Love Is a Canoe: A Novel Read online

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  For Lauren, who helped

  Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Dedication

  Introduction to Marriage Is a Canoe by Peter Herman, published by Ladder & Rake Books, October 1971

  Emily Babson, July 2010

  Peter Herman, July 2010

  Stella Petrovic, July 2011

  From Marriage Is a Canoe, Chapter 1, First Day

  Peter Herman, August 2011

  From Marriage Is a Canoe, Chapter 2, On Desire

  Emily Babson, August 2011

  Peter Herman, early September 2011

  Emily Babson, early September 2011

  From Marriage Is a Canoe, Chapter 3, Marriage and Intimacy

  Peter, September 2011

  Press release for the “Win a Day with Peter Herman Contest,” sponsored by Ladder & Rake Books, a division of Timmler Products, Inc.

  Emily, September 2011

  Stella Petrovic, October 2011

  From Marriage Is a Canoe, Chapter 4, What Is Marriage?

  Emily, October 2011

  Peter, October 2011

  Emily, October 2011

  “Stolen Bases,” from Marriage Is a Canoe, a new foreword to the third edition, first published in serialized version for six consecutive Sundays in July and August 1982 in Parade magazine

  Emily, October 21, 2011

  Stella, November 2011

  Emily, October 2011

  Stella, November 2011

  From Marriage Is a Canoe, Chapter 5, On Beginnings

  From The New Yorker’s November 14, 2011, Talk of the Town section

  Peter, November 2011

  Stella, November 2011

  From Marriage Is a Canoe, Chapter 6, Speaking of Togetherness

  Stella, November 2011

  Emily, Winners’ Weekend, November 2011

  Peter, Winners’ Weekend, November 2011

  Emily, Winners’ Weekend, November 2011

  Peter, Winners’ Weekend, November 2011

  Emily, Winners’ Weekend, November 2011

  Peter, Winners’ Dinner, November 2011

  Emily, Winners’ Weekend, November 2011

  Stella, November 2011

  Peter, November 2011

  Emily, November 2011

  Stella, November 2011

  Peter, November 2011

  Stella, November 2011

  Peter, November 2011

  Stella, November 2011

  Peter and Emily and Stella and Helena, November 2011

  From Marriage Is a Canoe, Chapter 11, On Endings

  Stella, November 2011

  Peter, December 2011

  Emily Babson, mid-April 2012

  Peter Herman, Millerton, New York, late April 2012

  From the introduction to the revised and annotated edition of Marriage Is a Canoe, retitled Love Is a Canoe, February 2013

  Acknowledgments

  A Note About the Author

  Also by Ben Schrank

  Copyright

  Introduction to Marriage Is a Canoe by Peter Herman, published by Ladder & Rake Books, October 1971

  Dear Reader:

  In this brief volume I will share some stories that were told to me ten years ago during the summer of 1961, when I was twelve. The stories are meant to entertain. But they are also life lessons.

  In that summer of 1961, my parents divorced. I was bewildered and lonely. During those July and August weeks, while my parents spent each night fighting over their possessions, I was sent to stay with my grandparents Hank and Bess Latham. They lived in a grand old cabin on the shore of Lake Okabye, in Millerton, New York.

  Over the course of our days together, we took long walks around the lake and I learned the proper names for the many things found in nature that had been, before then, unfamiliar to a city boy like me. We enjoyed picnic dinners of fried chicken and lemonade at dusk on the lawn that rolled down from their cabin’s back porch to the shore of the lake. I played baseball and went to square dances with the local children. And just about every day, Pop and I went fishing on Lake Okabye in his Old Towne canoe.

  The stories my grandparents told me have become the lessons and guideposts that I return to as I go about the happy business of being a hardworking man, a kind neighbor, and an honest citizen. But what I remember best, and what I’ll share in these pages, is all that my grandparents showed me about how to be a good husband and lover.

