A Ship Made of Paper

by Scott Spencer

  “Kate, I think we just have to move on.”

  “Move on?What kind oftalk is that? Move on.What are we? Cowboys?You get another room and we’ll talk in the morning.”

  He stands there.He is silent.He closes his eyes.Is this an act ofcontrition, or is he weighing his options?

  “All right,”he says.

  Her heart floods with relief.His agreeing to get another room gives her a sense ofdirection and triumph.She has come up with a plan and he has agreed to it.She stands there as he goes to their overnight bag and takes out what he needs.

  And then he does something intolerable.He flips his toiletries kit up in the air—a light-brown leather bag that she gave him a couple ofbirth-days ago—and catches it.She feels the blood in her face.Her muscles tighten so swiftly it feels like she’s growing taller.

  “Call Ruby,”she says, as he is about to let himself out.“Let her know what you think is important.”

  Their eyes meet, and she feels what she believes to be the miracle of her own strength, her own survival.Thoughts come to her like the drip ofanesthetic.He has not destroyed her, and he has not destroyedthem.

  The bomb has exploded but the hole is not big enough for him to crawl through.And just look at him, he knows it, too, he’s not going anywhere.

  Let him have this night, let him weep and tear out his hair.Tomorrow in the cool morning she will appear freshly bathed and combed, she will be wearing faded jeans and a black cashmere sweater, a little bit ofmakeup, theArts and Leisure and the Book Review sections ofthe Sunday paper tucked under her arm, the car keys in her hand, and a bag full ofbreak-fast goodies for the road.Then, once they are rolling, she will say the words that will end this insanity:she will forgive him.

  Carol Davenport has spent the past two hours reading to her nephew, who lay in his little bed, staring up at her with his dark obdurate eyes—even as he yawned, he refused to close them.After going through a dozen ofNelson’s books, Carol was feeling frantic with boredom and exhaus-tion.Ifshe had to keep reading to put the kid to sleep, she could not bear to read any more about headstrong bunnies and brave little toasters, so she read to him from the novel she herselfwas reading—a Barbara King-solver book chosen by her reading group back home in Baltimore—and that, in fact, did the trick.Now, she stands in the darkened second-story hall ofher sister’s house, listening anxiously for any signs ofwakefulness from Nelson’s room.

  Hearing none, she goes downstairs, wondering ifshe is tired enough herselfto go to bed.She has forgotten her book back in Nelson’s room, but she doesn’t dare risk waking him by going back to retrieve it.She sits on the sofa, picks theTV remote control up offthe coffee table.Sud-denly, the phone rings and she lunges for it, afraid that the high elec-tronic twitter ofit will awaken Nelson, who has been so stubborn and confrontational and whom she fears she will throttle ifhe says another word to her before morning.

  “Hello?”she whispers into the phone.

  ”Oh, thank God it’s you,”a man’s voice says on the other end.“I know you can’t talk.Can you?Are you alone?”

  Carol is so startled by the urgency—and the whiteness—ofthis voice that she is momentarily speechless.She feels exposed, out there in the middle ofnowhere, with only white people, whites in cars, whites in their houses, whites in the police station and the hospital, she feels fan-tastically and perilously alone.

  “I told Kate, she knows,”the man says.“I just wanted you to know.

  And this too, this too.I love you.When can I see you?”

  Carol summons her courage.She grips the phone tightly and brings it close to her mouth, so that this man can feel the heat ofher scorn.

  ”Who the fuck is this?”she says.

  [12]

  “ I think we’ve already been here,”Hampton said.

  “Really?What makes you think so?”

  It was too dark to see Hampton’s face, but Daniel could tell from the quality

  of the silence that Hampton was glaring at him.Even friends would have begun to get irritated with each other by now.Being lost brought out the sort of fear that dovetails into rage.

  “What makes me think so?”asked Hampton.His voice seemed completely un-

  connected to his feelings;even in anger, it was melodious.Or maybe there was a connection, but Daniel didn’t know him well enough to make it.

