Chapter 7

[asteralison]

 Chapter 7

 

She was standing next to Jonathan, in line to head down into the lava tube, starting at the small, tightly wound spiral staircase they would have to take.

“Think it’ll be ok?” he asked.

“I think so.”

“Do you want me to go ahead of you, or behind you?”

That was easy at least. “Ahead. That way I can stare at your back. That helps.”

The man behind her in line, who’d been kissing his boyfriend just a few moments earlier, leaned over to her. “Don’t stare at his back. Take the opportunity to stare at his arse!” he said, in a British accent. Melissa and the boyfriend both laughed at the comment and the man winked at Jonathan. “Just in case she hadn’t noticed!” he said. “You’re a cute one, but a bloke can always use an assist.”

Jonathan didn’t look too sure at that but smiled and said thanks. Melissa was still laughing at the look on his face when they reached the top of the spiral staircase and their turn to head down. She gulped. She leaned towards Jonathan, “Let’s go,” she said.

“You sure?”

“Yes.”

She was. It was bad, but only marginally worse than some basement stairs in a few lab buildings she’d worked in over the years. The spiral part was disconcerting, but she stared at the back of Jonathan’s Gore-Tex jacket, kept her hand on the railing, and headed down.

Half-way down she realized something. Two things she could hold onto while working to stay calm: that Jonathan was there and he knew she was scared and would help if she needed it, but also that there was a reason external to her to overcome her fear: she might not care if she never walked to the edge of a cliff to look at the view over the ocean, or from the top of a freaking Ferris wheel, but if he wanted to, she could focus on that.

She made it down. It hadn’t even been that hard. She grinned up at Jonathan, who smiled back at her. They got out of the way while they waited for the rest of the group to finish getting down. Once everyone was there, their guide had the group turn off all their lights. “And no smooching in the dark!” she said, and everyone laughed. Melissa and Jonathan took each other’s hands. “Don’t want to lose you,” said Melissa.

The darkness was complete. Melissa shivered a bit and squeezed Jonathan’s hand, who squeezed back. It seemed quieter in the dark, for some reason, and the cold seemed dryer and somehow colder.

She blinked when they all started clicking their lights back on. “That was dark!” she said, “to say something completely trite!”

“No,” said Jonathan. “That was extremely dark. I’m not sure I’ve ever experienced that level of, well, dark.”

“There is a lava tube in Bend that I crawled through,” she said, as they followed the group. “Same idea. I love it, in small doses.”

 

Later, they climbed to see a waterfall and to peer into the crater of a volcano. They did not hike up Kirkjufell, not having the proper gear or a guide, but walked around, and took photos. Melissa texted them to a group of friends and family who were Game of Thrones fans. They had lunch by the side of a stream, sitting on rocks, and talked about their respective areas of research and how Jonathan was vacillating between becoming a clinician or going for a PhD and becoming more involved in research.

Melissa drove north towards the next destination while Jonathan napped. She listened to heavy metal while driving, he had his headphones on playing classical while he slept. She liked driving and loved glancing over at him when she could. She was endlessly surprised at how quickly and easily he could fall asleep during the day. He was not as quick to fall asleep or stay asleep at night. Must be the physician thing, she thought.

She stopped to fill up and go to the bathroom at a small town along the way. Jonathan woke up and offered to drive so they switched drivers and she picked up her knitting. She’d finished his socks -he’d worn them to bed the previous night- and she was starting another pair for him, a dark green that went with his new pajamas.

“You said your mother taught you to knit?”

“Yes, she did. When I was about four. I made a lot of scarves.”

“What’s your favorite thing to knit?”

“Baby clothes! Tiny little caps and sweaters! I actually belong to a group that knits hats and clothing for babies, both preemie and full term.” She was silent for a moment. “I also knit with a group that makes outfits and blankets for the babies who will never go home.”

“That is always so awful,” he said. “We lost two babies while I was doing my obstetrics rotation.”

“I always knit two caps,” she said. “So the parents can have one to keep. One of the women who volunteers at the hospital and offers outfits to the parents is handy with embroidery and in just a few minutes can add a name and dates.” She was quiet for a bit. “But I’ve also made outfits for many happy babies and knitted at least a football field worth of baby blankets!”

“Do you want kids?” he asked. “Oh shit. Sorry, that was very personal.”

“It’s ok.” She swallowed. “I probably won’t have any.” She did not elaborate, and he did not ask.

“I hope to at some point,” he said. “Dad and Den would be such awesome grandparents!”

She bit her lip quickly. She should not, ever, think about any future that involved Jonathan. Now more than ever. “They would. And they’d have a blast. Ping me when you do, I’ll make little strawberry hats for them. Or pumpkins. And little cardigans.”

