Bridge of Sighs

dolt of a principal, Watkins. He didn’t doubt the end result, but a delay of any duration guaranteed that Watkins and his colleagues in the English department would constantly inquire, and he’d have to say he was still waiting for a response and then endure their envious, small-minded snickers. Worse, it meant his ex-wife would be permitted to live that much longer in the bliss of her ignorance. He’d hoped she might commence the process of bitter regret in a more timely manner.
    The first rejection came on the Ides of March, a form letter stating that the book didn’t suit the publisher’s needs at this time. Since the letter was unsigned, there was no way to tell whether the book had been read by the editor he’d selected or by someone else, though Mr. Berg felt confident it must be the latter. He’d been right! Mistakes of this sort not only happened, they happened to him. Another rejection came later in the month, also an unsigned form letter. This one caused him to suffer yet another doubt. Since he’d sent the manuscript off, an even better ending had occurred to him, so he sat down and composed a letter for all the remaining editors, outlining the new ending and explaining why he thought it might conceivably be an improvement over the old, though of course he’d understand if they were wedded to the original. Was it Hemingway who always said, “First thought, best thought”?
    This letter’s only immediate effect was to generate another form rejection. The day after Mr. Berg received it, a note appeared on the honors classroom door, canceling class without explanation and giving everyone a reading day in the library. But at the end of that period Lucy observed him leaving the principal’s office, his face ashen. Had he requested the meeting or been summoned? Had they patched up their disagreement over the Jewish mothers, or was their conflict deepening? Noonan saw Watkins later in the day, and he seemed in excellent spirits. All of this had happened on a Friday. By Monday Mr. Berg was his old self again—manic, sarcastic, mock-confidential, insulting, over the top. But according to Sarah he’d spoken hardly a word all weekend. On Saturday he’d sat on the front porch in the bitter cold, gripping the arms of a wicker chair with white knuckles until the mailman came. He’d taken an envelope into the study and closed the door. Sarah didn’t see him again for the rest of the day.
             
     
    N OONAN WAS NOT in love with Nan Beverly and didn’t see any reason why he should be, though his was a distinctly minority view. Almost all the other boys in the school were openly envious of his good fortune. After all, Nan had been going out with him for over six months, much longer than she’d dated anyone else. They couldn’t understand why either, because he didn’t seem to be working that hard to keep her. He didn’t even buy her presents. And when she flirted with other boys in the hopes of making him jealous, a tactic that had never failed her, he didn’t seem to care, and it was always the would-be rival who ended up slinking off. Lucy wasn’t jealous—he had Sarah, after all—but he did subscribe to the consensus view that his friend had no idea how lucky he was.
    “You shouldn’t lead her on,” Sarah told him one day when they were walking home from school and Lucy was home sick with a cold. They’d not been alone much since the night he’d given her a ride on the Indian. It was winter now, too cold for her to paint in his unheated “studio” above the Rexall and too cold for the motorcycle, which meant he couldn’t offer her a lift at the end of their foursome evenings. Unless he was mistaken, she was relieved that there were so few opportunities for them to be alone, as if their conversation that night had been too intimate, that they’d come dangerously close to…what?
    “How am I leading her on?” he said. He hadn’t told Nan he loved her, nor even implied it, so far as he remembered. Of course he hadn’t come right out and told her he didn’t, but was he obliged to make such a declaration? Sarah seemed to think so.
    “It’s just that she really likes you,” she said.
    “Well—”
    “And you don’t like her nearly so much.”
    “You know this?”
    “I do.”
    “So…what? You’re saying I should break up with her?”
    “No, I’m saying she’s vulnerable. If you were honest with her, she could move on to somebody else.”
    “That would leave