The Remedy for Love

by Bill Roorbach

  “It’s me,” he called. “It’s Eric. I’m down here. Downstairs.”

  Her face appeared in the faint, faint light. Still confused: “Eric?”

  “Yes. It’s me. Eric. You were asleep. I think you’ve been asleep.”

  “You think I’ve been asleep.”

  “You’ve been asleep.”

  “But what are you doing down there?”

  “I’m, I’m down here.”

  “I think I didn’t finish talking to you.”

  “We had a very, very nice talk.”

  “We did. It was a good talk.”

  “I’m working on the fire.”

  “You’re working on the fire.”

  “It’s very cold.”

  “What were you doing coming up and down?”

  “Up and down?”

  “What were you doing? I heard you coming up and down.”

  “I don’t know,” Eric said. “I was. I just thought. I thought it wasn’t right. I was trying to make a bed.”

  “You weren’t thinking of Alison?”

  “No, not Alison. If anyone, I was thinking of Jimmy. You and Jimmy. How important that is.”

  “And how you want to be back with Alison.”

  “Well. We have been trying to work it out.”

  “Work it out,” Inness said. “I see. So why did you say Jimmy?”

  “Because, it has not worked out.”

  “And you had to turn it on me? Like, you left me alone up here because of Jimmy? You don’t even know Jimmy.”

  “You know what I meant.”

  “I know what you meant? You leave me alone up here. You want to kiss me then you leave me alone up here. Because you’re thinking of Alison. Who isn’t so much work as me.”

  “I didn’t leave you. I’m right here. I’m fixing the fire.”

  “You got out of bed. You were thinking of Alison. How you’ve been with Alison so long. How she likes your fucking rock-hard Italian cheese.”

  “I was thinking of you. You and Jimmy.”

  “You were thinking of me and Jimmy.”

  “I was thinking of you and Jimmy, yes.”

  “You put your ring back on. Eric. Don’t think I didn’t notice.”

  Eric touched his hand. She was right. He’d put the ring back on, some absent moment, when? He had no idea. But that had been his right hand on her ribs. Oh, and his left on her back, the hand she’d had to collect.

  She disappeared.

  He shook his head, took the ring back off, buried it back in his pocket, sighed more loudly than he meant (that was his animal side trying to reach her, trying to tell her she was right), remembered the broken puzzle table, found one of its legs half buried in snow, put it in the fire. He stirred the coals with the table leg, got some light out of them, dropped the table leg back in, watched it catch. And that was it. Unless they burned the rest of the furniture, they’d be departing from a very cold cabin come morning.

  “Eric,” Inness said.

  He looked up, couldn’t see, something between them—a blur between them—Jesus! One of the couch cushions, flying down from above. It bounced hard off the floor and into one of their chairs, knocking it over with a slam. He laughed, couldn’t help it. And then there she was again, and the next cushion came flying down, this one straight at him. He punched at it automatically, deflected it into the butcher’s block, shouted: “Hey!”

  “Fuckface!”

  And here came the old coat, swirling down upon him. “Inness,” he shouted.

  But she shouted back: “You think you can just crawl off like that?” And disappeared into the shadows.

  Give her a minute, Eric thought. She wasn’t even awake. He couldn’t see a thing up there. The stove was still warm. He stood close to it, the table leg crackling in there. “Light the lamp?” he ventured after a while. He could hear her shuffling up there. He said, “You have the matches. Light the lamp and let’s talk.” He patted his pocket. What time was it?

  “Here’s your fucking lamp,” she said. And threw it emphatically, its fine glass chimney shattering on the floor, the steel base rolling clear to the far wall trailing kerosene.

  “Inness!”

  She appeared ghostly at the edge of the loft, flung her heavy mug straight at his head, water and all. He ducked and it hit the kitchen counter with a solid thud, unbroken.

  A sudden brightness, an explosion of brightness—she’d lit one of the wooden matches, brief view of her face before she snapped it at him. It flickered out in the air and then the next explosion of light as she lit another and flipped it down, and then another.

