HOW THERE WERE BRIDGES by Meagan Arthur
How I said, we’ve seen these same bridges. How it was dark. We’re driving in circles, I said. We wound the mountain roads away from your parents’ cabin, the yellow dashes in the middle of the black flashing by underneath us. How you didn’t say anything. The dashes flashed by like a treaty. How you turned the brights on and off, on and off, every time a car passed, which wasn’t often. How again we came upon the same fork – two bridges, splitting different ways over the river, one a little bigger than the other. One with a tunnel made of rusting metal, the other tunneling through the mountain. It was dark. But I could tell. We’d been here before.
How I was swimming in that creek. Years ago, before the bridges. When we met, I was in that creek feeling like nothing. How I flew to Louisiana. For my friend’s wedding. How I flew on a plane and took pills to keep from looking down. How everyone else came to the wedding in pairs. I took the pills so I wouldn’t have to see how far up the plane was. I was there alone, me and the creek. The pills had worn off. Which was why I was swimming. Everyone else was somewhere else, in pairs, not swimming, wearing stiff clothes in the sun. How I’d scrambled down a steep path and found a creek surrounded by smooth pebbles. How there was no one around. I’d taken off everything and smoothed my way in, displacing the water as if in communion. How I floated there, watching parts of myself reaching the surface, buoyed. How the water was warm. The water was the same temperature as I was. How it felt like the pills. Felt better. Each body part of mine broke from gravity, somehow, and became a part of that water, warm and buggy and free.
You had said, I’ll drive. We approached the bridges together, your hands tight to the steering wheel, holding the frame together. We’d been at your parents’ cabin in Idaho to celebrate New Year’s. We’d driven down the mountain as the sun was setting. Now it was dark. You’d looked down from the mountain and said, here, let me. A mountain covered in tall trees, like a luxury. Like a textured coat. We were in the dark, driving in circles, trying to get back home. It was the mark of us being fiancés, me being invited, finally, to one of your parents’ holidays. You’d said, they’re just traditional. You’d said they didn’t believe in inviting us to share a room and a bed when we weren’t joined in matrimony. But now we were close. Now we were almost joined. Tied together and sinking to our resting place. Down the mountain. When I’d offered to help with the dishes, after dinner, your mother had gone in and reloaded the dishwasher after I’d finished. I had watched her turn over every piece of silverware and replace it in a different spot, one by one. The headlights shined on the same two bridges in front of us. It should be impossible, that we hadn’t yet chosen one to drive over.
How I’d broken my ankle in that creek. In Louisiana. How we both heard it snap. I didn’t know where you came from, pastel and angelicseeming, the sun sliding into your reflection on the water. For all I knew from somewhere else. For all I knew separate. How I’d been ripped from the oneness with the water. How I was dazed, being returned to my body, returned to bones that are brittle and break. Returned to looking. How in your mind, you’d stumbled upon Bathsheba. Not from the Bible, you admitted later, but from the song. How you’d chosen that day to hike along the creek. Like a prophet. How you called the rescuers to come and take me in. How you carried me up the hill yourself. How my breathing was ruined. How I felt ruined, looking at you, sun soaked and golden tipped.
We were driving through the dark wilderness. We were watching the snow fall. I asked you again if you knew where we were going. You finally answered, soothing tones only, words that meant only words. You turned on the radio and casually switched through channels, and then static. Music. Then more static. The static started to turn over and over, in a twist, with our car, and us inside it, the mountain tunnels we refused to enter creating a conduit, us twisting in smaller intervals, a black hole of a road. I watched as the static split us into bridges.
How the moment we met I’d been broken. How you heard the beautiful song in your head. How you slid into place. In the hospital afterwards, you stayed to make sure I was okay. My ankle was in a cast. And the pills. We talked, me loopy, trying to string the things of my life together. You laughed, thinking it was the pills. You asked about my family. My gone parents, I said, phrasing it wrong. You gripped my wrist. How you gripped me like you were trying to hold me in place. You asked me how I liked Louisiana to change the subject. I tried to explain how catfish was to Pacific fish as dark meat was to light meat. How you could chew on it forever. You talked about your graduate program, about being so far from home. I told you how being in a place feels the same as watching movies about that place. How the pills turned the hospital into a curled-up haze. It should be different, I told you, being in a place in real life, but it’s the same here, with the music like in the movies, and the decks where people talk and eat things like they eat in movies. As if all of the South had been filmed the same. In the same frame. How I told you I must be missing something. I tried to explain how I knew my view was incomplete, but I felt unable to complete it. You said later you’d fallen in love with me. Right then and there. How the vulnerability of my myopia became one with your bathing effigy.
The radio found a song, static slipping away. The clouds covered the moon above the trees. I told myself to relax about the bridges, relax as the radio signals came to us. Located our car, its wheels carrying us to a different position than we had been previously. The signals that proved we were still here. I leaned my head back against the headrest and felt your arms relax on the wheel. I told myself I’d missed it, the passage over those bridges. I told myself we weren’t circling the same loop, weren’t spiraling smaller toward some kind of center. I tried to believe it.
