The Remedy for Love: A Novel (21 page)

Thirty-Nine

HE PUT A
couple of more books in the fire—fat ones: Victor Hugo in French, and something gigantic called
And Ladies of the Club.
That gave him enough light to gather Jim’s letters into a rough pile, stuff them back into the big envelope. He was not going to let her leave Jimmy Tremonton LaRoque’s letters behind. He cleaned himself again, a laborious process, had to accept that his shirt was going to smell, used a few of the magazines to wipe up the piss that had hit the floor, already half frozen, put it all in the stove.

Upstairs, she cried very hard. He heard her blow her nose, but into what? There was nothing up there. She was naked without a blanket or scrap of cloth of any kind. And then, surprise, he heard her snoring, snicking, a kind of chopped and clicking and snotty breathiness, a woman who could fall asleep on a dime. He righted the heavy ladder quietly as he could manage, collected the worn sheets and the smelly blanket, climbed up there and covered her where she lay on the boards. Back downstairs he fed more books into the fire, dragged the mattress and couch cushions over near the warmth. He moved the slipper tub quietly as he could (the snow island now frozen in place, but free water under the fresh ice), made himself a new nest on the frigid floor, mattress then couch cushions, the remaining bed sheet, the coat. Inside his head he had nothing but Inness and her anger. And suddenly two negative Alison scenes: one, his attempt to stop her exit after their last dinner (several months before, maybe actually six months before, maybe more, if he admitted it), the arm of her sweater stretching in his grip, stretching, the calm hatred on her face; two, the last night that Alison had stayed over, all the way back in summer, when he thought of it, a swim in this very river but up near the college campus, her new very skimpy bathing suit, not bought for his eyes. Four small bruises—clearly the marks of a strong grip—high on her inner thigh. “Don’t know,” she’d said a couple of times when he asked. “Always banging into things.”

A sudden roar and tremor and thudding brought him to sitting. He knew right away what it was: the snow on the river side of the roof had let go, tons of the stuff cascading and splashing past the window and into the river on the still, still night. When it was done, silence once again, but their only window was completely covered. Upstairs Inness snicked and snored, oblivious.

Forty

HE WOKE SHORTLY,
shivering, no faint gradation of dawn light. There’d been some loud cracks in the air like shots, something in the structure of the cabin breaking. Their blanket-and-ice patch job seemed to be splitting down the middle, like a plaster wall breaking, though the snow wall that had formed behind it looked solid. And now there was a kind of rumbling, barely audible.

Which stopped.

He hadn’t written his note to Alison. If he didn’t make it. Their wills were unchanged. She’d get everything. Probably she’d sell the house. He stuffed more books into the stove to give some light, a little heat, dragged the metal bed-frame over quietly as he could manage, bent it more or less square, threw the mattress on. He collected more books, indiscriminately threw them in the fire, even
Madame Bovary,
even Balzac, finally
The Maine Woods,
and good-bye to Thoreau. He gathered up a pile of sawdust and fed that into the flames. Come morning, he and Inness could break up the bookshelf and burn it, make coffee before their escape. He’d have to hide Jim’s letters in his clothes somehow—she might do something rash—he knew that in the end she wouldn’t want them destroyed. He found the thick FedEx envelope. The fire was bright for the moment. He pulled the first page of a letter out at random, noted the salutation:

My dear Inny: Nights here like nights in Maine but drier, and not many trees. I mean the pure silence. Errrr. Also the clear sky. The stars are about the same. The air is different. Smells spicy and burning. I don’t know burning what. We on furlough three days. HYFR. After a clean-up near here. Something to say. I have some bad evil on me. It’s very bad evil. Little shit turn out to be twelve. Twelve with Kalashnikov. We will have to live awful well, you and me, to make up for this badness. Kellogg is

And another, just a fragment on the light blue paper:

gravel pit behind Clark’s? And you be saying I could do it if I try, if I close my eyes. And you pull me in there. It was so humid, hot as shit. I never been afraid of the water at night again. And we slept on the slab of granite? I be saying the rest but I don’t wanna give the censor a fucking chubby. Remember, yip? That was the other thang you led me through. I kept asking if

