I look at the tooth, the pointy roots. I think about those months when Finch was teething, whining, flapping her arms, and drooling everywhere. I’d let her gnaw on my thumb, just to keep her happy. Seven, eight years back and somehow it feels like yesterday. “You’ll have to put this under your pillow tonight.”
“I will. Come on, time to get up. I’ve been awake for almost an hour. Marie and I already ate breakfast. Pancakes again. And eggs. She said to let you sleep.”
I shoo Finch out of the room and get dressed. I pause and pull the small handheld mirror from the top drawer of the dresser. First time in years I’ve taken a good look at myself, and here is what I will say: I don’t recommend it, not using a mirror for all that time and then looking. You have a certain idea of what you look like, and of course you’ll be different from when you last saw yourself, and there’s something jarring about that. Plus, most likely, the changes will not be good. My hair, for starters, has patches of gray, and the beard is worse: gray, too, and long and tangled. Cooper, you look like Jeremiah Johnson. Or Charles Manson. Something in between the two but maybe more like the latter. I reach up and press the hair down, try to comb it, but no use. I pull on a baseball cap. Wonder if maybe I should reconsider the beard.
Out in the main room, the woodstove is clicking and the fan on top is whirring and the whole place smells like syrup. At the table, Marie is seated, back to me, and at the spot across from her, there’s a plate and a cup. She turns and when our eyes meet, I have a sudden feeling that I’m walking on the surface of a wide river, in winter. Iced over, at least by the looks of things, but maybe not thick enough to hold your weight. “Morning,” I say, my voice hoarse.
“Cooper.”
I walk to the stove and grab the French press off the trivet. I pour myself some coffee and sit down across from her. Worry that whatever waved between us last night has now passed, that maybe it was just one of those times when the lateness in the day had dulled the senses: the moment, the possibility, gone. We’re lonely, both of us. Sad. Fragile. And we’re stuck here in this cabin and all of those factors are enough to pull two people together. I see that, I get it. But that doesn’t mean this will inevitably end in more sadness, does it? Well.
For the first time in a long while, there’s a spark of hope in my gut that maybe everything won’t go wrong like it always does, and I sort of like it, that feeling.
* * *
Later that day, we trek out to cut down a Christmas tree. As we slog through the woods, the realization darts to me: it’s warmer, today. The snow, it’s getting soft, our feet sliding a bit. I tilt my head to the sky, squint at the sun that is pushing through the clouds. Typical of December. Noncommittal, the temperatures still up and down. The unpredictability—a cold stretch but then a day in the fifties, bright sun against a cloudless sky—I’ve always sort of relished it. The way December can surprise you. Not today, though. No. Today all I can think about is another snowstorm. That’s what I want, down in my depths. Because that would mean she’d have to stay.
Finch leads the way, selecting a tree that’s a little taller than she is. I let her use the saw to cut it down, and she’s thrilled, and when the tree topples down and whooshes against the snow, she whoops and holds her arms high in the air. We drag it back to the cabin, fill a bucket with stones and water, and prop the tree inside. Heat popcorn in a pot on the woodstove, thread a needle and then string up the popped kernels in long streamers of white. Marie slices two apples into thin circles, and we hang those up, too. I pull out the Christmas lights I bought at Walmart and let Finch add the batteries. We drape the string of lights back and forth across the tree, too, and Finch presses her hands together and steps back and sighs, her face twinkling in the light. All of this takes up the better half of the day, but when it’s done, we make hot chocolate and sit and admire it, the popcorn and apples and most of all, the lights, and it’s like it’s the best accomplishment of our lives, that sight.
What I realize, sitting there by the tree, is how quickly my mind has shifted from contentment out here with just Finch and me to seeing there could be more for us, and wanting it. Wanting what, exactly? Days like this, I suppose. A wholeness that wasn’t there before. I don’t fully trust my instincts around relationships—never was good at it, plus I’m out of practice, Scotland and Finch and Jake being the only people I’ve interacted with for the better part of a decade now. But twice, I catch Marie looking at me from the other side of the tree, and I think maybe I’m not the only one who is sensing the pull of this, the possibility of a thing that could bud and bloom and grow.