Bridge of Sighs

Central.
    She caught a cab and gave the turbaned driver the address of her hotel, but when they passed Grand Central, she changed her mind and told him to pull over. Though she hadn’t been inside the terminal in four decades, it was just as she remembered it. The kiosk still stood in the center of the great hall beneath the four-sided gold clock, and there a middle-aged woman, her voice rising in anger, was arguing with an older woman who was inside the kiosk giving out information. How many times had Sarah, as a girl, witnessed her mother, clearly in the wrong but still adamant, having just such altercations with functionaries? Why, this woman wanted to know, would the man at the hotel have instructed her to go to Grand Central if it wasn’t the right place? Was it Sarah’s imagination, or was her voice identical in tone and timbre to her mother’s?
    “You must’ve misunderstood him,” the clerk ventured to guess. “If you want to go to Long Island, you need the LIRR out of Penn.”
    “I
didn’t
misunderstand,” the traveler insisted. “Don’t tell me I did. You weren’t even there.”
    No, she wasn’t there, the other woman conceded. She was
here,
and she’d
been
here, working in this very information kiosk, for the past ten years and
knew
which trains ran
where.
“You
want
the Long Island Railroad,” she said. “That runs out of Penn Station, whether you want it to or not.”
    Whereupon her adversary turned to Sarah and said, “Do you
believe
this?”
    Though they were the same height, she had the distinct impression that the woman was looking down at her, as you would at a child, and while Sarah saw little physical resemblance to her mother, she recognized her manic exasperation and half expected her to grab her hand when she stormed out.
    “You
want
the Long Island Railroad,” the clerk called after her, then looked at Sarah, assuming she was next in line. When their eyes met, it was as if she’d been talking to her all along. Which was when Sarah suddenly knew where she was going.

    L IKE THE SURROUNDING TOWN, the Sundry Arms had fallen on hard times. Now called just the Arms Apartments, its residents were black and Hispanic, its concrete courtyard weedy with neglect. There was also a smell Sarah wasn’t sure she’d ever encountered before, which had nothing to do with cooking or living or, for that matter, dying. After a lifetime in Thomaston, she thought she knew the odor of poverty, but this was different. Stagnancy? Hopelessness? Rage? The courtyard pool had been filled in and a makeshift playground set up, though the slide listed to one side and the seat of the rusted swing dangled from a single chain. Filthy, discolored toys were strewn everywhere, and graffiti bloomed on the interior walls. Towels and sheets were draped over the railings.
    Sarah had forgotten that each apartment door at the Sundry Arms had been painted a different bright color. Many were now wide open, and some sported round holes where the knobs had been, a sad acknowledgment that there was nothing inside worth stealing. The nearest apartment looked more like a storeroom than someone’s dwelling. Inside, the furniture was piled high with stacks of clothing, both children’s and adults’, organized by type—undergarments, shirts, pants, outerwear and so forth. Up against the far wall was a mound of what had to be hundreds of pairs of shoes. Did someone
live
here, or was this some sort of communal room where stolen or donated items were collected? And for what purpose? This was much, much worse, Sarah couldn’t help thinking, than anything you’d find back home on the Hill, and she now understood why the taxi driver had said, “You sure this is the place you want, lady?” when he dropped her off.
    It wasn’t as if she’d expected everything to be the same. The Sundry Arms had been sold a year after her mother and Harold died, and a lawyer had called her a few times in the interim. By virtue of their recent marriage, Sarah had stood to inherit part of the complex, but Harold had a daughter of his own, and besides, the place had been mortgaged three times, so the bank would be first in line. In the end the property had sold for half what was due on the loans, which meant that everybody had lost. It now looked like there’d been no winners in the forty years since.
    The apartment her mother had rented was at the far end on the second floor, and Sarah smiled when she saw it still had a bright blue door.