Love Is a Canoe

by Ben Schrank

  “I’d be jealous of all the Argentinians if we lived there,” Stella said. “Why do I take all this work stuff so seriously? It’s just that Helena has me turned on. She’s so … great. And I won’t lose the job. I love the job. So long as this meeting goes okay, I’ll be able to do whatever I want.”

  “When’s the meeting?”

  “Tomorrow at ten.”

  They began to walk back to the bedroom.

  “Remember not to put your foot in your mouth.”

  “I am going to keep quiet. You can bet on that.”

  “Sure you are,” he said. She could see him raise an eyebrow and smile at her, even in the dark bedroom. She really did love him. It was something. Or, no. It had begun to feel like everything.

  Peter and Emily and Stella and Helena, November 2011

  Less than a minute after Peter announced himself to the receptionist, Lucy Brodsky came out to meet him. To Peter, she looked so young that her office clothes clashed with her face. The fabric of her blazer appeared to be more experienced than the rest of her.

  “I’m an enormous fan of you and your book.” Her handshake was uncomfortably firm.

  “Thank you.” He met her eyes. She looked away.

  “No, really. I give it to all my friends. You wouldn’t believe how time-irrelevant your advice is. Or maybe you would.”

  “I’m not sure…” Now that he was in the physical space of the publishing house, he adopted the soft dumb tones he’d used forty years earlier—to get through that odd time. He waggled his eyebrows and tried to look befuddled. This action appeared to make Lucy more comfortable. So he did it again.

  She smiled and said, “Please follow me. Our meeting will take place in the Dreiser Room.”

  She led him past rows of cubicles and then down a long hall to a conference room that was warmer than where they’d come from. They were alone.

  “Coffee? Water?”

  “No thanks, nothing for me.” He walked around the long conference table and leaned against a window frame. He glanced to his left and looked out at a corner of Central Park.

  “How do you like these new offices?” he asked.

  “These are the only offices I know. I’ve been here for almost a year and a half, ever since I graduated from Carleton. It’s in Minnesota.”

  “Ladder & Rake’s old offices looked much … dowdier.”

  “The offices on Park Avenue? I guess that was before I was born,” Lucy said.

  “Also there were books around. I don’t see any books? Except those ones in the glass cabinets.”

  “You can’t touch those. Anyway, paper books are not very green and Ladder & Rake is a green company these days.”

  “But—”

  “I know,” she said, half to herself. “Don’t start saying ‘but’ about business or you’ll go nuts.” She moved around the room, repositioning chairs.

  “Do you work for Helena?”

  She straightened and said, “Directly.”

  Emily Babson came in with another young woman who had on an argyle sweater and a leopard-print scarf and maybe a little too much lipstick. Had they been made to wait somewhere else? That seemed odd. He did his eyebrow waggle again and Emily looked first confused and then angry.

  “Sorry, Emily,” he said, instead of hello. “And are you Stella?” He walked over and shook both their hands.

  Emily said, “It’s funny to see you in an office.”

  “For me, too,” Peter said. “I haven’t been in a place like this in at least a decade. Maybe even two.”

  Stella was both shorter and obviously younger, somewhere between Lucy and Emily’s age. She kept opening her mouth and then instead of allowing herself to speak, swallowing air. Finally, she said, “It’s really great to meet you after spending so much time on the phone. I just think—”

  And then Helena came into the room through another door, moving fast and talking.

  “Hello, hello, hello!” She looked only at Peter. He was striding toward her before he knew what was doing. But he knew he shouldn’t be so familiar with her. So he stopped and retreated to his place at the window. They hadn’t seen each other in such a long time.

  “Well, I’m glad we decided it’ll just be the five or eight of us or whatever it is. My goodness, this is a big conference room for some little personalities! Stop. I mean the opposite. Let me see your charming faces, all of you.”

