Crossing the Bridge

by Michael Baron

  As Amber High let out, the place got a little busier, allowing me to move on to other things, at least occasionally. Tab’s shift ended and a high school senior named Merry came on. Merry didn’t seem to take the store any more seriously than Tab had, but she was at least willing to make the effort to ring up a greeting card or show a customer where the all-occasion wrapping paper was.

  Merry had been in the store about fifteen minutes when Iris walked in. I went over to her as soon as I saw her and then pulled up short when I got within five feet, suddenly remembering that her personal space was decidedly not mine.

  “Do you have a couple of minutes?” she asked. I nodded and we started walking down the street.

  “I’m getting ready to head back home,” she said, and then added, pointing back in the other direction, “the dog’s already in the car.”

  “I’m glad you stopped by. It was really good seeing you the last few days.”

  “Yeah, it was great seeing you.” She looked over at me quickly and then looked back ahead. “I didn’t want to leave without talking to you a little about what happened last night.”

  I assumed that anything I said at that point would either be inappropriate or make me feel foolish, so I simply kept listening.

  “I was a little surprised when that happened,” she said. “I mean, I know it was me who started it, but I was just a little surprised that I did it. It had just been so good talking to you and it was kind of fun seeing you after all this time. And it just brought up a lot of stuff – good stuff. You said that thing about missing me and I just got . . . inspired, I guess. Then when we kissed, it was a lot more intense than I was expecting it to be.”

  “I felt that, too,” I said, still not entirely sure where this was going and hoping that letting her know that I shared the experience might help.

  She pursed her lips and didn’t make eye contact. “That’s why it would be a really big mistake to do anything with it.”

  Even though only a few minutes before I hadn’t been sure that I was ever going to see her again and was positive that if I did she would say something like this, I felt deflated. “What do you mean?”

  “You know, with everything that’s between us and all.” I could see out of the corner of my eye that she glanced over at me. “You aren’t going to tell me that it wouldn’t feel very weird if we actually went after this, are you?”

  “I’m not sure what I’m thinking about it, to tell you the truth.”

  “Yeah, well, there’s a major difference between the two of us. I’ve been thinking about it constantly since last night.”

  I could have – in fact should have – clarified myself, but there didn’t seem to be much point to it. By the time I was out of college, I had decided that no relationship was worth pursuing if the pursuit required convincing the other party. The fact that Iris had come to the store – with the dog waiting to go home – with the express purpose of clearing up any romantic misinterpretations I might have had was enough to make me just wish the entire encounter was over. I simply laughed, turned, and took a couple of steps in the direction of her car.

  “Can I meet your dog?” I said.

  Iris’ expression relaxed. She was clearly unsure of how I was going to react to what she had to say and was relieved that I was letting her off the hook. We walked toward the car. When the dog saw her, it pressed its nose against the side window, fogging it with its breath.

  “Big guy,” I said. “What is it?”

  “It’s a Wheaton Terrier. And a gal.”

  “This huge thing is a terrier?”

  “Yeah, I know. She’s really friendly.” Iris opened the passenger door and the dog came bounding out, jumping up on Iris and then doing the same to me. She calmed when I pet her, but then left our side and jumped back into the car.

  “She kinda likes road trips,” Iris said.

  “Maybe I should get one of these to come with me to the southwest. Do they like the Dave Matthews Band?”

  Iris took her car keys out of her jacket and walked toward her side of the car.

  “When do you think you’re going to go?” she said.

  “I’m not sure yet. I need to find out what’s going on with my father and then I have to take care of some stuff in Springfield. I have to do a little more research on the place, too. I’m not that spontaneous. I’m thinking New Mexico. Maybe by the end of the month.”

  She nodded and I thought she was going to say something else. But again she seemed to fix on something in the distance. After a moment, she looked into my eyes.

  “Let’s stay in touch, okay?” she said.

  “Yeah, sure.”

  “I mean it. It was really good seeing you. And I really liked talking to you the last couple of nights. I always did. You were a good friend, Hugh, not just Chase’s brother. Don’t let what happened last night get in the way. I don’t want to completely lose touch with you again.”

  I closed the dog’s door. “I’ll write you when I get out to wherever I’m going. Maybe you can visit sometime. And I’m sure I’ll be back here every now and then to check on my parents. Maybe our trips will coincide again.”

  “That would be good.” She came over and kissed me on the cheek. Then she opened her car door. “I’ve gotta get on the road. Stay in touch, though. I mean it.”

  I nodded and she got into the car. I said good-bye to the dog and then watched as Iris drove off.

  Before going back into the store, I took a side trip to the chocolate shop. I bought a hazelnut truffle and a dark chocolate toffee, and then went to Bean There, Done That for a triple espresso. I planned to take them back to the store with me, but changed my mind and sat on one of the sidewalk benches until I finished.

