The Sauna Letters

My name is Sally Farrell, I'm forty-four years old, and I have been dating Ken Carlisle for six years now. He's forty-six, he sells fish at the market, and he has never once in six years managed to pack for a trip without forgetting something important. Usually it's his razor. This time, I'm happy to report, it was my turn, because I forgot the entire bag of firewood kindling and had to watch him chip splinters off a plank behind the cottage like some pioneer wife.

We booked this cottage near a lake in northern Finland for our anniversary. Six years! Can you believe it? We met at Jen and Bea's wedding, when I was thirty-eight and he was forty, and he asked me if I liked mackerel and I said no and he said good, more for him, and that was somehow that. Six years later here we are at a wooden cabin next to a frozen lake with a military base somewhere out beyond the treeline, which sounds alarming but is actually just very quiet. Quietest place I've ever been.

Except for the storm.

* * *

The storm showed up on Tuesday night, two days into our week. It came off the lake sideways and it turned the roof of the cottage into a suggestion rather than a promise. By midnight there was a drip coming through the ceiling above the bed, steady as a metronome, landing directly on the pillow I was not using.

So I did what any reasonable woman does at one in the morning. I got up, lit the little lamp, and wrote Ken a letter. We'd been joking about writing letters all week because there's no phone signal worth the name out here, and the cottage came with a stack of paper and a box of pencils that looked older than both of us.

Here's what I wrote:

*Ken. It's one in the morning and your pillow has become a water feature. The roof leaks. I have moved my things to the kitchen table and I am writing to you from there like a Victorian widow. The good news is the sauna is fine. The sauna is always fine, apparently, because it's a separate little building and the Finns know what they're doing. I'm going to go sit in there while the storm yells at us. Come join me when you wake up. Or now. Or whenever. The door doesn't lock, which in this weather feels less like an oversight and more like an invitation. Love, Sally.*

I left it on his chest of drawers where he'd trip over it in the morning, which is the traditional place for letters in our house, and I went off to the sauna by myself with a towel and the last of the terrible chocolate.

* * *

I dozed on the upper bench until the storm ran out of breath, and he found me around nine. I heard boots crunching through the snow before I heard anything else, and then the door opened and a wall of cold air came in and said hello to my steam, and there he stood in his winter coat looking as though he had just read a letter on his chest of drawers.

"Your pillow is a water feature," he said. "I laughed so hard I woke myself up twice."

"Well, it's true! Drip, drip, drip. All night. I gave up."

He shed the coat, hung it on the peg, and sat down on the bench beside me, and pretty soon the shivering stopped and the steam started coming off him and I remembered why I keep him around. He reached into the pocket of the coat he'd just hung up, which is a very Ken thing to do, and pulled out a folded piece of paper, dry and flat and clearly carried here on purpose.

"Before I forget," he said. "I brought you something."

"You did not. You forgot the kindling. You're not allowed to also be thoughtful, it upsets the balance."

"Two things can be true, Sal." He handed it over. It was a knitting pattern. My favorite one, the fair isle mittens I'd been mooning over in the shop window in October, the ones I'd said were too expensive to justify. He'd written to the designer. He'd gotten the pattern. He'd packed it in his coat pocket for a week without telling me.

"You absolute menace," I said. "When did you?"

"Before we left. Wanted it to be a surprise for the trip." He shrugged, pleased with himself in that quiet way of his. "Figured with a storm coming we'd need something to do with our hands."

So I wrote him back. Of course I wrote him back. I tucked it under his coffee cup at breakfast like we were in a spy movie, and here is what it said:

*Ken. A knitting pattern. In your coat. For a week. You are a fishmonger, you handle ice for a living, and yet you kept a piece of paper dry in a coat pocket for seven days. I don't understand you and I never will. The mittens will be started today, on the kitchen table, under the leak, where the drip can be my metronome. Also, since we're doing letters now, I'll confess something. When you came into the sauna this morning, all that steam coming off your shoulders? I had thoughts. Not knitting thoughts. Just so we're clear. I would like to see more of that, possibly tonight, possibly wearing considerably less than a towel. Consider this official notice. Love, S.*

He read it over his coffee and went a shade of pink I usually only see on salmon. Then he laughed, that low laugh of his, and said, "Official notice, huh," and went out to chip more kindling with a spring in his step that hadn't been there before.

* * *

His reply came that evening, tucked into my knitting bag, right on top of the mitten wool. It said:

*Sally. Six years ago you told me you didn't like mackerel on purpose, just to watch my face. I knew right then. Don't argue, I did. Also you still do that thing at the market where you sniff the salmon and wrinkle your nose at customers to warn them off the ones you don't like. You think I don't see. I see everything. You are the quality control department of this entire stall and I pay you in fish soup.*

*Now. Since you've set the tone with your official notice, I'll answer in kind. Do you remember our first trip? The lake? You dared me into the water in April and I said no and you went in anyway and I stood on the shore like an idiot and then went in after you because the alternative was standing there alone watching you swim, which was worse. Cold water, both of us yelling, towels that turned out to be one towel.*

*I have thought about that night more times than I've ever admitted out loud. Every sauna, every hot bath, every time the steam rolls off my shoulders I think, she was