Mrs. Bridge (7 page)

Appearances were an abiding concern of Mrs. Bridge, which was the reason that one evening as she saw Ruth preparing to go out she inquired, “Aren’t you taking a purse, dear?”

Ruth answered in a husky voice that whatever she needed she could carry in her pockets.

Said Mrs. Bridge, “Carolyn always takes a purse/’

Ruth was standing in front of the hall mirror, standing in a way that disturbed Mrs. Bridge, though she did not know precisely why, unless it could be that Ruth’s feet were too far apart and her hips a little too forward. Mrs. Bridge had been trying to cure her of this habit by making her walk around the house with a book balanced on her head, but as soon as the book was removed Ruth resumed sauntering and standing In that unseemly posture.

“And you’re older than Corky,” Mrs. Bridge went on with a frown; and yet, looking at her elder daughter, she could not continue frowning. Ruth really was quite lovely, just as Gladys Schmidt’s husband had said; If only she were not so conscious of it, not so aware of people turning to look at her, for they did stop to look men and women both so deliberately sometimes that Mrs, Bridge grew uneasy, and could not get over the Idea that Ruth, by her posture and her challenging walk, was encouraging people to stare.

“Is somebody coming by for you?”

“I’m only going to the drugstore/’

“What on earth do you do in the drugstore?” asked Mrs. Bridge after a pause. “Madge Arlen told me she saw you there one evening sitting all by yourself in a booth. She said she supposed you were waiting for someone/’

At this Ruth stiffened noticeably, and Mrs. Bridge wanted to ask, “Were you?”

“I really don’t approve of you sitting around in drugstores/’ she went on, for she was afraid to ask directly if Ruth was going there to meet a boy not afraid of asking the question, but of the answer. “And I don’t believe your father would approve of it either/ she continued, feeling helpless and querulous in the knowledge that her daughter was hardly listening. “Goodness, I should think you could find something else to do. What about playing with Carolyn and her friends?*’

Ruth didn’t bother to answer.

“Ill lend you my blue suede purse, if you like/’ said Mrs. Bridge hopefully, but again there was no response. Ruth was still admiring herself in the mirror.

“I shouldn’t think you could carry much in those pockets/’

Ruth stepped backward, narrowed her eyes, and unfastened the top button of her blouse.

“Really, you need some things/’ Mrs. Bridge remarked a trifle sharply. “And button yourself up, for goodness sake. You look like a chorus girl/*

“Good night,” said Ruth flatly and started for the door.

“But, dear, a lady always carries a purse!” Mrs. Bridge was saying when the door closed.

Ruth was not particularly extravagant, In contrast to Carolyn, who spent her allowance the day she received it usually on a scarf or a baggy sweater, despite the fact that her dresser drawers were filled with scarves and sweaters but Mrs. Bridge did not approve of Ruth’s taste. Her allowance was apt to go for a necklace, or a sheer blouse, or a pair of extreme earrings. The earrings were impossible. Mrs. Bridge, whose preference in earrings tended toward the inconspicuous, such as a moderately set pearl, tried to restrain herself whenever she caught sight of Ruth wearing something unusually objection-able, but there was one morning when she appeared for breakfast in Mexican huaraches, Japanese silk pajamas with the sleeves rolled up displaying a piece of adhesive tape where she had cut herself while shaving her forearms blue horn-rimmed reading glasses, and for earrings a cluster of tiny golden bells that tinkled whenever she moved. She might have gotten by that morning except for the fact that as she ate she steadily relaxed and contracted her feet so that the huaxaches creaked.

“Now see here, young lady,” Mrs. Bridge said with more authority than she felt, as she dropped a slice of bread into the automatic toaster. “In the morning one doesn’t wear earrings that dangle. People will think you’re something from another world.”

“So?” said Ruth without looking up from the newspaper.

“Just what do you mean by that?”

“So who cares?”

7 care, that’s who!” Mrs. Bridge cried, suddenly very close to hysteria, “I care very much/

Douglas did a peculiar thing.

Instead of building a cave, or a house in a tree, as most of his friends were doing, he chose to build a tower of rubbish.

