The Forever Bridge Read Free Page A

clutches at her rib cage as if she can quell the cramp by containing it, and she stands. Her robe is waiting for her on the hook at the back of the door, and she slips into it as she slips into it every morning, grateful for both its comfort and familiarity. It is like the Superman cape Jess used to wear when he was three, a talisman.
    She shuffles across the worn floorboards to the living room, to the window, which, if it were not battened down, would look out over the front yard. She recalls walking through the unfinished house, the timber skeleton, with Robert and Bunk more than ten years ago. The smell of sawdust was thick, as Robert pointed out the views they would have from all these unfinished windows, promising her rooms filled with light. They’d bought this land enticed by the expansive front yard and, behind the house, the river and woods. She didn’t know, when she stood there nodding and smiling, that the view wouldn’t matter one day. That all that lovely green, those deep verdant woods, would instead become the stuff of nightmares. That most days she would leave the blackout shades closed, curtains on a stage of an old life drawn shut. Show over.
    She carefully tugs at the bottom of the roller shade, feels its weight and magnetic resistance. It is fragile. She worries the whole thing might just crumble in her hands if she’s not careful, that it will expose her. She gently pulls, just until it begins to show a will of its own, as though it wants to rise up and let in the light. Finally, she is able to reveal just an inch or two of the outside world, of that view that once was enough to make her think she could live here. That they could make a home.
    She sits down in the straight-backed chair by the window, the place where she usually sits to put on her socks and shoes, and she peers through that sliver. The morning glories she planted so many years ago have been left to proliferate, covering the whole front of the house and filling this window. She spies through the violet flowers, squinting as though this effort will make the thick leaves and indigo blossoms transparent. She needs to lift the shade higher in order to see. Her fingers tremble as she allows it to release just a couple inches more. Finally, there is a gap in the foliage that is strangling her house, and she looks through the peephole it makes.
    Through the vines, she sees someone walking up the overgrown front walkway. He’s got a phone, but he is talking at it, not into it; there’s no cell reception out here. “Goddamnit,” he mutters, looking at the useless phone, and then shoves it in his pocket. In the driveway, she can see the white van, and suddenly she is overcome by a flush of hot relief. Bunk. It’s just Bunk, her brother-in-law. But why on earth is he coming to the house? Usually he drives by to check on her once a week, but he never comes in: never even comes up the drive. But now here he is, in his filthy work coveralls, walking toward her house. He’s got a cigarette in the corner of his mouth which he finishes, crushes under his boot, and then picks up and deposits in one of his shirt pockets. He looks up, as if just remembering where he is.
    By the time he makes his way up the steps and opens the screen door to the porch, her entire body is trembling again. She feels like she might faint, the edges of her vision vignetting like an old photograph. His knock feels like fists against her chest.
    She considers ignoring him, just as she ignored the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the lost tourists, the salesmen and the Girl Scouts. But he knows she’s inside. And if she doesn’t answer, he will worry. She tries not to think of the bad news he could be delivering, of all of the terrible things he could tell her, of all the possible futures that she might be forced to face by simply answering the door. She is paralyzed, every muscle in her body momentarily atrophied.
    It’s only Bunk, she tells herself. It’s okay, as she beckons