Read Online The Bridge by Rebecca Rogers Maher - Free Book Online
Authors: Rebecca Rogers Maher
Ads: Link
dozens of open-air stalls in Chinatown, though, and on our way to the Manhattan Bridge pedestrian walkway, we stop at one.
On the sidewalk in front of the six-foot square stand are plastic tubs filled with tiny turtles, illegal to sell and covered from neck to toe in salmonella. Overhead hang oversized knockoff cartoon animals in I Love New York T-shirts. Slightly within is a single counter with crowded rows of jewelry and a carousel of sunglasses alongside it.
As I reach for the sunglasses, a flash from the jewelry counter catches my eye—a simple jade-and-silver hairpin. The milky green of the stone is almost glasslike, at once hard and fragile, like a frozen pond. It strikes me suddenly that although I’ve always loved jade, I’ve never owned any. Which is not surprising since I own very little jewelry. A pair of nondescript earrings and perhaps a hair tie around my wrist are usually the best I can do for myself.
I run a fingertip briefly over the pin and then grab a pair of oversized red glasses from the rack. Henry picks some aviators and we push on through the crowd.
It’s like swimming, in a way—the serpentine glide down Canal Street. The smell of fish rolls out like mist from the many seafood markets, and everything is bumping against you—the shoulders and elbows of people hustling to get somewhere, the errant wheels of strollers, the handlebars of passing bikes. You can’t walk down the street here and not be touched. Whether you want to be or not.
Beside the bridge entrance, someone has built a makeshift shelter of mattresses, blankets and boxes. I wonder what it’s like, sleeping there. Whether people bother the occupant, or whether he manages to fade into the concrete, a living ghost, and come and go unseen. Does he have friends? Family? Is he sick? Scared? There are signs of recent food consumption, which at least says that he hasn’t chosen to climb to the center of the bridge, as we have, and jump. His life, from his perspective, is not hard enough for that. I’m not sure how that makes me feel.
Unlike the Brooklyn Bridge, bikes and pedestrians travel on opposite sides of this crossing. It’s a much less popular destination for tourists, even at two o’clock on a Saturday, and it’s insulated, like the inside of a massive mechanical whale. Everything’s in shadow, encased in womblike gray-blue steel. We walk slowly, virtually alone, full of dumplings and chicken and a sudden soporific quiet.
Beside me, Henry walks with a steady, loping gate. His dark leather shoes look careworn, as though he’s traveled the length of the city and back many times. His tailored cuffs swing back and forth across the neatly tied laces.
Farther down the river looms the Brooklyn Bridge—imposing and magnetic—the tops of its towers fully visible in the harsh afternoon light. It’s hard to believe we were up there twelve hours ago, in the darkness. Henry was a stranger to me then. An impediment to my plan, a vague shadow. He becomes clearer every moment, though. Frighteningly clear.
Now, he’s a living, breathing person. A man. A beating heart resting in the palm of my hand. Now, when I think of someone jumping from the bridge tower, it’s him I think of.
His
body I see breaking against the water, hauled inside the current, carried away.
I watched videos of jumpers, before I steeled myself for my own fall. People who dove off the Golden Gate Bridge, for example. I watched them and tried to prepare myself. For how quickly it would happen. A few seconds, that’s all, and then the collision with water. I knew I probably would go down forty or fifty feet below the surface of the East River, and prayed I’d be dead before I saw what lurked in those depths.
I prepared myself. For my own death.
But not for the death of someone I know and care about. Not Henry’s.
“Why there?” I ask him. He slows momentarily. Long enough to follow my gaze out over the brief expanse of water between us and the Brooklyn
On the sidewalk in front of the six-foot square stand are plastic tubs filled with tiny turtles, illegal to sell and covered from neck to toe in salmonella. Overhead hang oversized knockoff cartoon animals in I Love New York T-shirts. Slightly within is a single counter with crowded rows of jewelry and a carousel of sunglasses alongside it.
As I reach for the sunglasses, a flash from the jewelry counter catches my eye—a simple jade-and-silver hairpin. The milky green of the stone is almost glasslike, at once hard and fragile, like a frozen pond. It strikes me suddenly that although I’ve always loved jade, I’ve never owned any. Which is not surprising since I own very little jewelry. A pair of nondescript earrings and perhaps a hair tie around my wrist are usually the best I can do for myself.
I run a fingertip briefly over the pin and then grab a pair of oversized red glasses from the rack. Henry picks some aviators and we push on through the crowd.
It’s like swimming, in a way—the serpentine glide down Canal Street. The smell of fish rolls out like mist from the many seafood markets, and everything is bumping against you—the shoulders and elbows of people hustling to get somewhere, the errant wheels of strollers, the handlebars of passing bikes. You can’t walk down the street here and not be touched. Whether you want to be or not.
Beside the bridge entrance, someone has built a makeshift shelter of mattresses, blankets and boxes. I wonder what it’s like, sleeping there. Whether people bother the occupant, or whether he manages to fade into the concrete, a living ghost, and come and go unseen. Does he have friends? Family? Is he sick? Scared? There are signs of recent food consumption, which at least says that he hasn’t chosen to climb to the center of the bridge, as we have, and jump. His life, from his perspective, is not hard enough for that. I’m not sure how that makes me feel.
Unlike the Brooklyn Bridge, bikes and pedestrians travel on opposite sides of this crossing. It’s a much less popular destination for tourists, even at two o’clock on a Saturday, and it’s insulated, like the inside of a massive mechanical whale. Everything’s in shadow, encased in womblike gray-blue steel. We walk slowly, virtually alone, full of dumplings and chicken and a sudden soporific quiet.
Beside me, Henry walks with a steady, loping gate. His dark leather shoes look careworn, as though he’s traveled the length of the city and back many times. His tailored cuffs swing back and forth across the neatly tied laces.
Farther down the river looms the Brooklyn Bridge—imposing and magnetic—the tops of its towers fully visible in the harsh afternoon light. It’s hard to believe we were up there twelve hours ago, in the darkness. Henry was a stranger to me then. An impediment to my plan, a vague shadow. He becomes clearer every moment, though. Frighteningly clear.
Now, he’s a living, breathing person. A man. A beating heart resting in the palm of my hand. Now, when I think of someone jumping from the bridge tower, it’s him I think of.
His
body I see breaking against the water, hauled inside the current, carried away.
I watched videos of jumpers, before I steeled myself for my own fall. People who dove off the Golden Gate Bridge, for example. I watched them and tried to prepare myself. For how quickly it would happen. A few seconds, that’s all, and then the collision with water. I knew I probably would go down forty or fifty feet below the surface of the East River, and prayed I’d be dead before I saw what lurked in those depths.
I prepared myself. For my own death.
But not for the death of someone I know and care about. Not Henry’s.
“Why there?” I ask him. He slows momentarily. Long enough to follow my gaze out over the brief expanse of water between us and the Brooklyn
Similar Books
