Peter Orner - Last Car Over the Sagamore Bridge

What territory?

The territory of being richer than God, my brother says. The landscape of sex and whisperings and innuendo.

I would rather fish up a whelk than listen to this, a live whelk with a black body inside, a Jell-O-ish squirmy thing that we will take back to our rented house and boil alive on the stove.

Even so, I ask, how much not very beautiful was she?

And my brother says, Not particularly unbeautiful. Just not that beautiful for a Kennedy. She wasn’t Jackie, is what I’m trying to say. But anyway, nobody was Jackie. Even Jackie wasn’t Jackie. Anyway, Teddy may have even loved her though he hardly knew her. Especially after she asphyxiated.

What do you mean?

My brother stares at me for a while. He and I have the same eyes, which is sometimes creepy. You don’t know yourself coming and going, as my grandmother used to say. Then he squats in the water and takes up a couple of handfuls of ocean water and raises his hands as it flows through his fingers. Don’t we sort of love what we kill? my brother says. What about the whelks?

Our bikes are on the bridge, leaning against a broken piling. Dyke Bridge is tiny, a miniature bridge. It is not much bigger than the width of a Chevy and nearly the same length. Driving off it is the bathroom equivalent of falling out of the bathtub.

I e-mail my brother and ask him if he remembers all this. He is still very sensitive when it comes to the Kennedys. Like my mother, he remains a staunch believer in the notion that the New England wisdom embodied by the Kennedys and their aristocracy of sorrow will save this doomed country yet. My brother works in Washington.

Why exaggerate? Why tell it worse? What happened isn’t enough? Yes, it’s a dinky bridge, but it’s bigger than a bathtub. I remember. We were out there with Dad. He took pictures. He thought the whole thing was hilarious. He kept saying, Be careful not to step on Mary Jo’s face .

And furthermore, my brother says, I should not, even over private electronic communication (remember: don’t use my.gov address for things like this) provide aid and succor to the haters who still love to dredge this story up out of the muck. Remember Chappaquiddick! Let the man rest in peace. And anyway, he says, why don’t you just pick up the phone and call me? Why do you e-mail your brother?

I write: E-mail gives the illusion of dramatic distance. Pretend I’m in Shanghai or somewhere.

He replies: Anyway, isn’t anything drive-offable if you put your mind to it? Or even when you don’t, especially when you don’t? He was tanked, what’s the story? You’re going to pass judgment? Look at your own life.

My brother is right. He is right. Even when he is not right, he is right. Look at my own life. And nothing he has ever told me have I forgotten.

It is only that something happened there, under that bridge, where my brother and I once swam. As things do, as they always have, so many more things (strange things, impossible things) than we can even begin to imagine. Dream it up. It already happened. One minute you’re drunk and laughing and your hand is on her bare summer thigh and there’s nothing but tonight ahead, and the next, the car is upside down and water’s flowing in through the cracks in the windows and the car’s like a big fat grounded fish and there’s this woman — what’s her name? — flailing her arms in the darkness and trying to shout but no sound is coming out of her mouth, and you wonder for a moment if you love her. Wait, what’s your name again? I’m confused. This is all so much black confusion. Shouldn’t I be swimmingly noble? Don’t I know the cross-chest carry? Aren’t I a Kennedy? Aren’t I the brother of the hero of PT-109? Isn’t now the time? No. Now is not the time. Now is the time to save yourself. Doesn’t matter who you are, Senator, save yourself — and run. My brother once said (though he doesn’t remember): Don’t we sort of love what we kill? This I’ve learned on my own. Sometimes you just have to save yourself and then run like hell. There’ll always be time for nobility, honor, sorrow, remorse, yes, maybe even love — in the morning.

The shadow of that little bridge over our heads. Us in the dark water, my brother and me, the gummy sand, July 1976.

No man is an Ireland .

— RICHARD J. DALEY,

48TH MAYOR OF CHICAGO

His Honor’s dreams tended to be practical and concerned matters such as tax policy or the loosening of onerous zoning restrictions or who to slate for state’s attorney. This was different. He found himself pounding on the door of a house, an ordinary bungalow. For some reason, he wasn’t able to use his fists. He’d lost the ability to close his hands. And so with open palms he pounded. Of course, it was his own house at Thirty-sixth and Lowe. Except at first he didn’t seem to know this. He tried to pound harder, his hands hopelessly platting against the door. Sis isn’t home, nor are any of the the children. He has no keys, apparently no pockets, either, though he’s wearing a suit. He goes around the house. Same thing. Back door’s locked. He’s starting to worry that the neighbors will think he is a prowler. He has influence? He knows President Johnson? He knows the Queen of England? Bring the kids next time, Lizzie . Right now he is only a man, Dick Daley, and he’s locked out of his house. Try throwing your weight around in a dream and see where it gets you. He goes around to the front again and sits on the stoop. Night comes without any slowness. It’s day. It’s dark. He sits on the stoop. The lights pop on in the house across the street, and he watches the shadows beyond the curtains. He watches those shadows — the Cowleys’ shadows — for what feels like hours. Now he wants to know something. Why do shadows dance when if you look directly at the people themselves — not their shadows — they aren’t dancing?

Her name is Allie and she sits outside a ring of boys at the bottom of this hill of sand, along the southern edge of Lake Michigan. Chicago rises like a kingdom in the distance. Closer, maybe a quarter of a mile away, lurk the boxy towers of a defunct steel mill. Out in the water is a platform with a rusty crane, floating with no apparent purpose. She wonders how long it has been since the crane has been useful and whether it will ever be useful again. Allie hugs her shoulders and inhales the clean, mineral waft. The lake, for some reason, has always smelled like rice to her.

She used to love one of the boys — Marcus — but it’s become clear to her that it isn’t Marcus but all the boys together that she loves, wants. Their motley collection of skinny bodies. Alone, she could take or leave any one of them, but together there is something so skittery about them. They all want her, too, or at least they claim to, with their sagging mouths. But would they even know what to do with her body if she tried to give it to them? She’s long known what to do with theirs, and she lets them know, and this makes them nervous and need to grip each other harder. It is each other they need. Later, maybe, her. Later one or the other of them will fumble for her in the dark. Now it is only this unfinished day, the sun like a fiery headlight through the trees on the top of the bluff, and the sand, the waves riding slowly up the beach. Wave after wave breaks and flattens, but the noise of them never pauses for even a single breath. That low, constant roar that she will hear long after they all leave this beach. It is each other they need, and it is their needing each other that she wants. She sits on the sand and watches. They wrestle and chase; they smash their bodies into each other. She cups some sand and drains it on her feet. She scratches her long legs. She digs a groove in the sand with her heel and waits to be noticed. Marcus locks arms with Anthony, lifts him up, Anthony’s big feet waving. It will go away, this time. Just like the nicknames her father used to call her. Now that she has breasts, he calls her Allison. She stands up and runs down to the edge of the water. She dives, leaving her eyes open. The cold stings. She swims through the blur. The boys have a new thing they say: Butter my bread. Butter it, butter it. She’d do it, faster than they could even imagine. They’d run up the dunes screaming for their mothers. Butter nothing, wimps. For now, let them lie about it. For now, let them stay skinny cowards flinging into each other. She rises and stands in the shallow water and faces the beach as the waves break upon the shore, only to fall back toward her.