Loose Ends
Amanda always cleaned out the refrigerator before she went away. Sometimes, it seemed like she looked forward to cleaning out the fridge more than the trip ahead of her. She knew this was a bit odd, even as she threw away a half-eaten clamshell container of lettuce that was turning brown. Then there were the random small chunks of cheese that she insisted on saving. Her rationale was that these little bits could be shredded or even melted down if she needed a quick meal. Tacos? Pasta? Or maybe a simple cheese omelet?
If she stood on her toes and opened the bathroom window (she had to open the window because the glass was frosted), she could see a part of the East River. Each summer before she left her apartment in Brooklyn and drove up to the cabin in the Adirondacks, she liked to look at the muddy water in the river for a moment or two. She didn’t know why she did this, but she guessed it was just a dumb habit. Usually, by the time she was up at the cabin, she had all but forgotten about the river and nearly anything that involved living in Brooklyn.
She made sure all her other personal things were in order, too. Like if she suddenly died (she didn’t like to drive very much or very far, so she always wondered if she’d have some sort of fatal accident on the journey north), she had scribbled a note that she would like to be cremated and then scattered in a state park she was particularly fond of. She had even stapled a map of where the park was located to the note in case there was any question about what park she was talking about. Besides, it had always made sense to her to plan ahead. She thought it was something she could control especially when it seemed that everyday life consisted of random annoyances.
Then she started to think – she had so many leftovers, not only in her fridge, but in her life, too. Amanda started out with a boyfriend but then gravitated towards a girlfriend that she thought she would be okay dating. But then she decided that this particular woman wasn’t for her. Then she found another boyfriend who was exceptionally attractive, prettier than the girlfriend actually, which made it very difficult when they broke up. But it wasn’t just about being attracted to someone because of their looks. It was the everyday stuff that Amanda was getting fed up with. For example, she knew that if she woke up with a sinus infection, the boyfriend would be a bit more sympathetic to her ailment than the girlfriend. The girlfriend always seemed to have her period and always told her to just “deal with it” if she wasn’t feeling well. Amanda didn’t want to choose which one of these companions/lovers she liked having sex with better (the boyfriend or the girlfriend) based on her nasal problems. But really, it seemed that like other loose ends in her life, that’s what it came down to.
Honey seemed to work if she put a generous tablespoon into a big mug of tea. As did ginger steeped in hot water with lemon and even rosemary. If she went online and researched the best way to take care of her sinus infection at the time, she would inevitably get a list of things to put in her body either by swallowing, chewing, or inhaling it. She was tired of that approach.
But here’s how, suddenly, her sinus infections went away. Well, at least during the summer. A few years ago, she had just started working for a non-profit that paid her next to nothing, but in return gave her a generous amount of time off during the summer months. One day, she found out through a letter from an attorney that she had inherited a cabin in the Adirondacks. She thought it was a bogus spam letter, so she ignored it. However, when she failed to reply to the letter in a timely manner, the lawyer called her and wanted to know whether she would agree to take on the property, or would she consider selling it.
“It’s probably worth nearly $600,000,” he said to her. “And you even have a small view of the lake from the front door!”
She remembered her only response to that very large figure was, “What?”
He repeated the sum to her. Followed by, “The Adirondacks are really hot right now.”
This made her briefly think that he was a very young lawyer, because an older one would have said something completely different. Maybe along the lines of, “It could be an investment, or a family home you could pass down to your children.”
The younger lawyer never asked her if she had children, or if she was even married, which she was happy about. She suddenly remembered the lawyer hesitating for a moment during their conversation, “Have you ever seen the cabin?” he asked.
Amanda had wondered whether the lawyer was interested in buying the property from her. So, she fibbed a little and said she remembered going there frequently when she was younger. She even let her voice fade away a bit as if she was remembering the cabin, or the lake, or even roasting marshmallows in a pit or something. Even though she had never been to the cabin or even to the Adirondacks at all. After all, she didn’t even remember the uncle that had left the cabin to her. All Amanda remembered about him was that he was her mother’s brother and every year he’d send her a birthday card with a crisp five-dollar bill taped to the inside of the card. One year she remembered that in her excitement to hold the bill in her hand, the tape was so secure that she ripped the corner off the money and just started to cry.
When Amanda learned that she had inherited the cabin, she wondered how he had acquired the property in the first place. Was he just one of those guys who never spent money on anything and managed to save enough to buy a small cabin near a lake? She had a feeling that maybe he was in fact a penny-pincher because even when she had turned 18, she still only got a $5 bill for her birthday. In the end it didn’t matter, but in hindsight, it was just very odd that he had bequeathed her this property because she didn’t even know him.
In the beginning, Amanda would brag to people she knew that she had summers off. Technically, it was only seven weeks, but she embraced that vacation in a very European manner. Probably because she had read somewhere that many European countries had legal mandates granting employees a large number of paid days off. So, she decided if she ever had to look for a new position, she’d be reviewing their benefits package before she even looked at the job description.
