”Really,”says Kate.“Imagine.”
“Daniel tells us you’re a writer,”Erick says.
”I wish I had more time to read,”Christine says.“I love books.Do you think you might have written something I’ve read?”
“I’m not sure,”Kate says.“Tell me what you’ve read.”
Daniel has heard this reply before and knows he must laugh to cover the aggression ofit.
“And what about you, Christine?”Kate says.She takes a long drink ofher martini.Too muchvermouth, it tastes slimy.“Are you a detec-tive, too?”
“Yes, I am, an investigator,”Christine says, with a small, satisfied smile.She knows she has been underestimated.“Erick and I were in busi-ness together, but it gotwaytoo incestuous.”
“What kind ofdetective work do you mostly do?”Kate asks.
“Matrimonial?”
“Not so much ofthat,”Christine says.
”Mostly business and industrial,”Erick says.
”And missing persons,”says Christine.“Which I prefer.”
“Do you mind ifI ask you something a little on the personal side,”
Daniel suddenly says.
“The personal side is our bread and butter,”Erick says, smiling.He tilts back in his chair, drapes his arm around Christine.
“I take it you two are married?”
“Correct,”says Erick.
”Do you get a lot ofhassle, being an interracial couple?”
Kate cannot believe he has asked this question.It is not so much its considerable impertinence, but that it reveals what is really on Daniel’s mind.
“Do you want to handle this?”Erick says to Christine.
”No, it’s okay.You go ahead.”
“Well, first ofall, thank you for your question.Actually, Chrissy and I wonder why more people don’t ask us about this.Even our friends fail to ask us what it feels like to be going through this experience.”
Here, Christine interrupts.“Short answer? It’s extremely trying.
We’re always being looked at.”
“Or pointedly ignored,”adds Erick.“We live in Beacon Hill, in an upscale neighborhood.So, in a way, we’re sheltered from some ofthe more virulent forms ofracism.We live in a cocoon.Where we shop, where we eat, it’s not a problem.”
“I see things Erick doesn’t,”Christine says.“I see it in their eyes.”
“I can live with what’s in their eyes,”says Erick.
This is a fucking nightmare,Kate thinks.Our evening is being hijacked by
these people.And I have to sit here while Daniel fantasizes about Iris by proxy.
“But how does it affect your relationship?”Daniel asks.He has always had this earnest wide-eyed aspect to his personality, but it has never seemed so infantile and jejune to Kate before.She feels like dragging him from the bar by his hair.“It seems to me that it would either tear you apart or cement you together.”
“Oh, we circle the wagons, ifthat’s what you mean,”says Erick.“No question but that sharing the antipathy ofsmall-minded people bonds us.
But that’s not our marriage’s source ofstrength.”
“Then what is?”asks Daniel.
His behavior reminds Kate ofsomething her English publisher once said aboutAmericans, how they can say more to a stranger on an airplane than an Englishman generally says to his closest friend.
“Well, what binds us is what people said would drive us apart—our differences,”Erick says.“The terrible trap married people fall into is be-lieving that their spouse is actually a version ofthemselves, and that they will act as they act, want what they want, believe what they believe.
When the spouse fails to do this, when, let’s say for argument’s sake, the husband acts in some contrary way, the wife cannot help herselffrom be-lieving he is doing so just to annoy her, or out ofdisrespect, whereas he may very well be acting in accordance with how he was raised, his own particular psychological dynamic, but she can’t see this clearly because she feels that fundamentally they are the same, two sides ofthe same coin, as much brother and sister as husband and wife.”
Kate looks in wonder at Daniel, who is rapt, as ifthis blowhard were some sort offucking oracle.She casts wildly about in her mind, trying to come up with a gesture or phrase that could instantly extricate them, move them on to dinner or, better yet, back up to their room, their dear, old, immemorial room, where, Kate thinks, they can screw their way back into each other’s good graces.
