Return to the Bridge
by Ralph E. Shaffer
Part 1 appears in this issue.
conclusion
All was finally quiet at the recreation hall. Well-wishers and classmates had left, and Ilsa, her mother and her grandmother returned to the manager’s unit at the motel where they sat quietly now that the hubbub was over. Ilsa’s mother had not questioned her daughter’s decision to enter the convent. If she was disappointed by that choice, she never showed it, either by expression or by comment.
Her grandmother, however, did not attempt to hide her disappointment. She had looked upon Rick as the son or grandson she never had and was pleased by the close friendship Ilsa had with him. Now she would be denied a great-grandson, or great-granddaughter. The line would end. She wasn’t pleased about that, but she was careful not to make her dejection too evident.
When Rick appeared at the still open front door, the mother and grandmother gave him a warm welcome. But he had come to see Ilsa and, after some conversation about bus schedules and packing, he turned to Ilsa.
“Would you walk to the footbridge with me, Ilsa? This will be our last opportunity to talk. Tomorrow will be too hectic, and there’ll be too many people around. Walk with me?”
“Of course,” she said, and the two of them walked the short distance up the main street to the park entrance, past the old narrow-gauge locomotive that they had played on so frequently when they were little kids. Then they followed the paved, lighted walkway to the familiar footbridge where they had stood together so many times. The park was empty, the night was warm and quiet, the only sound the rippling of the water in the now shallow creek below them.
There was so much they would like to have said to each other, but each was reluctant to break the silence of the evening. Finally, Ilsa took Rick’s hand as they both looked at the moonlit Sierras to the west. What to say? What to do? They seemed closer to each other than they had ever been before. Yet words failed the two accomplished debaters at this moment.
So they stood in the quiet of the night for a long time, holding hands, neither wanting to say anything that would detract from the momentous decisions that they had made. Each felt a deep hurt over the end of the relationship, such as it was, that they had. In the end, without words, they both turned back to the walkway and slowly, for the last time, left the footbridge.
At the motel, Rick said goodbye to her mother and grandmother, took Ilsa’s hands and they both said goodbye, then hugged. Then he was gone.
* * *
Independence was too small for a bus terminal. Instead, the Greyhound made flag stops, at a bus bench in front of the courthouse for the northbound stage, across the street for those headed south. The schedule had Ilsa’s bus for Reno, where she would catch a train east, arriving in mid-morning, thirty minutes before Rick’s southbound bus for Los Angeles.
Consequently, most well-wishers congregated on the courthouse lawn as they waited for Ilsa’s departure. Rick stood with them, somewhat in the background. He had said goodbye to Ilsa the night before. This was a chance for the rest of the town to do likewise.
The northbound Greyhound was nearly half an hour late. Amid the shouts of farewell, Ilsa stood for a moment in the open door of the bus, waving, a tear in her eye, to her friends. She saw Rick at the back of the crowd, made a special wave to him. He returned her greeting with a smile and a thumbs up. Then she was gone, and the bus quickly left the stop.
Almost instantly the southbound Greyhound, slightly ahead of schedule, arrived across the street. Two deputy sheriffs quickly stopped traffic so that the crowd could cross the boulevard, Rick leading the way. The bus driver loaded Rick’s gear in the luggage compartment, took Rick’s ticket, and pointed to a window seat. By the time Rick was in it, and before he could wave a final greeting to his friends, he, too, was on his way out of Independence.
The Present
As Rick approached the footbridge, he imagined for a moment that the figure he saw standing there was Ilsa. He hadn’t set foot on the little bridge since that night nearly sixty years ago. He fantasized that Ilsa had been standing there, waiting for him, all these years. But he knew that was not the case and that the nun wearing the habit of the community Ilsa had joined was not her. But her email had said that she and Ilsa were close friends, and she had a gift from Ilsa that would bring back memories.
“I’m Rick, and you must be Sister Mary.”
“Yes, Rick, I’m Mary. You wouldn’t recognize me, but I can see your face still resembles the one in the photo of the boy that Ilsa kept all those years. Older, of course, and gray hair instead of a black crew-cut but, yes, I can see the resemblance.”
“You had no trouble finding the footbridge?”
“No, the lady running the motel gave me directions. Is that the motel where Ilsa lived with her mother?”
“Yes, it’s been through several owners and managers since those days. Despite that, it hasn’t changed much. How long will you be in Independence?”
