The Remedy for Love: A Novel (14 page)

He heard the wind and he heard her drop the robe over her chair. He pictured the snow mounting, drifting. He pictured her placing her hands on both sides of the high part of the tub and sinking herself into the hot water, heard her huge double sigh, heaved for his benefit no doubt, a kind of thanks, and heard the wind. He thought of her desecrated hair, thought of her strong shoulders—she must have been at one time or another a swimmer—heard her finally let herself all the way in. Something clonked on the roof.

“Perfect gentleman,” she called.

“Perfect,” he said.

The FedEx envelope was at the side of the bed, one of the tiny letters on top. He didn’t touch it but read what had been left for anyone to see, blockish handwriting: “Your skin in my teeth, baby. Slippery girl, ass girl, the Jim he kiss you endlessly. Like dat. You know. The way you push-push on my teeth.” Well, it went on—it was what she’d just been reading—an act of lovemaking bluntly described, arousing in its privacy and not only in the pictures it evoked in his head, these starring Danielle and actually himself and not The Jim, just a long paragraph squeezed onto one of the little lined pages. He lay on his hand and read it again, dared after a third pass to flip the page over very quietly and read the backside. But the backside wasn’t as compelling—the guy had started to promise her a good hard pounding and something about pulling her ponytail (a ponytail that had now gone missing, but not difficult to imagine) and the pictures in Eric’s head turned to a lonely soldier stuffed with testosterone, wanking away desperate to come to orgasm before his fellows returned to quarters, or whatever they called it in the Army, using his pen to make his new wife complicit, nastier and nastier language, unpleasant. Well, all for the best: Eric shouldn’t be reading her mail. And he shouldn’t be getting himself all fired up, either. He flipped the letter back over, very precisely as he’d found it, flipped the FedEx package over, inadvertently uncovering the address:

Ms. Inness O’Keefe LaRoque

146 Spruce Street

Presque Isle, Maine

No doubt Danielle’s mother-in-law.

“Need soap,” Danielle herself called.

“Okay,” he called back. He rearranged the whole FedEx tableau, gave himself a moment more of the compound-interest discussion in his head to derail his undoubtedly too-obvious arousal, climbed down to her in his own good time.

“Oh, thanks,” she said. “It’s in the cabinet over there, up over the flour bins. In a dish.”

Lavender soap, pretty strong smelling, all but appealing, like the Walmart perfume aisle.

“What were you reading?” she said as he delivered it.

He blushed. “Love letters.”

She didn’t take him seriously, one of the great functions of the truth, as certain lawyers know. “Oh, Eric,” she said suddenly fresh-voiced. “Sit here and talk with me.”

She sank underwater, contorting herself in the slim tub to do so, and it was as if he himself had been dunked, that was how badly he wanted to get her hair underwater, that scalpy smell of hers. She stayed under, too. Her little breasts were plainly visible in the kerosene lamplight and it was very like the letters—you shouldn’t be looking but how not, left out like that for a person to see? She emerged suddenly and sat up high out of the tub, rubbing her head with the soap, rubbing her neck. She dunked again, emerged, fingered the water out of her eyes, all business.

“I have nice tits,” she said.

“Not that I noticed.”

“They’re lively, as my auntie used to say. Which she meant in a negative way.”

“She was jealous.”

“I need more hot,” Danielle said.

Eric said, “Okay.”

“That’s about enough male gaze, mister,” she said, looking at his shoulder, it seemed to him, looking at his chest.

He turned to the stove, two pots boiling. He selected the smaller of them. “You’ll need to stand,” he said. “If you don’t want to get scalded. Use your robe, please. You learned something in college: ‘Male gaze.’ ”

“Not just college. Eric. The eyeballs are everywhere.” She retrieved the robe, contrived to stand up into it, wrapped herself loosely, one breast free to the air. He just couldn’t help seeing it. Her shins were abominably hairy—dark sleek hair carried into rivulets by the water draining off them. He poured the new water in carefully, slowly.

“Tell me if it’s getting too hot,” he said.

“No, it’s nice,” she said, dancing.

He stirred the water with his hand, added more, stirred. The leg hair was primal and off-putting, not that he had anything against the body natural, just that there was the hint of neglect about this particular display, of depression, terrible isolation. He poured more. “Still good?” he said.

