Crossing the Bridge (30 page)

If Chase noticed any of this, he didn’t acknowledge it. On the drive over, he asked why I wasn’t coming down from Boston as much. But he never suggested that he saw any change in the way I acted around Iris. And yet I couldn’t help wondering how I was going to approach this as time went on. Making my feelings go away didn’t seem to be a viable option. Bringing the issue out into the open seemed counterproductive. And competing with Chase for Iris’ affections seemed disloyal and plainly absurd.

Halfway through the evening, Chase and I found ourselves thrown together in the middle of the dance floor during one of those group dances that were obligatory at weddings. As a precursor to my “madman in the water” episode later in the summer, I took this opportunity to act out of character and behave even more outrageously than my brother, dancing comically, suggestively, and utterly out of control. At one point Chase, never one to surrender the stage to another easily, stepped back and folded his arms in front of him to watch my exploits. I’m sure most of the people in the room thought I was drunk, which was fine with me, though I in fact found myself uninterested in drinking at all. Eventually, Chase rejoined me and as the song ended, we threw each other on the floor, rolling around and laughing.

Afterward, I went to the bar to get another Coke, dabbing perspiration from my face. Iris was there. It would have been impossible (not to mention ridiculous) to avoid her, though it was the first time we’d been together without Chase since “the moment.”

“You should have come out on the dance floor with us,” I said, quickly breaking eye contact to get the bartender’s attention.

“I didn’t want to get injured.”

I took my drink and turned back to her. “I guess we looked pretty stupid, huh?”

“You were funny.” It seemed for a moment that she was going to reach up to move some hair from my forehead, but then she put her hand back at her side. “Chase loves playing with you.”

I nodded. “It’ll probably look pathetic when we’re in our sixties, but I suppose we can get away with it now.”

“I’ll still think it’s funny when you’re in your sixties.”

“Then it’ll be worth it,” I said, immediately regretting having done so. This kind of comment would have seemed entirely innocent a few months before, but now it seemed charged with innuendo. Iris brought her drink to her mouth to cover whatever reaction I might have seen and then looked off behind me. A moment later, Chase came up to us, punched me on the shoulder, and threw an arm around Iris, kissing her on the neck. I excused myself and went off to find someone else I knew.

A short while later, I was talking to Lisa’s sister Mia near the edge of the dance floor when the band began to play “The Way You Look Tonight.” Chase and Iris were slowly spinning in time with the music and she was laughing and saying something to him that I couldn’t hear. He pulled her close and they moved together, Iris’ head on Chase’s shoulder, his eyes closed as he rested his face against her hair. Iris
pulled back from him for a moment and Chase regarded her with a look of contentment I’d never seen on his face before. Then they folded together again, barely moving as couples danced nearby.

I tried to continue my conversation with Mia, but this vision of the two of them transfixed me. While I’d been obsessing over one moment of abandon with Iris, they were becoming more and more completely enmeshed. Never before had it seemed so obvious to me how absolutely in love they were. I knew then that it was time to stop playing with my illusions.

I’d been unconsciously turning my body away from Mia and toward the dance floor as I watched.

“Do you want to go out there?” Mia asked.

It took a beat for her question to register. “Nah,” I said. “Not my kind of thing.”

For the first time since I’d known Iris, I was feeling nervous as I approached her house. I was certain that it had to do with the charged atmosphere the last time we saw each other and the easy intimacy of the phone conversations we’d had since. I’d left for Lenox that morning with a huge sense of anticipation and I was sure this was what led to the bubbling in my stomach as I turned up her street. If I believed in intuition, I would have interpreted the sensation differently.

I’d learned via one of the dozens of e-mail newsletters I received that Richard Shindell was playing in a club in Stockbridge a couple of weeks hence. Shindell’s sometimes bleak, always passionate songs had
been favorites of mine for the past several years and he was one of the first artists I’d introduced Iris to when we reconnected. I’d only seen him in concert once and knew the experience would be a richer one with another fan by my side. I bought tickets for the show online and planned to surprise Iris with this news when I saw her.

Iris offered me a quick kiss on the lips when she opened the door and then hugged me tightly. When she pulled back, she smiled up at me and then turned to let me into the house.

“Good trip?” she asked.

“Yeah, very good.”

“Doughnut or muffin?” She was referring to the pastry that accompanied my mid-drive coffee break.

“Neither actually. I think it’s finally gotten through to me that the combination of caffeine and sugar isn’t necessary for the last hour of the drive. I also think I’ve put on a few pounds.”

“I’d noticed,” she said teasingly. “I’m glad you brought it up before I had to.”

She walked over to the couch and sat against one side with her arms wrapped around her legs. I sat on the other end and faced her. We smiled at each other.

“Stop,” she said, laughing.

“Stop what?”

“Let’s just . . .” She made a flitting motion with her right hand.

“Let’s just be natural?”

“Yes.”

“You and I might interpret the term ‘natural’ differently.”

“Let’s just be us.”

“Whatever that means.”

