Bridge of Sighs

Well, now the tables are turned and it’s we who are on
your
doorstep. Lou and I will be visiting Italy for two weeks in May. Rome first, then Florence. Venice we’re saving for last. We’ve booked a room at Hotel Flora, which we understand is small but nice. We arrive by train on the 17th of next month. Will you invite your old friends across the threshold and into your world? Will you show us your studio and what you’re working on? Will you guide us through your city, its Titians and Tintorettos? You remember Lou’s mother Tessa, I’m sure. She’s on record as believing there’s too much water under the bridge for you to be interested in a visit from us. But Venice, I reminded her, is a city of bridges ( forgive me,
ponti).
Surely, I told her, you’ll be glad to tell us which ones lead to you. Either way, you’ll settle a bet. Yours, Sarah.
    Yours, Sarah.
    I feel my throat constrict at this familiarity. Sarah. No need to add “Lynch.” Dear Bobby will know. Forty years? Twice forty? He’d still know.
    And the postscript.
When you see me, you’re not to comment on the fact that I’m no longer the skinny girl you knew. I will ask you to believe that my hair is really the color you see. Of course you’re probably a sad, broken-down specimen yourself. If so, I will pretend not to notice.
    And the postpostscript:
Do you still have the drawing I did of you? The one where you’re not completely ugly? Of course not. One of your many wives will have destroyed it. Which, I wonder?
    A love letter. Is there another way to interpret it? That playful, intimate tone is one Sarah hasn’t used since we were young, and even then she employed it only with Bobby, which means that in writing to him she became that girl again—sporting, flirtatious, her whole life before her. Who does she miss more, I wonder, the boy she once loved or the girl who loved him?
    I don’t doubt my wife’s faith, innocence or devotion to me, her husband. It’s not that. But the human heart, well, it inclines this way and that without permission, ever unruly, ever wayward. It’s
this
I’ve always wished otherwise, the flawed human heart. My mother’s, Bobby’s, Sarah’s and especially my own. Was my father’s heart flawed as well? I suppose it must have been, though to me it always beat strong and true.
    When Sarah finally looks up, her eyes are full.
    “I steamed the envelope open,” I confess, feeling my cheeks burn.
    “I wondered,” she says. “It wasn’t like Bobby to ignore us.” To ignore
her,
she means. I can see myriad emotions warring within her, but the one that triumphs is relief, and at this my heart sinks even further. At last she says, “Are you going to tell me why?”
    “I was afraid,” I explain, but I can see she doesn’t understand, and I’m visited by an unwanted memory of the day I peered in through the smoky window of the passenger train and saw on Sarah’s lap the drawing she’d done of Bobby, the same one she alluded to in her postscript. I knew immediately what it meant, but in a heartbeat I’d hidden both the drawing and its significance away where it would trouble me no further. I think I’ve remembered it no more than half a dozen times in all the years since.
    “Afraid you’d fall in love with him,” I manage to tell her. “With Bobby. Again.”

CATHEDRAL
     
    H UGH WAS SEATED on the grand terrace of his hotel, his bags piled next to the balustrade, when Noonan finally arrived, an hour late. “Dear God, look at you,” he said.
    Noonan had been at work for hours and was covered with paint. There was even some in his hair.
    “What time is it?” Lichtner had asked when he shook him awake at dawn.
    “Time for you to go home,” Noonan told him. “Get up. I need you out of here.”
    The man sat up on the sofa, blinking at his watch in disbelief. “This is so fucking cruel. I’ve only been asleep for two hours.”
    Ignoring his complaints, Noonan busied himself setting up his spare easel. Outside, the newly risen sun was a dull red ball, the same size and shape as the dome of the Salute. A Turner, he thought, if there’d been a Turner handy to see it.
    “I could go get us some coffee,” Lichtner said wistfully after he’d pulled on his clothes, but Noonan was already going through his supplies and hadn’t even responded. If the fool had volunteered to fetch him a big tube of cadmium yellow, he might’ve taken him up on it, but coffee? A few minutes later Noonan heard the