chapter twenty-nine

As I study the journal again, combing for clues, I find something new.

Patrick wrote, “When Russell Cone came to inspect me work on the cable, we discussed how the bridge moves and deflects as the cable length changes. ’Tis this giving of the bridge that gives strength to the structure and absorbs strain. Me bridge is almost a living, breathing thing.”

I find his comment intriguing, for as a child I also imagined the bridge to be alive. With the wisdom of years that adulthood brings, I understand that she is just a bridge. Yet there are times, even today, when she takes on a life of her own.

I also notice that Patrick references God, and if he was a religious man from Ireland, it means that there are two choices—Catholic or Protestant. Thankfully, both are notorious record keepers. If he had attended a local congregation, there still might be a record.

When I explain my plight to Father Muldowney, my own priest, he is happy to help. He promises to check surrounding cathedrals as well as fax me a list of additional churches worth investigating.

Next I head out to see the city clerk. If Anna and the children moved to San Francisco, there’s a possibility that the family purchased a home. My chances are slim, but I am getting desperate.

The woman at the desk smiles a friendly hello, but if I expect her cheeriness to make my work pleasant, I am soon disappointed. The job is drudgery. Two hours in, I discover a P. O’Riley who owned property in Stonestown, but my hopes are dashed when further digging reveals he was Mr. Pierce O’Riley, not Patrick, and dates on the documents preclude him from being my O’Riley at all.

After six more hours, I head home for a hot bath and bed, flush with frustration, needing to extinguish the feelings of failure building in my chest. On my way, a haunting comment from the journal keeps flashing into my head. It is a simple, almost reflective statement Patrick made in the journal’s final pages.

“It is interesting,” he said, “that bridges, the most permanent of structures, are so often built by the most transient of men.”

Is he speaking of himself? If bridge builders are migratory, if they follow the work, then did Patrick also move on to another bridge? If so, where? Once home, I find a government website that lists all the bridges in the United States. My chest aches when I notice the number—six hundred thousand!

I narrow my search by filtering for large, historic bridges. The Tacoma Narrows Bridge pops up first. It was a suspension bridge, the first to cross the Puget Sound, and construction began shortly after completion of the Golden Gate. Within minutes, however, I have dozens of possibilities. I see bridges in Connecticut, Pennsylvania, New York; I find bridges along the East Coast, the West Coast, and in between. They are everywhere.

It doesn’t take long for hopelessness to roll and boil, for the bleakness to bubble. I am looking down another impossible road. Even if he moved on to work another bridge, the never-ending list on my monitor flickers a truth that bounces about the room—Patrick could have gone anywhere.

• • •

Visiting churches should be soothing—today, not so much. While some of the priests and ministers are pleasant, the rest must moonlight at the DMV. Several insist that I make an appointment—not a problem, except it’s for weeks down the road, and I can’t wait weeks.

At the churches friendly enough to let me peruse their records, I find the work grueling. It isn’t like typing words into a search engine. Instead the places are stuffy, the smell of must and mildew is overwhelming, and the rooms are miserably hot. Honestly, I envision hell to be quite like the back rooms of a church. Each page must be scrutinized individually, and the writing is nearly impossible to read. I start my quest with excitement, with a vision of success, but my enthusiasm ages into despair.

I take a deep breath and remember that I need to be elastic and flexible like the bridge. But I don’t feel elastic, I feel tense and rigid. I understand that this search is a self-imposed burden, one that I opted to carry the day I vowed to find the family of Patrick O’Riley. And if it is self-imposed, then I should be able to cast it aside—but I can’t. It has taken hold of me and won’t let go. It has grown into an obligation that wraps its fingers around my heart. With each beat I keep asking: what if, after all my searching, I can’t find him? What if I never learn more about Patrick and Anna?

