Sorry I Worried You

Gatsby, Tender, Paradise

202 Gatsby, Tender, Paradise At quarter to eight, Saturday morning, Russ Bridgeford’s daughter enters the kitchen dressed and carrying her car keys. “This is special,” Bridgeford says. Lauren nods and opens the door. “See you later,” she warbles, and then, without a syllable or gesture of sarcasm, she’s gone. “Does she have detention?” Bridgeford asks his wife. “She has other places she can go on Saturday mornings,” Kim says. “One of them is having her English teacher invite her to breakfast .” Bridgeford lets the newspaper droop. “And that’s OK?” he says. “It’s Perkins at 8 a.m., not dinner at his house.” She sounds so defensive Bridgeford is relieved. Perhaps he hasn’t missed some change in acceptable behavior. “Anyway,” Kim goes on, “Beth’s going with them.” “He invited both of them?” 202 203 “Apparently,” Kim says, and everything in her tone tells him she’s labored not to accuse herself of needless fear. “You worry about the wrong things,” Lauren says when she returns. “There were two of us. We just ate and left.” Bridgeford has mowed the lawn, washed a car, taken a shower, and shaved. “And that took two hours?” he asks. “We smoked cigarettes and drank coffee for a while. We talked about things.” “Things?” “Whatever. You know.” Bridgeford, beginning with ménage à trois, considers some of the things he would list under the heading of “Whatever,” and all of them have the common denominator of sex. “And that’s it?” “So far.” He feels himself turn dark inside. “So far?” “He said ‘I hope we can do this again sometime.’” “Why you two?” “He’s been doing this for years, Dad. He’s harmless. Everybody knows who the real perverts are. Mr. Martone wouldn’t bother buying me breakfast.” “The biology teacher? The Mafia wannabe?” “There’s plenty of stories.” “Stories?” “You know.” “But he’s not your teacher. He doesn’t even know you.” “I see him at track, but don’t worry. All he does is give me the creeps. He’s so obvious Grandma would know what he’s after.” On Sunday, Bridgeford walks the Gettysburg battlefields with Harry Austin, who’s driven them nearly two hours to examine bullet holes 203 204 in cabins, pockmarks in rocks. “Imagine yourself striding with Pickett ’s men across this field,” Harry says, “how long it would take to reach Cemetery Ridge, how much of that walk would be within range.” “I think I’d run,” Bridgeford says, though already his arthritic knees ache from the irregular surfaces, from the ups and downs of exploring Civil War sites. “Let’s just walk it,” Harry says. “Let’s find out for ourselves what a half mile of open land makes us want to do.” And then, looking at the ridge where Harry’s pointing, Bridgeford stumbles in a chuckhole, feels his knees begin to scream. “Christ,” he mutters, shaking his head and testing himself through ten cautious steps. He starts an apology, but Harry waves it off and strides toward the ridge. Bridgeford slides to the side and drifts toward a nearby cabin. Somewhere up ahead, according to Harry, is Little Round Top, but he sits in the cabin’s shadow and watches Harry walk. He can tell Harry’s watching the hillside in front of him, that he’s guessing when the bullets would start reaching him. If he walked like that, Bridgeford thinks, he’d tumble altogether, break a leg maybe, and save himself from real and imaginary slaughter. A small group of tourists appear and pass him without speaking. There are three of them, two women and a man, and they seem, to Bridgeford, to be disoriented. One of the women walks oddly. Multiple sclerosis, he guesses, the last months before she gives in to the cane. The other woman listens to the man as if he were a tour guide. She cocks her head, follows his gestures. Later, at the souvenir shop, he sees those tourists again. They’re bunched with twenty others, and the woman who walked oddly is being photographed. “What’s up with them?” Bridgeford asks. 205 “Another scam,” Harry suggests. “Maybe that guy takes pictures at the battlefield like they do at the mall with Santa Claus.” Bridgeford nods and searches behind the woman for the sort of background someone might pay for. He sees nothing but postcards and sweatshirts and...