  Everyone in the room looked up at Helena while she settled into a chair at the head of the table. Lucy immediately sat down to her right. Helena held the silence and Peter was thrown back in time to when they were very young and she had just begun to learn how to do that. Through the combination of yelling and sudden silence she could make any conversation dramatic, so even bringing a glass of water with or without ice to bed would turn into a heated exchange. She was capable of this all by the time she was twenty-four.

  “Peter, dear—together again! I find I have to come a bit closer!” She got up and made her way to him. Now that he was invited, he pushed himself off the window and came to her.

  He smiled and bent in and they kissed each other’s cheeks. How could a person smell of the same light flowery scent after nearly forty years? They couldn’t. She did. He glanced at her hand and the diamond bracelets around her wrists, and thought of her infinite ambition, the fortress she’d built for herself up high in an office building. There was a weirdly thick gold chain around her neck. He had been far away for so long. He really had. Her hair was silver-gray now, but her eyes were the same deep brown. Without thinking, he reached out. He wanted to touch her face. But she stepped back, still staring at him.

  “You look great, Helena,” he said.

  “Thank you. I’m happy to see you. I missed you, Peter Herman.”

  She nodded and sat down again, not at the head of the table but in a chair near the windows. Peter sat next to her. She said, “Now this is what I like. A good solid meeting with just a few people, where we can have an honest and forthright conversation about where we are and where we need to be.”

  And then everyone leaned in toward Helena and began to talk at once. Peter was overwhelmed by the noise. Could Helena have been who Lisa was referring to when she told him not to just be with Maddie? Could Lisa wish him back to Helena? Yes. His wife could have been that calculated about his life, at the end of hers.

  The affair with Helen came back to him as snapshot images, the two of them in bed in her studio apartment on East Seventy-Second Street, followed by her screaming at him in the Lever House courtyard on Park Avenue, when Ladder & Rake’s offices were located across the street. It was 1975. They were coming from a lunch with someone and he was apologizing. He kept saying that what they had together was never serious. That he had gone and gotten married and he believed in the marriage. The book could be like a child between them, couldn’t it? Something they’d created that should make them feel proud. But no, that was all wrong and she had been furious at him. A child was a horrid simile, especially for a woman who did not yet have one. Even now, so many years later, he deeply regretted his choice of words.

  “Nothing more than a few pokes, was it?” she had screamed.

  She carried a stiff almond-colored pocketbook and she hit him with it, smacked him over and over again. And then she fell into him, crying.

  “I could love you,” she said. Peter knew she meant, I do love you.

  He had shaken her off, said he was sorry. He’d walked down to Grand Central and ridden back up to Millerton, hoping like mad she wouldn’t be too disappointed in him.

  “What do you think, Peter?” she called out, now.

  She put her hand on top of his. She wore gold and diamond rings on several of her fingers but she had no wedding band. No doubt she’d divorced a second or perhaps a third time. He smiled at her. Here she was again, after so long, in the seat next to him. And in mere hours, he’d be going back to Grand Central all over again.

  “I don’t know what to think,” he said, falling
back on the self he’d fashioned so long ago.

  “I think we can rebuild the contest,” Stella spoke quickly. “I’m sure we can.”

  The room’s attention focused on her. But she stopped as quickly as she started, perhaps realizing that she had not been asked what she thought. Peter found her engaging to look at. Of course, she was just like Helena. Though Stella was far less shrill and bossy. He imagined Stella’s career would be more of a ricochet than Helena’s had been.

  Peter said, “Stella, you remind me of Helena when she was young. She was lovely, like you. And outspoken! You couldn’t get a word in…”

  Stella opened her mouth. She had turned pale. “I am flattered, of course,” Stella whispered.

  “We all look up to Helena,” Lucy said.

  “What about the contest,” Emily asked. “I am only here because I want to make absolutely sure it goes away.” Peter realized no one had been paying attention to her.

  “She’s right,” Peter said. “It should.”

  “Can you speak for your husband?” Helena asked.

