The Bridges of Madison County

Lying on her bed on her 67th birthday in 1987, Francesca remembers every moment of that brief time with Robert, a man for whom she’d have done anything except ruin her family. She goes downstairs and sits at the old Formica kitchen table where she and Robert spent hours together, a table Richard had since replaced but that she saved and brought back inside after his death. She lights two candles, turns on the radio, and whispers to Robert’s imagined presence.

Every day for many years after their tryst, she felt tempted to contact him, but she never does, fearing that, if she did so, she’d go to him. He sends her one package and then is silent; she knows that he knows that it’s for the best. She subscribes to National Geographic and sees the article on the covered bridges. Now and then his picture appears in the back of the magazine as one of the featured artists. Over the years, she sees him get older, and it makes her want him all the more. Somehow, she knows he was always single. In one shot of him, she notices a small medallion attached to the silver neck chain he’d worn with her. With a magnifying glass, she sees that the medallion says “Francesca.”

On his deathbed in 1979, Richard tells Francesca he’s sorry he couldn’t give her that for which she yearned. After he dies, she finally tries to reach Robert, but his phone number no longer works, and even his old National Geographic editor doesn’t have a current number. She writes a journal about her affair with Robert; it grows to three volumes.

In 1982 she receives a large package from a lawyer representing the estate of Robert Kincaid. The cover letter says that Robert recently died. It takes her an hour to be able to continue reading. The dry, lawyerly words continue: Robert’s last will, dated 1967, expressly requires that they send her the enclosed items, including a letter Robert addressed to her in 1978. The cover letter notes that, per the will, Robert’s ashes were scattered by their associate near a place called Roseman Bridge.

Inside the package are Robert’s silver chain with the “Francesca” medallion, along with the note she’d tacked onto the Roseman Bridge inviting him to dinner. The note is folded in a way suggesting it had been in Robert’s wallet for a long time. Also in the package are three cameras with lenses, including the one she handed him when she assisted him at Cedar Bridge.

The letter from Robert says the cameras are in better hands with her than in a used store. Robert worked steadily for 10 years, often overseas, after they’d parted because he was daily tempted to return to her. Leaving her was the hardest thing he’d ever done—“I live with dust on my heart”—and he never dated again: “I’m just not interested” (145). He compares himself to a goose whose life mate is gone. He remembers everything about her—her smell, her skin, her whispers—and he aches for her constantly. Still, he doesn’t regret their meeting, fleeting as it was.

Francesca orders a special keepsake box built of walnut to hold the contents of the package. Every year on her birthday, she pulls the items out and reminisces. The last item is a manuscript; every year, by candlelight, with a glass of brandy and her annual Camel cigarette, she rereads Robert’s essay, “Falling from Dimension Z.”

In the essay, Robert describes himself as traveling through the world but in a slightly different dimension. He looks at a wilderness trail and sees himself back in ancient times as a prehistoric hunter, then further back until he’s a primitive sea creature and finally a plankton. His dimensional shifts through time always bring him back to her.

Francesca puts away the things, then retraces her steps when she was with him, from the porch swing to the lane, and to the gate where she met him and where she last saw him.