Love Is a Canoe: A Novel

by Schrank, Ben

  We kissed twice and embraced, our long arms encircling each other’s backs. We were unsure of what else we might do.

  “Don’t tell anybody,” she said. “Don’t tell anybody about this.”

  “I really like you,” I said, not caring if she told anyone or not and aware that in that thought was my first movement toward some maturity. Useless as it was just then, but there.

  “Shhh!” She was giddy. “Shut the hell up!”

  We ran back to the party, breathless, maybe twenty seconds apart, sure that we’d fooled everyone, though of course anyone who cared knew just where we’d been and what we’d done.

  Bess and Pop had arrived and they were drinking with the other grown-ups. I came over and got between them. “What are you drinking?” I asked.

  “Take a tiny sip,” Pop said. And I did. It was lemonade laced with whiskey that Lisa’s parents had made. I have loved that strange too-sweet taste ever since.

  “Are you making sure to act like nothing less than a proper gentleman?” Pop asked, with his hand gripping the brown scruff of hair on the back of my neck.

  “Yes,” I said, and ran back to find Honey and dance some more.

  Later, as we made our way home on the moonlit road, I ran in circles around my grandparents, like a much younger boy, thinking of when I would see Honey again.

  * * *

  In his third revision, Peter added the following:

  Less than a decade later, I would come back to Millerton as alone as when I was a child, to bury my grandparents and to find Lisa again.

  I married her in our Millerton town hall and we had the party in that very barn, her family’s barn in Millerton. She was still the same—headstrong and charming and clear about love.

  I’m not suggesting that we all should marry the first girl we kiss. But then again, why not? Once you’re in love, if you follow the path that love provides for you, why not stay in love? With that one person—even if they’ve got a bit of a foul mouth!

  Most likely, true love is nearby.

  From The New Yorker’s November 14, 2011, Talk of the Town section

  TROUBLED WATERS

  We don’t know about you, but come mid-November, we look forward to indoor parties with fondue and Scrabble-and-scotch sessions with friends. But a few days ago, we decided to shake up our routine with a brisk canoe ride. The desire for such a trip was stirred by news from Ladder & Rake Books that it plans to reinvigorate Marriage Is a Canoe, the book of marriage advice by Peter Herman. LRB has created a contest that’s meant to celebrate the fiftieth anniversary of the events upon which the advice book is based, which had to do with a summer Herman spent as a boy with his grandparents on Lake Okabye in upstate New York.

  One lucky couple has already been selected to spend a Saturday with Herman, who has maintained a Pynchonesque quiet for the last decade (everyone knows where he lives, no one will give you directions). We were in no mood to chase down a sage. Better to leave the task of intimate talk about marriage with Herman to the contest winners. Our desire was simply to take a paddle on a lake in Herman’s inarguably sylvan part of New York State.

  Further investigation led to Fred Benton, who has run Hudson Valley Canoe Tours since 1985. Benton is married to Annika Benton, who teaches kindergarten in Poughkeepsie. The couple have two children, Roderick, nine, and Annaliesa, fifteen. Benton agreed to take us on a morning trip around Silver Lake, one of his favorite spots, which probably wouldn’t be too windy.

  And so, on a gray Thursday morning, we found Benton at his preferred meeting spot, in the parking lot of the Village Diner in Red Hook. The “historic” Village Diner is clad in steel and shiny, not unlike the canoes used at camps all up and down the East Coast. Benton waved us over. He is a thin man in his fifties with gray eyes and a horseshoe of stubble around his otherwise bald head. The Michael Stipe of East Coast canoeing?

  “In the summers I give tours to families and I’ll run expert paddling seminars out of Jay’s Camping Outlet on Mamaroneck highway on the weekends if enough people sign up,” Benton said as he drove us to the lake in his hunter-green Ford F-150 pickup truck. There were several canoes tied up in a steel canopy built in the truck bed and they jostled one another in the wind as we rode. “But once fall hits it’s the off-season. So today, it’s just us.”

  We parked and watched Benton nimbly untie a canoe and bring it to the water. He had chosen his favorite, a bright red Olde Towne Guide 147, made of three layers of polyurethane.

