The Remedy for Love: A Novel (4 page)

Six

OUTSIDE THE STORM
was howling, a different kind of snow altogether, curtains of it blowing, already drifted to knee-deep in sculpted ridges along the ground, coming so thick and furious it was as if legions of dump trucks were emptying their loads in his face, in the world’s face, misery: the jostling wind, the river coursing black below.

He pushed his way through hemlock branches and into their protection—a Mongolian hut of a cavern under there, still the ground bare and soft, cracks of muted light all around him. He barged through and back into the wind at the end of the line, the end of the cabin’s little dooryard, but reluctantly: his socks inside the rain boots were no longer dry, squishing in fact, and the going was more slippery than ever, nothing for a path but slight depressions where his footprints had been only short minutes before. Still, he felt a lightness: he’d given away Alison’s dinner, which amounted to giving up on her, admitting she wasn’t coming home, never again.

He slipped on hidden ice—it was all ice underneath—dropped to his knees, the snow immediately wet through his pants. If this weren’t such a short hike he’d be in real danger. No great loss, those groceries. Plenty of food at his house, in case Alison did turn up. Plenty more wine. Cases of good beer. He’d watch whatever movie and eat chicken-barley soup. He made good soup and froze it in batches. He put his head down and trudged. The dark was like an eclipse, sudden and thorough. One foot in front of the next, that was all you could do. He bumped up against a tree trunk, a really impressive yellow birch. Close by was another. A hundred years back, there would have been a barn here—yes, a large depression in the earth, great location over the river, when all of this would have been fields and farmsteads and pasture.

Fine, but the birches and the basement hole had not been on the path before. He followed his footfalls back—less than a minute old and already smoothed, as if each print were the basement of an old barn, nature closing in. He hurried, suddenly afraid, followed his tracks back all the way to the hemlocks near the outhouse, started back up the hill, paying close attention this time, allowing no stray thoughts. He saw immediately where he’d gone wrong: the branches of a white pine pressed down and covered the faint path. The radio had said record falls. But three inches an hour? He’d have to look at the Weather Channel when he got home.

With great attention he made his way up the long hill and to the road, which was still unplowed, the sky much lighter out of the woods, like a weight lifted off him. No car had passed recently, and no plow. The lights were off at the veterinary. The Mercedes was gone. And so was his Explorer.

He looked again and then looked all around, as if perhaps he’d parked somewhere else, somewhere he’d entirely forgotten. But, in the end he had to admit it: the car was gone. Already, efficient lawyer, he was rehearsing the phone call to Galvin’s Towing. He fingered the keys in his pants pocket, reached for his phone. Which was missing. Or not missing, not at all. He knew exactly where his phone was: his phone had been towed with the car. His sports jacket was soaked through, snow from the outside, sweat from the inside, pocket pulled half off. It was four or five or more miles to town, an hour and a half at a brisk walking gait on a bright summer’s day, so make it three hours in the heavy snow already on the road, face into the increasing wind, the new fresh snow blowing in devils all around him. No houses in sight. Only the veterinarian’s buildings, closed up tight, even the dog kennels quiet, built out here in the boonies where the barking could bother no one, the boarded dogs locked in for the night, maybe some comfort in there, if he could break in. No, no: the vet had had to shut down the kennel after the lawsuit, a requirement of the settlement. Bitch had had him towed; he’d sleep on her desk! But no. He wasn’t going in that place, not for anything.

No way around it, he trudged in the increasing cold for ten minutes, remembering houses around the big sweeping curve ahead. No lights in sight. Not a blink of light. Power must be down; it was always going down on these country roads. Around the curve was only one house, as it turned out, an old farmstead, faint light in the windows. Eric hurried up the long driveway and to the red-painted door. An elderly man answered, flashlight in hand, ready to use it as a club if this were death come knocking.

“Sasquatch?” the old man said, comedian. He was the ancient guy from Woodchurch Feed and Lumber, retired.

“Jack, I need to use your phone,” Eric said, coming up with the name heroically.

