Crossing the Bridge (31 page)

When I returned to my parents’ house that night, my mother was in the kitchen and my father was on his usual perch. I called in to him and he waved back. I went to sit with my mother while she prepared dinner.

My mother was an earnest cook. Her meals neither offended nor dazzled the palate, but they were rich with intentions. She’d always seemed to enjoy cooking for us and I think she found a considerable amount of satisfaction in our responses. Chase had of course been the most vocal respondent, regularly suggesting she put a dish in “heavy rotation” or, occasionally, “drop it off the playlist.” I’m not sure how she was finding the inspiration to put in the effort these days. I only ate with them three times a week and my father’s most enthusiastic reaction to any meal might be, “Good, Anna,” while he focused on the television. Still, she refused to descend to a level of preparation that would have been more appropriate to my father’s ennui. Tonight, she was putting together a salad with arugula, red leaf lettuce, walnuts, mangoes, and grilled chicken.

I kissed her on the cheek and reached around her for a piece of mango. She slapped me on the wrist playfully.

“I assumed you’d be home for dinner,” she said, “though you didn’t tell me you would. A less thoughtful mother would have you eating peanut butter and jelly tonight.”

“And don’t think I don’t appreciate it, Mom.”

“Why are you here, anyway?”

“Things came up with Iris.”

While still chopping, she looked up at me briefly, looking back down at the mango when I didn’t say anything more.

“How are things at the store?”

“Really busy again today.”

“Anything new from that guy from Westchester?”

“He’s asked for a bunch more information. I guess now that we didn’t agree to just give the store away to him, he wants to make an informed bid. His daughter seemed to like the place, though.”

“I suppose that’s progress. And it’s very good news that the store continues to be busy.”

“Certainly makes the hours go faster.”

She looked up again to offer a faint smile and then began putting together a vinaigrette for the salad. As she was doing this, my father appeared in the doorway. As always, he was wearing his robe, but he’d cinched the sash snugly around his waist.

“Richard,” my mother said when she saw him.

“I thought we’d have dinner in the dining room tonight.”

“That would be good,” my mother said, whisking her dressing briskly. “We’ll be ready in a few minutes. Hugh, would you set the table?”

There was an unusual level of conversation at dinner that night. My father talked about the day’s news events. My mother talked about things going on in and around town, information she’d gleaned from her hours out. I told them about the customer who’d
bought two Mexican tiles and one of the handmade mugs I’d purchased. My father even suggested an outing for him and my mother the next afternoon and my mother graciously agreed without asking where this was coming from.

It had been nearly a year since we’d last shared a meal together like this. Back then, it was hard to imagine that I’d ever consider something as casual as this to be momentous. But at the same time, I was only partially aware of what was going on. I couldn’t help but think that I wasn’t supposed to be here tonight or that the reason I was here to witness this watershed event was because of another that had happened the night before.

I certainly didn’t intend to talk to my parents about this. But then there was a lull in the conversation and I found it unnecessary to retreat into my own thoughts.

“Listen,” I said, “you know that I’ve been spending a lot of time with Iris lately, right?”

My mother nodded. My father looked at me as though it was the first time he’d heard Iris’ name in a decade.

“We’ve become really good friends. You know, we were friendly when she was with Chase and all, but in the last couple of months, we’ve been doing a lot of things together and having a good time.”

“Is something happening there?” My mother asked me this the way she might ask how a critically ill person was doing.

“Something happened. For me at least. For her, too, I think. I fell in love with her. Even with all of the reasons why I knew I shouldn’t, even with all of the
weird stuff going through my head about it, I did. I just find her incredible.”

“But something went wrong,” my father said.

“Something went wrong. She just can’t do it. As I said, I’m fairly sure that she feels a lot of the same things that I’m feeling, but it isn’t enough for her. She can’t overcome the fact that I remind her of Chase, and she can’t be with me what she was with him. And on top of everything else, I’m wondering how I can possibly get past this when she can’t. Does it mean that Chase meant less to me? That I wasn’t as destroyed by his death as she was?”

My father took a deep breath and looked at my mother. Then the two of them turned to me.

“Chase died ten years ago, Hugh,” my father said. “We all lost him and none of us will ever fully recover from losing him. But it was ten years ago. We’ve been waiting a long time to hear you feel about anything the way you feel about Iris.”

I looked down at my plate. “Not that it matters, as it turns out.”

“Of course it matters,” my mother said sharply. “Don’t be stupid. It might not get you Iris and it might not even be right for the two of you to be together anyway, but it definitely matters. You have to get on with your life sometime, Hugh. God knows, we know what we’re talking about.”

I looked over at my father. He let out a small chuckle.

“Yes, I heard that, too,” he said. “Your mother knows what she’s saying. Usually does. I hope it works out with you and Iris. You don’t like doing
anything the easy way, do you? I always liked her. She might just need to come around to this in stages. And none of us are as clear about this kind of thing at this time of year as we are at others. I hate August.”

My father looked out the window, and for a moment, I thought he was going to stare out there indefinitely again. But then he inched forward and set his elbows on the table. “And if it doesn’t work out with her, think about what’s happening right now. Think about how you’re feeling. Don’t think about this as a defeat or as an excuse to go backward.”

