The Remedy for Love: A Novel (3 page)

Three

HE SNIFFED THAT
smell of wood smoke and dirty clothes and mildew as he caught up to her a short way into the forest—it was that old pile of a coat she was wearing, not entirely unpleasant, but close. The enormous hood had fallen off her head, and her hair was really very badly matted and frizzed and chopped, little bright beads of water where snowflakes had landed. Around them the trees were scruffy, too, bare and overcrowded in what had been pastureland, the snow blowing through upraised branches, a few last, clinging leaves rattling. Seeing Eric, she unraveled herself from the bag handles and rubbed the twisted imprints in her fingers and hands.

Eric said nothing, but welling with anger—she’d no idea of the danger she was in—gave her one of his dress gloves, nice brown leather lined with warm fuzz. She took it quickly and thrust her hand into it, pride knocked back by the cold. He hefted all seven of her bags by the handles in the one gloved hand and she didn’t protest that, either, though Eric got the idea she’d rather. Fifty or sixty pounds, easily, now that he felt it.

“I just thought,” he said. He just thought some people needed to be protected from themselves.

“Storm of the century,” she said. “As if they fucking know.”

“Maybe just the last hundred years,” Eric said.

And that was an end to talk. Down and down and to the river, at least a half mile, thirty minutes at her pace, then down a very steep approach to the flats along the river, then upstream another hundred yards in the protection of a row of riverside hemlocks that grew under a rocky slope, all but a cliff. The hemlocks blocked the snow and kept the path clear, a soft, six-century duff of fine needles and tiny cones and brittle twiglets fragrant and giving underfoot. The cabin was a surprise, a sudden apparition, brown as the trunks of the hemlocks. Except for the steep plane of its roof under the new snow, it might have been invisible, a rustic old place perched on stout cement piers atop a high rock outcropping above the coursing Woodchurch. Beyond the hemlocks were two of the biggest white pines Eric had ever seen, one then the next, partners over the river, trunks that four people couldn’t hug: no logger had ever devastated this awkward spot.

So, she really did have a place to go. The young woman climbed three prodigious stone steps and pushed open the cabin’s heavy front door, no locks to fuss with. Eric climbed after her and followed her inside, nice and warm. She hobbled straight to the antique cookstove, a Glenwood (so it said), a fancy thing all decked out with chrome scrollwork and numerous warming shelves and doors and vents and handles, lovely. She built up the fire with sticks of dead pine and a couple of moldering logs, all she had for firewood. Beside the stove, a vintage copper slipper tub with two washcloths hanging stiff—how would you go about using that?

No invitation, he hefted his load of bags to the top of a stout-legged butcher’s block in the kitchen corner, slowly disassociated himself from the twisted handles. The gray of the afternoon permeated the place. The walls were beaverboard, and small sprays of snow had formed on the floor where there were cracks—not a shred of insulation, was Eric’s guess, the whole thing open to the wind underneath, no kind of winter abode, the sprays soon to be drifts, interior.

The young woman shuffled around in her huge coat putting things right. So there was a basic competence. She filled a large pot with greenish water from an old joint-compound bucket, lit a kerosene lamp with a long match from a lobster-shaped holder bolted to the wall, placed it smoking on the table, bent efficiently to adjust the wick.

“Okay,” she said in the sudden warm light.

“Nice,” Eric said. Probably too helpfully he unpacked the plastic bags item by item, again depressed by her shopping.

Clearly annoyed by him, she reached to put things away in the rough-hewn cabinets nailed high on the kitchen wall, lined up her ramen perfectly, her mac and cheese, the big cans of beans. At last she shed the huge coat, hung it on a nail near the stove, plain that it had hung there for many years.

“I’m Eric,” he said, noting once again the cut on her ear.

“Oh, for Christ’s sake,” she said and limped to gaze out the big window over the river, the only window in the place, blue light: the snowfall was nearly horizontal in the wind. “You’d better get moving.”

He shouldn’t have stared. “I’d like to help,” he said. “Before I go.” He felt strongly that she was his responsibility now, a kind of pro-bono client he’d taken on. He had nothing pressing to attend to otherwise, God knew, small-town lawyer with no cases, typical for November, or maybe a little less than typical: it had been a bad year all around. Also, Alison had missed their last several dinner dates. But he didn’t like to think of that. Always hopeful, as Alison might say.

“No, really,” the young woman said.

Eric noticed a ladder led to a loft above. She must sleep up there—no bed downstairs, only a couple of mission-oak chairs and small matching couch, cracked leather cushions, nice old furniture in the coldest corner of the place. He heard the wind picking up, checked his phone surreptitiously. No signal, nothing. The time was still only one o’clock, but sunset would come at 3:45, and in this weather dusk would drop fast.

