Bridge of Sighs

hang over the railings and practice looking lethal. Sarah thought maybe that was why the girl had been sent inside, then realized it wasn’t. They’d just returned from a drive to Orient Point, where Kayla had sketched the ferry that ran between there and New London, Connecticut. It had been a mostly uncomfortable outing.
    “What’s the funny name of that store?” she’d asked.
    “You know perfectly well,” Sarah said. She’d taken to heart what Miss Rosa had said about filling her head with talk of Thomaston and Lou and Ikey Lubin’s. Kayla wasn’t making things easy, though.
    “
You’re
supposed to say.”
    “That’s good,” Sarah said. She’d gotten the line of the ferry right—not easy, because it was deceiving. She was beginning to slow down, to really see before cutting loose with the ink.
    “You’re right,” she said. “I do know. It’s Mikey’s.” And when Sarah didn’t respond, chanted, “I’m right. It’s Mikey’s, Mikey’s, Mikey’s.”
    Once the girl was safely inside, Miss Rosa said, “Here’s the way it’s got to be. You gon go ’cross the street and call that man and say you comin’ home. I ain’t lettin’ this child be an orphan twice, you understand me?”
    “But—”
    “You thinkin’ about makin’ a new life, then go make it, but if you want this child you gon take her back to your ole life an’ that good man that’s waitin’ on you. You doan make that call,
I
call child services.”
    “If you could just give me a little more time—”
    “Hear me out, then you can have your say. Won’t make no difference, but you tell me if it make you feel better.”
    Sarah tried not to look up at the blue door but did anyway.
    “You make that call today an’ tomorrow morning you an’ me gonna go upstairs, say hello to that ole white woman.”
    She felt her heart leap with anticipation and, surprisingly, fear. If the woman inside the apartment wasn’t her mother, she’d lose the blue door, and the door, she realized, had become almost enough. “She agreed? You spoke to her?”
    “Five minutes,” Miss Rosa went on. “I told her you juss want to say hello ’cause of your mama. So we gon say hello and you gon see this old Jewish lady ain’t your mama and then we’re gon
leave.
You understand all that?”
    Sarah nodded, not wanting to trust her voice.
    Miss Rosa was smiling now. “Then you gon live like a woman with a brain in her head and not no lunatic. Maybe help a child, too.”
    Sarah had only to look at Miss Rosa to know this was the best deal—the only deal—she was going to cut with her. “This is what Jesus advised?”
    “Jesus tole me to use my own bess judgment, an’ that’s all we’re gon say about Jesus, too. I didn’t live so long to get talked out of Him, no ma’am, so doan even try.”
    Sarah then went back to Sundry Gardens to make the promised call. “I’m going to be bringing someone with me,” she warned her husband. “You’ll love her.” If you love her, he said, so will I, and she felt the dam of her emotions break, a relief every bit as intense as when the oncologist told her she was in remission. So profound, in fact, that the next morning she told Miss Rosa that it wasn’t even necessary to trouble Mrs. Feldman after all. The madness had passed. She was going to be fine.
    Surprisingly, Miss Rosa would have none of it, and they climbed the stairs and knocked on the blue door. A feeble voice inside said the door was unlocked, so Miss Rosa opened it wide. The first thing Sarah saw was her mother, and the second was the carpet coming up to meet her.
             
     
    T HE NEXT AFTERNOON Sarah said goodbye to both Miss Rosa and the Arms. With the help of a couple of the grandmas, the old woman had managed to clear mounds of clothing off a love seat, where they sat at an angle, their knees almost touching. Miss Rosa was a small woman, but today, indoors, among the towers of clothing and shoes, she seemed like she might be on the verge of disappearing altogether.
    “Hope you doan think you gon be any smarter when you my age,” she said, wiping away her tears, “’cause it doan work that way. Stupid’s what you get. Stupid waitin’ to be dead. Doan know why but Jesus muss want it, ’cause that’s the way it is.”
    “You’re the farthest thing from stupid, Miss Rosa,” Sarah told her.
    “Then you explain it,” she said. “All lass week I’m after you to get home to your good man, and now you goin’