The Remedy for Love: A Novel (20 page)

Thirty-Seven

WHEN HE WOKE
it was only maybe five minutes later. Inness O’Keefe was still talking, something very involved about her sister. She still had charge of his hand. Her sister was not a lot of help. Her sister did not call. Her sister had disowned her, actually. Her sister lived in Maryland in a big house. Her sister was married to a finance guy. They had money. This was a moral deficit, it seemed.

When at last she paused, Eric said, “Say her name again?”

“You weren’t listening?”

“I just missed her name, is all.”

“It’s Siobhan.”

“Older? Younger?”

“You weren’t listening at all.”

“I fell asleep. Just for a minute. I heard about her kids. So she’s older?”

“Much fucking older. She’s like my spare mother. She’s a Terrible and always was. And I didn’t mention her kids. I never mention her kids. I’m not allowed to see her kids.” Strum. “I was a pretty bad not-daughter to her. I admit it. I put her through hell.”

His other arm ached, caught beneath him. So he rocked to free it and with one smooth motion pushed his hand underneath her, got his fingers on her warm back, his elbow under her, maybe not so comfortable for her, but she didn’t protest. He said, “So, okay. What happened to your ankle? You wanted to tell me.”

“It happened to Danielle.”

“Or to that ghost.”

“Let’s say angel, instead. An angel sent here to tear you away from Alison. Also to test you. And by the way, you’re failing.”

“You will get your wings. You will get them.”

“I hate that movie. The angel should have let him drown, I’m not kidding.” Something was rustling in the eaves. A mouse that had stumbled on riches, shreds of raw-milk Reggiano.

Eric said, “What about your ankle?”

Strum. “What do you want to know?”

“Well, how long has it been hurt? A couple of weeks? That’s kind of a long time for the kind of bruising you have. It might be broken. Seriously. Something’s not healing in there. Maybe a bone chip? We’ll get you an X-ray when we’re out of here.”

“Right, with my nonexistent health insurance.”

“You’ve got insurance through the military, no? Tricare, right?”

Strum. “Do I?”

“I’d practically guarantee it. Spouse of an active-service Army Ranger? If not, we’ll make it happen.”

“Fine. Eric. Seriously.” She pushed his hand off her, but didn’t let go of it, in fact gathered it back in. “You’re such a fucking lawyer. Am I under oath? Because I think I lied about my ankle. I can’t remember what I told you. I’m sure I lied. But it was one of those first colder days, like two weeks ago, you’re right. Only two weeks ago. Like a little after Christmas? I wasn’t sure. I just guessed. I sang ‘Ho-ho-ho, who wouldn’t go.’ But it was warm like summer. A few days after that.”

“It was a long, warm fall,” he said. “And Christmas was actually hot. People were out on the golf course.”

“You play fucking
golf
?”

“Not any more. Very seldom.”

“And you played on
Christmas
?”

“A couple of us who were alone, yeah.”

“That is so
lame.
”

Now his arm underneath her was falling asleep. He stretched it further, his fingers sliding down her back, found he could reach the band of her panties, then a little further.

She dropped his one hand, reached to control the other.

“You’re a boy
after
all,” she said, firmly placing both his hands back on her side, pinching his fingers together forcefully.

“My cage is open,” he said. “Someone opened my cage.”

She didn’t seem to find that funny. She said, “You have to promise never to play golf again. Promise me. Golf? That’s sick. Promise me right now.”

“What’s in it for me?”

She pinched his fingers together hard and said, “I already gave you a fucking hand job.”

“Okay. No golf.”

“Really, never.”

“I promise.”

“The guys in Jimmy’s unit play golf. And Jimmy. He would kick your ass. He plays with one club, like a five-iron, even putting, and he still gets par, thinks he’s all that.”

“I’ve never gotten par.”

She pinched his fingers harder.

He said, “Can we get back to your ankle?”

The mouse began its return trip to the kitchen corner, subtle passage in the silent eaves. They kept listening. No other sound. Maybe the river shushing by, full of snow. The heartbeat of Inness O’Keefe, or maybe Eric. After a long while, she began to whisper, a kid telling a secret that he had to strain to hear, words on the breath out, words on the breath in: “I walked down to the rocks like I always did, with both of the good towels and my Pantene and everything, the soap and everything, my brush, all that stuff normal people use, all my Inness stuff, and I’d been bathing down there all summer, you know, so I just stripped—my good pair of pants and my real sweater and Jimmy’s thick, thick flannel shirt and my very good underwear, just piled it all on a rock, and then I stepped in and it was a lot colder than in the summer, of course, fucking freezing. And I dove.”

“You
dove
?”