They were all like that, mysterious scraps of information, or no information at all, the jaunty hip-hop language. Here and there a firefight noted, or an old lady’s corpse, an infant they’d found in a tree after battle still breathing and the argument over what to do with her, but she died. Eric put more books in the stove for light: they didn’t make much heat. No complaining from Jim, no complaining of any kind, no introspection either. Just a soldier missing his girl and doing his job and counting the days, at least while the days were boring, which they were until they weren’t—that kind of language. Jim was offering a report, not an analysis, mostly built on the clichés of his industry. Otherwise it was fairly moving declarations of love and memories of home, marred by efforts to turn her on, never an “I love you,” though often promises of a better life when he returned:

of names. William. Or Robert. Something simple. No, I ain’t against it, baby. I know I said never, but I just see him at your boobs and then in a stroller, you know, and then we’re throwing that football and he’s swinging that bat and I’m coaching his team, you know. I coming around fer sure. I know it’s the only reason you agreed to marry me! Errrr. My little wife. So if that be what you want, I think we know how to go about it. But let’s get everything settled first. Our own place. Don’t worry, I agreeing wit you.

In her handwriting along the scant margin a list of girl’s names: Lolly, Holly, Merrily, Candy, Bliss, Margaret, Sue, Danielle—the last underlined, and underlined again. Upstairs, Inness mumbled in her sleep, turned in her covers, moaned something, sniffed and snorted a couple of times, fell back into her wracked breathing. He remembered the votive candles, climbed out of his nest, found two of them, placed them on the arm of her chair, lit them. Back to bed and back to the letters, a man to be found in the handwriting, Jim speaking directly to him the way he’d felt him speak indirectly through Inness’s talk, and Inness’s kisses, or anyway Danielle’s, a page ripped in half:

People get a look at yo’ booty, it’s going to be like a line following you down the street. But I know in Presque won’t anybody come after you, yo. Cuz they know what we have and they know what they will get from me. K-Bomb be teaching me skills! And I know you won’t go sniffing downtown

The next envelope was the thickest one, and had come from the U.S. Government: Inness O’Keefe LaRoque, Presque Isle, Maine. Eric weighed it a moment—he shouldn’t be going through her mail. But that thought was balanced by the sure knowledge that she’d delivered this package to him on purpose. He slipped the letter out, unfolded it, simple stuff, dated April 6, so nine months gone, and suddenly obvious, as if he’d always known:

We regret to inform you that First Lieutenant James Tremonton LaRoque has been killed in action near Kandajar, Afghanistan.

Forty-One

THE LOW RUMBLING
beneath the house resumed, accompanied by faint shuddering.

Eric dug through the FedEx envelope more urgently, trying not to crumple all Jim’s little pieces of notepaper, found another official letter, this one on White House stationary, and not a form letter, either, but President Obama himself thanking Inness for her sacrifice, and praising Jim for his bravery, personally signed: dark, thick fountain-pen ink.

Folded inside that was a tightly handwritten letter from one Captain Frederick Kellogg, who must have been the Freddy that Jim so frequently mentioned in the tiny pages, also known as K-Bomb, apparently, as you put things together, the munitions man in Jim’s Army Rangers unit. This had been crumpled and torn to bits, then meticulously taped back together, pieces missing:

Dear Mrs. Laroque: Excuse this letter out of the blue and into your heartache I share it. I am home in Tennessee and finally I can hold a pencil again. I was close with your husband. He died as a hero. I expect you would want to know that he was a great leader and had to do some very tough things. He had to keep the mission going when we were getting shot up. When Prince went down and DuValley got shot. That was the hardest thing and he did that. Kept going. We didn’t know when we were training and before deployment or even in the first couple months in country that we were in actual danger not till the first man was shot. I mean really know. That changed us all. We became closer than already. And we became more real. And very angry with endless rage. But Jimmy was calm, always for the mission and made us a unit always. Never scared. That was us, and that was Jimmy. My heart is heavy for your loss. Which I hope you won’t be offe

There was a gap, a triangular piece missing under all the tape.

six months. That is unofficial, of course, because extralegal. It was a quadrant we called Talibanistan. We had many contacts among the local people. They loved Jim and called him
Dratfhar,
that is a kind of river barge. It is very square and strong and hard to turn.
Dratfhari
just go where they are going to go. They are not afraid and that is courage, going where you have to go and doing what you

Same triangular hole, flip side, then:

n the morning I was out identifying fragments from the ordnance which was one of my jobs. The round was American made, both sides using ordnance from the exact same factory in Michigan. Jim said it was good for the U.S. economy. He was always humorous in that way.

You never saw the enemy they knew the geog so well and the towns. They’d find a hole in a wall just big enough for the barrel of their Kali and shoot ten rounds and move away. You just never saw them. But if you did you shot them, and that caused laughter and rejoicing. Jimmy thought he was getting a curse from laughing at these deaths.