“Sounds awfully exciting/’ Mrs. Bridge responded somewhat absently when he first told her of his project; then, because she knew children wanted their parents to be interested in what they were doing, she asked how big it was going to be. He was vague, saying only that it was going to be the biggest tower anybody ever saw. She smiled and patted him affectionately. He looked at her for a long moment, shrugged in a singular way, and returned to the vacant lot where he intended to build the tower.

In the lot he had found some two-by-fours and a number of old bricks and half a bag of cement. He did not know where these materials had come from; he waited several days to see if they belonged to anybody. Apparently they didn’t, so he claimed them. He got a shovel and went to work.

Having dug a hole about four feet deep, he lined it with brick and cement, planted the two-by-fours solidly upright, and liberally sprinkled this foundation with water. He then waited for his friends, the trash collectors, and followed their truck around the neighborhood. There was a moment between the time a rubbish barrel was rolled to the curb and the time the truck stopped for it that Douglas made good use of; he grabbed anything he thought belonged on his tower. He collected a great quantity of useful objects, and, on the side, about forty or fifty cereal boxtops, which he mailed to such places as Battle Creek, where there was a cereal factory, getting in return all kinds of prizes.

Within a week he had accumulated enough junk to keep the construction going for a long while. Half-hidden in the tall grass and wild shrubbery of the vacant lot lay a bundle of brass curtain rods which the Arlens thought were now in the city dump, a roll of electrician’s tape and a bent skillet from the Pfeiffers* trash barrel, a hatchet with a splintered handle, a cigar box full of rusty nails, a broken fishing rod, several lengths of clothesline and wire, coat hangers, bottles, two apple boxes, an old raincoat and a pair of worn galoshes, a punctured inner tube, some very old golf clubs with wooden shafts, the cylinder from a lawnmower, springs from an over-stuffed chair, and, among other articles, thanks again to the unconscious generosity of the Arlens, a mildewed leather suitcase.

“My I** said Mrs. Bridge, when he told her he was working on the tower, “I can see you’re going to be an architect or an engineer when you grow up. Now we’re having an early lunch because this is my day for bridge club, so don’t run off somewhere.”

Douglas said he would be in the vacant lot.

During the next week he managed to steal a full bag of powdered cement from a house going up in the next block; he broke it open after the workmen left, shoveled the powder into a wheelbarrow, and eventually managed to push the wheelbarrow into the vacant lot, where he dumped the powder In the pit and gave It a thorough watering. Thereafter he stopped mentioning his tower, and If asked what he was doing in the lot he would reply laconically that he was just playing.

With the addition of jugs and stones, tin cans, tree limbs, broken bottles, and all the other trash he could find, tied or nailed or cemented to the uprights, the tower continued to grow, until there came a Sunday morning when a man named Ewing who lived on the far side of the lot saw the tower rising above his hedge. At this point it was nearly six feet high. Ewing went around for a better look, and, discovering Douglas watching him from behind a sycamore tree, said to him, ^*What have you got here, my friend?”

“Nothing/’ replied Douglas, coming out from behind the sycamore. “It’s just a tower, that’s all. It isn’t hurting anybody/’

Having inspected the tower from all sides, Ewing turned his attention to Douglas, because it was the builder, after all, and not the building which was remarkable; and Douglas, embarrassed by the speculative eyes, picked up a length of pipe and struck the tower a resounding blow to prove it was as substantial as It looked.

Shortly thereafter Mrs. Bridge saw it too it rose jaggedly above the fence that divided their grounds from the lot and went out to investigate. She looked at it for a considerable period, tapping a fingernail against her teeth, and that same afternoon she said lightly to her son, “My, but that certainly is a big old tower/’

Douglas thrust his hands in his pockets and gazed with a distant expression at his shoes.

“Think what would happen if it fell over ker-p?un& and hit you square on the head,” she continued, ruffling his hair, and reflecting automatically that he needed another haircut.

Douglas knew his tower would stop a truck, so he only sighed and pursed his lips.

