CHAPTER THREE
An Explanation That Works for Just
about Anything
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.”
“Hey, it’s a good
school,” I said, gesturing with my hands. “So what are you going to
do with your degree?”
“I’ll probably
ultimately get my MBA, but I’d really like to try to hit Manhattan
for a while. I’ve started talking to some recruiters. I’d love to
hook up with one of the major marketing firms.”
“Better not tell them
that you’ve skipped out on class today, then, huh?”
Tyler smiled. “Yeah,
I guess not.”
I nodded toward the
book. “Listen, if you want to go in the back to study for a while,
I’m pretty sure I can hold down the fort over here.”
“Nah,” he said,
shaking his head. “Richard doesn’t pay me to do my homework in the
back office.”
“He doesn’t pay me at
all. The way I look at it, it balances out.”
Tyler ran his hand
over the book. “Maybe I’ll just stand over here and read. This way,
I can jump in if you have any questions or if things back
up.”
For the first few
hours, it didn’t seem that I was going to need any help. In fact, I
probably could have left the store unattended and my father would
have made nearly as much via the honor system. But then there was a
flurry of activity around lunchtime and the afternoon was
relatively busy. Some guy came in and bought a $200 pewter dish,
which might have been the most expensive item in the store and had
quite possibly been there for several years. Around 3:00 Mrs.
Deltoff, the mother of one of my best friends in high school,
bought some wrapping paper. She didn’t seem to recognize me and I
decided not to say anything to her.
In spite of the
increase in action, there were rarely more than a few dozen
customers in any given hour. Standing by myself while Tyler went
for coffee, I tried to think of what could possibly have held my
father’s imagination for more than three decades. For thirty-four
years, six days a week, eight to ten hours a day, he stood
someplace near where I was standing now, ringing up a newspaper,
dusting a shelf, placing an order. Did the ceramic figurines come
to life in his mind, regaling him with clever verbal exchanges? Did
the Charleston Chews do the Charleston with Baby Ruth when no one
else was looking? If not, I could-n’t imagine anything about this
store keeping my interest for thirty-four days, let alone
thirty-four years.
Of course, I did have
something nearly as fanciful as dancing candy bars to keep me
entertained through the late afternoon. Seeing Iris after all of
this time was an utterly unexpected – though certainly not
unimagined – surprise. A day later, it seemed funny to me that I
wasn’t certain it was her when I first saw her on the street. Iris’
image was entirely distinctive to me. I couldn’t possibly confuse
her with anyone else and I certainly would never have forgotten
what she looked like. I’d even done a somewhat effective job of
aging her in my mind.
From the point at
which I watched Iris walk away from Chase’s gravesite, I believed
that we were meant to have more time together. I’d had unresolved
relationships before and I’d certainly had well beyond my quota of
them since. But unlike the others, it simply seemed wrong that this
one would go so completely unresolved.
We had so much to deal with. Our shared and separate experiences
with Chase. The friendship that had emerged between us during the
time the two of them were together. The abandon of those seconds
when we were kissing. While I lay in my room those weeks after
Chase died, listening more to his CDs than my own, I thought often
about calling Iris, meeting her in the park, crying with her,
slowly facing our own relationship, whatever it might be, and
staying in each other’s lives. But whenever I did so, I would think
about Iris and Chase together. I’d think about how they were always
touching, always feeling each other, and I’d shrink back into the
music. I’m sure that Iris was the only woman that Chase had ever
loved and the memory of that was both sad and
intimidating.
And a day after
seeing her on the street, I began to feel some of the same
trepidation again. I even thought about calling and saying that all
of my evenings in Amber had suddenly booked up. But at the same
time, I couldn’t help but feel a certain hopeful expectation at
being with Iris again. I imparted great meaning to our brief
encounter the day before. I found it encouraging that she tried so
hard to assure me that she needed to get back to her mother’s
house. I read much into her glance back toward the store when she
left the bakery. I even wondered about her choice of the Cornwall
as our meeting place. Surely, she remembered the dinner we had
there with my family. Chase got sick and I wound up driving her
home. We spent twenty minutes on her driveway debating the upcoming
presidential election and another couple jokingly castigating each
other over our opinions. It was the first time I’d had the chance
to speak to Iris without Chase’s unremitting energy serving as
counterpoint and I remember driving back home that night convinced
that my brother had happened on someone who would turn into a woman
of genuine power. Of course, I had no idea what Iris remembered of
that night or if she even remembered it at all, but I couldn’t help
but think that her selection of that particular restaurant was
portentous.