He said, “What’s going on with that limp?”

“Ankle,” she said. “Pretty bad.”

“We’d better take a look.”

She sighed but shuffled to the couch, fell onto it, tugged her shoe off. It was a teacher’s shoe, all right, kind of a felt clog with a negative heel, soaked through. Good wool socks, though, thick and green and fairly new. Whose charity accounted for socks like that? Gingerly she peeled her foot bare. The ankle was definitely swollen, a yellowy-green bruise down to the toes, but none of the deep-blue hematomic color you’d expect with a break. “You’ll want to keep using it,” Eric said, old athlete. He took the foot in his two hands gently, palpated it gently, cool skin, toenails untended. Back before he’d flunked organic chemistry in college, he’d thought he’d be a doctor. “Light use,” he said, “to keep it from stiffening up. And pack a little snow on it for ten or fifteen minutes every so often. You can do that right now, if it suits you. Maybe by the fire so you don’t get chilled?”

“Okay,
Doctor,
” she said, abruptly pulling her foot out of his hands. “Don’t you think you’d better get going? Like, right now?”

“You’ll need firewood,” he said. “It’s going to be a long three or four days with this snow.”

She looked at his loafers, his dress slacks, his natty sports jacket. She wanted the wood, anybody could see that. She said, “There’re some boots and stuff in the shed.” She pointed to a narrow door in the corner, upstream. He’d assumed it was a bathroom, but of course there was no bathroom. Behind the door he found a rough shed, wind and snowflakes inside. Also vintage water skis and slickers and broken fishing rods and lengths of hose and every sort of summer thing imaginable, a little six-horse Johnson boat motor on a wooden trestle, rakes and shovels and scraps of lumber and a workbench, plenty of tools hanging and fallen, a thermometer nailed to the wall (fourteen degrees), girlie calendar set forever to August 1965. The pin-up was a chubby young woman with red cheeks and an inadequate sweater buttoned strategically, no pants to speak of, but legs folded demure. Funny to think that in real life she was probably about his mom’s age, photographed in a less sexualized era. He wondered where the young woman was now, those plump shoulders, the cute chin tucked in, the finger to her lips, how many kids, how many divorces, what illnesses, alive or dead? He flipped through the calendar, couldn’t stop himself. August was the woman for him, all right, or would be when she grew up, though of course by now she had grown up and then down again, potent gaze. He could see why someone had saved her, and why she’d been banished to the shed.

In blue rain boots, a stiff yellow slicker, and a pair of pink fish-scaling gloves (very tough, not warm), Eric emerged from the shed carrying a bow saw and a dull hatchet he’d found, closed the door behind him.

His hostess very nearly smiled at the sight of him.

He said, “Pretty manly, I admit.”

The joke killed any amusement. “And then I need you out of here,” she said.

“Yes,” he said.

“But thanks, okay?”

“Tell me your name?”

“Danielle, for now.”

Four

OUTSIDE HE FOUND
an open little woodshed, but Danielle-for-now had depleted the supply to a couple of uselessly huge logs, half rotted in any case. So Eric flapped in his rubber boots up and under the hemlocks, snapped off dead-dry branches and twigs, broke it all into kindling lengths over his knee, made several large bundles in short order, carried them hugged to his chest, tucked them one at a time inside the cabin door. Danielle was in the kitchen corner, paid him no attention, just put the last of her groceries away. She’d pulled off her bulky, practically knee-length sweater and he saw she was slender, not so blowsy as he’d thought, and except for maybe the hair and shiny, unwashed pants pretty much just a person you’d find anywhere in Woodchurch. Her shirt was big like everything else, an old flannel job misbuttoned. She was wet up to her knees. Make that soaked. Well, she didn’t need him telling her to change her clothes.

Back in the pelting wind, Eric struggled up the path he and Danielle had come in on. Their footprints were already obscured. He found a dead maple standing nice and dry, maybe ten inches at the base, sawed it down more easily than he’d imagined, satisfying crash. He sawed off the bigger branches, sawed the trunk into manageable lengths, more sweaty effort, maybe a half hour’s work in the dumping snow, more and more uncomfortable as his fish-scaling gloves got soaked, dragged the pieces down one then two then three at a time to the woodshed, climbed back up the hill and retrieved the branches, exhausting. He saw himself returning in a couple of days after the storm had blown through, saw himself checking in on her friendly, bringing fresh victuals, a packet of clean T-shirts, unless that was too personal, certainly a decent blanket.

