dual existence, there before her in the flesh and safely tucked away in the dark. In adult life were realities so compartmentalized? At this possibility she felt her spirits, at low ebb on the train, buoyantly rise up again. If that were the case, she could manage it. She might even be good at it.
    “I’ll ride in back,” Bobby offered.
    “Nah,” Lou said, going around to the driver’s side. “You can ride up front with us. There’s room for three.”
    And he was right. There was.

WINTER BIRDS
     
    I TALY IS CANCELED.
    I have protested, but feebly, I fear. It’s taken all my strength to convince my wife to take me home instead of to the emergency room, and there I’ve fallen into a fretful sleep on the sofa to the sound of her voice on the phone in the kitchen. By the time I wake up, it’s done. Flights, train reservations, hotels, all our plans up in smoke. When I notice the travel books and magazines that for so long threatened to take over the house have also vanished, I study her for signs of anger, because she’d be entitled. But no, she evinces only concern. She is ever Sarah, just as I, alas, am ever Lucy Lynch.
    Over a light supper, in the hopes of putting her mind at ease, I remind her about how these things work. My spells, like the valve on a pressure cooker, serve to safely release stress, after which it takes time for the pressure to build again. Years, sometimes. The worse the spell, the greater the relief, the longer between it and the next. What happened today is good news, I tell my wife. It means we won’t have to worry for a while. But what, Sarah wonders, if José hadn’t found me? What if he hadn’t phoned or if she hadn’t been able to come immediately to the junior high and summon me back? Grateful though I am to both of them, I remind her that it probably wouldn’t have made much difference. It’s true the episode could’ve lasted longer if she hadn’t come. I might have returned to myself in the middle of the night, locked in the school, disoriented and confused, but eventually I would’ve made it home. That was true of my first spell, and of every one since.
    When we finish eating, I offer to help with the dishes but am shooed away. I’m told I look exhausted, that I should go upstairs and lie down, fall asleep again if I can. Instead I retreat to my study to contemplate this latest humiliation in solitude. While I wish I could make myself believe that I have not betrayed my wife, not only today but in all the days leading up to today, I know better. It’s possible that I’ve been betraying her from the start, when she “drew us together” at Ikey’s. That, oddly enough, is where I left off writing my story. I’ve written far more than I imagined I would, filling two large notebooks, and I now take the second of these and reread the last page. Over supper I’ve promised her that I won’t be writing anymore. I know she fears it’s become an obsession that may have contributed to this spell. I suppose it’s possible, and anyway I’ve reached a good place to stop. Sarah has entered my life. She’s drawn Ikey’s and she’s drawn the two of us together, which is what we’ve been ever since. Bobby is about to enter, which he did, but only briefly.
    Our lives have continued, of course, and there’s more, much more, to say about them, but I’m content to end on Sarah’s drawing, that moment captured and frozen in time. Things would never again be so perfect, so poised between innocence and experience, between past and future. The events of senior year in high school would steal our innocence, after which the losses would commence, Sarah’s father to disgrace; her mother to tragedy; Bobby, for us, at least, to Europe and fame; my father…my father to malignancy. I meant to write it all because I believed my life to be a hopeful story with a happy ending, the sort my father would’ve liked, where hard work and faith are rewarded, and the American virtues he most admired are triumphant. After all, Ikey’s