The Remedy for Love: A Novel

by Bill Roorbach

  Their sex life, which had never exactly sizzled (and Eric knew sizzle: Iskra), fizzled, to use the language of a women’s magazine he’d seen at the dentist’s office. A teaser had caught his interest, and waiting for a filling he’d read the ten ways to put that sizzle back. He knew flowers had no effect on Alison, and he knew that lingerie wasn’t going to work—she was a flannel girl. He did offer a massage, item seven, which she accepted (the first he’d seen her naked in weeks), accepted and napped through, waking only to slap his hand when he reached too high inside her leg. And he made her dinner, also breakfast, items nine and ten respectively.

  Talk of children didn’t move her, not at all: she was not going to have a pack of stainers get in the way of a career. Stainers, that was her word! And since procreation was what sex was ultimately about, what was the point of pursuing it? Pleasure? Pleasure you could get from a meal! She’d been raised to expect the best in all things, and she studied the gap between her expectations and the reality of their lives with close attention. You have low libido, she said to him as they ate sometimes, you are bored by sex, you shut me out: but that was her jury-trial strategy. You never knew she was doing it till later, when it was too late to argue, too late to reverse the verdict.

  Really, there wasn’t enough wood. Eric cleared the way back outside—the snow falling so fast and dumping off the steep roof so continually that the doorway was already blocked again—bashed his way back beneath the underskirts of the hemlocks. In the near-dark and relative silence under there he collected dead-dry sticks and handfuls of fine twigs as high up into the trees as he could painfully reach, unwilling to venture back up the hill for anything more substantial. He made bundles of fuel, passed them out of the relative quiet and into the storm. The wind had definitely gathered force, seemed to come from a new direction. The hemlocks drooped and swayed. The two mighty white pine trees creaked and groaned overhead, flung twigs and bundles of needles. Another hour passed like nothing, or ten minutes, who could tell, except that the overcast got darker and then darker again, dusk coming, exercise endorphins coursing through him like whatever caused love, but darkened by adrenaline: something in him ready to fight.

  The house was warm. He brought his bundles in two at a time.

  Danielle was up, stood by the stove glowering, moody thing.

  Eric patted his pockets, just a quick message he wanted to type into his phone, quick note to Alison, laughed at himself when he remembered.

  “Merry fucking elf,” Danielle said.

  Twenty

  IN THE SUDDEN dusk she went about making tea. He lit the kerosene lamp, placed it on the butcher’s block beside Jim’s photo, tried not to linger over that oddly kind face, pulled the chairs up to the stove, not too close together, sat and waited like a proper hired man, already chilled in his damp shirt and pants, blighted loafers, silk socks, the day gone by along with all hope of leaving. She spooned a blob of crystallized old honey into each mug. He resisted telling her how to recover the stuff—it would taste good whether recovered or not. The vintage tea came from a clever box and she simply spooned it into the smallest pot, let it sit in boiling water a precise while, finally poured it into the hot mugs unstrained. She handed him one and it was like a hardy little animal in his hands, quick and warm. He sipped at it in pecks, picked flecks of tea leaf off his tongue, felt the heat suffuse him.

  “You’re like the best girlfriend,” he said.

  “You wish I were your girlfriend,” she said crossly. She coddled her tea and sat beside him, nothing more to say, none of his games. When they’d finished the first cup she poured them each a little more, pulled her big sweater off over her head. He liked her shoulders, nothing wrong with that. He liked her arm in the lamplight, the straps from her double camisole falling. She didn’t sit with her tea but tidied some more, filled the little pot with cold water from the slipper tub, retrieved the lamp and set it closer with a quick look at Jim’s photo. She padded over to the shed door, tested it, checked the front door, gave a long look at the emerging Lichtenstein Castle, straightened the little rug with her toe, collected Eric’s jacket and shook it out.

  “It’s nice how you swept up,” she said.

  “We can burn the sawdust later,” he told her.

  She picked up The Maine Woods, stared at the cover a moment, brought it over and placed it on the arm of his chair.

  “Let’s read,” she said.

  She climbed the ladder and returned quickly with an old copy of The New York Review of Books, of all possible reading material, a large-format magazine printed on high-end newsprint, no doubt left in the cabin by Professor DeMarco. Settling beside Eric, she opened it right up and disappeared instantly and completely into the sentences she found there.

