Crossing the Bridge

by Michael Baron

  “My husband was a musician.”

  It would have been silly for me to pretend that I wasn’t surprised to hear she had been married. “Husband?”

  “Yeah, we met right after I got to Lexington. He was doing a composition for the dancers and we sort of connected.” She laughed. “Yeah, sort of. We were practically living together a week after I met him. One weekend a couple of months later, we just decided to get married. It was very exciting and insane and I was madly in love with him. It was something of a whirlwind.”

  “Sounds intense,” I said, still trying to grapple with this information. “How long did it last?”

  “All together a little more than a year.” She looked at me knowingly. “Like I said, it was a whirlwind.”

  “The road called?”

  “Nah, nothing so romantic. The passion just disappeared. It went from tearing each other’s clothes off to picking dirty underwear off the floor, if you know what I mean. It turned out that I didn’t get much of a charge from the domestic thing.”

  “So you were the one who left?”

  Iris smiled and her expression became wistful. “I’m always the one who leaves. Seems to be the way it goes. At least it was with Roger and Pete as well.”

  “You’ve been married three times?”

  Iris’ eyes opened widely. “No, not married. God, could you imagine? Well, I guess you could imagine, since you just asked. No, I only lived with Roger and Pete. Sixteen and thirteen months, respectively. Roger when I was still in college, Pete a couple of years ago.”

  “Same story?”

  “No, not really. With Roger, we were coming up on graduation and doing a lot of thinking about the future and it became obvious to me that we had different futures in mind. With Pete, it just sort of sizzled then fizzled. You know, that story.”

  “Yeah, I’ve had a fleeting association with that story.”

  Iris smiled and seemed pleased at the opportunity to redirect the conversation. “Details, please.”

  “Nah, the details aren’t interesting enough. I never actually lived with anyone. You know, stuff at each other’s apartments, that kind of thing, but never any official cohabitation.”

  “Yeah, that’s smart of you. It avoids the hassle of sorting through the CDs when it’s over.”

  “Exactly. I’ve never even seriously thought about living with someone.”

  The conversation moved on. We didn’t talk about Chase this night, either. I was aware that I was avoiding mentioning him and I felt a little self-conscious about this, but I wasn’t doing it because I thought it would make Iris sad or uncomfortable. I just wanted to have some time when I was talking to her alone, rather than to her and my brother. I have no idea why she was avoiding it.

  Fortunately, we also weren’t talking about movie theaters and shopping centers.

  “So what was the story with you and this job in Springfield?” she asked. The night before, I had told her what I still hadn’t told my parents: that I’d quit my latest job a couple of weeks earlier.

  “Nothing that hasn’t been ‘the story’ with other jobs. It just played itself out. I mean, I never really thought I was going to have a long-term future in the career counseling business. It would have been ironic if I had, wouldn’t it? If the firm wasn’t so laid back, I probably never would have applied for the position at all. But, you know, as it went on, they wanted me to attend seminars and association meetings and that kind of thing. And then when they invited me to a retreat to ‘contribute to the direction of the enterprise,’ I just got the sense that they were expecting a lot more out of me than I was out of them. It seemed like the right time to give them notice.”

  “Do you have something lined up for when you get back?”

  “Lined up? Gee, that sounds like a plan. I’m rather plan-averse, if you want to know the truth. Something has always come up. It probably won’t be in Springfield, but who knows? I’ve been thinking about a few other places.”

  “So many strip malls, so little time.”

  “It sounds so exotic when you put it that way.”

  She tilted her head. “I actually think there is something exotic about it. I mean it’s not as though you’re exploring the Himalayas or anything like that, but you really are sort of casting yourself out there. It’s anybody’s guess what you’ll discover, but the potential for discovery is always available.”

  I smiled at her and took a long drink of my beer. When I finished, I looked at Iris again and our eyes met in a way that they hadn’t in more than a decade.

  “I literally couldn’t put it better myself,” I said.

  There was something especially fulfilling about being “seen” by Iris. Other women had given me their impressions of what they thought went on inside of my head, and a few had even been moderately accurate. But in all of those cases, their observations had felt like an invasion. With Iris, all attention was welcome and the thought that she would expend the effort to consider my perspective on things was flattering.

  I realized that Iris and I had a unique kind of history together. We had not spent very much time as friends. And yet because of the intensity of her relationship with my brother and the fate of that relationship – not to mention the “moment” we had together – our own connection went considerably deeper. Iris was almost certainly the most significant living person from my Amber days, and as such qualified as my most reliable personal historian. More so than someone I might have known since elementary school.

  Late in the evening, the acoustic band on the stage began a medley of Joni Mitchell songs. As I suspected, they played them well and even with a bit of inspiration. I began to think about Iris’ husband. I’m not entirely sure why it was such a surprise to me that she had gotten married. Certainly, a decent percentage of people got married by the time they were in their late twenties. I suppose what surprised me was that Iris would have gotten married on a whim and then split in the same way. I suppose because I was still thinking of her with Chase, I saw her as the kind of person who would make a lifelong commitment to everything she did. I imagined that when she married, it would be to someone she knew she could stay with for the long run. She never struck me as casual about anything, especially her affections.

