Iris looked up at her friend. “Wow,” she said. “That’s harsh.”
“What did you expect from Joan Throckmorton? But maybe you don’t know her work.”
“Oh.”
“I wouldn’t advise you to read much of Throckmorton’s poetry unless you’re in a particularly sunny mood. The results could be—bad.”
“I’ll keep that in mind. Well, I guess I should get back to the studio.” Iris began to gather her scarf and hat and mittens.
“And I should get back to preparing the end-of-term exams.”
“How do you test someone’s understanding of poetry?” Iris asked as she finished buttoning her coat. “How do you know they’re not just repeating what you’ve told them? How do you know they really get a poem?”
Bess tugged her hat over her ears. It was a bright blue felt with a dark green brim and a fingerlike appendage sticking up about two inches from the dead center. “Those are questions,” she said with a sigh, “that I’ve been asking myself for years.”
Chapter 8
DiMillo’s Floating Restaurant had been a family business since 1954 and in its present location at Twenty-five Long Wharf—in an old car ferry first commissioned in 1941—since 1982.
It wasn’t hip or trendy, there was no loud and thumping music, and the food wasn’t experimental or skimpy, all of which made it a favorite with families. It wasn’t unusual to see several generations sitting around a table, from great-grandma in a wheelchair to her great-grandchild in a highchair.
In short, DiMillo’s was a cheering place and the thought of going there for dinner, even with an old love abandoned in less than ideal circumstances, should have boosted Iris’s spirits a teeny bit, but it did not. Since morning she had been thinking about the lines of poetry Bess had quoted her at the coffee shop. The dead sat around mocking the living. Talk about depressing. If Bess were right about Joan Throckmorton’s poetry Iris would have no trouble avoiding it, at least at this time of the year.
Now it was evening and Iris was walking through the doors of DiMillo’s. And there was Ben, waiting for her. Iris’s heart ached. Had she really forgotten how wonderful it was to be greeted with a warm and welcoming smile? God, what a thing to have given up!
“Hi,” Ben said when she was a few feet away. “Thanks for coming.”
Iris nodded. She realized he was wearing a coat she had never seen before. Why should I have seen it? she asked herself. I’ve known nothing at all of his life these past three years. Nothing.
They were shown to a table immediately and took seats across from one another.
“In summer it’s almost impossible to get a table on one of the decks,” Iris said.
Ben nodded. “I can imagine.”
“Yes. Sorry there’s not much of a view on a late autumn night.”
“That’s okay. I wasn’t expecting a view. So, did you walk here?” Ben asked.
“Yes,” Iris said. “I don’t have a car at the moment.”
“Oh.”
“How are you settling in to your place?” she asked.
“Just fine. I’m renting until I find something right to buy.”
“Oh. That’s good. I mean, I’m sure you’ll find something.”
Iris managed a small, anemic smile. She didn’t think she could stand making insipid small talk all evening, not with Ben of all people. And yet, the thought of his opening a brutally honest conversation terrified her. She remembered what Ben had said outside the art store. “I could argue that you owe me that much, a chance to clear the air.”
“That old diving suit by the hostess desk really freaked me out,” Ben said suddenly.
Iris managed a genuine smile. “I know. The first time I saw it I literally jumped. And I might have yelped.”
“Imagine the courage it took to go down into the depths of the ocean in that thing.”
“The courage or the sheer stupidity.”
“There is that,” Ben admitted. “I’ve always considered people who take extreme physical risks a different species of human from the rest of us. I don’t care if it’s for the sake of a sport or science or for the thrill alone.”
“I remember when one of the students who worked with you at that tiny gallery off Boylston Street asked you to go hang gliding.”
Ben laughed. “Yeah, like that was ever going to happen.”
He looked down at his menu then. Iris watched him surreptitiously. It felt odd to be admitting to memories. It was as if she still somehow possessed a part of Ben, though of course, she didn’t. She had relinquished intimacy and maybe even the right to the memory of it.
