Love Is a Canoe: A Novel (26 page)

“You shouldn’t be. I’m serious. Thank you for doing this.” She kissed him back and they bumped noses.

He turned off the engine and they sat in the car for a moment, listening to the chirping birds. She suddenly wished she was dumber and not so desperate to fix things. Then she was ashamed and angry at herself for wishing she was dumber. It was their marriage that was at stake. They should do everything to save it. Maybe she was a fool, and this was a fool’s errand? Trying to fix his cheating. Probably. Reaching out to strangers for help with explanations for incontrovertible problems? Yup, childlike and dumb.

“Eli, am I dumb for doing this, for making us do this? Do you think I am a dumb person?”

“You’re definitely not a dumb—”

But she had already seen Peter Herman. She opened the car door and that brought a blast of air so sweet she felt like she was going to lose her mind.

“Hi! I brought wine,” she said to no one, and then left it in the car and drifted toward Peter. She had meant to be calm and inquisitive, to approach the way she would approach Gary Hustwit after a lecture. But instead, she forgot all the layers of self she’d grown since she was a girl and just walked toward Peter.

“Hello, you two!” Peter Herman made his way down his brick steps to them. She could hear each of his footfalls and the country noise around them, the wind coming from the lake and the caw and honk of birds.

“Hello,” she whispered.

“Hello!” Peter said. And then with less certainty, “You are Eli Corelli and Emily Babson?”

“That’s us,” Eli called out.

“I had a feeling.” Peter smiled and twinkled his eyes at them.

She felt too shy to meet his eyes and instead gazed at his khakis and blue ragg-wool sweater, his brown cordovan loafers that were nearly as old as she was. He bent toward her to shake hands.

“I’m a fan,” she whispered.

She loved him intensely and immediately and felt, for only the second or third time in her life, an overwhelming fated happiness. She thought to herself, Here he is in front of me and I have walked in his words since I was a little girl. Walked in his words! She felt amazed that she was so in touch with her sentimentality. So what if his book was a little hokey? It had helped form her! The man had explained how to love. He had helped to form her idea of what marriage should be. Her forehead felt hot. She took a step back and braced herself with a hand on the car.

“It’s good to meet you,” Eli said. “My wife is a huge admirer of yours and we’ve both enjoyed reading your work.” Eli bumped Emily’s shoulder to create more space. He shook hands with Peter.

“Huge admirer?” Emily took a deep breath and smiled at Peter. “It’s more than that. I love your book. Since I was little I’ve loved it.”

“That’s enough—don’t embarrass me,” Peter said. “Your essay was charming. And it was honest. Now here we are. Well, what do you know?”

Emily tried to watch Peter without getting caught. But he seemed to know what she was up to. He turned and took her hand. “I mean what I say,” he said. “It was funny and sad.”

Eli walked ahead of them but then he slowed and turned around. He kept his distance, though. He understood that this first part, the part about getting to know Peter, needed to belong to her.

“Let’s go around the house,” Peter called out. Eli nodded and found the path that went down to the lake.

Emily said, “I never write about myself. So it wasn’t easy.”

“I imagine not. Writing never is.”

“I mean, I didn’t think anyone would actually read it. It was more of an exercise, you know? And now to be here with you, it’s so strange.”

“Don’t worry.” Peter let Emily’s hand go but when she stayed close, he put an arm around her. “I can already feel that we have a lot to talk about.”

“This is a beautiful spot,” Eli called out.

“Let’s go down to the water,” Peter said. “It doesn’t get a whole lot more picturesque than it is today.” They could see their breath in front of them and it was pretty, a pretty feeling, knowing that they were cold and crisp now but soon they would be inside and warm. They arrived at the water’s edge.

“There it is,” Emily said, when she saw Peter’s Old Towne canoe, resting on sawhorses, just up from the little dock.

“The very one,” Peter said. “The same one I used with my grandfather.”

“The green really does glow,” Emily said. The canoe’s dark green canvas walls looked fossilized.

Eli walked onto the dock, which was thirty feet long, made of beautifully weathered wood, with cattail fronds sticking up around the supporting columns. They could see other houses peeking out at them across the lake, from behind trees covered with leaves that had turned flame orange and red and deep brown and plum.

