The Remedy for Love

by Bill Roorbach

“We’re out of wine,” she said. And kept saying.

  But Eric was thinking forward, his proudest trait: “We can make wraps,” he said, “just wrap your tortillas around whatever’s left. We’ve got the grocery bags to put things in. We can bring a wine bottle full of water. Or probably maybe better to take two bottles, even if they’re heavy.”

  “Haven’t we said this, mister?”

  “We’ve said this. I’m sorry. I’m anxious.”

  “Scared and anxious. Sad and lonely. I like the way you just put it out there.”

  “That took some time to learn.” He didn’t recall saying anything about being sad or lonely, tried to think about that.

  But the woman was still talking: “And you cry whenever I do and you don’t get mad when I’m mean to you. You’re not at all who I thought. You’re like the best girlfriend.”

  Girlfriend. He knew she was quoting him. He liked it. He said, “You haven’t been mean to me. You’ve just been. Feeling your feelings.” Feeling your feelings—that was a direct quote from a movie, something Alison had rented, disastrous evening, their last, and he’d been feeling his feelings quite a lot since.

  “Yo, hello. I have been very mean to you. And you just listen and nod and wait for the, like, lava to cool. And you’re taking your clothes off the whole time, you freakazoid.”

  “I was wet. Probably hypothermic, when you think about it. When we go, we’ll have to dress in all the blankets, everything. I was disoriented. And you confuse me, too, gaping at me. I can’t tell when you’re kidding. That’s one of the things about you.”

  “Seriously. Eric. To quote yourself. I’ve seriously got it: We dress warm. We prepare our food tonight. We pack up everything tonight. We get up at first light and we go, yo. Oh, and I eat like two Advil right now and four tonight before bed and like six tomorrow before we go, six more on the way.”

  “That ankle.”

  “Thank you, Doctor. And you, too, for your shoulder. See what you would have missed if you’d left me?”

  “I wasn’t leaving, Inness.”

  “Oh. Say that again.”

  “I wasn’t leaving.”

  “The Inness part, I mean. I am Inness. I called you back to me with my heartstrings. My dad used to sing that. If I came home from somewhere, anywhere. It’s a song, a sad Irish song. He was a very sad man. He is. Lonely. Kind of mean. I called you back with my heartstrings and you heard me, mister. Say ‘disoriented.’ Say that part again.”

  “I was disoriented,” Eric said.

  “And confused,” she said.

  “And confused.”

  “And scared.”

  “Very scared.”

  She nodded with apparent pleasure at the sound of that and scooped up the last of her beans, sucked the last noodles down, burped expressively.

  After a while he said, “Your hair actually looks very nice tonight.”

  “Actually. My hair. Okay, before you start seducing everyone, please ask Inness some questions.”

  “I’m not trying to seduce everyone.”

  “And then I will ask you some questions, no singing.”

  “Like Truth or Dare?”

  “No, just, like, truth. I’ve been trying so hard to grow. Because I know a person is supposed to grow. But I don’t find I know what it means, to grow. Like you plant a seed, and somehow it gathers its life force with just the help of what? Like sun and rain and dirt? How the fuck does that work? It’s magic. Super-fucking-natural. Where I’m just me. And anyway, what would the dare be? Eric. Go outside in two-hundred-dollar loafers and saw firewood? Or I’ll shave my leggies in front of you drunk? I don’t actually know you. Eric. I don’t even know your last name.”

  “It’s Neil.”

  “Eric Neil?” She made a complicated face. “What’s your middle name?”

  “DiGiacomo. It’s Italian—my mother’s mother. Lost heritage.”

  “Eric DiGiacomo Neil. At least you have one last name. The one in the middle. And honestly, the whole thing sounds a little familiar. Like, a lot familiar.” She thought a moment. “Eric DiGiacomo Neil. Went down to the court for a deal. He tried something new and his client got screw-duh. And I can’t think of the rest, la-la, la-da, da-da. And jail time for some poor slut. Now, ask me a question.”

  “So much for the public defender’s zeal.”

  She just stared.

  “The limerick, Danielle.”

  “Jimmy’s father. Always with the limericks.”

