Chapter 7
2007
A sleet-filled wind buffeted the world outside. The front street resembled a snow globe shaken by an angry child. Though early March, winter was digging in its heels for a long stay. Sarah nested on the couch, a book and big bowl of popcorn warring for space on her lap. The TV was on, mainly for company, its glow adding to undulations of light in the room. She stared into the cold darkness out the window as talking heads discussed some celebrity’s hair color. Ice pellets skipped against the glass, their rat-a-tat adding to Sarah’s conviction that it was not a night to be out.
Beneath the drone, a ping caught her attention, like the tap of a fingernail against a full wineglass. She pulled her well-worn sweater tighter around her body and stepped to the window, as if knotted wool could disperse the foulness of the weather. The window mirrored a distorted image of her face, edged with the chaos of a storm. Sarah shivered and turned back toward the room.
The tapping resumed, this time with urgency. Sarah switched off the light and leaned in.
A figure raised its hand. She jumped back. Warily, she looked again.
“Matt?”
She rushed out her apartment door and down the stairs to the building’s foyer, throwing the door open to the night.
He stood on her stoop, his red face grimacing against the wind as he stomped heavy snow off his boots. A blast of wind trailed behind him, carrying the stinging smell of cold. Ice liquefied off his coat and hatless head as he stepped into the foyer.
“What were you doing out there?” Sarah brushed dregs of slush out of his hair, hearing them fall with a quiet splat on the tiles. “There’s a buzzer, you know.” Matt submitted to her ministrations with a shy grin.
Their “still keeping it casual” relationship was like a stream that rose and fell with the rains. The attraction was overwhelming, but Sarah was in no rush. She made time when it suited her and was unconcerned when Matt was busy or traveling. They fit when they were together and yet flowed apart easily. Sarah enjoyed being with Matt but still couldn’t sketch a future with this man. It was a game: she held back, waiting to see if he was indeed interested or just killing time with her.
Without a word, Matt leaned in, wrapped his arms around her waist and buried his face in the crook of her neck. This is a moment, Sarah thought, whether for good or bad, only time would tell.
“Hey, what’s going on?” she asked.
“Nothing,” he said, and stepped back. “I didn’t want to disturb you. I just—I wanted to see you.”
A coil in Sarah’s mind—one she hadn’t realized she carried—unwound. She reached for his hand and led him up the stairs into her apartment.
Matt’s coat hung on the front doorknob. Occasional drips ran along the arms, forming an inkblot-shaped puddle on the floor. The smell of peppermint tea and wet wool filled the apartment.
“What are you reading?” Matt said, as he picked up the book Sarah had left on the couch.
“David Adams Richards. You ever read his stuff?” she said while she rooted in the kitchen for something edible to serve.
“Naw. Any good?”
“Well, he’s a little darker than your typical beach read, but I like the ambiguity.”
Sarah came back into the room with a plate of what she was sure were very stale oatmeal cookies and a certainty that Matthew was not at all interested in talking literature.
“I need to go away for a little while,” he said when Sarah joined him on the couch. She willed her expression to stay quiet.
“It’s a family thing—well, not exactly a family thing, but sort of.” Matt looked at her now, an unreadable question on his face.
“Are you going to tell me more?” she asked.
They were at the point in their relationship where family was more than an acquaintance, but still not familiar. To date, Matt had given her the CliffsNotes version of his life: originally from Vancouver, parents dead. It was a loss they shared, both orphaned in the world. He had left Vancouver not long after his mother passed. Without her, there was nothing keeping him there, and the cost of living was exorbitant. Sarah knew no other details. She read fresh wounds in his silence about his family.
“He’s more an old friend than family, but we were like brothers ... once,” Matt said. He ran a hand through his damp hair as he spoke, gripping the roots with each pass. “He’s going through a tough time right now and hasn’t got anyone else. He needs someone. He—I can’t leave him stranded.”
Matt told Sarah about Kwan. Best friends through childhood and well into their midtwenties. It had been a joke in high school, Matt said: wherever Kwan went, there was Matt, and vice versa. Sarah felt the warmth in his voice as he described this man with whom he shared a past. She reached over and took his hand in hers.
