Bridge of Clay Read online

  Moths were there, too. A moon.

  Clay lay on his back.

  The girl paused a moment at the edge, she put something down, on the ground, then lay on her side, with a leg strapped loosely over him. There was the auburn itch of hair on his skin, and just like always he liked it. He could sense she’d noticed the graze on his cheek, but knew too much to ask, or to look for further injuries.

  But still, she had to do it.

  “You boys,” she said, and touched the wound. Then waited for Clay to speak.

  “Are you enjoying the book?” The question felt vaguely heavy at first, as if somehow pulleyed up. “Still good the third time round?”

  “Even better—Rory didn’t tell you?”

  He tried to remember if Rory had said something along those lines.

  “I saw him on the street,” she said, “a few days ago. I think it was just before—”

  Clay almost sat up, but quelled it. “Before—what?”

  She knew.

  She knew he’d come home.

  Clay, for now, ignored it, preferring to think about The Quarryman, and its faded old bookmark betting stub, of Matador in the fifth. “Where are you up to, anyway? Has he gone to work in Rome yet?”

  “Bologna, too.”

  “That’s fast. You still in love with his broken nose?”

  “Oh yeah, you know I can’t help it.”

  He gave her a short, broad grin. “Me too.”

  Carey liked the fact that Michelangelo had had his nose broken as a teenager, for being too much of a smart mouth; a reminder that he was human. A badge of imperfection.

  For Clay, it was slightly more personal.

  He knew of another broken nose, too.

  * * *

  —

  Back then—way back then, a few days after she moved in—Clay was out front on the porch, eating toast, a dinner plate up on the rail. It was just as he finished when Carey crossed Archer Street, in a flannelette shirt and well-worn jeans; the shirt rolled up at the elbows. The last piece of sun beside her:

  The glow of her forearms.

  The angle of her face.

  Even her teeth, they weren’t quite white, they weren’t quite straight, but they had something nonetheless, a quality; like sea glass, eroded smooth, from grinding them in her sleep.

  At first she wondered if he’d even seen her, but then he walked, timidly, down the steps, the plate still in his hands.

  From that close-but-careful range, she surveyed him; interested, happily curious.

  The first word he ever said to her was “Sorry.”

  He spoke it downwards, into the plate.

  * * *

  —

  After a comfortable, customary silence, Carey spoke again. Her chin touched his collarbone, and this time she’d make him face it.

  “So,” she said, “he came….”

  Their voices were never whispered there—just quiet, like friends, unthreatened—and now she confessed, “It was Matthew who told me.”

  Clay felt it in his graze.

  “You saw Matthew?”

  She nodded, just slightly, against his neck, and went on to reassure him. “I was coming in Thursday night when he was taking out the garbage. It’s hard to avoid you Dunbar boys, you know.”

  And Clay could have almost broken then:

  The name Dunbar, and soon to be gone.

  “It must have been pretty rough,” she said, “seeing—” She adjusted. “Seeing him.”

  “There are rougher things.”

  Yes, there were, and they both knew it.

  “Matthew said something about a bridge?”

  She was right, I had. It was one of the more unsettling traits of Carey Novac; you seemed to tell her more than you should.

  Silence again. One twirling moth.

  Closer now when she spoke, he could feel the actual words, as if put there, on his throat. “Are you leaving to build a bridge, Clay?”

  That moth wouldn’t go away.

  * * *

  —

  “Why?” she’d asked; that long-ago front lawn. “Why are you sorry?”

  The street had all gone dark.

  “Oh, you know, I should’ve come over and helped you unpack the other day. I just sat there.”

  “On the roof?”

  He liked her already.

  He liked her freckles.

  Their positioning on her face.

  You only saw them if you really looked.

  * * *

  —

  Now Clay navigated, to a place well clear of our father.

  “Hey,” he said, he looked over. “Can you finally show me your tips tonight?”

  She curled in more intensely, but let him get away with it. “Don’t talk to me like that. Be a gentleman, for God’s sake.”

  “Tips, I said, not…” His voice faded, and this was all part of it, each time at The Surrounds. It didn’t matter that Saturday night was the worst time to ask for betting advice, since all the big races had been run and won that afternoon. The other, less prestigious race day was Wednesday, but as I said, the question was only a ritual. “What are they saying down at trackwork?”

  Carey half smiled now, happy to play. “Oh yeah, I got tips all right. I got tips you can’t even handle.” Her fingers touched his collarbone. “I got Matador in the fifth.”

  He knew that despite being happy to say it, her eyes were close to tears then, and he held her that extra piece tighter—and Carey used the momentum, to slip down, to put her head upon his chest.

  His heart was out of its gate.

  He wondered how hard she could hear it.

  * * *

  —

  On the lawn, they’d talked on. She was getting onto statistics.

  “How old are you?”

