Chapter 8 (continued)

The bus rolled past the usual storefronts Sedgewick recognized. The bartending school. The drum shop with the funky logo and bright yellow awning. The YMCA and the art school next to it. Sedgewick had noticed high school kids with art portfolios in tow boarding the bus and getting off at the school. He wondered if it was some sort of magnet school, wondered if they spent the entire day painting or drawing or sculpting, wondered what it would be like to be so immersed in art.

Sedgewick’s father had been immersed in art. He never knew his dad very well, since he died when Sedgewick was so young. He was maybe three or four at the time, and he had vague, misplaced memories. The kind of memories where he couldn’t tell if they were actual, first-hand memories, or if they were stories repeated from his grandfather or grandmother. Some memories had a photo to go with them, and it was even harder to distinguish actual experience from retold and rehashed memory,

His dad had been an artist, at least part time anyway, but serious enough to have constant gallery openings and showings to attend. Sedgewick remembered a Saturday afternoon spend in his dad’s studio, at least he thought it was a memory, There were also photographs and stories and even artwork, a painting from his dad and a crayon drawing from Sedgewick, all to prove the day really happened. But Sedgewick was never sure what he really remembered.

The bus came to a jolting stop and a man rushed along side the bus, jumping into the door panting and clutching his bag. He gushed a breathless thanks to the bus driver and turned to find a seat. Sedgewick was watching out the window when the guy sat down next to him, and he made room as best he could. The man looked towards the window, half at Sedgewick and half at the scenery. Sedgewick gave a half look back and a slight nod.

“Barely made that one,” the man commented. Sedgewick stole a glance out the window, realizing he had given a little too much bus etiquette and had allowed a conversation. He didn’t usually care for bus conversations. Some times they could be enlightening, characters he would rarely ever get a chance to talk to, but he’d also talked to a few characters he wished he hadn’t.

His worst bus conversation was with a drunk former marine who kept prattling on about Mario Cumo. Sedgewick made the mistake of acknowledging the drunk and spent the rest of the trip listening to the beer-tinged monologue. The hatred of the rest of the bus was palpable.

“Yeah, looked like you cut close there.” The man adjusted his bag on his lap and let out a sigh.

“Yeah, late start today. How ‘bout yourself?”

“Actually, I had an early start this morning. I usually don’t catch the bus for another hour.”

“Early bird, huh? Must be nice.”

Sedgewick nodded and turned back to the window. Today it had certainly worked out. A morning with Allison could have been awkward, fraught with a first meeting with his grandmother and the whole awkward shower/pajamas/changing thing. Sedgewick just wasn’t prepared for these kinds of interactions with girls. He thought he would have plenty of lead-time, but it all just happened so quickly. That awkward morning encounter, probably with breakfast and questions from his Gram to fill the silence, was something Sedgewick was glad to leave behind. Maybe another day he could handle that.

Actually that probably wasn’t fair to Gram. She’d let him suffer with the silence himself. Make him figure out how to deal with it. But it wasn’t so much the silence that bothered him.

“I always seem to be pushing the bleeding edge of lateness,” the man continued. “ My wife hated that. Probably why she left me.”

Sedgewick nodded, turning back to the man. As much as liked to avoid awkward bus conversations with strangers, he was also curious. Sometimes it was worth pushing through the awkwardness, especially when someone else carried the conversation.

“How long ago did she leave?”

“Oh, four or five years ago. Picked up and left one day. Took the kids with her.”

“You have kids?”

“Oh yeah, a daughter and two boys.”

“Must be rough, on them.”

“It’s rough on everybody. Never easy when something like that happens. But we make do. Always manage to make do.” The man slowed for a moment, looking out the window on the other side of the bus, as if suddenly taken aback at Sedgewick’s interest in the conversation. But then he kept on.

“Yeah, I get to see them every other weekend, so it’s not so bad. Last weekend she came over to drop them off and we all ended up staying together for the night, like old times.”

Sedgewick didn’t give an answer, but turned to look the man in the face, nodding for him to continue.

“I think she was probably lonely, dumped by another of her hotshot young boyfriends or something, I don’t know. That’s what I like to tell myself anyway. But she stayed. Slept on the couch and the kids were a little surprised to see her still there in the morning. So was I.”

“She didn’t get up early and sneak out?”

“No, she’s not much of an early bird either.”

Sedgewick nodded.

“How old are your kids?”

“Oh, my daughter’s 14—she can be a handful—and my boys are 11 and 8. They’re a blast. We spent our Saturday mornings wrestling and watching TV.”

“Sounds like handful all the way around.”

