Bridge of Sighs

The worst was that if by some miracle it
had
been some other woman killed in that accident, if Mrs. R. Feldman somehow
was
her mother, living under an alias, it meant she’d have been hiding from Sarah herself for the last forty years, something she never would’ve done. In other words, if it
was
her mother behind that blue door, then it
wasn’t.
    “I know, Miss Rosa,” Sarah finally said. “I do.” Though she wanted to ask why she, who attributed all good things to Jesus, was allowed an imaginary friend when Sarah wasn’t.
    “All right then, go on home.”
    Good advice, and yet. “Did you ever meet her?”
    “Meet who? The woman who ain’t your mama?” She wasn’t even trying to conceal her irritation now. “Sure I met her. Long time ago. Dried-up little ole Jewish lady. Smaller’n me. That what your mama look like?”
    “No.”
    “All right then.”
    “I know,” Sarah said.
    And she did, in more ways than one. She’d tried her best to be patient with her husband after Lou-Lou’s death, the long hours he spent alone in the study with his blown-up map of Thomaston and its forest of black pins. His inability to see this death as a fact both of life and of their marriage, his inability to look past it and count their remaining blessings, had finally eroded her confidence that things would ever be right and good again between them. For a while she’d even considered leaving him to this painful loss he seemed to cherish more than their own lives. But eventually he’d snapped out of it, thank God, and things did get better. He’d recently confided to her that he never entirely banished the notion that Big Lou’s death had been some kind of cosmic mistake, that he still lived on in some parallel existence. That had troubled Sarah deeply, but here she was indulging in exactly the same fantasy.
    And Miss Rosa was right. Each day, to sustain that fantasy, she was using a child. Without Kayla she had no reason to return to the Arms every day and to continue her blue-door vigil. She could tell herself that she was acting out of kindness, and maybe her affection for the girl was real, but no matter how many new sketchbooks and lunches she bought, no matter how many hours she spent on tutoring or day trips to Montauk or the North Shore, the truth was she was still using a child. She’d known that much right from the start. When Kayla gave voice to that first plaintive question—“Can you teach me?”—Sarah had been about to say no when it occurred to her that saying yes would allow her to stay, which was what she wanted most. It was the sort of thing her father always did—the right thing for the wrong reason. Like making her go out with the Mock boy because he was a Negro, then later parading him around town to make everybody feel guilty he’d been beaten up. Did he have any idea that Sarah had blamed herself? Did he understand that she’d only said yes because she was sure he’d never allow her to go out with a boy? She knew the Mock boy’d had a crush on her for months, and she didn’t dislike him; it wasn’t that. Nor did she hold it against him that he was a Negro. But she knew that everyone would stare at them and whisper, that kids who had no idea who she was would now be able to identify her—the Berg girl, who went to movies with Negroes. “I’m proud of you,” her father said when the Mock boy climbed the steps and rang the doorbell, by which she understood there was no backing out.
    And the Mock boy’d known, too. He wasn’t stupid. He could see that she didn’t want to go, now that her father had said she could, but he’d already asked her, so what was he supposed to do? “You don’t have to sit with me,” he said after he’d bought her ticket, letting her off the hook. Everyone—his friends from the Hill, all the West and East End and Borough whites—was already looking at them, talking behind their hands. Her own best friend was worst. She came over when they’d taken their seats—causing several kids nearby to move—and said, “Come sit with me.” An order. Not even acknowledging the existence of the boy sitting next to her. “I can’t,” Sarah told her, and from the tone of her voice it must’ve been clear how much she wanted to. “Then it’s your fault,” her friend said, and of course Sarah believed her. If she’d done as her friend wanted, gotten up and left the Mock boy sitting there by himself, he’d have been spared his beating. But how could