So he watched and waited, and Miranda’s face did what it often did these days. It got still and flat, and in that stillness, he knew there was some particularly female sort of pain he might never be able to comprehend. He watched as she began to fret over all those things that not only didn’t matter to him but hadn’t ever mattered to her, either. Things like a few flecks of mud falling from the bottom of his pants to the floor. Another chicken killed by a fox. The tangy smell of manure that wafted through the valley when the farmers spread it on their fields. These were all just normal country things. Things she used to laugh about.
And there were those other things she worried herself over now. Why the Simpsons hadn’t asked them back after that one party. Whether she should serve fish or just put burgers on the grill for the two of them on a Sunday night. Should she volunteer somewhere or take a class? If the people at the local garden center would be mad that she hadn’t come to buy hanging baskets this year, like she had the previous spring.
“They won’t care,” he said, confused. “They won’t even realize.”
“You don’t understand,” she said, pushing her lips together.
“You’re right,” he replied. “I don’t understand.” He also didn’t understand why she had starting fussing with her hair, asking him whether it looked better pulled back or left loose. “Wear it whatever way is most comfortable,” he’d said. “You’re just going to the store.” And then, knowing he’d said the wrong thing, added, “It’s beautiful. You’re beautiful either way.”
He meant what he said, and he also hoped his words would soothe her. Would keep her from the bathroom, where he found her more often than ever, bent over in front of a small magnifying mirror picking at imaginary flaws on her face, rubbing thick white creams from small pots onto her skin, and even applying makeup, which simply ended up smudged beneath her eyes and on the sheets in angry streaks of black.
Nothing he said seemed to help her. Words were clumsy tools in his hands.
“No one cares what your hair looks like.”
He meant it as a comment about them, a way to diminish those others whose opinions seemed to matter to her in a way they never had before. It didn’t come out right. She glared at him.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I can’t seem to say what I mean. You’re worth ten to anyone else in this whole valley. You don’t need to give a damn what anyone else thinks.”
That dark, reflective shimmer invariably came back into her eyes. She was singed, somehow. And he was frustrated. So he would go outdoors to find something he could fix. And she would go to the kitchen, where there was something she could clean.
That was why he didn’t ask her about the ring. Not because he didn’t notice. Not because he didn’t care. Because he was afraid he’d ask the wrong question, say the wrong thing, hurt her in ways he could not comprehend or control.
Taking care of other people’s property reliably supplied Dix with chores that settled his mind. His own property also supplied him with an endless stream of must-, should-, and could-dos. The chore that faced him the morning when Miranda left him standing at the kitchen counter with a cold cup of once-warm tea was a dead tree he had cut down and bucked up. The kegs of wood were piled next to the barn, where he’d dumped them. They needed to be split and stacked. So he went outdoors to the familiarity of his compliant tools, hanging against the wall of the barn.
The barn had two stalls. His mother had kept a placid quarter horse that she used for trail riding. His father never took to animals the way she had. Which seemed fine with her. The barn and woods were for her, as they were for Dix, an escape from the confines of the house. She loved her house but also loved to leave it for a while, partially so she could have the pleasure of returning. She’d kept a goat as company for the horse—but also as entertainment for herself—and chickens. Always a rescued dog, sometimes two, and a few cats, which tended to live in the barn instead of the house. The animals had died, one after another, during the years of her illness, as if in solidarity and foreboding, and Dix had not replaced them.
Miranda had talked of getting a dog but was insecure about her ability to manage one, to train and care for it properly, not having grown up with pets. She wanted to do things well but was also afraid of having to get herself through the failures it took to learn how to do a thing well, a tendency that led her increasingly into spirals of self-doubt. She wanted chickens, so Dix repaired the old henhouse, an effort that had given her the necessary courage to pick up a pamphlet and a box of fuzzy chicks from the Agway this past spring. Their number had decreased and needed to be supplemented a few times—a natural inevitability of living alongside raccoons and foxes and coyotes, he assured her. Still, she took the losses hard, cried over the disparate trails of feathers when she found them. Cried too hard, he thought. Cried over the chickens, but something else as well. Something neither of them could name.
