Bridge of Sighs

he just stood there staring at the closed door, I didn’t immediately understand he was talking to me. “Don’t never be like that, Louie.”
    I said I wouldn’t.
    “You ain’t gotta treat nobody like that, is what I’m saying,” he continued.
    Anxious for us to be gone, I said I understood.
    “Don’t never treat people like you wish they were dead.”
    Afraid that my responses were rooting us to the spot, I said nothing this time, because I couldn’t bear to stand there one more second.
    Downstairs on the porch we met the Spinnarkle sisters returning from church. “Why, hello, Mr. Lynch. Good morning, Louie,” they said in tandem.
    “Isn’t this just…,” one of them began.
    “…the most glorious day?” the other finished.
    They both beamed at us, neither registering that anything was wrong.
    “Yes, it is,” my father agreed, because he liked to agree with people, especially about the weather, or that people were mostly good, or that things were bound to work out okay in the end.
             
     
    H E WAS QUIET the rest of the day and, after dinner, said he was going out for a while, something he never did on Sunday night, which was Ed Sullivan, whose show we watched religiously, though we rarely agreed on which acts were the good ones. My mother and I watched the show listlessly without him, and when it was over she got up and turned the set off. “So what happened over there?” she said, and I told her how mean Mr. Marconi had been, how when my father had offered to pay he’d snatched the hospital bill right out of his hand. None of which seemed to surprise her. When I finished, she was quiet for a bit, then said, “Your father…,” but fell silent again, apparently having thought better of whatever she’d been about to impart.
    “When will he come home?” I asked, because he’d been gone a long time and I couldn’t imagine where he might be.
    “Oh, I’m sure that by the time you wake up in the morning, he’ll be back. Don’t worry. He just needs some time to make the world right again. Once he’s got things back the way he wants them…” Her voice trailed off.
    Normally such a remark would have sounded like a criticism, which I would’ve resented, but this time my mother didn’t seem angry or annoyed, as she sometimes was, just sad about how things had turned out. And I thought I understood what she meant about him making the world right again so he could live in it. My own world had been out of kilter all day, and I knew why, though I didn’t know what to do about it. Actually, I
did
know but didn’t want to do it. All day I’d been picturing Bobby on that sofa, pale and sick and not at all like himself, and I couldn’t help remembering how I’d hoped for something like this to happen, how jealous I’d been of his refusal to cry. He
still
hadn’t cried, and now I felt even worse. And there was more. Finally, I heard myself say, “I didn’t call the turn.”
    My mother regarded me seriously. “I don’t understand.”
    “It was my fault,” I said, and explained how Bobby always surfed behind me, needed me to call out the turns so he could prepare, and how I always did, except this once. I told her I didn’t know why I hadn’t called that turn, that I never wanted Bobby to get hurt so bad, that it was all my fault and that he’d said as much, so now we’d never be friends again.
    “Of course you will,” she said, causing me momentarily to hope she was right, before realizing she wasn’t. “He’ll forgive you.”
    I shook my head. “No, he won’t.”
    “He will,” she insisted. “You forgave him, didn’t you?”
    “For what?”
    She was looking right at me, and I couldn’t meet her eye. “You know what.”
    “I don’t,” I said, barely able to speak.
    “You don’t
want
to,” she replied, “but you do.”
    “I
don’t,
” I probably shouted.
    “Okay,” she said, looking away, disappointed in me. “Okay, Lou.”
    My father didn’t come home that night until late. I heard him trip on the front steps, fumble through the door and finally lumber heavily up the stairs and into the bedroom next to mine. My mother was still awake, and I could hear them talking quietly in the dark, though I couldn’t make out what they were saying. Probably she was just telling him to come to bed, that everything would be all right, that he needed to get some sleep, because in a few hours he’d have to get up and go to work. The other possibility