by Ben Schrank
This was not her fault. Was it? She certainly was not that controlling. And how could she forgive him for this? She couldn’t. And how could she have thought entering a contest would solve anything? How stupid could she have been? And how lost was she now?
Stella, November 2011
Wednesday morning and Stella Petrovic got in the elevator at her office and closed her eyes. Though her workday was starting, she was unwilling to think of anything but what had happened with Ivan before she’d had to run out of the house.
As the doors clanged shut, she remembered staring up at the underside of his chin and the strain in his neck, all of him happily thrusting away. She had come several minutes earlier but just then she was only looking up at him, loving him. Then she turned to her side, saw the alarm clock, freaked out, and said “Hurry!” And, with an attempt at a smile, “If you don’t come soon, I’m going to be late for Free Thinking/New Billing!”
Upon hearing that, Ivan had cracked up laughing. She pushed him off and got free. He fell off the bed, dick still hard as a chair leg, and rolled onto the floor. She took the opportunity to jump up and race around him into the bathroom, making sure to stay at least five feet out of his reach.
“Wait!” he called out, while he lay naked on the floor, still hard and laughing.
“No, I’ve got to go. I don’t even have time to shower, goddamn it.”
“I’m not done!” he yelled. “And I love you!”
“I love you, too, Ivan. But I don’t think Helena Magursky would consider hot sex a good excuse for being later than her.”
“How would you know?”
“Good point! I wouldn’t. That’s how screwed I am.”
She struggled into tights and a red plaid skirt, a white sweater with a diamond inlay pattern she had bought at the McCarren Park outdoor market two weeks earlier and kind of hated. She glanced at a pair of blue corduroy overalls she loved but hadn’t worn out of the house in two years. She could wear those. She couldn’t wear those.
“You look great,” Ivan said. He was standing in the bathroom doorway. She turned and smiled up at him and realized that, for the third time in her life, she was in love.
“Wait,” she said. “I do love you. This is where the romance is, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” Ivan seemed confused at her obviousness. He was a subtle person, she got that—and he didn’t like to be so on the nose in his language, because of his proclivity for Russian poetry, she supposed. But he also accommodated her. Why? Because he loved her. He really loved her.
“Of course this is where the romance is,” he mumbled as he kissed her neck. And then they’d tumbled right back into bed.
Now, in the elevator she reached down to scratch her leg and felt come there, under her tights, that was guaranteed to itch all meeting long. And possibly smell? Definitely, if she sweated. Jesus! And she was on the agenda, right there in the top spot: Canoe Update.
So she was in love, for real. And she was in trouble, for real. She had no plan beyond hoping that there’d be an e-mail or some missive from the woman, Emily Babson, or less likely from that awful Peter Herman. But when she checked her e-mail from her phone, there was nothing.
Canoe Update.
She didn’t have one. She might say, “It’s ongoing!” But no. She was iced and knew it, but to be late and have to make something up? That would make her rude and a liar. She might as well go directly to HR for the COBRA benefits lecture.
She joined the parade of women and the few men making their way into the Dreiser Room. People were still rustling into place and finishing up their gossip as she found a seat.
Helena called out, “Let’s begin! Let’s begin. I’m sorry if I’m late. But you all are used to it, aren’t you. Forty years of it, and so you’d better be. I believe we are post our winners’ weekend.” She glanced at Lucy who nodded a yes. “So where are we? Have we got a happy pair of marrieds we can introduce to Diane Sawyer? A droll and verbose Peter Herman who can get up there with them and talk about how he fixed whatever was the matter? We’re dying to know. Who can fill us in?”
“I guess I can,” Stella heard her own voice and tried to catch her brain up to it. If things were going well, a marketing person would’ve stepped in by now and started taking credit. That had been Stella’s plan. But things were not going well. And Stella was looking at a quiet room free of supporters. She felt horribly junior and out-of-body.
“Who’s that?”
“Me. Stella.”