“I dove. I dove as far as I could. Past the rocks, missed everything. It gets deep. I hit my knee, but not too bad, and got out into the deep part out there, way over your head. It was really strong. And really fucking cold. I couldn’t hardly breathe. And I’m shooting downstream. Professor DeMarco always said not to go out in high water, which it definitely was. She meant like don’t go out in high water in
summer.
I’m a great swimmer. Eric. And it’s a lucky thing, or anyway today it seems lucky, because I had to swim a long way. It was like my body took over.”

“You did this intentionally?”

“I don’t know. I’m not sure.”

“But you swam.”

She pinched his fingers together, controlling those hands, and a good thing. “My body kicked and swam. I was furious with my body. But now I’m glad. The river took me down a long way. Finally, I managed to pull up on a, like, beach—I’m nude and fucking freezing and there’s nothing there but sand so I run up through the woods, but then with like a hundred yards to go I caught my ankle in the rocks and fell really hard,
really
hard, and that’s when I hurt it, like crunch. And I hit my head, too. I barely got back up here, I mean crawling and shivering and bleeding and half knocked-out and panting and everything else. And all, like, ‘Heaven Awaits,’ which is what Jim’s mother was always saying. It’s all boulders down there. And I’m in the cabin and I’m like, you can’t even fucking kill yourself right! I was so distraught. I didn’t know what to do—I found that filet knife and couldn’t do anything, I don’t know, anything
real.
Instead I chopped my hair. I didn’t light a fire after, nothing, just nude and naked and my hair cut off and my ear’s bleeding like crazy and I’m fucking freezing and getting this feeling of floating off into the next world. But nothing like that, because I must have gotten in bed, anyway, I warmed up and was still here the next morning. I fell into total darkness after that. Like this total torpulent turtle under the mud with a twisted ankle. Barely alive, a couple of weeks maybe, no effort to live. Then one of those warm mornings came and I realized I needed groceries. I still didn’t go out. Too afraid. But finally I did. And that’s when I found you.”

“And you hadn’t eaten anything till that pizza I made?”

“I had a ramen left. And there was rice.”

They lay quietly. Maybe they were going to sleep. Eric’s post-orgasmic serenity had evaporated. His pants were plain wet. Inness O’Keefe’s grip on his hands began to falter. What had he done now? Her breath caught, deepened. Her grip loosened on his hands. What had he done?

Inness snoring, Eric slipped out of bed, climbed downstairs, the only safe course.

Thirty-Eight

AS FOR ALISON
and him, they hadn’t fought, normally. They’d go through a kind of steaming détente, discuss whatever the issue was reasonably, no angry tones, though often carefully vicious phrases would go back and forth, stuff that would hurt only later and then echo and amplify, occupy whole afternoons and weeks of obsessive thought, phrases like “emotional impotence” from her mouth, and “coldhearted insecurity” from his. She might discuss his supposed low libido in clinical tones, but the very subject was meant to vanquish something in him, something that Inness O’Keefe had made rise again, and not his pecker. Alison was, in fact, nearly sexless, now that he considered the matter. Not an ounce of libido. Even in the height of their passion, those first few months of being in love, even then her hunger was muted, cautious, clipped and tidy. Anything more that arose was treated as a rebellion of her body. “Fingers aren’t made for that,” she’d said in the midst of passion early in their courting. Then how did she masturbate? He’d wanted to say. He hadn’t asked, never asked, never had a glimmer of such a thing on her part in their years of marriage, had the impression, simply, that she never thought about her body or his, cared little for the whole panoply of human sexual feeling.

Then, of course, came that buffoon of a state senator to explode the myth.

Eric had forgotten to bring the lamp down the ladder with him, but preferred the dark warmth of the closed stove anyway, just glimmers of flame through the air intake on the firebox door, and more efficient. Then, suddenly, he was exhausted. He cleaned his teeth as best he could with the rag at the tub, scrubbed his face with hot water from one of the small pots, then stripped out of his clothes, washed under his arms almost violently, dropped his besmirched trousers and boxers and washed his privates, washed his butt, what they’d done in the Navy on maneuvers, peacetime, when their lives had been almost luxurious. The washing had a Navy name he couldn’t recall, so what. He got dressed again fast and minus the underwear—realized that he still felt good back somewhere in him, some satisfied part of him, something slightly animal to pit against the guilty Apollonian: Dionysius, that’s who it was, awakened within him, ardor and laughter and abandon, but caring, too, and warmth, and fellow feeling, compassion, the stuff Apollo couldn’t muster.

Splash and dash, that was it, that’s what they’d called it.