“You mean my future children, not Dad and Den, right?”

She laughed. “Dennis would actually look spectacular in a strawberry hat. Your dad, maybe not.”

Jonathan laughed as well. The awkward painful moment was over.

“I knit,” she said. “I know you ballroom dance, thanks to France’s machinations, and I remember your playing the piano. Any other hobbies?”

“Not really,” he said. “I used to sketch, and paint watercolors from photos. I haven’t for a while.”

“Oh?”

He didn’t answer right away. “If it isn’t too personal, of course.”

“I think we can do some personal stuff at this point, no?”

“I think we have been. I just felt that if you needed space, I could give it to you.”

He nodded. She was looking at his hands on the steering wheel. They were beautiful, with long fingers and clean, short, rounded nails. And that fast, she felt a bubble of panic. Martin’s hands. He had the same hands as his father. His father who was her friend. But he was still talking so she dragged her attention back.

“… told you I used to go down to New Mexico to visit my grandparents when I was a kid? When I was about 9, I was in Santa Fe for a few weeks and France was sick. My grandmother had died the winter before, and my grandfather was out of things. I had nothing to do, and finally someone signed me up for some classes at a local art studio, I think it might have been Dad from Seattle. Anyhow, I did ceramics, which I hated, and sketching and watercolors, which I did not. It was also my first get to know you with the human body and I think my desire to go into medicine stems from those art lessons. Anyhow, I continued to do watercolors over the years. I haven’t, since Robin. Robin, to be honest, hated to travel. Dad offered to take him with us when we went somewhere, but he never wanted to go. We were in Hawaii over winter break one year and I took a photo of the view over the sea and the landscape and texted it to him with a dorky ‘wish you were here!’. Well he texted it back to me, with a stick figure with bright red hair drawn in and ‘now I am. See me?’ and it gave me an idea. I started adding him to random vacation photos, but I hated Photoshop. Then I started painting the scenes and adding him in that way. I don’t always paint faces because watercolor faces can creep me out, it’s mostly silhouettes from behind. Robin loved them, and we did it all through college. Dad, Den, and I went to Philadelphia after my college graduation, so I could visit Penn again and look for a place to live. We spent a few days in DC too. The last watercolor I did was adding Robin to the Lincoln Memorial. I haven’t done any since.”

She reached over to touch his knee, and he covered her hand with his, holding it there for a moment.

He laughed. “I also did one of him and his girlfriend, Katya, kissing under the non-existent cherry blossoms, since it was early August.” He sobered. “There were 12 total watercolors. His parents have them framed in their living room. There are no other photos of Robin anywhere, and these don’t show his face, but his dad told me they captured something of Robin. I haven’t tried anything since.”

“I can see that.”

“Maybe I should. I do still play piano when I’m at Dad’s since I don’t have room for a piano at my place.”

“Where do you live?” she asked, realizing she didn’t know.

“Tiny one bedroom not far from the hospital. It’s nothing fancy, but it’s a place to crash. I might see about buying something later, but it’s fine for now.”

“Are you planning on staying in Seattle?”

“I hope to. I love the area, the hospital, Dad and Den are nearby.” He turned to smile at her. “And now you.”

She looked back down at her knitting, hoping he would not notice her blush.

 

She swam over to the edge of the infinity pool. It was getting dark, and it was cold, but the water was warm and the view, in the golden light of just-past-sunset, was spectacular, over the fjord, to an island.

She was happy that Embla had detailed the shower protocol and indeed it had taken some tugging to get the shell pink bikini on. She felt a bit self-conscious in it. Jonathan wasn’t out yet, they’d agreed to meet in the pool, so she started swimming laps, stopping occasionally to check out the view.

She saw Jonathan get into the pool and waited for him. He joined her.

“That’s so beautiful.”

“I know. I’ve been swimming and admiring and swimming and admiring!”

“Sorry, Dad called.”

She swallowed. “Did you, uh, tell him?”

“That you were with me?”

She nodded.

“No,” he shook his head. “I didn’t have your permission to, so I didn’t mention it. I did say I had a friend with me, but nothing more.”

“Sorry. I—I guess it’s just weird, and I feel weird with people knowing and I’m an idiot—”

“It’s all right. Dad doesn’t need to know who I’m traveling with. He’s assuming I’ve found a girlfriend, and he’s happy speculating.”

“Ah. Good. I’m going to do a few more laps,” she said. She did not want to think about that, about Martin and about what anyone in Seattle would think if they found out she was traveling with a man almost fifteen years younger than her in a tiny camper van and sleeping in the same bed. She swam faster. She did admit to herself after a particularly vigorous lap that it was only 13 years and a few months older, but really, did the actual number matter?

