The Remedy for Love: A Novel (15 page)

An image came to mind, a man in a tank T-shirt, beer in one fat fist, Bible in the other. Eric said, “I would say yes—yes, of course I would date you. I would say yes very much, in my understanding of the word, if you weren’t married and we could go out on a proper date. But only because your math is so good.”

“Jim and me, that’s over,” she said. “So ax me on a date.”

“If that were true, which it isn’t, Jimmy and you, I would. And if I could be sure I wasn’t taking advantage of you. Yes, surely. I would ask you for a date. And what would be your reply? In this perfect world we’re talking about, of course.”

Silence, some expressive sloshing. “You think you’re so
fucking
superior.”

Uh-oh. “No. I’m far from superior. Not to you, not to anyone.” Not to Jimmy, surely. Jimmy the Army Ranger?

“And your accent changes when you’re doing it. ‘Surely’ this, and ‘what would be your reply’ that?” Her anger bubbled like one of the pots on the stove; steam rose in her voice. “You couldn’t say that—about taking advantage?—if you didn’t think you were superior, very superior. Because you’re saying there’s a power relationship that you don’t want to exploit, which is the same as saying you are superior. And that makes you a dick.”

“No, not superior at all.”

“Vulnerable! What about you? I think you’re afraid I’m going to take advantage of
you.
”

“All I meant by that was that you’re not yourself.”

“And all this high talk, but the only reason you’re not slobbering over me is that you think Jim will kick your ass. And you’re right, he will.” A big splash, and bathwater splashed in a fountain over his shoulder.

Eric said, “I’m not afraid of Jim.”

“Everyone’s afraid of Jim.”

He turned so he could see her, said, “Jim and I will be friends.”

“I’ve had a tough time. Eric. And you, you turn your back on me.” She had a tiny mole on her shoulder blade, otherwise unblemished skin, brightly pink from the bath.

He said, “A tough time, I know. And I’m not going to take advantage of that.”

A splash, and she was underwater again. For a long time. She came up gasping like a pearl diver, turned very naked to see him. Breathless, she said, “But I really, really feel like it.”

Big flinch, he couldn’t help it, knew she saw it, flushed, hit rewind, even as she held his eye, said, “What would we do on this date? I mean, what do you like to do on a date? A movie? I love a movie, good or bad, and then to talk about it after.”

“I’d wear a skirt. I have a skirt. I had one, I mean. I had a few, actually. One was like this fucking short. I’ll get a cute one. We’d have to be awfully quiet, mister.”

“I always thought a hike was a good date.”

“Always, like you went on more than two.”

He turned away emphatically. “I went on plenty.”

“I climbed Katahdin once. Jim is big on hiking. It was fucking brutal, more like a forced march. I did it in sandals. He sent me flowers you know, just last week. Flowers dot com and a guy drives down here all the way from Afghanistan.”

“I would have thought you’d hate cut flowers.”

“Eric. Come on. For a woman they’re about equal to a blow job for a man.”

Flinch.

Splish-splash.
Danielle’s breathing had calmed. She sighed. “Mm,” she said. Then, “Do you know what I’m doing?”

“In fact, my first date was a hike. My dad dropped Callie DeMartino and me and a couple of other kids—her friends—at the Ribbon Rock trailhead down by Acadia.”

Danielle moaned, but it was parody. She said, “No, really, do you know what I’m doing?”

“Tormenting me, that’s what you’re doing.”

“Dirty mind.”

“We brought a picnic. Just a nice baguette and a tomato, hunk of good cheese.”

“You and your cheese.”

“Ate on a rock high over the ocean, gorgeous.”

“I have your knife. You keep it so sharp. If you don’t turn and see me I’m going to cut my wrists. First one, then the other, and not across but lengthwise, between the tendons. I’ve done it before.”

“I didn’t see any scars.”

“And of course you looked.”

“Your wrists are very pretty.”

“You’d better stop me.”

“That’s enough.”

The water sloshed. “You better.” Her voice was breathy, then breathier. “You really, really better. Mmm.”

“You don’t fool me.”

“God. Mmm. It hurts. That’s a clean, yo that’s a, that’s a, shit, God, that’s a clean. That’s a clean cut.” She groaned expressively.

“Very funny,” he said, suddenly discomfited.

She must have seen him stiffen, breathed, breathed again, once more, not quite sighs, not quite moans, the real sound of pain.

“That’s enough,” he said.

“Now the other one,” she said with a choked sob.

He almost turned.

She must have seen this, laid it on too thick: “Ouch. Ouch, fuck. Okay. Okay, mister, good-bye.” The water sloshed.

