The Coolest Room in the Cottage

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By half past two, the attic study had become unsuitable for scholarship.

I had opened the window.

I had tied back the curtain.

I had removed my cardigan and folded it neatly over the chair, as though I might return to it before winter.

None of this helped.

The room was still warm in the particular way attic rooms become warm in August—quietly, thoroughly, and with no interest in negotiation.

I tried reading for another page.

Then half a page.

Then the same paragraph three times.

The paragraph was about woodland navigation, but all I learned was that perspiration makes it difficult to feel adventurous.

So I took my book downstairs.

Maeve sits overheated at her attic desk beside an open window, with her cardigan folded over a chair.

The reading nook seemed promising. It had shade. It had cushions. It had the open window beside it, where the curtain was moving just enough to suggest that the outside world still contained air.

I settled in.

The cushion was warm.

The wall was warm.

Even the little patch of sunlight on the rug looked tired.

I lasted seven minutes.

This was longer than it should have been, mostly because leaving the reading nook felt like admitting defeat to a piece of furniture.

Eventually I decided the furniture had won fairly.

By then, the whole cottage seemed to be holding one long, sleepy breath. The floorboards were sun-warmed beneath my bare feet. Afternoon shadows rested across the kitchen. A glass of cool water stood on the table with condensation slipping down its sides, looking far more comfortable than I felt.

Condensation runs down a glass of water above an open book, tea, and pillow near a breezy cottage doorway.

Then I noticed the curtain near the open back door.

It lifted.

Only slightly.

But it lifted.

There was a thin ribbon of breeze crossing the cottage just above the old wooden floor.

So I lay down in it.

This was not my first idea.

It was not even my fifth idea.

But it was, immediately, the best one.

Six inches above the floorboards, the cottage had an entirely different climate.

I brought my book.

Then I went back for a pillow.

Then tea, because lying on the floor should not mean abandoning standards altogether.

By the time I had arranged everything, I had created a very small reading nook with no chair, no rug, and no respectable explanation.

It was perfect.

The breeze slipped through the open door, crossed my ankles, and disappeared somewhere beneath the kitchen table. The curtain moved lazily above me. My tea began cooling at an agreeable pace.

I read nearly two pages.

Then Smokey arrived.

He stood in the doorway and looked down at me.

I looked up at him.

Neither of us spoke.

He sniffed the edge of my pillow, turned around twice, and settled directly in the middle of it.

Apparently the floor arrangement had passed inspection.

I reminded him that I had carried that pillow downstairs specifically for my own head.

He closed his eyes.

A clear ruling.

So I rested my head on the floorboards beside him instead.

They were cooler anyway.

I had spent most of the afternoon attempting to arrange comfort properly. A better chair. A darker corner. An open window. One fewer layer. Each idea had been perfectly sensible and increasingly useless.

Meanwhile, the breeze had been crossing the floor near the back door without asking to be improved.

It did not require cushions.

It did not care whether the room had been designed for reading.

It was simply there.

Smokey slept on my pillow with one paw stretched toward my shoulder. My abandoned cardigan remained upstairs. My tea went pleasantly lukewarm. The book rested open against my ribs while the late-August light shifted slowly across the wood.

Nothing had been solved.

I had merely moved lower.

Much lower.

But for the rest of the afternoon, the coolest room in the cottage was six inches above the floorboards.

And once I stopped trying to persuade comfort to meet me elsewhere, it was a very good place to be.