She continued to swim laps, stopping occasionally. He stayed in the big pool for a while but eventually told her he’d be heading to the hot tub.

“A few more laps and I’ll join you,” she said, and he nodded.

Eventually she hopped out of the pool and walked the few feet in the chilly air to the hot pool where Jonathan was sitting with two couples. They nodded at her when she got in, gratefully sinking into the hot water.

She heard snippets of conversation. They were Danish, she thought, and were camping at the same place she and Jonathan were. They were friendly, engaging Jonathan quickly in the conversation, but after quick introductions, they all pretty much ignored her. They were talking about university and a glance at her had probably told them she’d have nothing useful to contribute. She heard the conversation veer to politics, then to music, and she floated in the warmth.

After a while, she went back to the main pool. It was almost fully dark now, the fjord invisible. She swam, back and forth, back and forth. She preferred to row for exercise, but swimming was better than nothing and the soothing routine of it, the quick snap of cold each time her arms or face came out of the water were all welcome. At one turn, she saw Jonathan squatting at the shallow end of the pool. She stopped and, keeping most of her underwater, looked at him.

“This is freaking cold,” he said. “They close in about 45 minutes, if you want to warm up in the hot pool again, now’s the time.”

She followed him over, happy to see the others had left.

“They went to the sauna. And they invited us to join them at a restaurant in town.”

She rolled her eyes. “Did you want to go? I can get myself something in the camper.”

“Meaning you don’t want to go.”

“I don’t but go if you want. I don’t think anyone will miss my sparkling wit!”

“I wasn’t going to, unless you wanted to,” he said. “They’re nice, but at usual…” His voice trailed off.

“What?”

“They’re my age,” he said. “They finished university a few years ago. During the pandemic, they lived together in Copenhagen with three other people and put out indie music. They spent the summer working at random tourist jobs in Southern France and Italy. Now they’re driving around Iceland in a minivan and they’re planning to take a ferry back to Denmark in a few days, doing a few music gigs in the city, and then driving to Morocco for the rest of the winter. Once vaccinated, the pandemic became background noise, a nuisance.”

“And you,” she said, keeping her voice soft and gentle, “finished medical school a few years ago, with the responsibility that that brings. You did a pediatrics residency, caught covid-19, and worked on the front lines in a major metropolitan hospital through the worst of the pandemic. Now you care for children who have cancer, and your life is so very different you can’t fathom what you have in common with them, except your age.”

He nodded. “Exactly.”

“Do you feel you missed out on something, carefree college years or some such?”

He shook his head. “All the decisions were the right ones at the time. And I think they’re still the right ones. It’s just at times like this, I feel completely out of step with people my own age, like they’re children, but children I envy because I want to be like them but can’t.”

She thought about it for a while. “I guess I understand, on some level. I think, though, that… that later, there will be events in life when you are in synch with your people and you’ll find that your peers are the ones going through the same things as you, and not the age thing.”

“You mean like how my MD peers are my peers career-wise even if they aren’t at the same stage of life as me? Because I attended at least six Zoom weddings during the pandemic and almost as many since.”

“Yes, but also… for example, when you have kids, your peers will be the people who have kids at the same time, no matter if they’re barely out of college, or ten years older than you: you’ll all be going through diapers and night feedings at the same time. It eases the edges.”

“I hadn’t thought about that.”

“I guess I saw it when Mags and Cate had kids. They have a whole friend group of people who have kids of a similar age that they or their husbands met at kid events. One of Cate’s good friends, other than Mags and me, is about twenty-five years older than us, in her sixties, and they met when she was attending childbirth classes with her younger wife.”

“I see that. Huh. You think maybe I’ll find a peer group eventually after all, just one sorted by event, not by age.”

“I suspect so.” She smiled at him. “I do not want to get out of this water. Even the five steps to the locker room door seem too much.”

He checked his watch. “If you only need 20 minutes or so to shower, we’ve got about 10 more minutes in here.”

Since they were the only ones left in the warm pool, she closed her eyes and let herself float. She could feel the cold on the tip of her nose, her breasts, and stomach, and the warmth of the water holding her up, and she felt light, and completely at peace with the world. Her floating foot brushed Jonathan’s chest and she ignored it, hoping he would too. Sound was muffled and she didn’t hear him say her name but stood up in the water when he touched her arm. Disoriented, she turned around shaking her head at the freezing cold air.

“What?”

“Time, uh, time—” He was staring at her, and she realized suddenly that her nipples were hard and her bikini top was not lined and that seated, with her standing, he was getting a full view of the outcome. Her first instinct was to cover her chest with her arm, but she bit the inside of her lip and waited while he dragged his eyes up to her face.

