Love Is a Canoe: A Novel (33 page)

She held
Canoe
and looked deeper into her bag. There were bills. Eli hadn’t been back to their place and she kept fantasizing about putting them all in a big envelope and sending them to him. But that would be small and she knew she would regret it so she hadn’t done it. Also, it was much too early for that kind of thing. An AT&T bill was on top. The cell phone bill. It listed the calls made on both their iPhones. Number, time, and duration.

She thought back to the honesty of his underwear drawer as she tore the envelope open and spread the pages flat over the bar. Eli’s calls were right there, time-stamped, right up to Monday morning. He wasn’t calling his parents while he struggled through their weekend in Millerton. No. What she had long suspected was true. She glanced back through the month. There were dozens of short and long calls to different, strange numbers. Three minutes. Forty-two minutes. She paged up to the Millerton weekend. Timed precisely to when he went for his run was a twenty-six- minute call to a 310 number, which she knew perfectly well was Los Angeles. Jenny’s phone. The sheets of calls filled in his absent moments so deftly and undeniably that she almost felt bad for Eli, was nearly sympathetic to his head-spinning inability to figure out what the fuck he was up to. But the pages went on and the calls became regular and revealed that eventually, yes, he had made his choice and figured out what he wanted to do.

The tears that fell as she stared at the phone bill hurt her face, as if they were too salty or were made of acid. She kept wiping them away with bar napkins and then examining the smears for color or texture or smell. What did she expect? Orange and smoky and redolent of kung pao chicken? Kind of. There was definitely something suspicious about her tears. She mashed the pages of the bill together. She reached into her bag, past an Eckhart Tolle book one of her yoga instructors had given her after she’d cried in class a few days earlier, and got out
Canoe
and paged around. She gulped down wine and read:

On Healing After Disagreements

“Don’t you ever fight?”

I was with my Pop, out in the canoe. It was cool out, early morning, mist still on the water that I never stopped confusing with smoke from a fire. We hadn’t put bait on our lines yet. We were just sitting out there, listening to the morning.

“Not a pretty word, is it, Peter? Fight? Bite off the last bit of the
t
in order to say it right and it sounds like something ugly.”

“Like a cuss.”

“Yes, exactly like a cuss. You have your hat?”

I put on my New York Yankees cap. On that day in August I was finally past my sunburn and my nose had gone from pink and freckled to a dark tan. My hair had changed color, too. It was sandy brown instead of the dark mink color it had been when I arrived. And by then I was in love with Honey—if a twelve-year-old boy can feel that kind of love.

“You know what the best part of a fight is?” Pop asked.

“Making up,” I said.

“Yes. And what is making up?”

“I don’t know.”

By then, I’d learned that honesty was prized above all else and so not knowing an answer was better than guessing. My grandparents had no love for ingenuity. The philosophical talk that informed the way they chose to live was like black bread, dense and warm and honest and heavy and ready to absorb any challenge that came.

“Forgiveness is at the heart of making up. Because if you can’t forgive, you can’t make up.”

“What if … what if someone really hurts you?”

I was thinking then of another little girl—a green-eyed girl from Manhattan called Irene. A few months earlier in the spring, before I met Honey, I had told Irene I liked her and she said she liked me, too. But then a bigger boy named Charlie Gimmelstop told Irene he liked her, and she thought about it and then let us both know she liked him more than me. I was cast aside.

I realize now that I wasn’t asking about hurting. I was asking about betrayal.

“Even if someone really hurts you, you can forgive them. But in serious relationships, like marriage relationships, people try not to hurt each other terribly because, you know, they promised not to when they got married. But sometimes—heck, all the time—there are little things that go wrong, little moments of forgetting or ignoring or a little less caretaking when there should be more caretaking. But if both members of the relationship practice forgiveness, then there’s no mounting up of pain, you see? Instead, there is peace. And peace is the best goal.”

By then the mist that I thought of as smoke had lifted. The day was growing warm.

“Absolute forgiveness. You can’t get there easily, that’s for sure. But you can keep on striving for it. You see?”

I was just quiet. No, I didn’t see.

“Absolute forgiveness brings peace. Sure as a kind call brings the dog. Sure as seasons follow, as the Yankees play great baseball. Absolute forgiveness is the fastest and best way to peace.”

