The Last Bridge (11 page)

“Addison?” I waited. He didn’t move. I tiptoed to the television and looked for the power switch.

“Leave it,” he said, his voice muffled by his arms.

I looked out the window and followed the line of the road that should have brought Addison’s father to him. In the distance you could see the hint of cars passing on their way to somewhere better.

“I brought pie,” I said, turning to him.

Addison rolled on his side toward the wall and curled into a fetal ball. Dust fairies danced in the final burst of sunlight that cut across his waist.

“Your father called.” I spoke slowly, infusing each word with as much care as possible. I believed the right words would make it better. “He’s sorry he couldn’t come.” I made that part up. I didn’t know if he was sorry or not; he should have been and that was all that mattered.

“Go away,” he said, enunciating each word slowly.

“He doesn’t know what he’s missing,” I said.

Addison laughed. “Run along, Alex.”

The voice that spoke was not the one I associated with Addison. This sound had a harder edge and resonated from somewhere back behind his heart. I felt the sting but waited for an apology or shift of some kind, but he just lay there, appearing smaller and smaller.

After a few minutes, I gave up and started for the door.

“Go ahead and leave. Everyone does eventually.” His voice softened.

“Is that how it works? You drive them away and then cry when they go?”

Addison sat up and pointed to the door. “I said go away!” His hair and eyes glowed a gold-red color. His body was so tense I was afraid it would spring forward and attack me.

I stepped back toward the door.

“This is me.” He pointed hard at his chest. “Man who doesn’t finish anything. Who is still waiting for a father who will not come.” He moved closer to the foot of the bed toward me with each word as if he wanted to shake me.

I knew he wouldn’t hurt me; I recognized his rage—it was similar to my own. I understood what he needed and, if it was possible, what I could do for him.

I did not move.

“Please go!” He fell back on the bed with his arms and legs out as if he were asking God instead of me.

I moved closer.

“‘Three colleges and five different majors,’” he said, imitating the sound of his father’s voice. “‘What do you want, Addison?’” I sat on the edge of the bed. “I want to be someone else!” He answered himself and then rolled closer to me. “Do you understand that?” I nodded and put my hand out to him as if to pull him to shore. He didn’t take it.

“He cheats on her,” he said, pounding the bed. He fell back.
His left hand was inches from mine. I reached for it and placed it between my own. His palms were dry and cold. I rubbed my hands against them, trying to bring life back.

“He lies to his business partners. Cooks the books.”

As I held his hand the rawness of his voice began to thaw and the familiar, gentler tone slowly returned.

“It’s okay,” I said calmly.

“I’m poison,” he said, pulling his hand away. “Stay away.”

I resisted the urge to laugh, not because it was funny but because it was absurd. If Addison was poison, he was not lethal like my father. Most of what I knew about men was dangerous, but this one thing I trusted. If Addison was poison, I might be his antidote.

The sun had set. Grandma’s lace curtains floated in the air, buoyed by the warm evening breeze. Addison had turned away and rolled back into a ball facing the wall. I thought about doing what he asked and leaving, but I also thought about doing what he needed.

I eased down next to him with our backs touching and closed my eyes, hoping this was all I had to do. Addison didn’t move.

After a few minutes, I rolled slowly around and fit my body over his. I put my arm around his waist and found his hand trembling and laced my fingers in it. “Turn around,” I whispered.

He rolled slowly toward me. The tear-streaked bristles of his beard brushed my cheek like wet sandpaper. I smiled. “See,” I said, “I’m not afraid of you.” I wiped the tears off his cheeks.

His hands moved to my face and traced the soft spot between my chin and ear. I felt a coil of heat deep beneath my pelvis as his fingers traveled back toward my neck and up into my hair and then pulled me to him.

My eyes closed first and then there was the warm rush of his mouth and the overwhelming sensation of being engulfed. Instead of pushing away, I moved toward the feeling and was shocked by the urgent groan that came from my throat.

For all that he had failed at, Addison had mastered kissing, and
although I did not have anything to compare it to, I sensed that few experiences in my life would ever measure up to the intensity of that moment.