  “It’s a cheap and basic model but I swear by it,” Benton said. “Can’t hurt it even with a baseball bat, practically. The wooden ones are museum pieces if we’re being honest.”

  Fred handed over a Carlisle Scout paddle to this paddler. He got us out on the water and we felt the welcome of the great outdoors, safely bundled as we were in bright orange Extrasport Volksvest safety vests. Fred himself didn’t wear one. He used a beat-up black plastic paddle.

  “Bad habits,” Fred said, alluding to his lack of vest and junky paddle. “Can’t break ’em.”

  We paddled and gazed at the turning leaves. Fred explained that Silver Lake was about a hundred and eighty feet deep and was typical of the lakes in the Hudson Valley region. It was his favorite lake because of the Silver linden trees that lined the banks. They averaged only about forty years of age and were still buoyant and held their leaves longer than most.

  Did Benton know Peter Herman?

  “I believe I’ve met him once or twice over the years,” he said, once the shore felt to this city paddler to be several midtown blocks away. “I’m not much for social life. Ask my wife about him if you like.” Benton called Annika on his cellular phone. Once he explained the nature of the query, he handed the phone down the length of the canoe.

  “Yes, of course I know Peter Herman,” Annika said. “Fred and I have eaten dinner at his inn. He’s a wonderful man. You say you’re out on Silver Lake? Aren’t you cold?”

  Did she think that the lessons from Marriage Is a Canoe actually worked? Did she consider herself lucky to be married to a man who spent his days paddling in a canoe?

  “I can’t say I ever thought of it that way,” she said, and apologized for not being able to talk longer. She had to return to her classroom to supervise morning snack (apples and string cheese).

  This paddler wondered aloud about what sort of questions the winning couple might ask Peter Herman, and what canoeing had in common with love.

  “There’s no secret to a good canoe trip,” Fred said. “Keep a steady stroke. Don’t jam the paddle into the water. Dip it in. Nice and easy.” We gleaned that he might be worried this paddler would splash him with cold lake water and so we evened our strokes.

  Did Benton take trips in the canoe with his wife and children? Did he fill the canoe with just enough supplies for a happy day on the water?

  “Not since the girl became a teenager,” he said, and left it at that.

  This paddler went ahead and reeled off a few of the other lessons found in Canoe. What about: Find time to be together every day—just the two of you—in your canoe?

  “Good luck with that.” Benton’s paddling had slowed. He said, “I’ll allow that I agree it’s a good principle. So sure, Herman may have something going. If I were him I might add a bit about sticking with your old model canoe rather than trading for a new one—you know, to get across that folks ought to stay married to one person. And something else about not needing an expensive canoe to have a good time.” Benton smiled. “Once you get started, this stuff is pretty easy! No wonder he wrote it. What’s the one about infidelity?”

  We wondered at Benton, who seemed to know a bit more than he was letting on.

  You will look at others with lust, and this will challenge the strength of your marriage. But if you’re going to have a happy journey through this life, stay in your own canoe.

  “That’s the one.” Benton wouldn’t say more. He spat into the lake and raised an eyebrow. He said, “Let’s get out of this c
old water.”

  Fred drove us back to the Village Diner and took us inside for sandwiches and tomato soup. Would the homilies found in Canoe apply to his own marriage? Would Fred share an example? Fred ate half his grilled cheese and bacon on white. He chewed for a while and then said, “Not being a metaphorical thinker myself, it hadn’t come to me before today. But now that we’ve focused in on it, I agree that the lessons apply. I paddle around all the day long. Thinking about marriage as a canoe definitely couldn’t hurt. I’m more patient because I understand the water. I know when the wind will help us along and when we need to really work together to keep going in the right direction.” He winked and dunked the other half of his sandwich into his soup. “See? It’s easy. Marriage is a canoe. Makes a lot of sense. Can’t say the same for kayaking. Kayakers are often loons and loners.”

  Outside the diner the sky threatened rain and we waved goodbye to Fred Benton, who was checking the bungee cords that held down his canoes. Fred let us know that next month he’d turn to his winter work, tuning up rental ski and snowboard mounts and bindings at Hunter Mountain ski resort.

