A Ship Made of Paper

by Scott Spencer

  “Oh God, they have the best names.Hampton what?”

  “Welles.He’s Ivy League, Wall Street, so bourgeois he makes Martha Stewart seem like Karen Finley.”

  “And does he think O.J.is innocent, too? It would be interesting to find out.”

  “I don’t know.O.J.may be a little dark for Hampton’s taste.”

  Just then, Kate hears wracking coughs coming from Ruby’s bedroom.She has been in and out ofrespiratory sickness ever since the storm—the ride home on the snowmobile did her in.

  “Can you hold on for a minute?”Kate asks.

  ”Did you get another call? Don’t take it.”

  “No, Ruby’s coughing her brains out.I better look in on her.”

  “Where’s Danny boy?”

  “Out.I’m not actually sure where.”As soon as Kate says this, two things occur:Ruby’s coughing stops, and a heavy, soggy sense ofemo-tional panic settles over Kate.“Oh good,”she says,“false alarm,”while in fact she is just now feeling her first intimations ofreal alarm.

  “He’s out and you have no idea where?”Lorraine says.“That’s not likehim.”

  “Well, lately it has been.”

  “There’s nothing to do up there, nowhere to go.Where does he go?”

  “There’s this place in town, a bar.Lately he’s been going there.”

  “A bar?”Lorraine’s voice is full ofthe kind ofscorn that tries to masquerade as incredulity.

  “It’s not that extraordinary, is it?”Kate tries to sound bemused, but her blood has begun to race.She has an impulse to simply slam the phone down and get in the car, surprise the little fucker right in his new night-time haunt.Yet just as she is about to hang up, she realizes the reason she has called Lorraine in the first place.“We had this monster snowstorm,”

  she says.

  “I know, I saw it on Fox.Weird.”

  “We didn’t have electricity for four days, no heat, no water, nothing.

  And we were trapped here, no cars were moving, every road was closed.”

  “You should really move back to NewYork.”

  “Last year a water main exploded under your street and your entire apartment was filled with mud.”

  “True, but at least I had heat.I had lights, I could read.And I could leave, I could go to my health club, I could have a watercress-and-goat-cheese salad at Cafe Luxembourg.”

  “It was sort offun, getting back to basics, the three ofus camping out.

  And when the snow stopped the sun came out and it was sort ofmild.”

  “I don’t ever want to be in a position where I’m glad the sun cameout.”

  “But for the first day I was here alone, andthatwas a little weird.”

  “Where were Daniel and Ruby?”

  “At Iris’s.”

  “You’re fucking kidding.”

  “And while I was here alone, some boys broke into the house.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “There’s a home for delinquent boys, mostly black kids from the city.

  Some escaped during the power outage and they ended up here.”

  “Oh my God.Are you all right?”

  “Yes, I’m fine.They never even saw me.They came in to use the facilities.”

  “They shit in your house?”

  “In the toilet.”

  “Well, that was civilized.”

  Kate is about to say something and realizes her voice is suddenly not available to her, it seems submerged.

  “Were you hiding?”Lorraine asks.“Where were you?”

  Kate takes a deep breath.Okay,she thinks.Steady.“I was pretty scared,”she says.“These were not nice boys.”

  “They could have raped you, killed you.”

  “I suppose.A tree hit the house and they ran like hell.”

  “A tree.”Lorraine snorts contemptuously.“And Daniel was at Iris’shouse.”

  “That could not be helped.He couldn’t get home.”

  “The poor lamb.Listen to me, Kate.Okay?”

  “No, please.Don’t be smarter than me about this, don’t open my eyes to the obvious, I don’t want to be pummeled with your insight.”

  “I’m just—”

  “I know.I’m just not ready.Anyhow, I’m getting out ofhere.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “To that bar Daniel’s been hanging out at.Windsor Bistro.”

  “Good.And ifhe’s there with her—”

  “He’s not.”

  “Just remember, ifO.J.can get away with it, so can you.”

  After hanging the phone up, Kate sits in her chair and finishes her glass ofwine, waiting for her pulse to stop pounding.She goes to the window at the front ofthe house—the repairman who replaced the panes did a sloppy job and there are smears ofputty on the mullions—and looks out at the night.The sky is a steep dome ofbright stars.The moon is pale and wafer-thin;it casts its light down on the split and top-pled trees around the house;a little patch ofbrightness reflects on the chrome ofher car’s back bumper.