“I’m like Mrs. Bigfoot,” she said. “I’m sorry. I’ve been alone.”

“I’m not staring,” he said: another thing certain lawyers knew, a corollary—state the opposite of the truth to own the truth. He poured carefully.

“Okay, whoa up,” she cried. “That’s getting pretty very all-the-way fucking hot.” But she knelt, sank herself slowly back into the water, carefully managing the robe, covering her breast, suddenly shy again, always mercurial. She said, “My mom would sit and talk to me when I was in the bath.”

He dipped the pot quickly just in front of her knees and put it on the fire, soap and dirt and all, took his chair, which was just slightly behind her.

“I can’t tell you,” she said. “It’s been really months since I had an actual bath. Last time was, I don’t know. This is a lot of water. It was the river all summer, like YMCA camp, and okay right up till the last time, in, like, October. I tried again a couple or a few weeks ago—Christmas Eve, I’m pretty sure. When it was cold as shit, yo. I got pretty good at the sponge bath. Though my hair paid for it. And. Um. I got kind of freaked out one night and tried to cut it all off with a filet knife, a fishing knife, extra sharp. It was in the drawer. Yes, that’s what happened, Mr. Flinch. You’ve been pretty patient not to ask. It all ended in tears, as you can imagine. I cut myself and it bled and bled. I was just very fucking crazy from being alone. Also, hormonal.”

“It’s not so bad. You look fine. Your ear. And I didn’t flinch.”

“It’s very bad. Eric. And I don’t have a hairbrush. I don’t even have a comb. And you flinched. I can see you, in case you thought not. Female gaze. Not something you learn in school.”

Eric felt himself flush, got busy with a pot on the stove. He said, “Is there any shampoo?”

“Shampoo. I had a thing of Pantene. I was very proud of that. Pantene. First thing I bought with the car money. But I left it on the rocks down by the river that last time, conditioner, too, and towel and comb and brush and you name it. And the water came up after that week of rain? Like a mini flood. Carried it all away.”

“We’ll find it in the spring,” Eric said, which as an offer of extended friendship was pretty oblique, but the joke made her smile. He searched all the cabinets in the kitchen area (Lux dishwashing liquid, Murphy’s Oil Soap for floors, Windex with Ammonia D, all in ancient packaging, all potential havoc for her already beleaguered hair), searched the various nooks of the big room, boxes of this, shelves full of that, mountain of snow and sawdust in the middle, crashed tree and the iced blanket holding up the corner, no luck. In the tool shed by kerosene lamplight inside a stack of four unequal rolls of duct tape he found a bottle of dog shampoo, which in any other circumstances would have made a pretty good joke, picture of a happy collie on the label. But then in a line of another era’s spray-paint cans and wasp bombs and tubes of axle grease he spotted a (glass!) bottle he recognized despite the missing label as Breck shampoo, which his older sisters had used throughout their high school years and which by default he had used as well. The conditioner had been heartily electrical-taped to the shampoo, a length of chain attached, a man’s operation meant for the rustic bath in the river. Eric opened the (frozen) shampoo component of the clunky package, sniffed it luxuriously, and it was as if time itself had been trapped inside, how thoroughly his sisters leapt back to him, the fraught hour before the school bus came, Ellen and Tina, the steam in the family’s one bathroom, the creams and lotions and emollients and strange pads, the towels clutched around them, the rare peek at private skin, their lingering scents. He’d have to give them each a call when he finally got home. They’d love the story of the taped and chained Breck, something their dad might have done.

“Getting a little fucking cold,” Danielle said when he returned.

He handed her the shampoo and she laughed, that chirp and burble of hers.

“Dunk it under to thaw it,” he said, and turned his attention to the stove. The smaller pots were boiling hard.

This time she just threw her two legs over the side of the slipper, lifted herself off the floor of the tub, left a spot for him to pour, things to see. Instead, however, he pictured the hot water mixing fast with the cooler and swirling up under her bum, didn’t want to burn her.

“Woo, mister,” she said.

“Too hot?”

“Very hot,” she said. Then, “Jesus, look at my fucking legs.” She turned them this way and that on the lip of the slipper.

“They’re fine,” Eric said.

“You mind if I wash my hair in your water?”

“Go ahead, yes, of course it’s okay. There’s enough fresh I think. And soap is soap. Damn.”

