Free The Other Side of the Bridge by Mary Lawson Page B

room.

    The dogs barked when they first got his scent, but then they remembered him from earlier in the day and came to greet him, wagging their tails. He stepped off the driveway when the dogs came up, into the shadow of the trees. He didn’t know why he was here. The last thing he wanted was for Laura to see him and come out and start talking to him. The thought of her knowing what had happened filled him with shame almost beyond endurance. What would she think—what would anyone think—of a boy who meant so little to his own mother that she would walk off and leave him? In all his life he had never heard of such a thing. He’d heard of men abandoning their families, but never a woman. Never a mother.
    He stood uncertain in the shadows for a few moments and then cautiously moved toward the house. He went around to the back, where the kitchen was. He wanted to see her, that was all. He just needed to know she was still there.
    The farmhouse seemed bigger in the darkness than it had during the day. The house and the barn and sheds were solid blocks of night against the blue-black of the sky. The kitchen light was on and there were lights in two of the bedrooms upstairs. Laura was in one of the bedrooms; he saw her moving back and forth, folding things, hanging things in the cupboard in the corner of the room. He could tell she was talking to someone, though he couldn’t hear her voice or see anyone else. Probably the little girl. Julie. She must be putting Julie to bed. The boy, Carter, was in the other lighted bedroom—Ian had seen him cross the room. The baby must be asleep somewhere else.
    Arthur and the old man were downstairs in the kitchen, Arthur at the table, the old man huddled in a chair by the stove. Arthur was working on something, but Ian wasn’t close enough to see what it was. He could have moved closer, but then he wouldn’t have been able to see into the upstairs rooms. Anyway, he didn’t care what Arthur was doing. It was only Laura he wanted to see. The dogs, who had followed him around to the back of the house, waited curiously beside him for a while and then wandered off. From within the barn he could hear the heavy, quiet movements of the horses.
    After some time—he didn’t know whether long or short—the light in Julie’s bedroom went off. He felt a sudden clench of anxiety, as if a life raft had slipped out from under him, but a minute later Laura appeared in the kitchen, carrying the baby. He could see her better than when she was upstairs: the line of sight was more direct.
    She was still wearing the pale blue dress she had worn earlier and her hair was still tied back, but it was looser, as if she allowed it its own way at the end of the day. She said something to Arthur and he looked up at her and nodded, and then returned to his work. Laura went over to one of the big armchairs by the fire, lowered herself and the baby into it, and then, quietly, discreetly, undid her dress and put the baby to her breast.
    Ian watched. It was more erotic, and at the same time more painful, than anything he had ever known.

    The day his mother left, he would not look at her. She left after breakfast, but he skipped breakfast. He stayed in his room. It was Sunday, but no one had suggested church. She came up to his room. He heard her footsteps, heard her stop at the closed door. He imagined her, facing the door.
    After a minute she knocked. He waited a bit, and then said, “Yes?” in a tone completely devoid of interest.
    “May I come in?”
    “If you want.”
    He heard the door open, heard her cross the room. He was at his desk, with his books spread out as if he were studying. He didn’t turn around. She came to a stop behind him. He began to copy a section out of a book.
    She said, “Ian?”
    He waited a minute, as if he’d been concentrating and it had taken time for her interruption to filter through to him. “Yes?”
    “Aren’t you going to come down and say good-bye?” Her voice was