Bridge of Sighs

back under the circumstances. Perhaps sensing my feelings were hurt that he hadn’t contacted us since fleeing town, Sarah invented a game for us to play. Bobby, we decided, planned to return sometime during the holiday, sneaking back into the country in disguise and just showing up at Ikey’s. Anybody who came into the store was Bobby in disguise. “Look, there he is!” Sarah would exclaim when a tiny, elderly woman came in, leaning heavily on a walker. “I recognized him first!”
    But, no, he was gone, and he wasn’t the only one. Three Mock had been home briefly after boot camp before being sent overseas. Nan Beverly and Perry Kozlowski went off to college in September like the rest of us, but they wouldn’t be coming back, their parents having moved away. Jerzy Quinn and Karen Cirillo were still around, though I saw them so seldom that when they did appear they seemed like characters from a novel I’d read long ago and half forgotten. One day I ran into Karen outside the beauty parlor and she had a toddler in tow. “So, Lou,” she said, looking at me, or maybe at something behind me, “you still love me, or what?” I told her I was sort of engaged to Sarah Berg. “Never heard of her,” Karen said. “She must not be from around here.” Rather than explain, I said, “I guess you’re married now.” Her kid was grinning up at me, fascinated, as kids always used to be with my father. “Married,” Karen snorted. “You always were a scream, Lou.” I half expected one of the skinny wraiths who’d always attended Karen in junior high to walk up, but none did, causing me to wonder what happened to all of them. When she and her little girl went into the salon, I remember looking around and thinking that half the town, in one fashion or another, had disappeared.
    Sarah’s Christmas was also made awkward by the fact that, with her father gone, she had nowhere to stay. There wasn’t room in our house, which wouldn’t have been appropriate anyway, so she’d wangled an invitation from an old girlfriend she’d never been particularly close to and as a result was duty bound to spend time with her and her family, and even then the girl told Sarah she felt used, that next time she wanted to visit the Lynches she’d have to find someplace else to stay. Maybe it was this unpleasantness that cast a shadow over our last few days together, but more likely it was just my sense of unworthiness kicking into high gear as our holiday drew to a close. I was bitterly jealous of how excited Sarah was about the show she was going to help install as soon as she got back to New York. During the two weeks we had together, I’d felt not so much happy as—what?—complete. I’d ask Sarah if she wanted to go out, look up old friends and do things, but she’d said no, she’d rather be at Ikey’s most, which caused my mother to shake her head at my father and me, the two of us standing there moist eyed. I didn’t know how I’d be able to face her leaving.
    On the drive to Hudson I panicked and let all my insecurities come flooding out. I told Sarah how much I loved and missed her, how at times I couldn’t help feeling like maybe I was losing her to a better world, the one her father had wanted for her and that would never include me, or Ikey’s, or Thomaston. Instead of being repulsed by this display of weakness and mistrust, Sarah just kissed me on the tip of my nose and, looking at me cross-eyed, said I was being silly, although it was a good silly and I was forgiven. She loved me, too, she said, more than ever these last two weeks. She loved not only me but also my mother and father, and dear old Ikey’s, and even, when he behaved himself, Uncle Dec. I just had to believe her.
    I did. Of course I did. Being Sarah, she wouldn’t have said what she didn’t mean. She’d given me as unambiguous a declaration of devotion as anyone could hope for, yet when I put her on the train back to the city the thought crossed my mind that even if she
did
mean every word, even if it was the whole truth and nothing but the truth, even if it was so help me God, it wasn’t the guarantee I sought. Because I could still lose my Sarah, our Sarah, to some new passion, to someplace she’d never been, to someone she’d never met but would come to love even more than she loved me and us.
    Or even someone she’d already said goodbye to, who was gone, but maybe not for good. How could I prevent that? I couldn’t. I simply could