“I’m all right.Nelson’s Uncle James is visiting us.”
“I see that,”Daniel says.Daniel has always been moved by the quality ofIris’s mothering;her kindness and her aptness around Nelson have ap-pealed to Daniel so deeply that it is practically an erotic experience to see her with her boy, but just now Daniel wishes that she would speak only tohim.
Still, he goes along with it.“Are you pretty excited to see your Uncle James?”he asks, directing his question to Nelson, who at first seems not to have heard him, and who then leers at him, first pursing his lips and then showing his little milky teeth.Of course, now he hates me.He doesn’t quite understand what he saw, but he’ll never forgive finding me in his mother’s bed.“And how about you, Scarecrow?”Daniel says, squatting down to the dog’s level.“Everything copasetic?”By way ofan answer, the dog launches herselftoward Daniel, ramming his eye with her wet nose.
“What’s the score?”Nelson screams at his father and uncle.He squirms out ofIris’s lap and hits his hard little hands against the glass wall.“Who’s winning?”
“I am,”James says, flipping his racquet up and then catching it by the handle.“I’m on fire, I’m unconscious, I can’t be stopped.”
Nelson doesn’t shout in triumph, but he squeezes his hands into fists, goes rigid, and whispers to himself:“Yes.”Nelson’s expressions are ex-aggerated, feverishly intense;it’s difficult to say whether these grimaces and gestures come from some molten, unmediated part ofhim, or if they are deliberately theatrical and insincere.Whatever their source, there is something troubling about them.
Hampton, in the meanwhile, has hit the ball in a slow, lazy arc over James’s head, who then bats it wildly, with an equally wild accompany-ing whoop.The ball sails across the court, barely reaching the front wall, which it grazes, before dropping dead and unplayable, another point for the younger brother, who celebrates by spinning around on one foot with his arms outstretched.
James, having won the point, serves, and Hampton makes his usual methodical return—it’s art versus science.James returns the shot with a dazzling and picturesque behind-the-back stroke, but from that mo-ment on Hampton proceeds to dismantle him, wearing him down with his own refusal to lose.Hampton rallies to win the game9‒7.
Nelson has retreated to Iris’s lap, and he sits awkwardly on her, his legs dangling, his arms folded over his chest, outraged over some shady business.Bruce, uncomfortable with standing there in light ofwhat Daniel has told him, and also anxious to use his workout time, has gone back to court one, where he hits the ball to himself.Daniel, however, is powerless to move.He must see the match out to its bitter end.He has been crouched a few feet from Iris, as ifhe were a squash scout studying the game, looking for new prospects.He doesn’t dare say anything to Iris, though he continually looks at her reflection in the squash court’s glass wall.She glances at him and it seems as ifher eyes are asking,What are you doing?but he cannot move.
At last, Hampton and James emerge.All ofthe levity and grace and joyousness and even youthfulness seems to have been beaten out of James, while Hampton, in victory, seems not noticeably different than he was in the beginning ofthe game, when he was losing.His long slender legs are bright with perspiration, his shirt has dark circles at the armpits, a long ragged icicle-shaped sweat stain down the middle, and his scalp glistens in the overhead light.
“You lost!”Nelson cries accusingly, jabbing his finger at the air between him and his uncle, as ifto create a shock wave that would knock James to the ground.
“Sorry, O Great Leader,”James says.His voice is weak, exhausted.
“Your daddy’s too much for me.”
Pleased to hear this, Hampton smiles at James.
James slumps onto the bench next to Iris.“I feel sorry foryou,”he says to her.“The man is tireless.”
Daniel is offended by James’s little joke.It is unbearable to think about Hampton’s untiring ardor, the sexual machinery going on and on.
“He rinses his cottage cheese to take out the last one percent ofmilk fat,”Iris says.“What do you expect?”
“Hello, Daniel,”Hampton says.He opens his gym bag and pulls out a small white terry cloth towel with which he carefully dries, first his fore-head, then the wings ofhis nose, then his chin.
“I was watching you play,”Daniel says.“I’m just learning.”He is acutely aware that everything he says could very well be subject to mul-tiple interpretations, and that one day if—no,when—Hampton learns the truth, then it will all be remembered, ransacked for meaning.