“Damn, what?”

“I was just lamenting. I bought razors. Behind you in line at Hannaford? Cheese and wine and scallions and razors, of all things. But I left them in the car.”

“No you didn’t. They’re here. I hosed you about them, remember? But I’m not going to shave in front of everybody, and not in your bathwater. Or maybe. But I’ll do it after you’re done. And what is it with you bringing all the shit I need? A little creepy, don’t you think?”

“Well, it was all for Alison.”

“Alison this and Alison that.” She drew her legs back under the water, pointed at his chair. He was to keep her company, sit just behind, and watch the gaze, bub.

She washed her hair with the thawing Breck shampoo twice and plumped a good blob of the thickened conditioner on her head and waited. The fragrance was mild, floral, carried him back over mountain ranges to his Indiana home, to his sisters, his parents, his hours in the tub with model ships and washcloths, first experiments toward jerking off, which later like everyone else in the world he’d master. Danielle’s hair looked better globbed with conditioner than it had looked at any time since he’d first seen her.

Danielle said, “Let’s work on my hair.” She dunked, rinsed the conditioner out.

“Work how?”

“The scissors, mister. Maybe a fork? Just make it all even if you can. Get the elflocks out? It’s kind of gross. I’ll get out of the tub first. You don’t want to bathe in my hair.”

“Elflocks?”

“That’s what my mother called ’em. Like, knots. The elves make ’em while you sleep.”

While she climbed out of the tub and got in the robe, Eric retrieved a fork and the pair of scissors he’d noticed in one of the drawers, old-fashioned black-handled things with overly long blades, slightly rusty. She sat in her chair by the stove and awkwardly he combed a little with the fork, used the scissors as a pick, decoded some of the easier tangles, got into it: elflocks, all right. Danielle was quiet, let him work, and so he made another pass, tugged at knots that weren’t going to relax, the work of trolls. And she made no protest when he began to cut, an effort at a straight line or two, nothing fancy. When he was done—he worked fast, like a sailor trimming rope—she felt it all carefully.

“Mm,” she said.

“Back in the tub,” he told her, turning away pointedly.

And she complied, sank quickly under the water. When he looked again her knees loomed; she sank farther and her thighs rose, more downy than hairy, not like the shins, palest skin, not a blemish, not a mole. Her knees were scarred in the usual manner of the hoyden, which he was beginning to see was her history. She bobbed up again, ran her hands across her hair luxuriously, said, “Were you desperate to get married?”

He shrugged.

“I mean before you and Alison met? Was it all you thought about?”

“Hardly. What I thought about was law. About saving the world, to be honest. Delusions of grandeur.”

“I had delusions of, like, worthless. Ness. I had no interest in marriage at all. Though I didn’t not love Jim. He pushed and pushed. And look what he did to me! Total neglect. Sound familiar? At least you’re a lawyer. I mean really a lawyer. And no doubt making money cock over cunt.”

Eric flinched, thought it might be good to change the general tenor of the conversation: “Well, actually, there’s a bit of a problem in that regard. I do far too much advocacy and pro bono stuff, and then, when I do work for money, I don’t get paid half the time.”

Her demeanor flipped once again. She said, “Counselor, that’s fucked!”

He applied calmness purposefully. It starts with a breath. “Yes,” he said. “Probably people owe me fifty grand or more. I mean, perfectly well-to-do people. You have to write it off after a while.”

She just grew more aggressive: “No, you have to get some fucking
balls.
Eric. Do you need me to make some phone calls for you? Dooryard visits? And by the way, if people owe you money, you shouldn’t be buying such expensive fucking
cheese
!”

She dunked herself again, came up patting at her hair, eyes tight closed.

Her little breasts, honestly. Eric felt himself a starving man, sudden insight. Alison had starved him, and purposefully, all while telling him that he wasn’t hungry. Quickly he turned, this time all the way around, turned his chair, put his back emphatically to Danielle.

She said, “Would you ever date me?”

His answer came fast, too sharp: “I’d need a revival tent and a van.”

“Probably true. But in a perfect world? Someone like me? Not a chance. Is what I’m saying.”

“What do you mean, dooryard visits?”

“Well. It’s like the Maine Mafia. You get a visit. They don’t come in your house. You stand outside. You might not go back in. Ask Jimmy’s dad.”