Mrs. Bridge was not overly concerned, being under the impression he was going to become bored with the tower and would dismantle it. But about two weeks later she realized he was still working on it, because she could see a cider jug and a chicken coop wired to the top of a broken chair, and she recalled that on her last visit this chair had been on top of everything. She had assumed this chair was his throne; she remembered how he liked to play king-of-the-mountain, and possibly he only built the tower in order to have a throne. Now, wondering how much higher he meant to go, she walked out to the vacant lot for another look, and this time she remained somewhat longer. Tentatively she pushed at the tower and was troubled by its solidity. She pushed again, with her palm, and again, much harder. The tower did not sway an inch. She began to wonder whether or not he would be able to destroy his creation assuming she could convince him it ought to be torn down.

She intended to speak to him that same afternoon, but she did not know precisely how to begin because, like the tower, he seemed to be growing out of her reach. He was becoming more than a small boy who could be coaxed this way or that; the hour was approaching when she must begin to reason with him as with an adult, and this idea disturbed her. She was not certain she was equal to it. And so a few days, a week, two weeks went by, and though she had not spoken neither had she forgotten.

“Well!* 1 she finally exclaimed, as though she had just thought of it, “I see that ugly old tower keeps getting bigger and bigger.” It was, to tell the truth, quite a bit bigger. When he did not say a word, or even look at her, she wanted to grab him by the shoulders and shake loose whatever was growing inside him.

“It seems to me that a big boy like you wouldn’t want to go on building a silly tower,” she said, hopefully, and then he glanced at her in a way that was somehow derisive, as if he were reading her mind.

“111 tell you what let’s do!” She stooped In order to look directly Into his face. “First thing after dinner well get some wire clippers and a hammer and a screwdriver and well, just everything we need, and you and 1 together will tear it to bits* Won’t that be fun?”

He turned his head away and said very softly, “No.”

‘No?Whynot?”

After a while Douglas rubbed his nose and muttered that there was too much concrete.

“Oh, 111 bet we ” Mrs. Bridge hesitated. Her insights usually arrived too late to illuminate the situation, but this one was in time.

“You’re probably right,” she said, continuing with treach-erous frankness, “I doubt if you or anybody else could tear it down/’

She watched him almost fall into the trap. He was ready to defy her by saying he could if he wanted to, and if she could get him to say that she knew the battle would be half over. He was on the verge of it; she could see the defiance on his face and in the way he stood. But then, instead of answering, he paused to think, and Mrs. Bridge was dismayed. All her life she had been accustomed to responding immediately when anyone spoke to her. If she had been complimented she promptly and graciously thanked the speaker; or if, by chance, her opinion was asked on something, anything the cost of butter, the Italian situation no matter what, if she was asked she answered readily. Now, seeing her son with his mouth clamped shut like a turtle with a seed and his face puckered in thought, she did not know what to do. She gazed down on him expectantly.

After a long silence Douglas said, ” Maybe/’

And here, for the time being, the matter rested.

Mrs. Bridge stood alone at a front window thinking of how quickly the years were going by. The children were growing up so rapidly, and her husband She stirred uneasily. Already there was a new group of “young marrieds/* people she hardly knew. Surely some time had gone by she expected this; nevertheless she could not get over the feeling that something was drawing steadily away from her. She wondered if her husband felt the same; she thought she would ask him that evening when he got home. She recalled the dreams they used to share; she recalled with a smile how she used to listen to him speak of his plans and how she had never actually cared one way or another about his ambition, she had cared only for him. That was enough. In those days she used to think that the long hours he spent in his office were a temporary condition and that as soon as more people came to him with legal problems he would, somehow, begin spending more time at home. But this was not the way it turned out, and Mrs. Bridge understood now that she would never see very much of him. They had started off together to explore something that promised to be wonderful, and, of course, there had been wonderful times. And yet, thought Mrs. Bridge, why is it, that we haven’t that nothing has that whatever we ?

It was raining. Thunder rambled through the lowering clouds with a constant, monotonous, trundling sound, like furniture being rolled back and forth in the attic. In the front yard the evergreen trees swayed in the wind and the shutters rattled in the sudden rainy gusts. She noticed that a branch had been torn from the soft maple tree; the branch lay on the driveway and the leaves fluttered.