Seventh Grade
The tallest arch stands more than 800 feet above the Whitehead River, the steel curvature stark against the sky. It’s span is nearly seven hundred horizontal feet high, the black girders forming an almost delicate lacework across the turbulent waterway.
My first glimpse of the bridge was on a cold February afternoon. I was sitting in the back seat of Grammy’s Oldsmobile, staring out of the window as the rows of track housing gave way to larger industrial buildings, when suddenly it appeared on the horizon. I saw the tallest arch first, closely followed by the other two, each one in concert with the other like musical notes. I watched it grow; the beams, still tiny sticks held by an invisible force, coalescing into a giant, imposing structure. Beside me, Mom made a small noise that grew into a moan, as we neared the entrance to the bridge.
It had been Grammy’s idea that we go out that Sunday afternoon; ‘nothing going on here…and we all piled into the car, Bryan climbing in behind the wheel after reminding Grammy that he needed practice driving. We took Mom too, ‘fresh air will do her good’ Grammy had said, handing me Mom’s thin coat. I got it over her pajamas after a little struggle, but I was as tall as she and much stronger, and she acquiesced almost immediately. It occurred to me as I slipped her arm into the sleeve, that her flesh was becoming thin onion skin, lighter and more transparent every time I looked at her.
On the way to the bridge, she sat docilely in the backseat with me, her hands resting on her lap. I felt crowded despite the space between us. Scooting closer to the door, I put my nose up to the crack in the window and flared my nostrils to catch the winter air; it was cold metal on the back of my throat. It alleviated the sweetly nauseous scent of baby powder that hung around Mom like a herald. I always knew when she had entered a room, although she passed through the house soundlessly. I wondered if Grammy doused her with it so that she would know when Mom was in the room. Probably just the BO. In the last year or so, Mom had developed a distinct odor despite the fact that she didn’t do anything that made her sweat. When I had mentioned it to Jess, he hypothesized about what was causing it.
“Could be that her body functions are failing. You know, organs shutting down , dead skin floating all around her.” He shook his head wisely. “You’re smelling decomposition, dude.”
He never did get the hang of not talking about my mother. And sometime since fifth grade, I had stopped caring.
“Are you saying she’s dying?”
For a second he looked nonplussed. “I…I guess.”
“She’s taking her time about it, isn’t she?”
“Mike, I didn’t mean anything by it. What do I know? My dad says my body was born 13 years before my brain.”
“But that means you don’t have a br…”
“Yeah, haha.”
Mom ran her hand over the car window, her damp fingers making squelching noises on the glass. The timbre of her moan had changed into an intermittent mewling which grated on my nerves like a puppy whining in the middle of the night.
“Mom, stop it,” I said irritably. She turned her head at the sound of my voice.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Her voice, which had always reminded me of dark velvet, smooth and infinitely deep, rarely rose above a whisper now. “Magnificent and powerful.” She meant the bridge.
“Powerful?”
“It has the essence of the men who built it.” She turned back to the window. I didn’t understand her most days, even on days like this when something random caught her attention and she used real words instead of just sounds. Looking at the bridge though, I imagined the men crawling over it’s skeleton, hammering and welding, bolting pieces of metal together to create this giant edifice. I could feel the power vibrating, willing us closer as Bryan slowed the car over the toll entrance. I was just surprised that Mom felt it too.
“They were building this bridge when I was no more than thirteen or fourteen.” Grammy said.
“That was 80, 90 years ago,” Bryan added.
“Oh the hoopla! You would have thought we were getting a new factory or something. There were speeches and town meetings and ribbon cuttings every week; and that was before they even started construction. Papa went to all the meetings, and then come home and tell Mama and us children how the bridge was going to open Masonville to new markets. The rest of the state was going to bring their business to us, right across that bridge.”
“Did the businesses come?” I asked. It was rare that Grammy was in a talkative mood, and even rarer that she spoke of the past.
“Didn’t you notice all of the whore houses on the waterfront?” Bryan said to no one in particular. “And the crack houses and the…”
“All that came later, with the hippies, sometime in the sixties.”
“And gang tags and the bums on the street…”
“Open your eyes and drive, boy.” The traffic was bumper to bumper as far as we could see, creeping inches at a time. I wasn’t restless though, the black structure in front of us had grabbed my attention. Beside me, Mom stared off in the distance, her eyes following the curves of the tallest arch, her eyebrows curving too, as they formed their own arciforms.
Grammy picked up the thread of her story and slipping off my seatbelt, I leaned forward against the front seat.
“The trade did come of course, just as the politicians predicted. But the building of the bridge is what kept our attention in those first days.” Grammy absentmindedly adjusted the collar of her coat. She was looking at the car in front of us, and I looked also, wondering what was so interesting about it. But when I glanced back at her, I knew I wasn’t seeing the same thing. “That’s a story in itself,” she said.
“Right off, there was trouble. Complaints of favoritism and bribes, lower pay than was promised. But everyone who wanted a job, got one. And as Papa said, work was work. Contractors moved here, some with families, my best friend in grade school was a contractor’s daughter. Course, they moved away when the bridge opened. Their job was done.” Mom let out a small cry as the car jumped the low metal divider putting us on the bridge.
“Construction continued through the winter, and when Papa drove us out here in the spring, the abutments were sticking out of the ground as stiff as new plant stalks.”
“We all marveled at how much had been done over the months, but Papa told us the icy weather had put them far behind schedule and it would be a scramble to meet the deadlines.” The traffic had stopped moving. Grammy turned up the heater and continued with her story.
“I didn’t know anything about schedules and budgets or the such, I only knew that whenever I laid eyes on it, this bridge had become something altogether different than it had been, because it changed whenever I looked away.
“Did they meet the deadlines?”
“I don’t know. After all that happened, nobody was thinking about deadlines. They just wanted to be done with it and if business came driving across, they’d take it.”
“After all that happened? Okay, I’ll bite,” Bryan said sardonically. “Who died?”
“Hugh Mason and Charlotte Cross.”
Bryan blew out something between a snort and a raspberry. “They’re buried under the bridge?” he asked unbelievingly.
“Can’t be buried under the bridge, that’s the river, stupid,” I added.
“Ah, but they’re under the bridge, all right. In the river,” Grammy nodded solemnly. “Their bodies were never found. Oh, they searched, Willard P. Mason made certain of that and he was the most influential man in the county. When Hugh turned up missing, it was just hours before they had divers in the river and searchers trampling down the grass along the banks. It was early spring by then, and the grass was tall enough to hide a body. Two bodies even. Course, he was only interested in one.” She fell momentarily silent, the past vivid behind her eyes. “Never did find him.”
“How’d they die?” Bryan asked, a corner of his mouth turned up. He kept his eyes on the traffic in front of him, creeping perilously close to the car in front of us. We were about a quarter of the way across the bridge, the river still hidden from view by the jutting peninsula of land on our side of the roadway. We could hear it though, a dull roar, somewhere in the lower registers of all of the sounds in the air.
“It’s said, that one of them was pushed and the other one jumped.”
“Is it true?” I asked softly into Grammy’s ear which was only a few inches from my mouth.
“I’ll tell you what I know and you can decide for yourselves. As I said, it was early spring, one of the wettest of the century, and the river was roaring it’s way past Masonville in the fiercest current seen in half a century.