The floor was brutally cold, even more so through his absurdly thin dress socks. He retrieved the heavy couch cushions—dense old horsehair—and made a bed, lay on it under the old coat shivering in its stench, the dispassionate side of him trying to rationalize, rehearsing speeches, even a confession to Alison, then an apology to Inness O’Keefe, whom he’d taken advantage of. He got up twice and added sticks to the fire, but they were only sticks and burned quickly, hopeless. His boxers on the floor suddenly embarrassed him, and he stuffed them in the fire, too: might as well get some BTUs from his folly. After what was likely considerably less than an hour, all but literally freezing, he gave in, carried the dense cushions up the ladder one at a time—disaster if he fell—carefully lifted them past the bed in the cramped space and past Inness O’Keefe so as not to disturb her, went back for the miserable coat, climbed with it cautiously, slipped past Inness, made himself a little nest under the eaves in the insistent warmth up there, lay on it, pulled the coat over him. He’d proved he couldn’t be trusted beside her, simple as that. The cushions were brutally cold. She’d had to fend him off. He had not even the excuse of wine, as she’d pointed out. He imagined Alison reacting when he told her. And he thought of all the men who’d used Inness O’Keefe before Jimmy grabbed hold, logs and sticks and twigs in the fire. He was no better than the rest of them. He’d trek her out in the morning, he’d follow up on all his promises, the help she needed, even the golf—he’d quit golf, show her what a man’s word meant, not that golf was so important. And he’d leave her alone except for that help.

Then he remembered he’d left the firebox door open a crack in his quest for heat—that would only eat their last wood faster. The thing needed banking. He slithered back out of his makeshift bed, stole past Inness in hers, climbed back down the ladder quietly, poked at the ashes of his underpants (still pinstriped!), found a piece of bark in the woodbox, a stick on the floor, a bundle of pine needles, several cones, offered these to the coals, covered it all with ashes, shut the door firmly, stood in the faint, orangey light. Something popped sharply under the house, popped again. Then silence, or not silence but a kind of shushing, the river moving past. And the stove sucking air as the volatile pine needles caught. That mouse, somewhere close. I wish I may and I wish I might. Goodnight, my someone, goodnight.

He heard Inness stirring. Rustling and squeaking and then her pee hitting the side of her bucket. Their first night together seemed a month past, more than that, when he’d resisted her, when he’d still known who he was. How had the poles gotten reversed? He heard her fixing the bed covers, heard her sit back on the bed, heard her pat the blankets around her. “Jimmy?” she said. Very sleepy. “Jim?”

“It’s me,” he called. “It’s Eric. I’m down here. Downstairs.”

Her face appeared in the faint, faint light. Still confused: “Eric?”

“Yes. It’s me. Eric. You were asleep. I think you’ve been asleep.”

“You think I’ve been asleep.”

“You’ve been asleep.”

“But what are you doing down there?”

“I’m, I’m down here.”

“I think I didn’t finish talking to you.”

“We had a very, very nice talk.”

“We did. It was a good talk.”

“I’m working on the fire.”

“You’re working on the fire.”

“It’s very cold.”

“What were you doing coming up and down?”

“Up and down?”

“What were you doing? I heard you coming up and down.”

“I don’t know,” Eric said. “I was. I just thought. I thought it wasn’t right. I was trying to make a bed.”

“You weren’t thinking of Alison?”

“No, not Alison. If anyone, I was thinking of Jimmy. You and Jimmy. How important that is.”

“And how you want to be back with Alison.”

“Well. We have been trying to work it out.”

“Work it out,” Inness said. “I see. So why did you say Jimmy?”

“Because, it has not worked out.”

“And you had to turn it on me? Like, you left me alone up here because of Jimmy? You don’t even know Jimmy.”

“You know what I meant.”

“I know what you meant? You leave me alone up here. You want to kiss me then you leave me alone up here. Because you’re thinking of Alison. Who isn’t so much work as me.”

“I didn’t leave you. I’m right here. I’m fixing the fire.”

“You got out of bed. You were thinking of Alison. How you’ve been with Alison so long. How she likes your fucking rock-hard Italian
cheese.
”

“I was thinking of you. You and Jimmy.”

“You were thinking of me and Jimmy.”

“I was thinking of you and Jimmy, yes.”

“You put your ring back on. Eric. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

Eric touched his hand. She was right. He’d put the ring back on, some absent moment, when? He had no idea. But that had been his right hand on her ribs. Oh, and his left on her back, the hand she’d had to collect.

She disappeared.

He shook his head, took the ring back off, buried it back in his pocket, sighed more loudly than he meant (that was his animal side trying to reach her, trying to tell her she was right), remembered the broken puzzle table, found one of its legs half buried in snow, put it in the fire. He stirred the coals with the table leg, got some light out of them, dropped the table leg back in, watched it catch. And that was it. Unless they burned the rest of the furniture, they’d be departing from a very cold cabin come morning.