  Russet Avenue pedestrians had begun the annual process of slowing their pace for the upcoming season. The winter’s brisk and purposeful headlong charge began to relax in early March. By the beginning of April, you could see walkers stopping to talk with one another on the street, examining shop windows, and simply getting from here to there with less velocity. As a kid, I’d loved getting a couple of quarters from my father for ice cream from Layton’s Fountain Shop (now replaced by The Cone Connection) on days like this one. I would sit on a bench, peripherally watching the passersby, but essentially taking as long as possible to enjoy whatever flavor I’d chosen that day, all the while forestalling my favorite part, which was eating the melted ice cream that gathered at the bottom of the very last bite of cone. Early April days were especially appealing, because it was warm enough to sit outside comfortably, but not so warm as to make the ice cream get soft too fast. A few months later, I would need to lick much more deliberately and it simply wasn’t as much fun.

  Sitting with my two pieces of chocolate and my coffee wasn’t as idyllic. Still, there was the feeling I remembered with absolute precision of being completely unmoved to action. Then as now, being on a bench on a warm spring day in Amber seemed the best possible alternative to whatever else was going on in my life.

  A teenaged couple walked by with a small dog bouncing at their heels. I wondered what Iris thought about when she was “constantly” thinking about our latest kiss. Was there ever a point during this when she thought that perhaps we should see what would happen between us? Or did she spend all of this time thinking about how she was going to tell me that nothing was possible? As much as I wanted to shrug aside her dismissal the way I had with other women over the years, I knew that this was unrealistic. It would be pointless for me to write off what had happened the night before. Even before we’d kissed, I’d known that I was being drawn to her all over again.

  And yet it would be equally pointless for me to go after it. There was nothing about the way Iris had approached me this afternoon that suggested equivocation. She hadn’t said what she’d said because she wanted me to protest or because she was unsure of her feelings. Iris had made one thing abundantly clear: no matter what we were like when we were together, we could never take that to anothe
r level because of what I represented.

  That was a wall I felt utterly incapable of scaling. And as I bit into the second chocolate, I realized that I was at least somewhat relieved. There was no way that a romantic relationship wasn’t going to be fraught with the kind of emotional gymnastics I’d been doing for the past fifteen hours. She was and would forever be Chase’s last girlfriend.

  I finished the chocolate and took the rest of the espresso back with me into the store.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Strenuous Activity

  Chase had been dating Iris for a little less than a month when he told me that he was going to be “renewing her contract.” We were sitting on the grass on the banks of the Pine River drinking beers and wasting as much time as possible before we got back to town. We’d actually done surprisingly little of this that summer. Chase had Iris and a new group of friends from this year’s lacrosse team. I had made a couple of trips back to Boston to visit my friends there and to try to work a spark into something warmer with a woman from the CD shop near the school. I also got the impression that the novelty of doing this with me had lessened from the previous summer now that Chase looked old enough to buy his own beer.

  “Should I alert the media?” I said in response to his news.

  Chase laughed and pulled on his beer and then smiled at me in a uniquely goofy way.

  “She’s getting to you a little, huh?” I said.

  I was surprised at the way Chase spoke about Iris. At first, I had misinterpreted the sober tone he used as suggesting that he wasn’t that excited about being with her. But then I realized that it was something else entirely. That sound in his voice was respect. Chase didn’t talk about Iris with the wildly colorful language he had used for some of his other girlfriends because to do so would have been disrespectful of her. When the message finally got through to me, I felt a little taken aback by it. If Chase was going to take this woman this seriously – so seriously that he would circumvent certain hardwired attitudes about dating – then this had to have an impact on other parts of his life. I wasn’t sure I was prepared for that and I wasn’t sure I wanted it.

  But by this day, as we sat by the banks of the Pine, I had spent some more time with Iris myself and I saw that she wasn’t bending Chase or forcing him into a different mold. She was like the proper seasoning on a well-prepared meal – she was bringing out his optimum flavor. And so I approved of the news that he was planning to continue seeing her. Chase, of course, first needed to use a string of profanity to explain how he felt about my “approval” before clapping me on the shoulder and telling me he was glad that I liked her. I responded by pushing his hand off my shoulder in playful defiance, to which he responded by knocking me over. Before long, we were rolling down toward the river, laughing and cursing at each other the entire time. I managed to stand up and, when Chase lunged for me, I actually moved deftly enough to parry his approach and land on top of him, a technique I’d learned during an intramural wrestling program I had been in the fall before. I pinned Chase down and, for a moment, he couldn’t pull himself free. It had probably been ten years since I’d been able to exert that much control over him.

  “Shit, man, you are getting soft,” I said.

  And then I was temporarily airborne before plunging into the river. The water wasn’t particularly deep, no more than four or five feet at the banks, but I was so disoriented that I couldn’t immediately get myself out of it. I flailed a bit and then finally found my footing. When my vision cleared, I saw Chase laughing and then suddenly pulling himself up short. My instinct was to charge him, assuming if nothing else that I could get him wet, but I wasn’t feeling particularly steady on my feet. When I saw Chase put his hand up to his right temple, I did the same, and that’s when I discovered that I was bleeding. I must have hit a rock when I fell into the water.