  “I like the summers better,” Benton said. “But the winters are quiet and that’s good with me, too. You tell those contest winners congratulations from me! Annika and I wish them the best of luck. They ought to come back this way in the spring for a tour with me, and if they do, it’s half off!”

  —Elspeth Simon

  Peter, November 2011

  Peter drove into Millerton to do some shopping at Pantomime’s Grocery. He liked to visit with Pantomime’s owner, Arthur Levin. Arthur had built a theater in the grocery’s enormous backyard and run it successfully from the early seventies all the way into the early eighties. But as Arthur grew older, the theater and its demands had proved difficult to handle. Now Arthur was a Millerton old-timer who ran a good grocery store with an illogical name that was equally popular with tourists and locals.

  Peter moved up and down the store’s two aisles. Enormous posters lined the walls above the shelves, of The Threepenny Opera and Oklahoma! and Macbeth, posters that Peter imagined were ignored by the men and women who came in after shifts at Gilmor glassworks and the tire-repair places along Old Country Road to buy dark- and light-colored beer, respectively. Or was it now the opposite? Peter stood in front of the beer cases, meditating on this, while Arthur belted out gossip from his perch behind the counter at the front of the store.

  “I hear you’re leaving town,” Arthur yelled. He stood on a plywood platform, so his round stomach pressed against the counter and was framed on the sides by a pair of thin black suspenders from his mime days. He was five and a half feet tall and had a thick brown beard, just like the one most men in Millerton wore in the winter. He was dressed in his uniform of jeans, dirty white turtleneck, and red hunting cap, flaps up.

  “Am I?”

  “If I heard it, it’s got to be the truth.” Arthur smiled.

  The place smelled of the briny pickles that Arthur made himself, and the oily wool scarves and misshapen hats made by Arthur’s new wife, Vanessa, who had moved up from New York after a weekend stay at the inn with some girlfriends. She’d come in alone on a Saturday afternoon for tuna, sharp cheddar, and sprouts on a pita, and had left with an old man’s admiration and a chance at a new life that would leave behind the city that had let her down in the love department.

  “Do the glassblowers like dark beer or light beer?” Peter asked.

  “You’re talking beer fashion? Hell if I know,” Arthur said. “Ask my beer guy. Or better, ask Henry. He knows that stuff.”

  Peter nodded and dropped his basket on the counter. He set out shoelaces, dried cranberries, Cadbury chocolate, Grape-Nuts, a bag of baby carrots, and a quart of low-fat milk.

  “And how are you?” Peter asked.

  “Me? Who cares?” Arthur said. “I read about your contest in The New Yorker.” Arthur gestured at the laptop computer that sat between the credit card swipe machine and a red tin bucket filled with maple syrup candy. “Good piece.”

  “What piece?”

  “The save-your-marriage thingy?” Arthur made a ball with his hands and mimed laying it in a hoop. “Neat idea. That’s probably the most Fred Benton’s talked to a stranger in ten years. She must’ve been a hot young thing, that reporter. If I were still married to Françoise, I’d have entered your contest with a little entry essay that’d knock your socks straight into Connecticut. But with Vanessa, there’re no problems.” Arthur’s voice went up and he sounded just a little giddy. “Look at you!” he said. “Between your imminent departure and your contest, you’re the busiest old boy in the ’burg.”

  “Back up,” Peter said. “Fred Benton talked to a reporter about me?”

  “He said he didn’t know you. As I recall you and he had words back at the Sally Forth years ago, when you couldn’t keep your hands to yourself and he and Annika hadn’t yet made it legal. But Fred’s not one for speaking ill of his enemies.”

  “Because he’s not one for talking, as you noted.” Peter frowned and grabbed up The New York Times and a Poughkeepsie Journal from the wire rack. Then he took a Millerton Gazette, which was free.

  “Anyway, it’s true,” Peter said. “I did promise Maddie I’d move to California with her.”

  “And I admire you for it,” Arthur said. “She reminds me of that young girl on The Office—Mindy Kaling. Steady gaze, hot, modern—maybe Maddie doesn’t have as much of a sense of humor but the rest of it makes sense. On your charge?”

