Love Is a Canoe

by Ben Schrank

  From Marriage Is a Canoe, Chapter 11, On Endings

  On August twenty-fifth of that wonderful summer, with a single full day left to my visit, I knew I had to break up with Honey. But I didn’t want to do a bad job of it and hurt her. So I asked Pop for advice.

  We went out on the lake to catch a trout and talk it over. It was already deep into the afternoon when I got up the courage to ask him. The tips of the sun’s rays touched the elms across the lake. By then I could paddle us out and so I did that while Pop threaded his rod. When we got to floating, I said what I needed to say, about how much I liked Honey and how I wanted to see her again but that I knew, because of school and the distance that separated us, that I ought to tell her it was over. Even though that’s not what either of us wanted.

  “Peter, you’ve got to have endings in order to find new beginnings. Endings are okay. What’s not right is treating people badly—no matter if you don’t love them anymore. That doesn’t excuse you from treating them just as well as if they mattered to you more than anyone else in the world. You know the mark of a true gentleman?”

  I did not.

  “The mark of a true gentleman is to show the same deference and kindness to the Second Avenue shoe-shine boy as to the Queen of England.”

  I nodded, never having met either.

  “I have never had a break with Bess, but if I were to have one, I would not be unkind to her. No matter what. Now let’s look at your own mother. Your mother has had some bad breaks. Let’s be honest here. She has.”

  I only nodded again, because I was still not capable of admitting that my mother had been with a man who abused her. And that that man was my father.

  “And there are men she’s had relations with in her life—without going into too much detail because you’re just a boy, there are men who have not been kind to her and it hurts my heart to say it and I do not like this. I do not like knowing it. But there it is. You see? It won’t go away.”

  My hair had grown long so I was always flipping the front back and I did so then, and maybe that made me look a little prouder or like I had a little more attitude than I actually did.

  “You don’t want to become like one of those men who treats your mom badly, do you?”

  Not for the first time that summer, I swallowed back my tears. I said, “No, sir.”

  “Then go find that little girl and be kind to her. Be honest. You’re going on back home and won’t see her anymore. In life, you have to have endings. She knows that, too. And you shouldn’t try to get around them or run anyway. That’s a coward’s move and in the moment it might feel nice, like it gets your heart beating, to run from a responsibility. But you’ll live with that moment of cowardice and you can’t brush it off. It’s deeper than a sailor’s tattoo or a scar from a knife fight. It sits inside you if you don’t do the right thing and you can’t get free of it. So promise me you’ll never shy away from an honest ending. Can you promise me that, Peter?”

  “I promise I won’t,” I said. And the next thing I had to say was said because it had to be. “Are you giving me all this help and advice because of my father, and the way he and my mom are breaking up? I promise I won’t end up like him. I don’t even like him.”

  “Don’t say that. He’s your father. But yes, in part,” Pop said. “In part. We can’t fix him and set him straight now, can we? All we can do is work on you.”

  “So I’ve got to go and say goodbye to her? And just be kind? Just tell her I really like her but we can’t go on? That’s it?”

  “That’s right. It is okay to part, and it is okay to end. And you should know that. But you’ve got to do it honest, and that way you won’t have to live with so much regret. Come on, let’s go back. The fish aren’t biting this late in the day. They’re sleeping already. We both know that.”

  Later, after I’d gone to see Honey, we sat at the kitchen table and ate chicken cutlets with garlic bread and spaghetti with tomato sauce. We drank tall glasses of ice water. For dessert we had a Jell-O mold that was so full of fresh fruit the pink Jell-O could hardly stand the pressure and the weight.

  It was nearly eight and the lights were coming on in the houses around the lake. I thought, This is my favorite time of day. Then I thought, There are tons of times of day that are my favorite here. And looking back on that time now, I wish that all of my life could be filled with those soft moments.

  If you must put an end to your voyage, be as kind and honest with each other as you were when you started out together.

