A Ship Made of Paper

by Scott Spencer

  Kate wonders ifHampton is trying to put Daniel on alert.He, too, must sense what’s happening.She has to admit that she is enjoying this foursome more than she’d dared hope.It captures her imagination in some creepy, achey way, like sucking on a tooth that’s just starting to die.

  “Is this the same grandmother who played the cello?”she asks.Maybe

  if you thought a little less about your grandmother’s pedigree and a little more about your wife, she wouldn’t be squirming in her chair and eyeing my boyfriend.

  “No, the cellist wasAbigailWelles, ofBoston, my father’s mother.The singing grandma was Lucille Cox, ofAtlanta, on my mother’s side.”

  “I have many Coxes in my family,”Kate says.“On my mother’s side, many ofthem from Georgia, too.”

  There is a briefsilence, and then Kate says what she guesses must be passing through everyone’s mind.“Ofcourse, there’s a chance that one ofmyCoxes held one ofyour Coxes in slavery.”

  “In that case,”says Daniel, lifting his wine glass,“dinner’s on us.”

  For the first time that evening, Hampton smiles.Beaming, his face grows younger.His teeth are large, even, and very white, and he casts his eye downward, as ifthe moment’s pleasure makes him shy.Kate can imagine the moment when Iris first saw that smile, how it must have drawn her in and made her want to fathom the secret cave ofselfthat was his smile’s source.

  “Hampton,”Kate says.“That’s an interesting name.”

  “My family’s full ofHamptons,”he says.“We come from Hampton,

  Virginia.A few ofus attended Hampton University, back when it was Hampton Normal andAgriculture Institute.”

  “Hampton Hawes,”says Daniel.

  ”What?”says Hampton.

  ”He’s a jazz piano player, West Coast.”

  “Daniel knows everything about jazz,”says Kate.“And blues, and rhythm and blues.”

  The waitress arrives and presents them with yellowfin tuna, coq au vin, filet mignon, risotto funghi.“Look,”says Iris,“everything looks so good!”

  “Is that tuna?”Hampton asks, peering at Iris’s plate.

  Every marriage, Kate thinks, seems to have one person wanting what’s on the other’s plate.

  Iris smiles, but she doesn’t look pleased.“Do you want some?”

  “Okay, a taste.”He watches while she cuts her sesame-encrusted tuna in halfand then transports it carefully to his plate, next to his charbroiled slab ofsteak and French fries and homemade coleslaw.He doesn’t offer her so much as a morsel ofhis food.

  “Iris doesn’t share my interest in family traditions,”Hampton says, cutting into his steak.

  “All I ever said is that sometimes they can be a little limiting,”says Iris, trying not to plead, but Kate can tell she would like to.“InAmerica you can make your own history.”

  “Dream on, my sweet,”says Hampton.

  ”All right, then I will.And in the meantime, can we just relax and enjoy being alive?”

  “So you work onWall Street?”Kate asks.

  ”Does that surprise you?”asks Hampton.“That I’m an investmentbanker?”

  “Yes,”she says,“I thought maybe you were a tap dancer.”

  Hampton smiles, points his finger at Kate.“That’s funny,”he says, instead oflaughing.

  “I wrote a piece last year about the stock exchange,”Kate says.“I love all those men crawling over each other and shouting out numbers as if their lives were hanging by a thread.And then the final bell rings and everyone cheers and goes out for drinks.I loved the whole thing, in-cluding the bell and the drinks.”

  “That’s not what I do.But I’d like to read your article.”

  “Oh no, please, no.The only way I can churn that crap out is to tell myselfthat absolutely no one will ever set eyes on it.”She catches the waitress’s eye and gestures with a twirl ofthe finger:more drinks over here.“It’s just to pay the bills.And wrap fish.”

  “Do you mostly write about financial topics?”Hampton asks.

  ”What I’m supposed to be doing is working on my next novel, but that’s been the case for quite a while.So in the meanwhile, editors call me up and I give them whatever they want.It’s amazing how easily the stuffcomes when you don’t really have your heart in it.Right now, I’m doing a piece about the O.J.trial and about this woman artist calling her-selfIngrid Newport.”

  “What kind ofartist is she?”Hampton asks.

