Love Is a Canoe: A Novel

by Schrank, Ben

  Afterward, he sat in the hospital armchair with its fake red leather–covered arms attaching and detaching from his skin, the zither still in his lap. He plucked a string and listened. There were thirty-eight strings, and he plucked one and then another so a note sounded lonely and clean before it died and he plucked the next. He put the instrument down, fearing the nurse.

  “Oh, Lisa. What can I do? What can I do for you?”

  He had already dappled her thin lips with water, settled her pillows, and straightened the pale blue sheet over her bloated legs.

  * * *

  While waiting to have his hair cut once, in the late nineties, Peter read an article in People magazine about George Hamilton and discovered that he was just like him. He had started out as a bit of a fake and now was celebrated for the persona he’d created, not the person he was. Lisa had known this. He had not given her the deep, transformative love she deserved, and in return she had lost the money he made from his book. But still, they loved each other. At their beginning he’d been a little cool when he should’ve been hot. Now he was broke and a little nervous. Now he lived ruefully with the consequences of his life with Lisa.

  At seven the next morning, Maddie drove them over the dewy back roads that crossed and recrossed the Taconic, on their way to her house for a swim.

  He ran his hand through her hair. They’d had sex again at dawn, and were both acting a little smug about doing it so much in so short a time. Although his doctor had mentioned Viagra when Peter told him about Maddie, Peter had discovered he didn’t need it. He was proud of that and wanted to boast about it, but there was no one to tell. He couldn’t imagine saying that sort of thing to Henry. Perhaps in San Francisco men were more open to such a conversation?

  “Was any of the book true?” Maddie asked.

  He glanced at Maddie and suddenly felt how little they knew each other, which transformed instantly to anger, and with that anger, some of his false befuddlement fell away. “Don’t you know me well enough by now to understand how little that matters?”

  “Come here,” she said. She was going to hold his hand and drive with just one. He could see it. He reached out and they held hands. They turned into her long driveway. Her house was high up on a mountain and made of stones. They drove up her gravel road in silence and she came to a stop. Turned off her engine.

  “We are not getting along very well,” she said. “And now you would like me to apologize for asking such a question?”

  He shook his head no and gripped her hand, hard, for support as if he were going to fall. He glared out the windows. He could see the morning mist burning off the tops of her trees. He liked Maddie so much. The sex they were having was better than anything he could have imagined for himself at this stage of life. But the truth was that the cool quality at the center of her made him feel so alone. Still, what else did he have? He had nothing else.

  He said, “There was a chapter I added to the second edition, about how Bess fell asleep at the wheel of their Buick Skylark and drove herself and my Pop off Spook Rock Road, right where it crosses that little river, and they got caught in a current and were dragged to the river bottom. But it wasn’t so deep that they couldn’t be seen.” He stopped and looked north. He said, “Not five miles away from here. They drowned in sight of the road before anyone could get close enough to wrench them free. When they finally pulled them out, their bodies were tangled up in a frantic hug, so every bit of them was touching. That was true. I wrote it prettier than how it really was.”

  “I cried when I read that,” Maddie said.

  “I cried when I wrote it.” Though, had he? It was a stock response to anyone’s claim that they wept when they read Canoe, as rote as the flick of a horse’s tail when the midday flies won’t stop buzzing. At this rate, he wouldn’t have an end like that to his life.

  “There are two kinds of people,” Maddie said. “Those who see the wisdom in your book and respect it. And then there are those who make fun of it because they are cynical.”

  “No, there are three kinds of people. The two you just mentioned and then there’s a third kind, the kind who undulate constantly between their cynicism and the romance of engagement.”

  “Now it feels like we are talking about all the kinds of people.” She turned and smiled at him. “I cannot wait to swim.” They got out of the car and he followed her toward her house. He watched the outline of her backside through her skirt. Wait. He ought to let her lead him through the rest of his life. Anything else was nonsense.

  He called out, “Wait.”

  “What?”

  “Have I never promised you that I will go with you when you go to California?”

