Crossing the Bridge (23 page)

I smirked at her and she took a sip of her wine in an attempt to hide her grin.

“You know, the last time a man made dinner for me, I was sick for two days afterward.”

“You hang around with the wrong men.”

“So I’ve been told.”

“It’s unlikely that this meal will make you sick. It may make you lose your appetite, but it won’t make you sick.”

“I’ll take my chances. You look good at a stove. Almost like a natural.”

“Was that meant to be a compliment?”

“Absolutely. It smells good, by the way.”

Twenty minutes later, dinner was on the table. Iris seemed tickled when I set the plate in front of her. The food turned out fine. Maybe even a little better than fine.

“Um, delicious,” she said. “Will you be making all of our meals from now on?”

“Don’t count on it.”

“Even if I compliment you profusely?”

“Compliment me profusely and I’ll think about it.”

Iris twirled a forkful of linguine and said, “Nah, you’ll just get a big head. We’ll eat out.”

We talked about little things while we ate: reviewing the day, anticipating the work challenges of the coming weekend, touching on items in the news. Though this was the first time we’d had dinner in a kitchen together, we fell into it like people who had been doing this kind of thing for years.

Iris insisted on cleaning up and I didn’t argue with her. While she did, I dialed up the new Beck album on her iPod. When she was finished, Iris brought in the remainder of the wine and sat with me on the couch. Other than commenting on a couple of the songs, we didn’t talk at all until the music ended.

“What should we do tonight,” I said, looking over at the clock. It was just past 8:30. We’d still have time for a movie or we could wait a while and head to one of the clubs for some live music.

“I’m okay just staying here,” Iris said.

Ever since I’d been coming to Lenox, we’d always
done things. The idea of simply staying in her house felt foreign, as though she had said she wanted to go line dancing or something. At the same time, it was very appealing to think of putting on some more music, finishing the wine, and either talking or not talking for the rest of the night.

“You don’t mind?” I said.

“I’m actually feeling very settled tonight. Must have been the meal.”

“You’ll be closer to a bathroom this way.”

“Yeah, I thought of that, too,” she said, pushing my knee with a bare foot.

I settled back into the couch, not realizing until that moment that I’d been planning to get up. As we listened to a Tim Buckley album recorded before either of us were born, my thoughts wandered back to the kitchen.

I started thinking about what I would make the next time I cooked for Iris.

A few days later, I handed the contractor the final check for the repairs to the back of the store. He told me it was “good doing business with me.” I told myself that I wished I could say the same.

Tyler and I surveyed the repairs. Certainly, I’d never seen this part of the store in better condition: fresh carpeting, damaged displays replaced, clean white walls.
Now let the damn thing sell
, I thought. We spent the next hour putting merchandise back up. My father had used this space mostly for paper goods and party supplies and it was nearly comical when a man walked up to buy some birthday napkins and winked at me, as though to say “glad you’ve got these in stock again.” I glanced over at Tyler, who made an elaborate display of patting me on the shoulder.

Feeling as though we needed to mark the occasion in some way, I told Tyler I was taking him out to lunch. He’d stepped into the breach when the water main broke and on more than one occasion since, he’d allowed me to vent my frustrations over the ways in which the repairmen operated, and through
it all, he’d been a real colleague, more of one than just about anyone I’d ever worked with. Lunch was the least I could do.

“What do you mean?” Tab said when I told her we were going out.

“We’re going out to get some lunch,” I said plainly.

“Both of you?”

“Together, in fact.”

She looked around the store. There were perhaps a half dozen people there. “What about the customers?”

“We thought, if you didn’t have anything else planned, that maybe you’d take care of them, since that’s why you get a paycheck.”

She scowled and I decided not to take the conversation further. Ever since she failed to open the store a few weeks back, I’d been finding it harder and harder to tolerate her. I nodded toward Tyler and we left.

“How go the adventures in the Big Apple?” I said as we settled in our seats.

“I’m making headway, I think. I went on a follow-up a couple of days ago with an interesting firm and I had a couple of other interviews while I was in the City.”

“All of whom you impressed the pants off of, I assume.”

“Yeah, maybe. I know this sounds strange, but I’m actually kind of enjoying the interviewing process. I feel challenged by it and I feel like I have good answers. I know some people hate them.”

I raised my hand to indicate that I belonged in that group.

Tyler tabulated my vote and then added, “But I find it stimulating.”

“Since you like it so much, you can take a page out of my book and change jobs every six months. This way you can keep interviewing your entire life.”

We ordered and then Tyler leaned forward, putting his hands on the table. “You know what the best part of this trip was, though? I hung around that night and went to see Beam at the Bowery Ballroom. Do you know them?”

“Just that one song.”

“They’re incredible. It’s like being under siege. They’re relentless. I don’t think I’ve ever been to a show this intense before.”

I made a note to download some songs of theirs. Some of Tyler’s tastes veered toward the sentimental, but other than that, he tended to do an excellent job of identifying the good stuff – and Beam certainly didn’t sound sentimental to me.

“So what did you do this time on your midweek weekend?” he asked.

“Iris and I did one of our walking tours of Lenox and then I made her dinner. We drove up near the Vermont border the next day.”

“What is it with you and this woman, anyway?”

“Just friends.”