“Papa took us to see the bridge every Sunday afternoon, rain or shine. Mama pointedly told him one stormy day that it was difficult to see anything in that weather and if it was time, could we make our way back to our warm, dry home. Papa told her in his sternest tone, that his children would be witnesses to progress, damned be the weather. And so we continued to watch the bridge grow, regardless of the storms, every week a little more. It seemed to me that the steel girders were expanding almost miraculously, since we never saw anyone working on it.”
“Uh, the dead people, Grammy?”
“I’m coming to that, boy.” She didn’t though, not right away, since we had moved up enough on the roadway to see the raging river below us, the whitecaps curving and bobbing on the surface like frosted points on a cake. Mom released a long, low moan that startled me, I had almost forgotten she was there, and glancing back I saw her lick the glass with a pale, pink tongue. She stared avidly out of the window, unaware of the rest of us, and I turned back, determined to be as oblivious of her as she was of us.
“Hugh Mason was the eldest child and only son to Willard P. Mason, whose great grandfather, Vernon George Mason, had been the founder of this town almost a hundred years before. The Masons had their fingers in everything around here; from the original foundry to the only grocery market in town. Their name was everywhere; Mason Sawmill…Mason Jewelers…Mason Barbershop, like that.”
“They were the popular kids, huh Grammy?” Bryan was enjoying the story, I noticed.
“They were hot diggedys, no doubt, but life has a way of ironing out the sheets. That year, Hugh was twenty two, I know because your Great Uncle Billy was the same age. Hugh had just finished up with college back east and he was home to learn the family business. He was engaged to a girl from New York too, high society; it was rumored that the wedding was going to take place the fall following the bridge opening. The were hot diggedys all right.” She took a swig from a bottle of water.
“So Hugh either jumped or was pushed from the bridge, along with Charlotte Cross? Do you know why Grammy?”
“All this I’ve told you Mikaela, was public knowledge, and what I didn’t overhear from Papa, I learned from my sisters, Ethel and Betty, who were eighteen and twenty at the time. Betty had been working in the kitchens at the Mason house for several months, and she was familiar with the family’s “appetites”, don’t you know. Willard P. was an ambitious, miserly type; he demanded his pot roast be so tender it would fall off the fork. And he filled everyone’s plates himself - not unusual, Papa did the same for us children - but Willard P. determined how much you would eat off his table and not a spoonful more. His wife Meredith, Betty said, rarely ate, except the obligatory suppers with her husband, and she spent most of her time medicated with prescribed elixir. To calm her chronic cough.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, confused. “What does cough syrup have to do with her appetite?”
“Cough medicines had cocaine in them, back in the middle ages,” Bryan said sagely.
“It was opiates.” Grammy said, looking at him until he smirked. “And she was hooked. Hugh’s younger sister, Elizabeth, was big boned and stout like her father - since it was sweets she loved, by the handful. By the time she got married at 32, there was hardly a natural tooth in her head. It was rumored that on her wedding night, she’d had to put her dentures in a glass.” Grammy chuckled and I found myself laughing too.
“Hugh, on the other hand, preferred spice.” Bryan cackled, and again I was forced to reveal my ignorance.
“Spice? Like cinnamon and nutmeg?”
“No moron, more like the spicy blonde chambermaid, and the hot redhead in the laundry room or maybe the zesty brunette with the big b…”
“Yes, exactly that kind of spice.” Grammy said. “No girl in that household was safe from his intentions.”
“He raped them?” I asked slightly horrified.
“He didn’t need to, Mikaela. Hugh was Mr. Charm himself, dark hair and white teeth. Fact is, the girls swooned every time he walked into the room. Since they obliged him by falling at his feet, he merely picked them off the ground. Betty, don’t you know, aspired to be one of those girls, leaving little chocolate hearts by his breakfast plate, putting the jam jars on Hugh’s side of the table because he was so fond of them, and the such. But Miss Cora, besides being the cook, was good friend of Mama’s and she told her about Betty’s shenanigans. So when Betty came home moony-eyed about Hugh Mason, Mama was quick to act. I remember her taking Papa aside that evening, before supper, into their bedroom and closing the door behind them.”
“Did you listen at the door, Grammy?” Bryan asked with a glint in his eye.
“I did no such thing! Didn’t have to. Papa came out of that room with thunder clouds riding his forehead, grabbed Betty out of the kitchen, dragged her upstairs to the bedroom and gave her a sound whipping.”
“But she hadn’t done anything!” I protested.
“The whipping was for thinking she might. Course, she never went back to the Mason house. This is where Ethel comes in.”
“And the dead people?”
“I’m coming to that, boy, don’t get too close to that car!” Bryan stomped on the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of us. I jerked forward and then back, the momentum slamming me against the seat. Glancing over at Mom, I could see that she was wedged tightly against her door, seatbelt firmly buckled. She had laid her cheek on the cold window and closed her eyes retreating into her world. Although it looked like sleep, Grammy said it wasn’t; once in a while she did things, like hold a book in front of her face, or plump up her pillows. But she wouldn’t talk or acknowledge any of us, and sometimes she peed on herself, because I believed, she just didn’t care enough to say she had to go. That realization caused a sudden wave of dread to wash over me causing my heart to hammer loudly in my ears. Prickles of sweat popped out on my upper lip. Not here, not here! Calm down! Okay, okay…calm down… I took longer breaths, trying to get control of myself before anyone noticed. Did Grammy take Mom to the bathroom before we left? Yes, I think so…yes she did, because Bryan was complaining about how long it took to get out of the house. My breathing came a little easier. Then she won’t go for a while. I took a long, deep cleansing breath, the conversation in the front seat easing me back into the present. This wasn’t the first time I felt drowned by sudden panic, the weirdest things made me feel this way, and it was happening more and more often. It was getting harder to calm down too; so I focused on Grammy’s voice, on the exasperated tone that I was so familiar with. I felt my heartbeat slowly return to normal.
“…do I need to drive, boy? Pay attention to the traffic!”
Bryan grinned sheepishly. “It’s because of your fantastic story Grammy. Continue. Please.” Grammy pursed her lips but started up her story again.
“Ethel was a shy girl, much less wild than Betty. She worked at the library, which suited her just fine.”
“So how did she know anything about the murder/suicide?” I asked, a little shaky. No one noticed.
“Well, you see, Ethel had a friend...”
“You mean, Aunt Ethel had one friend,” Bryan added sarcastically, no doubt remembering Thanksgiving a few months before, when Aunt Ethel said hello and goodbye and little else during the meal.
“…and that friend was Charlotte Cross,” Grammy said smugly.
“So Charlotte told Aunt Ethel everything!” I was quick to point out.
“Well, quite a bit of what was happening and when it was happening; the truth and not that filtered drivel that was published in the Masonville Gazette after the deaths. Charlotte filled in a lot of blanks that the Masons didn’t want filled in.”
We had reached the middle of the bridge, suspended 80 feet above the surging river. Ice streaked intermittently along the banks, the dirty shards grabbing hold of tufts of dried grass like sugar crystallizing on a string.
“This part,” she said, pointing somewhere above us, to the center of the tallest arch, “wasn’t built yet. There was a gap here, where the two sides of the bridge hadn’t met; they were building from both sides of the river you know, somehow it would all come together in the middle, perfectly aligned. I always marveled at that. And it was right here,” she gestured broadly, indicating both sides of the roadway and the river below, “is where Hugh and Charlotte’s lives ended on that chilly spring day, just weeks from the completion of the biggest thing to hit Masonville and the Mason family.”
