Bridge of Sighs

father decided his best bet might be to let them go on about their business of being young and stupid, in the hopes that one day she’d wake up, see her new boyfriend for the big doofus he was and wonder what on earth she’d been thinking. He never truly understood, she told Sarah, how deeply she’d been touched by her husband-to-be’s simple, good-natured optimism, his reluctance to say an unkind word about anyone. He neither had a devious bone in his body, nor recognized duplicity in others. If some smooth talker conned him out of a quarter, he’d just shrug and say “How come he just didn’t come out and ask me for it? I’d have loaned him a quarter.” Tellingly, even then Tessa had felt compelled to explain the world to him. “I don’t think he wanted to borrow it, Lou. He wanted to own it free and clear. Later, if you felt foolish for giving it to him, that was a bonus.” To which Big Lou just shook his head, sadly acknowledging that he guessed there were people like that. In fact, he regarded his own brother as exhibit number one when it came to con artists. “Don’t have nothin’ to do with him unless you want to lose your shirt,” he advised Tessa, unaware she’d already lost that and a lot more. “I’m going to check back with your old man in about twenty years,” Dec told her when she and his brother got engaged. “See if he still thinks he pointed that gun at the right Lynch.”
    Over the years Sarah came to understand that Tessa’s confidences served a dual purpose. Most of what she revealed to her daughter-in-law she’d never told another soul, and Sarah sensed what a relief it was to finally disburden herself to another woman. But she also realized that when Tessa talked about her husband and her marriage, she was, by extension, also talking about her son and his marriage to Sarah. Father and son were that much alike. Tessa was offering her not just the wisdom of long, difficult experience but also the comfort that derived from realizing she wasn’t alone, that in the end there was nothing to be done about Lou and his father, who weren’t likely to change. It had taken a while for that last part to really sink in. When Tessa told her about the brief, nearly tragic fling with Dec, Sarah had not only been relieved to learn that Dec had preceded Big Lou but also imagined her husband might be comforted as well. After all, he couldn’t very well blame his mother for something that had happened before she’d even met his father. But when she indicated this, Tessa just smiled and gave her a look that suggested she still had a lot to learn. “Tell him if you want, but it’s not the way he thinks. The chronology won’t matter. He won’t want to think about me and Dec together, period.”
    Here, too, Sarah understood that her mother-in-law was talking about sex. Tessa talked only indirectly about her married life, but with Big Lou there’d clearly been no motorcycle involved, no thrilling abandon. He would’ve been driving one of those slow-moving vehicles she and Dec had flown by coming down the mountain. Her husband, Tessa let on, didn’t dislike sex, but was embarrassed by it, by its necessity, by how other people seemed so obsessed with it. Wanting to be a good husband, he recognized that he had duties in this regard, yet the physical act itself seemed to confuse and obscure his feelings for his wife rather than clarify or intensify them. While he’d grown up on a farm and knew there was nothing more natural than sex—and, when his son was born, understood even more fully its benefits and wisdom—he seemed surprised to learn he was expected to continue the practice once they’d achieved their goal.
    Sarah was even more circumspect with her mother-in-law about her own married life, partly because it was private but also because there was no need. Tessa understood Lou as well as anyone and how he both was and wasn’t like his father. In fact, Sarah grew increasingly certain the only reason Tessa confided as much as she did was to help her understand that if her husband didn’t always “lean into the curves” it had nothing to do with her. His devotion would reveal itself in other ways, and his commitment would never waver. Their marriage would be happy, and Sarah, unless she was expecting ecstasy, would suffer few regrets.
    “Did
you
have any regrets?” Sarah asked after Tessa’d explained about Dec, and was surprised by her one-word answer.
    “Never.”
    “You