At the same time, as
was the case in those months before we kissed, I had no clear idea
of what I was expecting from our drinks date. Back then, while my
feelings for Iris were undeniably romantic, there was no way to
imagine doing anything with those feelings because she was involved
with my brother. Now, while it was impossible to know what kind of
transformation those feelings had taken, there was the very real
fact that, though Chase had been dead for nearly ten years, she was
still involved with him, would be eternally involved with him as
far as I was concerned. Certainly, nothing momentous was on the
horizon, but it was entertaining to consider the possibility that
there might be some kind of charge between us, something to give us
some brief hesitation before we headed back to our
lives.
All of which was
considerably more interesting to think about than straightening the
greeting cards or restocking the magazines. Though I eventually did
these tasks because I needed to do something to make the time go
faster.
I truly had no idea
how my father managed to get out of bed for this.
When I visited my
father at the hospital that afternoon, there was more color in his
complexion. He cheered noticeably when I told him that Tyler was
doing a good job. I spent an hour or so with him and my mother
after I left the store, but we didn’t talk very much beyond that
debriefing. I was preoccupied with thinking about Iris and I’m sure
they were preoccupied with thinking about what the doctor was going
to say when he finally got around to saying it. I couldn’t convince
my mother to leave my father’s bedside to go to a restaurant with
me, so I had a tuna melt at a local diner before heading off to
meet Iris.
The Cornwall had been
at the same location for more than fifty years, which meant that it
had been around for a long time before Amber evolved from a fishing
village to a tourist destination. When it opened, it was the only
available option for a nice meal within fifteen miles and families
from all over Middlesex County frequented it. While the three
generations of owners made little attempt to change with the town,
its popularity was a constant. Somehow the tacky nautical motif,
laminated wine lists, and a menu filled with outmoded “classics”
like Lobster Newburg and Seafood au Gratin worked when you were
aware of the restaurant’s origins.
I think the owners
always meant the bar to be comical and, at this point, it was just
downright silly. A huge pirate head, complete with a dagger in his
teeth, dominated one wall. Sprinkled throughout were fiberglass
reproductions of various ship paraphernalia. And one could choose
from a special drink list that included such original creations as
The Matey (three kinds of rum and ginger ale), The Plankwalker (151
rum, Drambuie, and grapefruit juice) and the ever-popular
Landlubber (rum, Coke, and maraschino cherry juice). Fortunately
they also had a huge list of bottled beers (and did even in the
’50s), which made the place very popular among my friends when we
reached fake ID age.
The restaurant was
relatively busy, but there were only two occupied tables in the bar
when I arrived. Iris wasn’t there yet and I ordered a Belgian beer
while I waited. I found that I was in no hurry for her to arrive. I
considered the possibility that we might not have much to say to
each other or that the conversation might go badly and started to
feel that it wouldn’t disturb me terribly much if she didn’t show
up at all. It was the same push and pull I felt nearly every time I
knew I was going to see her in the months after the
kiss.
She arrived at the
bar about ten minutes later. I was facing away from the door at
that point, listening in on a conversation between the bartender
and a patron, and didn’t see her until she pecked me on the
cheek.
“Reconnecting with
the locals?” she asked as she sat down across from me.
“They were talking
about swordfishing,” I said, nodding toward the bar. “It could be
1958.”
“I love that about
this place. Do you ever come here when you’re
visiting?”
“I haven’t been in
here since – ” I realized I was about to say “since Chase died” and
thought better of it. “I have no idea when the last time was that I
was here.”
“So then it really is
old home week for you, isn’t it?”
I chuckled and
repeated, “Old home week.”
A waiter came over
and took Iris’ drink order.
“How’s your dad?”
Iris said after the waiter left.
“He looked better
today than he did yesterday. The doctor still hasn’t told him what
the long-term deal is going to be, which I know has him a little
worried. I think he’s out of immediate danger,
though.”
“When my dad died, it
happened all at once,” she said wistfully. Then she looked up at me
with a mildly startled expression. “I didn’t mean to suggest that I
thought your father was dying. This kind of thing just makes me
think of my father, that’s all.”
I held up my hand. “I
get it. It’s not as though the thought hasn’t come to mind. I think
he’s going to be okay, though.”
Iris’ beer came and
she took a moment to sip it. It hadn’t dawned on me that she might
be nervous to see me, but she seemed to be at least a little
anxious. I looked over toward the pirate head and let the moment
settle.
“My friends and I had
developed an entire personal profile for that guy,” I said,
pointing to the pirate. “His name was Phil; he had a wife and three
kids at home and a real affection for macramé. He did the pirate
thing to pay the bills, but what he really wanted to be was an ice
dancer.”
