Bridge of Sighs

showing, so there was nothing to do but give it another coat. When I heard her schedule the painter, I asked why she was doing all this. Sarah would only be with us for two weeks, and it wasn’t like Dec cared. And he certainly wasn’t going to stop smoking.
    “Don’t you want things to be nice for Sarah?” she said. “In fact, we might as well make a nice guest bedroom out of that storage room.” She then proceeded to buy a new queen-size frame, box springs and mattress as well as a nice vanity and chest of drawers. The bathroom got an upgrade, too, as well as a good scrubbing.
    All of which made exactly no sense. After all, money was tight. I tried to press my mother on the subject, but she got so angry that I let it slide, because by then we were bickering over everything. Most recently she’d gotten furious when she overheard part of a Sunday phone conversation I had with Sarah about the possibility of her transferring from Cooper Union to Albany for the following year. My father’s diagnosis and subsequent operation had frightened her, and she wondered if we might need her closer by to help out.
    My mother glared at me when I hung up. “You’d let her do that?”
    “Albany has a good art department,” I told her weakly. “They’ll probably offer her a full ride.”
    “But it’s not Cooper Union, Lou,” she said. “Do you have any idea how talented you have to be to get in there? How many kids get turned down?” I reminded her that Sarah was old enough to make up her own mind, but of course she’d have none of it. “If you told her not to, and meant it, she’d stay in New York.”
    Nor had she been enthusiastic, at least initially, about Sarah spending her spring break with us, an idea I’d floated on New Year’s Day, as soon as I returned to Ikey’s after putting her on the train. When I entered the store, my impression was that my parents, and even Uncle Dec, had used my absence to argue about Sarah and me, and that I hadn’t been gone long enough for them to arrive at a consensus.
    “I don’t think it’s a good idea,” my mother said when I mentioned spring break. “It wouldn’t be a kindness.”
    My father objected with his customary shrug. “You saw what a good time she had here.”
    “I saw what a good time
you
had,” she told him, which won her another shrug. My father wasn’t about to deny how much he liked having Sarah around Ikey’s.
    “She had a great time, too,” I said. “She told me so.”
    “We’re the only family she’s got left,” my father pointed out.
    “Exactly,” Uncle Dec chimed in from behind the meat counter.
    My mother sighted him along her index finger. “Don’t
you
start in.”
    “Is this a new rule, Tessa? I don’t get to talk?”
    “No, it’s an old one,” she said. “I just haven’t been enforcing it. I wish the three of you would quit ganging up on me every time we discuss something.”
    “It
takes
all three of us to argue with you,” my uncle objected, “and we still lose.”
    “She
had
a good time,” I repeated weakly, causing my mother to spin her attention on me.
    “You’re sure about that?” she said. “You can tell the difference between affection and gratitude?” But even she seemed to realize that this was a low blow.
    “You seen how she was—” my father began.
    “Okay,”
my mother interrupted. “Okay. She enjoyed herself over the holidays. My point is that it’s no kindness to offer security to somebody who’s learning to love independence. Sarah is a
brave girl.
She’s just beginning to understand she doesn’t
need
a safety net.” She turned to me now. “Don’t play on her fears. That’s not what you do when you love somebody.”
    Later that night, my parents were still arguing, their voices coming up through the heat register just as they’d done when I was a boy.
    “You have to think of her, too, Lou.”
    “I ain’t sayin’ that, Tessa. I’m just sayin’—”
    “I know what you’re saying.”
    “He ain’t had a single one of them spells since—”
    “I
know
what you’re saying.”
    “She’s been good for him. That’s all I’m—”
    “I
know
what you’re saying. I know, I know, I know.”
             
     
    B UT FOR MY FATHER’S ILLNESS, the conflict over Sarah’s spring break would’ve been even more heated. My mother knew that the last thing he needed was worry. While his chemo dosage was supposedly low, it made him sick to his stomach and weak for days