Crossing the Bridge (3 page)

“What are you doing here?” she asked as I walked up to her. I noticed her eyes scanning me from head to toe. She didn’t seem to be appraising me; it was as though she was taking inventory.

“I read about this place in a guidebook and decided to check it out,” I said.

“You look good. You seem – taller.”

“Yeah, I get that a lot.”

She looked stunning to me. I was surprised at how my memory had failed to do her justice. Her hair was shorter than I remembered, but her eyes seemed even more cobalt, her skin smoother, her posture even more approachable.

“So what
are
you doing here? Last I heard, you were off wandering the globe.”

“Yeah, moving from suburb to suburb in search of thrills. I finally got tired of the fast lane and decided to stop by for a little small town calm.” As I said this, I rolled my eyes to make sure that she understood I
was being ironic. “Actually, my dad’s sick and I’m here to check up on him.”

Concern darkened her expression. “Is he okay?”

“I think so. I’m gonna watch the store for him for a few days.”

“Wow, things
have
changed.”

“Well I guess you can do anything for a few days, huh? So what are you doing here? You haven’t moved back, have you?”

“God, no. I live in Lenox now. I come down every month or so to see my mom. My dad died a few years ago.”

“I’m sorry to hear that. He seemed like a good guy.”

Iris nodded and looked up the street. I couldn’t tell if she was thinking about her father or feeling uncomfortable about seeing me.

“Do you want to go grab a cup of coffee?” I said.

She wrinkled her nose. “I can’t. I’ve got a few more stops to make and I told my mother I wouldn’t be gone long.”

I shook my head and looked down at my shoes. “That just sounded like I was blowing you off, didn’t it?”

“No, your mom doesn’t like to be alone. I get it.”

“Actually, my mom is fine being alone. She just gets irrational if I tell her I’m only going to be gone a short while and then I come back a few hours later. Even if I call her.” She chortled. “Mothers. You’re here for a few days?”

“Yeah, three or four probably, assuming everything turns out okay with my father.”

“I’m going to be here until the weekend. Do you want to get a drink sometime?”

“That would be good,” I said, disproportionately cheered by the fact that she wasn’t blowing me off. “Tomorrow night?”

“I’d like that. I’ll meet you at the Cornwall at, say, 8:30?”

“The Cornwall. Yeah, absolutely.”

“It’ll be nice to catch up. You can tell me about all of your adventures.” She smiled and touched me on the arm. “This was a nice surprise. I’ll see you tomorrow night.”

She headed into the bakery and I returned to the store. It was no more active there than when I left and I again found myself looking across the street from the window. When Iris came out of the bakery, I saw her take a quick glance in my direction before walking away.

For a reason that wasn’t entirely clear to me at that moment, I found this extremely satisfying.

The first time I met Iris, I was serving as the brunt of one of my brother’s jokes. I’d been home after my sophomore year at Emerson for a little more than a week and wondering how long I could get by with the excuse of a summer independent study class before my father penciled me into the work schedule at the store. That day, Chase hadn’t come home directly after school. This wasn’t unusual now that he had his driver’s license. But in the late afternoon, while I was alone in the house and listening to a vintage Clash album at a volume only allowable when my parents weren’t around, the phone rang. It was Chase speaking agitatedly, telling me that he needed me to pick him up from the mall in Milton. He’d left his car at school because the girl he was with had offered to drive, but when they got to the mall, her behavior became increasingly erratic. He was concerned that she was some kind of psychotic and he definitely didn’t want to get back in the car with her for fear of where she would take him. He’d managed to shake her with the excuse of needing to go to the bathroom, but he
was sure he was going to run into her again if I didn’t come for him soon, and he had no other way of getting home.

I wasn’t accustomed to this sound in Chase’s voice. He was four inches taller than I was and at least thirty pounds heavier. I’m not sure that I had ever seen him intimidated. He had also been handling women deftly from the time he was preadolescent. Yet the rising pitch in his voice suggested that I should make the fifteen-minute drive to Milton without even stopping to turn off the stereo first. I told him to wait for me in The Sharper Image and that I would get there as soon as I possibly could.

When I got to the store, he was holding an electronic nose hair clipper in his hands while he scanned the room. The nervousness seemed incongruous with his broad, solid form. I imagined the girl he’d taken a ride with as a teen version of Glenn Close in
Fatal Attraction
, and my mind reeled at the notion of what she could possibly have said or done to him to make him this skittish. The very fact of his nervousness caused my heart to race.

I called out Chase’s name. His head snapped quickly in my direction and then his shoulders sagged. He came up to me, clapped me on the arm, and thanked me dramatically for coming to get him. I led him out of the store as he further described his encounter with the girl. He explained that she was extremely attractive and had always seemed even-tempered in school. For most of the drive to the mall, she had appeared to be completely normal. But then, just as they were getting out of the car, she had started talking about fate and the way things were
meant to be and about the two of them going far away together never to be heard from again. He had managed to distance himself from her as quickly as possible, but as we walked, his head was in constant motion and he warned me that she could be anywhere in the mall. He told me that if she found us I needed to remember not to let her fool me. She might seem sensible, but under no circumstance was I to leave him alone with her again.

I found my pace quickening as he spoke and my eyes scanned the mall, even though I had no idea what the girl looked like. Chase matched me step for accelerating step.

That’s when she came out from behind a store directory.

