“Well, that’s something you and I have in common, then.”
She smiles a little and turns back to the woodstove.
“I’m making pancakes with blueberries. Five bucks a quart this time of year but Jake made me promise to add a few surprises to the list.” She looks away, but not before I catch a flicker of sadness cross her face. “The coffee, the chocolates. These blueberries. The bacon. I forgot the syrup.”
“We have syrup.”
“Well. Then I guess we’re set, after all. Want to try the bacon?” She gestures toward a plate, where slices, crisp and brown and drenched in grease, lie in neat rows.
I’m at a loss. Here in the kitchen that isn’t really mine but that has effectively been mine for eight years. The place where I know every corner, every spice, every chip in every plate. Never once has there been someone else at the stove, least of all a woman. Jake with his messed-up face and infected leg, he would try to cook sometimes, but I could tell it hurt to stand and lean. Not to mention he’d just spent all those hours driving, which also took a toll. Just sit, I would tell him. You brought the food, you done your part. Now sit. And he would, right on the stool in the corner.
The truth is I can’t stop watching her, and I feel a tiny bit ashamed to admit that because I always thought I was more progressive when it came to such things. That is, I didn’t think I was that kind of man, drawn to the sight of a woman in the kitchen. Cindy, she was a full-blown hazard in the kitchen. Her parents had a chef, so before we got together, she’d hardly set foot in one. She couldn’t even cook mac and cheese from a box without burning it, and I was okay with it because that was my thing, cooking, something I brought to the table that she couldn’t, and she loved it about me, and I loved that she loved it.
Marie flips a pancake.
“Did you sleep all right?”
“Sure, once I rearranged the pillows so my head wasn’t below my feet.” She grins. “I slept well. Great, actually. It’s so quiet. I’ve been living at Jake’s since—since I left England. And there’s always noise. The garbage truck on Wednesday, recycling on Thursday. Street cleaner on Mondays. So today I just woke up when I woke up.”
Walt Whitman wraps himself around my leg, purring. I turn to the window. Outside, the snow continues to fall, thick and blinding. I finish the coffee and grab my jacket and hat, hung on the posts behind the door.
“There’s nothing quite like it: waking up to all that white.” Marie walks to the window in the kitchen and stands on her tiptoes. “There was a hill at the college where my father taught. We lived a few blocks away, and Jake and I would walk there in all our snow gear, two waddling ducks, our sleds in tow. We’d just go and go.”
I slide into my boots. “Did you close the gate when you came through last night?”
She pours batter into the skillet. “I didn’t. Is that a problem?” She says it nonchalantly, like it’s not even a question.
“As a matter of fact, it is.”
The way I say it has an edge. She looks up, frowns. “Sorry.”
“We always keep it locked. An open gate invites people. Sends the message someone’s here and it’s fine to come on in.”
“Do you have trouble with trespassers out here?”
“No, but like I said, we keep it locked, always.”
Marie bites her lip. “I didn’t know.”
It’s a source of stress, knowing that gate’s open. Cars won’t get through in this snow, or trucks. But snowmobiles. Unlikely they’d be out this far but you never know. And now I need to keep an eye out.
I open the door and step out onto the porch, protected by the roof and mostly clear of snow, although some has blown in, and the edges are white with fine dust. So quiet there, so intensely white and pure. Cold, too. The whole world swathed and bright.
Torn, that’s how I feel. Pulled in too many directions. Irritated about the gate being open, frustrated by the snow and yet somehow also grateful for it. Lulled by the warmth of the stove, the bacon, the coffee, the intimacy of Marie’s confessions. That she’s even here: another adult, a beautiful woman. All of it. Can’t afford to get caught up in that, let my guard down.
I step off the porch, the snow halfway up my boots. I take the shovel and clear a small path to the chicken coop, just wide enough for one person to cross because it’s heavy, all the snow, and we only have the one shovel, a square-shaped garden tool. It does the job but it’s not ideal. I should’ve picked up a decent snow shovel at Walmart.