“Okay, me. Good. Talk.”
“My update is actually not quite ready,” Stella said.
“I don’t understand. The weekend happened, didn’t it?”
“Yes, yes it did.”
“And yet, no update to share!” Helena laughed deep in her throat. There were titters from her lieutenants, too. A young woman three seats from the head of the table, who Stella didn’t recognize, slid a piece of paper down the table until it stopped in front of Helena. Helena glanced down at it and then her whole head drooped so it was at a ninety-degree angle from her neck. Everyone waited. Helena’s forehead hit the paper. She banged her forehead against the paper several times, as if she were trying to deny the order of scissors, paper, rock.
“Jesus Christ,” Helena muttered as she raised her head. “Can this be right?”
The unidentified woman nodded.
“I’ve just learned that with the USA Today ads, we’ve spent quite a lot of company money on marketing for this contest. Looks like we got overexcited. Regardless, after we spend money to do things, with the hope of increasing sales, we like an update.”
Forty-seven women and nine men nodded their heads.
“I will have a cohesive update that I can present to you next week,” Stella said.
“Cohesive, huh? That’ll be special. Will you have pictures?”
“Mr. Herman wouldn’t allow pictures.”
“No pictures? But I thought you—all right. So much for the goddamn twenty-first century. If he doesn’t end up on Terry Gross at the very least when all this shit is over I’m going to punch him in the nose. I should really call him. No more pussy-footing around.” Helena lowered her voice. Everyone bent in to hear her and she went on, “Lord, nearly a quarter million unchecked dollars on some half-assed contest and we’ve got less than nothing to show for it. Fuck. Fuck me. Lucy? Let’s not forget that phone call.”
Lucy nodded and noted that Helena needed to call Peter Herman. Stella wondered at this, as there must have been some communication breakdown in the past few weeks about just this phone call. It kept getting put off. Or perhaps these old people were playing phone tag? She shook her head. Though if Sara Byrd was right, she could see how Helena might have a hard time making the call.
After a moment, Helena went on, saying, “So we’ll have to wait a week for you … Stella? That feels wrong to me. Instead, let’s bring all the players in for a meeting. That’ll get us to the bottom of this morass!”
Stella smiled and nodded. The ugliness of the word morass hung in the room like flatulence that everyone smelled but no one would acknowledge.
Stella said, “Yes, yes of course.”
“Yes! Yes, of course we will! As I have just said we would. And let’s not think about bringing in the players. Let’s actually do it. No more thinking. Let’s do some doing! Now we move on.” Helena looked at Lucy, who nodded once at Sara Byrd.
Sara Byrd said, “I’ve got this proposal in, called ‘Swords of the Single Ladies: An Analysis of the Seven Traits That Keep Women Single and Unable to Find Husbands.’ The traits are different kinds of swords and the conceit is, like, ‘Ladies, put down your swords!’ The neat thing is that it’s written by a medieval studies professor at Princeton so it has a charming Joan of Arc theme running through it. It’s anti-Joan, incredibly. Obviously it’s not for me but I thought I’d mention it—”
“Sounds wild,” Helena said. “Very what-can-we-learn-from-the-Dark-Ages. Check with me later and anyone who’s i
nterested, get to Sara quick. We know there’s an audience for marriage advice. Don’t we, Stella?”
“What? Yes.” Stella spoke quickly. “Right!”
The group smiled and rustled, waited for Helena to move on. Stella made sure to only look down at her hands. The group focused their attention on a hot new novel about a glassblower who falls in love with an ice-skater, and Stella dared to look up. From her spot against the wall, she stared past the table full of senior staff, at the eighteen or so women lined up on the wall opposite her, perhaps sixteen feet away. Though their mouths were closed, they were laughing at her. Another eager editor blows her big shot. Now it would be that much easier for them to get theirs.
