Bridge of Sighs

completely absorbed in watching his clothes tumble past the window of the dryer, as if he was in there with them and she was waiting patiently for the end of the cycle.
    Finally she said, “Remember the day you went out and gathered up all my clothes and brought them home in that broken suitcase? I was out to here and your father was so angry at me. Remember? And he warned you to leave my things in the street, but you, little as you were, you marched right out and got my suitcase out of the stream and put everything back in the best you could and trudged home on your little legs. Most of the clothes were ruined and I had to throw them away later, but there you were, my little man. I can still see you tugging that suitcase up the front steps.”
    She delivered this memory as if it were a fond one, worthy of nostalgia. Her own terrible unhappiness, her desperate attempt to escape his father’s bullying—these features of the story apparently weren’t worth mentioning. He understood, of course, that what she was really nostalgic about was his former devotion to her. Back then, he’d been her little man, whereas now, a couple nights a week, he climbed onto a barstool next to the man he’d once tried so valiantly to protect her from. Which could only mean that he was coming to see things as his father did.
    She closed her eyes again and was quiet for so long that Noonan fell into a reverie of his own, until he felt her eyes on him and saw that she was studying him with terrible sadness, as well as an alert awareness that her medications usually prevented. “What’s she like?” she asked him.
    He knew, of course, who she was talking about, but pretended not to. “Who?”
    “That woman.”
    “Max?” he said, and saw how it wounded her, that he’d called her Max rather than Maxine.
    “Yes, her.”
    “She’s not pretty like you,” he said, because he imagined that would please her, though it didn’t seem to. “Kind of tough looking, actually. I don’t know what the attraction is, if that’s what you’re asking.”
    “The attraction is she’s not me,” she said. “Do you like her?”
    This was the question Noonan dreaded most. “Mom. We don’t have to talk about this.”
    “Do you like her?”
    “She’s a hard worker,” he said. “She doesn’t take any shit from Dad.”
    “Do you
like
her?”
    “Well enough, I guess,” he admitted lamely, aware that even so weak an endorsement was a betrayal. “I don’t
dis
like her.”
    “You used to like me.”
    “I love you, Mom.”
    She looked askance at him now, as if to acknowledge that, yes, sure he loved her, but
love,
as everyone knew, was no answer. “She has a son.”
    “Willie,” Noonan told her. “He’s a sweet kid. He’s got Down’s syndrome.” Why was he telling her this? So she wouldn’t be jealous of the woman? “They say he probably won’t live to be thirty.”
    The dryer stopped just then, silence filling the room.
    After a moment his mother stood to leave. “Good,” she said.
             
     
    B Y THE TIME Noonan left his mother’s house it had begun to snow. It was late afternoon, and the sky was low and dark. As he crossed from the Borough into the East End, streetlamps began to click on, one by one, lighting his way, as if that were necessary. He thought about heading straight downtown so he could drop off his laundry bag. From there he supposed he might go out to Nell’s, if he could find a ride. If the restaurant was busy, he could help Max behind the bar or bus tables or give Willie a hand in back, in return for which he’d be fed. But if it continued to snow as predicted, business was likely to be slow and there’d be nothing to do but talk to his father, who’d want to know if he’d gone out to see his mother, and he wasn’t anxious to recount what had happened there. He’d have to lie, say she seemed fine, that they’d had a pleasant conversation about nothing much in particular. He’d never tell him what she’d said about Willie.
    On a normal Saturday night, he and Nan and Lucy and Sarah would’ve gone to a movie and maybe from there to Angelo’s for pizza or back to Ikey’s, but Mrs. Beverly had flown in from Atlanta that afternoon, and so Nan was spending the evening with her parents. Noonan had always assumed that if there was one family in Thomaston insulated from strife, it was the Beverlys, though apparently this wasn’t the case. Last week, Nan had confided to Sarah that the story