When Dix entered the barn, he was comforted by the intertwined sweet and sour smells of sawdust and grain, manure and gasoline that lingered where animals and machinery had been housed together. He took off his canvas shirt and hung it on a peg—he loved the strange magic trick barns performed of being warm in the winter, cool in the summer, and a mirror of the temperature outside during the in-between seasons—then flicked on the fluorescent lights over his workbench. Working in a gray T-shirt, he found his ax and a file and began sharpening his tool, the dull metal brightening to a silver gleam as he filed away the rust and dents. He tested the edge with his thumb and then stepped out the back side of the barn and into the bright day. The logs were in a pile the size of a small car, right where they had tumbled off the back of his dump truck.
He swung the ax into the smaller pieces of wood right where they lay in comforting disarray. With every strike of the ax, he felt a piece of tension, a mote of worry, leave him. Strike, breathe, release. He soon felt emptied out, a pail scrubbed clean. That peaceful void stayed with him for the next hour. He got into the bigger pieces, picking them up, setting them on the splitting stump, working harder now, bringing the ax overhead for extra leverage. Swing, split, stack. But then, drop by drop, he felt himself start to fill again with something cold and wet. He paused, wiped his forehead on the short sleeve of his T-shirt, and looked into the dark wall of native forest that ringed his cleared acre and a half of home, cottage, barn, garage, storage shed, raised garden beds, perennial and shrub borders, and small patch of lawn. He didn’t really believe in lawns—this one was simply a means of keeping the forest from taking over.
He looked over his shoulder toward the house. It seemed empty in there—it was so quiet and still. He wondered if Miranda had left. No, he’d have heard the car. Maybe she was taking a nap. Reading a book. Trying to knit again. Cleaning. Fretting over her face. He didn’t normally wonder about her in this way. It felt strange and suspicious.
He went back to splitting.
He went back to remembering.
The first activity was familiar, the second less so.
Dix was someone who rarely looked backward. But recently, he found himself retracing his steps through his time with Miranda, trying to find the moment, the event or failing that had turned her from him. She had moved very little with her into the cottage. Just a suitcase of clothes, a few books, and one faded stuffed bear her father had given her as a child. She was hardly noticeable out there, but after years of living alone, Dix felt her presence the way one notices how a borrowed jacket doesn’t fit quite right because it has worn itself to the contours of another’s body. In the mornings, after he made coffee and ate breakfast, he would look out the window of his kitchen and stare at the small gleam from the cottage filtering through the trees. He was always up well before her light came on in those chilled, damp fall mornings, and as he drove away, it gave him comfort to think of her tucked in the cottage where he felt she was safe and secure. In a place where no more harm could come to her. That was his hope, anyway.
When he returned, the short
er days sending him home in the late afternoons, he’d find some small evidence that she’d been in the house and he’d smile to himself, satisfied. He’d told her to make his kitchen her own and was happy that she was. At first, he’d find just a coffee cup or bowl in the drain tray. Then a new box of cereal in the pantry or container of yogurt in the refrigerator. It gave him pleasure to see her things, not really mingled, but shyly set alongside his own.
Then she began to leave things for him. A plate of cookies she had baked. A loaf of homemade bread. A pot of soup. He reciprocated. He left a small trout in the refrigerator one day when he had to be out of town and wrote her a note telling her to cook it for herself. He brought some mismatched eggs from a neighbor and told her to help herself because there were too many for him alone. For a couple of weeks, they tiptoed around each other in this way, leaving their notes and offerings, waving from a distance, unsure how to step across the comfort of their friendly and formal distance—or if they wanted to.