“Is it terribly clichéd of me to order lobster?” Ben asked, looking up from his menu.
Iris smiled. “Probably. But I won’t tell anyone.”
“If I’m going to be a Mainer I suppose I should at least attempt to fit in.”
“No, you shouldn’t,” Iris told him, “because you won’t succeed. You’ll always be from away. But don’t despair. There are a lot of strangers. And some of them have lived here for twenty years or more.”
Ben raised an eyebrow. “Thanks for the advice.”
Their waiter, a skinny young man with a crew cut, took their order then and it was a long moment after he had gone off before Ben spoke. “I saw some of your recent work for sale in the museum’s gift shop,” he said. “The pieces are beautiful. I recognized the work as yours before I saw the identification card. It’s evolved since when I last saw it, but it’s still uniquely yours.”
“Yes. I mean, thanks. If you’re not busy changing you’re busy dying. Someone famous said that. I think.” And why, Iris wondered, did I have to mention dying again?
“Where else do you sell?” Ben asked after another moment of silence that was beginning to feel uncomfortable.
Iris shrugged. “In a few places around town. Also, at a store in Ogunquit and at a gallery in Portsmouth and one in South Portland. Sometimes I sell from my studio. I’m having an open house on the sixteenth. You know, for holiday shoppers.”
“Who does your marketing these days?” Ben asked. “Did you finally hire a manager?”
Iris laughed. “With what money? No, I do my own marketing, such as it is. I have a Web site, of course. I really should be more proactive about the whole thing. Maybe in the new year.”
“It’s not easy to promote yourself. Some people have the knack for it and some just don’t. Which is why they hire someone like your father to manage their careers.”
“Yes,” Iris said. “He had such amazing patience with the clients who were socially—awkward. Well, I suppose he still does.”
“He certainly did a wonderful job managing and promoting your mother’s career. Not that she was, as you put it, socially awkward.”
“Yes. I mean, no, she wasn’t.” She was anything but, Iris thought. Everyone had liked her. Everyone.
“You know,” Ben said, “my mother still wears the pendant she bought at your first show.”
Iris was stunned. “Oh,” was all she managed to say. And then, “Where were you working before coming to the PMA?”
“I was cocurator of new works at the Harbor Museum,” he told her. “It was a great place to learn the essentials of the process.”
“Then why did you leave?” she asked carefully.
Ben shrugged. “The job in Portland came up. Frankly, it was too good an opportunity to ignore. The PMA is a bigger, more prestigious museum. And, they made me an offer.”
So, Iris thought, his moving to Maine had nothing to do with my living here. She wondered if that were true.
“On an entirely different subject,” Ben said suddenly, “I might as well tell you that I was married. Not for very long, less than a year, actually. But you probably know that.”
Iris felt a stunning sense of betrayal. She knew she had no right to feel betrayed. But oh, this news hurt. “No,” she said finally, mustering what she hoped was a normal voice. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry. I mean, I’m sorry about t
he divorce.”
“I’m surprised you hadn’t heard,” Ben said. “I thought there were no secrets these days. I assumed you must have read about it on Facebook. Not that I have a personal page. I don’t care to share my life with thousands of virtual strangers. But Melinda did. Does. I’m afraid I come off pretty badly on her page. But she was hurt and disappointed.. . .”
“Oh,” Iris said. She couldn’t imagine what this Melinda person could have said about Ben. He was a genuinely good person. Then again, Melinda had been married to him. She had known Ben as a husband. Iris had not. “See,” she went on, “I don’t look at Facebook much.... Um, what happened? I’m sorry. I shouldn’t pry. . . .”
“That’s okay,” Ben said. “I don’t mind telling you. Briefly, it was a spectacularly unspectacular match. I thought it was about time I should get married. So did Melinda. And in the end, that was about all we had in common, though we each did a good job convincing ourselves otherwise. Amazing how stupid two educated and otherwise intelligent people can be, isn’t it?”
