A Ship Made of Paper

by Scott Spencer

  “Do you want to say this to Kate?”

  “She heard me.”

  “And she won’t dignify it with a reply,”Kate says.

  ”She’s practically making a living out ofwriting articles about O.J.

  Simpson,”Daniel says to Fox, as ifappealing to him, forging some sort ofbond, and instantly feeling the folly ofit as the therapist shifts in his seat.

  “Are you still seeing her or not?”Kate says, her voice level, composed.She cocks her head as she looks at Daniel, somehow creating the impression that whatever he answers will come as a reliefto her.

  But he’s not convinced.It seems entirely likely to him that ifhe tells Kate he is still actively in love with Iris, and he sees her whenever possi-ble, then Kate will not only suffer but she will retaliate.

  He wishes that Iris would tell Hampton herself.Soon,she has said.I

  can’t,she has also said.She fears him, fears the pain it will cause her, and is exhausted to contemplate the mess that will ensue.She worries about losing custody ofNelson—though surely Hampton could not delude himself into believing he was set up or temperamentally suitable to take care ofthe boy.

  Ifit were up to Daniel, Hampton would already know.Then he would simply stay in NewYork, and those unbearable conjugal visits could cease.But Iris is more than reluctant to tell him, she seems terrified of the possibility, which makes him wonder ifshe fears Hampton will do some violence to her, that he will pummel her, that beneath that golden-brown exterior ofaffluence and elegance, family roots, princely entitle-ments, and fraternity-boy competitiveness lurks the narcissistic, sexually preening, and ultimately predatory black man who prowls, sulks, and rages through Kate’s articles on O.J.

  “Well, are you or not?”Kate asks, her voice a little wobblier this time, like a tightrope walker working without a net who’s made the mistake of looking down.

  Ifhe tells her the truth, he will pay for it.She will try to put a wedge between him and Ruby.She will make his life hell.

  “I’ve already answered this question,”he says.

  ”Answer it again,”says Kate.

  He shakes his head no, thinking that in some malignantly petty way this silent No can be taken to mean that he isn’t seeing Iris anymore, or it could also mean that he doesn’t want to“answer it again.”He knows he is losing his honor with these infantile games with the truth, but, then, ifhe’s willing to lose his family why not jettison honor, as well?

  “What do you think about that?”Dr.Fox asks Kate.

  ”About what? He hasn’t answered me.He shook his head, that could mean anything.”

  “I’m not seeing her,”Daniel blurts out.“I’m not seeing Iris.Okay?”

  Telling this lie isn’t as sickening as he’d anticipated, he was so close to it anyhow, it wasn’t difficult, he just let himself drift into it.

  “What do you think about what Daniel has said?”Fox asks again.

  Kate shakes her head.“I don’t know.I’d like to believe him.”

  “You don’t believe me?”asks Daniel, as ifincredulous.

  ”No.I don’t.”

  “Then have me followed.Hire a private detective.”

  “I have.”

  Daniel’s first thought is ofthis morning, after he and Iris left the supermarket and drove north back toward Leyden—wasn’t there a car fol-

  lowing close behind, a nondescript sedan, just the sort to be driven by some professional snoop?A mile into the drive they pulled intoWindsor Motors;Iris wanted to check out the newVolvos, and Daniel would have gone anywhere for a few extra minutes with her.Had the sedan followed them in?They walked around the lot, a light snow fell for a few moments and then stopped.A salesman descended upon them.Iris pointed to a car she liked and the next thing they knew the salesman had slapped a pair ofdealer plates on it and he was waving so long to them as Iris steered the new car out ofthe lot for a test drive, with Daniel in the passenger seat.Her eyes were brimming with tears.What’s wrong,he asked her.She shook her head, pulled out into traffic, started driving a little too fast.

  He saw a tear roll down her cheek, he stopped it with his fingertip—re-membering Kate once saying that human tears were filled with bodily waste, more toxic than piss—and then licked his finger clean.You’re cry-ing,he whispered.He just gave us the car,Iris said.He didn’t ask for identi-fication, a credit card, nothing.“Here’s the keys, see you in a while, drive safely.”

  She sniffed back what remained ofher first response to this novel situa-tion, and then looked at Daniel with something utterly wild, something practically feral in her expression, as ifshe had just entered a realm in which more was permissible than she had ever dreamed.

  “Look at his face,”Kate says to Dr.Fox.“You must be somewhat ofan expert on the faces men make when they are totally fucking busted.”

  Fox’s clock is digital so there isn’t even a ticking, all that can be heard is the longshhhhhofthe white-noise machine, like the sound ofan enor-mous punctured balloon.And then, from another ofthe center’s offices, the sound ofa muffled male voice crying out,“Not at meal time, that’s all I’m asking.Not at meal time!”

