Love Is a Canoe

by Ben Schrank

  “Yes.” Maddie seemed to be speaking to herself. “You did.”

  Henry was seated at the table nearest to the fireplace. He waved to them. It was just after three on a Wednesday afternoon.

  “Hello, you two,” Henry called out. “Maddie, you look incredible, as usual.”

  Peter glanced at Maddie and she did look good, in form-fitting khakis and driving moccasins, purple shawl thrown over her shoulders, on top of a dark sweater.

  “Back in a moment.” Peter went off to the men’s room. His prostate was becoming an issue. But he wasn’t eager for a visit to his doctor. Part of what had gone wrong with Lisa was one too many visits to the doctor.

  At least, thank goodness, Wally Wood’s dirty Sally Forth comic strips were still the wallpaper in the men’s room. The inn had changed so much over the past few years, but Peter looked around and silently thanked Henry for having the good sense to leave the hundreds of images of a wonderfully big-breasted Sally Forth. Back in the early eighties, Peter had made the decorating decisions for both inns after Lisa’s parents retired. He’d had the brilliant idea of wallpapering the men’s room in both places with the Sally Forth comics he’d bought from a Vietnam vet at a garage sale in 1975 and hidden in the basement. Lisa never went into the men’s room, so she never found out. It pleased Peter that they were still there. Though they were old and yellowed, they were still damned good fun to look at.

  And then, as he reexamined the hot little drawings of Sally Forth before leaving the bathroom, he realized that of course Lisa knew about the wallpaper. She knew about everything. He’d written his book, entered her life, and then everything afterward had been scribed by her. And he had been okay with that. He had gotten up the courage to come to her in Millerton. She hadn’t expected too much from him after that. And of course he’d been great with Belinda. They both had.

  “Bathroom looks great,” Peter said as he sat down.

  “We ought to rip those dirty comics down and paint,” Henry said. “But I can’t bring myself to do it.”

  “Glad to hear it.”

  “What is in there?” Maddie asked. She sipped from a cup of tea that Peter imagined Henry must have prepared for her before their arrival.

  “You’ll never know.” Peter touched her back, and she smiled at him. “Any chance of an afternoon scotch?”

  “During the day we run more of an espresso bar,” Henry said.

  “Well, that’s about the stupidest thing I ever heard,” Peter said. “Is it a bar or isn’t it? I see a bottle of Johnnie Walker right there! So let me have a glass of the stuff with an ice cube in it. Please!”

  “All right, all right,” Henry said. “You can make your own drink.”

  Peter stood up again. He found his way behind the bar. But when he got there, he remembered that Maddie didn’t like to see him drink hard liquor, and he found himself with his hands outstretched a few feet from the bottle, waving at it. He hoped they weren’t looking and quickly turned around to face them, placing his hands on the bar as if he were the bartender. “Before we get started on your big proposition,” he called out, “I have one of my own.”

  “What’s that?” Henry asked.

  “There’s a contest.” Peter went on and told them about it. He felt like he did when he was a boy, excitedly telling a girl about a baseball game he’d played in, and the game was a lie but her disinterest was not. Though now it was the opposite, he realized as he went on—he was watching their faces, watching them lose interest. The more he thought about it, the more important the contest became to him. Why didn’t they care? But no. All they cared about was friendship and money and their carefully tended futures and families. To them the contest was as remote as any media, and maybe a little irrelevant and stupid. He closed his mouth. He saw Maddie smile at him. No matter how stupid he sounded, she looked at him like she loved him. It was troubling.

  Finally, Henry said, “I’m not even sure we want that sort of publicity.”

  “What? How could it be bad?” Peter came back and sat down at the table. He let his hands hang loosely at his sides and he breathed in so his stomach ballooned.

  “A save-your-marriage contest? The winner gets a two-night stay here at the inn? And advice from you? It doesn’t exactly make the place a dream honeymoon location, now does it?”

  “When was it ever that?” Peter asked.

  “We have honeymooners!” Henry said.

