The Remedy for Love: A Novel

by Bill Roorbach

  “Hannaford,” Eric said.

  “Yes, going to be a mess.”

  “Heater is fine,” Inness said.

  “Yes, it’s good,” Galvin said. “Just keep your focus, you two. Mr. Neil, I’ll run you home, and then I got to come back down for the plow. I’m the only tow vehicle moving, maybe the only vehicle at all at this point. Got to get some plows moving. We got a single night here to clear some roads. Next storm coming. For your part, Mr. Neil, keep talking to her. For your sake as much as hers. You two are going to have to finish rescuing yourselfs. Warm layers, Mr. Neil, warm bath, plenty of liquids. Do it gradual, don’t just dive in. Are you reading me? I’m going to drop you and you need to get warm gradual and I got to get that plow in to the DOT garage.”

  “Hannaford just got that whole new organic section,” Eric said.

  Galvin shook his head, got on his radio, raised the DOT garage, explained what he was doing to the boys at DOT: Couple with hypothermia; Mr. Neil the lawyer talking nonsense, but they’ll be okay; just a slight delay. It didn’t seem to concern Galvin who the young woman might be or what Eric Neil might be doing with her.

  Hypothermic? Doubtful. If you were hypothermic you got confused and Eric was not confused—he was clearer than he’d ever been. “Storm of the century,” he said.

  “Well, storm of the week, anyway,” said Galvin. “Quite a bit of some more coming, from what they’re saying.”

  Forty-Eight

  TOWN WAS NOTHING but mountains of snow among other mountains of snow, every house and business buried to the second floor, all the streetlights on, eerie electric light, the first they’d seen in days. “You’re on the trunk line,” Galvin said, disapprovingly: the trunk line might be dependable, but it had been wicked expensive for the taxpayer, the workingman, a luxury meant for folks just like Eric. And hadn’t Alison shoved it down the town’s throat? Galvin knew right where Eric lived. Inness had begun again to shiver, shook helplessly. Eric wanted out of his clothes. He worried over the butcher’s block. He worried over all of Galvin’s endless monologue, the broken political logic. He worried about the mess at Hannaford. He rubbed Inness’s cold hands, pumped her arms. She’d fallen asleep again in the heat of the cab, couldn’t be roused, maybe best.

  The mound that was Eric’s house glowed. He’d left the mudroom light on, but the mudroom door was buried. The front door was worse, a drift covering the entire east side of the house to the roofline. Eric remembered tunneling through snowbanks as a kid. Towns advised against it now: kids got crushed. He shook Inness and she swam up as if from a deep dive, only slowly opening her eyes, smoothing her hair, wan hand.

  “Jimmy,” she said.

  “You wait here. We’re in Galvin’s truck, where it’s warm,” Eric said.

  “Don’t leave me,” she said.

  Galvin said, “You’ll get a warm bath. And warm clothes. And something warm to eat. Lotsa water. Lotsa extra water. Electric blanket, if you got ’em, but of course no one’s got ’em anymore.”

  She nodded, blinking, shivering. “Don’t leave me.”

  But Eric climbed down and stood in the street in front of his house, worrying about the weight of the snow and about the patients at the hospital out of power, the road there unplowed, acres of flat roofs all over town. Galvin got busy, retrieved a couple of steel shovels from a long tool locker built into his rig, handed one to Eric. It was heavy, hard to hold. Together, practically tunneling, they cleared enough snow to get to the mudroom door, which they found frozen shut. Eric warmed as he worked, found his thoughts coming in a straight line again: the butcher’s block, caught up in ice floes and cabin pieces, his Leatherman knife. Galvin hurried back to his truck for a pry bar and used it to chop ice, got the door open.

  “Let’s get the girl in,” he said. “I’ve gotta run back for that plow. The boys at the DOT are waiting, all the folks at the hospital.”

  “You are a hero,” Eric said.

  “Just doing what I do,” said Galvin.

  They pulled Inness down from the truck cab, sack of potatoes that Galvin put on Eric’s shoulder. “You stay focused, now,” he said to Eric. “And don’t forget I got your car, not that you’ll need it anytime soon.”

  Eric focused as best he could—Galvin had his car, right—carried Inness up the walk as the big rig clunked into gear, a great jangling of chains, blast of the air horn, and back out into the frozen night, life or death, that was Galvin.

  Forty-Nine

  ONE THING ABOUT the mudroom, it was warm. Eric lay Inness on the old wicker couch Alison had found along the roadside years before and painted blue, Eric lingering over the image of that project, almost smelling the paint.

  Inness said, “Caroline. Catherine.”

  Focus. In the light she was a mess of duct tape and scraps of clothing more miserable than Eric had realized. She shivered and shook, seemingly more so as she warmed, which seemed to cue Eric, who shivered and shook, too. There was an awful lot of snow on the house and he didn’t know how much snow a house could take, even a stone house like his own with steeply pitched roofs, and he pictured it all falling down around them.