  “You started it.”

  “Just ask me a question, yo.”

  “That’s the first yo of the evening, if I may point it out. Or maybe not quite.”

  She gave him a long look. “No, it is certainly not,” she said. “That’s just a dream some of us had. Yo. And yo. What are you saying, yo? That I’m, yo, playing myself tonight in your production? Are you counting? Ms. Inness O’Keefe, no middle name? I’m sorry about the whole Jimmy routine yesterday. I see how it hurts you if I mention Jimmy.”

  He put everything into it: “Yo.”

  She almost smiled. “See, you’re getting it now.” And then more thoughtfully: “I wear him like fucking body armor.”

  Eric didn’t want to touch that, though it was impressive, real introspection. He said, “Why ‘Danielle’? I mean how did you come up with ‘Danielle’? It will be hard for me not to call you Danielle.”

  “I almost had a baby once.”

  “Almost?”

  “Not with Jimmy. It was earlier. In high school. I didn’t know who the father was. But before I had to deal, it went away on its own.”

  “You had a miscarriage.”

  “I was terribly sad. I had thought it was a girl. I had given it a name. She was going to be the best girl ever born. She was going to be my mom reborn. And I gave her my mom’s name.”

  “Which was Danielle?”

  “Oh, fuck you, no. It was Sarah. That’s all. Pretty normal.”

  “Sarah. That’s sweet.”

  “You can call me Danielle if you want. It’s a good name. You don’t like it? I just suddenly thought of it when you asked me. Because the Inness part? That’s private. I knew someone in Presque Isle, Danielle Habegger. She was a student teacher, too, same building as Jimmy’s. Fucking skank. We used to say. Which meant we were jealous of her. I mean, I was jealous of her, very beautiful and cheerful and tennis and these huge mountainous tits and big fine ass and cleavage everywhere, those coochie-cuttin’ shorts, and blonde hair all long and very generous to me and dating everyone, and having fun and all the hard-ons following her around, and not married, like me, though Jimmy was always trying his coins on her slot. And Inness, my actual self, all chained to him and hard-wired inward and skinny. Really skinny, like kid’s clothes at Junior Miss Parade in the shitty mall up there. It’s only gotten worse. I don’t actually know how I got down here the second time. I mean, after Professor DeMarco and her husband left. I just woke up one morning and I was back down here and it was cold and I didn’t remember anything, not selling the car, not chopping my hair, not hurting my ankle, not anything.”

  The cabin had gone dark. The day had seemed very short. There was still work to be done. The night was perfectly still. Gently Eric said, “Maybe you mean something besides remember? Because, actually you do remember, because you’ve told me about these things.”

  “But I don’t remember-remember, if you know what I mean.”

  Eric nodded seriously. No point in arguing: you either remembered or you didn’t, he tended to think. Just ask any jury. He huddled under the blanket. Really, they should be making up their food for the escape.

  He said, “I haven’t thought of Alison all day.” And wished he hadn’t said it. He was steering things back to the date discussion, because he’d liked that discussion, steering things back all but purposefully, and of course he’d thought of Alison, seventy-six trombones, goodnight my someone, goodnight.

  “Truth or dare,” Inness said. “Who is the strangest person you�
�ve slept with?”

  “You. By far.”

  “I mean, the most, like, inappropriate? And let’s make it besides me. And you haven’t slept with me, remember, only slept, you slut.”

  “I slept with one of my professors in college. Dr. Constable. She was youngish, not thirty. She had me to her house for a conference over tea but opened a bottle of gin and after about four glasses told me she’d fallen in love with me because of my midterm paper, which was called ‘The Case for Atheism.’ ”

  “She took advantage of you!”

  “I don’t know. She said she’d fallen in love with me, that’s all. I tried to talk her out of it just the way you’d argue the existence of God. And next thing I knew she was bending me over the back of her couch.”

  “Redheads are always aggressive!”

  “No, dark hair. Where did you get red hair from? Very dark hair. She was from Kowloon. Married to Dean Constable. She was a selfish lover.”

  “Like that matters to a twenty-year-old boy.”