  Though they would never come right out and say it, my grandparents were eager to share their philosophy of love. They were terribly upset at my parents because of how badly they mishandled their marriage. And I believe they wanted to keep me from following in their footsteps. My grandparents did something unusual: they brought me, an unhappy young boy about to enter adolescence, inside their world and they talked to me about their marriage. They showed me how to nurture a truly loving relationship.

  I am sorry you weren’t there with us that summer. But the wonder of all that happened then and my need to share it is what compelled me to write this book. I have done my best to fill this volume with all the lessons I learned about love from my grandparents. Their stories are meant for whoever might care to read them. Because I believe anyone who does, will benefit.

  Peter Herman, April 12, 1971, New York

  Emily Babson, July 2010

  “I got everything,” Eli called out. He carried his bike in one hand so its top tube was level with his ear and he swung a canvas bag full of groceries in the other hand.

  Emily smiled at him from the middle of their apartment, where she stood next to the kitchen island. She had been examining a defrosting piecrust.

  “Did you get cornstarch?” she asked.

  Eli let their front door slam behind him, dropped the bike so it bounced once before coming to a lean against the wall, and came through the big parlor and into the kitchen. He kissed her. He smelled like iron and oil from his bicycle factory and then underneath that, the smell she’d given up trying to properly name and now just thought of as green olives, which made no sense. She loved his smell. He had dark hair that he wore a little long and his eyes were brown but sometimes she saw them flash violet. She let go of the piecrust and put a hand on his chest.

  “I forgot that. I got everything else, though.”

  “Blueberry pie won’t work without it.”

  “Sure it will. It should. Anyway, we must have some.” He kissed her again. Eli Corelli was as tall as his wife, though he was thicker, so in photographs he looked shorter. When Emily first met him after a lecture he’d given at the New School, she thought he had legs like tree trunks and she loved that about him immediately, that he was so solid that if she were ever inclined to throw herself at him, he could catch her.

  Though it was Saturday, they’d both been working all morning and now they planned to spend the rest of the day making a pie for a contest held by Emily’s sister, Sherry. Emily didn’t often go to Sherry’s parties, which Sherry threw when she was between acting jobs, but she liked the theme of this one.

  “I called her and got the scoop,” Emily said. “There’s two categories, sweet and savory. And then a final big winner at the end. So our blueberry could go up against chicken potpie. Though it’s too hot for that.”

  “I hope going sweet was the right move.” Eli slipped his hands around Emily’s waist.

  Emily pushed the piecrust around on
the counter. She’d bought it yesterday and it would take at least another hour to thaw. She’d said yes to her little sister’s pie party on Monday before her shyness held her back and now she was nervous. Emily had long ago accepted that Sherry was social and she was not. Sherry was striking to look at. She had black hair while Emily’s was only very dark brown. And Sherry’s face was all angles so her photographer friends loved to take her picture because of all the shadows they could find when they lit her. Emily’s face was softer and rounder and she was quicker to tan. Most of the time she had a spray of freckles over her nose and cheeks. She had her hair cut in bangs to contrast with her features. The sisters weren’t best friends—Sherry’s best friends were actors like her, and they changed every year or two. Emily was just three years older than Sherry. They were equally protective of each other. And if Emily was being honest, she would have to admit that she was closer to Sherry than anyone else in New York. Emily had been too shy in her twenties and then she’d surprised herself and everyone else when she met Eli and married him. But instead of becoming more confident because she had a husband who everyone loved, she had come to live too much inside their marriage. She beat herself up about this situation and often thought up schemes that would change the dynamic before it solidified and she completely lost her identity to their coupledom. Before she was with Eli, she had trained herself to love to go to yoga at least a few times a week, to switch to merlot after a Manhattan or to just start with merlot, to not feel remorseful when she went shopping for clothes and brought home the same charcoal cashmere cardigan over and over again. She had learned to care for herself. Now she was sure she could work herself out of this newish state, and she believed that she absolutely had to before they had children. Emily was aware of the calculation that went into her decision to go to this party, aware of how purposeful she was and how she was bothered by it, but she was determined to go anyway. Eli never seemed to tear himself up the way she did. She loved Eli. But she was often frustrated with herself and jealous of her husband.