  Inness began to struggle with the huge old cabin coat. Good, she was coming back to life. Eric realized how stiff his hands were, realized again that one of his gloves was missing, the other rigid with ice. He bent to help Inness, couldn’t negotiate the duct tape, so just peeled the coat over her head, like skinning a wild animal, the big cabin sweater coming off, too, just the girl down in there and not much of her, sweated camisoles and skinny jeans.

  She said, “Bath.”

  And Eric’s mind rushed all around the thought. He said, “It’s a Jacuzzi. Never used. Also a fireplace. And of course the heat. Galvin said we’re hypothermic, but I doubt that.”

  “Well, it’s fucking hot in here.”

  “And later I can call Patty.”

  “Patty? Why?”

  He wasn’t sure. It had been an idea in his head, that’s all, the idea that Patty was going to help. “I’m a little worried,” he said.

  “We’re safe home,” she said.

  “You’re shivering,” he said.

  “I’m fine,” she said.

  “You’re cold,” he said, shivering.

  “You seem spacey,” she said, her eyes closing. “You really do.”

  He pulled off the rain boots, unwound duct tape, got the blanket scraps off his ankles, peeled his office socks down and off his puckered toes, blisters bad.

  “It’s an intimate world we live in,” Inness said.

  “Probably we shouldn’t drink,” he said.

  “Well or poorly,” she said.

  “You’ll go back to school,” he said. Not exactly what he meant to say. What he meant to say was. He didn’t know what he meant to say. He said, “I’ll go back to work.”

  Danielle said, “I ate your ring.”

  Eric considered that.

  She said, “And you ate mine.”

  He said, “I suppose we can find them.”

  She said, “Shit into gold.”

  He peeled off her good socks, one by one, examined her swollen ankle, the skin damp and puckered, but no worse than it had been, he thought, not a blister on her.

  “We’ll take it slow,” Eric said, realizing suddenly that they were safe. “We’ll have our date. We’ll go to the beach when the weather warms up.”

  “Seems a long time to wait.”

  “I’ve got a guest room,” he said. He lifted her butt and stripped her out of her skinny jeans with great difficulty, those repaired underpants, so badly worn, pulled them off, too.

  She put a hand over her tattoo, concerned only with covering the tattoo.

  He said, “I don’t mind,” meaning the name there, the man who must be honored.

  “You should mind,” she said.

  Under Alison’s stone Buddha, Eric found the extra key. He wriggled it in the lock, pushed open the door, fresh wave of heat. He remembered turning the ther
mostat way up, had wanted to make the place a hothouse for Alison, who was an orchid.

  Inness was the ice cube now.

  Gradually, Galvin had said. Warm up gradually.

  Eric ripped the tape off the breast of his blanket, wriggled and pulled and shed the thing awkwardly, tossed it in the far corner of the mudroom, spotted his insulated ski pants hanging on a hook above, grabbed for them, failed, grabbed again: success. “Put these on,” he said. He had to help her, one leg, then the next, belly and tattoo and half-shaved fuzz, flannel-lined ski pants, heavy and stiff, but soft and warm, too, and she sighed feeling the fabric, finally lifting her butt and wriggling all the way into them, tugging the suspenders up and over her shoulders. “And this,” Eric said. His big fleece shirt, just what he’d needed all these last days, his big blue fleece.

  “I can’t get used to you,” she said, pulling off her sweated camisoles as one. She let him help her get the fleece over her head. She slumped and lay across the wicker couch, curled on herself. Her shivering had stopped, just a last involuntary spasm or two.

  Those clothes were warm.

  Inside, he pulled the packet of Jim’s letters and the vintage girlie calendar from the back of his waistband, maybe a blister there, too, no idea what to do with them. So he just held on. Around the living room, every detail caught his eye. Galvin was right—he wasn’t focusing. He had set a fire in the fireplace (built of stones from the Woodchurch River) leaving a little strip of birch bark licking out, a kind of magic trick for Alison, for his dinner with Alison. He put a match to the bark and in seconds the crumpled newspaper he’d hidden back in there had caught and the kindling, too, a fire now for Inness O’Keefe, plenty more logs where these came from, half a cord in the garage and three more buried under snow out back. He dropped his own pants, pulled his shirt off. Thoughts of the butcher’s block kept arriving. He realized he was naked, suddenly, that his boxers were missing and he was naked and just standing there. Inside him, her wedding ring was becoming his, or theirs. He hobbled up the half flight to his bedroom, found his flannel pajamas, intimate world, slipped into them, warm.

  He collected four Alison photos from the bedside (wedding, honeymoon, long-ago black-sand beach, a lost kiss in Prague) and then made rounds of the house, at least one image in every room, half a dozen in what had been Alison’s meditation loft (cheerful shots with her parents, with his, the two of them in costume for The Music Man, she alone as the lead in Hello, Dolly!, a lot of happiness, really), several more in the argument bedroom, they called it (Ally as a kid with guitar as big as she, Ally and her three sisters in order of size, Ally holding her childhood cat, Arnold). The answering machine in the tiny den blinked threateningly. He hit ERASE without listening, unlike him, left a stack of photos in frames on the loveseat in there, added Alison’s formal portrait from college (sweet, slightly unfocused-looking girl in combed hair and soft sweater, only two ways things could go). In the kitchen he pulled down a painting Alison had made in an early phase of their relationship, a lot of cheerful blues and greens, splash of red in the center, big thing in a heavy wooden frame, unbeloved no matter the compliments he’d given her, used it as a tray to load all the photos onto, all the years, well and poorly: down to the basement.

