Crossing the Bridge (7 page)

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 another 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.

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.

For whatever reason, I was very hungry, although I wouldn’t normally have had breakfast for several hours. I took the muffin away from her and ate it. “If you’re going to have a heart attack, this is probably the best place to have one.”

“Yes, but no place is the best place to have two.”

“We’ll have to wait to see what the doctor says. You like these guys, right?”

“I like his other doctor. I don’t know the one we just talked to.”

“He seemed to know what he was doing. I’m sure he’ll be very careful with Dad.”

This didn’t reassure her in any way. She seemed
much more rattled than I had seen her at any time since I’d been back. For a moment, her eyes seemed to mist over and then she blinked the tears back.

“I have nothing if I don’t have your father,” she said. I reached out and squeezed her hand, but she didn’t seem to notice.

We went back up to the ICU waiting room and didn’t talk much over the next few hours. I tried a few conversation starters just to get her mind on something else, but I was useless.

We checked in on my father occasionally and she must have felt some sense of relief that he was resting comfortably. She relaxed enough to ask me about the time I spent with Iris and then she inexplicably asked if I had retained contact with someone I dated in my senior year in high school. She had never met any of the women I saw in college and the one time I brought Gillian home, my mother was in bed with the flu for most of the weekend. Therefore, this high school girl was as real to her as anyone I’d ever spent time with.

By 10:30, my father was awake and there had been no further incidents. At my mother’s suggestion – “he doesn’t need both of us standing over him like this” – I headed off to the store. Tyler was working the counter and Tab was busying herself around the wrapping paper.

“Hey, what’s happening?” Tyler asked when he saw me.