Bridge of Sighs

anyhow,” he concluded. “We could’ve used a guy like you who knows the right way to do everything.”
    “You’d think he was part of the Normandy invasion.” My mother snorted when my father told her about this conversation. From what Mrs. Marconi had said, by the time her husband had arrived in Europe the war was already over, which to my mother’s way of thinking explained why he was still fighting it. “Don’t you dare repeat that,” she said when she remembered I was in the room and taking it all in. “Bobby’s mother isn’t supposed to talk about the family, so I’m not supposed to know.”
    Dressed in his postman’s uniform, Mr. Marconi did have a military bearing, and I half expected to look up one day and see him wearing a sidearm. According to my mother he ran his family on a military model, with the emphasis on discipline. In our house it was my mother who was in charge of that, though there was little need of it. I’d never been a willful or disobedient child, and a reproachful look was enough to improve my conduct. Neither of my parents had ever raised a hand to me. Apparently at the Marconis it was different. Mr. Marconi alone handled discipline, and my mother feared it was often harsh. Could that be another reason he didn’t like my father, a man who spared the rod?
    If I had a hard time understanding Mr. Marconi’s resentment, I wasn’t alone. My father couldn’t understand it either, and whenever they met in the hall, he was even friendlier than he was with other people. “Lou,” my mother said, “leave the man alone. If he doesn’t like you, he doesn’t like you.”
    “What’d I ever do to him, that’s all I want to know. I never done nothing to him.”
    “I know that, Lou,” my mother said. “Leave him alone anyway.”
    But he couldn’t. Even I knew that. He kept an eye peeled and would waylay him by the mailboxes or in the hall, determined, I could tell, to be liked or know why he wasn’t. The subject he usually tried to introduce as an icebreaker was money and how much things cost anymore, that there seemed to be no end in sight and you had all you could do to keep up, never mind get ahead. These were subjects my father considered to be of universal appeal and easy enough for anybody to talk about and share as common ground. “What Tessa spent on winter clothes for our Louie this weekend?” he’d venture. “I couldn’t hardly believe it. And one kid’s all we got. With three, that’s gotta be rough.” Here he’d let his voice fall so Mr. Marconi could commiserate or, if he felt like it, compare notes about the cost of children’s coats and boots. I think my father suspected that Mr. Marconi, between his two jobs, made more money than he did at the dairy, but having three kids and another on the way, he figured, put them in pretty much the same boat, moneywise. Also, there were rumors the hotel was going to close. “I told Tessa she ain’t gotta pay Calloway’s prices,” he continued when Mr. Marconi declined to comment. “She could go down to Foreman’s for cheaper, but thinks cheaper’s more expensive in the long run, and I guess she’s right.” Actually, that wasn’t how he’d reacted the night before when he found out how much my winter clothes had cost, but now he’d slept on it, and I could tell spending all that money had become a source of pride. “Besides, if you’ve got the money, why shortchange your kids? If you ain’t
got
it, sure, that’s another thing, but if you
do,
why not spend the extra buck?”
    “Because you might need it tomorrow,” Mr. Marconi finally said, pushing past my father and closing the door in his face, rather more forcefully, it seemed to me, than was necessary.
    “Don’t always be bragging to that man,” my mother told him. “You know they dress those boys out of the thrift shop.”
    “Well, what’s he spend their money on, then?” my father said.
    “Lou, that’s none of our business. Leave him alone. He doesn’t like you.”
    “I just wish I knew why, is all. I never done nothing to him.”
    Which caused my mother to rub her temples.
    About the only thing the Lynches and the Marconis
did
have in common was a determination to leave the West End as soon as we could afford to. My mother in particular saw Berman Court as temporary. She’d wanted to rent in the East End from the start, but having grown up at the end of the Depression, she was wary and said she preferred to not have something at