It’s been quite a week of unpacking things, especially that dream. I’m glad I had it and that I felt empowered enough to confront my inner critic in that manner. I ended up writing a short story about Mrs. Bridge and Mr. Bridge, based on the novels by Evan S. Connell and I took quite a few liberties. I’m happy with the work. I recommend you read the 1st chapters from each book (they’re both just a few paragraphs long) to get the full context of what I’m going for here.
If you can’t read it, the novel follows an upper middle class family in Kansas City that can’t find a way to bridge the emotional distance between them. At one point Mrs. Bridge wakes up her husband and pours her heart out to Mr. Bridge while they’re in bed but Mr. Bridge falls back asleep before he can say anything. India is Mrs. Bridge’s first name and the novel starts of by telling us that Mrs. Bridge always wondered why her parents named her India.
Mrs. Bridge
As the years went on, Mrs. Bridge began reflecting on her married name. “A bridge? A bridge to what!?” she would scream in the depths of her mind. There was nothing between her and Mr. Bridge but silence and droning snores night in and night out, an unending stretch of perfectly manicured lawns accompanied by the overpowering stench of freshly cut grass. She spent countless nights staring at the lopsided face of Mr. Bridge as he lay snoring on his pillow, the wear of time creeping imperceptibly up his cheeks to settle at the corners of his eyes and into crisp creases on the temple of his head. She wrote stories on those fine lines—of Italy, India, and Bali and of a man named Brazil.
Every unrealized fantasy sunk her eyes deeper into the recesses of her skull and stretched her lips thinner over her teeth so that in the depths of the night, lights gleamed out her eye sockets like a bejeweled skull peering out of Aztec catacombs. She laid there for what seemed like the passing of an eternity, felt the wind creak through the cracks forming at the corners of her bedroom windows, and watched the air tussle, then scatter Mr. Bridge’s dandruffed hair onto the yellowed bed-linens until finally, she had enough. For the first time in centuries, she got up, swatted away the mottled curtain blinds, pushed open the glass, and flew out of the window, over prairies, to India. There, she met an Indian woman named Kali Fornia and the two of them settled in Northampton, Massachusetts where they adopted a Black child from Burkina Faso named Rwanda.
India was smitten by Kali Fornia as soon as she laid eyes on her ample figure and through Kali Fornia’s unceasing love, India’s hollowed-out cheeks started to gain color again. Kali spoke at length about her life and her aspirations, her dreams to make something of herself through her wit and guile, and how she would master the places that told her she could only be mastered by another. India knew she had to keep this woman in her life and so she showed her videos that spoke eloquently of life back in the United States, conjured luscious pictures illustrating how opportunity abounds for the taking in the West until finally, she convinced Kali Fornia to leave with her, stomach bloated with dreams. India listened but never talked about her experiences; the more Kali Fornia talked, the smaller she became until she had nothing left to give to India.
Rwanda always felt out of place. For one, everyone spoke Swahili in Northampton and expected him to speak it as well, and two, his mother, Kali Fornia, was a brown woman with thick silky hair that flowed past her waist and she never stopped talking about sending him to Cambridge and then after that to Cambridge in the United Kingdom to study. He always felt that his mother, Kali Fornia, was hiding something because every time someone asked her where she was from, she would shift her weight from one foot to the other and answer, “London University.” His other mother, India, was a skull and every time he looked into her bejeweled eyes, he would feel as though he had forgotten a part of himself while his skin gradually lost all melanin until it became almost translucent alabaster.
And so India outlasted both Kali Fornia and Rwanda. All she wanted to do was to let them know how much she craved them in her life but her centuries of staring at the face of Mr. Bridge left her tongue desiccated and shriveled. After all, she knew that diction lays at the tip of the tongue and at the cracks of the teeth so the words she couldn’t utter created a hole in the pit of her stomach that drained the house of its livelihood. As she kept her silent vigil over Kali Fornia and Rwanda, India would perch atop their bedposts to watch them sleep, alternating between them depending on the hour and absorbing their dreams through her ruby eyes until the jewels encrusted atop her brows burned with an infernal flame flickering within the depths of her icy sepulchre.
Mr. Bridge
The night after Mr. Bridge went back to sleep, he never woke up. He was never a talker even though it was his job to speak and he only spoke when there was a buck to be made. So after all of those nights of holding his tongue for fear of putting himself in a losing position, he finally choked on all of his unarticulated feelings and died. Afterward, the sound of his snoring was manufactured by the blowing of the wind through his ears and out of his nostrils, carrying out the sound of the air brushing against his eardrums. Since he never talked, Mrs. Bridge never realized he was dead even until the moment she decided she had enough and flew out of the window to India. Mr. Bridge just laid on that pillow as time sagged the skin off his face until he became a memento mori of their silent situationship.
Before he died, he wanted to ask Mrs. Bridge why she wasn’t satisfied. She had everything she needed here–a home, a husband, a porch, knitting needles, cookware, and neighbors. Why couldn’t she accept his love? Didn’t he lay there every night with her, facing her, giving her solace and comfort that his face would always be within her field of vision? Why couldn’t she see that he was all she needed and that he loved her? He needed to scream this out but the gushing of words from his soul caught in his throat and spilled over into his lungs, locking out the air from oxygenating his blood––his last words an imperceptible, indecipherable whisper fallen off a dilapidated bridge.