“Any chance we could go for a ride?” Eli asked.

Peter looked at Emily and raised an eyebrow.

“Yes,” she whispered. “Let’s send him out, just for a little while.”

“Sure thing,” Peter said. “Let me help you bring it to the water. There’s a paddle tucked inside—there it is.”

“There’s room for the three of us?” Eli asked.

“How about you go alone,” Peter said. “More fun for you that way.”

Eli nodded and Emily could see that sounded good to him. He had his hands on the canoe. “Look at this thing,” he said. “Here’s a design that hasn’t changed for well over a century. Wow, look at those ribs. Just beautiful … okay. I’ll take it for a spin and be back in ten minutes.”

“Take your time,” Peter said. He helped Eli slide the canoe into the water. Eli jumped in and paddled away.

Emily shivered as they watched him go. She said, “It took him a little while to wrap his head around coming here. He’s being great about it now, though.”

“He seems like a nice fellow.”

Eli waved from the canoe. He yelled, “So smooth!” And paddled directly away from them, toward the middle of the lake. They turned and went back to the porch. They sat down on the straight-back chairs on either side of the door and watched Eli paddle.

“It’s good to give him this break,” Emily said. “I’m sure he’s happy, paddling.”

“He’s fast,” Peter said. “I can see that he’s never spent time in a canoe before and he’s teaching himself.”

“I like that about him. He’s adaptable. When I told him this was important to me, to visit you even though winning was so weird, he said yes and never looked back. I have to tell you something. I really did read your book when I was eleven and twelve, when my parents used to fight before they split up. I used to lock myself in the bathroom off their bedroom and read and imagine I was Honey and my parents weren’t about to get a divorce.”

“My book wasn’t meant for little girls. That must have been a rough time for you.”

Emily nodded. She said, “I wonder how much reading your book had to do with the work I do now. I explain things for a living. And so do you. Except I explain how stuff works. And you explain love.”

“Love?” Peter laughed uneasily and turned to Emily. “Now remember, I only try to explain marriage.”

She only stared at him and she hoped he was able to understand her expression, that she was trying to say there’s no reason to be light with me. What you do is important and I know it and so do you.

“But what you say about when you were a child reminds me that the same was true for me,” Peter said. “I wrote because of my parents. I created this world up here with my grandparents and wrote about it because of them, because of all the fighting and the anger I had to put up with at home.”

“Really? I always wondered about that. You shaped the stories to fit what you imagined marriage to be like.”

“Some of it was real,” Peter said. “Anyway, when I wrote, that kind of shaping was okay. I understand that’s not true anymore.” Peter sighed. She watched him stare straight ahead at the lawn. She looked out but Eli was so far away now. She waved at him but he didn’t see. “Right there, my grandfather did tell me he was sorry about my mother and how things were. He hugged me. It helped. I don’t deny it. But that’s not what matters today. What matters is you and your husband and your future. You two want to be happy. It isn’t complicated.”

“I wish it weren’t. When I met him I meant for it all to be simple. But it hasn’t been. The way he and I are, I can’t find a way to speak clearly about it. I try to get control of it and it just spins away. Or, he does. But he’s trying not to anymore. That’s why we’re here.”

“Looks to me like he wants the same things you want. And you’re right. He’s not running away.” Peter nodded at Eli, who was making his way back toward the dock.

Emily shielded her eyes with her hands. She said, “I hope you’re right.”

“Today we’ll shape something new, a new way for you two to live. It won’t be perfect. But we’ll construct something safe and good for you. Just like you and I did for ourselves when we were kids.”

“I’m so happy we won.” Emily stood up. “I would love that. But even if it doesn’t work, don’t worry. I will always be grateful to you for your book, no matter what.”

“You’re kind,” Peter said. “You and I, in a way we’ve already given one another more than a happy afternoon. Now let’s get started on the hard part.”

“What a great place,” Eli called out, as he bumped the canoe’s nose on the dock. “Is it very expensive to live out here?”

“It’s about all I can afford!” Peter laughed. He turned to Emily and said, “Let me help him out and then we’ll go inside. We won’t sit for longer on the porch, not today.”