Under the overhang of the woodshed’s roof at least he was out of the horizontal snow, which had started to mix with flecks of stinging ice. He got himself set up and cut about half the wood into twenty or so logs of various diameters, only a few so big around that they’d have to be split. In the woodshed he found a splitting maul, and he enjoyed the work so much he just kept splitting till even the smaller logs were done. This gave the impression of a lot more wood and he brought it into her house in several trips, no sign of the young woman. So he filled the woodbox by the stove, stacked the rest against the wall, enough for a couple of days at least. Which, of course, meant a couple of days at most. After which he could come back with a chain saw and maybe a friend and do the job right. Or, maybe more to the point, a couple of social workers and a cop, get her out of there. You couldn’t let people die just because they might get mad at you.

“Wow, sweet,” Danielle said from up in the loft, disembodied voice. “That was above and beyond.”

“My pleasure,” Eric said. “Like a day at the gym. And there’s more out there, too.”

“Have some water—it’s boiled. In the small pot. And then you’d better go.”

He drank directly from the pot, the water still warm, faint biotic taste of the river, deeply satisfying: of course he was thirsty. She’d pulled the two mission-oak chairs up close to the stove and her clothes were arranged on them drying, meager items, pants and shirt and huge sweater, underpants. He stood there and stripped the sopping fish-scaling gloves inside out off his puckered fingers, found himself studying the underpants, elastic emerging from the band, side seam ripped, a picture of desperation. He hung the gloves near them. He could come back in a few days with a chain saw, yes, and also some provisions, even a load of clothes and bedding from the thrift shop. Maybe Patty Cardinal from the church would help him, jolly old Patty the volunteer organist and inveterate do-gooder, woman’s touch, always wearing red.

“You’re a masochist,” Danielle said from upstairs, her face and naked square shoulders suddenly in view. The color was back in her cheeks. She’d tugged a big knit hat over her hair, looked at him from under the brim, one of those Rasta caps in the colors of the Jamaican flag. So maybe she was growing dreadlocks, fine.

“Referring to what?” he said pleasantly.

“To your masochism,” she said equally.

He didn’t want to appear to be lurking, but didn’t want to appear to be hurrying, either, in case she had any further tasks she’d like done. If that were masochism and not altruism. Which was the joke he wanted to make. But did not. Because who knew what she was actually talking about. It really was time to get moving, the room and the day a notch darker, then two notches, and still the hope that Alison was coming, that Alison who’d broken their last several dates and hadn’t been home for months was on her way back to Woodchurch.

Danielle said, “Keep the boots and stuff. You can’t walk out in loafers.”

“I’ll bring them back, don’t worry.”

“Don’t bother,” she said. “Really, don’t.”

Five

HIS FOOTPRINTS AND
every sign of his miniature logging operation were completely obscured. He ducked under the hemlocks to where the path started up the hill. He hadn’t noticed the outhouse right there, though he must have walked past it several times. Solid little building with a blue toilet seat bolted over the single hole, half roll of toilet paper, box of tampons empty, thick soft-cover copy of
Anna Karenina,
apparently much thumbed, faint stench of shit, which he was something like embarrassed to associate with the young woman. He anointed the depths of the pit with his own urine, only heightening the embarrassed feeling, an intimacy he’d just not ever thought of before in a whole life of using outhouses and wished he hadn’t thought of now.

Up the very steep hill he climbed, lingering odd feelings, an afternoon of only half-appreciated charity behind him, plodded like making the last steps of a Himalayan ascent, stopping often to be sure he hadn’t left the path, which was increasingly indistinct. The wet snow lay atop the ice from earlier in the week and in the rain boots it was slippery, not only heavy.

And yet he was full of the surest feeling that
this
was the night, the long-awaited Alison night, and that his patience had paid off, would pay off, Danielle-for-now’s need and his response amounting to a sign. Of something. Karma being one’s actions. And one’s actions bringing destiny to bear. After Alison left, that time. For example. That time she’d arrived for the monthly visit they’d negotiated as a way to test their separation over the course of a year. The second monthly visit, after a very bad first one. Yes, that second one made a good comparison. She’d arrived early with her bike on the rack at the back of her sensible car, greeted him all bright and lively, a particular vivid mood of hers that he hadn’t seen in years. “Rumble Pond!” she’d announced.