  “Pretty much fifteen.”

  “Yeah? I’m pretty much sixteen.”

  She stepped closer then, and nodded, just slightly, toward the roof. “Why aren’t you up there tonight?”

  He quickened—she’d always had him quickening, but not in a way he minded. “Matthew told me to take a day off. He yells at me about that a lot.”

  “Matthew?”

  “You might have seen him. He’s the oldest. He’s good at saying Jesus Christ.” And now Clay had smiled, and she took the opportunity.

  “Why do you go up there, anyway?”

  “Oh, you know.” He thought how best to explain it. “You can see a pretty long way.”

  “Can I come up one day?”

  It shocked him that she’d asked, but he couldn’t help starting to joke with her. “I don’t know. It’s not that easy to get up there.”

  And Carey laughed; she bit the hook. “Bullshit. If you can climb it, I can, too.”

  “Bullshit?”

  They both half grinned.

  “I won’t distract you, I promise.” But then she got the idea. “If you let me come up, I’ll bring binoculars.”

  She seemed always to be thinking ahead.

  * * *

  —

  When he was there with Carey, sometimes The Surrounds felt bigger.

  The household junk stood like distant monuments.

  The suburbs felt further away.

  That night, after Carey’s tips and Matador, she spoke evenly, about the stables. He asked if she was due for a run on race day, and not just trackwork and barrier trials. Carey answered that McAndrew had said nothing, but knew what he was doing. If she pestered him, it would set her back months.

  The whole time, of course, her head lay on his chest, or up against his neck, his favorite of favorite things. In Carey Novac, Clay had found someone who knew him, who was him, in all but one life-defining way. He also knew that if she could
have, she’d have traded anything to share that with him as well:

  The reason he carried the peg.

  She’d have traded her jockey’s apprenticeship for it, or her first Group One winner, let alone a ride in a listed race. She’d even have traded a mount in the Race That Stops the Nation, I’m sure, or the race she loved even more: the Cox Plate.

  But she couldn’t.

  What she could understand, though, without a moment’s hesitation, was the way to see him off, and quietly, she pleaded. Gentle but matter-of-fact:

  “Don’t do it, Clay, don’t go, don’t leave me…but go.”

  Had she been a character in one of Homer’s epics, she’d have been the clear-eyed Carey Novac, or Carey of the valuable eyes. This time she let him know exactly how much she’d miss him, but also that she expected—or more so, demanded—that he do what he had to do.

  Don’t do it, Clay, don’t leave me…but go.

  * * *

  —

  As she left back then, she realized:

  In the middle of Archer Street, the girl turned.

  “Hey, what’s your name?”

  The boy, from in front of the porch. “It’s Clay.”

  A silence.

  “And? You don’t want to know my name?”

  But she spoke like she’d known him always, and Clay remembered himself, and asked, and the girl came walking back.

  “It’s Carey,” she said, and left again, when Clay called out an afterthought.

  “Hey, how do you spell that?”

  And now she jogged over, she took the plate.

  With her finger, she wrote her name, carefully, amongst the crumbs, then laughed when it was hard to decipher it—but they both knew the letters were in there.

  Then she smiled at him, brief but warmly, and crossed the road for home.

  * * *

  —

  For twenty minutes more, they stayed and they were quiet; and The Surrounds was quiet around them.

  And this was always the worst of it:

  Carey Novac leaned away.

  She sat at the edge of the mattress, but when she stood to leave, she crouched. She kneeled at the side of the bed, where she’d paused upon arrival, and held a package now, wrapped in newspaper; and slowly, she put it down, she placed it against his ribs. Nothing more was spoken.

  There was no Here, I brought you this.

  Or Take it.

  Or a Thank you said from Clay.

  Only when she was gone did he lift himself up and open it, and reel at what lay within.

  For Penelope, everything was going nicely.

  The years flowed in, and by.

  She’d been out of the camp a long time now, living alone in a ground-floor unit, on a road called Pepper Street. She loved the name.

  She worked with other women now, too: a Stella, a Marion, a Lynn.

  They worked in different pairings, traveling the city to clean. Of course, she’d been saving for a used piano in that time, too, waiting patiently to go and buy it. In her small apartment on Pepper Street, she kept a shoebox under the bed, with the rolled-up cash inside.

  She continued mastering the English language as well, feeling it closer every night. Her ambition of reading both The Iliad and The Odyssey from cover to cover seemed an increasingly real possibility. Often she sat well beyond midnight, with a dictionary by her side. Many times she fell asleep like that, in the kitchen, her face all creased and sideways, against the warmth of pages; it was her constant immigrant Everest.

  How typical, then, and perfect.

  This, after all, was Penelope.

  As the feat loomed up before her, the world came down in front of it.

  * * *

  —

  It was like that pair of books, really.

