The Woman on the Bridge

The Los Alamitos Creek was full and flowing after the rains. There were mini rapids splashing up and over the stones, tree roots, and branches. Eddies formed where the creek pooled, giving way to rushing water – loud enough to break through the music playing in my ears. Only a few weeks ago, you could walk across the parched arroyo, but now it was deep water and moving like a river. I wondered what would happen if I lay down in it, closed my eyes and opened my mouth. Would the strong current fling me downstream? Or would I succumb immediately and disappear under the dark water?

I did not stop at the break in the wooden fence and make my way down the cleared dirt path to the edge of the rushing stream, because the way things are going, God would let me drown. I had an appointment later at the animal rescue center where I worked, with a family coming to pick up their new kitten. Today an orphaned and homeless cat would get a forever home. Oh, the irony. So I stayed on the trail and ran to the small footbridge across from the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints (at the spot where I’d bumped into a coyote one day, thinking it was a dog), and then ran another quarter mile to Graystone Lane, my turnaround point for 5 miles. But I kept going, following the trail along Camden Avenue. Now the creek was on my left, heavily wooded in a canopy, you could barely make it out unless you looked closely or listened. Leland High School was the next mile marker, and another mile in I passed Carabelle Park (water fountain fill up spot) and ran up the little hill to the road. Finally, I reached the Camden Avenue Bridge and I looked for her in her usual spot.

She is sitting on the bridge, huddled in an old coat, knees to her chest, like she’s on the front stoop of the house she used to live in. She watches the cars and bicycles pass by, the runners and walkers crossing the road to reach the connecting part of the creek trail. Some days she’s got a broom and clears leaves from the road. Tidying up.

This day, I’m running to the end point of the trail at the 5 mile mark where it meets Harry Road and then I’ll turn around. On my return leg, I reach the Camden Bridge again. She’s still there a half hour later. I nod and give a brief wave as I run by on the opposite side of the road.

I wonder how long she’s been there. Someone told me she lives under the bridge. She wears a T-shirt in the summer and now she has a coat. Where does she store her belongings? Once I heard her yelling something to no one in particular and I could not make out what she was saying. I think it through: does she have anyone who worries about her? A family, a friend? Someone who checks on her when they haven’t heard from her in a long time? Do they know she sits on the bridge each day?

Later, on my way to work, I drive down Capitol Expressway towards Seven Trees and see the tents that have sprouted by the roadside, the growing homeless encampment taking over the sidewalk at the intersection. Each day it extends a bit further along the fence for about a quarter mile. Tent after make-shift tent, their occupants hidden from view, belongings are strewn in heaps outside the tents. When I stop at the traffic light, I notice all the items outside one tent are blackened and in tatters. Some had set it on fire. Perhaps the woman on the bridge is safer there than here. I worry about her and wonder how she got there.

I spent the majority of my life anchored to one place – the only real home I knew – in my hometown of Livingston, New Jersey, where I grew up. Life was simple and mundane. We lived in the same house for more than 50 years; I never thought of any other place as home.

My parents bought the house in Livingston the year after I was born. They’d started out their married life in a garden apartment in West Orange, the next town, where Mom’s parents, my grandparents lived, just ten minutes away.

It had all the hallmarks of New Jersey suburban life: a big green lawn in front and a backyard that met the woods, four distinct seasons; and New York City just 25 miles away. I saw the same view out of my bedroom window for more than 50 years. I used to stare at the big oak trees in the woods and imagine faces in the branches. I’d watch them gently sway in the wind, or weather powerful east coast storms. I never questioned the stability of trees.

As a child, I took for granted that the house would always represent home, although I don't think I ever vocalized that comprehension. I didn't appreciate how much of an impact it had on me. I complained that my little suburban town was boring, and wished out loud that we lived someplace else. We rode bikes around our neighborhood, played dolls at friends’ houses, stomped through the woods behind our house, and sifted the dirt for pretty rocks in the quarry up the hill.