I should go home. I haven’t eaten since breakfast, and I can feel my blood sugar is at an all-time low. Instead, with stress clouding my logic, I commit a cardinal sin. I pass Chang’s Chinese Buffet with its “all-you-can-eat” neon sign flashing like a hypnotist’s trap. I wander inside, hand the plump Chinese woman my money, and then for the next forty minutes I perpetrate diet suicide. I eat like it’s my last supper. I chow down on sesame chicken, sweet and sour pork, and orange beef. It’s like popcorn: once you start eating, it’s almost impossible to stop. With everything fried in oil, I can eat through my entire monthly allowance of saturated fat in one sitting.

I’ve always had the willpower to resist, but tonight I gorge like a screaming pig. By the time I can’t pop another piece of fortune cookie into my mouth, all I desire is to crawl home and throw up—not because I feel sick to my stomach, but because I feel sick in my heart. It’s a deep-down sickness that I’m feeling because, soon, I’ll be forced to admit that I have failed to find Patrick O’Riley.

• • •

In the safety of my home, I get angry—more than angry, I am livid. I scream at the computer. I crumple up papers and hurl them into the wastebasket. I move into the kitchen and swear at the stacks of books piled high, uttering words that I never say in public. All the while my unfinished outline mocks from the table. I utterly detest that ridiculous assignment—busywork from the Society of Ladies with Too Much Time on Their Hands!

I have been home for all of five minutes and my pity party is in full swing. In my frustration, I move close to the table and dump the remaining pages of my report into the garbage can. As I do, I interrogate myself.

“Why is it, Katie, that you can’t finish the report, can’t find Patrick, can’t accomplish anything you set out to do? Why is it that you’re still alone? Why are you still stuck at a university unable to move forward, too nervous to even face the man who betrayed you? Why, Katie?”

I ask as if I expect a different Katie to answer. But there is only one Katie at home, and her life is unraveling. As I wait for answers that don’t come, I realize for the first time since walking through the door that I smell atrocious. I’ve worked up a sweat in the hot and stuffy church rooms, and the ensuing stench coming from my shirt is disgusting. I don’t just stink with body odor, I reek of failure.

In disgust, I tear off my shirt, head to the shower, and pull on the hot water. I’m usually one to conserve, to do my share for the community, but tonight I don’t care. I plop down in the middle of the shower’s tile floor and let the water cascade over me in torrents, watching it pool, mix, and swirl with my guilt and then flow down the drain. I vow to leave the water on until the pipes in the city run dry, until the conservation police kick down my door and haul me off naked and screaming to jail.

After thirty minutes, however, my skin begins to shrivel. I renege on my vow to run the city dry and decide instead that using up all the hot water in the house will be revenge enough. Ten minutes later, I am a prune, but the hot water keeps blasting.

We have a deep, old-fashioned bathtub in the bathroom upstairs. Dad loved to soak in it after a hard day at the bridge. With an active teenage girl in the house, he would often run out of hot water. It drove him crazy until one Saturday, he brought home a new water heater, a huge, seventy-five-gallon model. Together, we connected it to our existing unit so that one feeds into the other. As my skin now starts to itch, it dawns on me that since that time, I don’t remember running out of hot water—ever. I could be here all night. I could drown. After five more minutes, I wave the white flag and push the valve closed in disgust. I am a failure at everything.

My hands are white and wrinkled. I look like an old, dead, white woman. As I pat myself dry, my skin begins to scream for lotion, and there is none left in the bathroom. I want to simply crawl into bed naked to begin the cry of my life—and I will, just as soon as I get more lotion from the kitchen. I find the other bottle on the counter, but when I discover that it too is almost empty, I am about to start my tantrum over—when something catches my attention.

The notification light on my phone is blinking.

Someone called while I was staging my shower sit-in. I tap the screen to hear the voice of Gwen from the library. She must have called just before closing. I want to believe that this is the break I’ve been praying for. I need to hope, but as I consider my actions of the previous hour, caution seems my best ally. If I raise my expectations, I’ll set myself up for a drop off the emotional edge that I just can’t handle.

But her words cause hope to rise in my chest.

“Hi, it’s Gwen at the library. I think I may have found something.”