Rumble Pond was a full-gear outing: saddlebags, food, sleeping bags, bike parts, tent. They pedaled side by side right out of the neighborhood and out of town and up Dairyman Hill Road four stiff miles to the log-company gate and then on gravel onward, then no gravel, mountain biking on an actual mountain, the gorgeous little lake at the end of the ride, the hot swim, the isolated campsite. And he hadn’t seen that game look on her face for years, not since the time he’d just shaved after work and she liked his smooth chin so much that she pushed him to their bedroom, fucked him hard (unheard of!), came to quick climax (unprecedented!), and bit that smooth chin (drawing blood!), just that one time, ancient history.

At Rumble Pond they’d made dinner excitedly working together, not like people who were separated but like the old kitchen team they’d been in the first flush of their romance. And after they’d eaten, well, instead of cleaning it all up right away they made love, first time in at least months, and the second-best time ever, as he thought about it, and he would think about it lots. She started it—kisses of unfamiliar depth, at last an acceptance of his real kisses and not the kisses he’d developed for her overly peckish tastes. And actual giggling and the ripping of his shirt buttons, okay? And a tumble on top of un-deployed sleeping bags and then upon the tent, complete inadvertent disassembly of the poor little thing. And her skin in the moonlight, unforgettable, as if it had grown soft in his absence.

They stayed up there that way three days, bike excursions east and west and north, a honeymoon like they hadn’t let themselves have in Prague (that she hadn’t let them have), stayed past their food, an extra day, giddy on the way back out with fasting and promises. Give her a month, is all she asked. They felt they’d solved the puzzle of their fractured marriage, one of those long algorithms from college math.

Tonight would be like those nights!

He felt a moral tug. Danielle had food. Danielle had shelter. She had firewood, now. But Danielle was alone, and with an injury, and very likely unstable. A small accident would be amplified. What if she burned herself or fell from her loft? He certainly knew of dozens of such cases, small-town law. That little girl who’d cooked to death in the back of her parents’ van parked outside the Sugarwood Grille, hot August afternoon? Or poor Kurt LaFarge, who fell on the North Church steps in the snow one Saturday night, last man out after choir, broke his neck and froze solid, ambulance and police and sheriff and medical examiner still there as the parishioners arrived the next morning. Pastor Tony paid for that one, and unfairly: gross negligence. Eric might have done more for the girl, was the point. Danielle would need more water, for example. Or did ghosts never drink?

He trudged, made the road, crossed to the veterinary parking lot, climbed in his car and started it, sat a few minutes catching his breath. Really, that was a very hard climb in these conditions. His own pants legs were soaked, but the boots had kept his socks dry. The veterinarian—a crabbed old soul when it came to humans and a well-known killer of show dogs—looked out her window at him, the longest look, no expression on her face. He gave a short wave, and she disappeared behind the curtain so fast that he felt like a magician.

Findings: Ms. Danielle would be alone down there for several days. A life on Doritos and ramen noodles. At least she had wine. A blizzard called for a box of wine, simple as that, no need to judge. Alison was probably on her way, should really be on her way if she was going to make it. And then—no doubt she’d thought of this—maybe she’d be snowed in and he’d get to make her breakfast after all, maybe a few days of breakfasts, if the Weather Channel was right. Unbidden, a certain bra came to mind, gray satin. From back in the day. He felt his hand upon its clasp. He checked his phone. No calls, no texts, no tweets, no e-mails, not a word on Facebook, not from Alison anyway, not a peep from Alison, who’d done nothing but stand him up for months, if he admitted it. He stifled a wave of anger, checked Troy Polamalu’s game stats one more time: fantasy football. Then the weather: the Winter Storm Warning had been upgraded to a Winter Storm Emergency. He’d never seen that designation. And a link to a checklist for disaster preparedness.

There was about an hour before the day would get swallowed by the storm and he was wet anyway and there was this terrible sense of responsibility, also the food he’d bought: she’d need everything she could get, and he had all he needed: Alison wasn’t going to show, third month in a row, and who was he kidding? Fourth in a row. He was no masochist. He heard his father’s voice:
face facts.
The snow was building, building. No more cars coming in and out of the veterinarian’s lot, just the Mercedes with the
SPAY
plates. No cars on the road, either.

He retrieved his bags of groceries, left the expensive wine in, why not? He had beer at home. Plenty of daylight. The snarly old poodle of a vet was spying on him again, glowering out the window at him. He’d won the case for his client, that’s all, had never thought twice about continuing to bring his dog to Dr. Mia Arnold, but then he hadn’t needed to: poor Ribbie, living now with Alison down in Portland, another stab of anger.