I looked down at my plate again. Nearly all of the food was gone and I didn’t remember eating any of it. I took a last bite of chicken before looking up at them again. I wasn’t sure how to tell them that I would try to keep what they said in mind, so I simply made eye contact with each of them. This seemed to be enough.

“Do we have dessert?” my father asked.

The next afternoon I got a call from Iris begging off from our plans for the next Wednesday. She said something about the Ensemble, but the only real question was who was going to make that call first. Still, I found the conversation deflating and was ready to end it moments after it began. But at least a bit of what my father said had gotten through to me.

“Maybe the Wednesday after next?” Iris said. I was certain she was doing it to make the separation easier.

“Let’s not set up anything formal,” I said. “I’m here. If you want to talk, just call me. If you want me to
come up, I’m there. And it’s okay if none of it happens.”

She didn’t say anything and I wasn’t sure if she was upset, confused, or relieved. I said good-bye to her and hung up the phone.

There were thousands of tourists in town and it seemed that at least half of them were coming into the store. Late July/early August was always the peak of the summer for us, and the great weather (and, I wanted to believe, the improvements to the store) meant that we were busy all the time.

During this particular rush, the temporary “A” team was in place. Tyler, two shifts from the end of his tour of duty, manned the cash register. Jenna, who’d become his ostensible replacement, bagged and wrapped. I prepped the next customer in the line. Jeff, a new stock clerk, worked in the back, putting up a display of marbled paper.

I’d often complained about the limited space for the staff behind the counter, but we were making the most of it now. Jenna and I would twirl around each other to perform various functions, gesturing with our heads to announce movement in a certain direction and never once getting in each other’s way. Meanwhile, Tyler was all arm motion, pulling the goods from the counter, ringing up the sale, receiving money, giving change. Perhaps Bruce Hornsby’s piano arpeggios on the iPod suggested this to me, but
we seemed to have a certain balletic grace to the way we approached this challenge. It was unlikely, though, that we’d be performing at Jacob’s Pillow any time soon.

“Tell me the truth,” I said to Tyler, “you’re going to miss this.”

“I already told you I was going to miss this.”

“But you’re really going to miss this. That marketing firm is going to seem sedate by comparison. Lots of sitting around drinking coffee and talking about where you can get the best sushi in the neighborhood.”

“Twenty minutes from now, you’ll send Jeff to Bean There, Done That and we’ll stand around talking about baked goods.”

“You’re missing the point.”

“I got the point. Go help a customer.”

There were still a dozen people in line when a man cut in front. “Can someone help me with the kaleidoscopes?”

“I’ve got it,” Jeff said, coming from out of our line of sight to take the customer over to the display.

Tyler looked at me and offered an arched eyebrow.

“Who needs you?” I said.

When things slowed down in the store, I went on the coffee run myself, feeling like it was wrong to assign the task to Jeff after he’d shown himself to have greater value. The line at Bean There was huge, which I found a slight bit humbling.

Walking back to the store afterward, I stopped for a moment to look down the street. This really wasn’t the Amber of my mind anymore. Many of the merchants had changed hands over the past few years
and their replacements were for the most part more sophisticated and knowledgeable about their products. The guy selling silver jewelry designed much of it himself. The new boutique had hand-painted scarves created by an artist in South Salem, NY, and handmade leather purses from a woman in Portsmouth, NH. The deli had a menu of original sandwiches that had become customer favorites, along with a chalkboard listing “this week’s creations.” Even the visitors seemed different to me. Fewer BMW’d couples getting their annual fix of “quaint” and more families who actually touched each other and pointed ahead to the next shop they wanted to see. I could appreciate why people would want to visit this town, and I realized that when I returned for a visit to Amber from wherever my next destination might be, there were shops on Russet Avenue that I’d want to drop in on.

I got back to the store and Jenna was handling the cash register while Tyler helped someone choose a mug. When he was finished, we drank our coffee and the conversation almost surrealistically drifted to a comparison between Bean There’s cinnamon rolls and the ones sold at the bakery across the street.

A short while later, I received a call from Howard Crest telling me that Pat Maple had made an “excellent” new offer.

“It’s still not what my father is asking,” I said to him.

“That’s true, but it’s very respectable. He’s obviously serious.”

“But it’s not what we’re asking. My father based those numbers on real multiples. We didn’t just pull
them out of the air. I’m sure Maple’s calculator works the same way ours does.”

“You’re right, Hugh, but I think we’re very close and I want to be able to tell Maple that we’re getting there.”

“We’re getting there, Howard. But I’m not even going to talk to my father about this until Maple comes up another twenty-five percent.”

Howard was quiet for a moment. “That’s going to be tough. He’s not going to want to bid against himself like that. And we don’t have anyone else who’s even close to being interested.”

“Well maybe we need to find someone. Have you been in the store lately? Did you look at the numbers for last week’s sales that I sent over?”

“I looked at them. They’re very impressive. Everyone on the street is having a great summer. But we’ve been through what the market is like for a store like this.”

“I’m serious, Howard. I’m not going to take a bid to my father until it comes up by twenty-five percent.”

“That could kill the deal, Hugh.”

I closed my eyes and forced myself to relax. “It isn’t going to kill the deal.”

The next night was Tyler’s last in the store. As though the community wanted to give us some time to ourselves, there was virtually no business during the last hour. We stood behind the counter sampling
the new candy and reading to each other from
New York Magazine
.