  “Oh, please. From Albany, once or twice a year. Welcome to the present, Henry. People live their lives in public now. I’ve been talking to my publisher, and believe me, this is totally normal.”

  “You think I’m not familiar with how the culture has given up on privacy?” Henry asked.

  “I think you’re a cultural bumpkin!” Peter clapped his palms flat on the table.

  “Stop right there,” Maddie said. She reached out and took Henry’s hand. She said, “But of course the winning couple will stay here. Let us set Peter’s contest aside. Henry, you have a proposal for Peter.”

  “That’s right,” Henry said. He took a few deep breaths before going on. “We have created value, here at the inn. And at the same time, we have taken on more debt…”

  Henry went on. Peter stared at his old friend. He felt heat in his chest and forehead. Half a minute passed. Peter finally said, “Say that again.”

  “I’m sorry, Peter. But that’s the price this bumpkin has to offer you.”

  “That’s his price?” Peter asked Maddie. Maddie didn’t speak. And Peter hadn’t actually heard the price. He tried to smile. He said, “Is this a conspiracy?”

  Henry could make his eyes twinkle behind his glasses, and while Peter watched, he went ahead and did it. Peter wanted to call him a shithead but held back.

  “I created more of the value than I contributed to the debt,” Peter said, carefully. He was outside his range of financial comprehension and all three of them knew it.

  “Sure,” Henry spoke quickly. “Sure it’s worth more than I’m offering. But I’m buying debt, Peter, not value. I’m buying the opportunity to pay down your debt to nothing.”

  “Yes, for twenty cents on the dollar. I mean—did I hear you right?”

  “I could refuse to buy it!” Henry sputtered, and Peter felt his old friend’s saliva hit his cheek. Henry said, “This wasn’t my idea. It’s Maddie who came to me.”

  “But you set the price. Make it twenty-five cents,” Peter said.

  Henry shook his head and said, “You’ve got to trust me. You know I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

  Maddie stared down at the table. She said, “Peter, you made me no promises in relation to your business. I am being meddlesome and we are wasting our dear friend Henry’s time.”

  “That’s right. And I won’t do it! I’m not giving in! We’ll find some other way.” Peter stood up. He said, “I didn’t live all this life to spend my last however many years in a fucking cowardly retreat! I own my house free and clear. I’ll mortgage it before I give up the inn.”

  “Your house isn’t worth enough to solve the problem. We were more than halfway to setting you free.” Maddie seemed to be speaking to herself. She placed one hand on top of the other on the table. She was incredibly still.

  “No,” Peter said. “No to all of this.”

  He turned away from them and walked out to the parking lot where he found a maid who was headed home after her shift. It was nothing to convince her to give him a lift back to his house.

  Half an hour later he was on the phone with Stella Petrovic. He sat in the kitchen with a cold glass of water in front of him. He found he couldn’t stop drumming his fingers while they talked.

  “If you don’t like the entries you’re getting, why don’t you soften your sales pitch. It’s not about a couple in trouble. It’s about a couple who are coming in for a checkup, you see? The save-our-marriage part bugs people. It’s more of a healthy talk, is all.”

  “Go on,” Stella said. “I’m typing.”

/>   “It’s about a couple with a few years of marriage who come to me and—there’s nothing to be ashamed of—they sit and we talk about marriage and what it means. We just want a good solid couple. We want to save somebody, but we don’t want to die trying.”

  “I wish I could be a fly on the wall of the session,” Stella said.

  “Session?”

  “Your time together—the afternoon and evening we’re talking about.”

  “Think of it as more of a visit. There’s a sweetness to this thing. Believe me, sharing wisdom and fixing problems are not the same thing. It’s the wisdom angle that’s missing from…”

  “Yes?” She did sound eager. He smiled. Who didn’t like talking with an eager young woman in New York who had been instructed to treat you with respect? He almost laughed aloud. An hour ago he felt awfully old. But now he was better. Dealing with people who didn’t quite understand what he was—that made him feel good.