“But with Chrissy and me,”Erick continues,“our differences are obvious and undeniable.I was born in Nairobi, educated inWales and Mon-treal, and then PaloAlto, and she comes fromWorcester, Massachusetts, her father was a policeman;and we bear this in mind, all ofit, the whole curious burden ofhistory.Our life together is a constant struggle to un-derstand.We have no assumptions, and few expectations.It’s a journey, do you see?”
“I do,”says Daniel.“I see what you mean.”
“How’d you two happen to meet?”Kate asks.“I’m curious.”
“Erick was one ofmy professors at Boston College,”Christine says.
“‘Controversies inTwentieth-Century Criminology.’”
Kate smiles.“Really,”she says,“I thought universities sort offrowned on things like that.”
“Kate!”Daniel says, admonishing her, but in a somehow teasing way, as ifshe were merely being irascible and eccentric.
IfErick and Christine feel insulted by Kate’s remark, they nevertheless remain serene.“How about you?”Erick asks.“How did you two hap-pen to meet?”
Kate notices a familiar face on theTV above the bar—it’s a flushed, balding, stocky man who looks like a sinister presence in a German Ex-pressionist painting.His name is Otto Fisher and he is one ofthe net-works’main correspondents at the Simpson trial.What’s he doing onTV on a Saturday?
“Shhh,”Kate says to Daniel, Erick, and Christine.They look at theTV and Christine lets out a little groan ofdispleasure.“Bartender?”Kate calls out.“Would you turn the volume up? Please.”
Otto Fisher is standing in front ofthe courthouse in LosAngeles, looking hot and displaced in his dark suit with the bright-blue sky behind him.He has gotten word that one ofthe lawyers defending Simpson is threatening to quit the so-called DreamTeam because he is objecting to the strategy ofplaying the so-called Race Card.The lawyer is quoted as saying,“As this trial has proceeded, it has become more and more about politics—especially the politics ofrace—and less and less about the let-ter ofthe law.I believe in Mr.Simpson’s innocence, but I also believe in the law…”
“That motherfucker,”Kate says, shaking her head.“He believes in the law like he believes in the tooth fairy.”She picks up her martini, discovers it empty.“He spends months helping to drag prosecution witnesses through the slime, and then suddenly he’s too delicate to stay on the case?”
“I’ve never seen such a fuss made over a trial in all my life,”Erick says.
”That glorified ambulance chaser is leaving because he knows O.J.’s going to be found guilty,”says Kate.“Mark my words.He’s covering his own fat ass.And he hates the new DNA guy, there’s total conflict be-tween them.”
“You seem to know a great deal about the personalities involved,”
Erick says.
“Oh, forget it.I’m totally addicted to this trial.”
“I wonder why.”
“You wonder why?”Kate says.“The man killed his wife.”
“Probably, but who knows?”
“He killed his wife.”
“Well, surely he’s not the first man in history to commit such a crime.Why all the attention this time?”Erick says.
“Yes, I wonder,”says Christine.
”That’s ridiculous,”says Kate.“He’s rich, he’s famous, he’s greatlooking, and he killed his wife.Why wouldn’t the world pay attention?”
“You don’t think it has anything to do with the fact that he’s a man of color married to a white woman?”asks Erick.
&n
bsp; “You know,”Kate says,“ifmen ofcolor murder their white wives, it’s still against the law.”
Erick is about to say something but stops himself and instead emits a breathy, contemptuous laugh.
“What about you, Daniel?”Christine asks.“Didn’t you say you were a lawyer?”
“I’m glad I’m not on the jury,”Daniel says.“I find myselfthinking one thing one day and another the next.I was a huge fan ofO.J.’s when he was playing ball.”
“No, you weren’t,”says Kate.This is mutiny, out-and-out betrayal.
Daniel seems to her to be actually making things up.“You don’t give a shit about sports.”
Erick places a twenty-dollar bill on his check and then stands up so abruptly he almost tips his table over.“I think it’s time for dinner, Chrissy,”he says in a tight, enraged voice.He makes a brisk Prussian nod in Daniel’s direction and says,“Good evening, Daniel.”
Daniel starts to stand up, but Erick gestures for him to remain seated.Christine gathers her purse and her angora shawl and in a few moments the two ofthem are gone.