Then one day there was the pie. It was a thing of beauty, with a delicate latticework of golden crust. The buttery pastry dissolved against his tongue and melded with the warm and syrupy apples that made up its filling. For this he had to thank her. In person. He cut two fresh pieces, scooped some vanilla ice cream he had in the basement freezer, and with a flashlight in his teeth to illuminate the way, walked toward the small patch of light that was her cottage. When he got to the door he stood there, unsure how to knock when his hands were occupied with the two plates. He kicked gently with the toe of his boot. She opened the door, and her face had registered caution, then surprise, then pleasure, in quick succession. She removed the flashlight from his mouth and ushered him inside. He took the rocker and she the upholstered chair, and they dug into the pie, the murmuring sounds of gustatory pleasure the only explanation required between them.
“Where did you learn to cook?” Dix asked once his plate was clean.
“My grandmother,” Miranda replied. “My father’s mother. She was an immigrant from Italy. She married an Irish man. They were very working class.”
Dix raised his eyebrows.
“I know. Everyone thinks my dad was the perfect WASP. But he wasn’t. Maybe that’s why he worked at it so hard, out-WASPed the real WASPs like my mother.”
“The converted are always the most devout,” Dix said.
Miranda laughed, which pleased him.
“His parents were not like that at all,” she continued. “Very simple. Very decent. Showed their love with food, not money.” She paused to finish her last bite. “I think they kind of embarrassed him. But I loved spending time with them. Especially my grandmother. In the kitchen. Cooking. I think it’s the only thing I’m any good at. Thanks to her.”
This was a lot of conversation for them. A lot of revelation.
“My mother taught me to cook,” Dix said.
Now Miranda raised her eyebrows. “Seriously? My mother’s idea of making a meal was to make reservations.”
Dix gave her a knowing look. “Yes, I remember that about her. My mother was a bit different. She wanted me to be self-sufficient. I even know how to mend and iron.”
Miranda laughed again, a light, easy sound that filled the small room.
“Come up to the house tomorrow night,” he said, surprising himself as much as Miranda with the invitation. He began collecting the plates, distracting himself from what he’d begun, from the fear that she’d protest. “I’ll show you. You’ll get to meet my mother through my cooking.”
And then before she could say no, he left the cottage.
When Miranda arrived the next evening, Dix could not help but notice that she had dressed up. Just a bit. Her hair twisted against her head in a knot rather than pulled back in a ponytail. A long skirt rather than jeans. A touch of color in her face. He watched her as she came into the kitchen, saw her noticing the dining room table set with cloth napkins and candles, and asked if she wanted a glass of wine.
“Are you having some?”
“A beer,” he said.
“I’d like a beer, too,” she said, looking around the bare kitchen counters, vaguely confused. “Am I too early? Can I help you get started?”
In answer, he opened the oven and a wave of smells, rich with spices and earth, permeated the room. “It’s almost done.”
“Ah, you’re one of those who cleans as he goes,” Miranda said. “I make a huge mess and clean it all up at the end.”
“Well, I wanted to make something that didn’t require a lot of fussing. Venison stew,” he said. “Cornbread. Salad. Leftover pie for dessert.”
“That does not smell like any stew I’ve ever eaten!” Miranda said. She laughed and a strand of hair fell free of its clip, framing her jaw. Dix was flooded with the urge to reach forward and push it back behind her ear. The sensation was so raw and unsettling, he turned away from her and busied himself with the salad bowl.
He asked how the cottage was working out, how her mother was, if all the real estate transactions had been completed. Small talk. The kind of thing he was unused to. It was not just that he had lived alone for so long. His parents had not been much for chitchat, either. They spoke to each other about their work. They spoke to each other through their work. Having someone in his home for dinner was strange and thrilling for him. He was also nervous, another thing he was unused to.