Amanda had read an article in a travel magazine recently that was raving about German spas. In the old days, she learned, the German government would even pay for your spa visit if you got a doctor to write you a prescription saying such a stay would be beneficial to your health. She couldn’t even imagine asking her primary care physician to write her such a script just because she felt she needed a “rest.” Or, as the Germans would say, a “Kur.” And that particular type of “cure” could only be done in a “Kurort,” or a healing place.
When Amanda looked at the pictures of the very posh spas and thermal baths in these old German hotels with décor to match (cue footage from a Wes Anderson film), she thought that even if she could afford a trip to a place like that and do a “Kur,” she’d still prefer to spend the summer in the cabin on the lake. For Amanda, that became her “Kurort.”
Her first summer up at the cabin, there was a lot of work to do. She didn’t remember which lover had been with her at the time - the girlfriend or the boyfriend. Neither of them was that interested in helping her fix up the property or being in the middle of nowhere. The boyfriend really disliked the fact that there wasn’t a decent restaurant, or actually any restaurant at all within 50 miles. And the girlfriend complained that she was cold even in July. Followed by constant whining about how much she hated bugs. By the second summer, Amanda just went up to the cabin by herself. And going forward, she decided she would only pursue casual romances when she was in Brooklyn during the non-summer months. But even that came to a halt when Amanda realized it was just too much work to not only have a conversation with someone she was only slightly attracted to but then try to explain to this new person that every summer she would escape to a cabin in the Adirondacks. By herself. And that they wouldn’t be welcome. Plus, how could she make someone understand that it became the place to tie up many loose ends? Or her habit of scrubbing the inside of the fridge in Brooklyn before she left? Amanda already knew that would be an instant turn off for any new lover.
Technically, she could leave the condiments in the fridge, but she’d often pack those as well because she hated having to buy giant containers of mustard or ketchup when most times all she needed was a teaspoon or two if she was making a sandwich or salad dressing. Anything dairy would also have to be taken up to the cabin or thrown away. Amanda hating wasting food, and luckily, because she shopped almost every day, there wasn’t a lot to throw out. There was a large container of cottage cheese that she had bought last week thinking she’d use it to make perogies, but then she just ended up buying some potato and cheese-stuffed ones from the supermarket. So that would need to be discarded. There was a very overripe avocado, some tomatoes that were dimpled, and even a large jalapeno that looked shriveled, too. She knew some people would take all three of those ingredients and put them in a blender to make some sort of guacamole thing. But she didn’t have a blender, and she also felt a bit nauseous thinking about pureeing food that to her looked rotten. Amanda also found some leftover shrimp fried rice that she instinctively held up to her nose. But since her sinuses were acting up again, she only got a brief whiff of sesame oil and the pungent smell of shrimp. She tossed that container right away.
She decided to boil all the eggs she had left in the fridge so she would have something to eat on the drive up to the cabin. She hated peeling eggs more than anything else because it seemed to just take way too long, and the shells never peeled off whole, but in tiny, little pieces. She remembered trying to really focus on a video once (and she thinks she watched it at least three or four times) about how to effortlessly peel eggs so the shells just came right off. Except, it didn’t work. She placed the eggs in a pot of water on the stove and turned on the gas. Her gas stove was really the only thing she missed when she was up at the cabin. There, she often had to use the side burner of a propane-fueled grill if she wanted to boil something. Or, she had to limit herself to baking in a fancy toaster oven she had splurged on.
At the time, she decided the toaster oven was going to be a birthday present to herself. Amanda regretted not having a lover when her birthday rolled around in May because she loved getting gifts, especially useful kitchen gadgets. But then she realized there wasn’t anyone she had ever been close to who would have even thought of buying her a gift like that.
While the eggs were boiling, Amanda opened one of the cupboards where she kept things like spices, coffee, rice and pasta. She dumped most of what was in front of her into a big shopping bag, and when the cupboard was empty, she wiped it out with a wet towel.
Less than two hours later, she was in her old Nissan Sentra driving up the Taconic Parkway. She preferred the parkway over the Thruway because there weren’t any tolls and a lot more trees. Living in Brooklyn as long as she had (over 20 years now), made her long for trees like other people hungered for desserts. She looked in her rearview mirror and saw the bags she had packed – staples for the cabin kitchen, some clothes, extra boots and sneakers, as well as a big bin filled with books. She didn’t have a television up at the cabin, so in the evening, unless she spent it scrolling through dumb social media posts, she’d usually try to read. She had bought some large citronella candles one year to try and repel the bugs, but the candles just made a lot of smoke and made her cough. So, she resigned herself to being eaten alive by the insects every summer. After all, it was their habitat more than hers.