  He said, “It’s a nostalgic project. Like a catalog I used to get in the mail from Restoration Hardware, of reconstructed products that we used in the fifties and sixties. Nostalgia sells. We know that.”

  “Of course you’re right, Peter. We just haven’t seen the right entry. I don’t want you to sit down with a couple that is any different from what you’re describing. No one wants a couple who would ruin the nostalgic feel of what has become a lifelong project for you.”

  “Very well said. I appreciate the care you’re taking.”

  “We more than appreciate that you said yes!”

  He got up and began to pace the house, trying to imagine how it would be when the winners visited him. Where would they sit?

  He said, “You’ll find them. They’re out there.”

  “I’m sure we will. I convinced marketing to spend more money on ads, both in magazines and on websites, but of course the additional money raises the stakes and the pressure…”

  “Uh-huh.” He nodded, half-listening. He looked out at the front driveway and saw Maddie pull up in her silent Mercedes.

  Stella said, “I wouldn’t do any of this if the stories in your book didn’t mean so much to so many people. I mean, I only discovered Canoe a few months ago but now that I know about it, your words pop up everywhere for me. I asked my parents about it and even they’d heard of it. My mom gave it to a friend who was going through a hard time once. It’s like part of our American fabric is what I’m getting at…”

  Maddie gently stepped out of her car. She caught his eye and frowned at him. She reached back into the car and tugged out a shawl. He thought, I’ll pull that off her. Pull her silky camisole down and tug the straps of her bra from her shoulders, cup her big breasts in my hands. He was proud of himself for thinking sexy. But from the look on her face, it didn’t seem as if Maddie was in that sort of mood. Though over their months together she had surprised him with heady afternoon sex more than once.

  Stella was still talking but he cut her off, saying, “I look forward to meeting you someday, Stella. Keep me updated.”

  “I will. We’ll find our winner.”

  “Of course we will.”

  He got off the phone and went to open the door for Maddie. There was a little pain in his backside, perhaps from crouching in the window seat at the wrong angle.

  She came in and searched his face with her dark eyes. “Peter,” she said, dropping her bucket bag on the hutch by the front door. She walked through the house to the kitchen and he followed her.

  “Want to walk the lake?” he asked. But he could see she didn’t.

  “Walk? You walked out of the inn and left me there. Was it so awful, Peter?”

  “I didn’t like where the conversation was going.”

  He moved in what he hoped looked like slow motion, fooling around, arching his neck back, groaning, trying to act as if he’d been punched on the chin, and then shot in the chest. He staggered back against the butcher block section of the kitchen counter, felt its warm contour in his hands, and steadied himself.

  He said, “You have to sell your house, too. We can wait until the spring to go.”

  “You are sixty-two. You have plenty of time to start something new. Why dawdle?”

  “Dawdle? I don’t think I’m making enough of this contest. It’s important to me. It’s become part of my legacy.”

  “Your legacy? I am not sure I would agree that a marketing-based contest burnishes a legacy, even if I am willing to be forced to agree that a single book makes a legacy.”

  “It still sells. It’s—at least I know it’s still in print.” He stopped. Then he said, “Why are you dragging me along? It can’t be fun for you.”

  “You are right.” She bowed her head. “I was trying to explain that to Henry.”

  “Explain what?”

  “How my faith in others always gets me into trouble.”

  He looked away and sucked air through his teeth.

  “Shall we walk?” he asked.

  “No.” She kept shaking her head. He wanted to kiss her shoulder and then he crossed the cold kitchen and did just that, pulling at the neck of her sweater. She pushed him away.

  He said, “What can I do, Maddie?”

  “I am sorry, Peter. I did all the things my husband wanted to do and I regret that now. My daughter needs my help. You made me a promise and now you are having trouble keeping that promise. I understand that.”

  He smiled. Had he promised? He knew he could be slippery with promises.

  Maddie said, “Earlier you wanted a drink. I will drink with you even if you are not to be trusted. What about white wine? Do you have any?”

