It was mid-morning, and we were sitting together at a small wooden table in the sunroom of your house in the country. Neither of us had spoken for a very long time. My attention drifted to the floorboards, and when I looked up, you were watching me.
Slowly, I arranged the items on our table into a labyrinth. I used two knives, a fork, a pair of chopsticks, a tea saucer, and a linen napkin. There was no entrance to the maze, and the perimeter was a closed wall of cutlery. I reached over and took the half-eaten muffin from your plate and placed it in the center. That’s you, I said. You laughed. Your laugh was gentle. You liked what I’d done.
Earlier, only a little after dawn, we’d walked together in the garden. It was the beginning of November, the same month as our birthdays, only one day apart. I had come to visit because it was our birthday. Tomorrow you would be forty, and I the day after. And our names were almost the same, too.
It had snowed while we’d been asleep, and when we woke, a light white coat covered the grass and foliage. Our route through the garden cut a crisp outline through the dark, wet branches.
You’d been lively on our walk. You touched every shrub. You said, with love, Goodbye, little friend. See you in the Spring, and you sighed, and we walked, and when you held my hand, it was wet with the snow your touch had melted.
Why do you live in the country? I’d asked, at breakfast, just before I’d built the maze. You looked at me and sighed in the same way you’d sighed at the closed-down branches.
Weeks before, in the city, your friend Sarah had said to me, You should go see Cris. She needs visitors up there. Where the fuck is Meaford? Sarah and I were having coffee. We did that. We didn’t always talk about you, but often. Without asking, she knew how I felt or thought I felt.
Sarah said, Go get her. Bring her back to the city and have a baby. I laughed, and so did Sarah. She wants that, too, Sarah said. Too? I asked. She laughed again, and her whole body shook. When Sarah laughed like that, it felt like she’d hugged you.
***
We hadn’t spoken much since you’d moved up to Meaford, or for most of a few years before that. Text messages on our birthdays that never led to anything, little forays that withered from neglect. Once in a while, you invited me to a show, but I wanted more than a show, and when I told you that, you were silent and stopped inviting me to shows.
***
Do you want in? you asked me at breakfast that day, our tea mugs steaming, the small sunroom so cool we’d put on our coats. Yours was checked in black and red; it was new and lined with white fleece. Ever since I’d known you, in your punk days in the city, you’d always owned a coat of checked black and red.
Wanting you to feel my answer, I spun a spoon on the perimeter, opening and closing an entrance to the labyrinth. I laughed at the silly metaphor, but you watched to see how I’d leave it. Still spinning, I picked up your muffin and took an over-sized bite, and you laughed.
We’d made love the night before, and I knew we would again after breakfast. I don’t know how you held this. It was an act your body wanted, but beyond that? A false entrance, I felt. You rose from your seat on the cool patio and went to the bedroom.
By the afternoon, the day had warmed, and we walked barefoot in the grass. The earth still had heat for us. The sun might burn. We only wore loose clothes.
It’s all my land, you said. We were walking through the forest on a smooth dirt path. I’ve grown possessive as I’ve aged, and you stopped and ran your hand over the bark of an elder. You winked at me, then leaned in to kiss the tree and said I love you.
***
The last time we’d met in the city, we were also on a patio, but the light had been bad. The patio was walled in on all sides, painted glossy white, the glare sharp and cruel to our complexions. You’d lost weight, I’d noticed, a little softness was missing, and I had lost, too; we’d leaned out through our thirties, and squinting revealed the wrinkles mirrored in our faces. But we did smile, we did, accepting what it gave away, and when you rested your hand on mine, I loved how it had aged, the veins and your skin, and mine too, but underneath where we touched was warm and unchanged. Then you hummed the lyrics from a song by a band we’d seen the first time we’d dated, years ago, in a soft, shaky tune, Let’s move to the country. But I think you were seeing someone then, and maybe I was, too, but I know we didn’t mention anyone while we sat, squinting and quiet, our hands touching until we had to leave.
***
When we came to the pond, we stopped. You have a pond? I asked. Instead of an answer, you walked to the grassy edge and sank your toes into the mud. You turned to face me. Behind you, the sun off the water lit your silhouette, and your body was projected as a shadow. You wiggled your toes, and I heard the mud squelch between them. There was no wind to sway the evergreens or your hair. You stared at me, watching. You always loved a show and you always loved your body: how it looked and how it moved, you slipped off your shirt, you slipped off your skirt and wore nothing underneath, you did this for you and I was the witness; it mattered to you that someone saw, but how much it mattered if that someone was me, I’ll never know. You turned as if to step into the water but instead, looked back.
We stood like that. The sun was warm but the air was cool and I saw your skin stiffen and pucker. You shivered and gave a tiny laugh. And still we stood, facing one another. You wiggled your toes and looked down at your lean body. I felt your heart wanting out. I stepped forward, and you shuddered and turned and dove naked into the pond.
***
The next time I saw Sarah was at your funeral. We sat together, quietly, and cried in our own ways. Your father spoke. I was surprised by how little he looked like you, or sounded like you, or seemed to be a part of you. I didn’t introduce myself, and he was the only family member present.
Sarah and I went for coffee after the ceremony. For a long time, we didn’t speak. Then she asked me to tell her again everything I remembered about the last time I’d seen you, up in Meaford. As I talked about our walk in the garden, she closed her eyes and wept. When I got to the part about the pond, she sobbed, silently, and her whole body shook. You loved her, she said, after I’d finished. I looked at the stir spoons on our tiny white plates, the brown paper napkins beside our matching mugs. I picked up my muffin, then set it down again. I didn’t deny what she’d said.