The Forever Bridge Read Free

word which conjures up holidays. Makes Sylvie imagine pretty wrapped packages. Ruby is special, the teacher in her sensible shoes and cardigan sweater will say with a nod. And this will make Sylvie blush with pride. And then feel terrible, because Ruby is not her only child. Because Jess, the little one, is sweet and gentle, but he struggles, and it seems there is little she can do to help him. She has watched him cry in frustration over the words on the page, the numbers, the problems. She tells herself that all that matters is that he is good and kind. Still, it breaks her heart a little, the way the whole world seems, already, to be disappointed in him. She tilts the mirror to look at him, this sweet boy, face pressed to the glass, looking at the rain that is starting to come down now in patterned sheets. He is mesmerized by the world. Captivated. It is enough for him, she has to remind herself, and there is something so good about that.
    Sharp, sharp slivers.
    What if you were simply able to rearrange them, to build something from these remains, reassemble the broken pieces into something new? Something stronger? Something both similar to what was and yet entirely different? What if you were able to make something indestructible? Something permanent?
    But here is the new truth: the pieces are chipped and broken, some of them lost. A shattered glass on a tile floor. Some of them working their way already under your skin. Shards that will burrow there, that sometimes will not bother you at all, but other times will make you wince with recollection. With the undeniable and unbearable pain of it all.
    Here: the look on Sylvie’s face when she turns to ask if she looks okay. And none of them know whom she is asking, whose opinion matters the most. She is asking each of them and all of them. Because they are not only father, son, daughter, they are a family, and so they nod a collective nod of approval. They all love her more than she can know.
    Here: Robert’s sigh when he resigns himself to nothing but static on the radio and clicks it off, filling the car with a peaceful silence.
    Here: Ruby lost inside her book and Jess, hot cheek pressed to the glass, the rain making patterns on the window, and he watches, transfixed.
    Here: the bridge, the covered bridge you’ve traveled a million times. The one on which you have closed your eyes and held your breath as you crossed over, the superstitions of childhood as powerful as God.
    Here is the moment before it slips and shatters. Here is the river. Here is the bridge.

S UNDAY

I n the morning Sylvie is startled awake, as she is always startled awake. But usually it is the banging clanging of her own brain, the electric shock of her own fear, that acts as an alarm. It takes her several moments of heart-banging, neck-sweating delirium to realize that the sound she hears is not coming from her own imagination but rather from outside her window.
    She is afraid to move. Afraid to breathe even. And so she holds her breath, worried that her own inhalations and exhalations will confuse her ears. Her head aches from the effort of separating the sounds she knows (birdsong, the wind, the river) from this new and unfamiliar one. It is like separating two intertwined necklaces from each other; she knows there are two distinct silver strands, but the chains are tangled together.
    She thinks of the grocery boy, but it’s only Sunday; he won’t be here until tomorrow. Once, on a Sunday a long time ago, a pair of women in ill-fitting dresses ( girls really, with glasses and heavy shoes, clutching their Watchtowers ) arrived and stood on her screened porch for nearly ten minutes. She watched them through the cracked vinyl shade in the living room. They giggled and whispered and knocked again and again, until finally they shrugged and left.
    But this voice is low. A man’s. Slowly, she rises out of bed, noting the stitch in her side. It’s a new pain on her list of pains, and it is sharp. She