“So what happened?” Bryan asked. Grammy turned down the heater a notch and slipped off her coat. “Hot in here, isn’t it?”
“Grammy! The dead lovers on the unfinished bridge?” Bryan was openly interested in the story now, impatient to hear the ending. I wondered about this; football and girls were probably the only things that mattered to him anymore. I couldn’t remember the last time we had said more than a couple of words to each other. I wondered how Grammy had managed to grab his attention and hold it - suspended over a raging river, simply by telling a story about dead people.
“The official story, as reported by the Gazette the day after the deaths, was that Charotte Cross killed Hugh Mason and then flung herself off the bridge in an apparent murder/suicide. She was supposedly so besotted with Hugh...”
“…besotted? What’s besotted?” Bryan asked.
“Crazy in luv, moron, like you’re is besotted with Melissa Dorsey, even though she doesn’t see you because you’re on the bottom of her shoe…” I said, taking the easy jab. Grammy continued before Bryan could retort.
“Someone was besotted all right, but it wasn’t Charlotte. It was Hugh, who had fallen madly in love with little Charlotte Cross.”
“Casanova fell in love?” Bryan said derisively. “What a loser!”
“From the moment Hugh laid eyes on Charlotte he was head over heels, following her around like a love sick moose. Not that he didn’t have reason, she was lovely, all peaches and cream, long blond hair that looked like silk. She was sweet natured too, a quiet girl with enormous blue eyes. I suspect though, that what captured Hugh’s imagination, was the fact that Charlotte was not taken in by his charms. Charlotte had plans of her own, you see, she wanted to be a teacher. Working at the Mason house was just a way to save money for teacher’s college. That was her dream.”
“But he was rich! He could have put her through school ten times over,” Bryan exclaimed.
“Ah, but Charlotte was not in love with Hugh, and true love meant more to her than any amount of money. She figured he would get over it soon enough. She was wrong. Hugh seemed to fall deeper in love by the day. Charlotte was concerned that Willard P. was going to find out and blame her, so when Willard P. offered to drive her home one evening, she was beyond worry, she was terrified. She was right to be. Willard P. took her to the end of the Mason property for a ‘private chat’. He demanded to know what she thought she was doing, did she really believe she was good enough for the son of the one of the wealthiest men in the state?”
“What a bully!” I cried out. “I suppose he fired her?”
“Well no, he didn’t. We can only guess at what the old miser was scheming though. Charlotte broke down, begging Mr. Mason to please believe her, she hadn’t led Hugh on, he just had a little crush, it would pass, she told him, it would pass into nothingness with time, it would pass. I remember her saying that three times - ‘it would pass’. Charlotte went to work the next day, fearing to go, and fearing even more not to go. Ethel promised to pick her up in Papa’s old clunker after work; but of course, she wasn’t there to pick up. And so that’s how it ended.”
“What do you mean it ended? That’s the end of the story?” Bryan asked.
“Yes. That’s the very evening Hugh Mason and Charlotte Cross went off the side of the Whitehead Bridge.” Grammy sat back, sighing heavily as though she had just put down a huge load of laundry.
“That’s a stupid ending!” Bryan declared indignantly. “All that and we still don’t know anything about how Romeo and his girlfriend died. That was lame, Grammy.”
Grammy’s lips curled back. “Well that’s all anybody knew until the Gazette made up the rest. But we knew much more.” She nodded her head. “You see, Betty still had friends at the Mason house and Ethel had known of Charlotte’s plans for the evening, and when we put it all together, we had something closer to the truth than anyone else did. Except Willard P. himself.”
“I don’t want to know anymore of this stupid story…” Bryan cut in.
“But I do,” I said quickly, “what exactly do you know Grammy?”
Grammy smiled fully, one of the very few times I had seen her do that. She turned to me as Bryan concentrated on the moving traffic, studiously ignoring us.
“Charlotte went to work that morning, relieved to discover that Hugh would be at the main office all day. But he came home early to see his beloved and immediately noticed her distress. He questioned Charlotte until she wept; she pleaded with him to not confront Willard P., that everything would be fine if Hugh would just stop loving her. Hugh was incensed. He only saw the woman who had captured his heart, weeping in fear of his own father’s judgement. He went looking for Willard P., who was in the house already, spying on Hugh and Charlotte.” Grammy turned slightly and looked me in the eyes, her voice lowering a notch.
“They drove right by Ethel while she was waiting in Papa’s car just outside of the property’s front gate.”
“They?”
“Willard P. and Charlotte.” I tried to process this information and failed. “Why were Willard P. and Charlotte in the car together?”
“That we don’t know. Except that Ethel saw them driving down the lane, and was still struggling to get Papa’s car started, when Hugh came screeching out of the driveway after them, picking up speed, hell bent on rescuing his beloved.”
“What did Aunt Ethel do?”
“Why, she followed - once she got the car started. She drove as close as she could, then went sneaking and hiding the last part of the way, all the way up the bridge until she couldn’t go any further without being seen. But she could see them.”
I stared into Grammy’s eyes, sharing the vision of a terrified young Ethel, hiding behind a concrete barrier, hair whipping around her head in the whistling wind.
“What about the construction workers, didn’t they see her?”
“They were gone for the day, only barricades and beams to witness the events of that night. And Ethel.”
“What did Aunt Ethel see?” I whispered.
“All she said, was that Willard P. was on his knees, sobbing, like his heart had just gone over the gap in the bridge; which it had, of course.”
“And Charlotte?”
“Gone. Ethel had the presence of mind to get out of there before Willard P. saw her and other than telling me and Betty what I just told you, she has never spoken of it again. That night the news broke, and the state police descended on us like a flock of giant ducks, quacking questions at ordinary citizens, instead of looking for answers in the Mason household. No one over there was truly questioned, I can tell you, and within hours, the ‘official’ Gazette story was released. Charlotte had pushed Hugh off the bridge, then jumped to her own death because he had spurned her love. The fact that Willard P. was also on the bridge, was never revealed.”
“How did he get away with that?” Bryan asked.
“Like I said before, Willard P. was a powerful man, and if he didn’t want it known that he had been there that terrible evening, then no one would ever find out.”
“What about Aunt Ethel? Didn’t the police question her?”
“No one knew that Ethel was a witness except for Betty and myself. Ethel never spoke of it again. She was never quite the same after that either, as though there was a wound in her heart that wouldn’t heal.”
The traffic was moving again and I could see the end of the bridge. A quietness had descended upon us as we each retreated into ourselves, digesting the troubling facts of love and murder and betrayal. Bryan watched the traffic in front of us, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel in nervous energy. Grammy had settled back in her seat, gazing down to the river where the dark water sloshed against the icy embankment. I had one last question.
“Grammy, do you think Charlotte killed Hugh?”
She took several minutes to answer, and I was just clicking my seatbelt back on when she spoke in a somewhat reflective voice, more to herself than to me.
“The only person that knows the full truth is Ethel. There were things she chose not to share with us, for her own reasons. I’ll not violate that trust.”
“But do you think…”
“I won’t not say another word.” She fell silent again, and I knew better than to pursue it; I had heard the final note in her voice.
The sound of the roadway changed to a deeper pitch as the steel grating ended and the concrete roadway began. I was glad we were turning towards home. I felt somehow soiled, as though I was covered in a sour residue of past evils. Charlotte’s death had saddened me, but it was with Hugh that I truly identified with, controlled as he was by his father. Yes, it was definitely Hugh who I felt sorry for; the poor slob with the suffocating parent.