  ”She’s sewn up her vagina,”Kate says.She can practicallyhear

  Daniel’s heart sinking.He worries about her when she drinks.And then he does something that strikes her asintolerable.He actually looks over at Iris and shrugs.

  “They keep on assigning me these sexual mutilation pieces,”Kate says.“It’s becoming sort ofmy specialty.My little calling card.”Is this putting Iris in her place? Kate has no idea.Iris may be one ofthose rare monsters:a person ofunshakable sexual confidence.“I tell them,‘Hey guys, how about a piece about the reemergence ofthe lobotomy as an accepted psychiatric practice,’but, no, they say,‘What we really want is fifeen hundred words on Peter Peterson, that guy in Dover, Delaware, who crucified his own penis.’They all tell me I write so well about gen-der issues, by which they really mean sex.I guess I should be pleased.No one ever said I did anything well when it came to sex.”Kate laughs.“But now I’m getting a lot ofO.J.assignments, so that’s good.Have you all been following the case?”

  No one’s taking the bait on that one.Getting this crowd to talk about O.J.would be like trying to convince them to take offtheir clothes right there in the restaurant.Kate feels sour and self-righteous, the way you do when you seem to be the only person willing to face something ugly.

  Iris’s eyes are locked on her meal.She seems to be hurrying to finish it before Hampton tucks into it again.Kate watches her hands as they del-icately maneuver her knife and fork.She finds her cute but hardly irre-sistible.Lean body, broad shoulders, big behind.Kate feels sorry for black people with freckles, it’s like they’re getting the worst ofboth worlds.

  “You know what we should have done?”says Daniel, his voice bright silver.“Kept the kids together, with just one baby-sitter.”

  “Wasn’t I lucky to have found someone like Daniel?”Kate announces.

  “When my marriage broke up and I was left with my kid, I thought I’d be alone forever.But Daniel’s a better parent than I am.”She waits for Daniel to contradict her, but he doesn’t.“Well, maybe notbetter,but he is so good to Ruby.”

  “She’s a great kid,”Daniel says softly.

  ”She is,”says Iris.

  ”And she so loves Nelson,”Daniel says.His face colors, and he looks to Kate for relief.“Doesn’t she? How many times has she talked about him? Right?”

  “Kids can fall in love,”Kate says.“In fact, in childhood, we may be at our highest capacity to just go head over heels for another person.I was in love with a little boy when I was five years old.A little black boy with the perfect little black boy name:Leroy.Leroy Sinclair.”She signals the waiter for more wine.In for a penny.“His mother cleaned the little med-ical arts building where my father had his office.He was a real butterball, Leroy.Just as fat as a tick, but with the most charming, lazy smile, a real summer-on-the-Mississippi smile.He wore overalls and high-topped sneakers.His mother had to take him to work and apparently she fed that poor boy sweets all through the day to keep him quiet.I used to go to Daddy’s office every Saturday and Mrs.Sinclair—”

  “You called her Mrs.Sinclair?”Hampton asks.

  ”Not at the time.We called her Irma.She weighed two pounds, shoes and all.”

  “Poor Leroy,”says Iris.

  ”I used to read to Leroy.I was precocious.I’d bring a book every Saturday and read to him while Daddy worked in his office, two hours of paperwork, nine-thirty to eleven-forty-five, every Saturday, to the minute.I used to read Leroy these bedtime books, right there in the mid-dle ofthe day, sitting on the inside staircase ofthis little medical arts building out on Calhoun Boulevar
d.And Leroy had all this candy his mother gave him, stuffed in his pockets, little red-and-white mints, but-terscotch sucking candies, all fancy wrapped…”

  “She probably took them from one ofthe houses she cleaned during the week,”Iris says.

  “Yes, I suppose she did.Stolen sweets.What could be better?”She narrows her eyes, lets Iris draw her own damn conclusions.“I read him Goodnight, Moon,and he put his head right in my lap and closed his eyes and I patted and rocked him and he pretended to fall asleep.And when I was finished with whatever I was reading, I kissed the palm ofmy hand and pressed it against his cheek, over and over, hand to my lips, hand to his cheek.And I remember thinking:I love Leroy.I love Leroy Sinclair.

  And just saying those words put me into a kind ofhypnotic trance.”