  “I’m sure there’s a bottle around here somewhere.”

  He went out of the kitchen and into the pantry, knowing there was no wine there, stalling her, looking for a few minutes to straighten himself out so that he wouldn’t reveal with more surety what she had already discovered about him.

  “Won’t you sing an old song with me?” he whispered to himself, on his knees now, pawing through old bottles of apple vinegar and jars of strawberry preserves. There was wine in the kitchen. He was afraid she would find it and discover yet another lie, on top of the fact that he was afraid to leave Millerton with her, even though, apparently, he’d promised.

  She called out, “You know what? Forget it. We will leave each other alone this evening.”

  He heard her open the front door. “Wait!” Peter struggled to his feet. “Don’t go!” He followed her, stepped onto the front porch and spread his hands over the railing.

  “Maddie, stop!”

  She turned and stood halfway down the path between him and her car.

  He said, “I’m going to throw myself into a new life with you. I’m—I get that I’m hedging just a bit. Like you say. But there’s this contest.” He realized how loud he was—nearly yelling—and that he needed to stop yelling, but he couldn’t, so he kept going. “I’m sorry about this afternoon. Let me just make good on my commitment to this contest and then I’ll leave with you. Doesn’t that sound fair?”

  “Since when,” Maddie asked, “does fair have anything to do with romance? I think you ought to read your—what do you call it? Your goddamn book.”

  Emily, October 2011

  Instead of meeting Ida Abarra alone for a drink, Emily called her from work on the morning they were supposed to get together and asked if she and Eli could go to dinner with her and Billy.

  “Of course,” Ida said. “I never invite Billy anywhere. He’ll glow. But I should tell you that as of a week ago I’m not drinking.”

  “That’s fantastic, Ida! Congratulations.”

  “Of course we’re not talking about it or telling anybody and we’re nervous as hell but I feel like it’s the right thing to do. I’m thirty-four, so may as well. How old are you?”

  “Thirty-three,” Emily said with a nod. Her small office was open plan but she was determined not to edit herself too much in front of others. Nobody at work messed with her. She was one of the few peo
ple at Yes who could explain what the company actually did and that made most of the rest of the staff tiptoe around her.

  “You’ve got time,” Ida said.

  “Eli turned thirty-nine a couple of months ago. He’s definitely ready.”

  “Did you work out the thing from when I last saw you?”

  “Sort of. He’s really sorry. We’re treating it like a watershed.”

  “Listen, I saw every moment of it and I meditated on it and you two are going to be okay. I promise. Do you want to meet us at Frankie’s, at … seven thirty? We can have a drink while we wait? I mean, I can’t but the three of you can. You’ll need more than one if Billy gets going on what Christine Lagarde ought to do with the IMF, which will definitely happen. You’ve been warned.”

  * * *

  “I guess trading on the international markets means you can work at any time. Must be stressful,” Emily said to Billy, at the bar at Frankie’s.

  “We call it trading an international book,” Billy said, without looking at her.

  Emily nodded and said, “Yes, I know that.” Ida had gone to the bathroom. They were lucky to have gotten spots at the bar since it was crowded. Emily was closer to Billy than she would have liked. But he didn’t seem to notice. He also ignored the fact that she understood what he did for a living. Emily sighed. She had a glass of wine but Billy had ordered bourbon that he’d asked for by saying, “Do you have…” and then a name she’d never heard of, and then when the bartender said no he would try again. So he was grimacing through his fourth-choice bourbon and the bartender clearly hated him. He was pretentious and Emily saw why he’d gone for Ida. She was a prize.

  “In fact, I’ve heard of your husband,” Billy said. “Everybody loves someone who can manufacture a simple technology like a bicycle with their hands. He’s quite the entrepreneur.”

  “Don’t use big words like that with him,” she said. “I’m joking—but you’ll see. He’s smart but he’s smart the way a brilliant designer is smart. By which I mean he is less than well-spoken. I mean, I’m kidding. You see how I’m kidding?”