As Bryan drove us slowly off the bridge, the horizon appeared before us in a patchwork of brown-gray meadows, the river behind us as though it never existed; gone, except for a distant dull roar. We picked up a little speed and jumped the metal divider onto solid land. The bright blue sky seemed endless without the steel girders cutting it into little pieces. My eyes hurt to look up at the brilliant light but I did it anyway, the weight of the bridge fading along with the melancholic feelings left by the tragic story. I closed my eyes and let the sunshine warm my cheeks and pushed thoughts of Charlotte and Hugh towards the back of my mind, where all bad things seemed to end up.
I had snuggled into my coat, letting the buzz of the car lull me into a lazy, half sleep, when I felt a warm sensation spread along my leg. Glancing down, I saw the little river of urine flowing towards me, placid and smooth, so unlike the river we had just seen.
“What’s wrong with you!” I screamed at Mom. My midsection cramped against the seatbelt as I tried to get away from the stream, nearly choking on the strap across my neck. Bryan swerved across two lanes of traffic in an attempt to get on the shoulder of the road. I dimly heard car horns blasting and brakes squealing before we came to a skidding stop on the gravel.
Grammy had turned and was leaning over the front seat when Bryan stopped the car. “What is it?! What’s wrong?!” Bryan had turned also, a panicked look on his face.
“She peed on me!” I screamed again. Mom was looking at me with an untroubled expression, her eyes large and blank, the light bouncing off the black irises. It was like looking into black dinner plates, deep and empty.
“I hate you!” I shouted loudly, wanting the world to hear me. “I hate you more than anything!” I tried to open the door and I was still frantically yanking on the handle, when I suddenly felt my ear being pulled and twisted. It burned savagely.
“Mikaela, stop pulling on the handle, the door’s locked.” Grammy was now leaning in my direction, her eyes on me.
“I want to get out now! I’m not staying in the car with her!” I started tugging on the door handle.
“Start that again Mikaela Watts and I’ll have to slap you. Settle yourself down.”
I was breathing heavily through my nose, the wetness spreading under me, as though I had wet myself. “I’m not sitting next to her anymore,” I said coldly. “I’m not feeding her, I’m not changing her, I’m not ever going to do anything for her again,” and I calmly unlocked the door and stepped out into the cold February day. The wet areas on my leg and bottom instantly froze in the winter air. I ignored it as I stood outside of Grammy’s door, until she got out herself and moved to the back seat. Mom had slumped against her door and closed her eyes. She had left us for her world again.
“Excitement’s over,” Grammy said tersely, sitting on her coat. “Bryan do you think you can get us home through Murphysville? I don’t believe I want to travel the bridge again.”
Bryan put the car in gear and pulled out into the road without saying a word, his fingers gripping the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles had turned white. A muscle twitched in his cheek, and he stared straight ahead, never bothering to look at me, not once.
I turned towards my own window, watching the scenery whisk by so fast it remained unreachable, untenable. I was stuck in this car, with these people, in a slow motion world where everything that hurt took it’s time with you. I felt the now familiar suffocating feeling gather in my stomach, and move up towards my lungs. I squeezed my eyes shut as my belly cramped, desperate for some sort of relief, for the whish of a pressure valve released.
I willed Bryan to drive faster.
Chapter Five
My first glimpse of the bridge was on a cold February afternoon. I was sitting in the back seat of Grammy’s Oldsmobile, staring out of the window as the rows of track housing gave way to larger industrial buildings, when suddenly it appeared on the horizon. I saw the tallest arch first, closely followed by the other two, each one in concert with the other like musical notes. I watched it grow; the beams, still tiny sticks held by an invisible force, coalescing into a giant, imposing structure. Beside me, Mom made a small noise that grew into a moan, as we neared the entrance to the bridge.
It had been Grammy’s idea that we go out that Sunday afternoon; ‘nothing going on here…and we all piled into the car, Bryan climbing in behind the wheel after reminding Grammy that he needed practice driving. We took Mom too, ‘fresh air will do her good’ Grammy had said, handing me Mom’s thin coat. I got it over her pajamas after a little struggle, but I was as tall as she and much stronger, and she acquiesced almost immediately. It occurred to me as I slipped her arm into the sleeve, that her flesh was becoming thin onion skin, lighter and more transparent every time I looked at her.
On the way to the bridge, she sat docilely in the backseat with me, her hands resting on her lap. I felt crowded despite the space between us. Scooting closer to the door, I put my nose up to the crack in the window and flared my nostrils to catch the winter air; it was cold metal on the back of my throat. It alleviated the sweetly nauseous scent of baby powder that hung around Mom like a herald. I always knew when she had entered a room, although she passed through the house soundlessly. I wondered if Grammy doused her with it so that she would know when Mom was in the room. Probably just the BO. In the last year or so, Mom had developed a distinct odor despite the fact that she didn’t do anything that made her sweat. When I had mentioned it to Jess, he hypothesized about what was causing it.
“Could be that her body functions are failing. You know, organs shutting down , dead skin floating all around her.” He shook his head wisely. “You’re smelling decomposition, dude.”
He never did get the hang of not talking about my mother. And sometime since fifth grade, I had stopped caring.
“Are you saying she’s dying?”
For a second he looked nonplussed. “I…I guess.”
“She’s taking her time about it, isn’t she?”
“Mike, I didn’t mean anything by it. What do I know? My dad says my body was born 13 years before my brain.”
“But that means you don’t have a br…”
“Yeah, haha.”
Mom ran her hand over the car window, her damp fingers making squelching noises on the glass. The timbre of her moan had changed into an intermittent mewling which grated on my nerves like a puppy whining in the middle of the night.
“Mom, stop it,” I said irritably. She turned her head at the sound of my voice.
“It’s beautiful, isn’t it?” Her voice, which had always reminded me of dark velvet, smooth and infinitely deep, rarely rose above a whisper now. “Magnificent and powerful.” She meant the bridge.
“Powerful?”
“It has the essence of the men who built it.” She turned back to the window. I didn’t understand her most days, even on days like this when something random caught her attention and she used real words instead of just sounds. Looking at the bridge though, I imagined the men crawling over it’s skeleton, hammering and welding, bolting pieces of metal together to create this giant edifice. I could feel the power vibrating, willing us closer as Bryan slowed the car over the toll entrance. I was just surprised that Mom felt it too.
“They were building this bridge when I was no more than thirteen or fourteen.” Grammy said.
“That was 80, 90 years ago,” Bryan added.
“Oh the hoopla! You would have thought we were getting a new factory or something. There were speeches and town meetings and ribbon cuttings every week; and that was before they even started construction. Papa went to all the meetings, and then come home and tell Mama and us children how the bridge was going to open Masonville to new markets. The rest of the state was going to bring their business to us, right across that bridge.”
“Did the businesses come?” I asked. It was rare that Grammy was in a talkative mood, and even rarer that she spoke of the past.
“Didn’t you notice all of the whore houses on the waterfront?” Bryan said to no one in particular. “And the crack houses and the…”
“All that came later, with the hippies, sometime in the sixties.”
