CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Anything Could
Happen
I had been home for
the spring break of my junior year for less than an hour when Chase
sat on my bed and told me that he’d split up with Iris. I sat on
the floor with my back propped up against the wall with my Eric
Clapton poster and spent the next hour trying to get him to tell me
how it had happened and why. Chase offered soliloquies and
babbling, but no cogent reason other than to take full, regretful
responsibility for it. Since he seemed so upset about it and since
he seemed to think it was entirely his fault, I asked him why he
didn’t try to do something to patch things up between them. All he
would say was that he’d ruined things and that the damage he’d done
could never be repaired. I briefly considered the possibility that
he was putting me on, but he wasn’t kidding this time. Eventually
he went into his room and played a Nirvana CD at a volume that
suggested that he wanted Iris to hear his anguish all the way
across town.
That night, he asked
me if I wanted to go out with him and some of “his guys.” Though I
hadn’t met any of them before, I recognized several from Jim
Krieger’s New Year’s party – Chase’s lacrosse teammates who had
played their drinking game until they passed out. While I had done
a great deal of drinking in college, I wasn’t entirely sure I was a
match for this group. My goal had always been to achieve a certain
level of blissed-out-edness and then to carefully maintain this
state throughout the evening, like steering a sailboat toward a
fixed point. For this group, it was about racing a hydrofoil into
as much turbulence as possible before flipping over and bailing
out. By the time we’d left our first stop, a boisterous joint
across the river, everyone else had slammed a half dozen shots of
tequila and a pitcher of beer apiece. It was intimidating in so
many ways.
After Chase and his
friends took turns pissing into the river not a few hundred feet
from where we’d had our first long conversation about Iris, we
headed up the highway to a club I’d never visited before. There
this group met up with their flannel-shirted brethren to mosh to
alt-rock covers played by an incensed band sporting Kurt Cobain
haircuts. I got within five feet of the edge of the mosh pit, but
couldn’t convince myself to go farther. It wasn’t as much that I
was frightened as that the angst and pseudo-angst repelled me.
Eventually I retired to the second level of the club while I waited
for Chase and his guys to emerge from the mass of furious boys. At
one point, I saw him carried atop the pit, pumping his fists and
screaming the lyrics to some Chris Cornell tune. When the pit
swallowed him back up, I didn’t see any of the group again for
nearly an hour.
Though it would have
been unsportsmanlike for me to say so, I was ready to go home at
this point. But there were other stops to make. The first involved
an all-night diner where the group ate huge stacks of pancakes and
bacon while heckling the waiter, hurling insults at each other at
the tops of their lungs, and annoying the other patrons. I was
certain the manager was going to throw us out, and I think if it
had been earlier in the evening and the diner was fuller, he might
have. I was surprised that Chase participated in some of this, but
I wrote it off to his being upset over Iris.
By this time, it was
2:30. I was working on only a couple of hours of sleep because I’d
had a paper to turn in before heading from Boston and I was
starting to wear down. But we weren’t quite finished. First, we had
to go to an alley between a sporting goods store and a bar on River
Road where Chase and his guys participated in one of the most
distasteful competitions I’ve ever witnessed: the vomit-off. Chase
seemed a little disappointed that I chose not to join in, but for
once, he was not going to cajole me into doing something stupid.
Standing at the “starting line,” they gagged themselves, awarding
points for distance and “style.” I nearly got sick to my stomach
witnessing this and turned my back while they argued over who
“won.”
I didn’t get up until
nearly two o’clock the next day. My father was at the store and my
mother was with her sister. Chase was shooting baskets on the
driveway. He smiled when he saw me, clapped me on the shoulder, and
then handed me the ball. I took a couple of shots and any lingering
fog from the night before began to dissipate. Eventually we settled
into a game of H-O-R-S-E, which I won, and then a game of
one-on-one, which Chase took easily. Afterward, we sat on grass
that snow had covered only a week and a half earlier. Chase asked
me if I wanted a beer and I cast him a disparaging glance. He just
laughed and leaned back to look up at the sun.
We sat there for a
long time. Talk about baseball and new music quickly evolved into a
lengthy conversation about Iris. Chase told me about things they’d
done over the past weeks, speaking as though nothing had happened
to interrupt their time together. At the end of this, he told me
that it had been three days since he’d last seen her and his
expression darkened. Again, I tried to get him to tell me what
happened and again I failed. I couldn’t be sure whether shame or
confusion prevented him from talking to me about this, but he
seemed utterly incapable. He went off on a long stream of
consciousness disposition about love and about what it meant to him
before, during, and after Iris. He talked about missing her and
wondering what she was doing, but never once would he entertain my
suggestion that he call her. I’d never seen Chase indecisive and he
wasn’t being indecisive now. In fact he was adamant in his belief
that whatever had transpired between them was final, even though it
caused him more pain than he’d ever felt before. We talked until my
mother pulled up to the driveway, after which Chase patted me on
the knee and approached her, wrapping an arm around her
shoulder.
