Bridge of Sighs

wonder every time I take a bath if that shithead’s on his knees outside the door with his beady little eye to the keyhole.”
    “Buddy wouldn’t do that,” Nancy said weakly, more to us than to her daughter.
    “Don’t
lie,
you stupid bitch! You caught him yourself. And what about that night I woke up and he was standing next to my bed?”
    “He sleepwalks, Karen.”
    “Right. With that thing in his hand, straight into my bedroom.”
    “Karen—”
    “Him or me, Ma.”
    This ultimatum stiffened her. “Where you gonna go, Karen?”
    The question hit her daughter hard, I could tell, implying as it did that the decision had already been made.
    “Who’d put up with you, besides me?”
    Karen’s eyes were suddenly full, but she refused to cry. “Besides you and Buddy, you mean?”
    And just that quickly it was her mother sobbing. “I need
something
in my goddamn life, Karen. I’m sorry, but I do. Even if it’s only Buddy Nurt. You’ll understand that one day. Soon, probably, the way you’re going.”
    “Fuck you, Ma,” Karen said, a whisper almost. And then she was gone, this time leaving the door wide open. Her mother didn’t move for a long time, while my father and I studied our shoes.
    “Guess I’ll take those other five beers after all,” she said finally. When my father handed them to her, she studied me sadly. “Don’t grow up,” she muttered, then left.
    Anxious as he’d been to go, my father now seemed reluctant to leave me alone in the store, even briefly. “I warned your mother something like this would happen,” he said, putting Nancy’s tab back under the cash drawer. There was no bitterness to the observation, though, not like there always was when my mother said her I-told-you-so’s.
    After my father finally went across the street, a truck driven by one of the brothers pulled up in front. Jerzy Quinn was with him. They went upstairs and returned a few minutes later with Karen, Buddy Nurt following at a respectful distance. There was no sign of Nancy. With the door closed I couldn’t hear exactly what was being said, but Buddy seemed to be arguing that Karen didn’t have to run off on his account. She was lugging an old cardboard suitcase, and when she tried shoving it behind the pickup’s seat, the clasp sprang open, spilling clothes into the gutter. Only then did she begin to cry. When Buddy came over to help, she screamed at him to keep away. I couldn’t tell if Jerzy and the brother felt the same admonition applied to them, or whether they just weren’t sure she wanted them touching her underthings, but at any rate they just stood there watching her cram things back into the suitcase. When she was finished, of course, it wouldn’t close, and she had to hold it shut as best she could on her lap. I hoped that maybe she’d remember I was there and look over at me, but she stared straight ahead as her uncle and boyfriend climbed in on either side of her. Buddy waved as the truck pulled away, though nobody waved back.
    I actually felt kind of sorry for him, standing there alone at the curb, knowing, as he surely must’ve, that his mere appearance was enough to make people scatter. But then he turned toward Ikey Lubin’s, and the expression on his face scared me. It wasn’t anything like he’d looked when he was trying to borrow his cab fare. This face was sneaky and mean, and looking right at me. For a moment the irrational thought entered my mind that for some reason Buddy Nurt blamed me for what had just happened.
    When he was gone, though, I went outside where he’d been standing, because by then it had occurred to me that he probably hadn’t been looking at me at all. In the early evening it was still bright enough outside for the windows to reflect light. Was it possible that the cold, contemptuous and frightening expression was the one that greeted him every day in the mirror? This was somehow even scarier than thinking it was me he’d been mad at. My own face, I couldn’t help noticing, had unconsciously mimicked Buddy’s expression.
    Heading back inside, I saw the three dogs my mother had shot at, loping up the street toward me. Inside, I found the gun under the counter and took it back outside with me. All three stopped in their tracks when they saw me, and when I raised the gun they turned and hightailed it back toward the West End. For all I knew they were East End dogs, but I thought of them that day as West End mutts and, because they had no