Love Is a Canoe: A Novel (38 page)

“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!”

From
Marriage Is a Canoe
, Chapter 11, On Endings

On August twenty-fifth of that wonderful summer, with a single full day left to my visit, I knew I had to break up with Honey. But I didn’t want to do a bad job of it and hurt her. So I asked Pop for advice.

We went out on the lake to catch a trout and talk it over. It was already deep into the afternoon when I got up the courage to ask him. The tips of the sun’s rays touched the elms across the lake. By then I could paddle us out and so I did that while Pop threaded his rod. When we got to floating, I said what I needed to say, about how much I liked Honey and how I wanted to see her again but that I knew, because of school and the distance that separated us, that I ought to tell her it was over. Even though that’s not what either of us wanted.

“Peter, you’ve got to have endings in order to find new beginnings. Endings are okay. What’s not right is treating people badly—no matter if you don’t love them anymore. That doesn’t excuse you from treating them just as well as if they mattered to you more than anyone else in the world. You know the mark of a true gentleman?”

I did not.

“The mark of a true gentleman is to show the same deference and kindness to the Second Avenue shoe-shine boy as to the Queen of England.”

I nodded, never having met either.

“I have never had a break with Bess, but if I were to have one, I would not be unkind to her. No matter what. Now let’s look at your own mother. Your mother has had some bad breaks. Let’s be honest here. She has.”

I only nodded again, because I was still not capable of admitting that my mother had been with a man who abused her. And that that man was my father.

“And there are men she’s had relations with in her life—without going into too much detail because you’re just a boy, there are men who have not been kind to her and it hurts my heart to say it and I do not like this. I do not like knowing it. But there it is. You see? It won’t go away.”

My hair had grown long so I was always flipping the front back and I did so then, and maybe that made me look a little prouder or like I had a little more attitude than I actually did.

“You don’t want to become like one of those men who treats your mom badly, do you?”

Not for the first time that summer, I swallowed back my tears. I said, “No, sir.”

“Then go find that little girl and be kind to her. Be honest. You’re going on back home and won’t see her anymore. In life, you have to have endings. She knows that, too. And you shouldn’t try to get around them or run anyway. That’s a coward’s move and in the moment it might feel nice, like it gets your heart beating, to run from a responsibility. But you’ll live with that moment of cowardice and you can’t brush it off. It’s deeper than a sailor’s tattoo or a scar from a knife fight. It sits inside you if you don’t do the right thing and you can’t get free of it. So promise me you’ll never shy away from an honest ending. Can you promise me that, Peter?”

“I promise I won’t,” I said. And the next thing I had to say was said because it had to be. “Are you giving me all this help and advice because of my father, and the way he and my mom are breaking up? I promise I won’t end up like him. I don’t even like him.”

“Don’t say that. He’s your father. But yes, in part,” Pop said. “In part. We can’t fix him and set him straight now, can we? All we can do is work on you.”

“So I’ve got to go and say goodbye to her? And just be kind? Just tell her I really like her but we can’t go on? That’s it?”

“That’s right. It is okay to part, and it is okay to end. And you should know that. But you’ve got to do it honest, and that way you won’t have to live with so much regret. Come on, let’s go back. The fish aren’t biting this late in the day. They’re sleeping already. We both know that.”

Later, after I’d gone to see Honey, we sat at the kitchen table and ate chicken cutlets with garlic bread and spaghetti with tomato sauce. We drank tall glasses of ice water. For dessert we had a Jell-O mold that was so full of fresh fruit the pink Jell-O could hardly stand the pressure and the weight.

It was nearly eight and the lights were coming on in the houses around the lake. I thought, This is my favorite time of day. Then I thought, There are tons of times of day that are my favorite here. And looking back on that time now, I wish that all of my life could be filled with those soft moments.

If you must put an end to your voyage, be as kind and honest with each other as you were when you started out together.

Stella, November 2011

Stella walked into her office a few minutes after nine on Friday morning, which was much earlier than she usually got in, but it didn’t matter. She was fired immediately.

She was shocked to discover that she felt no hate for Gina Adams from HR, who arrived with Melissa Kerrigan, who she’d barely seen in days and who she also, incredibly, didn’t hate. She didn’t feel hate while Gina told her that she would be covered by COBRA for ninety days but that regardless, she ought to get her own health insurance immediately. She didn’t feel hate for Melissa, who had come in especially for this event since she normally took Fridays off, to say goodbye.

“Even though LRB considers this a departmental restructuring rather than a firing, the point is that I bear some responsibility,” Melissa said.