  She remembers:Ruby, with a kind ofstart, the way you do when you drive away from the house and suddenly remember you’ve left the stove on.How can she go to theWindsor Bistro and leave Ruby all alone? How far away is it?Ten minutes, okay that’s twenty minutes round-trip.Let’s call it twenty-five, allowing for petty delays.And all she would need is fifteen minutes at the Bistro.That’s forty minutes altogether, and possi-bly a lot less.

  She walks into Ruby’s bedroom.The room is softly visible through the glow ofa fairy princess night-light.Kate stands over her daugh-ter’s—her captor’s—bed and gazes down at her.She sleeps on her back, with the satin border ofthe blanket drawn up to her chin.Her skin is creamy, her brows dark and sensuous.Deep childish breaths, with a lit-tle bronchial burr at the end ofeach one.Ruby is a deep sleeper, she plunges down through the barely lit terrain ofher own inner life, one hundred fathoms deep, dreaming ofgigantic doors and talking animals.

  She almost never wakes during the night—even those wracking coughs left her sleep undisturbed.Forty-five minutes,thinks Kate.She’ll never know the difference.Yet a moment later anxiety takes its customary spot in Kate’s consciousness, sits with the authority ofan old fortune-teller and turns the cards over one by one:here is the child waking, she is calling your name, here is the furnace leaking noxious fumes, here is an invisi-ble frayed wire festering in the wall, here is a thief, here is a kidnapper, and this card is five black boys coming back for who knows what.What are you thinking?What could possibly be in your mind?You are staying in this house.And he knows it.

  [10]

  The problem was there was no space to walk in;the woods had imploded.They were walking in circles, continually tripping over vines, stumbling over fallen trees, get-ting scraped by branches, stomping into sudden pools of still water, sometimes walk-ing right into a standing tree.It was strangely insulting, like being toyed with.

  Isolated in their despair, they walked for half an hour without speaking.

  Then, suddenly, a stretch where last month’s storm seemed to have done little

  damage.They walked for three minutes without having to change course.And though they didn’t know what direction they were going in, the mere fact of keep-ing a constant course gave them a bit of encouragement.They were not, after all, in the middle of some vast uncharted wilderness.They were only a hundred miles north of the city.How far could you go without ending up on some stretch of asphalt or in someone’s backyard? But then they reached a devastated grove of locusts, the saplings with bark spiked with thorns, like giant, petrified roses.There were so many of them down on the ground, or leaning against each other in a swoon, that it would have been impossible to get through them or past them even in daylight.

  Nightlife.Daniel comes down the stairs.In flannel pajamas, a House ofBluesT-shirt.Here comes the approximate orphan, here comes the almost father, here comes the world’s worst ersatz husband.But he feels none ofthese things.Night is the time ofdesire and love seizes him, s
hakes him silly.Outside:a gay dancing little flurry ofsnow blows past the porch light.His heart sings like a cello inside his chest.

  Being alive is a ceaseless project ofself-forgiveness, and Daniel forgives himself.He knows he is acting badly.He knows he ought to be feverish with shame.But he’s not, he has resisted it, like those doctors who tend a ward full ofinfected patients but who themselves don’t fall ill.Daniel has resisted his own feelings ofguilt, he has become immune to himself.

  The beauty ofthe world is, finally, overwhelming, it’s too fragile, too perfect, he must turn away.He faces a wall and glances at the aerial photo-graph ofhis house hanging there.Last year two men appeared at the door, a squared-offpilot with a rough face and a failed mustache, a lanky pho-tographer inTrotsky glasses and a Planet Hollywood satin windbreaker.

  For three hundred dollars they offered to fly over the house and take a pic-ture ofit from above.“We can see ourselves as God sees us,”Kate had said, strangely enthusiastic about the idea.The finished product was delivered six months later when the barnstormers were back inWindsor County, and it hangs now in the living room, behind the green sofa.

