Charles Wilson - A Bridge of Years

The desk clerk glanced at the ledger as he handed her the key. “Room 312, Mrs. Winter.”

Barbara was startled. Had she really signed that name? She took the key and shot a sidelong glance at the page where she had, yes, written Mrs. Barbara Winter in neat script.

The motel was a three-story brick bivouac set back from a dismal stretch of highway maybe an hour’s drive from Belltower. She had considered driving straight through; but Tony’s call had reached her this afternoon at a conference in Victoria, B.C., and it was late now; she was tired; her car was tired, too. So she had stopped at this bleak roadside place at 10:30 p.m. in a light rain and signed her married name to the register.

Room 312 smelled of dry heat and disinfectant. The bed creaked and the window blinds opened on a view of the neon vacancysign reflected in the slick wet parking lot. Cars and trucks passed on the highway in clusters of three or four, their tires hissing in the rain.

Maybe it’s stupid to see him.

The thought was unavoidable. She’d been having it intermittently since she climbed into the car. It echoed as she shrugged out of her jeans and blouse and stepped into the shower stall, washing away road dirt.

Maybe it was stupid to see him; maybe useless, too. Rafe had taken it well, with a minimum of pouting; but Rafe, twenty-three years old, saw the six-year gap between them as a chasm, was threatened by the notion of her lingering affection for Tom. She had obliged him by keeping contacts to a minimum … until now.

It was stupid to risk her relationship with Rafe—which was all the relationship she had at the moment, and one she was desperate not to lose. But she remembered what Tony had said on the phone:

I can’t do anything for him this time.

The words had gone through her like a shot of cold air.

“Please,” she said out loud. “Please, Tom, you dumb bastard, please be okay.”

Then she climbed under the cold motel sheets and slept till dawn.

In the morning, she tried the phone. He didn’t answer.

She panicked at first. Scolded herself for having spent the night here: it wouldn’t have been that much farther to drive. She could have gone on, could have knocked at his door, saved him from—

What?

Well, that was the question, wasn’t it? The great unanswered question.

She checked out, stowed her luggage in the trunk of the car, pulled into the sparse dawn traffic droning down the highway.

Since she left Tom she had spoken to his brother Tony exactly twice. On both occasions he had asked for her help with Tom.

The first call had been months ago. Tom had been drinking, the job had fallen through, he owed back rent on his apartment. If Barbara had known she might have tried to help … but by the time Tony put in his call the situation was nearly resolved; Tony had arranged for a job in Belltower and Tom had dried out. “I don’t think there’s anything I could do to help,” she’d said.

“You could come back to him,” Tony had said. “Much as it pains me to say so. I think that would help.”

“Tony, you know I can’t do that.”

“Why the hell not? For Tom’s sake, I mean.”

“We broke up for a reason. I have another relationship.”

“You’re shacked up with some teenage anarchist. I heard about it.”

“This isn’t helping, Tony.”

And Tony responded, “You must be the best cooze in Washington State, Barbara, because I can’t figure out why else my brother would be racked up over you,” and hung up. Barbara hadn’t expected to hear from him after that. Surely only desperation would lead him to call again.

Presumably, desperation had. Tony’s second call—yesterday’s call—had been routed up to the Conference on Forestry and the Environment in Victoria by one of the board members at World Watch, an advocacy group Barbara worked for. First came a warning call from Rachel, her coworker: “Barb, do you really know this guy? He says he’s related to your ex. He says, ‘I know she works for this pinko organization and I need to talk to her now.’ Some family thing. He said it was urgent so I gave him the hotel number, but I wondered—”

“It’s okay,” Barbara said. “That’s fine, Rachel. You did the right thing.”

She waited ten minutes by the phone, standing up Rafe at the Jobs or Oxygen seminar. Then Tony’s call came up from the switchboard. “It’s about Tom,” he said.

Barbara felt a sudden weight at the back of her neck: a headache beginning. She said, “Tony … didn’t we have this conversation once?”

“It’s different this time.”

“What’s changed?”

“Just listen to me, Barbara, will you do that? Save up all the psychological crap until I’m finished?”

Barbara bit her Up but said nothing. Underneath the insult was some urgency: from Tony, a new thing.

“Better,” he said. “Thank you. I’m calling about Tom, and the reason I’m calling is that I think he’s going off the deep end in a serious way and this time I don’t know what to do about it.”

Urgency and this confession. Barbara said, “Is he drinking again?”

“That’s the weird thing. I don’t think he is. He’ll disappear for days at a time—but he comes back clean and he’s not hung over. He’s holed up in this house he bought out on the Post Road. Hardly sees anybody. Reclusive. And it’s cutting into his life. He’s missed time at the lot and the sales manager is seriously pissed at him. Plus, it’s things I don’t know how to explain. Did you ever meet somebody who just didn’t give a fuck? You could say hello, you could tell them your uncle died, and maybe they say something sympathetic, but you can tell they just don’t care?”

“I’ve met people like that,” Barbara said. Like you, you asshole, she thought.

“Tom ever strike you as one of those?”

“No.”

“Well, that’s what he is now. He has no friends, he has no money, he’s on the brink of losing his job—and none of this matters. He’s out in some other dimension.”

Didn’t sound like Tom at all. Tom had always been a second-guesser—obsessed with consequences. Because of the way his parents had died, she guessed, or maybe it came from some deeper chamber of his personality, but Tom had always feared and distrusted the future. “It could still be alcohol.”

“I’m not stupid,” Tony said. “I don’t care how subtle he is about it, I know when my brother is juicing. This is something altogether else. Last time I went to the house, you know what happened? He wouldn’t let me in. He opened the door, flashed me a big smile and said, ‘Go away, Tony.’ ”

“He’s happy, though?”

“Happy isn’t the word. Detached. You want me to say what I think? I think he might be suicidal.”

Barbara swallowed hard. “That’s a big leap.”

“He’s signing off, Barbara. He won’t even talk to me, but that’s the impression I have. He doesn’t care what happens in the world because he already said goodbye to it.”

The phone was a dead weight in her hand. “What does Loreen think about this?”

“It was Loreen who convinced me to call you.”

Then it was serious. Loreen was no genius but she had a feeling for people. Barbara said, “Tony, why? What brought this on?”

“Who knows? Maybe Tom could tell you.”

“You want me to talk to him?”

“I can’t tell anybody what to do anymore. I’m way past that. If you’re worried, you know where to find him.”

Buzz and hum after Tony hung up.

Her marriage was over. She didn’t owe Tom anything. Unfair, to have this dumped in her lap.