A week after my cast has been removed, I stand alone on the footbridge in Knight’s Park, leaning my weight on the railing, gazing down at a pond I could walk around in less than five minutes. The water underneath me has a thin layer of ice on top, and I think about dropping rocks through it, but I do not know why, especially since I have no rocks. Even still, I want to drop rocks through the ice so badly, to puncture it, proving that it is weak and temporary, to see the black water below rise up and out of the hole I alone will have created.
I think about the hidden fish—mostly those big goldfish people stock the pond with so old men will have something to feed in spring and little boys will have something to catch in the summer—fish now burrowed in the mud at the bottom of the pond. Or are these fish burrowing just yet? Will they wait until the pond freezes completely?
Here’s a thought: I’m like Holden Caulfield thinking about ducks, only I’m thirty-five years old and Holden was a teenager. Maybe the accident knocked my brain back into teenager mode?
Part of me wants to climb up onto the railing and jump off the bridge, which is only ten yards long, only three feet above the pond; part of me wants to break through the ice with my feet, to plunge down, down, down into the mud, where I can sleep for months and forget about all I now remember and know. Part of me wishes I never regained my memory, that I still had that false hope to cling to—that I still had at least the idea of Nikki to keep me moving forward.
When I finally look up from the ice and toward the soccer fields, I see that Tiffany has accepted my invitation to meet, just like Cliff said she would. She is only two inches tall in the distance, wearing a yellow ski cap and a white coat that covers most of her thighs, making her look like a wingless angel growing and growing—and I watch her pass the swing sets and the large pavilion with picnic tables inside. I watch her walk along the water’s edge until she finally reaches her usual height, which is five feet and a few inches tall.
When she steps onto the footbridge, I immediately look down at the thin layer of ice again.
Tiffany walks over to me and stands so her arm is almost touching mine, but not quite. Using my peripheral vision, I see that she too is now looking down at the thin layer of ice, and I wonder if she also wishes she could drop some rocks.
We stand like this for what seems like an hour, neither of us saying anything.
My face gets very cold, until I can no longer feel my nose or ears.
Finally, without looking at Tiffany, I say, “Why didn’t you come to my birthday party?” which is a stupid question to pose at this time, I realize, but I can’t think of anything else to say, especially since I haven’t seen Tiffany for many weeks—not since I screamed at her on Christmas Day. “My mom said she invited you. So why didn’t you come?”
After a long pause, Tiffany says, “Well, like I said in my letter, your brother threatened to kill me if I made contact with you. Also, Ronnie came to my house the day before your party and forbade me to go. He said they never should have introduced us in the first place.”
I had already talked to Jake about his threat, but I have a hard time imagining Ronnie saying such a thing to Tiffany. And yet I know Tiffany is telling the truth. She seems really hurt and vulnerable right now, especially because she is sort of chewing on her bottom lip as if it were a piece of gum. Surely Ronnie said these words against Veronica’s wishes. His wife would never let him say something so potentially ego-damaging to Tiffany, and the thought of Ronnie keeping Tiffany from attending my party makes me a little proud of my best friend, especially since he went against his wife’s wishes to protect me.
“Bros B4 Hos” is what Danny said to me every time I would lament Nikki, back when we were both in the bad place—before he had that second operation. In art therapy class, Danny even made me a little poster with the words written in stylish gold letters, which I hung on the wall space between my bed and my roommate Jackie’s—back in the bad place—but one of the evil nurses took Danny’s artwork down when I was not in the room, a fact Jackie confirmed by blinking and banging his head against his shoulder. Even though I realize the phrase is sort of sexist (because men should not refer to women as hos), saying “Bros B4 Hos” in my mind now sort of makes me smile, especially since Ronnie is my best bro in New Jersey, now that Jake and Danny live in PA.
“I’m sorry, Pat. Is that what you want to hear? Well, I’ll say it again, I’m really, really fucking sorry.” Even though Tiffany uses the f-word, her voice sort of quivers like Mom’s when she says something she truly means, and it makes me think that Tiffany might actually start crying right here on the bridge. “I’m a screwed-up person who no longer knows how to communicate with the people I love. But I meant everything I told you in my letter. If I were your Nikki, I would have come back to you on Christmas Day, but I’m not Nikki. I know. And I’m sorry.”
I don’t know what to say in response, so we stand there for many minutes, saying nothing.