Funny World

I have a strange story to tell which happened on my birthday; I just turned thirty-five and my daughter had died the day before of some disease I'd never heard of before. I was drunk and sad, and sitting on the handrail of the Golden Gate Bridge with my legs dangling over the water.

The bridge was bathed in a blue, recessed light. There were cars crossing the bridge, but at four o’clock on Sunday morning, there weren’t many. I could see Alcatraz Island, where a lighthouse blinked in a roving arc of flashing red lights. Further out I could see the rising and falling lights along the Bay Bridge, and I could see a million scattered lights across the bay in Oakland and Berkeley.

I was thinking how cold the water looked and wondered if I would feel the cold when I landed. I was just concluding that no, I would not, when a cat jumped into my lap. A dog had been chasing the cat, and the dog now barked incessantly at my elbow. I didn’t know then that the dog had saved my life by chasing the cat into my arms.

The dog was some kind of Doberman mix. It looked mean and paid no attention to me. It stood below the railing barking at the cat, whose claws dug into my chest.

I said to the cat, “What the hell did you do to this dog?”

The cat, of course, didn’t answer, but my words seemed to gentle it, and it stopped squirming. I turned to the dog whose barking was getting on my nerves and screamed, “Shut up!” which did nothing to stop the dog barking but startled the cat and it started clawing at my chest again. I held on tight, afraid it might jump from my arms to its death.

There is a statistic I read that said over 1600 people had jumped off the GG Bridge since it was built, and only one person had chosen to jump off the other side, the side not facing Alcatraz and the Bay Bridge. That side had no lights and nothing to see at night. I don’t know why I thought about that, but it seemed interesting to me at the time and sad that a person would jump out of darkness into darkness when over here on this side you had the option of jumping toward light, which was my choice.

I patted the cat and held it close to my chest. The dog kept barking. The moon, not quite full, showed brightly over the Berkley Hills and I found myself thinking how pretty it was. The cat was warm in my arms. I turned to the dog and spoke soothingly, “Please shut up.”

And it did. And then it was peaceful out there sitting on the bridge. The dog was silent, the cat was no longer trying to get away. The semi-full moon was shining down on me so hard I felt it on my skin.

A man came up out of breath. He put a leash on the dog and gave me a funny look, then led the dog away. When he was gone, it was just me and the cat and the water below, and the lights and the moon above me. I sat on the railing with the cat warm and gentle in my arms and thought what a funny thing life is. I took the cat home and named it Hope.

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