“And gang tags and the bums on the street…”
“Open your eyes and drive, boy.” The traffic was bumper to bumper as far as we could see, creeping inches at a time. I wasn’t restless though, the black structure in front of us had grabbed my attention. Beside me, Mom stared off in the distance, her eyes following the curves of the tallest arch, her eyebrows curving too, as they formed their own arciforms.
Grammy picked up the thread of her story and slipping off my seatbelt, I leaned forward against the front seat.
“The trade did come of course, just as the politicians predicted. But the building of the bridge is what kept our attention in those first days.” Grammy absentmindedly adjusted the collar of her coat. She was looking at the car in front of us, and I looked also, wondering what was so interesting about it. But when I glanced back at her, I knew I wasn’t seeing the same thing. “That’s a story in itself,” she said.
“Right off, there was trouble. Complaints of favoritism and bribes, lower pay than was promised. But everyone who wanted a job, got one. And as Papa said, work was work. Contractors moved here, some with families, my best friend in grade school was a contractor’s daughter. Course, they moved away when the bridge opened. Their job was done.” Mom let out a small cry as the car jumped the low metal divider putting us on the bridge.
“Construction continued through the winter, and when Papa drove us out here in the spring, the abutments were sticking out of the ground as stiff as new plant stalks.”
“We all marveled at how much had been done over the months, but Papa told us the icy weather had put them far behind schedule and it would be a scramble to meet the deadlines.” The traffic had stopped moving. Grammy turned up the heater and continued with her story.
“I didn’t know anything about schedules and budgets or the such, I only knew that whenever I laid eyes on it, this bridge had become something altogether different than it had been, because it changed whenever I looked away.
“Did they meet the deadlines?”
“I don’t know. After all that happened, nobody was thinking about deadlines. They just wanted to be done with it and if business came driving across, they’d take it.”
“After all that happened? Okay, I’ll bite,” Bryan said sardonically. “Who died?”
“Hugh Mason and Charlotte Cross.”
Bryan blew out something between a snort and a raspberry. “They’re buried under the bridge?” he asked unbelievingly.
“Can’t be buried under the bridge, that’s the river, stupid,” I added.
“Ah, but they’re under the bridge, all right. In the river,” Grammy nodded solemnly. “Their bodies were never found. Oh, they searched, Willard P. Mason made certain of that and he was the most influential man in the county. When Hugh turned up missing, it was just hours before they had divers in the river and searchers trampling down the grass along the banks. It was early spring by then, and the grass was tall enough to hide a body. Two bodies even. Course, he was only interested in one.” She fell momentarily silent, the past vivid behind her eyes. “Never did find him.”
“How’d they die?” Bryan asked, a corner of his mouth turned up. He kept his eyes on the traffic in front of him, creeping perilously close to the car in front of us. We were about a quarter of the way across the bridge, the river still hidden from view by the jutting peninsula of land on our side of the roadway. We could hear it though, a dull roar, somewhere in the lower registers of all of the sounds in the air.
“It’s said, that one of them was pushed and the other one jumped.”
“Is it true?” I asked softly into Grammy’s ear which was only a few inches from my mouth.
“I’ll tell you what I know and you can decide for yourselves. As I said, it was early spring, one of the wettest of the century, and the river was roaring it’s way past Masonville in the fiercest current seen in half a century.
“Papa took us to see the bridge every Sunday afternoon, rain or shine. Mama pointedly told him one stormy day that it was difficult to see anything in that weather and if it was time, could we make our way back to our warm, dry home. Papa told her in his sternest tone, that his children would be witnesses to progress, damned be the weather. And so we continued to watch the bridge grow, regardless of the storms, every week a little more. It seemed to me that the steel girders were expanding almost miraculously, since we never saw anyone working on it.”
“Uh, the dead people, Grammy?”
“I’m coming to that, boy.” She didn’t though, not right away, since we had moved up enough on the roadway to see the raging river below us, the whitecaps curving and bobbing on the surface like frosted points on a cake. Mom released a long, low moan that startled me, I had almost forgotten she was there, and glancing back I saw her lick the glass with a pale, pink tongue. She stared avidly out of the window, unaware of the rest of us, and I turned back, determined to be as oblivious of her as she was of us.
“Hugh Mason was the eldest child and only son to Willard P. Mason, whose great grandfather, Vernon George Mason, had been the founder of this town almost a hundred years before. The Masons had their fingers in everything around here; from the original foundry to the only grocery market in town. Their name was everywhere; Mason Sawmill…Mason Jewelers…Mason Barbershop, like that.”
“They were the popular kids, huh Grammy?” Bryan was enjoying the story, I noticed.
“They were hot diggedys, no doubt, but life has a way of ironing out the sheets. That year, Hugh was twenty two, I know because your Great Uncle Billy was the same age. Hugh had just finished up with college back east and he was home to learn the family business. He was engaged to a girl from New York too, high society; it was rumored that the wedding was going to take place the fall following the bridge opening. The were hot diggedys all right.” She took a swig from a bottle of water.
“So Hugh either jumped or was pushed from the bridge, along with Charlotte Cross? Do you know why Grammy?”
“All this I’ve told you Mikaela, was public knowledge, and what I didn’t overhear from Papa, I learned from my sisters, Ethel and Betty, who were eighteen and twenty at the time. Betty had been working in the kitchens at the Mason house for several months, and she was familiar with the family’s “appetites”, don’t you know. Willard P. was an ambitious, miserly type; he demanded his pot roast be so tender it would fall off the fork. And he filled everyone’s plates himself - not unusual, Papa did the same for us children - but Willard P. determined how much you would eat off his table and not a spoonful more. His wife Meredith, Betty said, rarely ate, except the obligatory suppers with her husband, and she spent most of her time medicated with prescribed elixir. To calm her chronic cough.”
“I don’t get it,” I said, confused. “What does cough syrup have to do with her appetite?”
“Cough medicines had cocaine in them, back in the middle ages,” Bryan said sagely.
“It was opiates.” Grammy said, looking at him until he smirked. “And she was hooked. Hugh’s younger sister, Elizabeth, was big boned and stout like her father - since it was sweets she loved, by the handful. By the time she got married at 32, there was hardly a natural tooth in her head. It was rumored that on her wedding night, she’d had to put her dentures in a glass.” Grammy chuckled and I found myself laughing too.
“Hugh, on the other hand, preferred spice.” Bryan cackled, and again I was forced to reveal my ignorance.
“Spice? Like cinnamon and nutmeg?”
“No moron, more like the spicy blonde chambermaid, and the hot redhead in the laundry room or maybe the zesty brunette with the big b…”
“Yes, exactly that kind of spice.” Grammy said. “No girl in that household was safe from his intentions.”
“He raped them?” I asked slightly horrified.
“He didn’t need to, Mikaela. Hugh was Mr. Charm himself, dark hair and white teeth. Fact is, the girls swooned every time he walked into the room. Since they obliged him by falling at his feet, he merely picked them off the ground. Betty, don’t you know, aspired to be one of those girls, leaving little chocolate hearts by his breakfast plate, putting the jam jars on Hugh’s side of the table because he was so fond of them, and the such. But Miss Cora, besides being the cook, was good friend of Mama’s and she told her about Betty’s shenanigans. So when Betty came home moony-eyed about Hugh Mason, Mama was quick to act. I remember her taking Papa aside that evening, before supper, into their bedroom and closing the door behind them.”
“Did you listen at the door, Grammy?” Bryan asked with a glint in his eye.
