These Silent Woods: A Novel(43)

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.

“One problem solved,” I tell the chickens, who are huddled in the coop and not pleased about how snow flutters in when I open the door. I mean the girl with the camera. She won’t be back out here in this snow, all those national-forest roads closed, at least for a while. “But another one gained,” I say, peering into the coop. One of the hens eyes me cantankerously and refuses to move. “Marie. What are we gonna do about her?” I push at the hen with the back of my gloved hand and she clucks and then leaps to the side. “Got a woman in the house with me and one day in, I start thinking things. What? Yeah, so maybe I was. Maybe I did steal a look when she leaned over to pour the coffee. I didn’t look long, anyhow, so don’t go making me out to be some kind of pervert.”

I brush the pine bedding back from the ledge of the coop, tidying the chickens’ mess. “And yes, she’s attractive, okay. I find her attractive. I did, years ago, when we first met. And I still do. There, I said it.” One hen seems to change her mind and comes back toward me, beak out, intending to peck. “Easy,” I tell her and swat her softly on the head. “You’re lucky I need you, or you’d end up like Susanna.” The hens stand in a row at the back of the coop, watching me as I tuck their eggs into the deep pocket of my coat. “Sorry,” I say. “That was uncalled for. What happened with her was about putting her out of her misery. You understand that, don’t you, ladies?” I close the door and latch it and shimmy back through my skinny path to the porch.

You’re talking to chickens, Cooper. You’re confessing. You’re apologizing to them. Critters with brains the size of a pea. You’re losing your mind.

I stomp off the snow, turn to look once again at the woods. Even though I’m close, the birds are fluttering toward the feeder, pulled there by hunger, by the situation of snow. Two, maybe three years back, Jake brought the feeder, and after much debate—not right off the porch (bird seed all over the place), not on the clothesline (bird crap all over the clothes)—we dug a hole with the post-hole digger and sunk a straight and skinned piece of locust and installed the feeder just outside the window so that Finch and me could watch the birds when we ate our meals. Scotland had come shortly thereafter and taken the opportunity to point out that Finch’s childhood would be lacking if I didn’t see to getting her a pet crow. Which she has been harping about every spring since: finding a baby crow to nurture and tame.

Now, juncos, plain and gray, tremble in from the woods, gathering at the base of the feeder, but the snow is deep there. I grab the shovel from the porch and walk toward them and they scatter. I clear a spot so that when the seed spills, they can get it from the ground. I step back and lean on the shovel and wait and see if they’ll come back with me that close, and they do. Beautiful, fragile little things, quivering. I look up and see Marie at the window, Finch tucked in against her, and Marie’s arm across Finch’s middle. It’s a happy sight, the two of them watching in wonder and smiling, and I smile back, but inside I’m seeing that in spite of everything I can give Finch out here—and it’s a good life, and the best I can do—there is also something missing. A woman to love and soothe and guide her. A mother.