“Haven’t got one,” Jack said, heavy Maine accent, swallowed syllables. Back in the dark house the bright voice of an excited weatherman. Jack would be the guy with batteries for his radio, of course, the guy without a phone. “Fastest ac
cum
ulation in the records,” the old man said.

Mildly, Eric said, “I’d heard that predicted.”

“By jeezum crow,” Jack said.

Behind the old man in the dimmest possible light Eric could make out piles of cardboard boxes and high stacks of newspapers and cat-litter stations, whatever you called them, encrusted cat turds strewn all around, stacks of soiled books, folded lawn chairs, bundles of firewood, stench of piss like the breath of the house, clogged passages through all the junk.

But Jack wasn’t inviting him in: “So much for all this hockey-puck of yours about global warming!”

“Hockey-puck,” Eric repeated.

“They keep uppering the prediction. Now they says four feet!”

“Four feet!”

“Forty-eight inches! Just heard!”

No phone.

Whom had he been planning to call, anyway? He had had to let his secretary go months since, and she was still bitter. His best local friend, Carl, was in Nigeria for the year. Patty Cardinal, his church friend, didn’t drive anywhere after dark: all these private fears. Alison, be real, Alison was on permanent leave, it increasingly looked, and two hours away in any case, down in Portland, three in this weather, finally living the big life she’d always envisioned for herself, cute condo, high-pressure job, and the company of Ribbie their dog, who spent all day alone. His own house, a tidy little place he’d owned before Alison ever moved in, was on the other edge of downtown, a good five miles away, maybe six.

Hardware-store Jack had all the time in the world, was introducing various cats as Eric stood in the open door, Tingle and Pete and Round-Eye and Pretty Miss and Little Hunger-Tum.

Eric’s mind raced: his office. But that was no help, only slightly closer than home—four hours at the rate he’d been proceeding, and with the wind higher and the snow deeper every minute. The closest houses were at least two miles. A year back he might have called Jane and Bill or Drew and Sarah, these couples like friends of the marriage, but they had proven themselves aligned with Alison, or if they hadn’t they’d been neutral and that had irked him and he’d backed away, isolating himself. Alison liked to say. He started back down the list of his acquaintances, lots of whom might be helpful. Or, what the heck, call the police: he knew them all anyway from his work. They’d come and get him.

If he had a goddamn phone.

Some hell creature shrieked from back in the packed bowels of Jack’s castle. “Hunger-Tum!” the old man cried.

Seven

ERIC BANGED ON
the cabin door this time, banged and called out. His own fresh tracks had already been thoroughly buried, and he was soaked to the skin, his wrists aching from falls, but he’d made it down and now it was dark, no going back.

He was too miserable to stand on courtesy: when she didn’t answer (and why would she, even if she could hear his banging?), he took a deep breath, blew it out, grimaced, then shoved the old door, a desperate push. It fell open easily. “Halloo,” he said, though she was only at the big butcher’s block, hacking at something.

She spun, startled: “Okay, no,” she said.

“My car was towed.”

More than startled: “You’re scaring me, mister.”

“No, no. It’s not like that.”

“You’re scaring me
badly,
mister! Get out!
Out!
”

He held his hands up to show them empty. Also in case she came at him with the knife she’d been using, which it looked like she might. Quietly he said, “I’ve got nowhere else to go. Don’t be afraid. Please. You know me. I mean, I’m a nice local person. I just need help as you did. I throw myself at your mercy. All the power’s out up there. My phone was in the car.” He knew he had to up the ante: “The fucking vet bitch had it
towed.
And that place is like a fortress—I couldn’t kick the door in. I bruised my shoulder on it, I’m telling you, and I’m not exactly a shrimp. And I’m
freezing.
The snow is coming down like, like I don’t know what. Like an
explosion,
like a building coming down, okay? There’s not a car passing up there. Not one car. There’s like one house and the guy in there is completely nuts. That’s as far as I could get, all this time. And now it’s
dark.
” His voice broke, surprising him. Tears started to his eyes; he couldn’t help it.

