Page 56 of The Cabin
She leans down; relinquishing her grip on the blanket finally, and takes one. “This is…remarkable.”
It’s a raccoon, small enough to sit on her palm. I tried to capture it sitting up on its hind legs, its front paws clasped in front of it the way they do, looking like it’s praying.
“It’s so cute! So lifelike.”
The next one, then. It’s a dragonfly done true to scale, and this one I went all out and painted, so the body is iridescent blue, with a bulbous thorax which goes thin and narrow behind the wings, with delicate veins in the wings. It’s my best piece to date.
“It looks like it could take off any moment.”
“Spent several days on that one. Usually, I can do a carving in an afternoon. But that one? The wings took forever.”
“I bet. They’re so detailed.”
Third is not an animal at all but a representation of the episcopal church in town, a picturesque small-town place, white clapboards and a red roof, a spire with a bell.
“Why a church?” she asks.
“Um. Well, that’s the church that’s in town here. St. Paul’s. It just looks like the kind of church you’d see in a movie about a small town.”
I don’t tell her that Lisa was obsessed with little churches like that, that she would plan entire vacations around which churches she wanted to visit, or that we’d been married in one just like it, that her funeral had been in the same church we’d gotten married in.
Maybe there’s something in the carving, but she handles it somewhat more reverently than the others. Doesn’t say anything else, just stares down at it for a while, and then sets it down to lift up the last one I brought over. It’s a dollhouse-sized rocking chair, a couple inches tall. I’d carved a tiny cat curled up on the seat of the rocking chair.
“Story behind that one,” I say. “Came out onto my porch with my coffee a few mornings ago, and there was a cat sleepin’ on it. Never seen it before. I looked at it, it looked at me, and then it just sorta hopped down and walked off around the lake, and I haven’t seen it since.”
“The amount of detail you get into such small things is remarkable.”
“Well, it takes patience, is all. And a steady hand, I guess. Carving or whittling or whatever you want to call it, it’s kinda meditative for me.”
She nods. “I can see how it would be.”
“You do anything like that?”
She shrugs. “No, not really. I used to be into watercolors, but I sort of…lost the habit of doing it. What with life and all, you know how it is.”
“Well. No better place to try it again, right?” I gesture at the lake. “Lots to paint out here, I’d say.”
“You’re right about that. Maybe I will.”
I refill her coffee, and then there’s an awkward silence.
“I, um.” I clear my throat again. “It was nice having coffee with you, Nadia. Nice to meet you.”
“Thank you again for the coffee,” she says. “I’ll have to learn to make proper coffee one of these days, I guess.”
I shrug. “I’m up early out of long habit.” I hesitate. “You ever want some, just come on over.”
She nods. “I’ll keep that in mind.”
I wave, a strange, awkward half lift of one hand. “Well. See you ’round, I guess.”
“Yeah.”
What do you get when you take two people who have lost the most important person in their lives and have since lost the ability to socialize normally? A lot of awkward pauses and even more awkward conversation.
I head home, carve for a while. Think about fishing, decide against it.
Should I have told her I knew her husband? How would that conversation go?
I don’t know what’s right, what’s wrong, what’s neither.Dinnertime. I’m attempting to make a whole chicken in the oven, following a recipe I found online at the library and printed out.
Lisa always used to make fun of me for my cooking. I was always trying stuff, but I’d get it wrong at least half the time. Forget an ingredient, or do tablespoons instead of teaspoons, or put the oven at the wrong temperature, or leave it in too long. Once in a while, maybe every other attempt, I’ll get it right and it’ll actually be pretty damned good. But when I get it wrong? Boy howdy, do I get it real wrong.
This is the latter.
I turn around from carving, and the oven is billowing thick clouds of black smoke. I shove oven mitts onto my hands, yank the oven open, and grab the pan with my chicken on it—it’s all but on fire. It’s filling the cabin with smoke, so I carry it outside, cursing loudly all the way, and toss the pan and the blackened chicken onto the gravel drive.
I hear a snicker. “Looks like you, um, left it in too long.”