She’d been calling Peter since Sunday morning and nobody had answered the phone. Emily Babson wouldn’t answer her phone, either. And she’d never once talked to the husband, Eli. She had no pictures. Nothing except the entry essay and those few semi-charming but ultimately very lurchy phone calls with Peter Herman. In every one of them he had promised to update her and now he was unreachable. She sighed and touched her fingernails to her lips but made sure not to bite them. Because she’d need to get them in good shape for her upcoming job interviews. Maybe she’d become an agent? She shuddered at the horrifying prospect. A work life full of pitching jerks like her? Sure enough, the stuff on her leg warmed and began to itch. She dared not touch the spot. She thought of Ivan and grew angry at herself for dwelling on something that made her happy right at the moment when her career was going to shit.
“Who was that woman with the piece of paper,” she whispered to the marketing assistant to her right, who was mostly hidden behind a life-size presentation cardboard blowup of Pete Sampras, smiling and holding his new book, A Surprise or Two, but Mostly Pete.
“New business manager. Looks after the accounting as the expenses happen. I heard they’re calling it Monitoring as Spending Happens. MASH. Stupid, huh? I mean that’s what monitoring means. They’re trying to do a better job of tying costs back to editors.”
“Great,” Stella said. “Fucking great.”
“Shhh.” The assistant nudged Stella.
Stella glanced around the room and tried to pick up the conversation.
Everyone was laughing appreciatively at something Helena had said and Stella joined in. The joke seemed to be at Lucy’s expense. Stella looked around for Lucy and saw her leaning against a post at the side of the room, pretending to take notes. Lucy looked miserable and she was shivering. Had she lost her seat? It seemed that way.
Stella dared to look at Helena. And then the weirdest thing happened. Helena caught Stella’s eye and she smiled right at her. And did she wink? Was that even possible? But the smile was real and Stella felt it for what it was. One last chance.
Peter, November 2011
Where was the goddamn book? Lisa kept a copy on her shelves somewhere. If he couldn’t find it, he’d have to go down to the basement and unpack a carton. He had been avoiding the basement. He nosed around in her bookshelves, grazing through her gardening books, her Ovid and Krishnamurti and Galbraith and her investment manuals. For minutes he couldn’t find it among all these fine books of philosophy and economics that he had never read.
But then it appeared in front of him, several versions, all in a row. He pulled one out at random—a copy from 1981 that wasn’t any uglier than the ones before or after it, and that contained the exercises at the back. The goddamned exercises. He hadn’t even asked Emily and Eli if they’d done them. Standing there, he flexed his long legs and flipped around at random in his own book—the book he should have stuck to. He found what he was looking for. He poked a finger at the page and read chapter 8:
On Sin
“The twist I never saw coming was the twist and shout!” Pop loved to say that—it was his rock ’n’ roll joke.
I found it funny the first time, and kept laughing after that, just as Bess did.
But eventually I discovered that the joke was also meant as a kind of code for adultery. He never said: Look what happened to your parents because of adultery. But I was beginning to be able to understand him pretty well. On this evening, Bess had gone off to play bridge in the back room at the library and Pop and I were watching the sun go down together out in the canoe. He was drinking Yukon Jack whiskey from a copper flask and I was whittling.
“You will have your head turned by a pretty lady, you can be sure of that. You will twist. You may shout!”
His rough yell across the lake was like a crow’s caw. I still hear it when I see a pretty woman in stockings and a tight skirt pass me by in the busy midday street.
“Pretty girls are nice to look at,” I said, thinking of my Honey. “I mean, how can a guy keep from wanting to be with lots of girls?”
“You cannot keep from wanting. You will commit adultery. It’s a fact of life, like playing sports. You’ll keep playing sports as you get older, won’t you, Peter?”
“Yes.”
“At least football. You must play that in high school, or basketball, so you’ll know what it is to be on a team and to trust your teammates and work toward a common goal. But here is what you must remember. Even if you don’t take a woman who is not your wife in your arms and love her, you are certain to look at a woman with lust. This is adultery.”
