Degrees of Latitude

by Cheryl Graham

I’ll invite you over for a cup of tea before I leave. I’ll have everything packed and loaded into the car, then I’ll do the dishes, slide the chair under the desk, and arrange the cushions on the couch. I’ll strip the sheets from the bed, which is something extra I like to do to distinguish myself as a considerate guest. The house will be warm, with the fire I built still simmering in the woodstove, and there will be snow outside, either floating in slow motion from a grey sky, or in drifts, brilliant and icy under the low winter sun. Before I make the tea, I’ll tell you about the kettle and how, when it’s plugged in, the cord is too short to reach the counter. I’ll say it’s something I wanted to mention to you the first time I stayed here, and when you offer an apology, I’ll brush it off and say I’m just surprised another guest hasn’t pointed it out. I’ll say it’s not a big deal, really—since you don’t live in this house, it’s not something you’d notice. But I’ll kneel down and demonstrate that in order to boil water, I have to put the kettle on the floor, near the outlet, and this is not ideal. You will be leaning over me, in the confined space between the counter and the cupboard, and I will stand up, catch my breath, and turn around to face you. I will look in your eyes and smile, and wait for you to kiss me.

I won’t know your reasons for wanting to kiss me and you won’t have to know either, but it is important—no, imperative—that you kiss me and not the other way around. Maybe it’s something you haven’t considered until this moment. Maybe it’s something you’ve always been curious about. Maybe I am a singularity that brings those two impulses together, both urgent and tentative, but you will kiss me and I will let you for one long second, and then two, my eyes half-closed, inhaling the warm smell of your skin. And then, just when I might reach to touch your shoulder or brush your hair away from your face, I will lift my head and back away. I will stop, not because I don’t want you, but because this will set things right. 

I turned down the long, wooded driveway that day last summer, and saw the two houses side by side, just as they’d appeared in the listing, both whitewashed, angular, and Nordic. You and your husband walked out from the larger house, smiling and waving, as if welcoming an old friend. I’d arrived almost two hours after I’d said I would, and I felt like the person who comes late to a meeting and hopes to slip in unnoticed. But there was something guileless and almost corny about your greeting, so I forced a smile through the windshield. You showed me around the guesthouse and inquired about the writing project I said I’d come there to finish, and I sensed your bewilderment at why I’d drive all that way just to write. I was rumpled and ragged from the road, my brain still speeding forward, and all I wanted to do was pour myself a drink, get to work, and disappear for the rest of the night. 

Nevertheless, you invited me to join you for dinner, and I hesitated, not wanting to put you out. The truth was I had arrived at a point in my life in which the smallest kindness was suspect. Finally free from a relationship in which good deeds were tallied on some imaginary scorecard, only to be given out—or taken away—when the numbers didn’t add up, I was still in the habit of performing a mental calculus whenever I felt the balance shift. But you were simply here, with an open hand, a vegetable stir-fry, and no score to settle. Besides, the alternative was the box of dried tortellini and bag of potato chips I’d packed, so after I put my things away, I opened a beer and took a seat on the patio between the houses. I was thankful for the long drive now, and the five degrees of latitude between the stultifying humidity of Iowa and the clear north Wisconsin woods. I felt my body soften into the chair as the beer began its pleasant buzz around my temples. 

Your husband sat next to me and rolled a cigarette while you set the table, and we relaxed in silence as the sun retreated behind the trees. I watched a plane moving through the darkening sky above, and wondered aloud where it might be headed. My question was rhetorical; the sight of those white streaks always fills me with wanderlust. Your husband opened the flight tracking app he keeps on his phone and, tilting it skyward, reported that the tiny contrail belonged to Icelandair flight 656, en route from Minneapolis to Reykjavik. He recited the details: Boeing 757-class-200, cruising at 33,000 feet, arriving the next morning at 6:30. I caught you mid-eye roll, and said I wished I were on that flight. “Me too,” you said, and smiled at me as though I’d just uttered the secret word. After we ate you disappeared into your house and returned with a plate of freshly baked brownies. You must have registered the surprise on my face, and you whispered, “It’s like magic,” then slid the plate across the table. I could see the lines at the corners of your eyes in the fading light. 

In bed the next night with the windows open, I lay suspended in the cool evening air, calm and weightless. Lightning flashed silently in the distance. I heard the sound of tires on gravel and looked out to see your car coming up the driveway, its headlights jittering through the black. You and your husband appeared ghostly in the front seats, illuminated by the green glow of the dashboard, and I wondered where you’d gone, what you’d done, what you’d talked about. Just like that, the tranquility I’d felt a moment before shattered and my temporary self was gone. In its place was a longing I couldn’t name and a loss that felt as murky as the night. 