A lot of anger, Alison had said sometimes, no matter how justifiably pissed he was. “A lot of anger, Eric.” Heavy on the
K
sound in his name. Had he been angry on their bike trip? He had not. Had she returned? She had not. The bags were heavy, but not as heavy as Danielle’s had been, and only two of them. More awkward, though: paper. He arranged them in the crook of one arm so as to have a hand free. His own footprints from a mere three minutes previous were already filled in, but no question where the path was through the roadside meadow. The forest, however, was decidedly darker, the balsam firs beyond the stone wall drooping with snow, the branches starting to block the path. He enjoyed tugging on them, watching the snow dump, the branches springing back skyward. This would be a place to come mushrooming in the spring, and warbler walking. It would be a lot of things in spring that it was not now. He and Alison could come here together: she’d always liked to explore vernal pools. She’d bend deeply from the waist—all that yoga—and examine the loops of frog eggs. She’d flip leaves uncannily and find a fire newt every time. She’d have zero compassion for Danielle, or less.

The pitch of the slope seemed steeper and the rain boots more hopeless and he slid and slipped his way down, proud of his balance, almost skiing at times, groceries at risk. The last stretch of the path coming down from high above the river and past the outhouse was difficult—the wind and snow hard in his face, ice underfoot. The hemlock branches, heavy with wet snow, were already brushing the ground, no obvious entry to the shelter they’d provided earlier. He skirted them, stinging snow in his face, ducked to the cabin and up the stone steps, hurried to push the door open and escape the pelting, a loud halloo so as not to frighten the young woman.

He failed at that:

“Hey,” she cried.
“Hey!”
Then, “What the
fuck,
yo, get out!” She’d pulled the big slipper tub up practically touching the stove and stood in it, her naked butt pinkened from a scrubbing; anyway, she was in the act of dipping her washcloth into the pot of water she’d put on, and her legs were long and bare and awfully hairy and dripping, a patter of metallic beats from the copper tub, like a shower of pennies.

He turned away mortified. “Oh, my god, sorry! I just brought you this stuff. You’ll need more food. And there’s good wine. From the store. For you. If you want.”

Danielle had a tattered robe instead of a towel, but at least she had that. She wrapped herself up in it. “You just come crashing in?”

“It’s so windy, I . . .”

She climbed out of the tub in her pink-gray robe and marched toward him, sharp little fist at the ready. “Out!” she cried. “Get out!” And then she was pummeling him as best she could, one hand holding the robe, knuckles in his sternum between the grocery bags, which he didn’t want to drop. He tried not to smile, blocked her hand between the bags. “Help!” she cried, pulling it back, punching at him wildly, little knuckles ripping the heavier of the bags.

He crouched to save the wine as the bag tore open, dropped the other bag in the process, cheese and scallions and peppers tumbling out. She took the opportunity to pop him in the chin a good one, even as the next wine bottles hit the floor clanking against each other, rolling away across the floor. He said, “Hey, okay, easy. I just thought you could use some more food.”

And she popped him again, kicked at him. “You didn’t think! You didn’t think at all! Jimmy! Help!”

Jimmy? He fumbled on, the rest of the groceries hitting the floor, perfect mango splitting. He said, “That’s raw-milk Parmesan. It’s delicious, the real thing. I thought you’d like to have it. And some basics? That’s excellent flour.”

She kicked the bag, a puff of white.

“And all sorts of vegetables.”

She tried to stomp the first eggplant, but it rolled under her bad foot and sent her off balance. She fell hard, clutching her robe tighter then diving at Eric from a mad crouch, catching a pocket of his jacket, which ripped half off. “Get out! Basics and all! Get the fuck out! You’re so nicey-nice, you fucking . . .
creeper,
with your creeper
gifts.
”

Suddenly she softened, maybe at the sound of the word
gifts
as it flew from her lips, maybe at the realization that she’d ripped his clothes, maybe noticing that he really had brought food, food she really needed. Stiffly then, not exactly contrite, she said, “You’re crashing in here and grinning at me like a wolf and it really, really
freaks
me
out.
” She was back to shouting: “
You have to understand.
Please, just go. And quit
smiling.
”

Okay, he really was grinning. He killed it, said, “You were in a private moment. I’m very sorry.”

She blew up, jumped to her feet, jabbed a finger in his chest, backed him toward the door: “
All
-moments-are-fucking-
private
!”

Eric backed away, step-by-step and to the heavy front door, defending himself with his hands, the young woman poking at him all the way, trying to get at his face. He yanked the door open to wind and snow, said, “I hope you have a corkscrew down here. That’s nice wine.”

“Go!” she shrieked, and pushed him by the chest.

He stumbled down the stone steps, fell into the snow at the bottom.

“I said
go the fuck away
!”