“I did no such thing! Didn’t have to. Papa came out of that room with thunder clouds riding his forehead, grabbed Betty out of the kitchen, dragged her upstairs to the bedroom and gave her a sound whipping.”
“But she hadn’t done anything!” I protested.
“The whipping was for thinking she might. Course, she never went back to the Mason house. This is where Ethel comes in.”
“And the dead people?”
“I’m coming to that, boy, don’t get too close to that car!” Bryan stomped on the brakes to avoid hitting the car in front of us. I jerked forward and then back, the momentum slamming me against the seat. Glancing over at Mom, I could see that she was wedged tightly against her door, seatbelt firmly buckled. She had laid her cheek on the cold window and closed her eyes retreating into her world. Although it looked like sleep, Grammy said it wasn’t; once in a while she did things, like hold a book in front of her face, or plump up her pillows. But she wouldn’t talk or acknowledge any of us, and sometimes she peed on herself, because I believed, she just didn’t care enough to say she had to go. That realization caused a sudden wave of dread to wash over me causing my heart to hammer loudly in my ears. Prickles of sweat popped out on my upper lip. Not here, not here! Calm down! Okay, okay…calm down… I took longer breaths, trying to get control of myself before anyone noticed. Did Grammy take Mom to the bathroom before we left? Yes, I think so…yes she did, because Bryan was complaining about how long it took to get out of the house. My breathing came a little easier. Then she won’t go for a while. I took a long, deep cleansing breath, the conversation in the front seat easing me back into the present. This wasn’t the first time I felt drowned by sudden panic, the weirdest things made me feel this way, and it was happening more and more often. It was getting harder to calm down too; so I focused on Grammy’s voice, on the exasperated tone that I was so familiar with. I felt my heartbeat slowly return to normal.
“…do I need to drive, boy? Pay attention to the traffic!”
Bryan grinned sheepishly. “It’s because of your fantastic story Grammy. Continue. Please.” Grammy pursed her lips but started up her story again.
“Ethel was a shy girl, much less wild than Betty. She worked at the library, which suited her just fine.”
“So how did she know anything about the murder/suicide?” I asked, a little shaky. No one noticed.
“Well, you see, Ethel had a friend...”
“You mean, Aunt Ethel had one friend,” Bryan added sarcastically, no doubt remembering Thanksgiving a few months before, when Aunt Ethel said hello and goodbye and little else during the meal.
“…and that friend was Charlotte Cross,” Grammy said smugly.
“So Charlotte told Aunt Ethel everything!” I was quick to point out.
“Well, quite a bit of what was happening and when it was happening; the truth and not that filtered drivel that was published in the Masonville Gazette after the deaths. Charlotte filled in a lot of blanks that the Masons didn’t want filled in.”
We had reached the middle of the bridge, suspended 80 feet above the surging river. Ice streaked intermittently along the banks, the dirty shards grabbing hold of tufts of dried grass like sugar crystallizing on a string.
“This part,” she said, pointing somewhere above us, to the center of the tallest arch, “wasn’t built yet. There was a gap here, where the two sides of the bridge hadn’t met; they were building from both sides of the river you know, somehow it would all come together in the middle, perfectly aligned. I always marveled at that. And it was right here,” she gestured broadly, indicating both sides of the roadway and the river below, “is where Hugh and Charlotte’s lives ended on that chilly spring day, just weeks from the completion of the biggest thing to hit Masonville and the Mason family.”
“So what happened?” Bryan asked. Grammy turned down the heater a notch and slipped off her coat. “Hot in here, isn’t it?”
“Grammy! The dead lovers on the unfinished bridge?” Bryan was openly interested in the story now, impatient to hear the ending. I wondered about this; football and girls were probably the only things that mattered to him anymore. I couldn’t remember the last time we had said more than a couple of words to each other. I wondered how Grammy had managed to grab his attention and hold it - suspended over a raging river, simply by telling a story about dead people.
“The official story, as reported by the Gazette the day after the deaths, was that Charotte Cross killed Hugh Mason and then flung herself off the bridge in an apparent murder/suicide. She was supposedly so besotted with Hugh...”
“…besotted? What’s besotted?” Bryan asked.
“Crazy in luv, moron, like you’re is besotted with Melissa Dorsey, even though she doesn’t see you because you’re on the bottom of her shoe…” I said, taking the easy jab. Grammy continued before Bryan could retort.
“Someone was besotted all right, but it wasn’t Charlotte. It was Hugh, who had fallen madly in love with little Charlotte Cross.”
“Casanova fell in love?” Bryan said derisively. “What a loser!”
“From the moment Hugh laid eyes on Charlotte he was head over heels, following her around like a love sick moose. Not that he didn’t have reason, she was lovely, all peaches and cream, long blond hair that looked like silk. She was sweet natured too, a quiet girl with enormous blue eyes. I suspect though, that what captured Hugh’s imagination, was the fact that Charlotte was not taken in by his charms. Charlotte had plans of her own, you see, she wanted to be a teacher. Working at the Mason house was just a way to save money for teacher’s college. That was her dream.”
“But he was rich! He could have put her through school ten times over,” Bryan exclaimed.
“Ah, but Charlotte was not in love with Hugh, and true love meant more to her than any amount of money. She figured he would get over it soon enough. She was wrong. Hugh seemed to fall deeper in love by the day. Charlotte was concerned that Willard P. was going to find out and blame her, so when Willard P. offered to drive her home one evening, she was beyond worry, she was terrified. She was right to be. Willard P. took her to the end of the Mason property for a ‘private chat’. He demanded to know what she thought she was doing, did she really believe she was good enough for the son of the one of the wealthiest men in the state?”
“What a bully!” I cried out. “I suppose he fired her?”
“Well no, he didn’t. We can only guess at what the old miser was scheming though. Charlotte broke down, begging Mr. Mason to please believe her, she hadn’t led Hugh on, he just had a little crush, it would pass, she told him, it would pass into nothingness with time, it would pass. I remember her saying that three times - ‘it would pass’. Charlotte went to work the next day, fearing to go, and fearing even more not to go. Ethel promised to pick her up in Papa’s old clunker after work; but of course, she wasn’t there to pick up. And so that’s how it ended.”
“What do you mean it ended? That’s the end of the story?” Bryan asked.
“Yes. That’s the very evening Hugh Mason and Charlotte Cross went off the side of the Whitehead Bridge.” Grammy sat back, sighing heavily as though she had just put down a huge load of laundry.
“That’s a stupid ending!” Bryan declared indignantly. “All that and we still don’t know anything about how Romeo and his girlfriend died. That was lame, Grammy.”
Grammy’s lips curled back. “Well that’s all anybody knew until the Gazette made up the rest. But we knew much more.” She nodded her head. “You see, Betty still had friends at the Mason house and Ethel had known of Charlotte’s plans for the evening, and when we put it all together, we had something closer to the truth than anyone else did. Except Willard P. himself.”
“I don’t want to know anymore of this stupid story…” Bryan cut in.
“But I do,” I said quickly, “what exactly do you know Grammy?”
Grammy smiled fully, one of the very few times I had seen her do that. She turned to me as Bryan concentrated on the moving traffic, studiously ignoring us.
“Charlotte went to work that morning, relieved to discover that Hugh would be at the main office all day. But he came home early to see his beloved and immediately noticed her distress. He questioned Charlotte until she wept; she pleaded with him to not confront Willard P., that everything would be fine if Hugh would just stop loving her. Hugh was incensed. He only saw the woman who had captured his heart, weeping in fear of his own father’s judgement. He went looking for Willard P., who was in the house already, spying on Hugh and Charlotte.” Grammy turned slightly and looked me in the eyes, her voice lowering a notch.