Nelson has scrambled offIris’s lap.He takes the racquet from his uncle’s hands and grabs the ball and hits it.It bounces and then rolls down the long hall, and then over the ledge, where it falls to the ground floor.
Hampton snaps his fingers and points in Nelson’s face.
“Get it,”Hampton says.“Now.”
Nelson doesn’t say anything, but the skin on his face is suddenly drawn, mottled, he looks like someone who has been in the freezing cold.
“Take it easy, Hampton,”Iris says.“That doesn’t work with him.”She turns to the boy.“Go on, Nellie, do as your father says.”
“No!!”Nelson screams.“You get it.”
The vehemence startles Iris and she lets go ofthe leash.Scarecrow goes straight for Daniel.After bounding up on Daniel and uncoiling her long tongue in the direction ofhis face, she suddenly lies down before him, resting her chin on her forepaws.Then, with a couple sharp barks, she rolls onto her back, exposing the bare pink-and-black skin ofher belly, her eyes glazed with adoration.
“Scarecrow!!”Iris calls out, her voice sharp, nervous.“What are youdoing?”
Hampton has folded his long arms over his hard, flat chest.“Seems like you’ve gone and won my doggie’s heart,”Hampton fairly drawls.
Meanwhile, on court number one, Bruce is hitting the ball to himself, harder and harder, until it sounds like gunshots.
“Do you mind ifI sit next to you for a minute or two?”
Kate is sitting in the back pew ofSaint Christopher’s Church, which is eight miles outside ofLeyden, on a curving dirt road, surrounded by open fields, where the dried remains ofthe harvested corn stalks rise and fall with the undulations ofthe land, in neat rows like markers in a cemetery.Startled by the soft, questioning voice, she turns to see the young priest next to her, tall, narrow, with an ascetic face and prema-turely gray hair.He is the sort ofman people say looks like a priest, even ifhe happens to be selling dress shirts in a department store, or walking in his baggy plaid bathing trunks on the beach.
“I didn’t hear you sit down,”Kate says.
”I’m sorry.Did I startle you?Were you praying?”
“I was really just closing my eyes.I’m collecting my thoughts.”
“I see you come in here from time to time,”the priest says.“I thought it was time we met.”
“My name’s Katherine Ellis.I’m not Catholic.”She extends her hand.
”I’m Father Joseph Sidlowski.And IamCatholic.”He takes her hand, shakes it.His touch is spectral, she could be dreaming him.
“I go to a lot ofchurches,”Kate says.“But this one is just so lovely, it’s one ofthe nicest in the area, I think.”
Father Sidlowski looks up at the planked ceiling, the simple blue-andyellow stained glass windows.“It really is,”he says, as ifthe beauty ofthe place had never occurred to him before.“Do you know its history?”
“No.”
“The farm right behind us and all the land around us, about four hundred acres, used to be owned by the Bailey family.Does that name mean anything to you?”
“I know Bailey Road.”
“We’re on Bailey Road, and there’s the Bailey Building right in the village.The patriarch ofthe Bailey family was named Peter Bailey.He outlived three wives and ten ofhis thirteen children.In his seventies—this was in about1880—he converted to Catholicism and built this church for himself and his family.There were no other Catholic churches nearby.It has
something ofthe barn about it, don’t you think?Anyway, he died in his nineties and he left an endowment to the archdiocese to keep Saint Christopher’s open for one hundred years.The churchyard is filled with the remains ofBaileys, as well as the graves ofthe priests who have worked here.Part ofmy own pastoral duties is to make certain those graves are well kept.The Bailey family is scattered now, and most ofthe priests who are buried here have no family to speak of.I think sometime in the next few years we’ll see the doors to this chapel closed for the last time.We have a modest congregation and I suspect that when the hundred years are up and there is no income to support Saint Christopher’s, they’ll turn this place into an antiques shop.”
“Just what the world needs.”
Sidlowski shows his teeth in a slow approximation ofa smile.“May I ask what brings you to Saint Christopher’s?”His voice is low, confiden-tial, though there is no one else in the church.
“It’s very peaceful here,”Kate says.She looks around the small church—the dark, heavily varnished painting ofthe dying Jesus recum-bent in his stricken mother’s lap, a few votive candles twinkling in their red glass holders, the simple wooden cross, unusually austere.“I’ve been thinking a lot about…things, and it’s easier for me to have my thoughts in a church than it is at home.”