  No choice, Eric started back with Thoreau, flipping to his place, not very far, gradually warming to the paragraphs. This was a different Thoreau from the one in Walden, who was two at once: cocky little bastard, delightful genius. In The Maine Woods he was much more the storyteller, older and wiser, less aphoristic, less moralizing, more seasoned, offered a story with characters, all of them marching through the woods. Starting with Polis, Thoreau’s native guide, a man who, when the time came for them to paddle, walked into the forest for a single day and emerged with a birch-bark canoe he’d built from scratch, genius of another order. The Abenaki people, Eric reflected, had got through a thousand years of winter with fewer tools than this cabin offered. Outside the wind howled steadily, rocked the walls with frequent gusts. Maybe the cracks of the house had all been filled with snow and ice; anyway, the wind was nearly all outside now. Thoreau had been in love, loved the woman who had rejected him, loved her to the end of his days.

  Danielle’s arm was bent holding The New York Review of Books, her face buried in the pages (she read very close to the page—missing glasses?). Eric couldn’t help it, examined a tidy biceps, the particular camber of her bones, not enough meat on them, but still. He read a page of his book, couldn’t stay with it. The lamplight flattered Danielle. Even in the Rasta cap. She was older than he’d first thought, maybe closing in on thirty, and much smarter than he’d thought, so he’d seen. All the street talk, all the swearing and yo-ing—that was playing dumb, maybe for Jimmy, a wall she could put up around her, a wall that Eric wasn’t going to be able to climb but that would have to be blasted away if he were to get her out of here and to safety. Quite a bit in her story wasn’t coming together. She pushed on her soft nose as she read, flattened it, let go, flattened it again, a deep enough person for tangled undercurrents of thought to ripple in her face. That made her different from most of his indigent clients, who tended to have trouble concentrating on anything, ever. Back to the Thoreau, speaking of concentration. Her fingers were long. Polis stood in the canoe, used a pole, poled through the wildest rapids.

  Eric and Danielle read as the night came down—seventy pages on Eric’s part, so likely quite a bit more than an hour. He kept noticing the coat smell on himself, considered that he had sweated through his shirt and his boxers more than once in the course of this adventure. Gradually, he became aware of Danielle’s scent, too, which was the coat to some degree, and the mildewy cabin to another, but more particularly that Ben-Gay smell (from a stash she was secretly rubbing on her ankle?), also something more personal, feral, not unpleasant, exactly. Surely she’d washed—he’d seen her wash—but there would have been no way for her to clean her clothes once the river became inaccessible, and after a while your own odor escapes you, as surely as no doubt his own odor was escaping him. The fire felt good and warm and the tea had heated his toes, but what he needed was a long, hot shower, and she needed one, too.

  She turned a crackling page, studied a photograph.

  Eric planned forward (always planning, as Alison liked to taunt): the storm would be done before long and he and Danielle could battle their way out and to the road and he could retrieve his car and he could get her to Patty Cardinal’s house. Patty had taken in half a dozen
lost souls in recent years and never been burned. She had a kind of halfway-house apartment over her garage with its own bath, plenty of hot water, no kitchen (because addicts start fires). But nothing would make Patty happier than to cook meals for Danielle, fatten her up. Patty was chair of the church clothing drive, as well, and would have decent pants and endless T-shirts and a few pretty nice things and very likely a good, warm coat all clean and ready. He’d have to be delicate bringing it up with Danielle. People in trouble didn’t want to seem that way, he’d often noticed, and could be infuriated by the merest suggestion of help. Maybe if he said his poor, sad friend Patty was looking for a tenant. First couple of months free. Not charity, but that she needed help with shoveling snow, stuff like that. For Danielle there’d be the benefit that it would keep her alive through winter, and possibly help her get back to work or even school, keep her away from her in-laws in Presque Isle. She’d have her own door and stairway to the backyard at Patty’s, and she’d be right in town, at least until Jimmy returned. And Eric would go after the guy who’d hijacked her vehicle, get her a little more money on the deal (threatened headline: LOCAL CAR DEALER TAKES ADVANTAGE OF AFGHAN WAR HERO’S WIFE). Her husband would thank him. Poor Jim, who had no way of knowing how bad things had gotten for his girl! Eric kept getting the picture in his head of this tough Army Ranger shaking his hand in gratitude.