“Eric,” Inness said.

He looked up, couldn’t see, something between them—a blur between them—Jesus! One of the couch cushions, flying down from above. It bounced hard off the floor and into one of their chairs, knocking it over with a slam. He laughed, couldn’t help it. And then there she was again, and the next cushion came flying down, this one straight at him. He punched at it automatically, deflected it into the butcher’s block, shouted: “Hey!”

“Fuckface!”

And here came the old coat, swirling down upon him. “Inness,” he shouted.

But she shouted back: “You think you can just crawl off like that?” And disappeared into the shadows.

Give her a minute, Eric thought. She wasn’t even awake. He couldn’t see a thing up there. The stove was still warm. He stood close to it, the table leg crackling in there. “Light the lamp?” he ventured after a while. He could hear her shuffling up there. He said, “You have the matches. Light the lamp and let’s talk.” He patted his pocket. What time was it?

“Here’s your fucking lamp,” she said. And threw it emphatically, its fine glass chimney shattering on the floor, the steel base rolling clear to the far wall trailing kerosene.

“Inness!”

She appeared ghostly at the edge of the loft, flung her heavy mug straight at his head, water and all. He ducked and it hit the kitchen counter with a solid thud, unbroken.

A sudden brightness, an explosion of brightness—she’d lit one of the wooden matches, brief view of her face before she snapped it at him. It flickered out in the air and then the next explosion of light as she lit another and flipped it down, and then another.

“There’s lamp oil on the floor,” he said evenly. “Inness, there’s kerosene.”

Another match flew down as the first sputtered out. He ducked, jumped to step on the new one even as another landed on his shirt. She was getting faster at it, the sulfur still burning as the matches hit the floor. The smell of kerosene came to his nose. “Enough,” he said. “Now, stop.”

Her face lit up devilish; the matches came flying, little emissaries of her wrath, Eric like a dancer trying new leaps, stomping each one out. Finally the matchbox itself came flying down, a relief: she was out of ammunition. But here came the magazines from the little shelf up there, great velocity in the blue dark, like unkempt birds landing all around him, then the books, fluttering bombs, all aimed at his head. He ducked and dodged, tried not to grin, kept repeating her name: “Inness, Inness
O’Keefe,
Inness,
Danielle
!”

When the books were gone he stepped forward, arms out like Romeo’s, or maybe Stanley Kowalski, anyway, beseeching: “Inness O’Keefe!”

But there was a smashing noise, then her face and shoulders, her scrawny arms, and here came the bookshelf itself, a heavy wooden thing that simply plummeted, landed at Stanley’s or Romeo’s feet, might have knocked him out if he’d been a step closer, might have killed him, ended the play right there. “Inness, goddamn it!”

Next her bucket of piss, unexpected, and it hit him square in the chest, a splash and a stench, real pain. And then the bedclothes, next the mattress, major effort, then the bedstead, a lot of old springs in a flimsy metal frame,
sproing
on the floor, and now, nothing left, her discarded jeans, right in his face, then her shirt and her socks. Finally, she stepped out of the repaired underpants and threw them. Naked she came to the edge of the loft and kicked the ladder so hard that it swung out and fell, hit the slipper tub with a mighty, gonging boom. In solidarity the cabin lurched and shuddered, a series of loud, grinding crunches beneath.

“Inness,” Eric said.

Her weapons were gone.

So, very softly, very gently, like singing a bedtime song, he sang her name: “Inness O’Keefe. Inness, Inness.” Just her name, as soothingly as he could manage, given his emotion, given hers, something to fix her in time and space. “Inness,” he said, “O’Keefe, Inness O’Keefe.” He retrieved the tank from the lamp, set it right, wiped at the dripped oil—not a lot, thankfully—wiped at it with one of the paperback books she’d thrown, crossed the room singing her name, popped the book into the stove, a sudden explosion of light.

“Inness, Inness. Inness O’Keefe.” He picked up a few more books, collected the bedding. He righted the bookshelf, but whatever glue had held it together had let go and the poor thing fell into a sagging parallelogram. “Inness O’Keefe,” he kept saying. “Inness, Inness.”

Eerie silence up there, till finally there was a shuffling and she appeared at the edge once more, precarious and naked, the FedEx envelope in hand. She dug in, grabbed a handful of little pages and matching slips of cardboard and threw them, then the next handful and the next: Jim’s letters, a thousand fluttering leaves, little helicopters in the dim light, finally the FedEx envelope itself, planing through the daintier flights and hitting the front of the stove with a slap.