  “Peter, do not play with me.”

  “I am promising now.”

  “Really?” She stopped in front of her silent house and cocked her head to one side, examining him.

  “I promise you, Maddie. I will move with you. It’s time. We make each other feel really good. I like us.”

  “Peter! Do you know how happy you are making me?”

  He smiled and went in to hug her, pushed himself against her.

  Emily Babson, early September 2011

  “You must be Emily!”

  “Yup, that’s me.” Emily gripped her bag with both hands. She looked past the girl and into the crowded room. She had hoped to arrive just before the midpoint of the party but it appeared that she had miscalculated. She was late. The party was roaring and hot, the room she looked in on filled with bodies.

  “Eli talks about you all the time. It must be so fun being married to him! Emily and Eli—that’s so cool! Let me take your coat.” Emily handed it over to the girl, a pretty twenty-two-year-old in a black Roman Street Bicycles T-shirt. She’d never seen it before. It was just a week past Labor Day and still quite warm out. Emily had no idea why she’d worn an overcoat.

  “We’re so excited for this party!” the girl called out as she walked away.

  “Me, too.” Emily heard people come up the brownstone steps behind her and so she had no choice but to move into the crowd. It was a Roman Street cocktail party hosted by Eli’s new lawyers, a couple called Rick and Steven who worked out of their town house in Fort Greene. Eli was brilliant at convincing people to throw parties for him. He loved to preside over parties. He rocked them.

  This party was meant to kick off Eli’s new venture. He wanted to create a bicycle advocacy nonprofit and spin it off from Roman Street, using the same lists and assets and people. Eli had realized that he spent a lot of time advocating for bikers’ rights and that it didn’t always fit with selling bicycles. He wanted a more politically motivated nonprofit structure for this new company, which was meant to address the “next wave” in urban biking, finally bringing big American cities in line with places like Amsterdam and Stockholm. But the mission was awfully broad and ambitious and simply wasn’t related to his core business. Emily had helped him work through the idea on weekend walks. Though they hadn’t talked about it in the few busy weeks leading up to this party, and now she had lost track of the new company’s final form. She did not even know what he’d decided to call it.

  The whole of the town house’s parlor floor was open and people streamed around her. Emily thought they were rushing to the bar but immediately realized she was wrong. They were rushing to talk to one another. Still, she was able to look across the room and catch Eli’s eye. She could see that he felt her presence. He turned and smiled and left the conversation he was in to come to her.

  “Hi, sweet thing,” he said, and kissed her. “You always look so graceful when you enter a room. I’m, like, proud to be with you.” He reeked of beer and workday sweat, but on him it smelled good.

  “I’m sorry I’m late. I hope I didn’t miss anything.”

  “Don’t worry about it. It’s been crazy. Before everybody arrived we were on a funding call with these West Coast donors and I got tense.” Eli nodded and smiled at people as he talked to her. “But Jenny made some jokes
about the price of fuel next summer and we came out with real promises. Don’t forget to say hello to Rick and Steven, okay? They always ask after you. Don’t get shy now, okay? I want to be right next to you but you know I can’t pull it off since I’m hosting.”

  “Is Jenny here?” It had been three weeks and Emily still had not confronted him. She hadn’t gotten further than telling herself they were both too busy, no matter how much her mother and sister pushed her to at least talk to him. The situation with the hug seemed static. She had come to hate the word hug and intended never to think the word again. She’d been training herself to use only the word embrace. Except when it applied to them. Eli and Jenny. Their hug.

  “Is Jenny here?” Eli repeated. She watched him grit his jaw. He said, “Sure, of course she is. She’s around somewhere. It’d be great if you two could connect. Look at how many supporters we’ve got. This is really great for Roman Street and the new thing, UBA!”

  “UBA?”

  “Urban Bicycle Advocacy! What do you think, word lady? I wanted to surprise you.” Eli smiled. He had bright white teeth. She smiled back and tried as hard as she could to stop him from bringing up Jenny again without actually saying it. She was determined to get through the party without speaking to her. She had been sisterly and supportive once. That would not happen again.