“Okay,” I said. I pulled down hard on my cap. It was a big thing to hear. I’m not sure I totally accepted what he said, then. I didn’t feel like forgiving that girl, Irene. Not ever.

“Okay? Come on now! It is magnificent! You’ll understand that someday. Now let’s quit talking and catch a fish for a darn change!”

After an argument, only absolute forgiveness puts your canoe on a smooth path once again.

Emily put the book down and she knew that, though it was not nearly over, it was going to be okay. Someday she would be able to forgive Eli. That didn’t make her feel better, but it was true. After his things were gone and the agreements were signed and the lawyers were paid.

Emily’s phone buzzed again. She was amazed that she could feel it through the new Kanye song that was shaking the bar. She didn’t recognize the number. But she thought, Openness, forgiveness. Answer it. It’s probably a wrong number. That’s okay. If it was Eli calling from some strange phone, well, she would just hang right up on him.

“Hello?”

“Hello?” A man’s voice.

“Yes?”

“Is this Emily Babson?”

“Yes?”

“It’s Peter Herman.”

She went blank for a moment. She had locked him up in her mind and didn’t imagine that she would ever be in touch with him again.

“Listen, I want to come and see you.”

“What?” The music grew louder and she could hardly hear.

“I’m moving to California but before I go I owe you a visit.”

“You don’t have to do that,” she said.

“It’s time I came to the city. And I want to see you and Eli. Are you okay?”

She could hear how he had to strain to have a phone conversation and she felt guilty. She looked at her knees. She held them tightly together and pressed them against the bar. They were starting to hurt. She felt a hand on her shoulder and there was Sherry, smiling at her, about to apologize for being late, even though she wasn’t late. Emily motioned,
just a moment
.

“Please. I need to know. Are you all right?”

Emily said, “No, I’m not all right. And I will not see you with Eli.”

Sherry shook her head, rubbed Emily’s back. She picked up Emily’s glass and drank from it.

“Then I will see you alone. I’ll be there on Tuesday or Wednesday. Can we agree to meet on Wednesday evening?”

“Couldn’t you just tell me on the phone what to do? You saw us together. That’s the crazy thing. You saw us together and you saw us fall apart. It’s over, right? Or is that not true? Did you see something between us that you want to tell me about? Is that it?”

“No, Emily. I just want to talk with you. That’s all.”

“Wait.” She wrapped her free arm around her sister. Peter Herman was on the phone. He wanted to help her. She wanted to say: Tell me what to do right now, this minute. She felt herself stuttering into the phone, grasping to hear him, realizing that even his breath on the phone made her feel some hope.

“Eli isn’t sleeping at home. And it’s freaking me out, like, really badly. Please.” She clenched her eyes shut against a sudden and gritty breeze that came through the bar’s open door. “You were there with us. Can you tell me what to do right now?”

Sherry frowned and looked around the bar.

“You know I can’t do that. I wish I had some magic to share with you,” Peter said. “But we should talk. I’ll be in touch soon, as soon as I get there. Tuesday afternoon. Or Wednesday. I’m not sure yet. Goodbye, Emily.”

“Who was that?” Sherry asked when Emily set the phone down on the bar. Sherry had one hand on her belly and the other around Emily. She always worried that she was growing a gut when she was between jobs. Emily didn’t move. She wanted her sister to hold her.

“Peter Herman.”

“Oh, Christ! That sanctimonious bastard! Can’t he leave you alone?”

“Sherry! Don’t be so theatrical—I’m sorry!” Emily covered her mouth. It was the meanest thing she could say to her sister.

“It’s okay. I mean, like I care.”

“Listen. I was just looking at my phone bill. Eli’s calls are there. Eli was talking to Jenny the entire time we were together in Millerton. I know that for sure.”

“He is such a bastard.” Sherry sighed. “I shouldn’t have said that about Peter Herman. I was being kind of theatrical. Eli is the bastard.”

“He was lying to me the whole time. To himself, too, I guess.”

“I hate him, Emily. I really do.”

“Mom apologized for calling me controlling. She agrees that what he did is unforgivable. He wasn’t really with me, you know?”