He served, they sat, and Miranda ate slowly, taking her time with each bite, asking after his techniques and flavorings. They shared stories of their family meals, hers always centered by pasta and red sauce, his by game from the mountains and vegetables from the garden. They stayed at the table for a long time after the plates were emptied. The candles sputtered a bit. He thought of asking her if she wanted to sit in the living room, but something kept them right where they were. They talked of their mothers’ illnesses. He told her how his father had died soon after cancer took his mother. A heart attack.
“Well named,” Dix said as he folded and unfolded a napkin. “Losing her broke his heart.”
Then he looked up, and in the clear blue lakes of Miranda’s eyes saw a sorrow of his own reflected. It was a sadness he hadn’t fully realized he felt, and its revelation made him realize how lonely he had been—and how accustomed to loneliness he had become. In that moment, her eyes were a gentle press of light and warmth that seemed to dissipate the shadows of those feelings. And offered a promise to hold those feelings at bay, indefinitely.
They both got quiet, emptied of words. She yawned. He stood in response. She seemed reluctant to rise, but he attributed this to tiredness, the late hour, not to a desire to stay at the table any longer. She reached her arms over her head and stretched before getting to her feet and going toward the door. He held it open for her. The air, touched that night with the cold of the imminent winter, drifted in the gap. She thanked him. For dinner. For everything, she whispered. At the door, at the end of that evening, he went ahead and pushed the loose strand of hair behind her ear. She tilted her head toward his hand. His fingers grazed her cheek. Then she was gone.
A few evenings later, the lights were on when he drove up to the house. The smell of sautéing onions wafted toward him. Music was playing, some low, female vocalist. Miranda was at the stove when he came in the door, but crossed the kitchen with a cold beer in hand for him. She was smiling. Her hair was loose. There was flour on her cheek.
It was her turn to make him dinner, she announced.
After that meal—a veal dish, something he’d never had before—she didn’t go back to the cabin. He could still recall the taste of wine and berry sauce on her lips when, washing dishes side by side, he had bent his face to hers. Without words, she’d let herself go soft in his arms, and then they’d wandered, side by side, to his bed. He remembered how strange his coarse hands felt on her smooth skin, the contrast of his lean, hard musculature against her pillowy, delicate body. How odd it seemed to dress in the morning, tiptoeing around his own room while she slept in his bed, her hair a
spray of dried grasses spread over his pillows. How quickly he got used to hearing music in the air and something sizzling in a pan when he came home at the end of the day. How much he enjoyed the lunches she packed for him, thermoses of soup and sandwiches on thick slabs of homemade bread. How accustomed he became to her appearing in the barn with a cup of hot coffee for him when he was working.
She told him she seemed to be like her grandmother—she showed her love through food.
And on that day, that afternoon when three full seasons had passed since he had first pressed his chapped lips to her moist ones, as he stood in the sun splitting wood and tasting his own sweat as it drizzled into his mouth, wondering when and why things had changed so much between them, he slowly realized that he was waiting for that cup of coffee. He was waiting for her. And it didn’t look like she was coming.
While Dix waited for Miranda, she watched him. She had gone to the garden, seeking a simple task to settle her mind. She was being irritable and she didn’t know why. She was being short-tempered with the one person who deserved it not at all. She was being what her mother would have called “a brat.” She disliked herself for it. She picked a few tomatoes and ears of corn and returned to the kitchen. From the sink, with the water rushing over her gleanings, she watched Dix’s deceptively effortless competence on full display. He swung the ax with an economy and precision of movement that made it seem as if the logs were splitting of their own accord. She’d watched him do this before and loved the rustic choreography of his efforts. She admired him and was jealous of him. She adored him and was besieged by doubts as to why he loved her. She toted up all the comforts and kindnesses he had given her and feared she had offered little in return. Everything he gave her seemed like a revelation, a shiny, new object unpacked just for her, and she felt she came to him empty-handed. She couldn’t even get pregnant. Tears began to drip down her face. Dix appeared to her as if he were underwater.
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