  Just when a war was there to be won, a god would get in the way. In this case, obliteration:

  A letter arrived.

  It informed her; he’d died outside.

  His body was toppled next to an old park bench. Apparently, his face was half-covered in snow, and his hand was a fist, and sunken across his heart. It was not a patriotic gesture.

  The funeral predated the letter.

  A quiet affair. He was dead.

  * * *

  —

  Her kitchen was full of sun that afternoon, and when she dropped it, the letter swayed, like a pendulum made of paper. It skimmed beneath the fridge, and she spent many minutes, hands and knees, reaching under, and in, to retrieve it.

  Jesus, Penny.

  There you were.

  There you were with your knees all pinched and stretched, and the table cluttered behind you. There you were with your blurry eyes and crestfallen chest, your face on the floor—a cheek and an ear—your bony backside up in the air.

  Thank God you did what you did next.

  We loved what you did next.

  It was like this that night, when Carey left The Surrounds, and Clay unraveled the paper:

  He peeled off the sticky tape gently.

  He folded the Herald’s racing section flat, and tucked it under his leg. Only then did he look at the present itself—an old wooden box—and hold it in both hands, chestnut-brown and scuffed. It was the size of an old hardcover book, with rusty hinges and a broken latch.

  Around him, The Surrounds was airy, and open.

  Barely a breeze.

  A weightlessness.

  He opened the small wooden door on top, and it creaked like a floorboard, and dropped.

  Inside was another gift.

  A gift within a gift.

  And a letter.

  * * *

  —

  Usually, Clay would read the letter first, but to get to it he lifted the lighter; it was a Zippo, made of pewter, about the size and shape of a matchbox.

  Before he even thought to take it, he was holding it in his hand.

  Then turning it.

  Then steering it toward his palm.

  It surprised him how heavy it was, and when he flipped it onto its back, he saw them; he ran his finger across the words, engraved on its metal chest:

  Matador in the fifth.

  That girl was something else.

  * * *

  —

  When he opened the letter, he was tempted to flick the Zippo open, to light its light, but the moon was enough to read by.

  Her handwriting small and precise:

  Dear Clay—

  By the time you read this we’ll have talked anyway…but I just wanted to say that I know you’ll be leaving soon, and I’ll miss you. I miss you already.

  Matthew told me about a far-off place and a bridge you might be building. I try to imagine what that bridge will be made of, but then again, I don’t think it’ll matter. I wanted to claim this idea for myself, but I’m sure you know it anyway, from the jacket of The Quarryman:

  “EVERYTHING HE EVER DID WAS MADE NOT ONLY OF BRONZE OR MARBLE OR PAINT, BUT OF HIM…OF EVERYTHING INSIDE HIM.”

  One thing I know:

  That bridge will be made of you.

  If it’s okay with you, I’m hanging on to the book for now—maybe to make sure you come back for it, and come back as well to The Surrounds.

  As for the Zippo, they say you should never burn your bridges, but I offer it to you anyway, even if only for luck, and to remember me by. Also, a lighter sort of makes sense. You know what they say about clay, don’t you? Of course you do.

  Love,

  Carey

  PS. Sorry about the state of the wooden box, but somehow I think you’ll like it. I figured it couldn’t hurt, to keep some treasured things in. Take more than just a peg.

  2nd PS. I hope you like the engraving.

  Well, what would
you do?

  What would you say?

  Clay sat, stock-still, on the mattress.

  He asked himself:

  What do they say about clay?

  But then, very quickly, he knew.

  Actually, he understood before he’d finished asking, and he stayed at The Surrounds a long time. He read the letter over and over.

  Finally, when he did break his stillness, it was only for the small heavy lighter; he held it against his mouth. For a moment he almost smiled:

  That bridge will be made of you.

  It wasn’t so much that Carey did things largely or commanded attention or love, or even respect. No, with Carey it was her little moves, her easy touch of truth—and in that way, as always, she’d done it:

  She’d handed him the extra courage.

  And she’d given this story its name.

  On the kitchen floor, Penelope made up her mind.

  Her father had wanted her to have a better life, and that was what she would do:

  She would shed her meekness, her politeness.

  She would go and pull out the shoebox.

  She’d take the money out and clench it.

  She’d stuff her pockets and walk to the railway—all the while remembering the letter, and Vienna:

  There’s another way to be.

  Yes, there was, and today she would take it.

  Bez wahania.

  No delay.

  * * *

  —

  She already had the shops mapped out in her mind.

  She’d been before, and she knew each music shop by its location, prices, and varying expertise. One shop, in particular, had always called her back. The pricing was the first part; it was really all she could afford. But she’d also enjoyed the shambolic nature of it—the curled sheet music, the grimy bust of Beethoven scowling in the corner, and the salesman hunched at the counter. He was pointy-faced and cheerful, eating orange quarters almost always. He shouted through his deafness.