Bridge of Sighs

saving for anything specific. And of course, as soon as he was old enough, he worked at the store, fulfilling his duties there with care and diligence. Am I wrong to wish he loved the store as I do? To see it as I see it? Am I even sure he doesn’t? In truth, I’m not, though I worry. When his mother and I are gone, will he and Brindy sell their inheritance? It’s possible.
    Some years ago I learned, well after the fact, that Owen had his heart set on buying an old fishing camp up in the Adirondacks. The list price made it seem like a bargain, but the dozen or so lakeside cabins were so neglected that it would’ve been extravagantly costly to restore them. The remote location was a plus in the summer and fall, but after the first snow anyone living in the main house would be a virtual prisoner for the next five months, miles from the nearest store or doctor, hours to the nearest hospital or school, no place for a child. It was Brindy, I suspect, who made him see how impractical it was, but I was pleased to know that my son had wanted something bad enough to be heartbroken when he was denied it, even if he didn’t share that heartbreak with me. It didn’t seem fair, somehow, that someone who’d never known quite what to want should be refused when he finally discovered it. I tell myself he’ll want something else, and that next time he’ll be luckier. If he has to sell his inheritance to get it, so be it. To insist that he love what I love is asking too much. I know. I know.
    In truth, I wouldn’t mind if they sold the West End store on lower Division Street, which has no sentimental value to me. We purchased it after my father died, and while it outperforms our East End store, we’ve been robbed at gunpoint several times, and for a long time now I’ve had reservations about how revenue is generated there. We sell the usual convenience store items, of course—bread and milk and other things people run out of and don’t want to run all the way to the supermarket for. But it’s the Lotto machine that pulls them in. For the last several years Division has been one of the top-five stores in the entire state in terms of Lotto ticket sales. “Desperate people who can’t wait to pay the taxes” is how my mother describes it. She’s always considered gambling, especially the legal state-sponsored variety, to be a tax on ignorance, and Division’s success may well be, as she claims, an accurate barometer of that ignorance. I’m not sure my father would’ve seen it in exactly those terms, but I know he would have been troubled not just by the robberies but also by the long lines of shabby people that form in front of the Lotto machine, especially late at night, after the bars close, waiting patiently for their luck to change. He wouldn’t have felt much pride in owning the kind of store that had to hire an extra clerk just for the purpose of taking such people’s last two dollars. Nor do I.
    Of course if it’s up to Brindy, it won’t be Division they’ll sell. Why sell the moneymaker, she’d say, and it’s hard to fault her logic. It’s the busier store, no doubt about it, and she likes to be busy, especially now. Since the miscarriage she seems a different young woman, though when I remarked on the change to my wife, she reminded me that this was to be expected. She’s naturally sympathetic to Brindy, having herself miscarried, early in our marriage. “Don’t you remember how long it took me to bounce back? We need to be patient with her.” And I understand all that. I do. But I worry that their loss has driven some sort of wedge between herself and Owen, whom she treats coolly now, I think, as if he’s constantly trying her patience or blocking her way and making her wait for him to move so she can do whatever needs to be done, though too many errors are born of this impatience, or so it seems to me. Naturally, I keep that opinion to myself. The house they bought out in the country, the one
she
wanted, she now claims is too isolated. She’d like to “unload it,” so they could move back to civilization and have friends again. “Civilization?” my mother said when Brindy voiced that wish a few months ago. “Thomaston?” She’s never made it much of a secret that she’s not overly fond of her granddaughter-in-law. “You can take the girl out of the West End,” she says, then lets her voice trail off.
    “Pop,” Owen says, when I find him with the carton of milk at his lips. “I