“His wife has been sick for a long time now, and—” Matt’s voice stalled, trapped in a memory. “She passed away two days ago.” Loss filled the apartment, took a breath, expanded itself into the spaces of the room. “It’s just him and his two kids now. They’re still so young. He’s reeling. Needs some help to get through this next bit. Funeral arrangements, paperwork. He called last night to tell me about Lian.” Matt’s voice fell to a whisper with her name.
Matt offered to go to BC to help for a few weeks until Kwan could get everything worked out on a more permanent basis.
“Should be three weeks. Maybe four, tops,” Matt said, and squeezed Sarah’s hand. “I hate to leave you right now. You and I are still pretty casual, but I’ve liked where this has been going. I’d like to explore it further.”
“Of course.” It was Sarah’s turn to lean in. “I’m so sorry, Matt.” She wrapped him in her arms and felt his wet hair against her chin. They stayed like that, ringed in each other’s arms, each keeping their own thoughts. Sarah’s veered toward the vagaries of life, and how our everything could so easily be reduced to nothing.
“It seems like you and Kwan were close. You must have been close to his wife as well.” She kept his hand in hers as she pulled away.
“I was. Long time ago, now.”
“Was? Are you no longer close?”
“We grew apart some years ago. It got ... complicated.”
“How so?” Though she wouldn’t say it out loud, the edges of Matt’s story were blurry.
Why had she never heard of Kwan if they were like brothers? Curiosity and the uncertainty of her place drove Sarah to bring them into sharper focus.
“His wife, Lian. She was, well, sort of, my girlfriend.” Matt released Sarah’s hand to reach for a cookie. He held it between his thumb and index finger, turning it slowing as he spoke. “Through university. We broke up after we graduated.”
“Ouch.”
Matt took a bite of a cookie, his face twitching involuntarily. He looked at her over his nose and, with a rueful smile, said, “When exactly did you buy these cookies?”
They laughed. In the face of loss and the incomprehensible, they laughed, and the tether that had been holding Sarah back broke.
“It’s strange,” Matt said, laughter spent. “You think you’ll have all this time to make things right. To be the person you want to be. And along comes fate with different ideas. I guess part of me always thought there’d be a way to reconcile.” He rested his elbows heavily on his knees while Sarah stroked his back, willing her touch to say all the things her voice could not.
“I know I have no right to ask this of you, Sarah.” Matt’s words were thick and sticky, the syllables trapped in the back of his throat. “Will you wait for me?”
They made love, wrapped in the thickness of loss, listening to a storm ravage the outside world. Sarah drifted off to sleep with the salty taste of Matt’s tears still on her tongue.
Sarah woke the next day into a crisp morning light and a fog lingering in her head. She closed her eyes against the brightness and reached out into her empty bed. Her hand lingered in the hollow. Images from the night before drifted through her mind, his hands on her wrists as he moved his mouth across her body, the helplessness that drove him as he entered her, and, finally, the warmth of a body beside her on a cold winter night. Beneath all that, she clasped the vulnerability Matt had shared with her, just enough to let her in.
The living-room window offered a glimpse of a crystalized world. The front street, awash in white, looked like the top of a wedding cake. Icicles turned tree branches into gleaming archways. Though beautiful, a barrenness lurked in the brightness: not even a squirrel track seemed to disturb the gloss.
A full pot of fresh coffee and a single croissant waited on the kitchen counter. Sarah smiled at the tasty cliché and sat at her small table to enjoy her bounty. The croissant, still warm from the bakery around the corner, melted in her mouth, the buttery pastry like an indulgence and a balm to her disappointment at waking up alone.
Grease still on her lips and coffee steaming in her cup, Sarah moved to the small desk in her bedroom and turned on her computer. She opened her email and stared at the list of names and subject lines that demanded her attention. Hitting New Message, she typed in Matt’s email address.
Yes , she typed in the message, no subject line, no signature. A declaration, simple and unencumbered, she would tie her future to his, whichever way it led her.
Later, as she slipped on clunky boots and an oversize wool coat to contend with the waiting cold, a stray thought found its way to Sarah: How had Matt managed to slip out to the bakery without leaving a single trace in the snow? She held the puzzle for a moment, scarf in hand, before letting it trickle away like melting ice.