  “There’s lamp oil on the floor,” he said evenly. “Inness, there’s kerosene.”

  Another match flew down as the first sputtered out. He ducked, jumped to step on the new one even as another landed on his shirt. She was getting faster at it, the sulfur still burning as the matches hit the floor. The smell of kerosene came to his nose. “Enough,” he said. “Now, stop.”

  Her face lit up devilish; the matches came flying, little emissaries of her wrath, Eric like a dancer trying new leaps, stomping each one out. Finally the matchbox itself came flying down, a relief: she was out of ammunition. But here came the magazines from the little shelf up there, great velocity in the blue dark, like unkempt birds landing all around him, then the books, fluttering bombs, all aimed at his head. He ducked and dodged, tried not to grin, kept repeating her name: “Inness, Inness O’Keefe, Inness, Danielle!”

  When the books were gone he stepped forward, arms out like Romeo’s, or maybe Stanley Kowalski, anyway, beseeching: “Inness O’Keefe!”

  But there was a smashing noise, then her face and shoulders, her scrawny arms, and here came the bookshelf itself, a heavy wooden thing that simply plummeted, landed at Stanley’s or Romeo’s feet, might have knocked him out if he’d been a step closer, might have killed him, ended the play right there. “Inness, goddamn it!”

  Next her bucket of piss, unexpected, and it hit him square in the chest, a splash and a stench, real pain. And then the bedclothes, next the mattress, major effort, then the bedstead, a lot of old springs in a flimsy metal frame, sproing on the floor, and now, nothing left, her discarded jeans, right in his face, then her shirt and her socks. Finally, she stepped out of the repaired underpants and threw them. Naked she came to the edge of the loft and kicked the ladder so hard that it swung out and fell, hit the slipper tub with a mighty, gonging boom. In solidarity the cabin lurched and shuddered, a series of loud, grinding crunches beneath.

  “Inness,” Eric said.

  Her weapons were gone.

  So, very softly, very gently, like singing a bedtime song, he sang her name: “Inness O’Keefe. Inness, Inness.” Just her name, as soothingly as he could manage, given his emotion, given hers, something to fix her in time and space. “Inness,” he said, “O’Keefe, Inness O’Keefe.” He retrieved the tank from the lamp, set it right, wiped at the dripped oil—not a lot, thankfully—wiped at it with one of the paperback books she’d thrown, crossed the room singing her name, popped the book into the stove, a sudden explosion of light.

  “Inness, Inness. Inness O’Keefe.” He picked up a few more books, collected the bedding. He righted the bookshelf, but whatever glue had held it together had let go and the poor thing fell into a sagging parallelogram. “Inness O’Keefe,” he kept saying. “Inness, Inness.”

  Eerie silence up there, till finally there was a shuffling and she appeared at the edge once more, precarious and naked, the FedEx envelope in hand. She dug in, grabbed a handful of little pages and matching slips of cardboard and threw them, then the next handful and the next: Jim’s letters, a thousand fluttering leaves, little helicopters in the dim light, finally the FedEx envelope itself, planing through the daintier flights and hitting the front of the stove with a slap.

  Thirty-Nine

  HE PUT A couple of more books in the fire—fat ones: Victor Hugo in French, and something gigantic called And Ladies of the Club. That
gave him enough light to gather Jim’s letters into a rough pile, stuff them back into the big envelope. He was not going to let her leave Jimmy Tremonton LaRoque’s letters behind. He cleaned himself again, a laborious process, had to accept that his shirt was going to smell, used a few of the magazines to wipe up the piss that had hit the floor, already half frozen, put it all in the stove.