Amanda remembered one particularly buggy evening last summer when she had made herself a tomato sandwich with some tomatoes that she had bought from a farmer’s market on the ride up. There were so many flies, zombie flies she liked to call them because they were really big, that she spent most of the time swatting them away rather than trying to eat the sandwich she had prepared. The tomatoes were so juicy though that the sliced white bread she had bought at the farmer’s market, too, simply fell apart. She wondered if she should have made gazpacho instead with the ingredients on hand. After all, she did have a potato masher, that might work right? But she didn’t. She just ate everything with her fingers, trying to ignore the bugs, until the sun went down, and she opened the front door of the cabin to look at the lake.
She often contemplated whether the lawyer who had told her she had inherited the property was pissed that she hadn’t said, “You’re crazy. Why would I want a cabin in the Adirondacks?” Just so he could have the property to himself. But she didn’t. She kept it, adored it actually, regardless of who was with her, especially when that person didn’t seem to understand the overwhelming affection she had for the place.
She’d always think about what her first meal of the summer would be when she finally got to the cabin. But usually, the first night’s meal was whatever she had managed to rescue from the fridge in Brooklyn. So, tonight would probably be whatever hard-boiled eggs she hadn’t eaten on the ride up, and maybe some bread and cheese. She had packed bread, right? She couldn’t remember. Once there, she’d unpack all her stuff and even say hello to the summer people who might have come up the same weekend that she did. She didn’t socialize with any of them, and even if they didn’t speak to each other, a friendly wave was in order.
The next seven weeks always went by in a blur. A cup of coffee in the morning, some toast, or an egg, or a muffin. She’d read, then maybe just sit and look at the imperfections in the wood beams. Nearly all the windows were old, and sometimes she’d just hold her hand up to one of them when it was windy outside just to feel a draft blow onto the palm of her hand.
Other things in the cabin were falling apart too. She had to be particularly careful with the kitchen cabinets because she knew that if she pulled one open too hard, it would probably fall off the wall. By the time she had performed these morning rituals, she’d usually just grab a piece of fruit or a yogurt for lunch. Or, if she was feeling lonely, she’d have a beer, even if it was only 11:30 a.m.
Sometimes she’d talk herself into doing a quick hike around the lake. It was a small lake, barely even visible on any map – printed or digital. Usually, she could circle the entire body of water in under an hour and 15 minutes. Once back at the cabin, she’d splash some water on her face, avoiding the cabin’s narrow shower unless she had to because it always felt like she was stepping into a coffin. Afterwards, she’d just go and sit near a window with a book in her hand wondering what she’d eat or not eat for dinner.
She always managed to lose some weight in the summer. At first, she thought it was because she wasn’t surrounded by all the restaurants and take-out options that living in Brooklyn offered her. But she didn’t starve herself. She knew that even the local supermarket (although it was a good 20-minute drive from her cabin) stocked a few things others might consider a bit foreign. Pungent Greek feta, tangy Castelvetrano olives, and even soft, pillowy naan for example. She liked to eat the naan with chicken she had grilled, or even thin pork cutlets she managed to thread onto a couple of wooden skewers. She always preferred the naan over any other kind of bread she’d find at the market – even though it was made in a commercial bakery up in Canada. For lack of a better word, the only other bread she had bought from the market she nicknamed “squishy.” It had absolutely no taste whatsoever but at least it wasn’t rock hard. And in her mind, eating bread that soft, she wouldn’t risk breaking a tooth and have to drive 100 miles or more to find a dentist.
And then the summer seemed to abruptly end. She was truly sad the last day at the cabin when it was time for her to return to New York City. Again, she had to get rid of food she hadn’t eaten. But here, she nearly always laughed when she’d just throw odds and ends into the woods behind the property. Amanda somehow found this charming. Perhaps because it was something she couldn’t do in Brooklyn. Amanda realized that ironically, it was basically the same order of things regardless of whether she was coming or going.
This year, however, before she left, she thought that maybe it was time to name the cabin. Everyone else around her had names for their summer homes – Pleasure Cove, Summer Treats and Sandy’s Folly gave some of these cabins a bit of a sexual overtone. The lawyer had just called it “the cabin on the lake.” But she thought that was kind of generic. She also wasn’t egotistical enough to name it after herself, but she thought maybe she wouldn’t mind seeing a wooden plaque on a tree that said, “Amanda’s Place.” She decided that once she got back to Brooklyn, she’d talk to the owner of a woodworking shop she knew down on the East River. Maybe he could make her a sign. Perhaps even from a piece of wood she had found on her property near the lake.
Suddenly she had an idea. Why not call the cabin “Loose Ends”? Wasn’t her whole life kind of a mishmash of different pieces? Much like many of the meals she tried to put together each day? She looked at the front door of the cabin and knew exactly where she could hang the sign. The one spot that had a perfect little view of the lake. Even when the door was closed.