  “I think we’re making progress,”Daniel said. “Well, we’re not, we’re going in circles.” “Hampton.I’ve been following you.All right?” “We’re going in circles.” “Well, you’ve been taking us there.” “Daniel?” “What?” “Can I make a suggestion?” “Sure.What?” “Go fuck yourself.” There was a rock nearby, embedded deeply into the forest floor, covered with

  moss and lichen.Hampton thought to scale it, hoping to see a break in the woods,

  but the soles of his shoes were slippery, and as soon as he stood on the rock he slipped and fell hard onto his hands and knees, and just stayed there, with his head down, for several moments.

  Daniel went to his side, touched him softly on the shoulder.

  Hampton glanced up at Daniel.“Damn,”he said.

  ”Here,”Daniel said.He put out his hand.Hampton’s fingers were hard and

  cold;he grasped Daniel’s hand like a statue come to life.Daniel stepped back and pulled Hampton to his feet.It was strange to be touching this man who had once had, and was now losing, everything.

  Weeks pass.Anxiety.Cunning.Lies.Daniel and Iris meet whenever and wherever they can.The danger is, ofcourse, an aphrodisiac—

  anAfro-disiac, Daniel thinks, but does not say it.Iris has made it clear that she is not going to be his Black Girlfriend.She has also made it clear that she is not ready to tell the truth to Hampton, which means Daniel must somehow make certain that Kate doesn’t speak to Hampton herself.And so when Kate wants to make love he makes love with her, and when she insists that they begin to repair their relationship by seeing a therapist he must acquiesce to that, as well.

  And now it isTuesday, two days beforeThanksgiving, three in the afternoon, and Daniel and Kate are in the waiting room oftheWindsor Family Counseling Center.Daniel picks up an old, well-worn copy of Redbook,just for something to do with his hands and eyes, opens it up to a picture ofa delirious golden retriever bounding up to its human fam-ily in an open field, an ad for canine arthritis medicine.

  They are going to talk to a therapist on Kate’s insistence, but they have come to this specific office on Daniel’s recommendation.Daniel asked the shrink who worked down the hall from his law office for a name and was told that the best person for that sort ofthing was Brian Fox.But getting the referral didn’t complete Daniel’s manly reparations, nothing could.“You call him, this mess is your doing, you make the ap-pointment,”she said, and rather than argue the matter, Daniel found it simpler to make the call.Now they are here, and Kate seems appalled by the informality ofthe place, already in some agony over what they have come to discuss, already feeling that her privacy is being invaded, her dignity compromised, her wounded pride put on display.

  Daniel stretches his feet out before him, looks at the tips ofhis shoes, places his hands on his knees.He must gather himself, think ofwhat he will say, what he will not say, when Dr.Fox brings them in for their two-fifteen.He closes his eyes.

  A couple ofdays ago, after making love to Iris in her bedroom, they were both covered in perspiration, and Iris pulled from her closet a small tan-and-blue rotating fan.She plugged it in, placed it on top ofher dresser, and then grabbed his hand to pull him out ofbed and stood with him in front ofthe cooling, drying breeze.“This is better than a shower,”

  she said.“I don’t want you to just wash me offyou.”

  He tries to rivet his attention on the magazine.He looks again at the ad for canine arthritis medicine and thinks about Scarecrow, poor Crow, slowing down week by week, day by day, tottering around Iris’s house and yard exuding beneficence.Daniel has never known such a perfect dog in his life, though he realizes that his virtually
worshipful attitude toward the dog is consistent with his virtually worshipful attitude toward everything in Iris’s house, the orderliness ofher spice rack, the scent ofher hand soap, the clarity ofthe ice cubes, the amusing nature ofher computer’s screen-saver (kangaroos in sunglasses),the silkTurkish carpet her brother brought back from Istanbul, the black-and-white photographs ofNelson in their austere wooden frames, pictures Iris took and printed herself during the briefperiod she was interested in photography.

  A door next to the receptionist’s window opens and Dr.Fox emerges, wearing a dark-blue suit, a white shirt, a blue-and-white tie.With his close-cropped hair, wire-rimmed glasses, and elegant goatee, he looks like a diplomat from a small Marxist nation.“Katherine? Daniel?”he in-quires softly, with a kindly smile.

  Kate stares at Fox with palpable amazement and then, despite herself, she begins to laugh.Daniel, who himself was not expecting a black man, understands that Kate is feeling the irony oftheir having made an appointment with anAfrican-American to discuss their domestic diffi-culties, but he nevertheless feels she is behaving badly.

