Bridge of Sighs

Borough one day, I truly believe he was expressing as best he could what he imagined
I
might want, not something he himself yearned for or even necessarily wanted
for
me. That was the paradox. He discovered that embracing the notion of getting ahead trailed an unexpected obligation: to instill in me my right as an American to dream big, if that’s what I had a mind to do. So he did his duty.
    My point, though, is that my father already
had
what he wanted, and when he implied to Mr. Marconi that he didn’t think we’d ever move to the Borough, it
wasn’t
sour grapes. And that afternoon, when we returned to our own neighborhood and he said that the East End was the right place for us, I truly believe he meant every word. We don’t always want what we compete for. Sure, he believed in getting ahead just as he feared falling behind, and believed he had every right to want more. He just couldn’t imagine what
that
might entail. I don’t doubt he hated losing any competition to Mr. Marconi, but that didn’t mean he was jealous of the spoils with which the victor was crowned. Those grand Borough houses didn’t make ours look small and shabby, not to him. I repeat: my father had what he wanted.
    Below, Owen has finished filling his plastic jugs. As he stacks them in the club cab behind the seat of his pickup, I try to decide whether what I’m feeling is some vague disappointment, and I hope it isn’t, because that would be terrible. More likely I just wish I knew him better. After all, he’s not a complicated man, and often I know what he’ll do or say next, maybe even before he does. I know, for instance, that before he drives off with his water supply, he’ll come inside and help himself to milk from our refrigerator. He’ll drink it straight from the carton, though his mother wishes he wouldn’t, and feel mildly guilty when I catch him at it. I know him. I do. But if someone were to ask me what my son wants out of life, what he dreams of, what he fears, I wouldn’t have a clue. I know he loves Sarah and me, and that he’s devoted to Brindy. Nobody could’ve been kinder or gentler when she miscarried last year. And should they eventually have children, Owen will be a good, patient father. But there is and has always been a curious lack of passion in him, and that’s what puzzles his mother and me. Years ago rental trucks had devices called “governors” that prevented speeding and reckless driving, and a similar mechanism seems to govern my son. Extremes of joy or anger or fear appear foreign to him.
    Nor, when he was growing up, did his teachers know quite what to make of him, the way he waited so patiently for school to be over, for people to stop pestering him to read books that didn’t speak to him, for the day to arrive when he no longer had to answer their odd questions or fill blank notebook pages with words he didn’t believe. Though he invariably defeated their efforts on his behalf, I can’t remember a single teacher who wasn’t fonder of Owen than of their prize students. Sweet and resigned by temperament, he never rebelled against or challenged them. If he doubted the wisdom of their assignments or the relevance of their subjects, he kept his own counsel. Even as a boy he was quicker to blame himself than others. I once asked Sarah if she thought a truly gifted teacher like her father might’ve gotten through to Owen, burrowed deep into his core and forced the private boy out into the open, but she just smiled and kissed me and said no, he was his father’s son. It’s always been my wife’s contention that I have a place deep inside me that is wholly mine, that it’s fortified and unassailable, a place no one, even herself, has ever entered. This, she further believes, is where I go when I have one of my spells. Does my son have such a place? Don’t we all?
    Owen may have thwarted and frustrated his teachers, but not because he was lazy, and this, more than anything else, reassures me and makes me proud. From the time he was big enough to handle a mower, he tended our lawn as well as neighbors’, and when snowplows piled the driveways high with heavy, compacted snow, Owen was there to dig us out, even when the drifts were taller than he was. He neatly folded the dollar bills he earned and deposited them at the Thomaston Savings and Loan and each month reconciled the bank’s numbers with his own, pleased when they tallied exactly and when they grew, though he never seemed to be