  Through the entire Joni Mitchell set, neither of us spoke. When the band went back to playing an original composition that they announced as their last song, Iris turned toward me again.

  “When are you heading back?”

  “I’ll probably stick it out through the weekend.”

  “I’m going back to Lenox tomorrow afternoon. A lot of stuff seems to happen with the Ensemble on the weekends and I need to be there just in case.”

  “Wow. I’ve never had a job that I would build my nonworking hours around.”

  Iris finished her beer, turned to look for our waitress, and then seemed to think better of it.

  “There are a lot of talented people in the group and they do good work. I’ve gotten caught up in the whole thing.”

  “In other words you actually care about the fate of the people you work for.”

  “Yeah, of course.”

  I shook my head. “That’s like Sanskrit to me.”

  She laughed. “Gotta care about something.”

  “That much I understand. That this something would be a job is the part that’s hard for me to connect with. Do you want some coffee or something?”

  Iris looked at her watch. “I should probably get going pretty soon. My mother gets up at a ridiculously early hour, and even though she ‘tries to let me sleep,’ she’s not exactly light on her feet.”

  I took a final swallow of my beer and we left the bar. The early spring warmth had taken its predictable turn toward late evening chill while we were in there and Iris rubbed her arms as we walked to her car. I wished I had worn a jacket so I could put it over her shoulders.

  “This was really good,” she said as she got to her car door and then turned to face me.

  “Reall
y good,” I said. “I’ve missed you.”

  She smiled and cocked her head. “Yeah, I’ve missed you, too. I didn’t even realize it until I saw you last night. But I have.”

  I knew she was cold and I knew I should let her get into her car, but I wanted to prolong the moment.

  “You’re going back to Lenox tomorrow afternoon?”

  “Gotta.”

  I nodded. “Let’s not lose touch, okay?”

  “Hey, you’re the one who’ll be heading off to Ixtapa or Duluth or something,” she said, laughing.

  “I know, but I really don’t want to lose touch. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah, it’s okay.”

  And then she moved toward me. At first, I thought she was going to hug me, so I wasn’t prepared when her lips came up to join mine. Just as I wasn’t prepared for how the kiss made me feel – undeniably grounded, riveted in the moment. It was a very different kiss from our first one. Then, there was something illicit to it, something that needed to be said, if only in a whisper. This kiss carried with it no such qualifications. This was a kiss with an undetermined result, a kiss with unknowable consequences.

  All of these thoughts passed through my mind in milliseconds and then were replaced by an unyielding need to feel this moment. I pulled Iris toward me and returned the kiss hungrily as she molded herself to me naturally. I stroked her hair gently as we continued and I realized that there was very little in my romantic history to compare to what was happening just now. It was no longer cold outside. It was no longer Connecticut outside. I could very easily have stayed in this space, doing precisely this, indefinitely.

  But then Iris pulled back slowly. Caught in the ardor of the moment, I moved with her, but relented when it became clear that she wanted to stop. Even in the spotty streetlight, I could tell that her face was flushed. She brushed her hair back from her face and smiled at me with an expression that I interpreted as amazement.

  “Gotta get my wits about me,” she said, which wasn’t what I would have scripted for her. Her car keys had been in her hand the entire time and now she quickly snapped the remote behind her to unlock her door. Before getting in the car, she looked up at me. For a moment, I thought she was going to kiss me again. Then she just said, “It’s late . . . my mother,” and started the car.

  “I’ll be in the store the entire day,” I said to her behind her closed window. “Call me before you go.”

  “I will,” she said, backing her car out of the space and leaving the parking lot.

  I stood in the same place, as though planted there by that kiss, until she drove away. Then, instead of getting into my own car, I went back into the bar and ordered some coffee. I wasn’t ready to drive just yet.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Everything That’s Between Us and All

  I slept later than I intended the next morning, and when I went down to make myself something for breakfast, my mother had already gone to the hospital. An unopened box of Honey Nut Cheerios – which I ate practically every morning while I was still living at home – sat on the counter. I hadn’t eaten them in years, but my mother couldn’t have known that. I threw a couple of slices of bread in the toaster and poured myself a cup of coffee while I waited.

  I hadn’t been completely alone in the house in nearly ten years. For some reason, I felt that I should take the opportunity to examine things more closely, the whole-place equivalent of checking out the medicine cabinet. I walked into the den, sat in my father’s recliner, and looked around the room. There was a book on the coffee table that they’d brought back from a trip to the Grand Canyon a few years before. There was a photo of my mother standing uncomfortably (the only way she ever posed for pictures) next to her goddaughter Lisa on the weekend of Lisa’s wedding. The Raku vase I’d given them for their thirtieth anniversary sat on a shelf next to the television, at complete odds with all of the other adornments in the room. And the old tapestry throw pillows had been replaced by a set of navy velour ones. Other than that, the room looked exactly as it did before I moved out. They still had Chase’s lacrosse trophies lined up on one bookshelf. The set of ceramic candlesticks he’d made in seventh grade and given to my mother for Christmas sat next to my vase. My parents’ wedding picture was on one side of the fireplace and the photograph of them renewing their vows twenty years later was on the other. The frames with our high school photos hung on another wall. I suppose when you’ve been living in the same house for as long as my parents have, you stop thinking about making changes.