  The high school girl has cleared the plates away.The waiter hovers over to the side, waiting for a break in the conversation.

  “And then one day I saw my father talking to Mrs.Sinclair,”Kate is saying,“and I knew she would never be allowed to bring Leroy to work with her again.And I was right.The next time I saw him, maybe two years later, he was on his way to his school and I was with a couple ofmy silly, awful little girlfriends from Beaumont Country Day School, and I called to him across the street—Hey, Leroy—and he just looked at me as ifI was the most ridiculous thing he had ever seen, and he didn’t say a word.

  But whose fault was it?We were both caught in something so large, and so terrible.His people came over in chains and my people sat on the porch sipping gin.Something that begins that badly can never end well…”

  Kate looks around the table, smiling.

  ”How about you, Hampton?”she says.“Did you ever fall in love with someone not ofyour race?”Ifhe finds this offensive he gives no indica-tion—but Kate quickly looks away from him, throws her slightly bleary gaze first at Iris, and finally at Daniel.“Anyone?”

  [2]

  Once they were in the woods, the remains of the afternoon light seemed to shrink away.The shadows of the trees—a shocking number of which had fallen over to the ground from the weight of last month’s sudden snowstorm—seemed to pile on top of each other, one shadow over the next, building a wall of darkness.Once, there had been paths through the woods, made by the herds of deer, or left over from the old days when there had been enough money to maintain and even man-icure the Richmond holdings.But the October storm had droppedthousandsof trees and the paths were somewhere beneath them, invisible now.Daniel and Hampton could not take two steps without having to scramble over the canopy of a fallen tree, or climb over a trunk, or a crisscross of trunks, slippery with rot.And where there weren’t fallen trees there were thorny blackberry vines that furled out across the forest floor like a sharp, punishing fog.

  The evening was not a success.After Kate’s story about Leroy, the silences became prolonged.When Kate ordered an after-dinner cognac, neither Iris nor Hampton ordered anything, putting Daniel in the position ofhaving to order a cognac for himself, which he feared might create the impression that he and Kate were both heavy drinkers.As soon as Kate drained her snifter, Hampton announced that they had promised their baby-sitter an early night, and it was over.

  In the car, Daniel and Kate do not speak.Daniel has the car’s cassette player tuned low.Etta James singing“Love’s Been Rough on Me,”then Buddy Guy doing“HoldThat Plane.”WhenAlbert King’s“I Found Love in theWelfare Line”comes on, Kate rouses herselfout ofher torpor and hits the offbutton.“No singing Negroes, please.”

  “Fine.Whatever you like.”

  “Are you feeling like Herman Melville, darling?”Kate asks, her breath rich and fermented.

  “Am I?”

  “‘In the soul ofa man there is one insularTahiti, full ofpeace and joy, but encompassed by all the horror ofthe half-lived life.’Did you have a little peek atTahiti and now you have to go home to your half-lived life?”

  Daniel remains silent.He doesn’t want to argue with Kate, doesn’t want to spar with her, to feel the flick and jab ofher.He is content to be driving and thinking about the various little gestures Iris made during the dinner.He thinks about what she ate.He thinks about how she had refolded her napkin at the end ofthe meal and placed it next to her plate, good as new.He thinks about her expression as she listened to the oth-ers speak, a quality ofappreciation and grace, as ifher mind lapped up information like a cat with a bowl ofmilk.He thinks about how she con-tinually turned her wedding ring around her finger, as ifit might be im-peding the flow ofher blood.She had been wearing that perfume that he had come to associate with her—Chanel No.19.Afew weeks ago, in the city, he had gone to Saks and sniffed thirty tester bottles before finding which fragrance was hers, and then he bought a small bottle and kept it in his desk at the office.May I help you? May I help you?The clerks on the main floor had kept trying to make themselves available to him.But they couldn’t help him;nobody could.

  “Feel my forehead,”Kate says.“I think I have a fever.”

  He touches her with his fingertips and then the palm ofhis hand.A jolt ofremembered love goes through him.The car drifts left, the tires bite at the gravel at the side ofthe road.“You’re warm.”

  “I’m dying.”

  She closes her eyes and their silence reasserts itself.

  ”Did you have an okay time tonight?”Daniel asks.As his sense ofguilt increases, his tolerance for silence decreases.He knows he’s just blather-ing, but she did seem to like Hampton.She who likes no one.