“May I show you something?”Father Sidlowski asks Kate.“It’ll only take a moment.”
Kate follows the priest through the church.Their footsteps echo in the stillness and she wonders how he could have sat next to her without her hearing his approach.He leads her through a small doorway offthe nave ofthe church and into his office.It’s a small, windowless room, with books and magazines piled in every corner.A banged-up metal desk and a swivel chair are the only furniture.The fax machine on the edge of the desk is receiving a transmission as they walk in;Kate sneaks a peek at what’s coming in—it seems to be from a travel agency, she sees a drawing ofan airplane and the words“ChristmasTravel Bargains.”The walls are bare, except for one old painting in an ornate gilt frame.The image on the canvas is ofa dark-haired woman in a modest brown robe, on her knees before a child’s crib.Her hands are clasped prayerfully and blood drips from them.The crib is suffused with golden light.
“That’s Saint Mary Frances,”Sidlowski says, his voice suddenly intimate, suffused with gentleness, as ifthis were upsetting news he must break to her.“She died at the end ofthe eighteenth century and was can-onized about sixty years after her death.”
“I never heard ofher,”Kate says.“I don’t really know very much about saints.As I said, I’m not—”
“Catholic,”Sidlowski cuts in.“I realize that.But she’s a lovely saint, one ofmy favorites.Not very well known here, but greatly loved in Naples.But do you see why I wanted you to see this painting?”
Kate redirects her attention to the image.The canvas is old, the paint is muddy, and the surface veneer is cracked into a thousand little jigsaw sections.
“She looks so much like you,”Sidlowski says.“Don’t you see the resemblance?”
Kate shakes her head.She sees nothing ofherselfin the face ofMary Frances.All there is in common is the dark-brown hair, brown eyes; everything else about Mary Frances seems merely average, even generic: average height, average weight.Oh, maybe a little something in the mouth, after all, that thin, broad upper lip, and maybe, also, a certain boyishness ofchin.And the shoulders.
“I still think ofmyselfas having blonde hair,”Kate says.“Though I haven’t since I was ten years old.But it was such a part ofmy identity, and such a part ofmy parents’celebration ofme.The picture ofmyselfthat I carry within me will always be ofsome pink little girl with white-blonde hair.Oh my God, how my parents suffered when my hair went dark.”
“It’s not just the coloring,”says Sidlowski.Whatever tact he had when first pointing the saint out to Kate is falling away now.His voice is eager, insistent.“It’s the face, the shape ofthe head, and something else, some-thing ineffable.”
“I don’t really see it,”Kate says apologetically.“But thank you, I guess.
I don’t relate to saints, Father.I don’t really believe in them.”
“But it’s a matter ofhistorical record.And this is her birthday month.
She was born October6.October6was the day ofthe storm,”Sidlowski says.“It made me think ofher.”
“Why is that?”Kate is uneasy with any mention ofthat unexpected, chaos-inducing snow.The storm has come to mean two things to her:her narrow escape from the roaming Star ofBethlehem boys, and Daniel spending the night with Iris, a night that, the more she thinks about it, al-most certainly became the occasion for Daniel’s long desire to finally find consummation.Kate cannot see a broken tree—and there are still thou-sands inWindsor County—without pain in her chest.
“Are you all right?”Father Sidlowski asks.
“Tell me about her,”Kate says, gesturing toward the painting.“What’s wrong with her hands?Why is she bleeding?”
“She was called Mary Frances ofthe FiveWounds.”He waits to see if Kate understands those wounds refer to the five stabs ofthe Roman spears in Jesus’crucified body.“She had a very difficult life.Even after she joined an order, her father, who detested her, and, ifyou ask me, har-bored and perhaps even acted upon incestuous feelings toward her, in-sisted she continue to live in his house as a servant.When Mary Frances’s father was done with her, he passed her along to a local priest, a fanatic in the Jansenist tradition, who continued Mary’s ill treatment.She re-mained the priest’s personal servant for the rest ofher life, thirty-eight more years.Yet even in the midst ofher degradation, Mary insisted on caring for others.She practiced regular personal mortifications, many of them quite painful, asking God to place in her own soul the suffering ofall those trapped in Purgatory, and asking, as well, to share the pain of her sick neighbors, most ofwhom treated her with contempt.”