  Stella, November 2011

  Stella walked into her office a few minutes after nine on Friday morning, which was much earlier than she usually got in, but it didn’t matter. She was fired immediately.

  She was shocked to discover that she felt no hate for Gina Adams from HR, who arrived with Melissa Kerrigan, who she’d barely seen in days and who she also, incredibly, didn’t hate. She didn’t feel hate while Gina told her that she would be covered by COBRA for ninety days but that regardless, she ought to get her own health insurance immediately. She didn’t feel hate for Melissa, who had come in especially for this event since she normally took Fridays off, to say goodbye.

  “Even though LRB considers this a departmental restructuring rather than a firing, the point is that I bear some responsibility,” Melissa said.

  Gina glared at Melissa while Stella watched. Gina wore a huge engagement ring and Stella had heard that she was going to marry a fund manager and that she’d be rich and that she only stayed in HR at Ladder & Rake because she was a people person. She liked to bring people up to their potential and was likely going to run LRB’s HR group someday.

  Stella saw that Gina was looking at Melissa and thinking, You’re handling this terribly. And she didn’t care that Stella saw because as of ten minutes ago, Stella was no longer with the company.

  “Can I have some time to pack up my desk?”

  “Yes,” Gina said. “You can have that time right now.”

  “Goodbye, Stella.” Melissa came forward as if to hug her and Stella reared back.

  “The other way, please,” Gina said, in a singsong voice. She had her hand on Melissa’s arm.

  “I’m sorry,” Melissa said.

  Stella bit down on her tongue so she wouldn’t say it was all right. Because she damn sure was not going to absolve her direct superior of guilt.

  “I’ll be right back with a box for your things,” Gina said, after Melissa had left.

  “Could I have two boxes?” Stella had her arms folded over her chest. She wanted to say something glib like “And a hug?” but she was afraid it might backfire and she’d cry in front of Gina.

  Gina said, “I’ll see what I can dig up.”

  Stella looked around. There were the Canoe quotes on her bulletin board. She supposed she’d leave them there. She wanted a bunch of the junk she’d accumulated in her fourteen months at Ladder & Rake but she knew she wouldn’t be able to pack thoughtfully. There was a piece of Tupperware on the windowsill that she’d filled with chicken and brought from home. It was clean. She tossed it into her handbag.

  A few minutes later, she took a break from dumping random books she would never read into her two allotted boxes in order to use the office phone to call Ivan.

  “It’s over,” she said.

  “What is?”

  “My job. I was fired.”

  “What? That’s crazy! You love that job and you’re good at it. What happened?”

  She breathed in. That was it. That was all he needed to say.

  “Helena decided that I lied to her. Maybe I did. Anyway, it’s just a stupid job,” she said. “A job is kind of a stupid thing to love.”

  “You want to meet somewhere right now?” he asked.

  She imagined sitting in a cab with her boxes, on the way home to the place in Astoria that they had sort of backed themselves into, if she was going to be honest. Definitely going to spend some time cleaning that place up. Buy a wine rack. Maybe even build one.
/>   “Stella? Honey?”

  “Um. No, I guess I don’t want to meet right now. I don’t need to ask you to do that. Call me when you’re done working, okay?”

  She hung up the phone. She felt older and more tired than usual, a little heavier. She felt like someone else. Who was it? She felt like … it was Emily. For a moment, she felt just like Emily. She had believed in someone and that person had hurt her. Wait. She shook it off. She was nothing like Emily. Not right now, anyway. Now she was in love. And what was so bad about being like Emily? She understood that Emily Babson was an earnest person who believed people could be good. There was nothing the matter with that.

  She called Ivan back. “I’ve changed my mind. I need you right now. Can you meet me in front of Ladder & Rake? You can help me with my boxes and we can go someplace nice for a fancy drink.”

  “Yes, baby. I was just putting on my coat. I’ll be right there.”

