Bridge of Sighs

route was secure, but he was worried that the dairy’s new owner, a man from Albany, didn’t like him. The actual rules hadn’t changed, but suddenly they were enforced. My father was no longer allowed to park the truck at the curb in front of our house when he finished his route, and its personal use was now grounds for dismissal, as was allowing unauthorized people to ride in it. Since each of these rules directly affected him, my father couldn’t help wondering if they were imposed with him specifically in mind. Had the new owner heard about Bobby Marconi’s accident? Or had Mr. Marconi himself reported it, hoping to get him fired? He couldn’t inquire, of course, not without admitting to having broken the rule in the first place.
    The continued uncertainty over his future definitely clouded our family planning. In Thomaston, junior high was seventh and eighth grades, and that year (sixth grade) one of the many things my parents argued about (they called their arguments “discussions”) was whether I would remain at St. Francis or transfer to the public junior high. Unlike most of their “discussions,” this one confused me, partly because each seemed to be arguing the other’s point of view. My mother was the one who’d always wanted me in parochial school, not that she was committed to Catholic education but because the public schools were so rough. The boys who’d abducted me were good examples (though Jerzy Quinn was no longer a threat, having by then landed in reform school), not that my being in St. Francis had protected me from them. I wasn’t a scrapper like Bobby Marconi, and my mother didn’t want me to become one. To her way of thinking, in public school I’d either be brutalized or grow brutal myself. My father didn’t worry much about this. He’d been bused in to these same schools from the farm, and nothing terrible had happened to him, unless you counted being made fun of all the time, which my mother did. When we moved to the East End I assumed, as he did, that I’d be going to public school, but my mother put her foot down. I was doing well where I was and was being looked after—whatever that meant—and I would stay put until starting high school in the ninth grade.
    But now my mother began wondering out loud if next year might not be the best time to leave St. Francis. All the public school kids would be in the same boat—that is, moving from familiar elementary schools into the new environment of the junior high. And Cardinal Fulton High, she hated to admit, would be out of the question. We simply couldn’t afford both private high school and college, and the latter was more important. My mother had put her foot down about that, too. I was going to college, and that was the end of the story. No discussion allowed. My father could wonder all he wanted about where we’d ever come up with that kind of money, but every time he did so out loud she’d stop dead and stare at him until he relented and said sure, of course I’d go to college, he’d rob a bank if he had to. Only after she’d left the room would he grumble that robbing a bank was the only way he could see it happening. So it was strange to hear my father arguing that I should stay in St. Francis two more years.
    Finally it dawned on me that they weren’t discussing schools. This dispute was really an extension of their ongoing argument about whether my father was going to lose his job. My mother, who wanted me in parochial school, thought he was, which meant that the St. Francis fees, though not large, were a luxury we could no longer afford. My father, who’d always maintained that there was nothing wrong with public schools, remained adamant that he
wasn’t
going to lose his job, which meant there was no reason I couldn’t continue at St. Francis if that’s what she wanted.
             
     
    D IAGONALLY ACROSS THE STREET from our house sat Ikey Lubin’s corner market, where it was well known that a man could play a number or daily double. In fact, Uncle Dec, who played both, was a regular visitor, though he never seemed to purchase anything. When he pulled up in front of the store, my father would invariably fold his newspaper and take it inside until he left, lest Uncle Dec spot him sitting there and saunter over to ask him if he remembered what happened to the dinosaurs, which he sometimes did anyway. My mother exhibited a weary tolerance for her ne’er-do-well brother-in-law, probably because