The wind took over. The wind was everything, a roar all around, sucking at the stove, pulling air through the stove; it burned brighter, puffs of fragrant smoke, a whistling. Eric didn’t look back, and he didn’t look back. The kettle on the stove rattled once. He thought of his wrecked shoes. He thought of the veterinarian, a chain of causation starting yesterday morning with the tense weather reports. He wouldn’t look. That kindly bagger at Hannaford’s. The bitch of a checker. Not a sound from behind, not a telltale ripple, nothing. Five minutes, ten, plenty of time for a person so skinny to bleed out.

Finally a splash. “You are fucking useless,” Danielle said.

He slumped, real relief, as he was unhappy to note. He said, “You had me for a minute.”

“No, you had
me.
Eric. You had me and do you know what you said? You said no. You started talking about hiking.”

“If you still mean it in a couple of months and if Jim and you have actually split—no way—and if Alison and I have split, unlikely, I’ll say yes. Of course, yes. Anyone would date you, of course I would, and honored. In a perfect world. I would date a woman just like you, you yourself in fact.”

“You’d want me to go back to school.”

“That would be up to you.”

“Maybe I could work for you.”

“I could use the help, honestly.”

Silence. Then, “Your turn.”

“I’ll bet you’d really enjoy being back in classes. How many credits do you need?”

“Like we’re ever going to date. And like I’m ever going to go back to school. And like you’d ever let me work for you. Eric. Who can’t even get clients to pay. Yo. I’m getting out of the tub. Your chance to see my fucking pretty wrists.” The water sloshed. “Okay,” she said after a minute. “I’m decent.”

He turned as she was leaning, not decent at all, turned as she was reaching for the huge robe, the cabin’s huge robe, a certain skinny elegance about her. He closed his eyes, pinched them closed, turned. But he’d seen plenty. The backs of her thighs had a distinct pattern of hair growth, a kind of staircase curve, symmetrical one leg to the next, not unattractive, fascinating in an animal way: on a horse this would be the color pattern, he thought—palomino, paint, piebald, skewbald, odd-colored, roan—thinking horseflesh so as not to think anything else. When he opened his eyes again Danielle was at the stove and covered.

“Water’s all boiling for you,” she said happily, and poured the big potful into the tub, dipped a new fill as he had done, put it back on the stove, poured the three little pots in, dipped again and back to the stove. “I smell so
good,
” she said. And then, peering, “It doesn’t look too dirty, sorry. Really you should’ve gone first.”

She wasn’t going anywhere so he just stood as if casually and pulled his T-shirt over his head, undid his belt, pulled his pants off, one hand on the chair to steady himself, hopped a little getting his socks off—that floor was deeply cold.

“Those boxers,” she said, turning just as he pulled them off. He still had half a hard-on from all this overload, the letters, the scent of Breck, her pretty pink butt. She turned away quickly, only talked faster. “Jim wears these boxer
briefs
—you should get some. Sexy. You have a great body. Eric. Mr. Long and Lean. You should show it off more—everything you wear is so fucking baggy. As if I know what you wear. But I can guess: brown suits and pressed shirts. From that store in the mall down in Portland. What’s it?”

“I wear casual to work,” he said, mortified; she was right on the money: Brooks Brothers. “Maybe dress pants to court.” L.L. Bean for pants, but that was a name he’d better not say.

“Just that you say ‘casual,’ and ‘dress.’ ”

“You know, like jeans and stuff, versus suit and tie.”

“Duh. And you say ‘versus.’ How did you and Alison meet? L.L. Bean adventure outing? Kayaking to the Isle of Conformity?”

He stepped into the not-too-cloudy water, hemlock and pine needles floating, found it hot, one leg then the next, very hot, nice though, waited a moment, too long for Danielle, who turned again to see him: “Oops,” she said, but frankly assessing him.

The wind outside still howled. Amazing that violence like that could slip into the background of even such charged talk. Eric sat more quickly than he’d intended, leaned back against the slipper tub. He said, “We met on a blind date. My roommate at law school set us up.”

“Before, you said you met at moot court in high school.”

Busted. “We were acquainted, yes.” When had he told her that? “But my friend didn’t know it.” And why on earth was he lying now? “And, um, we didn’t realize it right away.” Why was he still? Danielle’s interest had surprised him, that’s why. And something about the history between him and Alison seemed private.

“I’m not buying it, Counselor.”

“Well, I’m not selling.”

“You found her on that hike.”

When had they talked about the hike?

“And then you met up in Boston.”

“Okay. True enough.”

“What happened at the moot court, through? That’s what I want to know.”

“Nothing. We were friendly.”

“No, not nothing. You talked and talked. And realized you had soooo much in common. Even though you were rilly, rilly different. Like, I don’t know, a dog and a cat. And after a week of this, you avoided each other rather than hook up, though it could have gone either way. Because you were a gentleman even then. And because she didn’t want to go there. But then years later, you meet accidentially on a hike and it’s like old friends, but still you don’t kiss her.”

“I went to see her in Boston.”

“And you fucked in a parking garage.”