  “Yes.”

  “So you’ve got these winners coming to meet with you. Why not bring them down to Pantomime’s and we can put on a show. We can talk folksy about marriage and they’ll see how human you are. I’ll make out to be real impressed by you and then I’ll tell them about me and Vanessa. We can give them some apple cider donuts. We take pictures and I’ll get some press that’ll help me with the tourist trade. What do you say?”

  “God. I don’t know, Arthur.”

  “Couldn’t hurt.”

  “No, I suppose it couldn’t. And I’m moving away soon afterward, aren’t I? Since you only hear the truth.”

  “Indeed.” Arthur leaned forward. “Look, Peter. A woman wants you—go with her.”

  Peter dragged his paper bag off the counter. He cradled it in his arms. The bag felt heavy and alive. He hadn’t managed to get comfortable with shopping for one and it still felt wrong. Did he buy too much? Too little? He could never tell.

  “You’ve had a good run here,” Arthur said. “Now you’ve got a woman who cares about you and you’re getting out. Believe me, that is okay.”

  “I’m glad everybody’s got an opinion about where I ought to lay my head.”

  “What the hell else are we supposed to talk about?”

  The door opened and a young couple came in, stretching from what appeared to be a long spell of driving—most likely from the city to visit someone for the weekend.

  “Where’s your coffee?” the man asked. Arthur smiled and held up a hand in a just-a-moment gesture. Peter moved toward the door.

  “Don’t stick around for no reason!” Arthur called out. “I’ll never forget when Peter Schumann walked in that door and asked me to join up with him and his Bread and Puppet theater operation up there in Vermont and I said no because I wanted to make my own way here. A bunch of fucking geniuses about to make history and I said no!” Arthur made two fists and pumped his arms at his ceiling, which was decorated with bits of colored paper from piñatas and Cinco de Mayo celebrations. “Peter Schumann saw a kindred spirit in me and I said no. He makes history and I make coffee. Somebody asks for your hand, you give it to them, you get me?”

  “Yeah. I’ll see you soon,” Peter said.

  “And remember to bring your winners here! I’ll put together some fresh quinoa salad and some other stuff. It’ll be a party.” Arthur turned to the couple. “Now, you young people, what kind of coffee would you like? Because I am going to make it fresh for you. And
while I do, I am going to tell you the story of that man who is right now walking out the door.”

  Back at home, Peter got Lisa’s computer going and read the New Yorker piece.

  Well, he thought, if the winners are as awkward as old Fred was with that reporter, it will be a hell of an awful long Saturday.

  He glanced at the framed black-and-white photograph on the wall above the light switch, of his Pop coming in for the day with a few fish in a bucket, wearing a green vest and a blue T-shirt, blue jeans, a Lucky Strike hanging off his lip, nearly perpendicular to the grassy waterfront. Not even sixty in the picture and looking about as Peter did now, save that he was smaller and had more of a paunch. Just an occasionally kind and generally affable old man who could bear the weight of Peter’s aphorisms in death. Not a drunk, thank god. Just a retired salesman with a pension from the army and a little bit of money on top of that from his wife. A wife who, in turn, was much as he was. A daughter who had started out well enough and then moved to New York City for no good reason. An easily confused woman who became Peter’s mother and who was dead of alcoholism before her son finished college.

  Peter went and found the cordless phone in its cradle in his study, picked it up, and weighed it in his palm.

  He got Stella on the phone and said, “I am sorry to be slow about returning your calls.”

  “Oh, no,” Stella said. He could hear her getting up to close a door. “Not at all. We are doing this on your schedule. Though we have scheduled the weekend for our winners and we do need to confirm all that with you.”

  “I read the New Yorker piece. A little smug.”

  “That’s the right word! They are so smug. They just do whatever they want. I’m so sorry if any of it offended you. I can call someone over there and complain?”

  “No, no. I’m sure they’re impossible to control. And Fred could’ve been a whole lot worse,” he said. “There’s a backstory there.”

  “I’m sure there is.” She laughed. “Do you want to tell me about it?”