  “The more I think about it, the more I don’t see how we’ll win with straight-ahead blueberry.” Eli opened some cabinets. “Blueberries are in season. Everybody is going to show up with the same pie.”

  “We don’t have to win. We just want to make a yummy pie, that’s all. Not some avant-garde bacon and peach monstrosity. I want ours to be liked.”

  “Liked? No, baby. It’s easy to make a likable pie. I want to see people fucking love whatever we make. I want to see forks go in mouths and swoons happen. I want to see finger licking, not liking.” Eli wouldn’t stop moving around the kitchen. He frowned. “I want to help you cook this thing, but what’s always weird about Saturday afternoons is that I need a nap.”

  “I won’t sleep, but I’ll go in there with you.”

  They held hands and walked into their bedroom. They rented the parlor floor of an oversize limestone town house on Clinton Street in Carroll Gardens, in Brooklyn. The tall front windows were near exactly like the ones Emily had dreamed of when she first came to New York a decade earlier. Emily had repainted and washed those windows when they moved in. The rest of the place was good, though unloved around its edges, with a noisy refrigerator and a parquet floor that would be amazing if their landlord would just sand and polish and care for it. They did their best to keep everything clean and bright, except for the bedroom, which had chocolate-brown carpet and blackout shades. Eli had painted the room a deep red when they moved in two years earlier, just a few months after they were married. It was a much sexier color than Emily would have ever thought she would like in a bedroom. When her mother had come down for a conference and stayed on their couch, Emily had kept the door to their bedroom shut.

  They lay down on the bed, over the sheets.

  “Did you get enough done today?” Emily asked.

  “Nope. The boys in Japan want eighteen more bikes. And I’m falling behind schedule. I don’t love the stress.”

  “Send them a pie.” She laughed and her eyes crinkled. She knew he liked seeing her laugh. He brushed back her bangs and kissed her.

  “Maybe I will if we can make one worthy of their undying love…”

  Eli kept talking about work. His six-year-old company, Roman Street Bicycles, made single-speed bike frames that were in demand all over the world. Eli was having trouble managing growth. He was determined to touch each frame and get involved with every build, and if he kept meeting demand, soon that wouldn’t be possible. Emily was thinking about work, too, about a proposal she was doing for a company that wanted to re-brand a line of cotton blankets.

  “What’s a good name for a blanket?” she wondered aloud.

  “I knew you weren’t listening.” Eli buried his face in her neck. Warm blanket, she thought. Soft blanket. There are so many things, Emily thought, that gain nothing from being reconsidered. Her group had been paid well a few times for suggesting that a company not change a thing. But a good brand consultant couldn’t do that every time. Eli threw an arm over her. His hand slipped behind her back. It amazed her that after four years together, they could fall asleep intertwined. She thought she would need an abstract word in front of blanket, Moomja or something. Eli. The Eli blanket …

  “Kiss me,” she said. “Kiss me for one minute before you fall asleep.” He did and she was happy that she knew what to ask for from Eli. She would make that trade and stay too prim with everyone else but never with him. To be too ensconced in your marriage? Why was that bad? Emily did not consider herself a dreamy person. She believed life was made up of trade-offs and this was surely a fair one.

  She woke up an hour later with her brow sweaty. She wiped her forehead and blew out air a few times, opened her eyes wide to see in that dark room. She smelled onions frying. She pulled her hair back and went into the kitchen. Eli was mixing something in a little bowl. He was in a pair of khaki shorts and nothing else. The Roman Street Bicycles logo, made up of the letters RSB wound through the spokes of a bicycle wheel, was tattooed on his left shoulder blade. Sometimes she scratched at it, as if she could take it off with her nails. Eli didn’t like it when she did that. Now she touched his back without scratching him and looked around the messy kitchen.