“My God,”Daniel says, shaking his head.He is visibly upset.“How did that happen?”
“I will quote Czeslaw Milosz,”Kate says.“‘In a room where people unanimously maintain a conspiracy ofsilence, one word oftruth sounds like a pistol shot.’”
“Is that what that was?The overwhelming sound oftruth?”
His eyes look reptilian and blank as he says this, and Kate thinks,I
have my work cut out for me.
They leave the bar with the vague thought ofgoing on to dinner, not because either ofthem is hungry but because it is dark now and it just seems time.As they make their way toward the dining room, Kate takes Daniel’s arm and says, in a kind ofhaunted-house scared voice,“What if they’rehaving dinner now, too?”What she hopes for is that Daniel will shudder, too, and they’ll be bonded by their wish to see no more ofEr-ick and Christine, and that, further along, the story ofthe old black de-tective and his dumpy young white wife will become a part oftheir own lovers’folklore, taking its place in that shared history ofmishaps and faux pas that constitute the fabric ofall enduring relationships.
But Daniel is not amused.He stops short and then says,“You’re right, we can’t go in there.So?What do you propose?”
What she proposes is they go back to their room.“It’s too early to eat,”she says.“In the old days we never had dinner before nine o’clock, sometimes we’d eat at midnight.”
“That was in NewYork.Ifwe wait too long out here, we’re going to end up with a bag ofchips from some Seven-Eleven.”
“Well, at least let’s wait until nine, or even eight-thirty.”She wants to get him into their room.It’s time for her to be abject, it’s time for her to worship him, to go through all the phallocentric rituals.She tugs at him, she hopes it feels playful to him but she wonders ifperhaps she’s pulling a little too hard.Everything’s a notch or two off, he’s really mak-ing her work for this, he’s putting her through the mill, and once she wins him back he will have to be punished for this, not severely, not even so he will know he is being punished, but he will suffer nevertheless.As God is my witness, I will never be humble again.
Room301.Now that they are back in their old room, it occurs to Kate that this four-poster bed with its dourYankee spread and foam rub-ber pillows is hardly a monument to ecstasy.That first night together had been awkward, tense, a bit ofa botch.We accomplished it but we weren’t very accomplishedis how she described it to a friend.There’s a lot to be said for establishing a friendship before sex, there’s a sweetness to it and even a possible synergy, but in their particular case all ofthose hours ofcon-versation and chastity were not so much a prelude to sex as an alterna-tive.She and Daniel had already established routines that had nothing to do with sex, they had learned to be relaxed with each other, they had de-veloped a sense ofsafety, and as wonderful as those things were, they had very little to do with the fierceness and desire, the mindlessness and abandon oferotic joy.Their friendship cast a pall over their lovemaking.
The friendship needed not only to be overcome but jeopardized, re-nounced.
“Remember our first night here?”Kate says, sitting on the edge ofthe bed, patting the mattress and inviting him to join her.“We were so shy.”
“Yes,”Daniel says.“I remember it well.”His back is to her, he is standing at the window, looking out at the town’s main street.A truck is go-ing by, the sound ofits grinding gears like the roar ofa lion.Workmen have set up ladders and they are braiding Christmas lights around the poles ofthe streetlights and through the branches ofthe maple trees.
“Don’t you want to sit next to me?”Kate says.She means for this to sound teasing, and that slightly pleading tone ofvoice is meant as a kind ofsend-up ofthe whole notion ofa woman trying to get a man’s atten-tion, but the satire is leaden.It’s too true to be amusing.
“You were really weird with the people down there,”Daniel says.
”I know, it’s fine.They’re offsomewhere circling the wagons.”
“I don’t know why you did that,”Daniel says, shaking his head.
”Why were you so interested in them?”Kate asks.She can’t help her-
self, the self-righteousness in his voice offends her.“Because they’re an interracialcouple?”
“My God, listen to you,”Daniel says.The dull sheen seems to be lifting from his eyes, he is coming alive suddenly.“You really have a prob-lem with it.You feeling a little racist in your old age?”