  “Word lady,” she said. “Don’t call me that.”

  “Sorry. I meant word person,” he said with a smile. “But what do you think?”

  “Another acronym.”

  “Yeah, but this one is different. It sounds primal. Jenny figured out the name. She’s probably with Rick or Steven—we’ve been working here all day.”

  “Wow, you and her … really keyed into something.” Emily bit her lip. She couldn’t find it in herself to smile.

  “Come on, Emily. How about not losing your patience in a heartbeat? Tonight is important.”

  “I wasn’t,” she said. Then, “I didn’t.” She tugged on his plaid shirt. “Can’t I be a little jealous? What’s wrong with noticing when somebody has a crush on you?”

  “A crush?” He laughed. “This is all about UBA.”

  She hated the name UBA and could have come up with a better one in half an hour if she’d been asked. But she hadn’t been—and that made her almost as angry as their hug. She had helped enormously in giving direction to his messy business. And now it was out of her control. Jenny had thought up the name. Fucking idiot. She wanted to fire Jenny. She caught Eli looking at her, shaking his head at her frown. Then he gave her his tight-lipped smile and faded into the crowd, like an old Jules Feiffer cartoon found in one of the books her parents had had when she was a child—he just grew thin-lipped and crinkled his sweet eyes and faded away.

  She was suddenly alone, standing a foot from the bar, which was manned by a handsome kid, probably an undergraduate from Pratt. She grabbed a glass of white wine and didn’t move. She touched the tablecloth and looked at the rows of glasses and the huge wedge of Parmesan that people had begun to hack into chunks. There were bowls of fat purple kalamata olives, too. It was going to be a thirsty party. Emily loved the olives and began to eat them one at a time, carefully, so the skin didn’t get caught in her teeth. She began to berate herself for not being able to glow from all the warmth in the room. She tried to work up to glowing, or at the least work down from feeling too tall and pale and damp. Did anybody even know who she was? She doubted it. Roman Street was blowing up so fast and it was all about Eli. She watched Eli embrace people. It looked almost like people were waiting in line to get some of his affection. His hair was getting longer. He looked a little bit like Che Guevara. No wonder he’d gotten into the idea of a nonprofit. She turned away and decided she was about ready for her second glass of what was turning out to be some pretty good pinot … Then she looked up and couldn’t find Eli anywhere. She didn’t want to search for him. But she had no choice. She knew nobody. And she was afraid to run into Jenny. Jenny was short. She would keep her eyes aimed high.

  She glanced around the corner into the kitchen and saw him, talking to the husband of an actress whose name she couldn’t recall but who Sherry had kissed once in a play four or five years back. She eavesdropped. They were talking about banjo playing. Eli was a proficient banjo player and an excellent banjo conversationalist. She frowned. This was such a networky event and she was so not a networky person. Eli wasn’t supposed to be either. He was supposed to be charming and awkward. A savant industrial designer slash bike lover slash grease monkey genius. But now she saw, as she glanced around, that if that had ever been true, it wasn’t anymore.

  “Emily?” Someone was calling her name from behind her. She felt a spike of relief. Someone wanted her! Unless it was Jenny? What would she say? You stay away from my husband! How could she say that? She couldn’t.

  She turned fast and bumped into the woman who had called out to her.

  “Ida!” It was Ida Abarra—the novelist whose book she’d bought back in August. Phew.

  They hugged and kissed hello. Ida had a glass of white wine in her hand. She said, “I haven’t seen you in a thousand years. Then I did see you on the street a couple of weeks ago but you were strutting alone and obviously thinking hard about something. I didn’t want to break into your head space.”

  “That’s embarrassing. I hope I didn’t look too crazy,” Emily said. She must be looking like that every night lately, when she was walking home. She smiled at Ida, raised her shoulders and then dropped them.