“Time to get showered,” he blurted, and she nodded. She was turning around towards the steps out of the pool. “Hey, Melissa?” His voice was teasing and there was amusement and… something else she couldn’t identify on his face.

“Mmm?”

“That bathing suit looks awesome on you,” he said with a grin.

She swallowed and inclined her head. “Why thank you,” she said, continuing out of the pool. At the very last moment, she turned around, sent a splash of water at him, and scooted through the cold to the showers, laughing at the spluttering behind her.

The two Danish women were in the shower, tossing bottles of shampoo and conditioner and soap at each other, talking, and laughing loudly. They waved at her.

Later as they were combing their hair in front of the mirror, the blonder one of them said to her: “He’s nice, your boyfriend.”

She started to say he was not her boyfriend, but then smiled and nodded.

“And, what’s the word? Kind? And a doctor, very young.”

She nodded again.

The other women interjected. “I told him you were a lucky lady to have such a handsome boyfriend.” She smiled at Melissa. “And he said that no, he was the lucky one.”

 

After dinner they both got out laptops. Melissa sighed at her email but started checking and answering. Once done, she was able to get back to reading a paper she was peer-reviewing. Jonathan was restless. He typed for a while, then took out his Kindle and started to read.

“Melissa?”

“Mmm?” she asked, looking up.

“Do you have any paper?”

“Like, paper? Hum…”

She rummaged around her laptop bag and found two sheets that were blank on one side, and only had a line indicating the URL of whatever she’d printed on the other.

“This do?”

“Yeah. Thanks.”

When she looked up later, he was sketching. She left him to it and went to the common area to change into pajamas and brush her teeth. It was cold, probably close to freezing. The van felt warm when she got back. Jonathan was still at work, the pencil flying over the paper. She sat back down to her work.

He stretched out his hand. “It’s been a while,” he said, and he slid the paper over to her.

She blinked. It was one of the waterfalls they’d visited the previous day, Hraunfossar. Both she and Jonathan were inserted into the sketch, looking over at the water spilling over the rock formations. Seen from behind, and yet her two plaits and both her and Jonathan’s silhouettes were unmistakable. She thought the sketch showed them closer, more intimate than they’d been, but she wasn’t sure.

“Whoa. That’s incredible!”

He smiled. “Keep it if you want.”

“I will. Sign it for me?”

He did, a stylized JJT and he dated it as well.

“Thank you.” She slipped it carefully into her computer bag where it would stay safe.

“JJ?” she asked.

“Jonathan Joseph. My grandmother was Josephine. Dad thought he’d call me JJ, but in the end, it never stuck. Thank goodness.”

He continued to doodle, drawing small bits of the waterfalls they’d seen, the cathedral, the Sun Voyager sculpture, and the London Eye. Melissa glared at that little drawing balefully, then went back to her paper.

“Tomorrow when we visit Akureyri, I’m going to get some watercolors if I can,” he said. “I think it’s time.”

“Don’t forget to get paper too. I think that’s my whole stash!”

“I know. I don’t have any at all! At least I had a pencil!”

“So, tomorrow?”

“Up early if we can,” he said. “Drive to Akureyri, we can explore the city, and I have the address of a yarn shop which seems to do other art supplies, so we could go there. Then airport and a half hour flight to Grimsey. We can wander around the island, and maybe have a late picnic lunch, then flight back. We can either head to the campground, it overlooks the water outside Akureyri, or spend a night on the town.”

“Jonathan,” she said. “I’m not one for going out drinking. I mean, heck, the only reason we met at the hotel in London is that I decided not to go out bar hopping with my colleagues.”

“Me either, to be honest. I like to pretend that I’m going to acquire a taste for it, but I never do. Too loud, too many people, too much drinking.”

“If you’re sure. If you want to, I will go with you, or even better, I can hang out in the campground common room while you go out or whatever.”

“Melissa, aside from hanging out with a bottle of wine with you in London, I hadn’t had a drink, caffeinated or alcoholic, with anyone socially in… maybe six months? Since before I left Philadelphia, certainly.” He shrugged. “Again with being out of synch. All my classmates turned 21 and went out drinking when I was like 15. By the time I turned 21, I was in med school, and it never occurred to me to go out and get drunk.”

“I’m an old lady, Jonathan,” she said. “I just want to make sure I’m not holding you back.”

“You’re not old,” he protested.

“Oh, I certainly am, at least compared to you,” she said lightly. “But more importantly, I’m boring, set in my ways and my idea of fun in the evenings is a cook-out with my old friends and their kids.”

“My idea of fun in the evenings is sleep,” he said. “I’m a resident. I go home. I sleep. If I have time I eat, but mostly, I sleep. I wanted to make sure you weren’t bored.”

She looked up at him, met his eyes, and shook her head. “This is good,” she said.  He nodded.