That day we saw Taliban coming into the village across a little valley all in a line. Jim picked the lead man and we each called the number of our man and shot simultaneous. He was the only one who got his target. The others over there started jumping around and firing down the valley, where our shots must have echoed from we guessed. We saw which doorway they entered when they quit. We all shot after them and shot all the windows then their rounds starting come right at us. You couldn’t see from where. And the bullets is flying. And they shoot through sheepskin to hide the muzzle flash. And it’s getting dark, so no air support.

Mortar rounds came in all night, because we had compromise our position. Our translator was killed a nice man. Our medical officer was killed one of the team. Very bad. Four men down in two days. Not what you thought signing up. Just bad. Still bad. Very real. Not Sylvester Stallone. Actor gets up off the ground and wash off the blood and do the next movie and that’s what I had pictured. Jim led a service after the choppers took them. That next afternoon which was April 5 Jim tapped me and we crossed the valley on our bellies, several hours by inches knowing we might be having our last day, not real. We caught them eating dinner and made them pay one at a time running after them up the stairs but on the roof

Another hole.

second I took him out face-to-face so at least you know that and I stayed till the evac came in and got us both out I did my part and my part was not plenty I agree. None of it seemed real, or else nothing else was ever real. Honestly I don’t know which. This is hard to explain.

And another.

hy of Jim’s sacrifice. Every day I wish it had been me and not him that day. He talked about you often especially your singing. When I’m released maybe I will come to Maine and we can meet and talk about Jim and I hope heal. And I will ask you to sing.

Eric found the letter from President Obama again, truly signed in Obama’s hand. Eric thought about that, how the president’s signing of a condolence letter was both personal and impersonal. He tried to imagine Inness O’Keefe all alone at her mailbox reading it, could not. Or maybe it was hand delivered the way he knew the fatality letters were. Probably Eric had heard about Jim’s death on the news. Probably it was in the news for days, Jim being a native Mainer. He tried to recall, but there were too many kids killed, a disproportionate number from Maine, it was often observed.

Eric put the president’s letter on the butcher-block table, weighed the paper down with the votive candles so that it wouldn’t go anywhere, and so that Inness would know that he’d seen it, looked at it long, and blew the candles out.

Forty-Two

SHE CLIMBED INTO
the makeshift bed with him at first light, her skin shockingly warm, like a fever. She put her face close to his. “Thanks for putting the ladder back,” she said.

“I’m very sorry for your loss,” he said.

She put her head on his chest. “Your heart pounds, mister. Like something down below on a ship.”

“You’ll be all right, Inness O’Keefe.”

“I want to believe you,” she said.

The front wall groaned, a sustained noise, almost funny, like something bodily, digestive. Then it stopped. They lay together in the blue and gradually pinkening predawn light, vague through the blocked front window.

Eric said, “I read the one from K-Bomb, too. That’s a real friend. He said you sing.”

“I do not sing. That was a joke of Jimmy’s. He’d tell people I was a great musician and then out of the blue they’d ask me to play the piano or sing or whatever he’d told them. Very embarrassing. Please, no more about K-Bomb. K-Bomb is fucked. Right after that letter? I wanted to go see him? But he killed himself. In the V.A. hospital down in Washington, or wherever it is. Hung himself with a sheet.”

Eric waited a moment, said, “Terrible.”