By Wednesday of that
week, after a few more conversations of this type, I thought about
calling Iris myself. Partially, I wanted to do this to see if I
could get any sense from her of whether she’d be willing to talk to
Chase. But I was also partially wondering how she was doing. I’d
come down from Boston the weekend before anticipating seeing both
of them. By this point, I no longer considered her to be simply one
of Chase’s accessories. If Chase was hurting this much from the
breakup, then there was a very real chance that she was hurting as
well. And that meant something to me. I’d even nearly convinced
myself that she would be expecting me to check in on her, that our
relationship had developed to the point where she would want me to
make sure that she was okay.
In the end, I
couldn’t do it. What held me back was the fear that I wouldn’t know
what to say once I got her on the phone or perhaps that she might
even be hostile toward me, seeing me as an agent for “the enemy”
and railing at me.
But there was
something that overrode this concern: the glimmer of recognition
that my intentions in making this call might not be entirely
honorable. That in fact a part of me wanted to hear from Iris that
things were irreconcilable between her and my brother. That she was
available. Once that thought entered my mind, and once I found that
I couldn’t easily shoo it away, I knew I couldn’t speak to
her.
By Sunday afternoon,
it didn’t matter. While my mother prepared an early supper and I
got ready to drive back to Boston, Chase surmounted whatever
obstacles he’d placed in the way of reaching out to Iris. He
bounded into my room, threw himself on my bed, and told me that
he’d just finished talking on the phone with her for an hour and a
half and that they were seeing each other that night. I could swear
I even saw his eyes glisten for a moment when he said how relieved
he was that he hadn’t completely lost her. I hugged him when I
heard the news and gave him a playful punch in the stomach to
lighten the moment.
He never did tell me
what came between them and I never asked again.
Since Iris was coming
to Amber to visit her mother, I didn’t drive up to Lenox the next
week. However, we did keep our Wednesday “date.” I picked her up
midmorning and we went to the beach at Beacon Lake. In that summer
ten years earlier, Chase, Iris, and I spent a fair amount of time
on this beach, splashing in the water, burying each other in the
sand, and drinking illicit margaritas from a thermos. I hadn’t been
back since Chase died and couldn’t get there now without
directions.
Iris was considerably
more organized this time around than we had been a decade before,
packing lunch in a cooler (no margaritas as far as I could tell)
and bringing a huge beach blanket (not an heirloom) from her
mother’s house along with an umbrella. She set this up methodically
while I watched, certain that any attempt to help would make a
negative contribution. When she pulled off her T-shirt and shorts
to reveal the royal blue bikini underneath, I remembered another
convention of those summer days past: the forays Chase and Iris
would take into the woods to make love while I lay in the sun.
Iris’ skin was lightly tanned and her body was as lithe as I
remembered it from all those years ago. I’d seen her this undressed
several times before on this very beach, but was somehow a little
unprepared for it this time. She sat down on the blanket and I felt
a moment’s self-consciousness about removing my own shirt and
shorts before sitting next to her.
There were a few
dozen other people on the beach with us. A child poured buckets of
water onto his mother’s feet. A group of kids kicked a red rubber
ball around in the sand. A man in a dress shirt and pants talked on
a cell phone. Two teenagers lay very close together, kissing. A few
swimmers bounced around in the lake.
“Are you still a
madman in the water?” Iris said. “I’d just like to know before I
decide whether or not to go in with you.”
“I was never a
madman. Chase was the madman and he coerced me into acting like
him.”
“That’s not what he
told me. The first time we all came here together, if I remember
correctly, you were out of control. Afterward, Chase said those
exact words to me: ‘my brother’s a madman in the
water.’”
I recalled the time
clearly. It was after Iris and I had our first “moment” together
and I was still feeling awkward about it. Seeing her nearly naked
on the beach that day was a little more than I could handle and I
remember being more animated than usual in an attempt to cover this
up. Chase and I had always wrestled in the water and I took this to
an extreme this time, relentlessly attempting to dunk his
head.
“It’s a bad rap. He
brought out the lunatic in me. Trust me, you’re safe.”
Iris knocked her knee
against mine. “Too bad,” she said.
She lay back on the
blanket and, after a short while, I did the same.
“He loved doing that
stuff with you,” she said. “At first it seemed kind of sophomoric
to me in that dumbass male-bonding-jock kind of way. But then I
figured out that there was something very intimate about this
physical stuff between the two of you. Intimate and
necessary.”
“That’s an
interesting way of looking at it. I always thought he was just
proving that he was stronger than me.”
Iris turned her face
in my direction. “I think he was actually buzzed about the fact
that you were nearly as strong as he was. He didn’t get a lot of
that kind of competition.”
