Seven Mile Bridge. Michael M. Biehl

the long, meandering crack in the ceiling and wondering what was in that letter, who “Newley” was, what was the stupid thing my dad’s boss made him do, and how it all might result in us ending up on the street. An hour later the noise from the television stopped. Then Jamie clumped back and forth between his room and the bathroom for a while, brushing his teeth with the same exasperating deliberation as any other night, and finally the house quieted. Out of a combination of self-protective vigilance and morbid curiosity, I had left my bedroom door ajar. I was still awake when my parents’ voices started back up, from the direction of their bedroom. Barely audible whispers at first, then agitated but still hushed tones, then anguished declarations loud enough I could make out the words.

      “I will take care of it. I’ll talk to a lawyer tomorrow.”

      “And pay him with what? Lawyers don’t work for free, you know.”

      “I’ll work it out.”

      “How, David? If you file bankruptcy again, our credit is finished.”

      Again? What was she talking about? When had my father filed for bankruptcy? I wasn’t even sure I knew exactly what bankruptcy was.

      “Perhaps I should be the one talking to a lawyer.”

      “Don’t talk nonsense, Lou. This isn’t grounds for divorce.”

      “Nonsupport is grounds in this state. Besides, I read Wisconsin might be no-fault soon.”

      I heard some shuffling around coming from their bedroom, then the squeal of the fifth stair tread, followed by a door slam that sounded like the report from a cannon.

      I lay awake for another couple of hours, replaying the events of the evening in my mind and trying to decipher my parents’ remarks. My stomach ached and I couldn’t seem to take a satisfying breath of air. The crack in the plaster over my bed looked threatening, like it might spontaneously start spreading and cause the ceiling to collapse on me.

      I was picturing what my mother looked like tramping angrily up the stairs, her blonde flip bouncing up and down, when I realized something. Her hands had been balled into little fists, with nothing in them. She was not holding the letter. I thought of my father on the stairs, slinking after her, head down, pulling himself up with the banister. His hands were empty, too.

      I got out of bed and shuffled quietly to the stairs. The uncarpeted wooden treads were cold on my bare feet. Halfway down I could see my father passed out on the sofa in his bathrobe, gently snoring, one slippered foot on the floor, one draped over the arm. The room reeked of whiskey and cigarette smoke. On the coffee table, next to an empty bottle of Early Times and a brass ashtray full of Tareyton butts, was a tri-folded sheet of white paper. I stepped over the squeaky fifth step and moved as quietly as I could to retrieve the letter. By slipping in behind the drapes I was able to read the letter by the light of the streetlamp in front of our house.

      * *

      I pick up my empty glass and go back in the kitchen, just to make sure there isn’t another little bottle of Old Crow or something else palatable hiding in the cabinet over the refrigerator. There isn’t, so I pour two fingers of the sorry-ass blended whiskey into my glass. It’s as bad as I expected, but better than nothing.

      Back in my old room, I read the Bank of Wisconsin letter again. It doesn’t scare or confuse me anymore, like it did when I was seventeen. It just makes me feel sad, and a bit queasy. Below the date, my father’s name and the address of our house on Foxglove Lane, it says, “Re: $80,000 Promissory Note dated June 1, 1970.”

      Dear Mr. Bruckner:

      The loan made by the Bank of Wisconsin to Philip J. Newley of Oostburg, Wisconsin, is in default. Mr. Newley has not made payments as required by the Loan Agreement of even date with the above-captioned Promissory Note for the past nine months. We have been unable to locate Mr. Newley.

      Under the terms of the Loan Agreement, the entire principal amount of the Promissory Note and all accrued interest, together with default penalties as provided in the Loan Agreement, are due and payable on demand. As guarantor of the Note, you are liable for the amount due, $108,715.87.

      Demand is hereby made for payment of the said amount. If full payment or other arrangements satisfactory to the Bank of Wisconsin are not made within ten (10) days from the date hereof, this matter will be turned over for collection with instructions to commence immediate action.

      Very truly yours,

      Frank T. Shriner

      Vice President, Business Loans

      After thirty-six years and with three stiff drinks in me, I think I can finally see that the letter did have to be as big a deal as my parents made of it. If the same thing happened to me now as happened to my father then, I could just give up my equity in the dive shop and my boat, move to the mainland where the cost of living is lower, and drive a forklift or do odd jobs. But I don’t have a wife and kids.

      I stare at the letter, remembering how it alarmed and disheartened my father. Perhaps witnessing the effect these three paragraphs had on him is the reason I don’t have a wife and kids. I think acknowledging that possibility is what is making me queasy.

      I hoist a couple of large corrugated cardboard boxes off the bed and onto the floor so I can lie down for a moment. The bed sags like a hammock. The crack in the ceiling is still a meandering river across the room, but it is wider now and has developed tributaries. In the stillness of the house, I imagine I can still hear my parents’ argument that night escalating down the hall, the plaintive wail of the squeaky stair tread roused by my father in retreat, and the punctuating slam of a bedroom door reverberating through the house with an ominous finality, like the concluding chord of a Beethoven sonata. One of the grim ones.

4

      I wake up to what sounds like a snare drum rat-a-tat-tatting in the room. I’m cold and my back aches from napping on the sagging mattress. My eyes and nose are full of dust and I sneeze repeatedly.

      The snare drum turns out to be the window in the gable, rattling violently in the harsh wind. I check to see if the window is latched. It is, but the sash is loose in the frame and no one has bothered to put up the storm window, this late into November. No wonder it’s so damn cold in the room. I pull a couple of magazines from a nearby bundle and jam them in around the window sash to keep out the worst of the gale. Outside, darkness is gathering in the bare tree branches and along the ground.

      On my way back to the desk, I notice that the top of one of the boxes I moved off the bed is open, and some of its contents have spilled. I must have popped it open grabbing the flaps to lower it. It’s a large box that once contained a microwave oven. Pouring out of it onto the floor are more than a dozen old photographs. Three-by-five and four-by-six color prints, typical family snapshots. The box is packed to the brim with pictures, hundreds, maybe thousands of them.

      I go downstairs to turn up the thermostat, and the furnace comes on with a resounding roar. How many decades has it been since that decrepit dinosaur was last serviced? I realize I am hungry, so I head to the kitchen and rummage around for something to eat. Spilled beverages, dark mold, and something green and sticky coat the inside of the refrigerator. Nothing in there looks bacteriologically safe; I’m surprised my mother didn’t die from food poisoning a long time ago. An off-brand can of pork and beans in the pantry looks like it won’t kill me, so I heat it up on the stove and eat from a pink plastic plate that dates from the ’50s.

      The cheap plastic plates she wasn’t able to chip.

      Down in the Keys I usually follow dinner with a couple of snifters of Curaçao. Here the best I can come up with is a slug of cheap vodka, which I take straight from the bottle. Thus fortified, I venture back upstairs to poke around in that box of pictures.

      The photos are a jumble without even the chronological or subject matter grouping one might expect would occur naturally. It is as if the contents of the box have been spun in a clothes dryer for an hour. Snapshots of my mother gray-haired and holding hands with my stepfather Ray are mixed in with those of her young and holding my brother and me as babies,