Growing up there were birthday parties in the downstairs’ den, with crafty activities Mom made up like drawing pictures with crayons, and eating her beautifully decorated homemade layer cake. Dad had his office in one corner of the room. We’d sit on the bright orange couch (who knew mid-century modern would become trendy?) and watch moon landings on the console TV. There were cat trees at the windows so the cats could watch the bird & squirrel channel on their “TV.” Upstairs were three bedrooms, an elegant living room with a baby grand Steinway piano, given to Mom when she was a young woman learning to play, and filled with antique furniture, and a stone fireplace we never used once she had it remodeled. Off the dining room, there was a sun porch surrounded by lilac bushes, and the heart of our home – the kitchen. More than 50 years of memories in each room.

I went through all my schooling in the public school system. The elementary school was in an old brick schoolhouse, named Squiertown for some original inhabitants of the community, which was established in 1813; the Heritage Junior High was a more modern building; and the senior high, Livingston High School, was a mish-mash of architecture, with numerous additions over the years as the population of students outgrew the space.

The town added a paved running path around the circular drive in front of the high school. In the center were ball fields where teams could practice baseball or football or field hockey, and around the perimeter, anyone could walk or run laps for exercise. Before I became serious about training and running marathons, I would show up at the "Oval" and pick up some half-mile loops with friends I'd met there, or on my own.

I came back home to Livingston after I'd finished college at George Washington University in D.C. My plan was to work in New York City (a commute through the Lincoln Tunnel into Manhattan), and eventually move to my own place once I was making enough money to live on my own. Residing in New York was financially out of the question even then. In the meantime, I was living with my parents, and trying not to fight with them; we all needed to learn how to coexist as adults, rather than carrying on with the adversarial parent-child relationship we’d had so far.

I'd only been out of college about two years when Dad became ill. Three years later he died and everything fell apart. That’s a whole other story – not this one. Mom and I stayed in the house, adopted some cats for company, and we learned to rely on one another and become friends. We weathered actual storms from hurricanes and blizzards to hail and locusts, and figurative ones that came in like a wrecking ball: one health crisis after another for Mom.

She was talking about selling the house and moving – somewhere. I didn’t really want to leave. We argued about where we would we go. We debated possibilities. I was sick of the New Jersey winters that brought months of misery from the cold, and now storms that meant endless snow blowing and shoveling and treacherous driving. Icy roads I couldn’t run on. I wanted to go someplace warm, where I’d never have to think about snow again. The obvious choice was California because my brother, David, was already there with his family and Mom could see her grandchildren grow up. Her brother Stan was in Palo Alto, along with one of his sons, and the other son was in San Jose. My dad’s nieces were in L.A. So there was family. But we knew we couldn’t afford to live there. Could we go south to Florida, where some of her friends had moved? Too hot, she said. We talked about the Carolinas. Her Seton Hall friend and colleague had a house in Charleston. Another acquaintance was in North Carolina. There were pros and cons to living in each state, but mostly cons, and our debates always turned into circular arguments that came back to California, and ended in a stalemate. We stayed put.

We stuck a toe in: we tried to sell some things like the piano and a set of antique French Limoges china she’d had since she was married. I sold the piano, but no one wanted to buy the dishes.

She’d already made up her mind to sell, even though we disagreed. Without discussing it with me, Mom found a realtor who advertised in the local paper as being a specialist for seniors. I came home one day to find this woman and her photographer touring the house with Mom. I didn’t like her from the start and didn’t trust her.

The pushy realtor would call frequently, asking when would we want to list the house? She was persistent and determined. She’d stop by to meet with Mom unexpectedly, and when I’d see her car in the driveway, I’d wait until she left before going inside. She was a smarmy, high pressure real estate hound. Mom and I were barely speaking and if we did, we were fighting and arguing. I hated this realtor being in the house and I felt powerless to stop her. That changed one day when we opened up the local paper, The West Essex Tribune, and saw our house featured in her real estate ad. “Coming Soon,” it said. No, it wasn’t. We hadn’t agreed to put the house on the market yet. So Mom fired the realtor and we tabled the moving issue for another year.

We cleaned out the basement with its five decades stuff: my dad’s old cameras, her elementary school scrapbooks, colorful pictures of food and animals and other objects pasted on construction paper for teaching French, embroidered leather gloves she bought in Paris, my notebooks of early writing and poetry. I organized a yard sale, sold items on Facebook. We donated to Goodwill. She hired a painter and a carpenter and made some repairs on the house. We still hadn’t come up with a place to go.