He rolled on top of me, and for a moment, I imagined how nice it would be to spend the rest of my life kissing him, until I felt his hand on my thigh moving toward my underwear. I pushed him off me and jumped up.

Addison sat up. “I’m sorry, I …”

I adjusted the skirt of my dress, pushing the memory of his hand away with my own shaking hands.

“I don’t know what I was doing,” I said, looking toward the window, which faced the house.

“What happened?” He came toward me with arms outstretched. I left him.

The house was silent when I came through the back door. Mom had put away the pie and bread and left a set of dirty dishes in the sink. Dad was passed out on the chair with an empty bourbon bottle next to him. Wendy and Jared were in their rooms.

At four I rolled out of bed and slipped into the bathroom, careful not to creak the floorboards. I was unable to sleep. It wasn’t my mind that kept me awake; it was my body. In the short time I had been with Addison, my senses had recorded every detail of the kiss, from his orangey-musk smell to the wet cinnamon taste of his mouth to his smooth hands on my neck and face. The moments replayed over and over, rendering me more awake than I had ever been.

I avoided the bathroom at all costs on most nights. If I could help it, I would hold it until I heard my father go downstairs for his morning coffee. Some nights I couldn’t wait, and I’d make my visit as short as possible. It wasn’t the bathroom that was dangerous; it was passing my parents’ bedroom.

Once I was in the bathroom, I’d put my ear to the door to listen
for any movement. After a count of one hundred, I’d relax, throw the lock, and pee in peace. If I was especially concerned about night rustling (that’s what I called Dad’s evening wanderings), I would avoid flushing the toilet or washing my hands, as the water pipes often burped.

I was careless that night and didn’t do the count or check the hallway before I flushed. I ran the water to wash my hands and even wondered how my hair might look pulled off my face. I took a rubber band from the medicine cabinet and made a short ponytail, thinking I might try it that way for the summer dance that was in a couple of days.

My father was standing naked in front of the door when I opened it.

“I’ll get out of your way,” I said quietly.

“What did you do to your hair?” he said, his voice a steel tone of danger. He grabbed my ponytail, found the rubber band, and tugged it until it snapped. I winced. “You do that for some boy?”

“No, sir,” I said as I reached for the door to steady myself. He grabbed a clump of my hair and pulled me into the bathroom with him. I tried not to make eye contact. I learned at an early age that looking into his eyes was the biggest mistake I could make. I imagined there were worse punishments he could bestow on me if I did.

“What are you looking at?”

“Dad, please,” I said, as calmly as I could. My focus was blurred. All I could see was the gleaming white of the floor and wall tiles we had polished so hopefully. The room smelled like a pool from all the bleach we used.

“Please what? Leave you alone so you can run off with some punk?”

“I’m not going anywhere.”

My hand was on his forearm trying to pry it off my neck but it kept slipping as my palms were sweating. I was losing my footing as he pulled me over to the toilet. He dropped the seat cover and sat down as he pushed me to my knees in front of him. Most times he
did stuff to me, but sometimes it was me who had to do it to him. I felt the cold sharp edge of the octagonal floor tiles imprinting their shape on my skin as he forced my head closer to his crotch. My mouth went dry.

“We’re going to have a little conversation about who is the boss of you,” he said. Sometimes when we were alone he sounded like he was talking to someone other than me. I didn’t understand what he was saying or what weird thing he was seeing in his mind; I only knew that the monster was out and I was in its throes.

The sound of a door creaking open and footsteps in the hallway brought me back into my body and into the bathroom. Someone going or coming?

Let it be Jared, it’s Jared, it’s Jared, it’s Jared
.

“James?” It was my mother.

My father looked toward the door and slightly loosened his grip. I pulled myself up from the hunched position and clawed my father in the face and pushed him with all of my might. He fell toward the tub and screamed, “You cunt!” as I barreled down the stairs and out the door. It wasn’t until I had hidden myself safely in the woods that I realized I had wet myself.