She’d been cutting oranges, or so it smelled. The lantern light was reflected in her eyes as if it were they that burned and not the kerosene. Her big bag of tortilla chips was ripped open and half spilled on the butcher’s block. His groceries were on the floor where they’d fallen amid the ripped bags. She was still in the robe, had found her thick wool socks, still with the Rasta cap.

She said, “You made a big mistake. You think you’re nice but you’re not. What you are is you’re an idiot. You’re an idiot to help me, and you’re an idiot to come back down here. Of course there are people up there. What do you want from me? What do you
wan
t
?”

He looked to the stove, the beautiful hot stove.

She said, “Stay there. Right there. When Jim gets here? You’re
grease.
Do you understand me?
Grease.
”

“Let me just warm
up,
” Eric said. He’d seen her soften. Just one tick, but something.
Grease.
That must be her husband talking. One of those solid guys on the road crew, say, or in Maxi’s garage, tough and funny, shaved heads and rough tattoos, tender inside if you didn’t cross them, though crossing them was hard to avoid. The fire had burned down but the air in the cabin was hot, at least in a layer starting at Eric’s face. The floor remained frosty. He slipped to the stove without her assent and felt how wet he was, and likely how close to hypothermia. He couldn’t think straight. If he’d been thinking straight he wouldn’t be back down here. He pulled the rain boots off and poured puddles from them to show her how bad it really was. “It’s getting
colder,
” he said. “They said it would get colder and the roads would freeze and they have. And anyway I was scared for you. They’re saying
four feet.
Apparently it really is the storm of the century. I was worried about your safety. I mean, I was truly worried about you.”

She tapped the knife on the block. “Worried about me. Scared for you. Two stories equals a
lie.
That’s what Jimmy says.”

He pressed close to the stove, felt the heat on the fronts of his legs, the cold at the back. “Listen,” he said, “I’m sorry. Relax, please chill. This is not better for me than for you.”

“Chill? You chill, you liar.” She turned the knife, held it weapon style,
Psycho
style, took a menacing step toward him.

He felt that grin rising in his cheeks, couldn’t stop it.

“
You’ll
smile,” she said. “How does your car get towed in Woodchurch, Maine? Tell me that, mister. No one ever gets towed in Woodchurch.”

Very softly: “You win a case against the veterinarian, I guess.”

She wielded that knife, stalking closer. “You sued her? You sued the fucking nice old vet?”

Even softer: “A client sued her. She killed his dog.”

She feinted at him with the knife. “You’re a fucking lawyer?”

He shrugged, grinned harder, backed away from the stove. “Easy,” he said.

She said, “You’re not old enough to be a fucking lawyer.”

He couldn’t stop the grinning. Same thing in court when he wasn’t sure of his case. “I’m old enough to be anything,” he said calmly. “But, yes, a fucking lawyer. Okay? As small town as they get.”

Keeping her eye on him, knife still poised, she reached awkwardly across herself and pulled the long iron poker from its hook behind the stove, came at him as he shuffled backward, back into the cold, back toward the door, her weapons really more comic than menacing.

He composed his face. “I’m just a nice person who helps others for small pay or even for free, or even gives away money, and wouldn’t hurt a fly. And I’ve got no way to leave.”

She pushed the tip of the ancient poker against his chest, rested it there, too heavy to loft for long. She said, “Why don’t you call your wife?”

“She’s not available. We’re separated. It’s bad. And it’s very bad out there in the storm. I was frightened. And my phone, it’s in the car.”

Glimmer of compassion on Danielle’s face, knife still poised.

Eric turned the ring on his finger, gazed at it, a poor thin thing from antimaterialist Alison, twenty-one dollars at Kay Jewelers. Danielle had seen it, good or bad. He’d never removed it for any reason, never since Alison had stuck it on his finger in her parents’ church. More sadly than he wanted, he tugged it off, stuffed it in his pants pocket. He said, “An artifact, I guess.”

“Okay, so now it’s archeology.”

“And even if she were home where she belongs, I’m not sure the roads are passable in any case. There’s not a car in sight. Nothing’s been plowed, nothing at all. Record rate of accumulation, they said. Please put the knife down.”