Mom’s friend Johanna had a friend Bernie, who was a realtor. We’d met her a number of times at social gatherings and Mom liked her. She asked Bernie to help sell the house. There was no stopping now. We hadn’t decided where to move and our only quick solution was to rent something locally. Bernie put the house on the market and it sold in 2 days for a cash sale to a builder. Bernie found a townhouse for us to rent in West Orange – just ten minutes away – and ironically, down the street from the house Mom grew up in as a girl.

I packed up the house on Scotland Drive mostly by myself, with Mom occasionally pitching in to bubble wrap a dish or two. We’d lived in the house forever; the yard sales and donations barely made a dent in paring down the contents. It was August and we’d move in October.

The movers did a two-day move. Once everything was unloaded into the townhouse, Mom and I went back to our house to empty the fridge, pick up any remaining items like the living room curtains, a stray frying pan left in the cabinet. We still filled up the entire car with belongings and then it was time to leave for good. I looked around my bare room with its pretty new carpeting that I’d picked out when she had the house painted and spruced up for the sale. I peered out the window into the back yard and looked at the faces in the trees and said goodbye to my home.

The townhouse was enormous – 3,400 square feet – bigger than our house. It had 4 floors. Mom didn’t really think that through since she’d have to climb stairs – but this was the only place we could move to on short notice and she viewed it as an adventure, rather than an obstacle. We unpacked. The cats found their litter boxes and cat trees and adjusted.

Our landlord, Bruce, seemed too nice and a bit overfriendly. In the winter when it snowed, the townhouse complex was plowed and people came to clear the driveway and the walks, relieving me of those chores. I didn’t have to do more than clear the snow off my car.

We’d been there less than a year, when Mom started to have new health problems. In the summer she had a rare and life-threatening sinus infection that required surgery and months of IV antibiotics. That December she had dental surgery, after which she refused to even try to eat. I’d puree everything in the blender, but she would not eat anything. She had anemia. Then she was diagnosed with a recurrence of the non-Hodgkins lymphoma which had been in remission. Now it was back. By March, she was in the hospital. I spent the next 49 days by her bedside, until the end of April, when she died. I was all alone in the giant townhouse.

The lease was ending at the end of June I didn’t want to renew it for another year. It was too big and expensive for me to stay there. I was in shock from her death, grieving, alone – I needed time to decide what to do. Memorial Day weekend, Bruce the landlord emailed me asking if I wanted to renew the lease (I had already told him that Mom died). I told him I wanted to extend it a few months to September or October, so I’d have time to make some decisions. At first he agreed. But the next day, he sent another email telling me no – it would be too much of a business loss for him to rent the townhouse out in the fall instead of the summer, and I would have to leave at the end of the lease. Everything stopped. I sat on my bedroom floor stunned, surrounded by piles of papers from the estate: copies of the will, condolence cards, car documents, bank statements, and two cats sniffing my phone. I was already grieving and devastated and all alone and now I could not even take the time to think about where I could go next. My brother reasoned with the landlord, and he gave me one more month in the townhouse. I had until the end of July – 60 days – to pack up the townhouse, find a mover, find a place to live where I could bring the cats. Oh and the landlord decided to sell the townhouse – not rent it – so he was sending over his realtor to take photos.

I wasn’t even thinking of staying in New Jersey. I didn’t want to be alone there and I did not want to stay one more winter. I just wanted to be close to my last remnant of family and I decided to move to California where my brother was. It wasn’t really a decision as much as a default. I wouldn’t have time to fly to San Jose to look for a place, so I had to ask my sister-in-law, Lisa, for help. She reluctantly agreed. I knew she resented having to help me. I went ahead with beginning to pack up the townhouse.

Bruce’s realtor arranged open house showings on the weekends. I’d have to halt any packing for the day, take the cats in their carriers, and leave the house for most of the day on a Sunday – while the realtor brought in prospective buyers. I went to our friends’ townhouse around the corner, where they graciously let me visit for the afternoon. I put the cats in the bathroom and waited out the hours until I could resume packing.

I packed up every item in the townhouse myself. I tried to sell what I could, but as expected, no one would buy dishes or antiques or furniture or clothes. I donated all of Mom’s clothes to Good Will. Thousands of dollars worth of clothing and all I had left in my hand was a receipt for the number of bags I brought in. I kept a few pieces like the black sweater she wore all the time – but put everything else in plastic bags and boxes and ferried car loads of items each day to the Good Will store.