“They drove right by Ethel while she was waiting in Papa’s car just outside of the property’s front gate.”
“They?”
“Willard P. and Charlotte.” I tried to process this information and failed. “Why were Willard P. and Charlotte in the car together?”
“That we don’t know. Except that Ethel saw them driving down the lane, and was still struggling to get Papa’s car started, when Hugh came screeching out of the driveway after them, picking up speed, hell bent on rescuing his beloved.”
“What did Aunt Ethel do?”
“Why, she followed - once she got the car started. She drove as close as she could, then went sneaking and hiding the last part of the way, all the way up the bridge until she couldn’t go any further without being seen. But she could see them.”
I stared into Grammy’s eyes, sharing the vision of a terrified young Ethel, hiding behind a concrete barrier, hair whipping around her head in the whistling wind.
“What about the construction workers, didn’t they see her?”
“They were gone for the day, only barricades and beams to witness the events of that night. And Ethel.”
“What did Aunt Ethel see?” I whispered.
“All she said, was that Willard P. was on his knees, sobbing, like his heart had just gone over the gap in the bridge; which it had, of course.”
“And Charlotte?”
“Gone. Ethel had the presence of mind to get out of there before Willard P. saw her and other than telling me and Betty what I just told you, she has never spoken of it again. That night the news broke, and the state police descended on us like a flock of giant ducks, quacking questions at ordinary citizens, instead of looking for answers in the Mason household. No one over there was truly questioned, I can tell you, and within hours, the ‘official’ Gazette story was released. Charlotte had pushed Hugh off the bridge, then jumped to her own death because he had spurned her love. The fact that Willard P. was also on the bridge, was never revealed.”
“How did he get away with that?” Bryan asked.
“Like I said before, Willard P. was a powerful man, and if he didn’t want it known that he had been there that terrible evening, then no one would ever find out.”
“What about Aunt Ethel? Didn’t the police question her?”
“No one knew that Ethel was a witness except for Betty and myself. Ethel never spoke of it again. She was never quite the same after that either, as though there was a wound in her heart that wouldn’t heal.”
The traffic was moving again and I could see the end of the bridge. A quietness had descended upon us as we each retreated into ourselves, digesting the troubling facts of love and murder and betrayal. Bryan watched the traffic in front of us, his fingers tapping on the steering wheel in nervous energy. Grammy had settled back in her seat, gazing down to the river where the dark water sloshed against the icy embankment. I had one last question.
“Grammy, do you think Charlotte killed Hugh?”
She took several minutes to answer, and I was just clicking my seatbelt back on when she spoke in a somewhat reflective voice, more to herself than to me.
“The only person that knows the full truth is Ethel. There were things she chose not to share with us, for her own reasons. I’ll not violate that trust.”
“But do you think…”
“I won’t not say another word.” She fell silent again, and I knew better than to pursue it; I had heard the final note in her voice.
The sound of the roadway changed to a deeper pitch as the steel grating ended and the concrete roadway began. I was glad we were turning towards home. I felt somehow soiled, as though I was covered in a sour residue of past evils. Charlotte’s death had saddened me, but it was with Hugh that I truly identified with, controlled as he was by his father. Yes, it was definitely Hugh who I felt sorry for; the poor slob with the suffocating parent.
As Bryan drove us slowly off the bridge, the horizon appeared before us in a patchwork of brown-gray meadows, the river behind us as though it never existed; gone, except for a distant dull roar. We picked up a little speed and jumped the metal divider onto solid land. The bright blue sky seemed endless without the steel girders cutting it into little pieces. My eyes hurt to look up at the brilliant light but I did it anyway, the weight of the bridge fading along with the melancholic feelings left by the tragic story. I closed my eyes and let the sunshine warm my cheeks and pushed thoughts of Charlotte and Hugh towards the back of my mind, where all bad things seemed to end up.
I had snuggled into my coat, letting the buzz of the car lull me into a lazy, half sleep, when I felt a warm sensation spread along my leg. Glancing down, I saw the little river of urine flowing towards me, placid and smooth, so unlike the river we had just seen.
“What’s wrong with you!” I screamed at Mom. My midsection cramped against the seatbelt as I tried to get away from the stream, nearly choking on the strap across my neck. Bryan swerved across two lanes of traffic in an attempt to get on the shoulder of the road. I dimly heard car horns blasting and brakes squealing before we came to a skidding stop on the gravel.
Grammy had turned and was leaning over the front seat when Bryan stopped the car. “What is it?! What’s wrong?!” Bryan had turned also, a panicked look on his face.
“She peed on me!” I screamed again. Mom was looking at me with an untroubled expression, her eyes large and blank, the light bouncing off the black irises. It was like looking into black dinner plates, deep and empty.
“I hate you!” I shouted loudly, wanting the world to hear me. “I hate you more than anything!” I tried to open the door and I was still frantically yanking on the handle, when I suddenly felt my ear being pulled and twisted. It burned savagely.
“Mikaela, stop pulling on the handle, the door’s locked.” Grammy was now leaning in my direction, her eyes on me.
“I want to get out now! I’m not staying in the car with her!” I started tugging on the door handle.
“Start that again Mikaela Watts and I’ll have to slap you. Settle yourself down.”
I was breathing heavily through my nose, the wetness spreading under me, as though I had wet myself. “I’m not sitting next to her anymore,” I said coldly. “I’m not feeding her, I’m not changing her, I’m not ever going to do anything for her again,” and I calmly unlocked the door and stepped out into the cold February day. The wet areas on my leg and bottom instantly froze in the winter air. I ignored it as I stood outside of Grammy’s door, until she got out herself and moved to the back seat. Mom had slumped against her door and closed her eyes. She had left us for her world again.
“Excitement’s over,” Grammy said tersely, sitting on her coat. “Bryan do you think you can get us home through Murphysville? I don’t believe I want to travel the bridge again.”
Bryan put the car in gear and pulled out into the road without saying a word, his fingers gripping the steering wheel so tight that his knuckles had turned white. A muscle twitched in his cheek, and he stared straight ahead, never bothering to look at me, not once.
I turned towards my own window, watching the scenery whisk by so fast it remained unreachable, untenable. I was stuck in this car, with these people, in a slow motion world where everything that hurt took it’s time with you. I felt the now familiar suffocating feeling gather in my stomach, and move up towards my lungs. I squeezed my eyes shut as my belly cramped, desperate for some sort of relief, for the whish of a pressure valve released.
I willed Bryan to drive faster.
Chapter Five
6 comments:
I want to let you know that I am still enjoying your story and very interested in Mike. Obviously she has some very deep problems and I admire the way you're exposing them. Excellent story telling and quite a few vivid images that continue to persuade me that there's a poet in you. :)
Okay, fasten your seatbelt, this is going to run a bit longish. LOL
The beginning of this chapter caught me by surprise. You describe the bridge beautifully. Clearly your description is a wonderful set up for the grandma's story to follow but doesn't it come a bit out of left field? I mean that although the bridge description is very impressive, it doesn't sound like Mike saying it. With her I seem to always sense raw nerves only barely under the service. I dunno, maybe if you have her briefly introduce the chapter somehow. Not a great deal of help but just my take on it.