Iris fiddled with the edge of the napkin she had yet to unfold and put on her lap. She wondered if Ben had married on the rebound, determined to move on and put the troublesome Iris Karr firmly in the past.
“I’m sure something good came of it all,” she said lamely.
“Not really,” Ben replied bluntly. “We each wasted almost eighteen months of our lives from start to finish, and we each lost a fair amount of money. Not to mention what we put our families through. No, the whole relationship was a disaster.”
“Oh.” Iris finally unfolded her napkin. Maybe Ben was accusing her in some way, wanting her to take responsibility for his disastrous marriage. Maybe he wanted her to feel sorry for him. Iris stifled a sigh and wondered how things had gotten to this sorry state, when she could no longer detect the real meaning behind his words. But she had the answer to that.
“So,” Ben said heartily, as if (Iris hoped) eager to close the subject for good, “what have you been up to these past few years? Besides working, of course.”
Iris managed a smile of sorts. “Nothing, really,” she said. “Work is pretty much my life. Not that I’m complaining. I’m lucky to love what pays my bills.”
“I guess I could say the same right now,” Ben said. “Though I’m sure that given time I’ll find something to complain about. No job is without its challenges.”
“True.”
Their food arrived then, brought to the table by the skinny young waiter.
“How’s your lobster?” she asked after Ben had made an initial attack.
“Lobstery. How’s your pasta?”
“Good.”
Silence descended as they ate. Iris realized that her entire body was tensed, as if for fight or flight. When was Ben going to bring up her dramatic defection from their relationship, and all those months of his ultimately futile pursuit? Why else ask her to dinner to “clear the air”? She had no idea how she was going to handle his questions—with deflection, outright refusal, lies, a tantrum, a dramatic exit? None of those options was right and each would be insulting to both of them, especially to Ben. She didn’t know how the food was moving down her throat and actually staying in her stomach.
“You know,” Ben said into the silence, “I run into your father on occasion. Well, when I still lived in Boston.”
Iris took in that bit of information. She wondered if they talked about her when they met, her father and her former lover.
“He never mentioned that,” she said. Not that she talked to her father all that often. Undoubtedly, there was a lot about his current life she didn’t know, like how his second marriage was faring and how his business was doing in the terrible economy when buying art was a very low priority, even for those with disposable income.
Ben shrugged. “He probably didn’t think you’d care.”
That was harsh but what else was Ben—or her father—to think? When was the last time she had called her father or even sent him an e-mail? She thought of Tricia, who called her parents once a week, and felt a little bit ashamed.
The waiter came to clear their plates. Neither wanted dessert or coffee. Ben asked for the check and paid for their meals. “After all,” he said lightly, not meeting her eye, “I pretty much insisted we meet tonight.”
Together they walked back through the covered walkway lined with gift shops selling baseball caps, T-shirts, and snow globes, and then out into the parking lot.
“So, has the air been cleared?” Ben asked, his tone still light.
Had it? They had talked about a lot of things, even, briefly, her mother, but not about the one thing that most mattered: why Iris had abandoned Ben. “I don’t know,” she said, thinking that what she should have said was, “No. The air is as murky as ever. And it’s my doing.”
“Me, either,” Ben said quietly. “But maybe it’s been cleared enough for us to coexist peacefully in this small city.”
Iris looked out over the water of Portland Harbor. It looked infinitely black and very, very cold. “Yes,” she said after a moment. “Maybe.”
“Can I offer you a ride home?” Ben said. “You won’t believe this but I still have my old black Volvo.”
The old black Volvo. How many times had she been in that car! Easily thousands of times over the six years of their relationship. If she got into the Volvo this night the sensory memories alone would rob her of what little reason she possessed.
None of this was supposed to happen. She and Ben were not supposed to be standing within inches of one another after having shared a meal. Ben was not supposed to be offering her a ride home and she was not supposed to be remembering how it felt to sit by his side in the warmth of his car on a dark December night.