  “Yo,” Danielle said suddenly. She crackled the magazine, lots of book ads on the back, didn’t withdraw from its folds, read quickly and clearly, no stumbling, hint of the substitute teacher, an educated person, not who she pretended to be: “ ‘In the American view, marriage remains the ideal state: only 10 percent of Americans endorse the idea that the institution is outdated, compared to, say, in France, where a third of people think it is.’ ”

  She held the page so he could see it, but wouldn’t hand it over, pulled it away when he tried to get hold. The article was called “The Marrying Kind” and was a review of four books about marriage, illustrated with a still photo from The Graduate: Dustin Hoffman making off with Katharine Ross in her wedding dress, Anne Bancroft holding on to her for dear life, playing Mrs. Robinson.

  Eric said, “Did you know that Dustin Hoffman was already twenty-five when that movie was made, and Anne Bancroft just twenty-seven? They were only two years apart!”

  She ignored him, went back to reading.

  His response had been lawyerly, he realized, deflective. That’s why she was irritated: she was saying something about him and Alison, and he wasn’t hearing it.

  She read to herself a while more and said, “Okay, mister, I’m getting to the good part here, listen up: ‘Gottlieb thinks that she and other unmarried women in their thirties or older have gotten unrealistic notions of life and men, and are just too picky. Besides requiring that a guy be tall, have intelligence, education, kindness, a good income, and hair, he has to have an instant spark and avoid off-putting quirks like the wrong taste in TV programs or clothes. Her view that women have to learn to look for the good qualities of men who may not fit with their exigent dream lists, but with whom they know they get along, is exactly the advice mothers have always given daughters, but was somehow not transmitted to Gottlieb’s generation.’ Great, huh?” She studied him to find whatever effect she was having. “Discuss.”

  Intelligence is beauty, he thought, with all the force of a revelation. He said, “I like the way you read. You really are a teacher. I like how confidently you pronounce all those words—you’ve got precision.”

  “Eric. I’m sorry. You really are a giant squid. I like your clouds of ink. It’s really thorough. The way you do it. Nothing to say about the article?”

  “Ink,” he said. In court, you repeated the question to gain time: “Okay. Something to say about the article. Women might need to look for the good qualities of men who aren’t their dreamboat. But I guess I just don’t see the point.”

  “The point is: doesn’t that describe what happened with you and Alison? That after a while, she thought she could find a better model?”

  “Why are you so interested in my wife?”

  “Let go with your sucker arms.”

  “Tentacles, you mean. Squid have tentacles.”

  “The article.”

  “My dad used to say that there are two ways marriage can go: well or poorly.”

  “Squish-squish, mister. Clouds of ink like fucking fog. ‘Well or poorly’ my ass.”

  “Okay. I think you’ve got it a little wrong. I’d call it an essay. With a thesis. She’s saying that some women never find a man to fit their ideal vision of a mate, that it’s not possible to find such a man, that they have to learn to settle, and then learn to consider the man they’ve settled on the pinnacle.”

  “Just what I’m saying. With a thesis: Alison settled for you. And then, happily married, happily balanced on the pointed peak of you, she kept looking. Eric.”

  “She did find a better model. Definitely closer to her dream. I can admit that. He’s got the height and he’s got the high-visibility government thing going, and he’s undoubtedly got the spark.”

  “As if you don’t, mister. You’re practically a TV host. In the store, I marked you for a grinner. You don’t know what a grinner is? No? Aren’t you supposed to know stuff? A grinner is, like, you can tell the checkout lady’s mad so you grin at her. You grin at the people behind you in line. You grin at me, even when I’m, like, clearly fucking desolate. And when I’m . . . ? You grin. You’re trying to look harmless but you’re hiding this fat aggression. It’s a little sick. You’re grinning now, mister. It’s like looking at a double exposure—you want to show how friendly and nonthreatening you are, but at the same time you look like you’re about to bite me.”

  He composed himself, said, “You’re the one that bites.”

  “You grin because you’re afraid.”

  Eric said, “You don’t smile at all.”

