PART V: THE BRIDGE 1967

“Here I am,” Claire said to Mary in the doorway. Her chest was full of fish and brine.

“Here you are,” Mary said, kissing her on each cheek. She closed the door behind Claire. “You must be freezing.” It was chilly, but it seemed like the last cold night.

Claire dropped her small suitcase by the entrance, not knowing where she was expected to sleep. On the couch in the main room? On the floor in Mary’s? In the nursery? After months of grappling across long tables with Freddie and his lawyer, Claire had finally lost the apartment. Mary had decided then, no arguments, that Claire would stay with her in her East Village apartment, insisting she needed help with the baby, nearly a year old now, in order to meet her next deadline. Claire had agreed, but only as a temporary situation until the manuscript was complete and she wasn’t needed anymore.

Mary took Claire’s arm and led her into the living room. “I built us a fire, see?”

A candle was lit and sitting on a dish by a stack of books in the center of the floor, a few feet from the real fireplace that had been bricked over. The living room bled into the kitchen; the furniture was sparse, only one couch against the wall, and a small table in the corner that served as dining table and desk. But Mary made the room feel bigger than it was.

“Research,” Mary said, gesturing to the pile of books on the floor. “I’ll clean it up.” Instead, she went to the record player and put on Simon and Garfunkel. “It won’t wake Leo. Nothing wakes him, except his own crying.”

“You should work if you need to,” Claire said. “I can entertain myself.”

“No, I want to talk. I need a break. I haven’t seen you in years.”

“It’s only been a few weeks. You must miss me.”

“It’s the only emotion I’m capable of anymore. I’ve been trapped in here for centuries. I feel like a cavewoman. I thought it would get easier after ten months. But look at me.”

Claire did. Mary looked far from a cavewoman. “How’s Leo?”

“I feel like half the time I don’t know where I am. Eating, sleeping. Those words don’t have the same meaning anymore. I mark time by Leo’s bowel movements. I’m already scaring you away, aren’t I?” Mary sat on the floor by the candle. “I’m glad you’re here. And not just because you’re saving my life with this deadline. I can’t believe it’s next month!” She cupped her hands over her eyes and groaned, then smiled at Claire. “I’m glad you’re here.”

“You said that already,” Claire said.

“Oh, shush. I don’t smell that bad, do I? Come sit with me.”

But Claire’s muscles were wound so tight. She walked around the perimeter of the room, looking at Mary’s photographs instead of Mary. The prints were mostly from antique stores and flea markets, old passport photos and yellowed family portraits from nameless people who probably died in the Great War. Had they made it to America? Or were these photographs sent by ship to those who’d gone ahead of them? What would it mean to be an old photo found by Mary picked from among hundreds?

One photograph stood out to Claire from the rest, large and crisp. The man’s bald skull shone out almost three-dimensionally. His nose was owl-like and handsome and his ears were too big, which made his scowl charming in a way. This was a member of Mary’s genuine family, not her anonymous vintage one, though they were all mixed together on her wall, no pattern to discern who was who.

“My father,” Mary said, watching her.

“He looks like you. Or you look like him. Has he met Leo yet?”

“I should hope not. I’d have to reevaluate my atheism. It would be too embarrassing to start believing in ghosts now.”

Claire closed her eyes. “How could I have forgotten? I didn’t forget. I just wasn’t thinking. Why did I say that?”

How many of Mary’s stories had slipped her mind? There should be a word for the fear of forgetting a story.

“It’s fine,” Mary said. “I rarely talk about him. It was so long ago, before I met you. I probably only mentioned him to you once in all these years.”

“And your mother passed just a year after him.”

Mary nodded.

“And why did I say that? I’m sorry to bring it up. I should have asked about them more. What a terrible friend I am.”

“Claire! What’s the matter with you? Come sit down. And bring the picture.”

Claire sat and they leaned over the frame together in the candlelight.

Mary laughed softly. “Look at those ears. That’s what Leo inherited. And that big bald head. But my dad never liked having his picture taken. He used to say you should be able to rewrite memories, that’s the fun of them. Photographs ruined his fun.”