The premarital counselor told me to try to keep track of memories. In the room next to the room with the clapping. To try to keep up. To 10 use the phrase: I remember how. I remember how, something. To get myself straight, when I lose myself. To put something into my head. Orient myself around myself, she told me. In the room our counselor is in, next to the room with the class in it, all the clapping. The counselor apologizing and shutting the door, telling us to ignore it. Telling me to make a list of things I remember. To make a list of examples of how things connect, one to another. The counselor teaching us to talk about how the other person makes us feel, not to pass sparkling judgements, sparkling like a hot surface in the sun. I feel betrayed when you go all foggy, you’d say. The clapping next door going on. I feel hurt when you won’t help me to solve this problem. You’d often use phrases like this when talking about me. This problem. Our problem. Maybe it was a dance class. Your meaning was clear. My brain, something a really good fixer could make use of, find the spare parts and mend. The clapping to the rhythm.
How you drove me, pills in tow. Back to the resort for the wedding. How you tugged on my hospital bracelet and laughed. The perfect accessory for a wedding, you said. How my friend was worried. She’d been calling. How you, helping me and a pair of crutches out of your car, must have looked from the outside. How my friend stood in the turnaround at the hotel, where the cars drop people off, waiting for me. How she narrowed her eyes and smiled. After that you were invited to the wedding. After that we were us. You helped me around the dance floor with my new cast, and everyone watched. How at the table, we all sat in pairs, in even numbers.
We passed the bridges again. I was sure of it. This time I said nothing. This time I read the language of your face. An immobile stare. Hard and set. The world becomes a horror movie so fast. The movie shifted through my head like the static. There are always characters who understand the shift. The merry-go-round goes on forever and you can’t get off. The shift from the world before to the world during. To the world unraveling. In the horror movies they don’t scream on the merry-go-round. Driving through the snow, on a loop, forever, like this. I felt my legs and arms prick up a million times, bumps setting themselves in my body and mind. It looked like the trees outside were rustling. The trees, my body, all growth, twisting, moving, stuck in the same shapes. A supernatural breeze followed us as we passed the very same fork, over and over again.
How before we met, I drove myself around in the dark. How I drove my old loud engine through the suburban neighborhoods at night. With big gleaming houses. Lit from within, shining through big gleaming windows. How I drove around to watch people in those houses. Sitting in front of big gleaming TVs. The engine screamed. How I watched the families sitting together. Me watching them. Them watching their movies. How I could turn on the radio inside my car and change my perception of myself at will. How I could direct the shot, in my head. How I could decide the world. I’d find a fast song louder than the engine and turn myself into a movie. Driving alone listening to rebellious music. A pin on a map, solitary because I stood up, everyone else lying down. I’d become the car on the road and drive flat. The people in their houses looking out their front doors. Watching me go. How I’d switch the station and the world would lift. I’d find a soft song that wound through me like a disagreement. How I’d imagine myself in that story, just before the plot ticked upward. Just before I’d found someone to sit inside and watch movies with.
There was a time when I realized I could go anywhere. When I became a grownup I realized my body could stand any place. Orphan or not. I was free. I went to stand in the aisles of the supermarket. I went to stand out on the streets and nobody came to find me. I went to the movies. Nobody came to take me back to wherever I was supposed to be. Whichever house had been assigned to me. I diligently worked at the job that had been found for me. The social workers stopped coming to find me and said, go to work. Said something like, get on with it. Something like, leave. I left. I made enough money and then applied for a different job. I went to stand in different states. I stood in the water. I could be anywhere and not mind it. It didn’t matter. I went everywhere.
The dark road started to feel like shifting air. Like the merry-goround. The moment when someone’s face turns backward. In the horror movie. I remembered how the air shifts to different temperature and wetness and thought about the static from the radio, gone now. The music was still playing. Your face was still hard, arms holding the wheel. Everything in the same place. I thought to tap on the dashboard with my fingers. Just to make sure that there’s still air in the car. That everyone isn’t completely static. To make sure things can still change.
How your parents wanted things for you. Things like marriage. Like a mirage. Things like a long lawn in front of your house. Things like a vase. How they called you all the time to make sure you would get the things. How I told you I wanted things. Maybe not the same things. Maybe a vase. How I wondered what my parents would have wanted for me. Maybe flowers. How I wondered what I wanted for myself. How wanting is for people like you.
When you proposed, we both cried. We sat on the top of the building to look at the stars. You gave me your jacket like we were in a movie. There weren’t any. Stars. We cried and hugged each other close. I tried to melt into you and you tried to melt into me. I tried to hug you so tight like I wanted to pop. Like I wanted to mesh, to meld. I failed. We remained in our bodies. Locked in your arms I remained boundaried. I couldn’t help it. I remained fenced in and whole.