  Upstairs, she cried very hard. He heard her blow her nose, but into what? There was nothing up there. She was naked without a blanket or scrap of cloth of any kind. And then, surprise, he heard her snoring, snicking, a kind of chopped and clicking and snotty breathiness, a woman who could fall asleep on a dime. He righted the heavy ladder quietly as he could manage, collected the worn sheets and the smelly blanket, climbed up there and covered her where she lay on the boards. Back downstairs he fed more books into the fire, dragged the mattress and couch cushions over near the warmth. He moved the slipper tub quietly as he could (the snow island now frozen in place, but free water under the fresh ice), made himself a new nest on the frigid floor, mattress then couch cushions, the remaining bed sheet, the coat. Inside his head he had nothing but Inness and her anger. And suddenly two negative Alison scenes: one, his attempt to stop her exit after their last dinner (several months before, maybe actually six months before, maybe more, if he admitted it), the arm of her sweater stretching in his grip, stretching, the calm hatred on her face; two, the last night that Alison had stayed over, all the way back in summer, when he thought of it, a swim in this very river but up near the college campus, her new very skimpy bathing suit, not bought for his eyes. Four small bruises—clearly the marks of a strong grip—high on her inner thigh. “Don’t know,” she’d said a couple of times when he asked. “Always banging into things.”

  A sudden roar and tremor and thudding brought him to sitting. He knew right away what it was: the snow on the river side of the roof had let go, tons of the stuff cascading and splashing past the window and into the river on the still, still night. When it was done, silence once again, but their only window was completely covered. Upstairs Inness snicked and snored, oblivious.

  Forty

  HE WOKE SHORTLY, shivering, no faint gradation of dawn light. There’d been some loud cracks in the air like shots, something in the structure of the cabin breaking. Their blanket-and-ice patch job seemed to be splitting down the middle, like a plaster wall breaking, though the snow wall that had formed behind it looked solid. And now there was a kind of rumbling, barely audible.

  Which stopped.

  He hadn’t written his note to Alison. If he didn’t make it. Their wills were unchanged. She’d get everything. Probably she’d sell the house. He stuffed more books into the stove to give some light, a little heat, dragged the metal bed-frame over quietly as he could manage, bent it more or less square, threw the mattress on. He collected more books, indiscriminately threw them in the fire, even Madame Bovary, even Balzac, finally The Maine Woods, and good-bye to Thoreau. He gathered up a pile of sawdust and fed that into the flames. Come morning, he and Inness could break up the bookshelf and burn it, make coffee before their escape. He’d have to hide Jim’s letters in his clothes somehow—she might do something rash—he knew that in the end she wouldn’t want them destroyed. He found the thick FedEx envelope. The fire was bright for the moment. He pulled the first page of a letter out at random, noted the salutation:

  My dear Inny: Nights here like nights in Maine but drier, and not many trees. I mean the pure silence. Errrr. Also the clear sky. The stars are about the same. The air is different. Smells spicy and burning. I don’t know burning what. We on furlough three days. HYFR. After a clean-up near here. Something to say. I have some bad evil on me. It’s very bad evil. Little shit turn out to be twelve. Twelve with Kalashnikov. We will have to live awful well, you and me, to make up for this badness. Kellogg is

  And another, just a fragment on the light blue paper:

  gravel pit behind Clark’s? And you be saying I could do it if I try, if I close my eyes. And you pull me in there. It was so humid, hot as shit. I never been afraid of the water at night again. And we slept on the slab of granite? I be saying the rest but I don’t wanna give the censor a fucking chubby. Remember, yip? That was the other thang you led me through. I kept asking if

  They were all like that, mysterious scraps of information, or no information at all, the jaunty hip-hop language. Here and there a firefight noted, or an old lady’s corpse, an infant they’d found in a tree after battle still breathing and the argument over what to do with her, but she died. Eric put more books in the stove for light: they didn’t make much heat. No complaining from Jim, no complaining of any kind, no introspection either. Just a soldier missing his girl and doing his job and counting the days, at least while the days were boring, which they were until they weren’t—that kind of language. Jim was offering a report, not an analysis, mostly built on the clichés of his industry. Otherwise it was fairly moving declarations of love and memories of home, marred by efforts to turn her on, never an “I love you,” though often promises of a better life when he returned:

  of names. William. Or Robert. Something simple. No, I ain’t against it, baby. I know I said never, but I just see him at your boobs and then in a stroller, you know, and then we’re throwing that football and he’s swinging that bat and I’m coaching his team, you know. I coming around fer sure. I know it’s the only reason you agreed to marry me! Errrr. My little wife. So if that be what you want, I think we know how to go about it. But let’s get everything settled first. Our own place. Don’t worry, I agreeing wit you.