  “I don’t know. After a while. It mattered. I broke it off. You’re the first person I’ve ever told. And she gave me a D! My only D. It kept me from getting honors. Nothing I could do about it.”

  “I’m the first person you ever told?”

  “Yes.”

  “Not even Alison?”

  “She didn’t ask.” He tugged the robe around him, stood wearily, checked his trousers on the peg (nearly dry), checked his boxers (crisp), put the boxers on, put his pants on, too, then went about dragging the branches he’d found into the room. It didn’t take long to saw the load into maybe an armful of firewood.

  Inness was waiting for him: “And who else?”

  “Oh, okay. Jesus. You want a catalogue. It’s not many. I’ve had long-term girlfriends, mostly. Iskra in high school. At tall ships camp. Broke my heart.”

  “She’s sorry now.”

  “Ha. And after Dr. Constable, there was my college sweetheart, Emily Nadeau, very intellectual.”

  “And the best sex ever. I can see it in your face!”

  “No, that was Iskra. But close. Anyway, Emily broke it off. Devastating. She was the redhead. I’d bought her a ring.”

  “Tall ship camp?”

  “Long story.”

  “Then Alison in law school.”

  “No, then two short-term girlfriends. I had to break up with both of them, terrible.”

  “Not up to your high standards.”

  “Ha. No. Just. I don’t know.”

  “They weren’t very bright.”

  “They weren’t very bright, you got it.”

  “Then Alison.”

  “Then Alison. But Alison you’ve heard about. How about you? Who was your first love?”

  “We’re not talking about love,” she said. A movie seemed to play behind her eyes, and she seemed to watch it intently. She clacked her tongue privately, got suddenly to her feet, kept clacking her tongue, picked critically through his pile of wood, went about a scientific stuffing of the cookstove’s small firebox, all the bigger logs they had left, and then smaller, dozens of sticks fit carefully then jammed into the small space, then twigs between those, scores of twigs into every little opening, and each seemed to represent a lover. The wood smoked on the coals, the smoke brightened, then the fire leapt, log to log, stick to stick, a show you never got sick of. She watched a while, and he watched her, the firelight on her face.

  “Jimmy,” she said at length. “That’s all you gotta know.”

  Thirty-Six

  ERIC SEARCHED THE house for items they might use on their trek out. There wasn’t much, really nothing. A length of twine, a pair of pliers. Danielle or Inness sorted some food out, suddenly helpful. “I’ll make wraps in the morning,” she said. Eric tried not to seem too impressed. She was taking her Advil, too, and gave him his. And early she declared they needed extra sleep for the walk, climbed the ladder to the loft. Up there she undressed where he could see if he looked, her bare shoulders, anyway, a brief glimpse of her breasts, certainly not inadvertent on anyone’s part, a lot of creaking as she got into bed. They’d said they would sleep in their clothes. For safety. In case something happened.

  “Come warm me up,” she called.

  He brought all the duct tape close to the stove so it would be supple for the morning, fit a few more one-night stands into the firebox, banked the coals down, though the room wasn’t even warm, the floor positively frozen. Forcibly, he put the next morning’s project out of his mind. And then he climbed up the ladder, bearing their lamp. In its light her face looked fresh, as if she were someone he hadn’t met, that soft nose and those full lips, the soft nose relaxing amid the generally harder features, her eyes dark and alert, always alert, wary and even scared, maybe that was it, at the very least closely observant, always ready to flee. Or maybe pounce: she gave him a long inspection. Gradually, then, she let her gaze go vacant, pretended to be asleep, a kind of invitation, he thought. Wrong guy. He blew out the lamp, stumbled around to his side of the bed, felt his way in under the covers, slid himself up behind her. She was naked, of course, save for the repaired panties, threadbare cloth that caught at his fingers. So make that all but naked. And what was he doing? Just an assessing stroke of the hand in the blackest dark, a friendly goodnight in the intimate space they’d carved out, the not-sex space. The skin of her back was taut and nice and really kind of cold and the smells of the cabin were theirs now. Her hair felt soft, and in the dark you couldn’t see it, lingering scent of Breck. She’d asked him to warm her, he told himself, so he wasn’t out of line.