“I leave later today for San Francisco. I have other friends and relatives of some of the sisters to visit before I return to the convent. This is my only day here. It is beautiful, just the way Ilsa described it. Rick, she never forgot the town, the footbridge... or you. And that’s why we’re meeting here on the footbridge.”
“You were with Ilsa when she died?”
“Yes, many years ago. It was the first time any of us had heard of Ebola. We had been sent to an especially poor village in West Africa. We aided doctors in the little clinic that served an enormous area. When the first victims of that dread disease came in, we had no idea of the danger it posed to us, although we took what we thought were normal precautions. Several of the nuns became ill, Ilsa among them. Most of them did not survive. By luck, I was not infected.”
“We heard about her death some time after it happened. That was...” — Rick stopped to calculate — “fifty years ago.”
“Yes, but I never forgot what she told me in one of her last lucid moments.”
Sister Mary opened her bag and withdrew a little box that looked vaguely familiar to Rick, although he couldn’t immediately recall where he had seen it. As Mary held the box, she asked Rick about his own personal tragedy. “Rick, you suffered a terrible loss, too, about that time, didn’t you? Ilsa never knew about it.”
Rick thought for a moment before answering. “My wife. I met her when I returned from the Peace Corps and entered Berkeley. I was an Engineering major. She was in English Lit, studying to become a teacher. I guess I saw a little of Ilsa in her, but I married her for what she was, not as an imitation of Ilsa. We were very happy. More so when we knew the baby was coming.”
Here Rick paused. Fifty years after the most heartbreaking event in his life, he still found it hard to discuss. “She died in childbirth. It still happened in those days, despite good medical care. And we lost the baby, too. I never remarried.”
“Were you living here in Independence then?”
“Yes. After graduation I came back home, with her, to run my dad’s hardware store. I’ve been here ever since. The store closed a decade ago, along with most of the other businesses in town. After the water department moved its headquarters to a bigger city in the valley, there wasn’t much to support business here. I kept the store open long after it had become unprofitable. Hated to close it, because my Dad had built a great business. But he would have quit long before I did.”
Sister Mary handed the box to Rick. “She wanted you to have this. Said you deserved it. No, she said you rightfully won it.”
As Rick opened the little box and moved the tissue paper aside to uncover what Ilsa had wanted him to have, the little silver medal was revealed. He was sure he had seen it before and when he read the still clear inscription on the medal he remembered very well, even though the date on the medal was illegible.
“First prize,” the inscription read, “Oratory, Owens Valley High, 19—”
“She said you really won the medal even though the judges gave it to her. She told me that she thought they did that because you had won something else in the speech contest.”
“I won the extemporaneous and humor events. The medal was for the grand prize in oratory. I thought I was going to win and was hurt when they awarded her the medal. But I got over the loss pretty quickly. Besides, she was a good orator. She was good in everything! Later, I was glad that she had won. I’m honored that she wanted me to have the medal.”
“Are you sorry she became a nun, Rick? She and I talked about what we might have done had we not chosen to enter the convent. She said that sometimes she wondered if she had made the right choice, that perhaps she should have married you. She talked as though that was almost a foregone conclusion... marrying you. Is that the way you felt too?”
“We never talked about marriage. We weren’t even boyfriend-girlfriend like other couples. But deep inside I did imagine us married at some time in the future, after college. Her becoming a nun ended all that. I think we would have had a good life together. But I also felt that way about the girl I did marry.”
“She knew you married, but she died before news of your wife’s death reached her. I would have read the letter to her, but she had passed away a few days before it arrived. She would have been deeply sorry.”
Sister Mary held out a hand. “I must go now, Rick. I’m glad I finally had a chance to deliver the medal to you. Don’t bother to walk me back to the motel. I think you’ll want to stay here on the footbridge with your memories. Goodbye, and God bless you.”
“Thank you, Mary. Thank you very much.”
Rick stood alone on the bridge, holding the medal in his hand, thinking of the evening he and Ilsa had stood here, sixty years before and plotted out their lives in a direction that neither had really envisioned until that moment. The rippling water of the creek was the only sound audible. The eternal creek.
What other stories had it heard from other young couples over those years? Young people grow old, their children replace them on the bridge, and their grandchildren. Only the creek remains, year after year. The footbridge itself might be replaced, more than once. But the creek stays the same.
Rick fondled the medal for several minutes. Then he tossed it into the creek.
The medal will be there forever, along with the creek and the footbridge, he thought. And so will Ilsa and Rick.
Copyright © 2021 by Ralph E. Shaffer