  “No, just thoughtful,” Ida said. “How are you? Wait. I think I read about your job.” Ida had big eyes—you could see white all the way around her black pupils, and Emily remembered how that made talking to her feel intense no matter what you talked about.

  Ida said, “You’re the person who is going to dream up the name for whatever we all carry around in the future. I read the piece on you in the alumni magazine.”

  “Yeah, that creepy guy from the year below us is running it—Jeremiah Bazelton, bald with Philip Johnson glasses? He won’t stop sending me e-mails. But wait—congratulations on your novel! I bought it.”

  “Have you read it?”

  “Not yet.” Emily looked straight down at the floor.

  “I’m glad. Don’t read it. It’s not that good.” Ida sighed and smiled at Emily. “I’ve made my peace with it.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true. You were the best writer in college.” More than anything, Emily hoped that Ida wouldn’t walk away. Ida held a goblet of white wine that was bigger than everyone else’s glass. She also had a bit of dark hair on her upper lip. And she didn’t seem to give a shit about it and that was really cool.

  Ida said, “Yeah, so what’s your deal? What else do you do when you’re not forecasting the future?”

  “Oh, god. I don’t know. And that’s not really what I do. I’m just a consultant. It’s stupid.”

  “Don’t tell anybody, but the truth is I hate innovative people. Not you, but, like, inventors.”

  Emily laughed and looked down. Ida was wearing a pleated green skirt and high black boots covered with a sea of maroon beads—she’d seen those beads on a pair of Miu Miu pumps last spring and wished boots could be beaded that way. And here they were: her dream boots, existing in reality, on Ida’s feet where they looked even more perfect with just a few beads carelessly knocked off.

  “I love your boots,” Emily said.

  “These? I got them at Century. Thanks. Anyway, what are you doing here? I know Steven and Rick. They did a film option for me with this Uruguayan filmmaker. So now I show up at their stuff. They don’t make me donate.”

  “Actually I’m here because—” But Emily let Ida cut her off.

  “You know I got married?” Ida nodded and Emily could tell that Ida was still trying to get comfortable with the words. “Yeah, about two years ago.”

  “Is your husband here?”

  “Lord, no. Billy hates this stuff. He’s a trader and on the side he writes a newslette
r about the World Bank. He wants us to move to D.C. but it’s not happening. I hate that town. In Brooklyn, I’m a face in the crowd. Every time I go down to D.C. somebody tries to pin a medal on me.”

  “That sounds cool.” Emily imagined Ida and her genius husband at balls at the Watergate Hotel and parties in the bowling alley at the White House with powerful speechwriters and lobbyists for international trade organizations. She was sure they stayed up late in bed afterward and laughed and gossiped together. Eli sucked at gossip.

  “It’s not cool,” Ida said. “It’s boring. But whatever, it’s my fault. I love him. I married him. So he’s home and I’m at this random thing. I see your ring. Who’d you marry?”

  “Um,” Emily said, and then she just shook her head and closed her eyes. “Eli,” Emily said with a shrug. “Eli Corelli.”

  “What?” Ida asked. “You’re married to Eli? I am so, so sorry I didn’t make the connection!”

  “How could you,” Emily said. “I’m standing here and I don’t even know where he is.” Emily worried that she was hovering over Ida so she gave her some space. But Ida moved closer. They both leaned against the doorframe to the kitchen, with just inches between them. Everybody else had to maneuver around them. Emily could see that Ida so did not care.

  “Wow, everybody loves your guy.”

  “True,” Emily said. “Wait, who’s he with now?”

  Eli was in the living room with the actress and her husband. The three of them were huddled in front of an enormous black marble fireplace. Eli had someone else’s banjo in his hands.

  “Looks like Trent Norman and Genevieve Winslow-Homer.”

  “That’s her name,” Emily said. “I kept forgetting it.”

  “You forget it because she stole it from a famous artist and if you’re anything like me that disgusts you. Her actual name is Jennifer Puddle or something. I see her at yoga. She has flexible hips.”

  “Where do you go?”