"The tallest arch stands more than 800 feet above the Whitehead River, the steel curvature stark against the sky. It’s span is nearly seven hundred horizontal feet high, the black girders forming an almost delicate lacework across the turbulent waterway."
"Turbulent waterway" sounds a bit stilted to me and a little bit cliché as well.
In my opinion, this next bit seems like a perfect opening paragraph to the chapter and also sounds like our narrator. If you want to keep the current opening paragraph, perhaps it could come after?
"My first glimpse of the bridge was on a cold February afternoon. I was sitting in the back seat of Grammy’s Oldsmobile, staring out of the window as the rows of track housing gave way to larger industrial buildings, when suddenly it appeared on the horizon. I saw the tallest arch first, closely followed by the other two, each one in concert with the other like musical notes. I watched it grow; the beams, still tiny sticks held by an invisible force, coalescing into a giant, imposing structure."
I'm not sure about this next paragraph, I understand why you would think you need it here but honestly, I don't think it goes with the paragraph that it's in.
"Beside me, Mom made a small noise that grew into a moan, as we neared the entrance to the bridge."
Wonderfully rich images and foreshadowing in the next two paragraphs:
"It had been Grammy’s idea that we go out that Sunday afternoon; ‘nothing going on here…and we all piled into the car, Bryan climbing in behind the wheel after reminding Grammy that he needed practice driving. We took Mom too, ‘fresh air will do her good’ Grammy had said, handing me Mom’s thin coat. I got it over her pajamas after a little struggle, but I was as tall as she and much stronger, and she acquiesced almost immediately. It occurred to me as I slipped her arm into the sleeve, that her flesh was becoming thin onion skin, lighter and more transparent every time I looked at her.
On the way to the bridge, she sat docilely in the backseat with me, her hands resting on her lap. I felt crowded despite the space between us. Scooting closer to the door, I put my nose up to the crack in the window and flared my nostrils to catch the winter air; it was cold metal on the back of my throat. It alleviated the sweetly nauseous scent of baby powder that hung around Mom like a herald. I always knew when she had entered a room, although she passed through the house soundlessly. I wondered if Grammy doused her with it so that she would know when Mom was in the room. Probably just the BO. In the last year or so, Mom had developed a distinct odor despite the fact that she didn’t do anything that made her sweat. When I had mentioned it to Jess, he hypothesized about what was causing it."
And I thought this was a great kid conversation, especially between a boy and a girl:
“Could be that her body functions are failing. You know, organs shutting down , dead skin floating all around her.” He shook his head wisely. “You’re smelling decomposition, dude.”
He never did get the hang of not talking about my mother. And sometime since fifth grade, I had stopped caring.
“Are you saying she’s dying?”
For a second he looked nonplussed. “I…I guess.”
“She’s taking her time about it, isn’t she?”
Damn funny expression here, did you make this up or is it one of those colorful southern idioms?
“Mike, I didn’t mean anything by it. What do I know? My dad says my body was born 13 years before my brain.”
“But that means you don’t have a br…”
“Yeah, haha.”
Because this is already a weighty message and also because it's so late here now, I think I'll finish up with this chapter tomorrow. Thanks for the great read!
Thanks pb, as always, your comments are invaluable. I too, found the rhythm of the opener somehow not right, but I think I was too close to see what was wrong. I see it now.
Looking forward to the rest of your comments, thanks again.
BTW, I don't believe I've used any idiomatic language, not intentionally anyway; so I'll just say, I made it all up. :))
Wow, I so should not write comments in the middle of the night. LOL I just looked back over that last comment I made on this chapter and oh my god. LOLOL Raw nerve under the service. That's a new low even for me. Also I forgot a few things I meant to say at the beginning. At least I try to review the dopey things I say in the middle of the night. Okay, first, what I forgot to say:
I meant to tell you that I love the subtle connection between the grandma's story about the bridge's history and the struggle that Mike is having with how to see her mom and her mom's disability, e.g. is it a betrayal when the mom "pees on her" or can there be a betrayal at all when the mom is clearly not mentally present so to speak. Then there is the rich boy's dad who pretty clearly could use a team of shrinks and of course the betrayals but most especially the father/son one in the grandma's tale. I don't know if you meant to write in the parallels I've found between the two stories, maybe I'm off in psychosis land, but to me the parallels are subtle yet powerful.
And...you lost me with the subtitle this time. I read the whole chapter wondering when the gray man was going to turn up and of course, he didn't. LOL Unless he was blending into the background somehow or you didn't use his nick directly in the story but rather refer to him by another name. If I'm being a blind fool, please ignore the observations. :)
"“They were building this bridge when I was no more than thirteen or fourteen.” Grammy said.
“That was 80, 90 years ago,” Bryan added."
Did you mean 80 or 90 years ago?
'Papa went to all the meetings, and then come home and tell Mama and us children how the bridge was going to open Masonville to new markets.”
I realize this could be just a bit of southern dialect but it seems to me that the grandma's a bit too worldly wise to make serious grammatical errors (Also, she's old enough I presume to have gotten a very respectable education in English grammar in grade school). Oh yeah, I'm talking about the italicized bit above.
I know the advice we get to avoid using the same word more than once in a paragraph but sometimes a word either has no decent synonym or the synonym that's available is either archaic or just a retread of the original word. To me, it's better to chose the right word or simply rewrite the paragraph so the problem can be avoided. Okay, my eyes are starting to cross. Time for a nap. Heh
LOLOL. I read your comments in the middle of the night, so they made perfect sense to me. ;)
I was very much attempting the parallel storyline, although initially, I was only trying to introduce Aunt Ethel. It's funny the way the pieces fall into place sometimes.
The subtitle, (The Gray Man), is a typo that I didn't have time to go back and correct, and then I forgot to tell everyone that it was a typo. It has nothing to do with this chapter. I hope it wasn't too confusing. Sorry!
Thanks for taking the time to read "Mike" over the holidays, as always much appreciated.
Thea: sorry I didn’t get to this sooner as I said I would. I got really busy. I’m enjoying the story and really cant find much to comment on…just a few typos.
Ch3:
I was a little confused here as to who was speaking. Perhaps start a new paragraph at “Both sets…”.
“So I have to stop doing my homework because she needs me to tell her to put the chicken in the microwave? She’s not a baby, she’s 11 for crissakes!” Both sets of eyes turned to me. I ran from the table and down the hallway,
Second line here…should it read: Now pick up those pads… ?
“You know exactly where I talking about. Nothing should go up there until your wedding night. Now pick those pads there, and get two boxes so I won’t be subjected to this nonsense any time soon.”
Ch4
They were instead of The were.
The were hot diggedys all right.” She took a swig from a bottle of water.
…she was a good friend of Mama’s.. the word “she” or “a” omitted.
besides being the cook, was good friend of Mama’s and she told her about Betty’s shenanigans.
Ok, I have to ask this. The boy is named Jess and the girl is named Mike. Am I missing something?
Thea, you have a good story here. It’s a page turner and well written. You have me wanting to see where this is going and that’s a good thing.
Thanks for posting.
-Steve
Thanks for the comments, Steve.
As for the names, well Mike is Mikaela but only her friends call her that, her family uses her given name. (Except Bryan, he likes to call her princess in his nastiest tone).
Jess is Jess, pretty common in the South, (although this story is not placed anywhere specifically, I think the tone is somewhat southern).
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