Bridge of Sighs

he could encounter his father without fear of conflict, thanks in large part to Willie, whose sensitivity to discord actually seemed to prevent it. The boy was slow witted in the extreme, but Noonan quickly grew fond of him. And his father either liked the boy, or at least didn’t mind having him around. It was as though, having neither expectations nor responsibility for him, he could just let him be, a luxury he’d never afforded Noonan even for a minute. He wasn’t sure either what his father’s feelings were for Maxine, whom he treated with a kind of gentle consideration that Noonan at first found impossible to credit. It had to be an act, he thought, the purpose of which was to convince him that his mother had brought on herself all the ill treatment she’d suffered at his hands—and, by extension, Noonan too. He kept waiting for the façade to crack, for the man he knew to reveal himself to both Maxine and her son, but so far it hadn’t and he began to wonder if maybe it wouldn’t. After all, his father had been part of their lives almost as long as he’d been with his original family.
    At home, though, things could still get tense, so without ever discussing the matter he and his father had arrived at an unspoken agreement that on those rare occasions when they both turned up at the house, one or the other would leave. It was as if their relationship had become site specific, and it was the Borough house itself that was toxic.
    Noonan had continued to tend bar at Murdick’s on Sundays through the end of November, then moved out to Nell’s, where Max—as he’d started calling her immediately—taught him to make martinis and manhattans and dozens of other cocktails. He got his own tips from the patrons, plus a small percentage of the waitresses’ tips from the dining room, which added up to a good deal more than he’d made drawing beers at Murdick’s. After a month of Sundays Max gave him a couple hours on Friday nights, too. This was by far the busiest night of the week, and though the cocktail lounge was small he and Max worked what she called tits back, trying to keep up with cocktail orders. After their first Friday night together, he asked, “What did you do before me?”
    “Oh, I’d coax your father off his stool. He wasn’t half the worker you are, though,” she said, loud enough that he could hear. “At least on this side of the bar.” This, Noonan guessed, was a reference to the fact that his father was never without a drink. The old man drank top-shelf scotch but never got drunk, though it occurred to Noonan that he was perhaps never entirely sober either.
    By nine on Fridays the rush was over, after which Max usually told him to go join his friends, and sometimes he did, but just as often he climbed onto the stool next to his father and had something to eat. Other times, if Will was behind in the kitchen, he’d help him by scrubbing pots or ferrying clean glasses out to the bar. With Dec’s motorcycle put up until spring, he had to depend on his father for a ride back into town, so often it was easier to settle in at Nell’s. Many times he’d look up in surprise when Max announced last call, realizing that somehow the evening had slipped away, that he’d gotten tipsy on free beer, that Nan and Lucy and Sarah had probably waited for him in vain at Ikey’s or Angelo’s.
    “You want to come home tonight?” his father suggested one night when they rolled back into town.
    “No, just drop me off at my place,” Noonan said.
    “Why not come home? It’s gotta be cold up there with no heat.”
    “It is,” he admitted, though only on nights when the outside temperature fell below freezing was he uncomfortable. Heat leaked upward from the drugstore, and he had a down sleeping bag and a small electric space heater.
    “Your mother misses you,” his father said.
    “I miss her too,” he replied, which was both true and false. In her dreamy, medicated state she wasn’t the woman he remembered and loved, and in any case she seemed to have everything she needed in his brothers.
    “How long since you spent any time with her?”
    “I don’t know. How long since
you
did?”
    “Okay, if that’s the way you want it.”
    “It’s not the way I want it. It’s the way it is.”
    “And you think I’m to blame.”
    “
I’m
sure not.”
    “And you think the day won’t ever come when you’re the reason somebody’s unhappy?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “It will,” his