  I heard the bread pop up in the toaster and returned to the kitchen. The local daily paper, the Amber Advisor, sat on the kitchen table and I absently perused the front page while I ate. There might have been unrest all over the globe, a crippling political scandal in Washington, or a life altering scientific breakthrough commanding the headlines of the New York Times or the Boston Globe. But the Advisor reserved the space above the fold for matters of traffic lights, Amber High’s SAT scores, and the visit of a Lithuanian folk musician to the Community Center.

  Just as they’d reserved it ten years earlier for the report of an accident on the Pine River Bridge that had claimed the life of the eighteen-year-old son of a prominent Amber shopkeeper. I hadn’t read the paper that morning, in fact didn’t remember seeing any newspaper in the house for several days after the accident. But just before I’d left town, I’d found the issue with the story sitting on top of a pile of other “commemorative newspapers” on my aunt’s bookshelf. I’d frozen at the sight and then walked away without reading more than the headline.

  After I finished eating, I headed to the store. A college-age woman stood behind the counter reading a copy of Entertainment Weekly. She didn’t look up when I entered and I think I could have taken the entire front display of stuffed toys out the door without her noticing. Only when I walked behind the counter did she pay me any attention.

  “You the son?” she said.

  “Yeah, hi. You’re . . .”

  “Tab.” She moved her head back and forth quickly as though she was shaking off excess water. “Tabitha. I hate that name, so I make it as short as I can. No one calls me Tabitha.”

  “I’ll keep that in mind.”

  “Yeah, thanks.” She looked back down at the magazine and turned a page. Clearly, this was all the information she thought it was important for us to exchange.

  “Where’s Tyler?” I asked.

  She kept her eyes on the magazine while she answered. “He doesn’t come in on Fridays. Some independent study thing or something.”

  “So he’s not going to be here at all today?”

  “Not unless he’s planning to surprise us.”

  She turned another page. I wondered if I should apologize for breaking her concentration. A customer walked up to the register and Tab moved over so I could ring him up. For the first time since I had been back in the store, I felt an urge to flash the authority that was my birthright. I got over it and helped the customer. A few minutes later, I suggested to Tab that there might be shelves that needed restocking or merchandise that needed straightening and she laboriously closed the magazine and walked to the back of the store.

  The stock guy, Carl, was working again, but as was the case the day before, I saw him only on the occasions when he wandered up from the back room. With Tab tinkering at whatever she was tinkering at, I was alone behind the counter to register a few sales and answer a couple of customer questions. None of it was particularly taxing and, while I was slightly irritated at Tab’s laxity, it was hard to fault her. The closest thing to a challenge came just before lunchtime when the candy vendor showed up – the same man who had sold my father candy ten years earlier – to take an order for the next week. To keep myself entertained, I reviewed every item available on the vendor’s stock list and ordered a box of BlisterSnax.

  “You sure about this?” the salesman said. “Your dad doesn’t usually carry these.”

  “We’re gonna take a walk on the wild side.”


  That marketing experiment addressed, I navigated my way through what stood for a lunchtime rush and then settled into the long lull that typified the early afternoon. Without Tyler there to talk to, and with very few customers to deal with, I had no choice but to think about the way the night before had ended. I hadn’t been conscious of how much I wanted to kiss Iris again until I was actually kissing her. I was certainly aware of how much I enjoyed talking to her, how beautiful she seemed to me, and how I felt – especially that second night – that I was beginning to get to know her in a new way. And of course, I was aware that I simply saw her differently than I saw most other women. But it wasn’t until she reached for me, until we were actually kissing, that I realized how much I wanted her physically. It was like exiting the highway expecting to eat at Denny’s and finding The French Laundry instead.

  And at the same time as I was buckling under the sensual weight of the kiss, I was sucker punched by the emotional impact. I hadn’t been smitten for a long time, but when Iris kissed me, there was so much possibility to the act that I allowed my mind to race. I began to calculate the distance from Springfield to Lenox, to think that New Mexico (one of the destinations I’d been considering) could wait for a while, all immediately in the seconds after our lips first touched. And when we continued to kiss, I swear I had actual visions of Iris and me walking together and holding hands. It wasn’t simply a kiss; it was a time altering act transporting my sensibility back to my junior year of college.

  And then she pulled away. And there was that shake of her head, that muttering about “gathering her wits,” that look in her eyes. It was a different look from the one Iris had given me when we kissed ten years before but, like that look, it suggested that she had experienced our moment differently than I had. And I didn’t know what to make of it. After all, she had reached for me. But in the end, something about kissing me, something about an act that had sent my imagination whirling, had caused her to retreat into herself.

  It felt a little strange to me that while I had been kissing Iris this time, I hadn’t thought about Chase at all. In fact, I hadn’t thought about Chase until I was back in the bar with a double espresso. I’d played a medley of guilt and frustration before settling into the slow jam of confusion that I was still working on while I stood in the store.