Bridge of Sighs

me.”
    “You’re special?”
    “Well,” he said, “I do own the place.”
    “Right.” Noonan snorted, then realized his father was serious. The surprises were coming too fast now, practically tripping over one another.
    Maxine returned with a setup and a salad with blue-cheese dressing—also Noonan’s favorite—in a small wooden bowl.
    “
You,
” he said. “You own this place.”
    His father dug in. “Well, it’s my name on the lease, put it like that. What?”
    “Nothing,” he said. “I was just thinking about the budget you keep Mom on.”
    “Your mother’s a child. If I treated her like an adult, we’d all be broke.”
    “You’re the one who keeps her a child,” Noonan said. “You never let her do anything.”
    “She
can’t
do anything. It’s not a question of letting her or not letting her.”
    Noonan shook his head in disbelief. “And you were at the game today?”
    “I told you. I’ve been to all of them.”
    “Would it have killed you to sit with her? Make her happy for once?”
    “Trust me, she was far happier with your brothers.”
    The prime rib came then, beautifully red, swimming in au jus. Noonan’s stomach began to growl. “You sure you don’t want one of these?” his father said. “It’s not too late.”
    “I’m not hungry,” he said, certain that by now his lie was transparent. “It’s those pills. She can’t function.”
    “They don’t help,” his father admitted, chewing thoughtfully. “They aren’t the problem, though.” He’d separated the leaner meat from the fatty tail. Even the fat made Noonan’s mouth water. “Suppose you’re right that I should be around more, act nicer to your mother. What about you? These days, you aren’t around much more than I am. If you really cared about her, you wouldn’t be living downtown. You’d be home helping out, making things better. Except you know there’s no way to make things better, right?”
    “I live downtown so I don’t run into you. If we lived under the same roof, she’d be even worse off.”
    “But I
don’t
live under that roof. I visit. Just like you.” His father pushed his plate away, having eaten, Noonan judged, about half. “Look, I don’t give a shit if you lie to me. Say you aren’t hungry when you are, that’s no skin off my ass. But don’t lie to yourself.”
    “How am I doing that?”
    Maxine came over and cleared the plate away. Noonan told himself not to watch it go, but he did anyway.
    “Here’s what I think. When you were a kid, you saw things a certain way,” his father continued. “Who knows? Maybe you were right. But you keep wanting to see things the same way now, even though they aren’t. You know they aren’t, but you’re in the habit. You feel better about things if I’m the bad guy.”
    “You
are
the bad guy.”
    “See what I mean?” his father said. “You didn’t even have to think about it, and you should’ve.” He called down the bar, “Max, am I a bad guy?”
    “Nope.”
    “Call Willie out here a minute,” he suggested, and when the boy appeared in the doorway he said, “William, tell the truth now. Am I a good guy or a bad guy?”
    “A good guy,” Willie said with no more hesitation than Noonan and even more pleased to have gotten the answer right. “The best guy.”
    “There you go,” his father said, as if only the most unreasonable person could dispute such unblemished testimony.
    Noonan chuckled. “I guess that settles it.”
    “Oh,” his father said, “he’s not smart like you, so he must be wrong?”
    “I didn’t say that.” He’d implied it, though.
    “Okay,” his father said, conceding the point. “You tell me. What should I be doing different?”
    “I wouldn’t know where to begin.”
    “Begin anywhere. Maybe I should be more like you. Go through life pretending I’m not hungry when I am. Should I make like there’s nothing wrong with your mother…pretend she’s the woman of my dreams?”
    “Not a bad idea,” Noonan said, mostly out of frustration. “You made her the way she is. Bullying her. Scaring her out of her wits.”
    “What wits?”
    Noonan ignored this. “And you call yourself a man?” His father’s birthmark darkened a shade, and Noonan thought, Okay, so we’ll do this, right here, right now. Come on. Throw that punch, old man. You know you want to.
    But the kitchen door flew open just then, and Willie reappeared, his face contorted and body trembling with what looked like fear. But