I worked at it endlessly day and night, watching the clock tick down the seconds until July 29. I didn’t sleep or eat or talk to anyone except the store clerks at Home Depot or Good Will. I was hyper-focused on each step of the move – I didn’t have the time to be mourning. I hired a cross-country moving company, a car transport company to ship my car. I brought in a junk hauler I had to pay when I ran out of time to sell big pieces of furniture I could not bring with me and had no interested buyers.

By mid-July, even while I was still packing, we still had not found an apartment in California. I could not give the movers an address. The truck would pick up the contents of the townhouse and all my belongings would go in a warehouse in New Jersey until there was a destination. With a week left before I had to vacate the townhouse, Lisa found an apartment for me to look at. I saw pictures in a Craigslist ad and I signed the lease without visiting it.

My car left a week before I did – I packed the trunk and car interior with items I’d need immediately: supplies for the cats; a television; a laptop; kitchen wares; bedding, towels.

The movers came on July 27. All I had left were suitcases, two cat carriers, and two cats. Lisa flew to New Jersey on July 28 and the next day, July 29 – my last day in New Jersey – we both flew back to San Jose, each of us with a cat on the plane, stuffed under the seats in front of us.

By the time I left for California on July 29, I had lost 15 pounds – I weighed 112 and I was sleep-deprived, documented permanently by my California Real license I got a week after I’d arrived.

I moved into the condo a few days later and unpacked to start my life in California. I was as alone as I was in New Jersey. I hung each picture on the walls myself. Every day was a struggle to adjust to life in Silicon Valley: finding community, making friends, reconciling my life without my mother. All I felt was alone. I never felt home. I knew before I moved here that I couldn’t afford it and I was right.

I used every penny I had from liquidating my retirement account. I could not find a job except a part time one that doesn’t pay enough to live on. I made it almost four years – all on my own – with little support from my so-called family who I barely speak to. I reached the very end of my resources with only enough to pay for one more month’s rent. My lease was finished at the end of January. I wanted to stay in the condo, but I knew I couldn’t realistically renew the lease. I’d gotten nowhere in a search for a job, despite trying and trying to get someone to pay attention to me.

Then – because there’s always a “then” under the perpetual dark cloud of my life – this landlord texted to let me know he was thinking about either refinancing or selling the condo. Could I let his realtor take a look? I was right back where I was four years ago in New Jersey melted on my bedroom floor after my previous landlord did the same thing. This time, I crumbled in the tiny dining room, leaned against the leg of the table, held on to Whisper and cried and cried. I had no one to call and nowhere to go. The landlord messaged a week later that he decided not to sell and would be refinancing the unit. He’d be sending his appraiser. I set up an appointment and a man came a few days later with a laser tape measure and a camera. He marked off every room and took pictures. After he left, I felt it was an invasion of privacy – now my landlord would see everything I own and how I live in his space. I awaited his decision. Would he tell me he was raising the rent? Days went by and I didn’t hear anything from him and I grew more nervous. A week and a half into February, he texted: “I didn’t see your rent yet. Where is it?” I decided to pay it – since I’d already been there 11 days past the end of my lease. But then what? I couldn’t pay for another month. I was out of options.

I tried to find a way to cover the rent, but I knew I couldn’t stay. The landlord changed his mind, and decided to sell the condo after all. His realtor sent an email asking if I could be out of the apartment by the end of March. Before I even answered – that it wasn’t enough time – she sent me a lease termination letter. They were ignoring tenant rights and not even giving me 30 days notice. My brother was consulting with his brother-in-law, the real estate attorney, advising that by California law, the landlord had to give me 60 days to vacate. None of that mattered. After a tense week of phone calls that all went to voice mail, untouched messages and emails, I finally accepted the final offer from the landlord: I could stay in the apartment until the end of April, he’d give me a cash-for-keys incentive to vacate, and he’d return my security deposit. I agreed. I had until April 30 to pack the entire two-bedroom condo (plus a full garage I’d already been using as storage), find a place to live, find a mover, and put most of my belongings in storage.

I had nowhere to go. And no money left.

A friend floated an idea that I could stay at her house, where she’d been living after her parents died. It sounded like a nascent idea, but I wasn’t sure it could happen by the time I needed to move. And close to my moving date, she backed out – it wasn’t the right time for her.

