Joni doesn’t find any coffee in the kitchen. Doesn’t find any real food either. Just a couple cans of beans and an empty tin of crackers. She scrounges up a granola bar from her backpack. It tastes like nothing. Her mouth feels numb. The cabin makes no sound. Buildings this old should creak, Joni thinks, but the logs don’t give.
The weather’s changed by the time Joni sets out toward town. Closer to winter than summer. Thin fingers of fog drift over the tall grass as she makes her way down the dirt path through the forest. Birds call softly from branches she cannot see. She walks carefully, wary of the deep puddles along the road.
Her sneakers are caked in mud by the time she makes it to the gas station Robin mentioned. The air is chilly, sun obscured by low, heavy clouds. Joni pulls her windbreaker closer around her. It’s hardly warm enough. She can see her breath and the tufts of reedy grass along the road are bent over with frost.
If it were night, she probably would have missed the place. No sign on the front awning, nothing along the road – paved, but so poorly maintained that the gravel roads probably are probably a smoother ride.
It’s a box of a building, red siding, a black steeple roof. It looks old, but not overgrown. Someone’s kept the forest at bay, planted two neat rows of flowers beside the front door. The single gas pump has that shiny, metallic quality that very old machines tend to have, but it looks clean. The door dings over Joni’s head. The store smells like old cigarettes and firewood, The shelves are a little sparse. Joni looks around to try and find the cashier, but the store seems to be empty. The carpet is closely cropped and an inexplicable dark red. The walls all wood paneling. A popcorn ceiling. There’s a bulletin board on one wall, chunks of cork missing from it, carved out by pushpins. A flyer for a fall festival on the mainland, a carefully typed advertisement for S. Vasilakis, odd jobs (computer work, website development, yard work, basic car maintenance, furniture assembly). Call XXX XXX XXXX. The newest looking notice is hand-written with colorful vines and flowers drawn along the edges. Are you sad? In pain? Anxious? Meditation can help! Sunrise yoga with sound bath and meditation to follow every Wednesday morning at the Alta Lake Artist’s Colony. Joni taps the flyer with the back of one finger as if to say nice try, but no thanks.
The place has a sort of comforting quiet to it. It doesn’t feel strange that it’s empty, doesn’t feel strange at all. Joni approaches the register. There’s a microwave on the counter, a toaster oven. A coffee pot full of coffee; little cups of flavored creamer a little too close to the hot bottom of the machine. An empty, plastic pastry case with a little white standing fan on top. There’s a note tacked to the case. Out on errand. Back in thirty. Leave money on caunter. – Pam. Joni wonders how many people live here. How many people come in. For gas or, she glances around sparse shelves, peanut butter, instant mashed potatoes, bleach. There’s an old ATM in the corner by the door and, beside that, a payphone. Joni digs in the pockets of her jeans for the slip of paper Robin gave her last night before swinging back up into her truck. The buttons stick as Joni dials. She taps one foot as she listens to the ring.
By the time Robin’s truck rumbles up to the cabin, the clouds have cleared. The tuft of daffodils by the mouth of the path, downtrodden by the rain, perk up under the sun and Joni feels a little perked up too. She sits cross-legged on the porch’s bottom step and watches Robin swing out of her truck. “Hey there, kiddo!” she calls across the meadow, “you doing alright?” Joni waves back, a noncommittal response. She wasn’t doing alright an hour ago, she’s doing mostly alright right now, and trying to talk about either thing would cheapen them both. Robin trudges through the mud towards the house, a backpack slung over one shoulder. “Must have been a hell of a shock last night.”
“Something like that. The storm didn’t help.”
“No kidding.” Robin helps Joni to her feet.
She wipes a few strands of hair out of her face. “I really appreciate you coming out here again.” Robin waves her off, looking over Joni’s shoulder at the cabin. Joni wonders if she’s been out here before, if she knew her grandfather well, or at all. “I think there’s some other stuff wrong with the house too. Stuff that I can see and stuff that…listen I don’t know a lot about houses or construction or,” she waves vaguely toward the cabin, “this.”
Robin shields her eyes again from the sun even though it’s hidden now behind heavy clouds, like it’s a habit. “Unless it’s plumbing, I’ve probably got you covered.” She wipes her hands on her jeans and peers up at the cabin, her jaw sets. “Hang out here for a bit. Let me take a look.”
“Well, it’s certainly a little worse for wear.” Robin comes out dusty but smiling. “Nothing structurally wrong with it, though, so it’s safe for habitation even if it might be,” Robin looks back at the cabin, “a little uncomfortable for a while.” She pats Joni on the shoulder. She has heavy hands, calloused from her work, but her nails are painted a pristine, cherry red.