  “What happened?” she asked. “What’d you do to my piecrust?”

  Eli was looking into a glass bowl. Bits of egg bobbed in a green sauce that didn’t seem like it could possibly set. There were mounds of vegetables on cutting boards and spices everywhere. Butter was smeared in pie plates. Though she didn’t see anything cooking in a pan, the smell was now more complex than just onions.

  “I had an idea,” Eli said.

  “This is not blueberry pie. I love you, Eli. But this doesn’t look like a winner.”

  “No it is, don’t worry. I saw eggs in the fridge and we have potatoes and there’s prosciutto that I bought with that old Staubitz gift certificate. But the green sauce is the key. That’s our secret weapon. I called my uncle Frito. We’ll go savory with a breakfast pie for dinner that’s actually like a timbale and we’ll win. I’m going to get the male vote. You watch.”

  “Uncle Frito?”

  “Uncle Frito, in Mexico, who created the Frito pie. He had a good pointer for me so I’m glad I called.”

  “I don’t get how just because your mother is from Chile it allows you to both claim and denigrate all of South America,” Emily said. She was Jewish and had grown up in Milton, outside Boston. And then her parents divorced when she and Sherry were still in middle school and their mother had gone to Maine to teach at Bates. So Emily felt strictly Northeastern and was even a little proud of it.

  “Take it easy, Mrs. Laid-back. This pie is initially subtle and then studded with fire. Or it will be if I can get it to set right.” Eli stroked his chin. “You go take a shower. Let me do a few more secret South American things.”

  “This isn’t very team,” Emily said.

  “Sometimes one member of a team needs blind support and then the whole team ends up winni
ng,” Eli said. “Actually, it’s like that a lot. Look at Lance Armstrong.” He grabbed a spoon and dipped it into the bowl. “Taste.”

  “No. If you expect blind support, I won’t. What illegal something extra did you put in there, Lance?”

  “Taste.”

  So she did and the sauce was smoky and fiery and everything Eli said it would be.

  “It’s delicious,” she said. “I guess I’ll get dressed. You’ll get the male and the female vote.”

  When Emily came out of their bedroom she was in a dark blue summer dress with white polka dots.

  “You look hot,” Eli said. “Later you’ll pull that dress up around your thighs and we’ll do our victory dance on a tabletop. You can flash your underpants at the boys.”

  There were two big paper bags on the kitchen counter. Tomorrow she’d bake a pie with the blueberries and bring it to work on Monday.

  “How about clothes for you?” she asked.

  “Oh, yeah.” Eli threw on a shirt and found his flip-flops by the door. “Also, I need your help with the speech.”

  “Speech?”

  “I don’t want to be at a loss for words when we win.”

  * * *

  Sherry lived on Lorimer Street in Williamsburg above a recently shut-down restaurant called Baba. She had briefly dated Nicola, the restaurant’s owner. Sherry mostly appeared in productions at Playwrights Horizons and in new plays by Kenneth Lonergan and Annie Baker. Because she was intermittently funny and conventionally beautiful, she occasionally flew out to Hollywood or Vancouver for supporting roles in movies starring Anna Faris.

  “I know,” Sherry said to Emily once Eli had gone off to set out their pies. “I’m all sweaty.”

  “Don’t be dumb. You look like somebody’s dream come true,” Emily said.

  Sherry was in a black dress with a thick white sash across the middle. Her lipstick was bright red. She had a habit of biting her lower lip and she did that now.

  “You do get that I’m a truck-stop waitress?”

  “I do,” Emily said. “It works.”

  Baba had been a bodega before becoming Baba, a wine-and-small-plates place, and then Nicola gave up on it and went down to Miami to run a catering business. But Sherry had a key and was friendly with the landlord. Now the small room was filled with round café tables with a pie stuck with a numbered flag on each one. The place smelled like spilled wine and it was noisy.