“I assumed he was
just going easy on me. I mean, he had a thirty pound
advantage.”
“‘Thirty pounds of
muscle,’ let’s remember,” she said, quoting one of Chase’s favorite
proclamations.
“How could I
forget?”
“You were the better
singer, though.”
“Something that has
served me well in my later life.”
She propped herself
up on one arm. “No, really. Do you remember that time the two of
you serenaded me by the campfire to ‘Hey Jude’? He was only okay,
but you were really, really good.”
“I think your memory
is playing tricks on you.”
“Yeah, right. My
memory is absolutely photographic from that time. You should sing
more often.”
“I sing all the
time.”
“I mean without the
stereo blasting.”
“Yeah, maybe for my
next career.”
“Don’t mock.” She lay
back down on the blanket. “That was a great summer, wasn’t
it?”
“Most of it,
anyway.”
“Yeah, most of
it.”
Lying here on this
beach brought Chase very much onto the blanket with us. I’m not
sure what Iris’ intentions were in suggesting we come here, if she
had any at all, but we hadn’t made a habit of visiting old haunts.
The effect on both of us was obvious. This was and would always be
Chase’s place.
And now that I’d
redirected the conversation, however inadvertently, toward the part
of that summer that wasn’t “great,” I felt that I needed to say
more. I’d told a grand total of two people about the role I’d
played the night Chase died. One was the therapist I’d seen very
briefly a few years ago. The other was Gillian at the point at
which I thought we were becoming serious. Since Iris and I had
begun our new relationship, I’d wondered on and off whether I
should tell her. The thoughts had receded lately, but now that we
were here and now that the subject was out there, it seemed
essential.
I sat up and glanced
from the teenaged lovers to two boys splashing each other in the
lake.
“There’s a good
chance you’re going to hate me more for this,” I said. I could hear
Iris turning on the blanket, but I didn’t look at her. “I could
have saved Chase.”
“What are you talking
about?”
“I was with him that
night. I met him at Shanahan’s after he’d already been there
awhile. He was in a weird mood – weirdest I’d ever seen him in. And
he got me pissed off and we argued. It was just another one of
those arguments we sometimes had, but he was really wasted and I
should have been paying more attention.”
Iris was sitting up
next to me now. “I don’t understand.”
“He was wrecked. I
should have known that it wouldn’t be safe for him to drive, that
he was in real danger. I should have just told him to shut up and
gotten him into my car. But what I did instead was just yell at him
and walk out. I should have known that he was in no
condition.”
I looked over at her.
I knew I was going to start crying if I said anything else, so I
just stopped. She put a hand on my shoulder and I could see that
she seemed ready to cry as well. I found her touch reassuring. When
I’d started, I’d half expected her to pack up her things and walk
out on me.
“Do you want to know
why he was so drunk?” she asked.
I just kept looking
at her. The question didn’t seem to need a response. She pulled her
legs up and wrapped her arms around them.
“That afternoon, I’d
told Chase that I was pregnant. He freaked. I think it just stunned
him that he could have done something that wrong. It was as though
he didn’t understand that there was always some level of
risk.”
She released her legs
and dug a hole with her toe in the sand. I was having a little
trouble breathing.
“Things got a lot
worse when I told him that I wanted to keep the baby.”
“How could you do
that?”
“You mean between
being eighteen and going to Holyoke in the fall and all of that? He
wondered the same thing. At least I assume he was wondering those
things while he was screaming them at me. I just knew I could do it
and I knew that he could do it with me. Do you really think your
brother would have botched it if he put his mind to
it?”
“I’m not sure he was
ever tested at that level.”
“Of course he wasn’t.
But there’s no chance he couldn’t have pulled it off. If he wanted
to. I knew that nearly as much as I knew that I couldn’t go through
with an abortion and I certainly couldn’t have the baby and then
give it up. I’ve always known what I was doing, Hugh. This wasn’t
impetuousness on my part. I knew I could handle it, even if it
meant transferring to MCS.”
“Chase obviously
didn’t agree.”
“It was the worst
argument we ever had. He wasn’t just upset. He was furious. As
though my pregnancy was an affront to him. He couldn’t sit down and
the muscles in his neck were bulging. I’d never seen him like that
before. I think he thought that if he got angry enough he could
make me change my mind or make the whole thing go away or
something. But I wouldn’t give in. I wouldn’t even say that I was
willing to consider it. When he left the house that day, I wasn’t
sure what he was going to do. Obviously, he decided to drink it
away.”
She hugged her legs
again and rested her chin on her knees.
“He wouldn’t have
been in the condition you saw him in if I hadn’t made him get that
way in the first place. The irony is that I had a miscarriage in
September. That was one hell of a first semester at
school.”