“I know.” Sherry hugged Emily tighter.

“I had to take the morning-after pill. I told you that, right?”

“Yes.” Sherry kept holding on to Emily. “Emily, I know.”

“I should have married Gordon. I should be in Oregon with two children and Gordon right now, walking on a—on a rocky trail.”

“Stop,” Sherry said.

Emily looked around the bar, which was all black wood and mirrors. She and Emily would eat in the back at a table with a candle and a red-and-white checkered tablecloth, and they would drink lots more wine and eat things slathered in red sauce. They could be sloppy together. It didn’t matter.

Sherry said, “God, sometimes I wish I didn’t have to stay in New York when I’m not working. This place seems perfect when I’m happy but right now it feels a little dead.”

“It’s a good restaurant.” Emily took another inch of bar napkins and began to tear them to shreds, caught herself doing it, and stuffed the mess into her bag.

“I know it is. But I don’t always want good.”

Emily stared at her sister. Her sister would know if Eli was with Jenny now.

“I do. I always want good,” Emily said.

“Emily,” Sherry said. “I know you do.”

Sherry pulled Emily closer and since Emily was still on the barstool she buried her head in Sherry’s chest. And Emily began to cry all over again because she knew from Sherry’s silence and how she hadn’t gotten upset at Emily’s comment about her being theatrical, and how the news of the awful phone bill didn’t surprise her at all, that Sherry had just confirmed that, yes, Eli was with Jenny, now. And Emily had to accept that her marriage was over, all over again.

Stella, November 2011

“You see, it’s a problem,” Melissa Kerrigan said, on Monday afternoon. She leaned in Stella’s doorway, pink sweater thrown over her shoulders, arms crossed over her chest. Stella was thinking it was Melissa’s inability to manage a direct report that was the problem. That was why Stella had come up with the
Canoe
contest and was also why she had gotten so close to Helena. Yeah, because she’d been too free. She wanted to scream, You’re the problem, Melissa! You … shouldn’t manage people. But she knew she’d demanded the freedom. She had wanted to gamble and win big. And so Melissa had left her alone.

So she said, “I know. I agree with you.” She looked at Melissa’s shoulders, which were broad. Melissa had been captain of her water polo team in college. Why Stella knew this, she had no idea.

“They won’t talk to you?” Melissa asked. “Not a word from any of them?”

“Shroud of silence.” Stella raised her hand as if she were testifying.

“Everybody is saying she left her husband for him. Is that true?”

Stella shrugged. She had been asked this question several times a day for the last week. If it was true that made her some kind of engineer of disaster. All aboard the disaster train! I’m Stella Petrovic and I’ll be your conductor!

Melissa frowned and said, “It’s all awfully public, that’s all.”

“Which was the intention,” Stella said. “I mean, I don’t want to go on the defensive.”

“No. You don’t.”

“Look, I’ll see it through to the end. It might work out.” Stella smiled and told herself that Helena probably wouldn’t appreciate a manager torturing a potential rising star.

“Yes.” Melissa smiled. “That’s a good point. Maybe you should make a list of ways in which it might work out.”

“Thanks for the tip.”

“Seen anything else on the backlist that looks hot?”

“A few things.” But she was lying. She’d figured that
Canoe
was her ticket out of the backlist. She had not looked further.

“Good! And new stuff?” Melissa’s arms were still folded.

“Um. Yeah. There’s a new book on the value of supportive friendships for women that’s kind of interesting.”

“That’s really good. If you see a diet book, we could use one. Don’t you have a friend at
People
? Can’t you find out who is thin lately and who we can still get for cheap?”

“I’ll try.”

“You do that. I’m here if you need me.” Melissa pivoted off the doorframe and disappeared.

Stella lay her forehead down on her desk and hoped for an idea to pop out or just burp up, like they always did for Helena. She would even settle for spitting one up, right there on her skirt. But of course nothing happened save that she felt weird and a little head rushy.

Her phone rang—an outside line.

“This is Stella.”

“Stella, this is Emily Babson.”

Stella gasped. She needed Emily to tell her everything and then go on TV otherwise the contest was a failure and Stella wasn’t sure she could survive that. She said, “Emily? Hi.”