In the morning I wandered through the trails on your property, taking one last walk before the long drive home, holding the dry, piney air in my lungs as if I could take it with me. When I emerged on the other side of the house, it took me a minute to get my bearings, but then I saw you in the garden, gathering vegetables and pulling weeds. You were wearing a light blue skirt and a white sleeveless blouse, and didn’t notice me at first. The midday heat radiated off your bare shoulders as you bent to collect your tools, and your hair was the color of flame grass backlit by the sun. I gave a half wave, and you smiled as I approached. I slid my hands into my pockets and looked down at the dirt, then squinted up at you and said I was heading out. When I backed away to leave you said, “Can I give you a hug? I feel like we’ve made a connection.” I felt a thud below my rib cage, something collapsing and opening at the same time. “Of course,” I said, because I’d felt it too, but wouldn’t have dared say it, so plainly and without artifice. And then you hugged me and I wanted to melt into you. I couldn’t remember the last time someone had touched me, let alone put their arms around me. I let go, wiped my eyes and swallowed hard, and made an excuse I thought you would appreciate: “I am a woman of a certain age,” I said, trying to smile and hold your gaze. You said you understood, you were the same, and that you even cry at TV commercials. You didn’t seem at all surprised or put off, and I didn’t know what to do except hug you again. I thanked you for the accommodations, then got in my car and drove away. 

Straight, married, and four hundred miles between us. Any one of these is a disqualifier. All three were just ridiculous. But you had given me the one thing I wanted most: to be seen, to stand in the warm spotlight of another person’s attention, free from judgment and reproach. You reflected my idealized self back to me, one I was unable to see on my own, and that mirror shimmered like a mirage in the distance. 

After I got home, you messaged me to say you’d add me to your Christmas card list, if that was okay, and asked if you could find me on Facebook. At once I felt the warmth of inclusion wash over me, followed immediately by the doubt that I had done anything to merit it. Could it be that easy, I wondered, to just accept your invitation of friendship and feel worthy of it? To not be expected to give anything in return? To be enough?

I spent hours looking through years of photos in your profile, images offered as effortlessly as you shared a plate of dessert.

You with your hair pulled back, standing with your family in front of a dinosaur skeleton in a museum.

A life in pictures. A life I wanted but had somehow forgotten to create, like the bad dream in which I’ve shown up for the final exam without attending a class. An alternate reality, one with a partner, a home, a family; every photo of you an image of something lacking in me. A faulty, zero-sum equation I couldn’t stop trying to solve.

You in a floral scarf and a rose-colored tank top, playing a board game at a table with friends. 

Here again, doing the math, adding and subtracting and coming up short. Maybe, if you could turn your gaze to me one more time, if I could possess something you lacked, if you could want something from me, it would balance the scales, even tip them in my favor. 

You in a chair on the deck, raising your glass in a toast to the camera. Your sweater matches the wine in your glass, offsetting your white-blonde hair, which contours around your cheek and touches your neck. 

I wanted to touch your neck. 

Late summer turned to fall, then winter contracted around me, its featureless days never seeming to begin, but nevertheless ending too soon. Marianne Moore once said that the cure for loneliness is solitude. I turned my attention north.

I booked a long weekend for the middle of December. After I made the reservation, you wrote back to say you’d be out of town and I’d have the place to myself. Well, what about the weekend after that, I replied, and actually, now that I think of it, yes, that would be better. You said you’d be away until the last night of my stay, and that you would modify the reservation so I wouldn’t have to pay the weekend rate. “Just smile and say fine,” you wrote. I pictured that same conspiratorial sparkle in your eyes. 

The small suitcase is in the hatch, a box of snacks on the seat beside me, and a cooler containing the next few days’ provisions sits on the passenger side floor. I’ve filled my Thermos with hot tea and my phone with audiobooks. Snow is forecast for later in the afternoon, with temperatures in the negative single digits, but since the storm is moving south and I’m driving north, I think I’ll be able to avoid the worst of it. 

Out of the city and onto the open road, the snow on the ground blows through the brittle grass on the highway’s edge, combing it into thin streaks of vapor, like white ruled lines on a blank gray page. The warm cocoon of the car hums along in the silvery light, past weathered barns surrounded by fields gone dormant for the winter. A bitter blast grazes my forehead when I lower the window to throw out a tangerine peel, which bounces behind me in the rearview mirror, a bright orange fragment disappearing into the colorless landscape.

Nobody knows where I am or where I’m going. The snow’s falling harder and the GPS has directed me down a county road that hasn’t yet been plowed. I don’t remember this from the last time, and in fact, I don’t even know what state I’m in right now. I’m supposed to be going through a little corner of Minnesota, but it’s dark and flat and if I turn the headlights to bright, it only makes things worse. 

My phone dings: It sounds pretty harrowing out there. I’m a little worried about you. 

You say you’ve seen some photos of cars in the ditch on Route 53 and tell me to be safe. I text you back and say that I’m fine, I can handle driving in snow. I feel mildly annoyed. I wanted to be there by now, but I got a late start and I don’t know where I am and dammit, what is my problem? You’re on vacation someplace warm, yet you’re looking at the weather report and checking on me and all I can do is respond like a petulant teenager.

