Bridge of Sighs

cripple, said, “Girls, I’ll leave the rest of this to you,” then disappeared upstairs.
    When they finally finished the parking lot, Tessa told Noonan to go home, that he’d done his part, but he knew the Lynches were still snowed in across the street, so he followed Lucy over there, and they began again. At one point Lucy heard the phone ringing inside and went in to answer it, telling Noonan to rest for a while, but he kept working, as if good-faith exhaustion might appease the angry, jealous God who decided whether small-town girls got pregnant or not. The pain in his wrist was worse now, and that, too, was fine.
    Across the intersection people continued to traipse in and out of Ikey’s, parking in the lot he and Lucy and Dec had cleared by hand, and for some reason, watching this, he felt a welling up of emotion he didn’t immediately recognize as pride, perhaps because there was so little justification for it. Was it possible to achieve such intense satisfaction simply by shoveling snow for a corner grocery? Right then, leaning on his shovel, he felt almost weak with gratitude for the long day’s labors, proud not only of himself, but also of the Lynches, even Dec, for their daily devotion to Ikey’s. Last night he’d given Nan a guided tour of the West End world that had both fascinated and frightened her. He’d taken secret pleasure in showing her the hard realities she’d been sheltered from, but that had been a very different sort of pride from what he felt now, because in truth he no longer belonged to that West End world any more than she did. And this morning, returning Nan to the Borough, it had struck him that he didn’t belong there either. When her mother had screamed at him to get out, he remembered thinking she had every right to do so.
    But here, right here, was a place he
could
belong, or at least was worth belonging to, where he’d always be welcome, even if he ended up as dubious a character as Dec Lynch. Back in November, Sarah was in tears at the notion that something might happen to Ikey’s. At the time her fear had seemed melodramatic, but now he understood. She was taking a stand against her father’s values. Noonan didn’t know anything about Mr. Berg’s novel, but he was certain nothing like Ikey’s was in it. No, he was drawn to extremes, both philosophical and dramatic. The poor black man who dreamed of fish and whose wife played the number appealed to his grand sense of racial injustice, because these people never had a chance. That they thought they did deepened the irony, and oh how Mr. Berg loved irony. On the other extreme were the grand dreamers—the Gatsbys and the Ahabs—who were determined either to conquer or to tear down and reshape whole worlds. In class they’d also read
Death of a Salesman,
though it was clear Mr. Berg didn’t care about Willy Loman. He was simply pitiful. Small men with small dreams didn’t interest him, even when their dreams demanded enormous faith and endless forbearance. Ikey Lubin’s was a small thing. A small, good thing. You could count on it much like you could count on the Lynches, not for what they didn’t have but for what they did. Was it something like this—some small, good thing—his father had been yearning for when he invested in Nell’s?
    “That was Nan,” Lucy said when he came back outside and picked up his shovel.
    “Really?” he said, surprised. If Nan was calling Lucy, then maybe, even if she was done with Noonan, she still wanted to be friends with him and Sarah. That morning, when she’d waved at him from her bedroom window, he’d gotten the distinct impression she was blowing all of them off.
    “She said nothing happened last night,” Lucy said, grinning and happy now.
    “Is that right.”
    “She said you almost did, but then you decided not to.”
    He nodded.
    “That was smart,” Lucy said, and Noonan could tell his friend was every bit as relieved as if he himself had been the one in jeopardy. “She and her mom made up, too,” he added.
    Noonan doubted this could be true but didn’t say anything.
    “They’re flying to Atlanta tomorrow for a whole week,” Lucy went on. “There are some southern colleges her mother wants her to visit. One’s in Atlanta, and they’re going to drive to the others.”
    He wondered if that meant Mr. Beverly would remain behind. Maybe they’d just leave him under the car.
    “That’s the only bad part,” Lucy went on. “I was hoping she’d go to