  “Not really.It felt like work.”

  “You seemed to be enjoying yourself,”he says.“You and Hampton—”

  “Fuck me and Hampton,”Kate says, and turns her face away from him, as the two-lane blacktop turns into a narrower dirt road that leads to their secluded old house.They drive past a neighbor’s rolling fields, a pond ringed by weeping willows.A pebble driveway leads from the road to their house, and as the stones crunch beneath the tires, Kate opens her eyes.Their car’s headlights shine on the red wreck ofthe baby-sitter’s car.

  “I hope Mercy treats children better than she treats her car,”Daniel says.He turns offthe engine;the lighted windows in their front rooms shimmer before them.

  “Why did you tell that story about that little boy?”he asks her.

  Kate sits up, rubs her eyes with the heels ofher hands.“Did you like that story?”

  “I never heard ofLeroy before.I thought I knew about every boy who ever passed through your life.”

  “I think what I was saying was Leroy and I could never be friends.”

  “Why? Because he was black and you were white?”Despite everything, he allows himself to feel indignant.He thinks Kate’s white south-ern girlhood is asserting itselfin a highly unpleasant way.

  “Be glad I didn’t tell the story ofwhy we left NewYork City, how you were scared to death ofevery black person you saw.”

  “Why would you ever say anything like that?”

  “Because it’s true, you were.”

  “My life was threatened.And the people who made the threat were black.I overreacted, I admit it.”

  “You were scared to death.”

  “Let’s just drop it,”Daniel says.“I’m over it.”He opens the door to get out, but Kate catches him by the arm.

  “Ifit’s any consolation to you, the marriage won’t last.”

  “What marriage?”

  “Iris and Hampton’s.He’s on edge all the time, looking for little slights against his dignity.She wants to live in a world where a little spilled water is just an accident, not an incident.”

  Inside, Mercy Crane is on the phone, which she hangs up without a word ofgood-bye as soon as Kate and Daniel come in.

  Kate goes up to check on Ruby.Daniel pays Mercy and locks the door.

  He goes back into the living room to gather up the half-eaten bowl ofra-men noodles and the can ofSprite she has left behind.He sees something poking out between the sofa cushions—a half-full pack ofCamel Lights, with a book ofmatches squeezed beneath the cellophane.H
e tosses them onto the table, hoping for Mercy’s sake her parents don’t smell the smoke in her hair.Her father’s a cop and her mother teaches at a Christian ele-mentary school;both are known to be strict and unforgiving.

  After clearing Mercy’s little mess, he falls back onto the sofa and lights one ofher cigarettes.When he moved in with Kate, she asked him not to smoke around the baby, and he went with the program and quit al-together.But now he would like to taste tobacco and inhales deeply, blows a smoke ring, and watches it make its way like a jellyfish through a shaft oflamplight.Then he hears Kate’s footsteps coming down the stairs.

  “I don’t have a temperature,”she announces.She’s already in her nightgown.

  “You’re probably just tired.You should go to bed.I’ll bring you up some orange juice.”

  “You’re smoking?”she asks.“You’re actually smoking in the house?”

  Just then, the doorbell rings.Daniel flicks the cigarette into the fireplace and goes toward the door, his heart racing, as ifthis might really be Iris.Kate stops midway down the staircase.Daniel shrugs at her and opens the door.

  “My car won’t start, Mr.Emerson,”says Mercy.

  ”Oh no, poor you!”His voice is booming, as would be expected in a man who has just, against all odds, been offered a means ofescape.“I’ll drive you home.”He realizes how eager this sounds, and so he adds,“I’m just no good at automobile repair.Ifit doesn’t involve a gas can or a jumper cable, it’s out ofmy league.”

  “I could stay here, ifthat would be easier,”she says.Her voice is plaintive.“I could sleep on the couch.Ifyou wanted, I could make Ruby breakfast in the morning and you and Kate could sleep late.”

  “It’s okay,”he says.“It’s really okay.”

  For the first couple minutes ofthe drive back to town, Daniel and Mercy don’t exchange a word.Daniel rolls the window down.There’s a faint smell ofskunk in the air.

  “I’m really sorry about the car,”Mercy says.