  “I’m sorry I slapped you.”

  “I wasn’t afraid. Or if I was afraid, I was afraid you’d take offense. In line at the store, I mean.”

  “You were afraid. We’re all afraid. Your greatest fear, what is it?”

  “I don’t know. Probably death.”

  “You grin.”

  “And car accidents involving death.”

  “Why does that make you smile? You’re almost about to laugh.”

  “What’s your greatest fear?”

  “Being dumb. That’s what I liked about college. Professor DeMarco was always giving us stuff to read. Stuff you would never have thought. A person is allowed to be interested in stuff. That’s what I learned. And I just find this subject interesting. Male aggression. And by the way, your father was wrong. There are a million ways marriage can go, or anything else; well or poorly, those aren’t even the extremes.”

  “You are funny,” he said.

  “Well, you are not.” She made little squid hands, squirted ink.

  Eric said, “I don’t get the squid metaphor.”

  She said, “You are not too bright, clearly.”

  A silence grew. Eric got to his feet unsteadily and tunked a log into the stove, settled back into his chair, realized he was grinning very hard, couldn’t make it stop. He picked up Thoreau, found nothing but strings of words, grinned more. He put his hand over his mouth, hid behind his book, but he was practically giggling.

  After a few minutes, Danielle put her magazine down again, gave him a long, appraising look. She said, “He has studied Chinese. Mandarin, I mean—every Ranger in his unit has to have a fucking language. Some have several, like A-rab and Persian and I don’t know, Russian. They all studied Pashto and the other one over there, which is Dari. For a month at LeJeune. I don’t get how you learn anything in a month, but. One of them is fluent somehow, the language guy. And Jimmy, his legs are too short. In proportion, I mean. Very long in the body. Am I repeating myself? Like, a Michael Jordan body stuck on short legs. He’s great at surfing and skateboard. And shredding. Because thos
e short sticks give him low center of gravity. Put it this way: I would not have married him except he was on exit.” She turned the big engagement ring on her delicate finger, clicked it against the tiny wedding ring that held it in place. “He paid, like, thousands.”

  Eric had thought it was fake. Finally his grin subsided. He said, “And you said yes.”

  “I said, Yo. And we fucked on the hood of his truck. Flinch.”

  “What kind of truck?” Eric said.

  But she didn’t get it, that Eric was refusing to rise to the bait, or maybe she did, went back to her reading, quickly absorbed.

  Eric had always been in competition with guys like Jim. Stronger, faster, braver, often less intelligent, but handsome as oak trees. And as sensitive. Eric had that going, at least, sensitivity, though Alison was the one who claimed it, narcissist. He tried a little more Thoreau, the anti-Jim if ever there was one, found he could concentrate, began to enjoy Polis again, Thoreau and his Penobscot guide making their way into the forest:

  The Indian sat on the front seat, saying nothing to anybody, with a stolid expression of face, as if barely awake to what was going on. Again I was struck by the peculiar vagueness of his replies when addressed in the stage, or at the taverns. He really never said anything on such occasions. He was merely stirred up, like a wild beast, and passively muttered some insignificant response. His answer, in such cases, was never the consequence of a positive mental energy, but vague as a puff of smoke, suggesting no responsibility, and if you considered it, you would find that you had got nothing out of him. This was instead of the conventional palaver and smartness of the white man, and equally profitable.

  Eric recognized his own style in Polis’s, something Alison with her pop-psychological insights had called passive-aggressive, but which Eric had always merely thought cautious. It was also a great negotiating tool, his slowness at times, his silence after an adversary or interlocutor would say something like, “So, how’s about ten K?” and Eric would sit at the other end of the phone stunned by the generous amount, thinking through all the possible replies, thinking how ten thousand dollars would help his client or how it would help himself or thinking about whatever issue was at hand, thinking and thinking in silence, dead phone till the other person would say: “Okay, twelve.” And still he wouldn’t get the effect of his silence—he’d only realize it maybe the next day—but think and think and feel the pleasure of the extra two thousand till the other person would say, “All right. Fifteen. But that’s the best we can do. Final offer.” And he’d hold a little longer silence, more aware of what he’d achieved, and finally say, “Well. All right. I think we can live with that.”