  Maybe she really was asleep. He listened to her breathing, felt her ribcage expand against his: very calm breaths, very quiet, very steady, but too shallow. So she was there, right there with him, feeling his hand on her back, on her butt. A wave of feeling rose in him and grew and finally crested, crashed on a rocky shore (maybe a sliver of beach in there somewhere, plenty of seaweed, one perfect shell amid the fragments), misery and ecstasy entwined into something new and for her alone; anyway, he hadn’t felt anything just like it before, and never anything so strongly. He felt he had something to tell her. Fully dressed, boxers and trousers and shirt and socks, he pressed up behind her, let his hand drift down the side of her thigh, let it drift back up, warming her, smoothing a trail through goose pimples. Her butt was hard and thin and cold and her panties caught at his roughened fingers. He caressed the bony rise of her hip, gained the summit slowly, then even more slowly down into the next valley, tracing the shot waistband, lightly, lightly, two fingers only, his breath starting to rise even as hers grew steadier yet, his two fingers tracing the skin above the elastic, feeling for her tattoo—he could swear he felt her tattoo.

  “Mister,” she said suddenly and tugged his hand higher on her belly.

  “Sorry,” he said quickly.

  “I feel you,” she said accusingly.

  “Yeah,” he said.

  She backed into him. “Something to look forward to.”

  “You’re taking my part,” he said.

  “You can whack off when you’re safely home,” she said louder.

  “And what about you?”

  “More like twirling. But that’s my business.” She wriggled against him, and not subtly, comedy rather than passion, or so it seemed to Eric. Suddenly she turned to face him, a great, awkward thumping around, expressive squeaking of the old bedsprings, finally pushed her hands against his chest. Needing space? He backed off, but she followed, her breath in his face.

  “What?” she said.

  “I guess I want to kiss you,” he said.

  “You were smart before,” she said. “You were very smart. When you were like three-quarters drunk. Smarter than me. Don’t be stupid now.”

  “Just one small kiss,” he said.

  She seemed to think about that. She thought about it a long time. All the tension went out of her. She whispered, and soulfully, too, “You are the best kisser,” but pushed harder at his ches
t, pushed him away, turned up the volume: “But the answer is no. Not with all the trouble down south.” Louder yet: “Police with nightsticks and dogs. Firemen with hoses. SWAT teams on call. Answer is no.” Then angrily: “No way!” Of course she was right. But in the dark she slid her hands down his belly atop his shirt, bumped over his belt, massaged him through his pants. And whispered again, whispered to his mouth, working her way through two narratives: “Just the way your fingers go? I can tell it would be really, really good.” He’d been that close, a torment, and now. She breathed, as if for him, almost silently: “Just the way your kisses go.”

  He puffed hard, and harder, trying not to be too loud, didn’t want to seem too quick.

  But she knew what she was doing, and quick was just what she wanted. To his mouth she said, “Baby,” as if it were just a conversation. And then, all matter-of-fact: “Go ahead.”

  And he did, nothing for it, no way to command himself otherwise, trying to keep the motion to a minimum, the noise from his mouth. “Honey,” he said. “Sweetie.”

  After a minute or two she took her hands off, found his shoulders, pulled him close. “That was legal,” she said.

  “Nothing’s legal,” he said.

  “But mister. You don’t get a kiss. No more of that. Dat be crime wave.”

  “Please don’t talk like that.” And despite the injunction he kissed her forehead, kissed her soft nose.

  She ducked away when he found her mouth, she said, “Keep your fucking oxytocin to yourself.”

  He kept trying—really wanted that kiss.

  “Behave,” she said.

  “I am,” he said. “I will.” He did.

  She said, “Pretend you care about me. Ask about my family. Ask about my childhood.”

  “No,” he said. “I can’t ask about anything right now. And I do care about you. Obviously.”

  She commandeered his hand, slid it off her butt, kept it, brought it to her side, used it to strum her protruding ribs. And she whispered in his face: “Ask about my father. No one ever asks about my father. He’s still in Jersey. He won’t travel. He’s never been to Maine. And it’s not like I’m going down there. Haven’t seen him in five years. Since Jim and I got married.”