“Oh, no, that’s okay,” she said weakly.
“Are you sure? It feels like it’s going to snow.”
“Yes, I’m sure. I like the cold air.”
“Since when?” Ben held up a hand. “Sorry. I shouldn’t presume that I . . . I shouldn’t presume that I still know you.”
Yes, Iris thought. Virtual strangers. That’s what we’ve become. “It’s okay,” she said. “Well, good night.”
She didn’t put out her arms for a hug or her hand for Ben to shake. She just turned away and began to walk, quickly, out of the parking lot. She didn’t see in what direction Ben walked, and if his car passed her as she made her way along Commercial Street she didn’t know that, either. Before too many minutes she realized she was trembling and it wasn’t entirely due to the cold.
Chapter 9
A pale sun filtered through the window shades Wednesday morning, the seventh of December. Iris peered over the covers at the clock on her bedside table. Eight o’clock. It was high time for her to be up and about. But she remained where she was.
She had been frozen to the bone by the time she got home the night before, her fingers red and swollen and stiff in spite of her mittens, eyes streaming tears, nose running. Ben had been right about the snow, though it hadn’t started until she was home and tucked into bed. This morning there was probably only an inch or two on the ground. As Iris lay there in bed under blankets and comforters, she wondered if a thin layer of snow still sat on the back of the Rising Cairn, or if the weak morning sun had exerted itself enough to cause the snow to melt away through the gathered stones. Sometimes a foot or more of snow settled on the sculpture’s back, a burden or a protective cloak, depending on how you looked at it.
Iris burrowed deeper. She was still surprised the evening had passed without Ben’s having asked her why she had left him almost three years earlier with no explanation other than “the need for a change.” Maybe, she thought, he was biding his time. But why? To torture her for having hurt him? Or, maybe he really didn’t care any longer. Maybe he had gotten past the misery she had inflicted, recovered from the shock and pain to which she had subjected him, and just wanted to be friendly neighborhood acquaintances.
Friendly neighborhood acquaintances,
indeed. Iris wondered what her mother would have thought of such a pathetic outcome to a once vital relationship.
Her parents had loved Ben and for all Iris knew her father still did. What was not to love about him? He was intelligent and kind, generous with his time, and respectful of others even when he had a good excuse not to be. He could be great fun. He was hardworking. He got along well with his own parents. On paper, he was impossible. In reality, he was, well, real.
In short, Ben Tresch had been a blessing for the Karr family. Bonnie had even admitted to Iris that she regarded Ben as the son she had never had.
Iris sighed to the empty bedroom as she thought about how Ben Tresch, Bonnie Karr’s surrogate son, had been the last person to see her alive. She had been unconscious during his visit as she had been for the better part of the day. But what might have happened if her mother had been conscious, even for a moment? What might she have said to Ben about the request Iris had denied her? What might Ben have felt?
Iris flinched as if in physical pain. She remembered how she had told Ben he needn’t bother to come to her mother’s funeral. It was an outrageous thing to have suggested to him—a part of her had known that even then—and he had been understandably appalled. Telling her own father that he didn’t have to attend the services for his wife would have been no less bizarre.
She remembered, too, that not once during the services for her mother had she cried. In fact, she hadn’t shed a tear since Christmas morning when a private nurse greeted Iris and her father with the news of Bonnie’s passing in the night. She had cried then, intensely, for close to an hour and then, the tears had simply gone away.
Only weeks after the funeral the idea of moving to Maine had come to Iris like a flash of divine inspiration. That, or a bolt of madness, she thought now, rubbing her forehead. Only a month after the funeral she had announced her plans for departure. And in spite of Ben’s pleading, she had packed her car and driven off, alone.
And that, as it is said, was that.
Iris looked again at the clock on her bedside table. It was almost nine. She would get out of bed. Soon.
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