  Down there, he inspected the plumbing—no leaks, nothing wrong, nothing at all: the power had never flickered, trunk line be praised. (Alison had fought for it on the behalf of the state. Her personal investment had been minimal. But it had made her enemies, even as essential as it had proved.) Damn—Jim’s letters! The calendar! He found them on the hearth, brought the calendar to the kitchen, opened it to August, hung it where Alison’s painting had been. That pulchritudinous sixties gal, pretending not to be innocent though innocent she was, coy finger in her mouth, those chubby legs tucked under her, breasts under tight-crossed arms, a kid with all her long life ahead. (Funding had been cut off before the trunk line reached the hospital, which had been the whole point, protecting the hospital, Alison filing suit, all pending.) He put the oven on. There must be something he could cook. He put a big pot of water on to boil. You always needed a pot of water. (Alison, who would never be coming back.) There was stuff in the freezer. Soup he’d made, big batches. There were all kinds of staples in the shelves. Rice might be nice. Plenty of not-too-old veggies in the fridge, too. He just had to think. That bottle of Scotch was on the counter. Thirty-year-old Macallan, so it said. He found a couple of small glasses, brought them out by the fire with the bottle, arranged two chairs, the ones Alison had never liked, would never sit in, big comfy things in leather, pushed Alison’s stiff blue reading chair across the floor and into the dining room. He closed the double doors to hide it. Then to the linen closet and all around the house collecting blankets, at least a dozen, and that many pillows, too, and four sleeping bags and his grandmother’s quilts and the two gigantic down comforters stored in his closet. He would let Inness pick the music, plenty to choose from. So much as he looked around seemed unnecessary—bowl of pinecones, clever little boxes, Mardi Gras masks. He put them away, empty closet shelves. On the mantel, a big glass vase full of seashells. These he scattered over the blankets, why not, put the vase away, too. In the closet he found Alison’s full-spectrum therapy lamp, dragged it out, plugged it in, hit the switch: like sunshine, a heat of its own. Food, water, shelter, the light of day: these were the basics of human existence. You didn’t need the rest.

  The oil burner finished its cycle and the blower stopped and the house was very quiet—only the fire, those perfect ash logs beginning to crackle—and the strongly pitched roof above and the densely insulated walls and the stone structure all around and the mountains of snow atop it all and the new low-pressure system coming from the south with who knew how many more feet of snow and everyone around them suffering the same and the weeks it would take for the town to recover and the years it would take for the storm to be forgotten, the decades, the centuries, the eons: forgotten.

  Inness, Jesus, what was he doing! He had to get the kid inside. Why had she joked about a massage? The not-kid, who couldn’t get used to him. Eric hurried, but couldn’t recall why. The bath! Of course. He hurried though hurrying seemed impossible, almost comical, his legs barely moving, hurried as best he could, hurried to the guest suite up the full stairs in back, checked the bed—nicely made, untouched since his brother’s visit, his sister-in-law leaving everything hotel fresh, as she put it, Jeannie the suburban goddess. No photos to worry about in that room, which had once been Alison’s closet, basically. Nothing on the walls, either, come to look, the dresser empty, the desk bare, unused TV on a low table, big comfy chair and reading light, lots of space: Inness could make it her own. They didn’t need Patty Cardinal. In the unused guest bath he dampened a towel and wiped the dust from the enormous tub, started the water, felt it come hot, closed the stopper, crazy water jets, came with the house, never used, an absurd thing (Alison hated it for its representation of excess; Jeannie had made fun, found it decadent; he had found it irrelevant, but not anymore), an absurd thing that held about a million gallons of water (to go with the million-gallon hot-water heater in the basement, Alison liked to point out) and would warm Inness, save her yet again. His own teeth still chattered. He felt he’d never be warm, felt, in fact, as if he were losing heat rather than gaining. They’d best be careful, he and Inness, find their temperature slowly, as Galvin had warned. Eric could take a shower in his own bathroom. A shower would feel damn nice. He watched the tub start filling, a dramatic swirl, terribly worried about the snow weighing down on everything, the image of that butcher’s block sliding across the cabin floor, the vision of it floating in the river, his heart racing.

  Likely he and Inness could find the butcher’s block come spring. Likely it would end up on the banks of the Woodchurch somewhere above the 138 bridge, forced there by the ice, or just below, all those snags and sandbars. It wouldn’t make it far, those stout legs to catch on something. They could go in search of it in his canoe. He
pictured it on a sandbar, a blocky, stately thing, alone. Likely they’d recover it. They’d recover it and float it downstream to a spot they could fish it out, and they’d load it in the Explorer (with help if need be—Galvin?). Home, they’d put it in his kitchen, and it would be the center of all things. Funny to think the center of things right now was floating among ice pans and chunks of cabin in the Woodchurch River. More snow coming, Galvin had said.