“My old age? How fucking dare you.”
“You see?You’re more worried about your age than you are about being called racist.”
“Well, my dear, the fact is that Iamgetting older, so I’m sensitive to it.And the fact also is that I amnotracist, so I’m not sensitive to that.
Okay?”
“You’re obsessed with the Simpson case, and the Star ofBethlehemkids—”
“Those black delinquents were in our house and it seems like you’re ontheirside.”
“I’m not on their side.But the fact is, halfthe kids in that place are locked up because they’re black.You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.”
“They were in our house,”says Kate, her voice rising.“How did I know what they were going to do?They could have easily killed me, or raped me, or both.I was alone, I was completely alone.”She is standing now.She walks toward Daniel, stops.They are facing each other, less than a foot apart.“While you were all cozy and warm at Iris Davenport’s house.”
“I know, I know,”says Daniel softly.“It must have been frightening.
I’m sorry.”
“What was really going on at that house, Daniel?”Kate says.She reaches for him, but he moves away.
“Let’s not do this, Kate.”
“It’s too late for that, Daniel.I want to know what was really going on in that house.”
“We were snowed in, just like everybody else.”
“I know you were snowed in.That’s not what I’m asking.”
Daniel shrugs, as ifunable to imagine what more she could want.
”What I’m asking is did you sleep with her?”As soon as the words are out, she regrets them.And in the ensuing silence she casts frantically about for some way to turn this conversation around, or off.Is it pos-sible to simply throw her arms around him and say,Never mind, I don’t wanttoknow? It seems she could go for decades not knowing, but ifthe knowledge is there it will pierce her, it will shoot its poison into her, and then she will have to save herselffrom it.
“Well?”she says.“You’re very quiet.”
He backs up a little, he seems to be shaking.He seems to have an appetite but no talent for treachery.“What do you want me to say, Kate? I don’t know what to do here.”
“What kind ofquestion is that?You want my fucking guidance, for Christ’s sake? Just tell me, get it over with.Did you sleep with her?”
“Yes.I’m sorry.I did.”
For a moment, she doe
sn’t believe him.He’s just throwing it in her face, giving her a taste ofwhat it would be like, trying to shock her into shutting up.And then the moment passes, and she still does not believe him, yet at the same time, she knew it all along.
“Did you really?”she says, sitting on the bed again.
”I’m sorry, Kate.It kills me to think ofhurting you.”
Kate laughs, but she can see by his expression that laughter, or any other sign ofinstability, will be playing right into his hand.He would like nothing more than to withdraw into the relative safety ofdeciding she’s a little crazy right now.
“I think we should leave,”he says.
”Really?Any place in particular? Do you have a hot date or something?”
“No,”he says quietly.
”Do you mind ifI ask you a question?”she asks.“Would that be all right?”
He shrugs.His eyes are suddenly bright red, as ifthe sight ofher is like knives going into them.
“Are you in love with her?”
He is trying to say something, but his lips are trembling, he will not allow himself to cry, he will not try to elicit her sympathy.He nods his head.
“Is that a yes I see?”The handle toward my hand.Come let me clutch thee.
He covers his face.It seems suddenly important to Kate, a matter of life and death, that he not do that.She springs from the bed, grabs his hands, and pulls them down.His face is soaked with self-pity.
“Get out ofhere!”she screams.“Just get out ofhere!”
He backs away, gives her a wary look, somehow implying that the problem between them is her mental health.He seems to like the idea of just getting out ofthere.His hand is on the door, but he keeps his eyes on her, as ifshe might attack him.Is he going to take the car? Drive back to Leyden, go right to Iris’s house?I told her, she knows,he’ll say.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.You said…”
“No, don’t go.We’re going to work this out, okay?”
“Kate.”
“Get another room, but you’re not leaving me here.You can sleep in another room, you can dream ofyour little sweetheart in peace.But you’re not taking the car and abandoning me.We’re going to work this out in the morning, or whenever.But I’m not letting you do this, you understand me?You’re not doing this to Ruby, or to yourself, or me.”
A Ship Made of Paper Page 23