“Adultery,” I said. And I won’t lie—it felt good and illicit to speak such a word aloud.
How little I knew! How innocent I was. But my Pop knew that from the moment I clambered off the bus on Main Street, with my army-green duffel stuffed with white T-shirts and blue jeans. I was blank enough for every sort of imprinting, right or wrong.
But everything I learned that summer was right.
Especially this:
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.
Peter snapped the book closed and laughed aloud at his own ridiculousness. The hubris he must have had to type such blather! Yet people liked it. And Emily Babson—she really believed this stuff. How could that be? She seemed intelligent. Maybe she was just being kind. And then everything had blown up around her. He had failed her. But what about the exercises? Maybe they were the kernel that held the true value and everything that surrounded them was so much husk. Maybe the exercises would be his excuse to call Emily. He would read them, and then he would call her because he wanted to talk about them. He could say that she and Eli ought to do an exercise. He imagined the two of them in their apartment in Brooklyn. Probably not speaking to each other this week but possibly, just possibly living through each day with the hope of salvaging their marriage.
He had been slow to write the exercises when he was asked in 1977. But Ladder & Rake had been after him to expand the reach of his book then, too. The later seventies were a healthy sales period for the book, because the energy crisis created plenty of marital problems among people who liked the idea of Canoe in the first place. The sort of people who were sick to death of hearing about the wild sex the guys in rock bands like Led Zeppelin and all their teenage fans seemed to be having. The people who loved Love Story and wished there were more books and movies like it to get them through the tough years, they were Peter’s audience. He was okay with that. It was a big audience.
The best he could do was to keep the exercises short. He decided to make each one no more than a dozen or so words. Let readers figure out the rest for themselves. Though he tried to be cool about it, he resented LRB’s insistence that he add the exercises. Though he didn’t say it aloud, he had begun to think of his book as a koan. He made a few things up and checked them with Lisa. She agreed they were reasonable and harmless. They had tried each of them at one time or another, and hadn’t been hurt by them. So, if he dug a bit, he could rationalize adding exercises to a program that was not entirely logical in its underpinnings. Doing these little things was part of his life. They were not lies. Of course, they also weren’t r
eally exercises:
1. Erase a trait. If there’s something your partner doesn’t like about you, change it.
2. Buy each other dinner. And not just at the local diner.
3. French kiss for a minute or more each day.
4. Make out in the parking lot after the movie against your car and then inside in the backseat.
5. Tell your lover all the little things about you that will help them understand you. Why are you holding back? Your lover needs to know.
6. Excuse behaviors you don’t like. If your partner can’t erase the trait, accept it.
7. Be free with money. You’ll be dead soon enough.
8. Go dancing somewhere that’s just a little dangerous.
9. Take a trip to a nearby spot you’ve passed dozens of times and treat it like a five-star vacation.
10. Hold hands in the supermarket.
Everyone wanted more. More advice. Specifics. LRB thought he should give stock market tips. But he didn’t understand how to invest money and so he wouldn’t answer. He understood that not having money led to the worst periods in married life and often destroyed otherwise stable marriages. Peter ended up going on Wall $treet Week with Louis Rukeyser to talk about stability. Helena immediately published a pamphlet based on the exercises that was endorsed by the American Society of Certified Public Accountants.
None of this would help Emily. Peter pulled out another, newer edition.
In the fall of 1993, after Belinda left home to begin her freshman year at Berkeley, he rebuilt the exercises. This happened because he’d been at the ShopRite outside of town buying groceries and was arrested by a six-pack of Charmin toilet paper. He noticed how thick the rolls had become, and how the language on the packaging seemed more terse than he remembered. More emphatic, more conscious and deliberate in its flirtation and subsequent demand that the consumer complete the purchase. It was looking to be a quiet fall, so he set his sights on tightening up the exercises that had always bothered him. Also, he was grateful that he and Lisa had survived their own spell of bad years and were still together, and he wanted to commemorate that.