I researched storage units in my area. It felt like going to visit rehab facilities where Mom could have gone if they released her from the hospital (but she never went there). A friend gave me some moving boxes and supplies as a start. I could not plan any other moving logistics without the most important element: where I could move to. I couldn’t get anyone to talk to me. Like four years earlier, no one would help. Everyone was telling me not to panic; it would all work out, but that wasn’t true.

I picked up one of the moving boxes, and taped up the bottom. 

I packed up again. A few friends from my running community came to help ferry boxes to my storage unit. It was slow going, and I could see we were not even making a dent. I would still have to hire a moving company to wrap the furniture and take it out of the apartment. One by one, I packed up all my things, the pieces of my life, the memories that made up my past, the items that made it feel like home. Two men in an unmarked moving truck came to haul the furniture down the steep staircase. They didn’t speak any English.

We filled up the 10x20 storage garage until there wasn’t any more room. I stood at the entrance and looked back over rows and rows of boxes and oddly shaped items stacked to the 8 foot ceiling. All that’s left of home are the contents: the antique couch, pullout tables, lamps, paintings, figurines that sat on the on the mantel in the living room, which had been my grandmother’s, the kitchen items Mom and I bought together so we could bake or cook from family recipes or invent new ones, French china Mom had since she was first married, Grandma’s breakfast sets. Boxes of books I never unpacked from the cross country move since I didn’t have room for book cases. All my family photo albums in plastic containers stored way in the back of the storage locker. Did I ever live that life? Was I ever that girl in the photos? I don’t know. I don’t even recognize myself anymore.

I pulled down the steel door and padlocked the storage unit. My entire past life boxed and invisible.

I miss that life I had before. I miss having home. I yearn to go back, but I know I won’t find it there. The house is demolished and replaced by an unwieldy mansion that fills up the property, my trees obscured, the land unrecognizable. My mother is gone, reunited with my father and my grandparents, all resting in the same King Solomon cemetery section a half lot from each other even in death. I miss the pets I had, the streets I ran on, the turning leaves, even the snowfall and the icicles in the frigid winter, the lilacs outside the screened porch in the summer. I long for a place and a time I can’t return to – it doesn’t exist anymore. The Welsh call this hiraeth; the Portuguese call it saudade; there isn’t even a word for it in English. It isn’t nostalgia, and it’s more than homesickness and melancholy – this grief for my life irretrievably lost and gone forever.

All that remained in the apartment were items I could transport in my car – déjà vu from the car’s journey four years earlier – suitcases, the cat’s supplies, my computer, a comforter and some pillows. I was sleeping on the floor. In the morning would go for a last run on the Los Alamitos Creek trail.

The cat yowled and woke me. I looked at the clock. It was 3 a.m. He was nudging against the soft blanket I’d set on the floor. I threw off the quilt and groggily made my way to the bathroom, trying not to trip over the open suitcases. I passed through the dressing area with its mirrored closets that face each other reflecting infinity and impulsively glanced to my left.

 Staring back was the woman on the bridge.

I went for a run as I planned and I wound up at the bridge. She wasn’t there. I stood in her spot, cleared of leaves, leaned over the steel fence and peered into the water. I saw a shadow of myself looking back.

Long ago, in a high school poetry class that explored song lyrics, a too-cool-for-school English teacher led us in a guided meditation to delve into our inner poet. We nestled our heads on our folded arms on our desks, and we’d chant “shanti, shanti, shanti” as if summoning our deepest selves. One by one, the teacher stopped in front of each student. I felt a tap on my arm and opened my eyes. I saw myself staring back. He was holding up a mirror and I saw through to my 17-year-old soul with my 17-year-old flaws and imperfections. Who was that girl then? I didn’t recognize her now.

I climbed up and sat on the top of the thick steel railing facing the road, watching the cars go by, the runners on the trail. I crawled up higher so I could stand, balanced, and opened my arms wide, like Leo on the prow of the Titanic. I took a deep breath and leaned back. I felt the gentle lapping of the creek against my cheek, the subtle gushing sound as it moved along, and sensed my blood running out. I felt a hand on my cheek and fluttered my eyes.

Her gaze met mine and our eyes locked as I faded to black.