She sniffed his cheek and said, “I thought I was going to slaughter Jim’s mother. After he was cremated. And we put his ashes in the wind. She was all over me, like. Like I had done something wrong. That’s exactly it. The same little shit-squad went to her door that came to mine, lieutenants with like stripes on their pants, and swords. I thought it would be dramatic to pull one of the swords and cut my own throat in front of them. At Arnold Elementary they had an assembly without telling me beforehand. Without telling me, Eric. Like, it was for his mom and not for me. A memorial for Jim the beloved gym teacher. And his celebrity mom in her black fucking gloves. Bitch with her hands inside chickens all day. Or maybe I just missed the announcement? Because I took two weeks off, which is the maximum grief allowance. Or maybe they told me about the assembly and I misunderstood. I couldn’t make sense of anything no matter what people said. The way they look at you, mister. Or the way they don’t, is more like it. You turn invisible, like you drank a potion. And the unbelievably moronic things almost everyone says. You can’t believe it.” She put on a deep voice: “ ‘
He was a great hero. He died for freedom.
’ And then they stuff your arms with flowers. ‘
He would want you to know.’
And all this fantasy stuff about Heaven, how I’ll see him in Heaven. And I’m like, Jim is going to Hell, yo. He’s killed people now. He’s killed a lot of people and some of them were innocent, and like at least one was a twelve-year-old boy and probably some were babies, too. He fucked me in the ass when I didn’t want it and pulled my hair and called me his ho. And everyone? He’s never been nice, not to any of you, and not to anyone. So don’t talk about fucking Heaven and Jesus and God, not to me. Of course I didn’t say any of that. I went, Thank you, Father. And, Thank you, Mrs. LaRoque. I went, He was good to me. True, when he was good to me, he was very good. He was a great gym teacher and all the kids loved him to pieces and I believe K-Bomb that James T. LaRoque was a great soldier and that James T. LaRoque loved me. His mother has the medal. He got a medal. At the assembly. The, like, whole fucking army was there in dress uniforms. And the governor of Maine, fat slob with Cheetos dust all over his suit jacket. Anyway. I shouted at the principal and at the officer guys for not telling me and for talking about Heaven too much and for talking about honor, like that meant anything, and the twelve-year-old boy, I said: What about him? And I said how the room was filled with twelve-year-old boys, how’d they like to see them all shot? And people tried to comfort me, then it became more like
restrain
me. And I got away and got in my car and I drove and I drove and I never went back. So I guess what I’m saying is that despite earlier communications, I am available, fully available, more or less, though who would want me?” She threw her leg over him, neither sauce nor supplication, something else in the gesture, something new to Eric, something he’d have to work to understand: plain affection.

That low rumbling under the house. A crackling in the front wall. A series of pops in the roof above them. A prolonged groan. They listened to the silence after.

“Damn,” Eric said.

“Probably it’s Jimmy,” she said.

“Probably it’s not,” Eric said firmly.

She climbed up on him, rocked her pelvis on him. “Can we please, just please fuck?”

“Mm. No.”

“I just think it would be a good idea to fuck before we go, I really mean it.”

“Inness,” he said. “Inness O’Keefe.”

“Mister,” she said.

“We can save it for our date.”

“Are we still having a date?”

“If you want to have a date.”

“It will be cold on the beach.”

“Maybe we’ll wait a few months. Maybe we’ll wait a few months in any case.”

“You are just you here, and that’s what you say here, when you are just you, just Eric, but out there, you are a lawyer. You might not want a date. Or I might not. You represented my friend Carly, yo. You are Eric DiGiacomo Neil.”

“You knew Carly Martin?”

“And Eric DiGiacomo Neil failed her.”

Long silence. “I agree, I did.”

She kissed him hard. Her mouth tasted like tears.

“Inness,” he said.

Very fast and against his cheek she whispered, “There was this kid I met at a party in high school in Jersey and he was a stranger and I never knew his name and never saw him again. I just called him the Good Kisser. I thought if I ever found someone who could kiss like that, like the center of everything . . .”

“The center of everything . . .”

“Give me that ring,” she said in the midst of another kiss.

“It’s only an artifact,” he said.

“I just want to see it.”

“No.”

“Give it.”

He struggled to get his hand deep in his pants pocket, found the ring among useless change, drew it out, pinched it in his fingers where she could see it.

She grabbed it fast, plunked it in her mouth, swallowed it with a gulp.

Before he could react to that, there was a loud
boom
from the cabin, the whole building at once, it seemed, something crucial giving way. And suddenly, the whole place lurched and groaned and pitched toward the river, dove off its piers, the whole place wrenching and falling and thumping into the huge bank of snow that had dumped off the roof at river side, falling and settling and perching precariously right at the edge of the high bank, the front wall staying behind, the blanket patch ripping exactly in half, squeals and cries and a roaring, the shed detaching itself cleanly, nothing but tarpaper to hold it, the stove pulling free from the chimney pipe and sliding down the floor fast to the riverside wall just as the butcher-block table slid and just as Eric and Inness in their broken bed lurched and slid, right up against the kitchen drain board, Eric slamming into it, Inness into him with a yell, all of this a matter of seconds. The cookstove fell over beside them. The mostly frozen slipper tub came to a stop against it with a thonk. One of the kitchen cabinets tore from the wall, jars falling and exploding. The air in the cabin was all flying snow and bits of branches. Suddenly the loft was breaking free with loud snaps and screeches and itself falling with a percussive slam, finally the ladder landing with a clatter, just an afterthought, then silence. But no, it wasn’t silent. The world went on—all the wind of the forest, all the music of the river, all the pink of dawn were around them, above them, and the penetrating cold.