  IfDr.Fox senses some racial content in Kate’s laughter, he gives no evidence ofit, and he ushers them into his office, a small, dimly lit room filled with books, green glass lamps, a small collection ofantique type-writers.His window looks out onto an old apple tree that was split in two by the October storm.When they are all seated—Kate and Daniel in khaki director’s chairs, Fox in a tufted burgundy leather seat—the re-lationships counselor begins the session by asking them their names, their ages, what insurance they carry.His voice is steady, at once emo-tionless and insistent, it’s like being pulled over by a highway patrolman.

  “We’re here because Daniel has been seeing another woman,”Kate suddenly says, no longer patient enough to allow Fox to collect the stan-dard data.

  Daniel is surprised at how raw this sounds.Every scoundrel he knows complains about being quoted out ofcontext, but having his behavior re-duced to the simple act ofinfidelity strikes him now not only as inaccu-rate but unjust.What about all the pointlessly lonely nights that led up to it?What about never having known passion?

  “How have you come to this knowledge?”Fox asks, with funereal tact.

  ”It was quite obvious,”says Kate.

  ”I told her,”Daniel adds softly.

  ”Well, then,”Fox says, taking a deep breath.He pinches the skin around hisAdam’s apple, purses his lips.“So let me begin with you, Katherine—and Daniel, you’ll have your chance to speak, too, but I want to begin with Katherine, ifthat’s all right with both ofyou.Katherine, this situation you find yourselfin, how would you like to see it resolved?”

  Kate’s face colors, and the sight ofit stabs through Daniel.She is nervous to be here, humiliated, and she who is so deft with words seems tongue-tied.

  “I want to save what amounts to my marriage,”she says, her voice barely more than a whisper.She clears her throat.“We may not have any official documents, but this relationship means a great deal to me.Cer-tainly more than my actual marriage, which was just…crap.More than anything, I guess.And I miss my old life, I miss the way things were before all this chaos.Ifwe could go back to that, back to that nice life, I think I would be willing to forget everything that’s happened since October.”

  Daniel feels he is being lured into what a man in his position must never do:looking into the heart ofthe person he is leaving.He thinks for a moment that maybe he ought to get out ofhis chair and leave.He can-not offer her hope, nor solace.IfKate is here to protect herself, or to heal her wounds, then he should not be here.He is the cause ofher pain, he is the source, that churning in her stomach, he put it there, that sense ofexclusion and exile—it comes from him.But what can he do? He can-not be for himself and for her, too.Their interests are in collision.There is no middle ground.What he wants is what is tearing Kate apart, and he cannot and will not stop wanting Iris, Iris is the most real thing.

  Fox strokes his goatee, and his deep, almond-shaped eyes seem to soften, which Daniel notes, as iftrying to assess a juror’s sympathies.

  ”Can you say more about that?”Fox asks.

  Daniel sits back in his chair, waiting for the sharp sting ofKate’s reply.He knows her well enough to imagine how irritating Fox’s insipid in-vitation must be to her.

  But Kate tries to do what Fox has asked.“I’m very angry, and very hurt,”she says.“As Daniel knows.The atmosphere at home is obviously tense.Very tense.Practically unbearable.We’re all walking on eggshells.

  We’re waiting to see what Daniel will do.I think even Daniel is waiting to see what he’ll do.He’s a decent man and very kind and he’s terrific with my daughter.I’m sure this whole situation is killing him.”

  Fox turns briefly toward Daniel, not to elicit a response or any further clarification ofKate’s remarks but, it seems, just to see the expres-sion on his face.

  “And you say you were previously married,”Fox says.

  “Yes, to a man whom I wasn’t in love with.And about whom I rarely think.He has no relationship with my daughter, he lives in Hawaii on a little bit offamily money, and he is completely irresponsible.”

  “Which brings us to Daniel,”says Fox.

  ”I’ve asked him to stop seeing this woman.”

  “I see,”says Fox.“And has he stopped seeing her?”

  They’re talking about me as if I weren’t actually here,thinks Daniel.

  ”I don’t think so,”she says.