I had no idea what to
say. I was stunned and saddened and confounded all at the same
time. I put my hand on her shoulder and she turned from me and lay
down on her stomach. As though to reassure me that she wasn’t
moving away from me, she reached her hand out for mine. I held it,
though I didn’t lie down next to her.
“I’m sorry,” I
said.
She squeezed my hand.
“You couldn’t have known what was going to happen to him. He’d
driven drunk any number of times before. He was good at
it.”
“He was very
drunk.”
“He’d been very drunk
before. There was no way you could have anticipated
it.”
“I’m not sure. It
seems so inevitable to me now.”
“I know what you’re
saying. Don’t you think I’ve told myself ten thousand times that I
should have handled that last conversation with him differently?
The way he looked when he left, I should have known that anything
could happen. I should have run out after him and told him that we
both needed to take a little time with it. It could have changed
everything. It would have changed
everything.”
“It was your
baby.”
“It was our baby.”
I lay down on my
back. “My God, Chase was going to be a father,” I said. I looked
toward Iris. Our faces were perhaps a foot apart from each other. I
was close enough to see the tears forming in her eyes and the first
one roll across the bridge of her nose. I reached out and touched
her calf with my foot and she touched her forehead against
mine.
“Now you know more
about me than you ever wanted to know,” she said.
“Not possible,” I
said. But even though I said it, I wondered if it was true. Even up
to the point when I started speaking, I wasn’t sure that I would
ever tell Iris about my involvement with Chase on that night. And
yet she had responded by sharing a secret that was so much more
revealing. And now that we’d done this, it seemed inconceivable to
me that we could possibly go back to being “running buddies” again.
And I simply didn’t know if I was ready for that.
“I’m gonna go take a
dip in the water,” I said. “Want to join me?”
“Go ahead. Maybe I’ll
come in a couple of minutes.”
Eventually she did
and we spent the next couple of hours pretending that everything
was as it had been.
I know Iris knew that
it wasn’t, and I knew that she understood me well enough to know
that I knew it as well.
I spent much of the
next morning down in the basement putting my latent woodworking
skills to practical use. After my drinks conversation with Tyler
and after discussing it with my father (the only time I’d brought
up the subject of the store with him during his convalescence), I’d
decided to make some of the changes we discussed. Among them was
replacing the chipped white Formica display cases in the front of
the store. In a flash of inspiration, I started to build the new
ones myself. I’d made a couple of false starts before some of the
old techniques came back to me and this morning I was cutting,
sanding, planing, and hammering fluidly.
All the while
thinking about Iris and the conversation we’d had the day before.
She’d been pregnant with my brother’s child. This revelation led
me, however foolishly, to think a little differently about her
romance with Chase. I’m not sure why. Was it that it made the sex
between them more serious? That certainly couldn’t be the case
since the pregnancy was accidental, not to mention that the notion
of some sex being more serious than other sex among committed
couples was somewhat silly in the first place. Was it that the
accidental pregnancy suggested a level of urgency to their passion
– I need to have you right now regardless of the consequences –
that elevated their physical connection? Maybe. Was it that Iris’
determination to keep the baby was confirmation of her desire to
have a permanent relationship with Chase? In some sense, I’d known
that all along.
Regardless, what Iris
and Chase had between them seemed more intimate to me after that
conversation. It was as though what she’d revealed wasn’t just a
physical reality, but an emotional one as well. And it left me
utterly off stride. I’d vaguely considered the notion of becoming
her brother-in-law. But becoming an uncle had so many additional
implications and reverberated so much stronger ten years
later.
I lay the top of the
case on the workbench and pulled out a carving tool. I didn’t want
to do anything elaborate with these displays, but I thought a few
etchings would improve them. I set to work carving three subtly
curved lines on each side. This was the first time I’d used this
tool in ten years and I needed to exercise great care. The
concentration allowed me a few minutes’ diversion.
But then there was
the other thing to think about from the day before – the argument
between Chase and Iris when she’d told him that she was pregnant
and the way he’d walked out on her that day. For the past ten
years, Iris had been carrying around the belief that this argument
had led in some way to the accident that night. It was so easy for
me to dismiss it, especially given my much closer proximity to
Chase – and my much greater opportunity to save him – in the time
before he took his fatal drive. But was I dismissing it too easily?
Chase surely got as drunk as he did that night because he was upset
about the way his future was redefining itself. Could Iris have
handled the conversation differently? Should she have allowed the
fact of the pregnancy to sink in before she confronted him with her
conviction to keep the child? Was Iris right in carrying this guilt
with her a decade hence?
I pulled back and
noticed that I’d angled one of the curved lines incorrectly. This
was going to take some work to fix. And perhaps today wasn’t the
best time to do it.
I put the tools aside
and shut down the workshop for the day. I spent a few minutes
bouncing a ball against the concrete wall before heading upstairs.
They weren’t expecting me in the store, but I decided to go there
anyway.