“Nah, my wife probably has to deal with all the real messy stuff, the day to day problems and worries and punishments. It’s really not fair. She wins custody and I get weekends, but it really means I get fun and spoiling the kids, and she gets reality and doling out groundings.”

“I guess that’s not how it’s supposed to work.”

“No, probably not. But sometimes people drift apart. I’d hate for my kids to have live with that every day. I certainly couldn’t live with it.”

Sedgewick didn’t say anything. He wondered if that was really true. If the kids would rather be ferried back and forth between mom and dad versus putting up with parents who fight. Sedgewick hadn’t known either situation, so he couldn’t imagine which way would be better, though neither seemed all that bad.

The bus pulled up to the university stop, and Sedgewick gathered his bag and excused himself.

“Nice talking to you.” It actually had been and Sedgewick wondered how his kids really felt about Saturday morning wrestling as their one strong memory of time spent with their dad.

Sedgewick stepped off the bus and headed for the cafeteria. He’d left quickly, without breakfast, and he needed something. He wasn’t particularly hungry, but he also knew completely skipping breakfast would be the smartest idea.

The campus was just beginning to wake up, the crowds of people were thin, but the usual lanes and avenues of moving people were starting to establish themselves.

The cafeteria was quiet, only the most dedicated breakfast eaters were here this early, mostly the ones who needed to grab a bite to eat while finishing homework or cramming for a first class test. Sedgewick grabbed an apple and a cereal bar and headed out again. The morning air was cold and sharp, but not enough to keep him inside. He walked across the familiar campus, down a sidewalk and towards the river.

He followed the same path he’d followed yesterday afternoon, hoping to take the same reflective walk he’d planned yesterday when he stumbled across a crumpled and broken Allison sitting on a rock and grieving her loss. Sedgewick had intended to walk along the river by himself, maybe toss a rock in the river, but it wasn’t for pain, it was for the butterflies he’d felt after Allison practically jumped into view and introduced herself.

But those butterflies disappeared with the news and it was an entirely different experience at the river. Today would be somewhere in between, certainly not butterflies, but he hoped he wouldn’t ball his eyes out on the river’s edge. Once a week was more than enough for that.

He crossed the green lawn and dropped down the steep slope. The boulder sat empty, perched on the edge of the river, and Sedgewick was drawn to it. He could still make out their footprints from the day before. He stepped up to the rock and climbed on top of it, but not to sit and mope. He stood tall and looked out across the river.

It was a fairly narrow crossing here, for the Mississippi, maybe 30 yards or so, thanks to the looming walls of the river gorge. It looked swimmable, though Sedgewick wasn’t much of a swimmer. Occasionally he’d come by the river to see the university’s crew team practicing, gliding up the river and then back down again.

From his perch atop the rock Sedgewick flung a rock high and far, watching it splash into the middle of the river. It felt good.

Stepping off the rock, Sedgewick’s hands plunged into the pockets of his jeans and he shuffled along the shore. He kicked at a rock or a stray stick as he came upon them, He liked the very edge, where the water lapped against the sand and it was always moist. His feet sunk into the wetness and his footsteps were slowly lapped away by the waves.

He liked Allison. He liked the fact that she introduced herself the way she did. He liked the way they talked at Perkins the night before, even if it had been awkward and slow. He also liked the way they drive home. The air was charged and there was a certain friction between them, but it wasn’t exactly a bad thing. He didn’t like feeling like he always had to talk, always had to keep a conversation going. Silent wasn’t a bad thing. A silence uneasily and too quickly covered was a bad thing. He liked listening to the silence sometimes.

But as much as he might like Allison, he didn’t know where to go from here. Girls weren’t exactly his specialty. Not that he had a specialty. Relationships were new and different and awkward for Sedgewick, like much of the life people expected and took for granted.

One of the bridges towered above the water, the massive concrete supports jutting out of the water. Sedgewick looked up to the massive bridge, a few hundred feet above. It seemed so easy to forget that the Mississippi River wound through the Twin Cities. Sedgewick had often come here, so he never took it for granted, but he got the feeling from friends and acquaintances that they had no idea such a famous body of water was in their own backyard. It seemed sad, to overlook something so grand. Not everybody had a river close to home, much less a massive waterway that provided drainage for an entire continent. That was big stuff. And yet some people drove over it everyday, lost in their concrete maze and missing the natural beauty beneath the bridges and overpasses.

Relationships hadn’t always gone well for Sedgewick. There were awkward elementary school crushes, even a few junior high hopes. He went to a dance in seventh grade, encouraged by his well-meaning Gram. He didn’t know any of the music, though he tried to listen and take it in. He didn’t know how to dance, but that wasn’t what bothered him the most.