  “What’s that?”Kate asks.

  ”Somebody else’s misery,”Daniel answers.

  ”Not that.That.”

  “It’s the white-noise machine,”Fox says.

  ”Ah,”says Kate, smiling.“Then shouldn’t it be whining?”She starts tolaugh.

  “I can’t believe you hired someone to follow me around,”says Daniel.

  ”Well, I didn’t.But I’m never going to forget the look on your face when you thought I had.”

  “All right,”says Fox.“I’d like to try something here, ifthat’s okay with you two.”

  “He still hasn’t answered my question about whether he’s seeing her or not.”

  “What I’d like to try…,”saysFox.

  ”Just a second, Dr.Fox.Please?There’s no point going forward with this little session, ifDaniel’s not willing to answer my question.”

  “He did answer your question,”Fox says, his voice rising with alarm, which Daniel notes with relieffor himself and a feeling ofsome pity for Kate—poor Kate, fifteen minutes into therapy and she’s alienating thedoctor.

  “Let me tell you something about Daniel, Dr.Fox.He’s not terribly straightforward.He’d rather lie than hurt someone.He’s a negotiator.

  No, here’s what he is.”She uncrosses her legs and then recrosses them in the opposite direction.“He’s like an orphan.He’s always covering his ass, making sure he doesn’t get sent back to the home.He doesn’t feel as if he belongs anywhere.He moves back to his hometown—and moves me back with him, by the way.He has no idea why.His parents cut him out oftheir stupid little will? He barely reacts.He wants something big to happen to him, something to tell him who he is, or make him something.

  There must be a name for that, he must be a type, or something.He can tell you anything.He may end up saying that he’s black.I wouldn’t be surprised.People like him can never tell the truth, because they don’t know the truth.He’s a sweet guy, and a good man, and despite his be-havior he’s really pretty ethical.But Daniel’s been spinning his own feel-ings for so long they’re a mystery even to him.”

  Fox nods, somewhat sagely, but when he strokes his goatee, his fingers are trembling.He clears his throat and murmurs something about

  ”trust issues,”and something further about that most unfortunate“circle ofsafety.”

  Abruptly, Kate reaches over and squeezes Daniel’s knee as hard as she can.She speaks to him through curled lips and clenched teeth.

  ”Saysomething.”

  “Do you love me, Kate?”he asks, his voice soft, almost sleepy.The pressure she exerts on the muscles right above his knee is vaguely painful, but relaxing, too.The physical punishment seems to siphon off some ofthe other, more persistent agonies.

  “That’s really not the issue here,”Kate says.“Anyway, ofcourse I do.”

  “I’ll take that as a no,”he s
ays.

  ”You see? I can’t win.”

  “All right, then let me ask you this…”

  “It’s better to just express your own feelings,”Fox says.“And not askquestions.”

  “I agree,”says Daniel.“But let me get these questions out ofthe wayfirst.”

  “He said no questions, Daniel,”Kate says.

  ”You’ve had your chance to cross-examine me.Now it’s time for thedefense.”

  “The whole idea ofcouples counseling,”Fox says,“is to keep youout

  ofcourt.”

  “Have you ever felt the kind oflove for me,”Daniel says to Kate,“that you’d rather die than live without me?”

  “What do you want me to do?Audition?”

  “I’ll make it easier for you.I don’t think you ever have, at least not toward me.And I think it’s a sad life, and a waste ofheart.We are capa-ble ofit.IfI am, then you are…”He points to Dr.Fox, who seems to be staring at him with alarm.“And you are, too.We all are.It’s in our wiring, in our DNA, it’s the poetry that we all are capable ofwriting, if we can find the goddamned courage.”

  “I think you have lost your mind,”Kate says, slowly taking her hand away from him.“Who are you?The fucking JohnnyAppleseed ofLove? How can you say these things to me?”She looks for a moment as ifshe is going to be furious, as ifshe is going to scream at him, smack him, rake him with her fingernails, but then her face crumples and she begins to cry.She takes a handkerchiefout ofher handbag and covers her eyes.

  Ifshe thinks what he says is awful, she should hear what he does not say.He is here trying to mollify Kate, when what he might really be in-terested in is shaking her until she sees how he has changed, that he is no longer the emotionally anemic man she somehow chose.He wants to ask her:Have you ever made love for six hours barely stopping? Have you ever had nine orgasms in a night? Have you ever seen me weep from the sight of your beauty?When was the last time we slept in each other’s arms? Have you ever seen my savage side? Have you ever known me to be absolutely helpless with passion? Has anyone ever stuck their tongue up your ass? Have you risked disgrace for me? Have you made a double life and been willing to hurt another person for the love of me? Have you ever been willing to give up everything for another person?You wouldn’t even do that for Ruby.