  “Um,” Emily said. She looked around. “For this purpose, yes.”

  “For this purpose?” Helena asked.

  “We are separating.” Emily nodded. Her cheeks and forehead reddened. But she stayed very still. She said, “Therefore we want to keep our privacy and have nothing to do with any of this. I’m sure you’ll agree that this is the right course of action. That’s what I’ve forced myself to come here to say.”

  “I’m sorry to hear it,” Helena said. Her eyes were sad for a moment and then she rolled her neck and looked out the window. Her coral-colored blazer did not shift. “I think we can all agree that our recently separated contest winners wouldn’t make for very good television or webisodes. In fact, this result doesn’t make for very good anything, does it?”

  “I’m not sure any of us were ever going on television, Helena,” Peter said. He smiled again at Stella.

  “Really, Peter?” Helena asked. “Stella thought you would. She sold me on that idea. In fact, she promised me. Didn’t you speak to Stella, Peter?”

  Peter looked out at Central Park. He said, “I’m sure I promised Stella the moon and the stars. Whenever someone from LRB calls I say yes, don’t I?”

  “He did promise me,” Stella said. She drummed her fingers on the table. The room grew quiet.

  “We’ll deal with you later,” Helena said to Stella, who went still, again.

  “No scones this morning?” he asked.

  “We can—” Lucy Brodsky began to get out of her chair. But Helena moved her chin to the left and Lucy sat back down.

  “No scones, Peter. We’re so busy running around like a bunch of Chicken Littles worrying over you and your book that we don’t even have time to eat!” Helena laughed.

  “So what shall we do?” Peter asked. “I played my part.”

  “You certainly did,” Helena said. “I knew Stella was lying to me. Making promises she couldn’t keep. And we’ve got your book. Or I should say, we still have it. We already have substantial unit escalation week to week. It’s great. Now that we’ve elevated awareness, the word of mouth will keep it going for a long time to come. I couldn’t be happier. And you should be, too, Peter. You wanted a little money. You’ve got it. We don’t mind that we paid you for participating in this catastrophe—that’s not the problem.”

  Peter looked at Stella, who had begun to sink in her chair. She stuck her tongue out and licked a spot between her lips and nose.

  Peter said, “Then what is the problem?”

  Helena stared at Peter and said, “There are a couple of things I hate. One is betrayal. I hate betrayal. But something I hate even more is working with someone who makes promises she cannot deliver!”

  “I don’t understand,” Peter said. “What promises were made? I’m saying I made them, not her.”

  “Peter, it is living hell to work with people who promise and then do not deliver on their promises. Living hell. Stella will come to understand that.”

  “Helena,” Peter said. “Please—”

  “No.” Helena shook her head. “This went too far. Stella took it too far. She doesn’t understand how to manage authors, or books.” Peter felt the three other women in the room watching him and Helena. They did not move. “We’ll take care of the fallout. We can be sure that whatever constitutes the media these days will sling some arrows at good old LRB but we’ve weathered worse. Twitter and all that. They’ll make hay of us. I’ll have a talk with counsel later today about how to exit the contest without delivering winners,” Helena said. “Now Peter, can we ever expect to see something else from you? Our Stella tells me you hinted at a second book. Or was that one of her lies, too?”

  “I’m going to leave now,” Emily said.

  Helena turned and looked at Emily. “Yes, you can go. We will leave you to your piousy—your privacy,” Helena said to Emily. “Please forget us. Enjoy this nice man’s book and forget the apparatus behind it. If anyone from the media does get to you, I’m sure you’re sophisticated enough to handle it. We are at arm’s length from you, as of now. I am sorry about your marriage.”

  “Okay,” Emily said. Peter saw her crying face in two places at once, at this awful business meeting and in the ruins of her crumbling marriage. He stood up and went to Emily.

  “I’m sorry, Emily,” he said. “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s not your fault.” She walked to the door, stood there, and then turned around, as if she were waiting for something.