How the world had turned into a terrarium. How when everything broke there were glass walls. When I was a kid the world was a dark box. How I heated up soup for more than a week before anyone came to find me. I was eight when the walls turned to glass. When the people broke open the door after the knocking. Everyone could see in. How the empty house became full again. How I didn’t even know they’d been dead for who knows how long. How the soup pots sat unwashed on the stove. How I just stayed there and waited. Why didn’t you go outside, they said. Why didn’t you call for help. How I left the world, then, and when I came back there was gravel under my feet and see-through edges. How the terrarium was a trap. The TV was left on and shining blue from switching the movies. How the people came and knocked and took me away. They left the TV on and the soup pots sitting there. How I didn’t bang on the panes. I didn’t try to get out. I saw that I was in a tank. How I figured out a way not to see it.
The wheels were turning beneath us but I couldn’t hear them. I couldn’t see the road passing us anymore. Everything was dark around us until we came to the bridges again. And our headlights lit up both paths. But somehow the car didn’t take either. We didn’t cross any bridges. The darkness surrounded us. And then we came upon them again. Over and over.
At your parents’ cabin I escaped into the sauna and turned up the heat. We hadn’t said much at dinner. I tried to lie there and find a way to be hot enough to float. I’d said I liked the potatoes. I breathed in the fire, trying to feel like the pills. Your mother had responded. I couldn’t remember what she’d said. I remembered it meant something like, leave. In the sauna I couldn’t help but come back to myself. Eventually, you came and found me. The sauna didn’t work well enough. I watched through the glass screen as you took off your sweats, your shirt, watched as the heat was sucked out the gap when you pulled the door open. You came in and lifted my head up. Placed it on your lap. You held it between your hands. Trying to be telekinetic. As if you could will me to be different. As if it would help.
How you’d seen that I was a satellite. Lost somewhere where physics still is. Floating like in an unfamiliar creek. How you’d jumped into the center of the orbit. How I was a lost void. How you finally, for yourself, found space.
In the moments when you start to lose your focus, the counselor told me, you can list the memories you know, and start there. Like, I am sitting on a couch. I remember how I sat on a couch yesterday, in my own apartment. I’m on earth. I remember how it feels to walk around my floors. I’m bigger than a worm, smaller than the world. I remember how I’m tilting and turning along with everything alive.
No cars had passed us in hours. I continued to drum my fingers on every surface of the car, on my knees, on my temple. I tried not to panic. We could be driving by these bridges forever, I told myself. The momentary panic would be useless. Like the moment before the song ends. Like the static at the end of the movie that would play forever in that empty house. Like a ring around someone’s finger, a clock hand that traverses the same path over and over. It’s a mundane trap. There is no point in panic. You learn to live inside the looping. You forget there was ever anything else.
How I realized the pills could bring me out of myself. I realized the pills made people like me. How the dinner table was a mirror. How it was glass. How I looked at myself in the table, at dinner, and realized. I realized I could become like other people. People who have glass tables. How people who weren’t cared for don’t know how to care for. The words your mother told you in the kitchen when she didn’t think I could hear her. After dinner. How you’d defended me needlessly. You’re seeing it wrong, you’d said. How it’s all about seeing. How your mother was right.
When someone begins life with trauma, our counselor said, she spends a lot of her time trying to catch up on receiving care. You started off life wounded, she’d said to me. Sitting on the couch you nodded along with her, rolling up your sleeves. Cracking your knuckles. Ready to mend. Still, the clapping next door. I sat in the counselor’s office watching myself as a fishing pole. Unwound. My line loose.
How it feels to look at you, sitting in the car, your arms moving the way arms should move. Driving us back home. How your eyes are staring like eyes. Looking for our home. How we pass the bridges over and over. How it feels to look at real people. How it feels like a movie.
I wonder what my life would be like if I’d grown up with your parents, spending New Year’s at the cabin, I said to you, as we passed the same bridges. I didn’t wait for a response. When I learned how not to need anyone, I wanted to say. I learned how to keep other people around by not needing them. That was how I made a friend. The one who got married. In Louisiana. That was how I met you. I could explain all of this to you. I could say it aloud. But you’re already driving. We’re already stuck in a time loop. The tense has already changed. It won’t make any difference.
How right before we met I’d been floating in a creek. Under a tree. How all of a sudden I’d forgotten where I was. How I’d forgotten why I was there. How I got scared. How the wet hot air became a vacuum, sucking out all of me. Leaving only my eyes. Seeing and confused about the trees. How they were different trees. How the bugs were a symphony, one that would be played when floating with Charon, loud and buzzing and hurt hurt hurt in my ear. How I’d jumped up in surprise when your foot made a twig go, crack. Ending the symphony on a low note. How we’d both watched my ankle go, snap.
You reach over silently and grab my hand. I watch the bridges out the window. I watch them passing us, instead of the other way around. I watch me loving you. I watch me not. I watch the loop the same way. I watch it not make a difference.
How we are driving in circles. Coming upon the same two bridges. Over and over again. How we always come back to ourselves. How both of the bridges are tunnels. How both of them are pitch black inside.
Meagan Arthur’s work has appeared in Quarter After Eight, Cream City Review, Identity Theory, Pontoon, Figure 1, and California Quarterly.