After they’d set the canoe back in its place, Eli obediently trooped toward the house. Emily watched him pivot for a moment and then resist his urge to go back and play at the water’s edge, skip stones or just look about for fish or birds or whatever else.

The three of them went up the back steps and in through the kitchen. The house was perfectly clean. Peter didn’t stop them there, so Emily could only glance at the knotty-pine cabinets and dark wood floor, at a pair of scissors with blue plastic handles on the butcher-block counter next to the apron sink and some flower stems lying in a puddle of water next to them.

They went into the living room and stopped near a green couch in front of picture windows that looked out on the driveway and the front lawn.

“I do want to talk broadly with you,” Emily said. “About the way you show love in a story. I want to talk about your gift.”

“One thing at a time.” Peter looked back at her. “Let’s begin with you and Eli. Later we’ll have dinner together and you can ask me anything you want. I’ll be getting some help with that so you needn’t worry about my cooking! I don’t have a gift for it.”

“Sweetness?” Eli reached out and touched Emily’s shoulder. “Isn’t this a great house like we were talking about in the car yesterday? Do you want to ask about that?”

But Emily didn’t look at Eli. She sat down next to him on the couch, but didn’t respond to his touch. Emily could only look at Peter. Maybe they really could get back on the path toward the life she’d once dreamed would be hers. And here was Peter Herman, ready to help them try. His marriage and his life were everything she had imagined for herself, the marriage she would have, the happiness at holidays, all of it. Everything that Eli had nearly wasted was here, in Peter.

“You helped explain me to myself,” she whispered. Neither man heard her. She turned and felt a flash of pure hope as she looked at Eli.

“Let’s begin,” she said. “Please forgive how awkward we are. It’s just that I don’t want to waste a single moment.”

“I should start by saying that I don’t have a philosophy,” Peter said. “Everyone thinks I do, but I don’t. Still, I believe I can be helpful to you.”

No one spoke. Eli rolled his head back and cracked his neck.

“What about the line ‘Marriage is a canoe’?” Emily asked. “That’s metaphorical philosophy.”

“Is it?” Peter smiled. “I think it’s just an aphorism. I only mean that the anecdotes in the book don’t add up to a philosophy. For today, perhaps we could call them more of a point of view, like we discussed out on the porch. Do you see? How really it’s all about being kind?”

“Please.” Emily waved her hands over her eyes. “Can we just call it a philosophy?” She looked at Peter and gestured at her husband as if to say let’s keep this simple for his sake.

“You’re very smart,” Peter said. “All right. It’s a philosophy. Would you like a cookie? They were baked by a friend of mine just this morning. Try the cardamom.”

“But you just said you don’t have a philosophy,” Eli said. “I’m confused.”

Emily saw Eli squint. He was a businessman, after all. He could be a little tough when someone was indecisive. And she also knew that for her sake, he wanted what happened at Peter’s house to be valuable. He did not want her to feel cheated.

“Look,” Emily said. “We’ve been through something bad. We’re not afraid to hear real advice.”

“I understand,” Peter said. “Forgive me. I’m a little rusty.”

“Of course we’ll be silent and unable to talk now.” Emily tried to laugh. “It’s my fault. We started in too fast.” She uncrossed her legs, spread her knees apart and then brought them together again. She was wearing corduroys and felt the fabric on her thighs. She could see Eli to her left, crouched over, looking at the palms of his hands.

“I hope there’s not going to be a photographer?” she asked.

“Let’s leave all that aside and you start,” Eli said to Emily. “We both know you want to.”

“Fine,” she said. “I will. I’m going to try again to jump right in even though this is completely awkward. I am going to trust you both.”

“Go ahead.” Peter spoke through a mouthful of cookie. “You can trust me to listen and to keep your secrets.”

But she didn’t speak. She could not choose what to say first. She looked at both men. The room was perfect and quiet. She didn’t mind how constructed the moment was. She understood that. It was something else. It would be easier without Eli here, she thought. She glanced at him.

“I can’t wait anymore. I need to talk,” Eli said. “I am feeling the trust here and so I need to say this. I almost blew up our marriage.” Eli put his hands out in front of him, palms up, like a man trying to find his way in a dark room. “I got too deeply involved with my business and there was this woman—”