What he found the most disconcerting was when the slow song began and the lights went low and the dance floor cleared. The other kids began to pair up, slowly at first but then more and more desperately, especially as the night wore on. And they weren’t always dancing for fun or romance some other motivation. Half the time their eyes were on someone other than their dance partner, taking in who was dancing with whom and who stood alone and who was pretending to get another drink at the punchbowl.

Sedgewick just wanted to dance, to have a good time. He could imagine his Gram dancing with his grandfather, a twinkle in her eyes and a spring in his step. He wanted to feel that.

There was a girl he’d known from elementary school, a girl who used to gently tease him. He’d seen her at the dance, standing against the wall for a slow song or two. He didn’t want to ask her right away, in case some other guy, a guy more appealing that him should ask her. He’d never thought of her as a girl before, as a potential dance partner, but in the dim lights of the junior high cafeteria, he thought she looked pretty and despite a school yard taunt or two, he wouldn’t mind dancing with her. He thought he might even like it.

And so he asked her. He had to work up to it first. He eyed her from across the dance floor, standing alone in a sweater and a floor length skirt, not too casual but not too dressy, the perfect junior high, uncommitted middle ground. She kept looking from side to side, her eyes darting around, watching her friends pair up and dance away. She fiddled with her hands, picking at her hangnails.

Sedgewick began to cross the dance floor, not assured and confident, but at least not zigzagging to obscure his motives. He shuffled his feet a bit as he walked, and tried to keep from shoving his hands in his pockets. He caught her eye half way across and committed to keep going. He could see her looking back and forth more and more frantically, and he wasn’t sure if this was nervousness at knowing she would soon be dancing, or nervousness at knowing she would soon be dancing with him.

“Hi Kristin... Would you like to dance… with me?” It took a lot for Sedgewick to get the words out, though he had managed it. He didn’t think it’d be as easy as it was, not that it was as easy as asking about homework, but it certainly wasn’t the most difficult thing he’d ever done. Now that he’d done it, he thought he could manage it again.

Kristin had looked to the ground and hesitated for a moment, and for a second Sedgewick thought she might say no. Butterflies swirled in his stomach, and he could feel a lump in his throat, even though it was just a dance. But she said yes and joined him on the dance floor. He saw her shooting glances at her friends, exchanging entire sentences mouthing every word, and Sedgewick wondered how they could possibly understand each other. Lip reading must have been a skill junior high girls practiced when they were alone together for situations like this.

Her hands were damp and Sedgewick thought his probably were, too. He smiled weakly and they moved in a slow circle to the creaking, wilting song. His hand rested in the small of her back, her hand on his shoulder, their sweaty hands holding each other.

“You having a good time tonight?” He didn’t know if you were supposed to talk or not during a slow dance, and he figured it didn’t hurt to try. But apparently it did.

Kristin mumbled something and squeezed his hand, then went silent again.

“I’m probably not the best dancer, sorry about that. I just thought it’d be fun.” Her body felt tense and it made Sedgewick tense and self-conscious. He hoped she’d loosen up a bit, swing to the music, but it never did happen. They spun in slow, lilting circles, almost out of sync with the music, like they were both trying to keep pace with a different song.

When the song finished their hands dropped and they stepped apart. She mumbled thanks and bolted for the comfort of her friends.

“Thanks,” Sedgewick had said as he watched her go. It was just supposed to be a dance. A meaningless three and a half minutes on a darkened dance floor where they could move the music and have some fun. But apparently that’s not what junior high dances were for. Sedgewick never understood what the real purpose was and he never went back to another one.

Kristin hardly teased him after that dance, she hardly spoke to him. It wasn’t like they were on constant speaking terms anyway, but there was a definite cool silence now. And all for a dance. If it had been that damaging Sedgewick wouldn’t have asked. He kind of quietly wished she had said no, though he couldn’t imagine how that would have felt thirty seconds into a slow song in the junior high cafeteria. Crushing defeats seem to be amplified in those settings.

As Sedgewick walked along the shore he remembered that dance well. He remembered Kristin, too, remembered thinking she was a pretty girl long after that awkward and fateful dance. But that thought remained quietly his from a safe distance. A distance she never let him close again, save for the random group project or a fleeting sentence or two exchanged at the class graduation party.

It was an ominous welcome to the rollercoaster world of relationships. Sedgewick thought it a wonder that he kept trying after that experience. But girls seemed to have that strange and curious draw that kept boys interested. Though for Sedgewick it was a different kind of attraction. Curves and skin had the same appeal for him as any other guy, but it went deeper for him. At least he hoped it did. Sometimes he wasn’t so sure. But there was an indescribable draw nonetheless, like moths to a flame.