“I don’t remember telling you all this.”

“Red wine.”

“And then, just so you know, we kept going at her apartment.”

“How’s the water?”

“You know exactly how the water is. It’s great.”

“Hot and dirty?”

“No, it’s fine. It’s really nice. And Alison hates dogs and cats equally.”

“Where’s your dog?”

“How do you know I have a dog?”

“You said he went to the vet up there.”

That miserable vet. “He’s at Alison’s.”

“Alison who hates him?”

“No, she loves him, too.”

“But demanded him because she wants all the chips?”

“I could get used to this.”

“I’ll shave while my skin is soft.”

“We made out on the hike. Within an hour of seeing each other. Just so you know.”

“Bold.” She retrieved his five-pack of disposable razors from wherever she’d stashed them in the kitchen and collected the plywood cutting board. This, she placed across the low end of the tub over his knees and sat sideways to him but very close, also close to the fire, her foot up on the ash shelf of the stove, plenty warm. Carefully she bared a leg, examined it thoroughly, used the scissors to mow a while, harrowing patchy cuts and hair falling in little clumps on the floor around her, one leg then the next. She dipped a washcloth in their tub, wet her skin at length.

“This is the most intimate thing,” she said.

He dunked himself awkwardly. “A little too,” he said. And kept his eyes closed.

She said, “I mean the most intimate thing I can think of between people who aren’t squishing. We’re basically survivors down here. Right?”

“I think we’re better off than most survivors.”

“Refugees, then.”

He swiped a hand across his eyes, bolt of panic, death
imminent,
found her looking at him very softly, anodyne.

“ ‘Modesty flies out the window,’ ” she said, quoting whom?

Hotly he said, “But the window down here doesn’t open even when it’s not packed solidly with snow.”

She admired the razor in her hand: “Oh,
cunning.
” Easily, she drew it up the side of her calf, left a perfect, clean strip.
Cunning,
that was such a Maine word, something she’d learned from her in-laws, no doubt. She dipped the multiple blade in one of the small pots on the stove (she could just reach it, elegant once again, all gesture when she wanted), shaved another clean strip. “I have nice skin,” she said.

“I’m not paying any attention at all,” Eric said leaning back, sinking as best he could, his knees pressing up beneath her against the cutting board.

“Just no whacking off,” she said as he went under.

Twenty-Six

HER THIGHS WERE
next. She didn’t seem in a hurry. She sat poised with the cunning razor in her hand. Her calves glistened in the lamplight. Eric felt he was losing his boundaries or, if not that, at least losing his moral compass. He felt himself falling for her, which he’d prefer not, altogether. He could already leap ahead to the pain: Jim would come back. Jim would come back soon. There’d be trouble, that was for sure, Danielle a woman for confessions, and Jim not one to hear such confessions calmly, at a guess. It was hard not to look at her.

She muttered, “But you still love her.”

He said, “And you’re still married.”

She finished the one leg, turned just so away from him, drapery of the cruddy robe, finished leisurely, finally stood, removed the plywood seat and retrieved the three-gallon pot, which was boiling audibly. “You better move, yo.”

He swung his legs as she had, but his were much longer than hers and it wasn’t going to work, his privates very much in the line of fire.

“Just fucking stand up,” she said.

“I’m embarrassed,” he said.

“No doubt,” she said.

He stood, turned away from her, made a little comedy of putting his hands over himself. Not that she could see, but surely she must know: he was rampant, rampant, and so close to her as she poured the water, and she poured it slowly, slowly.

“My god,” he said. “That is very hot.”

No mercy. No turning away. She said, “Jim was a fireplug in all respects. He was more like good engineering than anything beautiful. Eric. Can I say something? If you broke your dick off you’d be like a statue in ancient Greece.” She dipped the saucepan behind him, hefted it to the stove. “In fact, a little chop-chop might be a good idea.”

“That’s very nineteen-fifties of you.”

“No, more like three thousand B.C.”

“I mean the castration-complex stuff.”

“Nineteen-twenties then. Just sit.”

Eric eased back in the water, displaced it nearly to the rim, unduly pleased by the compliment on his corpus, very hot water, bring it on.

Behind him, one leg shaved, she put a log in the fire, much bumping and clanging. She put on her big socks, corner of his eye. Then she was splashing their mugs full of box wine, sliding to him across the wooden floor. She handed him the mug that had been hers, her robe falling open, not that he saw.

Their blanket thumped rhythmically, beat of the wind.

“Thanks,” he said. She’d switched those mugs on purpose, he thought, a kind of intertwining, a woman big on symbols. The wine was cold and tasted fine, better than the Côtes du Rhône, not so bloody thick, but he wasn’t going to say that.

Danielle sipped, too, no comment, wine being wine, and no pretensions.

He’d have to get out of the tub soon: he felt almost queasy with the heat.