“Oh, there you are,” she said. “I thought you were going to meet me in The Limited after you went to the bathroom.” She didn’t look at all the way I imagined she would from Chase’s description. She had inviting eyes and lustrous hair, and for some reason I immediately noticed the sculpting of her bare shoulders. I realized that I could just as easily have fallen into her trap as Chase had.

Chase stuttered (which was way over the top and in retrospect makes me feel especially foolish for buying into any of this) as he explained to her that he was in fact planning on meeting her at The Limited but then saw me and got distracted. Mention of my name caused both of them to look in my direction.

She extended her hand. “I’m Iris. Chase has said great things about you.”

I shook her hand, surprised at how soft it felt even
though her grip had some real integrity. I’m not sure what I was expecting.

“Are you gonna hang with us for a while?” she said.

I glanced over at Chase, whose eyes were imploring me to make a move.

“Um, you know, something has come up and I came to get Chase because we both have to go.”

Concern quickly registered on Iris’ face. “Nothing bad, I hope.”

“No, nothing bad,” I said. “Just something that means we have to leave right now.” I looked over at Chase again and he offered the faintest nod to acknowledge that I was taking the right approach. I thought I sounded like a bumbling idiot.

“Sorry to hear it,” she said. Iris turned to Chase and he stiffened immediately. “You don’t look okay,” she said to him. “Are you sure there isn’t anything wrong?”

Chase simply nodded, as though he was dumb-struck. Anyone who could move my brother to silence had the power to do much more than that to me. Genuinely concerned, even though every instinct told me that there was nothing to fear from Iris, I took Chase by the arm.

“We really have to go,” I said.

“Where are you parked?” Iris asked. “I’ll walk out with you.”

Chase put his hand over the one I had placed on his arm. If I had been thinking at all rationally, I would have realized how absurd this performance was. Instead, I jerked myself toward the girl and
sharply said, “No, Iris. That really won’t be necessary.”

She looked like I had slapped her, and I felt terrible about being so abrupt. Then I heard Chase laughing. He hugged my arm before pounding me on the shoulder. Then he walked over to Iris to kiss her while still laughing. It took him more than a minute to calm down enough to speak.

He told us that he wanted to introduce us and just thought he’d have a little fun with it. I reddened, thinking about the way I’d treated Iris and how I should have known better, since this kind of trickery was always a possibility with Chase. It had been happening once every few months for as long as I could remember, and as stupid as I felt after each incident, I nevertheless marveled at his ability to devise fresh practical jokes that caught me completely unprepared.

“I was never really convinced that you were insane,” I said to Iris.

She smiled weakly. “You looked pretty convinced.”

I took a deep breath. “I might have been. He’s pretty good at this stuff.”

“I’ll keep that in mind.”

Chase was still chuckling as he walked down the hallway, beckoning us to follow him. We wound up eating bad Mexican food at the mall and then going to see a Cameron Crowe movie together. When we parted, Chase started toward Iris’ car, hesitated to throw me a concerned glance, and then laughed about his little hoax all over again.

“You can have him if you want,” Iris said to me.

“No, that’s okay. You keep him.”

The morning after I saw Iris on the street, I was back in the store. Tyler was already there.

“When do you go to school?” I said.

“I was supposed to be in a marketing class this morning, but I figured I should be here instead.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. You know, your dad asked me to take care of the place and you didn’t say when you were coming in again.”

I laughed to myself and wondered what it was about my father that inspired this behavior. I could think of at least a half dozen people he had previously employed who would have done the same thing. Tyler introduced me to Carl, a college freshman who usually shared this shift with my father. Carl shook my hand while looking over my shoulder and then retreated to the stockroom.

The foot traffic on Russet Avenue was light, as was often the case on midweek mornings in the early spring. The locals were at work or hadn’t gotten around to setting out on their errands yet and the tourists were few, many perhaps returning to their rooms at one of the inns after a multicourse breakfast to prepare for the drive home. There were two people in the store, one intently scanning the relationship cards, the other looking at the magazine rack while sipping at a paper cup from Bean There, Done That, the coffee bar down the street.

I joined Tyler behind the counter and the two of us stared out at the display of ceramics. A limp instrumental version of The Beatles’s “We Can Work
It Out” was just barely audible through the sound system.

“Radio always on one and always set to the ‘beautiful music’ station,” I said, mimicking my father’s oft-repeated instructions.

Tyler laughed. “Yeah, Richard likes things a certain way.”

I nodded. “They were playing the same music on this station when I was in high school. Do they still do that string version of ‘Where the Streets Have No Name’?”

“At least once a day.”

I looked over to the shelf behind the counter to see Tyler’s statistics textbook.

“Business degree?” I asked, gesturing toward the book.

“Yeah, I graduate from MCS in two months.” MCS was Middle Connecticut State, a modest college that most of us frowned upon because it catered to commuters.

“Let me guess – just missed at Yale.”

“Actually, I turned Yale down.”

I looked at him skeptically.

“I know,” he said. “I wanted to stay home, if you can believe it, and no one commutes to Yale.”

When I didn’t comment on this, he added, “It had to do with a girl.”

I nodded. “An explanation that works for just about anything.”

“My parents would have had a hard time affording it anyway.” He moved over toward his textbook, as though he needed the contact. “As you might have guessed, it didn’t work out with the girl. I could have
tried to matriculate at Yale in my sophomore year, but I found I actually kinda liked MCS.”