I watched for lights to come on in the house, but nothing happened. The full moon cast a cool light on the night. I sat alone, shivering from cold and the memory of his grip while everyone slept. My nightgown smelled like a cat’s litter box. I sat for hours, staring at the house and thinking about that cold, dark hand reaching out for me—even when he wasn’t there, it was still reaching for me. I pulled my sketchbook from under the stump and began to draw furiously as tears streamed onto the page and made my bold lines soften like watercolors. “Kitty Kat makes a final stand against the Hand,” I wrote as I had her slice, dice, karate-chop, and use all of her powers to defeat the Hand.

The kitchen light came on in the first rays of dawn. I walked quietly to the clearing and saw my mother at the sink washing dishes as she looked out into the yard.

I waited and hoped she would find me and take us away. I wanted her to be willing to lose another finger for me. I wanted her to be someone else.

“We all have our crosses to bear,” was her answer the last time I tried to tell her what was happening.

After a while, my mother crossed over to Addison’s apartment and climbed the stairs to his door. The lights came on and his shadow passed between the two windows. He opened the door and spoke to my mother, who pointed to the woods. He grabbed a jacket and followed her to the house. She went back to the kitchen window as Addison headed into the woods.

I felt my breath against my knees and a cold chill swoop under my nightgown. I shut my eyes and tried to make myself disappear. Sometimes I could do it: I would float above my body and watch as an impartial observer of my own life. I wanted to be gone by the time Addison found me. I was certain I would dissolve from the humiliation.

“Alex …” I heard the twig-snapping walk mixed in with his whispers. “Alex … it’s me.” Snap, shuffle, breeze, birds chirping, “Alex … Alex …”

“I’m over here,” I shouted back, and startled myself at the anger in my voice. “What do you want?”

“Your mother is worried ….”

“Yeah, I bet,” I said, still holding my knees.

“Have you been here all night?”

I nodded.

“What happened?”

He knelt down and put his hand on top of mine. “Alex?”

I pulled away, embarrassed by my own smell. I rocked back and forth, holding my knees to my chest. Finally, he stood up and took my hand, pulling me up to him.

“Come on, you need some rest,” he said, as he led me toward the house.

I broke away. “I can’t go back in there. He’s going to kill me.”

“He’s passed out… it’s fine … I’ll walk you back.”

“How do you know it’s fine when you don’t even know what happened?”

“Look, it can’t be that bad. Did he hit you?” I shifted focus and relaxed a little.

“No. I’m fine. You can let go.” As soon as he did, I ran. My bare feet pounded the cold ground littered with sharp twigs that jabbed my soles and slowed me down. In the distance was the clearing that bordered our property with the Igbys’. I would go to them and see if they would help.

Addison’s steps mirrored my own but were surer in their mission. He caught me around the waist and lifted me in the air. “Stop!” he said, huffing. His grip was strong as I tried to pry his arm from my waist.

“Let me go!” I shouted so loud a gathering of sparrows fled from their nest.

“Tell me what happened!”

We struggled together, trying to catch our breath as we hunched over. I could feel the pulse of Addison’s rapidly beating heart against my shoulder and imagined my own responding back in the Morse code of the body.

“Come back to my apartment. We’ll go the back way.”

“He’ll kill you if he knows you helped me.”

Addison looked at me as if I were crazy and then reconsidered as he stepped back and saw my tear-stained cheeks and wet nightgown. “I’ll take the chance. Let’s go.”

He took my hand and led me back. Aside from my mother, there were no other signs of life at the house.

In a few hours the apartment had changed. Maybe it was the way the morning light hardened the edges of everything in the same way the dusk softened them. “Can I take a shower?”

“Sure. There’s a towel in there. I’ll find you a shirt.” He searched the pile of clothes on the chair.

The hot water felt good on my back. I washed my hair with his orange-ginger shampoo and used the suds to wash my body without looking at it. When I had cleaned everything once, I lathered up and did it again.

I dried myself in the shower with the curtain drawn. Addison knocked on the door and opened it.

“Here,” he said, “you can sleep in this.” I peeked behind the curtain and saw he was holding a faded denim shirt and a pair of sweatpants.

“Drop them,” I said.

I took in his smell as I put the shirt on, musky with the sweetness of Old Spice. I pressed my face to the sleeve and felt the smoothness of the denim and pulled on the sweatpants and tied the drawstring as tight as it would go. I felt small in his clothes.