  Daniel, whose lover’s heart has sprouted wings, now is airborne himself, and he enters the photograph in full flight, hovering above his own house and its snow-dappled ten acres.The smoke from his chimney, a slightly darker gray than the cold, sunless air, rises up, stings his eyes.His arms are extended, he swims away from it, wondering ifat any moment he will come crashing down to earth but somehow knowing he is safe.

  He points his hands upward, hears the whoosh ofthe air as he zooms to-ward the dawn moon, which remains fully risen, stuck in the sky like a coin frozen beneath a thin sheet ofice.He tucks his chin in, peers down at the little town—the cold air crashes like cymbals against his eyes.

  There is the river, a blue-gray serpent upon whose chilly scales the wan-ing moon reflects.The mountains to the west are humped in mist and darkness;the lights ofa few houses and headlights flicker like the sparkle ofdew on the coat ofa sleeping bear.

  He flies in through the window ofhis parents’bedroom, where Carl and Julia sleep side by side on their backs, as still as carvings on a sar-cophagus.The electronic numbers on their digital clock, burnt-orange, pulsate in the darkness ofthe room.On Julia’s side ofthe bed, the night table is stacked with books, but all Carl’s table holds is a lamp and a wristwatch, as ifhe already knows everything he cares to know.Upon the old Crouch and Fitzgerald trunk at the end ofthe bed, where extra blankets and fragile quilts are packed in mothballs, they have lain their matching plaid robes.The tidiness and modesty ofthe room makes Daniel ache with love and a mysterious sort ofpity, a pity that is also the deepest kind ofrespect.The room smells ofliniment, eucalyptus, deter-gent, and slow human decay.Daniel hovers above them, wanting to touch them but hesitating, for either he is incorporeal or they are.He rests his ear near his father’s chest, listens to the ruminative thump ofthe old man’s heart.It is time to start spreading all that forgiveness he has been giving to himself.Thank you for feeding me, thank you for sending me to school, thank you for staying the course.He kisses Julia’s cool forehead, a smooth stone in a rushing stream.Thank you thank you.

  He backs out through the window, the branches ofa tall hemlock scrape against him as he gains altitude.He sees a police car, the beams of its headlights are going from side to side.He flies alongside it.His old friend Derek Pabst is at the wheel, sipping from a Styrofoam coffee cup, his uniform cap on the seat beside him.He has xeroxed pictures ofthe boys who escaped from Star ofBethlehem taped to the dashboard ofhis car.He is driving fast, his lips are gray and pursed, they are like a wall through which no words can penetrate.Derek pulls offthe county road and speeds across a short, singing bridge onto an unpaved road.His tires churn up long choking curls ofdust.

  Daniel is above the river now, sailing past the mansions.He enters Eight Chimneys.Squirrels are in the entrance hall, wildly chasing each other around.The air is cold in the old dank house, colder than outside.

  He hears a sound and finds Ferguson in the huge, cluttered, far from clean kitchen in his pajama bottoms, standing in front ofthe refrigera-tor, scratching idly at his pale bare chest.He suddenly grabs the heel of a roast beefand a carton oforange juice, and he heads back upstairs with it, with Daniel following.On the second story ofthe house, Ferguson turns right, walking past a dozen closed doors, until he comes to the staircase to the third floor, where once the servants lived.Marie is wait-ing for him at the top ofthe stairs, naked.Her little tangle ofpubic hair looks particularly black against her colorless skin.The skin around her nipples is wrinkled with cold.She stands on her toes, writhing with hap-piness and anticipation.“Hurry,”she whispers.“I’m so thirsty.”As soon as Ferguson is on the landing, Marie takes the carton oforange juice from him, sniffs it, and then drinks it down.She finishes with a loud, comical Ahhhh,shakes the carton to make sure it’s empty, and then lets it drop and puts her arms around her disheveled, confused lover.He lifts her up as they kiss, she wraps her legs around him.

  Daniel flies to Iris’s house with one beat ofhis winged heart, blessing every house beneath him as he sails toward his beloved.She is in bed, awake and alone, propped up with the pillows behind her, and her portable computer resting on the hammock ofblanket between her knees.He lights next to her, puts his arm around her, nuzzles her neck, kisses her cheekbone, the corner ofher eye, and looks at the screen.Dear Daniel,she has written, but that is all.Her fingers rest on the keys.When Kate writes, her expression is avid, she is being fed and enjoying every bite, but Iris has a kind ofshyness even within the privacy ofher own thoughts, as ifshe is observing one part ofherselfwhile the other is half hidden behind a pillar.