He looks at Kate, sees her pained expression, and lowers his voice, almost to a murmur.
“You said you were going from church to church.Would you mind my asking why?”
“I’m being treated with contempt, too, Father,”Kate says.She steps toward him.The floor is soft, it seems as ifher feet are sinking in through the wood.A sudden dizziness, the world spins, once, twice.What’s hap-pening to me?She grabs Sidlowski’s arm to keep her balance.
Daniel is wracked with jealousy now that it is the weekend and Hamp-ton is home.He suspects that there is no one in the world who would sympathize with his agony, not even Iris.And what puts him even further from sympathy’s comforting embrace is that he is harming other people.
He is lying to Kate, though he tells himself that he would tell her the truth and take the necessary steps to separate their lives ifonly he hadn’t promised Iris not to make any precipitous moves.The fact is that Iris’s swearing him to silence fits in with his own reluctance to say the terrible thing to Kate.He is betraying Hampton, who is not really a friend or a man toward whom Daniel has ever had warm feelings, but who is, at least, a fellow human being, and worthy ofrespect and decent treat-ment.And he is betraying Iris—he has slept with Kate as a way ofkeep-ing a modicum ofdomestic peace, simply a matter ofslapping up some wallpaper to cover the cracks in the plaster.
His only comfort is theWindsor Bistro, which he discovered a couple ofweeks ago quite by accident.Before the storm, theWindsor Bistro seemed well on its way to being a losing proposition, a small, pleasant place, with a little gas fireplace and a Colonial chandelier, but there were never more than six or eight people eating at the same time.The owner and cook, Doris Snyder, a shy, frugal woman with a starburst birthmark on her forehead, stocked as little fresh food as possible, afraid, as she was, that most ofit would end up in the garbage.By the time ofthe Oc-tober snow, theWindsor Bistro was beginning to have that doomed air of a fighter looking for a place to fall.But then the storm hit, and the Bistro was the first place in Leyden to reopen, and anyone who was brave or restless enough to leave home gathered there for companionship.Doris’s confidenc
e grew each time the door opened, and soon she was greeting everyone personally, serving free drinks and complimentary desserts.
After a couple ofnights, she convinced her boyfriend, a mentally unsta-ble but handsome man named Curtis, who had not left their house in six months, to bring his guitar in and sing his repertoire ofNeilYoung, Jim Croce, and Jackson Browne songs.
Daniel has become a regular.The place is crowded tonight and it is only his position as one ofthe original, favored customers that allows him to oc-cupy a table all to himself.The owner’s boyfriend has not come in;his place on the stool to the side ofthe bar is taken by an old grade-school friend of Daniel’s, a bushy-browed man named Chris Kiley, who accompanies him-selfon a littleYamaha keyboard while he sings sultry rhythm and blues songs about marital chaos, such as“Me and Mrs.Jones”and“Who’s Mak-ing Love toYour Old Lady (WhileYou’re Out Making Love).”These songs feel like anthems in the confines ofthe Bistro, which, aside from being the only place in Leyden open past midnight, seems to have become a refuge for people whose deepest impulses have brought them into conflict with what society expects ofthem.There at the bar sits the principal ofthe high school with the new second-grade teacher fresh from college in Colorado.
There at the table next to Daniel’s sits Clive Mason, whose wife is dying of breast cancer, with his arm around Mary Gallagher, whose husband is a state patrolman serving three years in prison for grand larceny.And now they are joined by Ethan Cohen, who owns a women’s clothing shop next to the GeorgeWashington Inn, and Shane Chilowitcz, who teaches per-formance art over at the college, where he lives with his Polish wife, who is at home minding their six children.
Got no one to turn to Tired of being alone Feel like breaking up Somebody’s home.
Ah, truer words were never sung,Daniel thinks.He looks up from his book, habitually scanning the place for Iris.Though in the week he has been coming here every night, he has yet to see her, he continually expects her to walk in at any moment.It’s maddening to be constantly on the look-out for her, but it gives him a gambler’s fervid hope that something trans-forming is just about to happen.
A Ship Made of Paper Page 19
