Bridge of Clay(142)

    When we left, he’d held it out to our father:

The bronze and the pale-covered book.

“It’s time I gave you this back.”

As he walked toward my station wagon, there was a final father’s last gasp; he ran up quickly, behind him. He said, “Clay—Clay!”

And Clay knew what he’d wanted to say to him.

But he knew he was leaving us all.

“Clay—the backyard—” and Clay cut him off with his hand. He said what he’d said to him years ago; a child and not yet a bridge: “It’s okay, Dad. It’s okay.” But he soon added something else. “She really was something, wasn’t she?” and our father could only agree.

“Yes,” he said, “she was.”

When he got in the car, Clay watched us.

We all shook hands with our father.

There was talking, and Tommy calling Rosy, and Clay gone to sleep in the station wagon; his face against the window.

He slept through us crossing his bridge.



* * *



—

At home, it took most of a day and a night, as he and I sat in this kitchen. My brother had told me everything—of Penelope and Michael, and all of us—and all he had been with Carey. Twice I nearly broke down, and once I thought I’d be sick; but even then he’d talked on, he’d rescued me. He’d said, “Matthew, but listen to this.” He told me how when he’d carried her, she was that pale and blond-backed girl again, and the last thing she’d seen was the pegs. He said to me, “Now it’s you, Matthew. You have to go out and tell him. You have to go out and tell Dad. He doesn’t know that’s how I saw her. He doesn’t know that’s how she was.”

When he was done, I thought of Penelope, and the mattress, The Surrounds. If only we’d burned it when we should have! God, I thought so many things. No wonder, no wonder. He was never the boy he’d been; he would leave now and never return. There was just too much of him left here: the carry of too much memory. I thought of Abbey Hanley, then Carey—and what she’d called him at Bernborough Park.

    We’d lost our beautiful boy.



* * *



—

When he left, next day, there wasn’t much said, you know by now how we are. It was Clay who did the most talking, I think, for he was the one who’d prepared.

To Rory, he said, “I’ll miss our hart-to-harts,” and there was rust and wire around him. They laughed to ease the ache.

For Henry, it was simple.

He’d said, “Good luck with your lotto numbers—I know you’re going to win.”

And Henry, of course, half tackled him.

He’d answered him, “One to six.”

When he tried offering Clay some money, one last time, Clay just shook his head again.

“It’s okay, Henry, you keep it.”

And Tommy—young Tommy.

Clay put his hands on his shoulders.

“She’ll meet you at the thylacine,” and it was that that nearly finished us—until all who was left was me.

For me, he was able to wait.

Soon he’d walked between us, the way boys often do. We don’t mind touching—shoulders, elbows, knuckles, arms—and now he’d turned and faced me.

For a while he said nothing at all; he simply made his way to the piano, and quietly lifted the lid. Inside remained her dress, and The Iliad and The Odyssey.

Slowly, he reached in, then handed the books to me.

“Go on,” he said, “open the top one.”

    Inside were two separate notes.

The first was the letter from Waldek.

The second was a little more recent:

    In case of an emergency

(like you keep running out of books)



There was the number, and signed, ck.

I almost said he should give it a Goddamn rest, but he got there, easily, first.

“Read everything she gives you, but always come back to these.” His eyes were fierce and firelit. “And then one day you’ll know. You’ll know to go out to Featherton, to dig up the old TW, but you’ll have to get your measurements right, or you might dig up Moon, or the snake….” His voice became a whisper. “Promise me, Matthew, promise.”



* * *



—

And so it was.

He left us late that evening.

We watched him walk, down the porch, across the lawn onto Archer Street, and our lives were left without him. Sometimes we’d catch a shadow, or see him walk through the streets of the racing quarter—but we knew it was never Clay.

As the years climbed by, I could tell you so much:

We all had lives of our own.

Every now and then there’d be a postcard, from places he must have worked in—like Avignon and Prague, or later, a city called Isfahan—and of course they were places of bridges. My favorite was from Pont du Gard.

Here, we missed him with every minute, but we couldn’t help being ourselves; the years spanned out to eleven—since the day our father had come, and asked if we might build a bridge.



* * *



—

For Tommy in that time, he grew up.