“Could have guessed that I suppose” Joni says, stuffing her hands in her pockets and looking again at the house. In the daylight it looks worse. A rotting log amidst a forest of color. She looks over at Robin who seems to be doing some sort of math in her head, fingers on her chin, lips moving in silent calculation. “Listen,” Robin glances over at her, “I’m not exactly flush with cash.” And just saying it opens up a yawning inside of her. Because she doesn’t have any cash actually and the studio is forwarding her final paycheck to the new address, but who knows when that will wind its way across the Sound. But where else will she go? The apartment is sublet. Back to her dad’s? Jesus, no. The idea of him putzing quietly around like nothing is wrong makes her feel angry for the first time in a long time. She could go right into the Sound then, stones in her pockets like Virginia Woolfe. That shocks her out of her own thoughts. That is frightening. She feels, for a moment, afraid of herself again. Afraid of what she can do, like there is some other self living inside her, impulsive, pulsing with a death drive.
“We’ll work something out,” Robin says, and Joni feels herself come back to earth. Here on the muddy ground, the sun out, the smell of flowers in the air. Robin standing sturdy and real beside her, smelling of cut grass and motor oil. Their eyes meet. Robin’s are a pretty, leaf green. “You hungry?”
Joni finds some old towels in the bathroom and scrubs the long, wooden table in the middle of the kitchen. Robin scrounges for dishes. She manages to find a few plates with only one or two cracks in them and a couple cloudy glasses. Joni rinses them, careful not to let them rest on the sink’s rusted bottom.
They sit across from each other, windows open, soft breeze tousling the cloth curtains like little ghosts. Figured you didn’t have any good food in this place, Robin said, hefting grocery bags from the truck into Joni’s waiting arms. Robin made sandwiches. Thick, seeded bread that Joni just knows has never seen the inside of a supermarket. Between them, strips crisp, fatty bacon and tomatoes that still have a hint of garden on them. Even from the thermos, Robin’s zucchini soup is a little cold, but Joni gulps it down all the same. She’s eating at a wild pace, like her stomach forgot what it meant to be fed. She feels strangely close to tears. About the meal and Robin’s presence and the promise of pro bono work. Maybe if the bread had been store-bought, she wouldn’t feel like this. Maybe if Robin rolled her eyes when she brought up money, the urge to cry wouldn’t have appeared at all. Joni can’t figure out if this is a big gesture from Robin or just something normal and neighborly. But of course, there’s more than that, isn’t there? Joni doesn’t remember Robin, but maybe Robin remembers her. As a child. Remembers a Joni that not even Joni remembers. She is not new here in town, just long gone “So, you knew my dad?”
“Here and there,” Robin says, laughing a little wistfully. “We both like playing pool. Got to know each other a little bit that way. But he stopped coming a couple decades ago, after…” Robin trails off, eyes a little narrow, gaze soft, thinking, “actually I’m not sure what all happened.”
Joni clears her throat and, in between bites of her sandwich, says, as nonchalantly as she can, “After my mom died. We mostly stopped coming after she died.”
Recognition dawns immediately over Robin’s face. “That’s right.” She says with a sharp intake of breath. “That’s right. I’d forgotten all about that.”
It was here, Joni doesn’t say, right here in this cabin. Or outside it. The details half whispered and fuzzy. Did you know her? Joni doesn’t ask. Were you here when it happened? “It was a long time ago.”
Robin bobs her head a little contemplatively, like she’s trying to decide what she wants to say. She reaches across the table and pats the top of Joni’s hand. “My son lost his father when he was young too.” Joni doesn’t really know what to say to that. Her grief for her mother feels so far away now, buried deeply. Her grief for her grandfather too, who she knew less and less as the years drug on. Her grief now is for herself, and it is sharp and terrifying and ongoing and not something she can tell this woman who has come here bearing kindness and who Joni knows not at all. Robin squeezes her hand once and then stands. “I brought some more candle for you. Should tide you over ‘til I can get back over here and tinker with the power.”
Joni watches Robin’s truck pull away, kicking up mud as it rolls back onto the road. She leans against one of the porch’s heavy log supports and fiends for a cigarette. She hasn’t smoked in years, but she’s desperate to do something with her hands now. There’s a sense of dread that comes with the setting of the sun and with the idea of another dark night. Candles this time though, Robin’s candles. Joni wonders, for just a moment, about Robin’s son. She can’t picture him, but she feels like she already maybe knows him. A boy without his father. An owl hoots from a nearby tree. She wonders if he has the same red hair as his mom.