“Ice
dancer?”
“It was around the
time of the Olympics. And did you ever see some of the outfits
those guys wear? Phil would fit right in.”
“You have a rich
fantasy life.”
I laughed. “Actually,
that’s about as rich as it gets.”
“What about ‘moving
from suburb to suburb in search of thrills?’”
It tickled me that
she quoted a line back at me.
“It might have been
more exciting if I had a better imagination.”
We spent most of the
next hour catching each other up in a top-line kind of way. Iris
had put in four years at Mount Holyoke College and spent a lot of
time around theater and dance groups, though she didn’t have much
talent at either discipline. What she did have, she realized, was a
real love of these fields, a sharp organizational mind, and an
interest in helping these operations succeed. When she’d graduated,
she’d handled a variety of back-office duties for local arts
organizations and finally settled in the Berkshires, where she had
been for the last three years. She had a dog who made all of the
trips back to Amber with her and a surprising affinity for potted
plants, of which she had “dozens, I don’t know, probably thirty or
so.”
Not wanting to bore
her with my entire travel itinerary over the past ten years, I told
Iris only about the longer stops. She listened to my stories with a
combination of amusement and disbelief. I could tell that she was
having some trouble synching these details with the person I was
back when she knew me, but she was too polite to acknowledge
this.
Once we had boiled
the last ten years of our lives down to fifty minutes, we came to
the point in the conversation where we were going to have to move
on to other things. The first attempts at getting something started
fizzled. Three sentences on how Amber had changed in the last
decade. A few exchanges on her mother’s failed attempt at a spot on
the City Council. She said something about the new IMAX theater
that opened just across the bridge and I cringed internally. Was
this really everything we had left between us?
A sudden memory
caused me to laugh and to abandon caution. “I remember when I was
fifteen my parents took us to a 3-D IMAX theater to see a movie
about dinosaurs. At one point, a T. rex reared up on the screen and
Chase was so startled that he spilled his entire soda onto his
lap.”
It was the first time
that either of us had invoked Chase’s name – although it was
ludicrous to think that either of us hadn’t been thinking of him
nonstop since meeting on the street. I tried to gauge Iris’
reaction, wondering if this was only going to make things more
awkward. I saw just the briefest hesitation on her face and then
she started laughing.
“The poor thing,” she
said. “Was he humiliated?”
“For all I know, he
might have been, but of course he kept his cool. He jumped out of
his seat when it happened, but then he just brushed off the ice
cubes and went back to watching the movie. When we left, he kept
pointing to his pants and telling the people waiting in line for
the next show that the movie was really
exciting.”
Iris laughed again
and nodded her head. Neither of us said anything for a minute or
two, but the silence wasn’t nearly as uncomfortable as the small
talk had been a short time before.
“I had my first
interview with the director of that dance troupe in Lexington after
getting caught in a downpour,” Iris said. It was hard for me to
imagine that what I’d just said had caused her to think about times
when she had been very wet, but I let it go. Chase’s name didn’t
come up again for the rest of the night, but unlike the first hour,
it no longer seemed to be because both of us were avoiding it. We’d
both nodded toward his memory and silently acknowledged that, if we
were going to get to that subject, it would be at some later point.
Even the small talk seemed easier to handle after that, and when I
walked Iris to her car a couple of hours later, we made plans to
see each other again the next night.
“This has definitely
been the highlight of ‘Old Home Week’ for me,” I said.
“I’d take that as a
compliment if I didn’t know what else you’d been doing since you
got here.”
“Take it as a
compliment anyway.”
She smiled, but her
eyes darted downward for an instant. Then she looked back up at me
and nodded before kissing me on the cheek and getting in her
car.
The bar of choice the
next night was a place that Tyler had recommended. It was just over
the bridge and had been open for only a few months. Given that
Tyler had just turned 22, I’d half expected it to be stripped-down
concrete with blaring rap metal and indifferent waiters. Instead,
it was an oversized and eclectically decorated living room, filled
with large couches, original art, and muted lighting. I again
arrived a few minutes ahead of Iris. Shortly after she got there, a
trio of acoustic musicians began playing their own earnest
compositions.
“Do you think they’re
any good?” Iris said when she saw my attention flit to the
stage.
“Not really. It
sounds like the guitarist can play, though. They’d probably be
better off doing other people’s stuff, but you have to give them
credit for trying their own.”
This seemed to make
Iris think, though what I’d said was hardly profound. She leaned
forward and rested her chin on an up-propped hand.
“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.
“Really 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.