  Thank you,he says to her.Surely there is some way she can hear this.

  Thank you for being so beautiful, thank you for not being too beautiful for me, thank you for your life, thank you for your breasts, let me touch them, can you feel that?That’s my hand, this is my mouth, thank you for being so open and wet, thank you for putting me in your mouth, thank you for grabbing at the sheets when I kissed you between the legs, thank you for digging your fingers into my back, thank you for letting me sit at your table, thank you for letting me play with your dog, thank you for looking at me with your deep clear eyes…

  Iris lets out a long sigh and shuts her computer off.She reaches right through him as she places the little Compaq on her night table.She puts the pillows back in their normal places and lies flat, pulls the covers up to her chin.

  And it is then that it strikes him:this will not end well.He has exceeded his capacities, he has somehow gotten more than he deserves, he has the sudden terrible knowledge that happiness ofthis magnitude can only lead to sorrow.Joy lifts you up and joy casts you down.

  Now she is turning offthe lamp on the night table.Her touch is too emphatic, the lamp totters, but she catches it before it falls, sets it right.

  Good girl.He lies next to her in the darkness, no living ghost has ever loved more fervently.He brings his nose almost into the crook ofher neck and breathes her in, the smell oflaundered cotton, and some inef-fable spice.

  Airborne again, flying close to the treetops, heading home.He slips into his own bed, Kate is sleeping deeply.A scent ofalcohol comes off her skin.He props himself up on one elbow, disentangles a few ofher hairs that have gotten stuck into the moist corner ofher mouth.“I’m sorry,”he whispers into her ear.

  She opens her eyes.She looks damaged, badly used.“What did you say?”she asks.

  [11]

  They continued to walk, hoping to find a clearing, a way out.Once, most of this land was pasture, grazed by cattle, but it hadn’t seen a plow in over a hundred years and left to its own had become a wild place.They climbed yet another hill—this might have been steeper because they both had to hold on to trees to pull them-selves up, or else they were getting tired.

  And once they had scaled it, all they could see was more trees—except on one

  side, where the
re was a sharp drop-off, leading to what looked like a large pond filled with black water.

  “We came from that direction,”Hampton said uncertainly.He was pointing

  down the hill upon which they stood, and off to the left.The night was gathering quickly, the darkness was rushing in like water through the hull of a ship, cover-ing everything.

  Kate has prevailed upon Daniel to take a day and a night away from home, together, and he cannot decently refuse her.They leave Ruby with Carl and Julia, and then head out oftown on County Road100A, a curving blacktop that winds its way past Leyden’s two surviving com-mercial dairy farms—sagging wire fences, Delft-blue silos, black-and-white Holstein cows—until it runs into aT-junction, at which they turn onto the road to Massachusetts, where Kate has booked them a room—

  their old room, their first room—at a huge ramshackle hotel in Stock-bridge called the Sleeping Giant Inn.

  On the drive, Kate reads to Daniel from the article she has just written about the O.J.Simpson case.As Kate reads, Daniel is silent, his jaw set, his eyes hooded—she has never seen him pay such fanatical attention to highway conditions, even the shadows ofthe wind-rocked hemlocks make him brake, he is continually readjusting his side and rearview mir-rors, changing the tilt ofthe steering wheel, checking the gas and tem-perature gauges, anything to escape her two thousand words on O.J.

  Kate realizes that bringing up the case is not the best way to begin their Saturday getaway, but, perversely, she is unable to refrain.She isn’t about to pretend that she has the slightest sympathy for a man who so wantonly committed murder and who is now trying to buy his way out ofit.And she cannot help but feel that ifshe can only find the right fact, the right tone, the right line oflogic, then Daniel himself will snap out ofhis ridiculous spell and see, as everyone else she knows and respects sees, that O.J.is as guilty as the Boston Strangler, or Richard Speck, or any of the other monsters.

  “What do you think?”she asks.They are just turning offtheTaconic, onto the road to Stockbridge, where there is an old roadside diner, with a neon sign showing a vast, noble Indian.