“Where did they emigrate from? Poland?”

“I don’t care.” Mary rested a hand on Claire’s knee. “I’m sorry, dear. I want to talk, but I must change.”

“What?”

“I can’t be in these real clothes anymore. Ever since Leo was born. I only put this on so you wouldn’t think I’d become a hobo.” Mary laughed briefly with her whole body—Claire had never noticed that about her laugh before. “I’d spend my life in pajamas if I could. Do you mind? You can use the bedroom to change, too.”

Claire followed her to the bedroom, where Mary grabbed her clothes from a pile on the floor and disappeared into the adjacent bathroom.

Claire went back to the front door and brought her bag into the bedroom and dug through it, hoping she’d packed something that wasn’t completely unflattering. But why would she care what Mary thought of her nightclothes? It was just Mary. Mary, whom Claire had known since she first moved to the city. Mary, who’d taught Claire to dance and dress and talk without ever letting on she was teaching. Mary, who had taken her out those nights Freddie didn’t come home, pretending to match his recklessness.

But the fish in her stomach were on a feeding frenzy, and some had minnowed their way to her throat. Claire undressed slowly at first, then hurriedly, afraid Mary would come out of the bathroom before she’d finished. But then this thought caused her to slow again—as if she wanted Mary to walk in on her. She checked herself once in the mirror and shook her head: her cap-sleeved gown had a hole by the armpit.

In the living room, Mary opened a bottle of wine. “Tomorrow I can start living like a normal person again, using dishes and glasses and wearing clothes. Since you’re here to remind me what the outside world is like. People drink wine from wineglasses! What a thing! But, for tonight—” Mary lifted the bottle toward her lips.

Claire bounced slightly on her toes. This small idea excited her. Indeed, she felt excitable watching Mary drink. “I don’t even own glasses anymore, so what do I know?”

Mary passed her the bottle. “I feel young when you’re around.”

“I haven’t a clue why!” Claire laughed and drank. “I feel the same with you.”

They drank Pinot Noir, the bottle a gift from the subject of one of Mary’s ghostwriting projects. Claire couldn’t help but wonder if it was from Leo’s father, the congressman, if they were drinking that man’s wine. Mary had barely told her a thing about him. Claire would have to read the damn book if she wanted to know more.

They lay on the carpet in thin nightgowns, candlelight; the room seemed to mold around them. When Mary lifted an arm, the light lifted with her. Mary had always been pretty, but she had grown so much into her own beauty. At forty-three she was shocking to look at, with her long, black hair that seemed wet in the low light. Her hand, as if of its own accord, lifted towards Mary. But Claire stopped it, and took off her own earrings instead.

They were near enough now that their knuckles touched. Claire felt grateful she had gotten to see Mary change, that there was beauty and life in her that she could still discover. She almost said this out loud.

“What about Leo’s father?”

Mary straightened her shoulders, shifting only slightly from Claire. “What about him?”

Claire didn’t know what about him. She took a slug of wine, the bottle already half gone.

“I still haven’t told him,” Mary said.

“But he would help, wouldn’t he?”

“I don’t want to talk about it.”

“All right,” Claire said quietly.

“He’s married with two kids, for Christ’s sake. And the midterm election was just before Leo was born. I knew what he would have said and I didn’t want to hear it. Not again. The speech is always the same. That waiter years ago, or a congressman now, there’s no difference. They must all have subscriptions to some top-secret newsletter for chauvinists. I bet they rehearse it in the mirror.” Mary deepened her voice in her best impression of a man. “This is your decision and I support you, baby. Whatever you choose, baby. But it’s bad timing, there’s no money, it’s better for everyone including the baby, baby. Trust me, baby.”

Claire laughed, but stopped when she realized Mary wasn’t.

“The number of times I’ve heard that speech and had a hundred bucks shoved at me to get it over and done with.” She held up her fingers as if counting out the three men, then rested it on top of Claire’s.

“Did you love him?” Claire asked, her eyes on Mary’s unmoving hand.