  Peter, December 2011

  Peter knew he was beginning to get past the contest and its bungled outcome when he started to come up with lines that were so bad they made him laugh out loud: Love is simple and sweet and sour as the lemon-caper tuna sandwiches at Pantomime’s.

  He figured that he was coming out of mourning and saying goodbye to an awful lot and, further, he imagined that meant he was headed toward something good, soon. On a dark Friday evening, he went and found the zither in the hall closet. He wanted the beautiful thing out of the house.

  He walked through the kitchen and down the back steps and all the way to the tip of the dock. He stood in the freezing cold. He watched moonlight glint off the zither’s shiny wooden face. There was no sound save the lapping of the water. He held the zither up and stared at it, enjoying the feel of it in his hand. Then he kneeled down and plunged the instrument into the cold water. He held up his empty hand, white and glowing in front of his face.

  He had been sorry when he’d returned from New York a few weeks earlier and said goodbye to Maddie. Anjulee had had her baby and it was time for Maddie to go. He told Maddie he wouldn’t move out to San Francisco with her after all. He had hoped she would say she had always expected that outcome. But instead, she was deeply surprised and hurt and she would not stop crying.

  “I can’t keep doing things that are not really my intention,” he said.

  He thought she might understand. Instead she was furious at him and she had used the fury to propel herself away from him and Millerton, forever.

  He had written Helena a short note, asking to see her soon. Whenever you’re ready, he wrote. She hadn’t written back, or called. He felt it was wrong to push further than that. Though in the past few days, he’d begun to consider reaching out to her again. Soon, he would.

  Out on the dock, he told himself he could hear his grandparents. That was possible. Some bits of the book came from them. Some of it was true. Not a lot. But some.

  Fifty years ago, where was he? Crying in his room in his parents’ apartment on Third Avenue and Sixty-Third Street while they divorced. And then a few weeks later, quietly watching his grandparents go about their lives during those weeks of vacation. They saw him sitting, doing nothing. They told him to go fishing. He was given a pole. Pointed toward the lake. Don’t drown, Peter. There was a neighbor who owned a canoe he might use. Though maybe there was a hole in it. They weren’t sure. If there was, he ought to learn to patch it—otherwise he’d get wet.

  He had managed to patch the canoe himself, using instructions he found in a book in his mother’s old bedroom. He’d caught his grandfather’s attention once he made the canoe float and the old man had gone out fishing with him a few times. They had talked in the canoe. He had done his best to make Peter feel better. At the end of the summer his grandfather had bought the canoe from the neighbor for five dollars and Peter still had it—the very same one.

  Sometimes there had been chicken and vegetables for dinner. Pie for dessert. Other times, when they went to sleep early and forgot about him, he’d made himself a peanut butter and jelly sandwich and sat reading in the kitchen. Just as he might this evening, about fifty years later. They were nice old people. Didn’t talk much, but what they did say had been kind, and yes, he’d written down a few things they’d said and some of that had made its way into the book.

  At eight in the evening he found that he was still standing there out on the dock. And then he realized he was freezing and turned back toward the house. He saw a car’s headlights glint on the lake and heard the crunch of tires on his gravel driveway.

  After a few moments of confusion, he rushed up the path to his back porch to see who it was. The car’s engine went quiet. Maddie? Henry had told him she left town a week ago, for good, without saying goodbye. Maybe it was Henry? Though he would have called first.

  He heard the squeak and bang of his front door opening and closing. He found Helena Magursky standing in the kitchen, leaning against the apron sink. She wore a dark overcoat and her arms were folded over her chest.

  “Door was unlocked,” she said. “I let myself in.”

  He stood still and just stared at her. “I see.”

  “Who’d you expect? Mother Teresa?”

  “Sophia Loren,” he said with a laugh. “But you’ll do. You’re more beautiful than she is anyway.”

  “Please. If that were the case I would have spent my life on yachts instead of in conference rooms. Would’ve got a nice tan.”

  He smiled. “You got my note. I’m glad you came.”