  I’m not sure what my expression said to him, but Chase moved very quickly to action. He lifted me out of the water and laid me down on the shore. I knew enough about these kinds of wounds to know that if I was conscious, I was probably okay, but I still found the amount of blood that I could see very upsetting. Chase pulled off his shirt and tore it into strips to wrap my head, telling me the entire time that I was going to be okay and that he would take care of things. It was the second time that afternoon that his voice seemed out of character, though, since I was shaken up myself, I might not be remembering it accurately.

  An hour later, a doctor at the emergency room had stitched and properly bandaged me. A stillshirtless Chase was pretending not to preen for the nurses.

  “This is great,” I said to him when they released me. “I look like one of those Revolutionary War musicians and you’re taking phone numbers.”

  Chase pretended not to know what I was talking about and reminded me that he wasn’t in the market for phone numbers any longer. I insisted on buying him a T-shirt from the hospital gift shop before we left anyway. While we were there, he picked up a silk rose for Iris, telling me, laughing, that I had screwed up and made him late for his date with her.

  The night after Iris left, I stayed with my parents until the end of visiting hours. My father looked tired, but I was guessing that it was largely from being immobile for so long. When my mother and I got back to the house, she made us tea and we sat in the sunroom.

  “We really appreciate you looking after the store the last few days,” she said as she opened a package of Oreos. “I guess you have to get back home soon, don’t you?”

  “In a couple of days, yeah.”

  “This was a lot of time for you to be taking off from work. Will that be okay?”

  “I don’t really have to worry about work right now, Mom. I quit a couple of weeks ago.”

  My mother looked down at her mug and then took a slow sip. “What was wrong with this one?”

  I shrugged. “They just wanted more from me than it made sense for me to give. This place wasn’t meant to be a career.”

  “Any prospects?”

  “Not really. I haven’t actually been looking. I’m not sure I want to stay in Springfield. There isn’t a lot going on there.”

  She studied her tea for several seconds. I wondered if she was looking for a message. Something that would tell Anna Penders how to deal with her perpetually wayward son.

  “This isn’t a good time for me to be worrying about you,” is what she said.

  “You don’t need to worry about me. When have you ever needed to worry about me? I’ve never once been concerned about finding a way to make money or a place to live. You shouldn’t, either.”

  “Of course you haven’t. You’re smart, you’re talented, and you know how to talk to people. Someone like you can always get by.” She sipped again. “Don’t you think you might be underachieving a little, though?”

  “Mom, I’m fine. Don’t waste any energy wondering about whether I’m underachieving.”

  We’d had this conversation before. It was always an easy one to brush aside. This time was no different.

  “Ben Rice from the Chamber of Commerce came to visit your father today.”

  I nodded. I had never heard Ben Rice’s name before.

  “He said that a Banana Republic was trying to lease the space that Miriam Wallace’s boutique used to be in.”

  “Did the Chamber of Commerce call out the militia?” This had been an ongoing tug-of-war since Amber had grown to its current size. National chains would occasionally try to take space on Russet Avenue and the town would vehemently oppose it, believing that one of the primary reasons why tourists came to Amber was because of shops you couldn’t find on any Main Street in America. In fact, only one store in the entire downtown area had an additional location elsewhere.

  “I guess they had more trouble this time than usual. Ben said it was touch and go for a while. Your father was getting more riled up than he should until Ben told him that the landlord was nearly certain he was going to lease the space to a pottery gallery instead.”

 
“Better that they bring in another craft store than another stationery store, huh?”

  “Don’t even joke about that.”

  I took another Oreo from the package and stood to go to bed.

  “You’re okay for money, right?” my mother said.

  “I’m fine, Mom.”

  She nodded and turned back to her tea. I kissed her forehead and walked up the stairs.

  Somewhere around 5:00 that morning, the phone rang. I couldn’t hear what my mother was saying, but after she hung up, she started to rustle around in her room. I threw on a pair of jeans and went to see her.

  “What’s going on?” I said.

  My mother was dressing and pulled a sweater up in front of her to cover her bra. “He’s had another heart attack.”

  “Is he okay?”

  “They’ve brought him to the ICU and are monitoring him.”

  I turned to head back to my room. “Let me get dressed and I’ll drive you.”

  “You don’t need to come. He’s going to be fine.”

  “I’ll drive you. Then we’ll see that he’s fine together.”

  By the time we got to the hospital, the doctors had stabilized my father and he was sleeping in Intensive Care. They weren’t sure yet what had caused the second heart attack and they were going to watch him closely over the next few hours. One doctor told my mother that my father was out of immediate danger and suggested that we go home to get some more sleep. This wasn’t a realistic option for my mother and she wouldn’t even go down to the cafeteria until she was certain that the ICU staff had her cell phone number.

  “If they don’t know what caused it, it can happen again,” she said as she picked at a bran muffin, pulling it to little pieces.