Instead she feinted with it again, prodded him hard in the chest with the poker, once again indignant. “Who said? The pixies? The roads are passable, all right. Of course they’re passable. People have big four-by-four trucks around here. Nothing stops them. Don’t you have any friends? Aren’t the plow guys driving around? The tow-truck guys? The ones who towed your car, for example? But you come down here? You hide the ring and think it’s gone? I don’t know what you think you’re going to get out of this situation. Because you’re going to get
nothing,
except your teeth beaten through your lips when Jimmy gets here.”

Eric pushed the poker away from his chest, held it away from his chest, ready to catch the wrist of her knife hand if necessary. But she just kept the knife poised, fought to pull the poker back away from his grip. She wasn’t strong.

“Easy,” Eric said.

“Let go!”

“I’m not going to let go. You were hurting me. Kind of got me right between the ribs there. Easy now. Okay? You didn’t see the road. You didn’t see how much snow. That first wet stuff has frozen solid and now there’s another, I don’t know, almost a foot since you’ve seen it. Don’t scoff. It really is a foot. Just since we came down. As for my coming back, I was afraid of freezing. I didn’t want to come back down here. But there’s no one around. No one. And what I want out of the situation at this point, and what I wanted coming back down here, the only thing I wanted—okay?—is not to die. I mean, that’s how serious. A person could really die. I’m half frozen, and I’m stuck here, and it’s because I tried to help you. I did help you. You wouldn’t have made it halfway home without my help. Now it’s my turn. Why can’t it be my turn?” He couldn’t stop the shivering, stood in the freezing puddle his office socks made, thin silk.

Danielle let her end of the poker go such that the heavy handle swung and hit Eric in the shin. She let the knife come down, too, scuffed in her nice wool socks back to the kitchen corner, resumed her position at the butcher’s block, exactly the tableau he’d walked in on, went back to her chore—there’d been no interruption, Eric didn’t exist—went back to cutting the orange, not in wedges but in slices, round slices like you’d do a tomato, every seed picked out with the tip of the sharp knife. Only when she was done did she return to the problem of him, gave him a long look, the new puddle at his feet seeming to get her pity.

“Okay,” she said sharply, “my husband is an Army Ranger, you know what that means? It means if you do anything off-game he will kill you with his bare hands and he’ll stuff your body into the outhouse pit and we’ll fill it in with rocks and no one will ever know.”

Outside the wind kicked up into a new intensity, whistling through every crack in the cabin, puffs of fine snow coming up through the floorboards. Something flapped and knocked on the roof. Eric sidled back to the stove on frozen feet. She’d moved the copper tub far from the fire. The unusably torn panties were draped over its edge along with her washcloths. Eric hopped around absurdly on the icy floor while trying to keep a serious demeanor—because it was very important she take him seriously, very important he not have to go back out into the storm.

“One minute it’s a normal afternoon,” he said shivering more violently for trying not.

“The floor is frozen. You’ll have to dry your socks. I only have my one pair. Sit down. Take your socks off and dry them. Then we’ll just see.”

“Thank you,” Eric said sitting. He rolled his thin, soaked socks off, put his feet up on a warm ledge of the stove, stinging relief.

She stabbed the knife into the butcher’s block, brought him a slice of orange, watched him tear it and eat it, delicious, fresh, wet. She dipped a pot of water out of a plastic bucket on the floor, put it on the stovetop to heat, collected another orange in the kitchen, cut that up, too, slowly, methodically. He hung his socks on the edge of the tub, not too close to her broken underwear. She brought him more orange, plopped the slices on the chair arm, ate her own, looming over him, licking her fingers. The warmth started to move into his feet. He noticed how wet his pants legs were, soaking wet around his ankles and up to his thighs.

“How do you get your drinking water?” he asked, something to say.

“Just quiet,” she said.

They watched the firelight through the stove vents as the cabin darkened. The wind howled and whistled. Something landed on the roof with a startling thud, a branch, no doubt, a branch from one of the huge pine trees above. Slowly Eric’s shivering abated. He closed his eyes, felt his head nod, his neck go slack, his toes prickle and steam.