  In fact, he has seen her this morning, their parting is just three hours old, and he feels, as usual, halfmad from either having just seen her or from being about to see her.Today, he accompanied her to an immense su-permarket twenty miles south ofLeyden and followed her up and down the aisles while she shopped for her family’sThanksgiving dinner.Despite everything, Iris was excited about the holiday, which was her favorite of all the holidays—a fact that confounded Daniel, who would have ranked it close to the bottom, rivaled only by Christmas in the categories of forced jollity, depressing cuisine, and awakened feelings ofemptiness, isolation, and loneliness.Iris’s parents were coming in, as well as her sis-ter, Carol, and her brother, Andrew, with his wife and two children.

  Hampton’s parents would be there, too, along with his aunt Margaret, his sisterVictoria, with her family, and his brother James, and the prospect of housing them all, the improvisation ofbeds and bedrooms, the finessing ofsmall privacies, the worries over laundry, water pressure, the orches-tration ofbathroom times, Aunt Margaret’s sudden allergies to pecans and oysters, without which a properThanksgiving dinner was unimagin-able to Iris, all these and a dozen more domestic preoccupations were ab-sorbing Iris as she filled her cart with bags ofcranberries, cartons ofbeer, gigantic bottles ofseltzer and Coke, three pounds ofbutter, bags of marshmallows, a ten-pound bag ofsugar, a twelve-pack oftoilet paper.

  Listening to her as he tagged along made Daniel ache with envy ofall those people who were to be the recipient ofher care.Imagine! Pressed into this marathon ofhousewifery and to somehow keep her enthusiasm and her love offamily intact.She was an emotional genius.Ifonly he could somehow escape the frozen Butterball turkey sitting sullenly in his own refrigerator, somehow be spirited away from the embattled dinner that waits to be served at his table at home, ifonly all the laws oflogic and propriety could be suspended and he could find himself at Iris’s house for that meal, with Ruby at his side, and Hampton not only vanished but completely forgotten, gone like a puffofsmoke.

  “Daniel?”Fox is saying.“This is a heavy time for you, isn’t it.”

  “Yes,”says Daniel, though not quite certain to what he is agreeing.

  ”I hear you.”

  “Yes,”says Daniel automatically.“Thank you.”

  “Is there something you’d like to say to Katherine right now? Let’s imagine we are in a little circle ofsafety, and we can say whatever it was that was in our hearts and there will be no blame, no blame at all.What would you like to say in the circle ofsafety?”


  “I’m sorry.”

  “That’s good, Daniel, but you’re looking at me.”

  He turns to face Kate.“I’m sorry.”

  “We’re not really in a circle ofsafety, Dr.Fox,”Kate says.“We’re more like in a circle ofhell.”

  Daniel’s heart floods with fondness for Kate, a strangely nostalgic outpouring ofremembered love, as ifshe were long departed.Wouldn’t it be nice ifIris said biting and sophisticated things like that? But wit is not the source ofIris’s allure.Hers is a different sort ofgrace, unadorned and total, the grace ofthe sea, the grace ofangels, and sex.

  And as for Kate:she is suffering, but how can he protect her from it, how can he even soothe her when he himself is misery’s messenger?The unmentionable truth is that he has moved on.No.Worse.He has moved up.He has entered a higher plane offeeling, a higher plane ofdevotion, and a higher plane ofpleasure.How can he make Kate understand this? He is not only leaving her, he is leaving himself, leaving everything familiar be-hind, he is slipping over the border with only the clothes on his back.

  “I didn’t think we’d have to talk about a certain aspect ofthis whole thing,”Kate says, crossing her legs,“but since we’re here and…you’re here.”She gestures elegantly toward Dr.Fox.“It seems worth mention-ing.The woman Daniel was, or maybe we should say,isseeing is black.”

  “How is that relevant?”Daniel says, much more insistently than intended.

  “Oh please, Daniel.It’s completely relevant.You always wanted to be black, and now you’ve figured out a way to be black by proxy.”

  Daniel hazards a glance at Fox, whose brief, black eyebrows have raised up practically to his hairline.“Is this true?”Fox asks.

  “About the woman beingAfrican-American?Yes.But, I’m sorry, I think there’s something a little bit racist in what Kate’s saying.”

  “Daniel,”says Fox,“you’re looking at me.”

  “I know.”