Eight hours and six inches of snow after I left, I enter the door code and let myself into the house. I text you to say everything is okay, and get to work building a fire. Then I see the note you left telling me you’d be home Sunday and that there were two beers in the fridge for me and a small loaf of home-baked bread on the counter. I want to cry. I text you again to thank you and you tell me you hope I get lots of writing done. 

For the next two days I write, I pace the floor, I venture out only to replenish the firewood from the shed outside. I move from the desk to the couch and back to the desk. I shovel a path between the houses, so it will be clear when you get home. I sweep the snow off the deck so you won’t see the footprints where I stood and looked in your window.

Monday morning I find you in my phone’s contacts and open a message window. I didn’t hear you come back the night before, but I can see your kitchen light from the guesthouse bedroom:

 I don’t want to leave. I wonder if you will read this as a statement of fact and nothing more. Two minutes pass before your reply:

I understand. I wonder what you’re doing over there. Cooking? Reading? Thinking about what I’m doing over here? I get up and put a small log on the fire and my phone dings again: 

You don’t have to. . . 

I stare at that ellipsis, its three dots like a sideways traffic light: Stop. Caution. Go. 

No one is booked for tonight, I know that, but it’s too awkward to discuss the transaction. I want you to want me to stay, not to simply bill me for another night. I have to do this today. If I chicken out now, I may lose my nerve and never get the chance again. Best to get out clean. I text you back and say that it’s tempting, but I should be getting home. And then one more slingshot to the cell tower and back: Are you around this afternoon for a cup of tea? 

You suggest 1-ish, and I reply: We could have tea over here and you could see what I’m working on. 

God, I feel like I’ve just asked you to “come up and see my etchings” which is, of course, exactly what I’ve done. But it’s part of the script I’ve already written and I must adhere to it. No going back now.

As I wait for you to arrive, I pack up my things and leave the suitcase by the door. I take the food out of the fridge and put it back in the cooler, leaving some tea bags behind for future guests. I wash the dishes and leave them to dry in the sink. I hear your footsteps on the deck.

I remember I’ve locked the door, and just as I go to open it, here you are, balancing a plate of cookies and fiddling with the door handle. You’re wearing the wide magenta scarf and tailored black leather jacket I recognize from your Facebook photos. It’s supple and stylish, a curious choice for a woman whose social media handle is “GardenLady.” I have a fleeting thought that you’ve chosen this jacket for me. I tell you I forgot I’d locked the door, and feel a flush in my face. “Well, I have the key,” you say, and there’s that same knowing look and that same mischievous smile. 

“It’s funny I’m hosting you in your own house,” I say, and we both laugh. I make a show of asking what kind of tea you’d like, detailing all the different flavors in the basket on the shelf above the sink. I tell you I want to show you the tea kettle, with its short cord, but you immediately say there’s another one in the cupboard and breeze past me to retrieve it, taking charge of the tea-brewing so quickly that I feel swept out of your way. You get two mugs from the shelf and busy yourself arranging the cookies and some chocolate while the water heats up. I can’t tell whether you’re being officious or kind, or simply performing this determined hospitality out of habit. I suggest we sit on the couch together, but you say the dining table would be better. Right. I’m standing here empty-handed and helpless, and now I have to pivot. I notice you’re wearing those felt clogs I like but can’t really afford, and I ask you how you like them. You say they’re versatile and comfortable and that you wear them all the time. Then you do a strange thing: You kick them off and tell me to try them on. You say they’re probably a size too big for me and I wonder how you would know this. I hesitate for a second, then slide my feet into your shoes. The clogs are warm, and yes, a little too big. Their footbeds press into my arches. This feels more intimate than any fantasized kiss. I look at you, seeking a signal of what you might be up to, because I always suspect (or in this case hope for) a hidden agenda, but there is nothing but your serene, open gaze. The water boils and I give you back your shoes. 

You are finally sitting across from me, just the two of us at the table, separated by a plate of shortbread and a pot of tea. Apart from that day in the garden, we haven’t been alone together, and I’m trying to reconcile your physical presence with the two-dimensional images in my head. The sunlight refracting from the snow outside makes your eyes look even more blue, and I think maybe I could stay another night. You show me the candy wrapper in case I want to buy some for myself, and I refrain from telling you I don’t really like chocolate. I offer you a wedge of tangerine and you decline. 

We’re silent for a minute, sipping tea and smiling at one another, and it dawns on me I have nothing to say to you. I’ve been too busy telling myself a story about the two of us, writing a script you haven’t read and don’t even know exists, and now it’s evaporating before me. The imbalance of power, the tipping scales, the transactional nature of everything—it was all a fiction. One that had nothing to do with the woman looking back at me now, slightly bemused, asking if I’d like more tea. I decline. 

Here in this sun-filled room, with the fire waning in the corner, my mind searches for another opening. But in our shared silence, the upside-down curve of your smile—this is where I begin to lose you. Here where I had once wanted to stay lost. 

Published May 31st, 2020