“Love him? I don’t know. Yes? Maybe I still do.” Mary lifted the bottle halfway to her mouth then seemed to forget it and put it down. “I know him. I know him better than he knows himself. But I don’t want him to know. Leo’s father will never know he’s Leo’s father. I only have a few weeks to lose this pregnancy weight before the book party. A year and still I haven’t lost it all.”

Claire took the bottle from Mary and quickly downed another mouthful. “You’re going to see him there?”

“You’re supposed to say, ‘What weight?’” Mary shrugged. “It’ll probably be the last time I see him. Until Leo’s old enough to ask questions. He’ll probably get picked on in school and need an ego boost someday and I’ll tell him who his brilliant father is.”

So Mary thought he was brilliant. Claire hadn’t realized she’d been assuming, hoping, that Mary hated the man.

“The book was one of my best, though. Don’t you think?”

Claire nodded and drank again. She had the galley somewhere. She’d read most of Mary’s books, six in all, but she hadn’t wanted to pull this one off the shelf.

“I’m sorry I’m going on like this. I think I’m a little tipsy.” Mary took the bottle back and finished it off. “Remember when things were simpler?”

“No. When was that?” Claire smiled. “I do remember when your boyfriends were simpler.”

“Dumb as rocks is what they were.”

“What happened to the one who tried to make a film about the people in the sewers?”

“Him! He only lasted an hour down there and he ran out screaming that his camera was stolen!”

Mary cackled, her mouth wine-stained. Claire tried to ask about another, but only laughter escaped her. Then Mary hiccupped and they both doubled over. They fell back and their bellies burned. There were no words. Nothing was all that funny, but neither of them could stop. They laughed until they forgot they were people.

Then Mary kissed her on the mouth. Once. And they lay flat on their backs, beside each other in silence for a long time, no longer laughing but breathing hard and deeply serious in a way that was related to laughter, and their stomachs ached from the physical memory of it.

It was a first, but it wasn’t new. Claire’s heart raced in that familiar way. And not only because she had fantasized about Mary without realizing she was fantasizing about Mary—it was as if they had kissed before and were returning for more. She felt so grateful she could cry.

They moved closer to one another. Even after their bodies pressed, they did not stop moving closer. Here was the hollow above Mary’s collarbone. Here was Claire’s neck. Her elbow as it had never felt before, shimmying under Mary’s cheek. Kissing and pressing and kissing hard, until Claire closed her eyes, locking the moment inside her.

“What are we doing?” Claire whispered.

Mary answered silently. Her lips were chapped. Claire remembered that Mary’s lips always bled in winter. She felt the filaments of Mary’s lips on her own, the coarse parts of them. She felt Mary’s fingers moving down her body more than she felt her own body. Claire was rigid, nearly immobile for most of it, outside of herself looking down from above. She grazed Mary with her own hand. She had never touched another woman, Claire said again and again. Mary only laughed and took charge, undressing Claire as if she were undressing herself, fluid and natural. Claire was inadequate, prudish. But, in feigning knowledge, she felt more sexual than she ever had. She bit Mary’s lip hard. Their breasts pressed together. She kissed Mary’s arms all the way up and down, giggling. She sucked on her shoulder. Sucked on her knee, and upper thigh, and ribs, but nowhere too close. She moved so they were diagonal, so their smooth sides and hips could touch, so she could know what that felt like, too. She liked imagining the two of them from above, watching the film of their encounter. She felt as if she had never been touched by anyone.

In their excitement, they made such plans—Claire would move in not just for the month, and not only to help with Leo. Mary said she was afraid they would become a cliché, finding this in middle age—they’d be one of those couples that everyone envies, the kind whose happiness comes late and twice as big and here it is.

They both fell asleep on the floor, naked, wrapped only in each other. Claire dreamt that men broke in and shot them both clean in the forehead, and an older Leo found them dead. The neighbors came, and the coroners, and no one knew how the two women ended up there together, the tenderness between them. No one knew their story and it was as if their love hadn’t happened at all, and Claire woke with a dread that took the form of thick saliva. In a dream state, she rose to close the curtains. She stood above Mary, who lay unharmed and still curled around the empty space where Claire’s body had been.