“You know what I mean. We don’t need to be weird.” She chuckled, offering a glimpse of her girlish side and then turned to me with the most stunning grin I’d ever seen on a human being. “What are we going to do today?”

“I’m not sure what we’re going to do today, but I can tell you what we’re going to do on August second.”

“What? Planning ahead? From you?”

“Only in this case. Richard Shindell is playing in Stockbridge and I got us tickets.”

“Really?” she said, reaching over and squeezing my leg. “That’s so great. The second, you said? Let me go write that down.”

She stood up to go into the kitchen where a calendar hung from the refrigerator. While she did, I put Shindell’s newest album on her iPod, thinking it would be nice to sit together on the couch and listen to it before we headed off for the day.

Iris was in the kitchen for considerably longer than it would take to mark the date. When she came back, she offered me a compressed smile and then sat next to me on the couch. The smile didn’t say, “Let’s get cozy.” It seemed to say, “Let’s not talk for a while,” though I had no idea why. I put my arm around her shoulders, she leaned into me a little, and we sat that way through the entire album. Shindell’s complex, brooding melodies seemed appropriate for the situation, though I couldn’t have possibly said what the situation was or how the air in the room had so completely altered in such a short time while seemingly nothing happened. A few minutes in, I asked Iris if
she was all right and she nodded. She’d gone from buoyant to contemplative in the time it took to walk back and forth from the kitchen and she clearly wasn’t ready to discuss it. I wondered if this wasn’t in some way her response to what the last week had been like for us and to the presumptiveness of my planning ahead.

When the music finished, we sat on the couch for several minutes more. Then Iris patted me on the leg and said, “Let’s go for a drive.”

We headed up Route 7, past Pittsfield, the iPod going the entire time (Green Day’s “21st Century Breakdown” album, Iris’ choice). Eventually, we stopped at a deli for sandwiches and ate them sitting on the grass at a nearby park. The connection between us had recalibrated again, back to what it was like just after Memorial Day. We were talking easily about surface-level things. I’d expected that this day might have some awkward moments. I’d even braced myself for the possibility that Iris was going to tell me that she didn’t want our relationship to go deeper. I was completely unprepared for what came next, though.

As we finished lunch, Iris lapsed into silence again, her eyes focused on the distance. I put my hand on her shoulder and she leaned her head into it for a moment before looking back out.

Without turning to me, she said, “I had to flip the calendar to August. The first thing I saw was the tenth.”

The tenth was the anniversary of Chase’s accident.

“It’s not like I didn’t know it was coming. But having it announce itself to me like that when I turned
the page was a real shot to the stomach. Especially since I’d gone in there all excited about the concert.”

She looked at me with an expression that mixed sadness and something more unsettling. It seemed like defeat.

“I always have a hard time with that date, Hugh. An extremely hard time. It can sometimes take me days to get past it. You won’t want to be anywhere near me.”

“I’ll be near you,” I said. “We’ll do it together. We
should
do it together.”

She looked back out toward the horizon and leaned her head away from me.

“I don’t know that I’m ever going to be able to look at you without seeing him, Hugh.”

For months now, I’d believed that to be true. In many ways, it was true for me as well. But it didn’t matter – it wasn’t real – until Iris said it herself. And in doing so, she’d defined our future. We could continue with the fits and starts. But we would never get past this absolute. Every relationship comes to its insurmountable place. Ours happened to be the foothills, in fact the very ground itself.

I took her hand and stood up. “Come on, let’s head back.”

“We don’t have to. It’s a nice day out. Maybe we could go for a walk.

“No, I think we both really want to get back to Lenox.”

I didn’t stay that night. In fact, I didn’t stay for more than forty-five minutes after we returned to her house. I told Iris that I thought it might be a good idea for me to leave and she only made the slightest
attempt to disagree. She was sitting on the couch when I kissed her forehead and said good-bye.

Ten years ago, I’d considered it a cruel act of destiny that the first woman to ever inspire me was committed to the person I loved more than anyone in the world. But this was exponentially harder to deal with. I knew more now. I’d been through more now. And I knew Iris better and she captivated me even more. For the first time in my life, I truly wanted someone and I was ready to make a life with her. I was willing to climb whatever mountains I needed to climb, including the several considerable ones I’d already scaled.

But I wasn’t willing to cause Iris pain. And what had become heartbreakingly clear to me that afternoon was that loving me was simply going to be too hard for her. If she were ever going to have a romance that stood the test of time, it was going to have to be with a person who could finally walk her beyond the events of August tenth ten years ago.

In other words, it could never be me.

I wasn’t supposed to be at the store the next day, but since I’d come back from Lenox earlier than I’d planned, I went in anyway. Ironically, I’d even made contingency plans in case I wound up staying an extra night with Iris if things moved forward as they seemed they might.

When I walked in the door, Tyler looked at me quizzically and I simply said, “You don’t want to know.” He didn’t push it, the store was busy, and we
didn’t get back to it. But still, I found Tyler’s presence comforting. He wouldn’t be around much longer and I wasn’t anxious to see him go. And even though I couldn’t confide in him on this day, the very fact that he was around seemed to help.