“This is a nice scene,” Danielle said slowly, sitting back down on her board in front of him. “Intimate.” She sipped at her wine. Then she repeated it, a whisper: “Intimate.” And fell into a revery. Finally, she said, “The shrink used to ask what I thought that meant.”

“What shrink was that?”

“Grief therapist. When I was, like, twelve. My father made me. The waiting room was always full of old men and magazines.” She sipped some more wine. “But the lady was really quite chill. Dr. Dewanji. You’d wait and wait and then her inner office was like going into the sunshine. I didn’t know why she asked. Intimacy. What the fuck did that mean? I wanted to tell her something smart, so she’d love me and would let me keep coming back, not that I knew that then. What I thought then was that she needed a definition for some other patient asking what the fuck she meant, that she’d just cop my answer and use it in the other room. I mean, we talked about it a lot, mister. What is intimacy? No, I’m asking you.”

Eric had been thinking about the very thing, recent weeks. “Not proximity,” he said. The wine stayed on your tongue. It stayed on your tongue a long time.

“Like you think I won’t know what that means.”

“Propinquity.”

“Now you got me.”

“Just a joke.”

“Closeness? Is that all?”

Eric said, “A kind of shared privacy.”

She said, “Loss of boundaries? That’s another thing Dr. Dewanji liked to talk about, boundaries.”

“No, no. I think that’s something different, less healthy? Real intimacy, I think, you’d keep the boundaries, but press them together.”

“Okay. Eric. I know what ‘boundaries’ means.” The cabin made a miserable groan. “Do you think the front wall will cave in?”

Which made him realize he’d been staring past her at their makeshift corner. “I don’t think so,” he said. Now the water felt perfect. “There’s a lot holding it up, when you think about it.”

Danielle looked, too. They admired their repair a long time. It was still moving with the wind, but stiff with ice. That was something they’d done together, something that had happened to them. The huge tree trunks pressed against the front of the house had settled, Eric reasoned, would surely serve as buttresses. She stared at her wine then, drank it down, stood up pulling the robe tight around her. She shuffled to the kitchen in her big socks, found the open pack of razors—a lot of crinkling of plastic—brought them all back to the tub in a fist, offered him one, which he took. She retrieved the wine box then, poured them both more, sat on her board. Sumptuously, she arranged herself in the lamplight and let the robe fall open, turned sideways to him, put a foot up on her chair, dipped the washcloth in his water.

“Hot,”
she said.

He looked past her to the broken wall, began to shave, starting where he always started, upper lip. Watching him closely, she put the dripping cloth on her raised thigh, turned slightly further away from him—he still couldn’t look—stroked upwards neatly from her knee. “This is going to feel nice,” she said. Sip of wine. “Nice and smooth, yo.”

He felt his own razor’s path over his face with his fingers, tightening his chin, pulling down his lip, tried to make it look effortless.

“Smooth on smooth,” she said.

“I don’t think so.”

“I mean, on our date.”

“Our date that won’t happen.”

“Don’t you be so sure. Eric. Shit happens, including dates. I want to go to the beach. That’s what I want. To the beach at Phippsburg. For our date. That very private beach with the huge rocks. Of course you know it. With a picnic. On a day no one’s there—maybe say in June, or even May. The sun’s high, then, and it’s almost warm, we’ve got blankets. You have dared me to swim. Our skin is so salty. The sun is sparkling on the waves. That time of day —like late, but not sunset. A big pile of blankets, really nice blankets. Presents you bought for me. Like comforters and quilts and L.L. Bean blankets, those very thick wool ones. And I bet you made the bread. I bet you made the bread and brought some of your cheese and a thing of really nice, I don’t know, olives. And those really nice kinds of salami you get at your fancy stores down in Portland, all those stores you know about. And tomato slices, and salt, one of those cardboard salt shakers, lots of salt and like leaves from special plants and that kind of really good cheese—it’s salty, too. The theme of our date is salt, mister. And there’s a fancy inn up the way and they have a room and we say what the hell and for us it’s always these bathtubs and wine and all our blankets. And you’ll be like a puzzle and I’ll take off each little edge piece on one side of you and then all the edge pieces off one side of me, and we’ll see if, if like, if the puzzles fit together. Smooth on smooth. Eric.” Danielle swung herself back toward him, pulling the robe open, her thighs tight together and nicely shaven, pink from the scraping. She said, “I want to show you something.

“No,” he said.

“Just look.”

Her belly was too thin, actually concave, her ribs too prominent, her belly button tidy as he’d seen, stretched tight by the way she was turned, a vertical slit, that abandoned piercing visible. She pointed lower, a further contortion: “Here.”

There.

As low as you could go and still call it belly. A tattoo—small lettering, plain black ink, very crisp, actually quite elegant, like a satin ribbon:
Jimmy Tremonton LaRoque.