| The Bridge 2 |
| 1 | TWO WHATEVER ENCHANTS, also guides and protects. Passionately obsessed by anything we love-sailboats, airplanes, ideas-an avalanche of magic flattens the way ahead, levels rules, reasons, dissents, bears us with it over chasms, fears, doubts. Without the power of that love . . . "What are you writing?" She looked odd puzzlements at me, as though she had never seen anyone work a pen and notebook, passenging south on the bus to Florida. |
| 2 | Somebody interrupts my privacy with questions, sometimes I answer without explaining, to frighten them silent. "I'm writing a letter to the me I was twenty years ago: Things I Wish I Knew When I Was You." In spite of my miffment, her face was pleasant to see, lit with curiosity and the bravery to satisfy it. Deep brown eyes, hair a dark brushed waterfall. "Read it to me," she said, unfrightened. I did, the last paragraph to where it broke off. |
| 3 | "Is it true?" "Name one thing you've loved," I said. "Liking doesn't count. What one driving obsessive uncontrollable passion . . ." "Horses," she said at once. "I used to love horses." "When you were with your horses, was the world a different color from other times?" She smiled. "Yeah. I was queen of south Ohio. My mom had to lasso me and drag me out of the saddle before I'd go home with her. Afraid? |
| 4 | Not me! I had that big horse under me-Sandy-and he was my friend and nobody was going to hurt me as long as he was there! I loved horses. I loved Sandy." I thought she had stopped talking. Then she added, "I don't feel that way about anything, now." I didn't answer, and she fell into her own private time, back with Sandy. I returned to my letter. Without the power of that love, we're boats becalmed on seas of boredom, and those are deadly . |
| 5 | . . "How are you going to mail a letter to twenty years ago?" she said. "I don't know," I told her, finishing the sentence on the page. "But wouldn't it be terrible, the day comes we learn how to ship something back in time, and we've got nothing to send? So first I thought I'd get the package ready. Next I'll worry about the postage." How many times had I said to myself, it's too bad I didn't kn ow this at age ten, if only I had learned that at twelve, what a waste to understand, twenty years late! "Where are you headed?" she said. |
| 6 | "Geographically?" "Yes." "Away from winter," I said. "South. The middle of Florida." "What's in Florida?" "Not sure. I'm going to meet a friend of mine, and I don't quite know where she is." There, I thought, we have the understatement of the day. "You'll find her." At that I laughed and looked at her. "Do you know what you're saying, 'You'll find her'?" "Yes." "Explain, please." "No," she said, and smiled mysteriously. |
| 7 | Her eyes shone so dark they were almost black. She had smooth walnut-tan skin, no crease, not a mark to hint who she was; so young she hadn't finished building her face. " 'No,' it is," I said, smiling back. The bus boomed along the Interstate, farms rolling past, fall-colored palettes at the edge of the highway. The biplane could have landed in that field, I thought. Telephone-wires high at the edge, but the Fleet could have slipped right down. |
| 8 | . . . Who was this unknown beside me? Was she a cosmic smile at my fears, coincidence sent to melt my doubt? Could be. Anything could be. She could be Shimoda in a mask. "Do you fly airplanes?" I asked casually. "Would I be on this bus? Just thinking about it makes me nervous," she said. "Airplanes!" She shuddered, shook her head. "I hate flying." She opened her purse and reached inside. "Mind if I smoke?" I shrank, cringed from reflex. |
| 9 | "Do I mind? A cigarette? Ma'am, please. . . !" I tried to explain, not to hurt her feelings. "You don't mean . . . you're going to blow smoke into our little bit of air? Force me who has done you no harm to breathe smoke?" If she were Shimoda, she had just found out what I thought of cigarettes. The words froze her stiff. "Well, I'm sorry," she said at last. She picked up her purse, moved to a distant seat. |
| 10 | Sorry she was, and hurt and angry. Too bad. Such dark eyes. I lifted the pen again, to write to the boy long ago. What could I tell him about finding a soulmate? The pen waited above the paper. I had grown up in a house with a fence around it, and in the fence there was a white smoothwooden gate, two holes bored round and low together in the wood so the dog could see through. One night, the moon high, late for me home from the school dance, I remember that I stopped, hand on the gate, and spoke so quietly to myself and to the woman I would love that not even the dog could have heard. |
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