  “I suppose it’s time for me to go, too.” Peter followed Emily to the door. “Goodbye, Helena.”

  He watched Helena stand.

  “One more thing,” Helena said.

  “What’s that?” Peter asked. He looked again at Lucy and Stella, both with their hands clasped in front of them and their eyes upraised, silent and expectant as little girls in class.

  “Listen.” Helena’s voice was calmer now. “Your book is not really what we’d call a hit. I’ve kept it in print all these years without much in the way of sales because I’m nostalgic. Sometimes it amazes even me, what I can do. We’ll shut down the contest, as I’ve said. I’m sorry I encouraged it. I should have said no to this one.” She gestured with her chin at Stella. “But I didn’t. I let her lie to me.”

  Stella, who had only been quiet, watching, said, “But I found the romance.”

  “Did you?” Helena asked. “Well then, that will be your consolation.”

  Stella only nodded and looked down at the table.

  “You kept it alive, all these years?” Peter asked Helena.

  “People like it. But people like lots of crap and goodness knows they lose interest and forget and start looking for something new quicker than goldfish. Lucy?”

  “Yes?”

  “Can you show our guests out?”

  “Emily, Peter, please come this way.”

  “Goodbye Helena,” Peter said. “It’s always good to see you.”

  “Keep us updated on that new book, won’t you?” But he could see she was frowning, holding back tears. She would not look at him.

  “Yes, yes, I will.”

  He watched her, glancing again at her uncommonly thick gold rope chain—It was like armor, he thought. Such a charming, powerful woman. All these years later and he was still drawn to her, was still walking away from her. He couldn’t understand it.

  He followed Lucy down the hall. Emily was already at the elevator bank.

  “Wait for me, Emily,” he called out.

  Helena was coming after him.

  “Peter? There’s just one more thing.”

  He turned to her. She looked up at him and her eyes flared and if he didn’t know her, hadn’t known her, he would have thought she was about to yell at him. But that wasn’t it. She was gathering enough courage to say something that mattered to her. He loved her eyes.

  “You did a lousy job of keeping in touch. You never called.”

  “I
know. I’m sorry.”

  “I never forget people’s promises.”

  Peter smiled and thought back on the ever-constant love he had with Lisa. He thought back to those evenings with Helena. She had driven him wild and he had ducked the intensity. He had chosen a quieter life.

  After a moment, he said, “I was afraid I would disappoint you. I was sure I would.”

  “You needn’t have worried about that.”

  “Is it too late?”

  She frowned. He was astonished at how much he liked the feel of her in front of him, there in the hallway. The way they couldn’t quite seem to let each other go, even now. And then she quickly shook her head and went away, down the corridor.

  “Well, that didn’t go quite as I imagined it would,” he said, half to Emily, who was mute, and half to Lucy Brodsky, whose arms were folded tightly over her chest.

  “You could start a blog,” Lucy Brodsky whispered to him. “Tell the truth about what happened here. We’d all read it. We won’t be here forever. This place doesn’t rule us.”

  “Oh?” he said. “Mmm. That’s for you to do, isn’t it? I’m no blogger. And besides, this place isn’t to blame for what went wrong.”

  And then Peter and Emily were standing on Fifty-Seventh Street, with a blustery Thanksgiving wind and dozens of tourists walking around them.

  He took Emily’s hands in his. “Emily,” he said. “You are going to be okay.”

  “Maybe someday. What about that awful girl, Stella? She’s still up there.”

  “I imagine that by now she’s learned that she doesn’t fit in. If she hasn’t, Helena will make it even more clear.”

  Emily got free of him and took a step back. She said, “After a while, when I look back on this, I’ll feel that you helped me through a difficult time. You listened to me. You gave me a sweater.”

  “I didn’t do you any good at all.”

  “That’s not true. You were there for me, Peter Herman. You can’t deny it!”