  In her handwriting along the scant margin a list of girl’s names: Lolly, Holly, Merrily, Candy, Bliss, Margaret, Sue, Danielle—the last underlined, and underlined again. Upstairs, Inness mumbled in her sleep, turned in her covers, moaned something, sniffed and snorted a couple of times, fell back into her wracked breathing. He remembered the votive candles, climbed out of his nest, found two of them, placed them on the arm of her chair, lit them. Back to bed and back to the letters, a man to be found in the handwriting, Jim speaking directly to him the way he’d felt him speak indirectly through Inness’s talk, and Inness’s kisses, or anyway Danielle’s, a page ripped in half:

  People get a look at yo’ booty, it’s going to be like a line following you down the street. But I know in Presque won’t anybody come after you, yo. Cuz they know what we have and they know what they will get from me. K-Bomb be teaching me skills! And I know you won’t go sniffing downtown

  The next envelope was the thickest one, and had come from the U.S. Government: Inness O’Keefe LaRoque, Presque Isle, Maine. Eric weighed it a moment—he shouldn’t be going through her mail. But that thought was balanced by the sure knowledge that she’d delivered this package to him on purpose. He slipped the letter out, unfolded it, simple stuff, dated April 6, so nine months gone, and suddenly obvious, as if he’d always known:

  We regret to inform you that First Lieutenant James Tremonton LaRoque has been killed in action near Kandajar, Afghanistan.

  Forty-One

  THE LOW RUMBLING beneath the house resumed, accompanied by faint shuddering.

  Eric dug through the FedEx envelope more urgently, trying not to crumple all Jim’s little pieces of notepaper, found another official letter, this one on White House stationary, and not a form letter, either, but President Obama himself thanking Inness for her sacrifice, and praising Jim for his bravery, personally signed: dark, thick fountain-pen ink.

  Folded inside that was a tightly handwritten letter from one Captain Frederick Kellogg, who must have been the Freddy that Jim so frequently mentioned in the tiny pages, also known as K-Bomb, apparently, as you put things together, the munitions man in Jim’s Army Rangers unit. This had been crumpled and torn to bits, then meticulously taped back together, pieces missing:

  Dear Mrs. Laroque: Excuse this letter out of the blue and into your heartache I share it. I am home in Tennessee and finally I can hold a pencil again. I was close with yo
ur husband. He died as a hero. I expect you would want to know that he was a great leader and had to do some very tough things. He had to keep the mission going when we were getting shot up. When Prince went down and DuValley got shot. That was the hardest thing and he did that. Kept going. We didn’t know when we were training and before deployment or even in the first couple months in country that we were in actual danger not till the first man was shot. I mean really know. That changed us all. We became closer than already. And we became more real. And very angry with endless rage. But Jimmy was calm, always for the mission and made us a unit always. Never scared. That was us, and that was Jimmy. My heart is heavy for your loss. Which I hope you won’t be offe

  There was a gap, a triangular piece missing under all the tape.

  six months. That is unofficial, of course, because extralegal. It was a quadrant we called Talibanistan. We had many contacts among the local people. They loved Jim and called him Dratfhar, that is a kind of river barge. It is very square and strong and hard to turn. Dratfhari just go where they are going to go. They are not afraid and that is courage, going where you have to go and doing what you

  Same triangular hole, flip side, then:

  n the morning I was out identifying fragments from the ordnance which was one of my jobs. The round was American made, both sides using ordnance from the exact same factory in Michigan. Jim said it was good for the U.S. economy. He was always humorous in that way.

  You never saw the enemy they knew the geog so well and the towns. They’d find a hole in a wall just big enough for the barrel of their Kali and shoot ten rounds and move away. You just never saw them. But if you did you shot them, and that caused laughter and rejoicing. Jimmy thought he was getting a curse from laughing at these deaths.