Up close the bartender’s face was boyish and pained, so much so I felt like his mother when I looked at him, and it was unbearable to see him so unhappy after all that I had gone through to bring him into the world. This was not a convenient feeling to have when all I wanted was to order a sandwich and beer. I took a stool facing away from the girl and pushed my bizarre feelings away for long enough to order and I got out a book to avoid looking at the bartender and as I read I half dreamed that the bartender asked me to read aloud to him, and so in my half dream, I did. At first he laughed at the right parts, he saw the quiet tragedy of Mrs. Bridge and I began to think that he had just the right measure of unhappiness and dissatisfaction with life to be someone I could get along with. In my half dream the bartender smiled and we made occasional, comfortable eye contact as I read, but then my fantasy turned sour, and he stopped laughing at any of the funny parts, stopped reacting entirely. He looked around for someone to pour a beer for and seemed dismayed when there was no one. He exhaled visibly. He cracked his knuckles.
Oh, this chapter’s not as good out loud, I said in my half dream. I’ll read a different one.
I flipped to the scene where Mrs. Bridge is trying to learn Spanish from a record, but I mangled the pronunciation and he had to correct me.
It’s Cómo está usted.
Cómo está usted?
No. Cómo está usted.
I am a stupid American, I thought inside the fantasy inside my thought as I read Mrs. Bridge, as the imagined bartender wiped a white towel down the bar, inching away. I decided in my fantasy I would make an effort to speak in a way that was more pleasing to listen to and I would choose a passage better suited for the bartender: the part where Mrs. Bridge, sleepless, has a growing sense of unreality and despair.
She had a feeling that all was not well and she waited in deep expectancy for some further intimation, listening intently, but all she heard before falling asleep was the familiar chiming of the clock.
(The imagined bartender began wiping down the bar again, moving toward me.)
The next morning Lois Montgomery telephoned to say that Grace Barron had committed suicide.
(And he was visibly satisfied with the sudden darkness, and I knew that I’d found a way to capture his attention, though I wasn’t sure what use I had for his attention.)
In the days that followed Mrs. Bridge attempted to suppress this fact. Her reasoning was that nothing could be gained by discussing it; consequently she wrote to Ruth that there was some doubt as to what had been the cause of Mrs. Barron’s death but it was presumed she had accidentally eaten some tuna-fish salad which had been left out of the refrigerator overnight and had become contaminated, and this was what she told Douglas and Carolyn.
(The imagined bartender kept listening and I thought, as I read, inside my thought, that maybe in another dimension this bartender was my child and this was our alternate-universe bedtime story, in the middle of the day, in the middle of a bar, in the middle of my head.)
Her first thought had been of an afternoon on the Plaza when she and Grace Barron had been looking for some way to occupy themselves, and Grace had said, a little sadly, “Have you ever felt like those people in the Grimm fairy tale — the ones who were all hollowed out in the back?”
The idea of my alternate-universe bedtime story dissolved and I left money on the bar and I got up, denied myself a glance at the woman who owned those legs, and wandered away, first to the library where an email from my husband let me know he’d canceled all my credit cards and closed my bank account and that explained it, so I went back to the hostel and counted the money I had: two hundred American dollars in traveler’s checks, twenty-seven New Zealand dollars, thirty-eight New Zealand cents, and one American nickel. I thought about this, remembering that when he took over all our finances after the wedding I somehow hadn’t considered any of the ways that it might become a problem, then lay on the bunk and saw that on the underside of the mattress above mine someone had written THIS PLACE SUCKS.
13
In the morning I checked out of the hostel and walked slowly down the street. Three Japanese girls were posing in front of a mailbox; one pretended to kiss it while a fourth took a picture with her phone. I walked into a bookstore, half-intending to buy a book so I didn’t have to read Mrs. Bridge again, but I noticed a flyer by the door:
What Do You Need? A Home? A Job? Advice?
In smaller letters it asked:
Do You Need To Know Something? Do You Need To Know Someone? Are You Wandering? What If You Had A Place To Stay? Are You Out Here Reading A Flyer And Saying Yes, That Is Me? Some People Are In Need Of Giving; Do You Know Any People Like That? Would You Like To?
There was a name, Dillon, and a number. I wondered for a while why he had capitalized every word on his flyer, then I memorized the number, left the bookstore, found a phone booth, and called.
This is Dillon; may I help? he said after one ring.
I saw your flyer.
And what would you like to tell me?
I’m traveling and need to make some money.
Did you know that no one ever calls from that flyer?
No, I didn’t know that.
Has it ever occurred to you that no one wants to ask for help?
Well, I said, wondering if that was what I was doing — asking for help. That was supposedly the first step in something, in making progress, in becoming a better person with fewer problems. Or wait — was it admitting you have a problem? But doesn’t everyone have problems? Isn’t waking up or drinking water or eating lunch admitting you have a problem? There was a long silence going on. I realized I had stopped talking in the center of a sentence.
Do you have a pen? Can you take down this address?
I was happy he let me stay in my other world where sentences didn’t have endings.
The neighborhood I walked through on the way to Dillon’s seemed like nice families lived inside all the houses, like there was always a woman cooking something inside them all and these nice houses reminded me of a story I’d heard about a woman who’d had enough of her children: One morning after her husband had driven off she dressed the children, a small boy and two very small twin girls, and she put them in the minivan and she drove the minivan to a police station and she took the children out of the minivan and she told them to hold each other’s hands and not to speak, that whatever happened, they should just say nothing, and she led the children into the police station and she told an old man at the front desk, These children — I found these children. I do not know who they belong to or where they should go, and she turned and walked out and got into her minivan and drove home and took a nap and that evening when her husband came home and said, Dear, where are the children?, she said, What children? The husband said he could see in her eyes that she had gotten up and left herself and isn’t that the worst kind of leaving? No one is okay when someone leaves like that and I knew I never wanted to leave that way. I can’t quite remember the end of the story but I thought it somehow involved the husband going to the police station to retrieve his children and finding that they hadn’t said a word all day.