“You drive two hours to see her every week and you’re just friends?”

“It’s complicated.”

“She’s beautiful, by the way.”

“I’m aware of that.” I paused for a beat, wondering if I really wanted to talk to anyone about this. “She was my brother’s girlfriend.”

“Oh,” Tyler said elaborately, as though I’d given him all the explanation necessary. I wondered if in fact I had.

“She’s great. I always thought she was great. And I’ve always liked being with her. And there are times, you know, when it sort of feels like there should be more between us. And then there are other times – most of the times, I guess – when I feel like that would be like moving into the luggage compartment of a jumbo jet.”

“In other words, it’s complicated.”

“I couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“And you’ve been doing this for the last ten years?”

“No, not at all. Until I came back to Amber this time, I hadn’t seen her since Chase died.”

“You and your brother were close, huh?”

“Really close.”

“It’s such a drag what happened to him. I’ve been thinking about that more ever since you came to town. I mean, it’s not like I knew him, but knowing you and knowing your dad, he just flashes into my head sometimes.”

“He has a way of doing that. I go from thinking about him constantly, to finding constant reminders about him, to having him on my mind a lot. It rarely dips below that level.”

Tyler looked off into the distance, as though he was processing what I’d said. When he looked back at me, I just smiled and we switched topics.

When we got back to the store, there must have been ten people waiting in line at the register while Tab methodically tended to the one in front of her. She was moving even more languidly than usual and
I was certain that it had something to do with our going out and leaving her alone. I glanced over at Tyler and the two of us headed behind the counter to do triage. Within a few minutes, the rush had ended. Tab grabbed her pocketbook from under the counter and walked away.

“I’m going to lunch now,” she said before leaving the store.

As she walked down the street, Tyler turned to me and said, “And she was
that close
to a huge raise.”

The next morning, I checked in on my father (watching
The Today Show
, but with his head propped up on his right hand – a new position for him), checked in on my mother (paying bills at the kitchen table), grabbed the unopened box of Honey Nut Cheerios, and went down to the basement. My mother looked up at me as I opened the basement door, but then went back to her work.

I sat down at the workstation, running my hand over the block of wood mounted on the lathe again. I wished I could remember what I was planning to do with it, though it’s entirely possible that I didn’t even know back then. I would often simply turn the lathe on and start carving, allowing the piece to become something while I worked on it.

I didn’t know how I could have so completely stopped thinking about this equipment. I’d spent so much time with it during my teens. I’d come down here to recharge while studying, or to decompress if Chase had pissed me off about something, or to
mollify myself if some girl brushed aside my affections. I’d come down here when I was feeling highly creative and when I was feeling tapped out. And often I’d come down here because I’d begun a project that had taken hold of me and I was driven by the need to complete it. And yet, despite the passion I’d expended on these tools, I had spent a couple of months living under the same roof with them without even wandering down for a visit.

I picked up a carving tool and wondered if I remembered what to do with it. I decided to find out. I turned the lathe on and watched it whir, feeling a little thrill at hearing a sound I hadn’t heard in a decade. I put on my gloves and my goggles and I bent toward the spinning block of wood. I touched it tentatively with the carving tool, finding reassurance in the familiarity of the experience. But when I pressed a little harder, the block splintered, a segment catapulting against the wall across from me. I turned off the lathe and looked at the damage. The wood had obviously dried from being in the same position untreated for all these years.

I pulled the remaining shards from the lathe and then retrieved the one that struck the wall. I held them in my hands, unsure of what to do next. There were a few more blocks available, but they would certainly be in the same condition as the one that had just cracked on me. I threw the shards in a trash basket, took off my gloves and goggles, and went back up the stairs.

“Were you using your tools just now?” my mother said while writing a check.

“Yeah. I’ll be back in a little while.”

She looked up at me at that point, but didn’t say anything. I couldn’t read her expression, which I actually considered progress since the expression I had been reading on her face the past few weeks was so disapproving.

I assumed that Wilson’s Lumber Yard was still in the same place it had been when I lived in Amber. By the time I was in high school it had already been in the area for more than sixty years. I became something of a regular customer there, certainly not like the contractors who visited almost daily, but enough to trade small talk with members of the staff. Not that I was expecting any of them to remember me.

Wilson’s was in fact right where I left it, though they’d painted the red cedar shakes cream, the parking lot featured a trio of sheds selling landscaping equipment, and there was a large sign near the front door inviting customers to visit their Web site. The lumber department itself, however, was refreshingly familiar. If they had made any changes to the layout or the merchandising in the past ten years, these escaped my notice. I browsed through the aisles of plywood, 2x4s, and studding materials in the same way I’d walked the aisles of the record store in Lenox my first day there. Names, smells, and textures came back to me. It was like a class reunion.

I’m sure this wasn’t behavior that the staff was accustomed to seeing, and after a few minutes a guy came up to me to ask if he could help. I gave him my order and he was perhaps a little more efficient in delivering it to me than I would have liked. I piled the armload of wood into the trunk of my car and drove back to my parents’ house.

By the time I had a new piece mounted on the lathe, I had to get to the store. Still, I felt the need to turn the machine on just for a moment. I put the gloves and goggles back on and I picked up the carving tool. With one smooth motion, more assured than I would have guessed, I began the process of rounding the square block.