Shirley’s defenses seemed to be crumbling.

“C’mon,” Tom said.

Into Nysa

The morning drive is long and slow and sleepy, and you drift in and out beside me in the passenger seat. Out of nowhere, the bridge to Nysa appears. I had lost track of where we were, my mind wandering through all of these long years, and then the bridge emerges, rising up above the tree line. It’s a lumpy old arc of metal and concrete, but I have to admit that seeing it brings a tear to these old eyes. I reach up and touch the knot. I look over at you. You have been sleeping for at least an hour.

“Pearl,” I whisper almost reverently. “Pearl. Wake up. We’re almost at the bridge.”

You yawn and stretch, your limbs unfurling like one of those fiddlehead ferns in time-lapse, and you rub your eyes. “Where are we?”

“We’re nearly at the bridge that goes over to Nysa,” I say, and we drift off the exit and make a right onto the simple two-lane road that leads toward the bridge.

The forest in those parts is dense and dark, so when we drive down the exit ramp and off the highway it is like we are submerging underwater. You, however, rise. You press your nose against the window, and I can see a mini caldera of steam form on the glass. We drive through the deep shadows, and sharp flashes of light fall through gaps in the trees. I put my window down a few inches, and I can smell the water. I feel suddenly like I’m home. It’s been forty years since I felt this way.

We arrive at the bridge, begin driving up its long span, and the whole sky opens up. There is one lonely boat droning its way upriver, to the left and away from us, its hull smacking the water over and over. I have such a strong longing to be in that boat, to feel the spray, the sun, the almost violent up-and-down movement, being tossed, to close my eyes and smile at the expanse of the river.

You turn downriver, looking to our right, your face open to every possibility offered to us by the wide world. We get to the top of the bridge and begin another descent, this one down onto this strange terrain, this Nysa. The forest that waits for us on the far side of the bridge is even more dense than what we’ve already driven through, if that’s possible, and far beyond those trees I can see the flat expanse of farmers’ fields, but I can’t yet see the small town. I can imagine it. I can see it how it used to be, forty years ago.

Strangely enough, so far nothing has changed. Yes, the bridge is crumbling, the cement barriers missing chunks, the pavement cracked and pockmarked. I had prepared myself on the drive for developed land, perhaps mansions along the river with their own docks slicing the water and cell phone towers rising through the trees. But the woods are exactly as I remember them, the river the same, the sky as endless as it ever was. I can easily imagine that I am eighteen again.