  “I kept meaning to call. But somehow calling didn’t quite address it. Took me some weeks to get up the courage to drive here. I don’t care about you disappointing me. Too late, like you said. I know what I ought to expect from you. And I’ve been patient.”

  Peter smiled and said, “There’s nothing in the book about patience. You decided to leave that out? Keep patience for yourself? It’s your book, Helena. You know that.”

  “I think we did put in a bit about patience, actually. But who wants to talk about a book?” she asked. “I meet a guy in a bar and he tells me sob stories about his parents’ divorce and a couple of sad weeks he spent on the receiving end of what he imagined might be some wisdom that his grandparents shared with him. I tell him he could get a book out of it and we sleep together. Wonderful affair, too. One of my absolute favorites. We make his memories into a bestseller. We have a nasty breakup and too many years later, here we are.”

  And then she shut up. And she waited. He kissed her once, deeply, and there was a passion there. They were so close to each other now, listening to the pattern of each other’s breathing. Peter couldn’t help feeling how it was different than with Maddie.

  He pulled back but kept hold of her hand. “I’ve been unable to stop thinking about you.”

  “Peter! Didn’t I just lay out our awful history? I’m not here to try to go backward in time. I’m here because you wrote to me. I liked seeing you in New York.”

  He kissed her again, harder.

  She said, “It’s true you’ve been on my mind a lot in the past several months. I thought it might be nice to get to know each other again. Neither of us has changed much, so there shouldn’t be too many surprises. But don’t get me wrong. You can’t marry me. You missed your chance for that.”

  “How’d you know I was all alone up here?”

  She laughed and said, “I have my sources. It wasn’t hard to find out. What did you think? That I would hop in my car and drive here without knowing what to expect? You think I’m some kind of romantic idiot?”

  Peter wouldn’t let go of her hand. “Let’s go out on the porch for a moment.”

  * * *

  Peter took Helena to the inn on Sunday for brunch and to introduce her to Henry, who turned out to be in Hudson for the day. It was gray out, so he had Jenny find someone to make a fire and they sat at the big round table in front of the fireplace. They ordered Bloody Marys and omelets and toast. Peter caught Helena making a face at the wallpaper.

  “I should t
ell Henry to remodel?” he asked.

  “I didn’t say that.”

  “Already critical. And you haven’t even met him.”

  “That’s my job,” Helena said. “I do like the fire.”

  They watched the fire and then Peter said, “What about the young women? Stella and Emily?”

  “Our former editor and her contest winner? They’ll be fine. I fired the one. She kept tripping herself up and banging into things, was what she did. I tried to warn her, but she didn’t listen.”

  “That was mean of you,” Peter said.

  “No, it wasn’t. She’ll have another job in two shakes of a lamb’s tail.”

  “How can you be so sure?”

  “Stop it, Peter. She was out of control. I told her to find the romance and she made a hash of it. Plus, she lied to me. I know what I’m doing. I only say the opposite of what I mean if that’s my intention. Don’t attack my character.”

  “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t be brusque.”

  “Damn right you shouldn’t.” But he could see she didn’t love to talk that way, not to him, anyway.

  “You know,” Peter said. “My marriage was good. But you’re still the only one.”

  “And I’ve had a few other relationships, too. Marriages, too. You can bet on that.” She raised an eyebrow and winked at him. “My daughter thinks I’m crazy. But she’s happy for me.”

  Peter sipped his Bloody Mary. “We’d better be gentle with each other.”

  Helena shrugged. “We don’t need to be gentle. It’s relaxing being with someone who knew you before you knew yourself. We can’t possibly harm each other now, can we?”

  Peter smiled and said nothing.

  “I’ll come up here next weekend, too,” she said. “Shake off the week with you. Would you like that?”

  “Keep showing up and I’ll amend the book for you.”

  Helena raised her eyebrows. “That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But you say that to all the girls.”

  “I do,” Peter said. “But if you’ll give me a little help, this time I might actually do it.”