Mary had had other women. But why me? Claire wondered. Why now? Perhaps she symbolized the stability Mary had never had. She was Mary’s oldest friend who was still alive. That meant something in this city, this neighborhood. Come to think of it, Mary didn’t have many friends—more often lovers whom she’d call friends in a pinch. Perhaps she made Mary feel sexy for the first time in a long while. Poor lonely, prudish Claire, Mary must be thinking. Claire was just there.

It was Sunday morning. Mary was long awake, working at the typewriter at the bedroom window. Claire watched her from the bed. The new spring sun made the paper gleam and Mary’s morning hair was caught up with light. She turned and smiled.

“It’s you,” Mary said tenderly, moving to the edge of the bed. She wiped the hair away from Claire’s forehead. “I know you.”

Claire pulled the sheets up to her shoulders, embarrassed.

“When did you get so modest?” Mary said, as if they’d woken up naked together on many occasions.

Claire gripped the hem of the sheet to her as she sat up. “I’m not.”

“You’re having second thoughts, aren’t you? I knew it. I made a mess of things again. Now you’re going act awkward around me. You’re going to want to leave.”

“I’m here,” Claire said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

“I know it’s new. And strange. But mostly—”

“Mostly it’s perfect,” Claire said. “The strange part is how normal it feels.”

“Ginsberg normal or Park Avenue normal?”

Claire lifted the sheet away and drew Mary in close.

As if on cue, Leo started crying in the next room. And in that moment, when Mary pulled away, Claire was grateful for the baby, and she hated him. Mary sighed and stood, but Claire stopped her. “I’ll get him,” she said, searching for her nightgown in the rubble.

In the blue-wallpapered nursery, it took a moment for the bundle of blankets in the crib to become a small human in her mind. She folded over the bars and lifted him up, his whole body one shape, irresistible and deeply frightening.

The warm body against her chest, the small breath. Tiny hands pulling her hair. And a face—a real face, chubby and red from crying—looking back at her. She could still feel last night’s red wine hiccup in her veins.

Bouncing Leo in circles around the nursery, she caught a glimpse of herself in the small mirror with a carved giraffe frame. Did she look younger, like she felt yesterday? She had always wondered why one could not be seen as one felt. Or could she? She was momentarily afraid that strangers on the street would be able to tell she had been with a woman. But no, she assured herself, her appearance had not changed overnight. She was Claire; it was a fact outside of fact. And yet, she hardly knew herself. She hadn’t even known who she loved until now. If you are the thing, how can you know the thing?

Along with night windows, her grandmother had avoided mirrors; she was afraid, perhaps, that it wouldn’t be her own reflection staring back at her.

She wanted to look in the mirror just long enough to unknow herself, so she would know what it was like to know herself. Like tensing a muscle so you know what it is to relax. Or undoing a word by repeating it again and again until its meaning is lost. Sorry. Sorry. Sorry was the word she’d repeated as a fearful adolescent, until it was not-sorry, the word with which she realized all words were just a smash of sounds.

But all Claire could see was that her hair was a mess. She tried to believe it didn’t matter. She repeated the thought, it doesn’t matter, until it was a belief. Then she shifted Leo to one arm and used the other to pat down her hair. Leo, who had quieted down, was facing away from the mirror and it looked like she was holding a ball of white blanket, like she was merely playing at being a mother. There, staring back at her from the mirror, was a new woman.

From the nursery, she could hear Mary making coffee. The watery chuckle of the percolator. Silver spoon clinking porcelain. A woman waiting for her; it didn’t feel new at all. She had always been the woman she was in that moment, fast in love with Mary. It had never been otherwise. It would never be otherwise. Claire could not imagine not knowing Mary’s skin. Or her chapped lips, or the weight of Leo in her arms. The smell of black coffee being poured for her. That baby’s breath. That Mary air.