  Fox finally releases them, and they hurry out ofhis office, angry and ashamed, with their eyes down, their faces closed.They have made an ap-pointment for nextWednesday, but they both know they will not keep it.

  Neither ofthem ever wants to be in this place again.The medicine here cannot cure them.

  The November sky is the color ofa cellar sink;a cold wind blows through the parking lot as Daniel follows at a safe distance behind Kate on the way to her car.She lets herselfin and he waits there for a moment, giving her a chance to pull away without him, ifthat’s what she wants to do.His car is at his office, a ten-minute walk, which he would prefer to being in cramped space with Kate.Yet he cannot bolt out ofthe parking lot and make a run for it;despite the danger, he feels the logic oflife, the rules ofdecorum insist that he get into the passenger seat, close the door behind him, strap on his safety belt.The car’s engine turns over.The radio comes on, a blur ofexcited talk that Kate instantly switches off.

  “Ready?”she says.And then, without waiting for his answer—he was about to say sure, fire away—she throws her car into reverse and backs it quickly and without hesitation across the center’s small parking lot, straight into the front end ofa blood-redToyota.Daniel is hardly dis-lodged from his seated position, but Kate, lighter, has pitched forward and banged her forehead against the steering wheel.She barely reacts to this, not so much as touching the oozing welt with her fingers.She throws the car into drive, her car extricates itselffrom theToyota, and she drives it headlong into a gray Honda parked on the other side ofthe lot.By the time the center empties out—no one inside has failed to hear the twisting metal and shattering glass—Kate’s car is immobile and she and Daniel are screaming at each other.

  The next morning, desperate to see Iris and to tell her what has hap-pened at the counseling center, Daniel brings Ruby to My LittleWooden Shoe at the normal time, but to his ravishing disappointment Nelson is already there.As he helps Ruby out ofher jacket, Daniel’s eyes search the suddenly grim and airless little day care center in case he has some-how overlooked her presence, in case she is talking to a teacher, or maybe helping out in the kitchen.Stiffwith unhappiness, his fingers fum-ble with the buttons, and Ruby looks up at him with dismay.

  Nelson, seeing Ruby, comes to her side and tugs at the sleeve ofher shirt.“Come on,”he commands her.Generally, Ruby is compliant around Nelson, but today she resists.She raises her little square hands to-ward Daniel and puckers for a good-bye kiss, while Nelson glowers at them both.

  “Okay, you guys, have a great day,”Daniel says.

  ”I don’t even like you,”Nelson replies, raising his eyebrows, extending his lower lip, shrugging.

  Ruby is appalled by what Nelson says.Her cheeks blaze as ifslapped.

  “Yes you do!”she fairly cries.“He’s my dad.”

  “No he’s not,”says Nelson.He smiles as ifRuby has walked into his trap.

  Tocomplete his mastery ofher, he takes Ruby’s arm and pulls her away.

  Daniel drives away from My LittleWooden Shoe, with no destination in mind, only vaguely aware oftraffic and the fact that he is in charge of a heavy moving machine.His mind is not so much processing informa-tion as pinned beneath it, pierced on one end by the absence ofIris and on the other by the fact that Nelson is harboring a great malevolence for him.At the end ofthe winding, residential road that the day care center shares with a scatter ofone-story houses, where Daniel would normally turn right to head toward the village and his office, he instead turns left, which brings him to Chaucer Street, which in turn empties out onto the state highway leading six miles north to Marlowe College.He presses the power button on his cell phone to tell SheilaAlvarez he’ll be in an hour or so late, but the battery has worn down and the phone remains dark.

  I’ll call my office when I get there,he thinks.

  But get where?All he knows is that there’s a good chance that Iris is at the college, and a good chance that ifhe drives over to Marlowe there is hope offinding her.

  Life, it seems, can be really very simple:you feel where you want to go, and you go there.You let your legs take you.At least the body, dog that it is, tells the truth.

  Seventy years ago, Marlowe College was a sleepy, mediocre Episcopalian school with an enrollment offive hundred young men.Now, it is nondenominational, with four thousand students, twenty-four hundred ofthem women.The original old buildings still exist—ivy-covered, gray stone buildings, with leaded windows and burgundy slate roofs—but they are now overwhelmed by the modernist additions, the glass-and-steel fitness center, the broken geometry ofthe art center, the Bauhaus-ian dorms.The campus has grown, but it is still only thirty acres, with one north-south road winding through it, and another going east to west, and now Daniel is navigating his car, driving slowly as students stroll across the road without so much as a cautious glance.The air, cold and humid, is like a soaking sheet.A couple ofvery large crows land on a power line and swivel their heads toward each other as the wire sinks beneath their weight.

  Daniel finds Iris’s car in the parking lot between the gym and the stu-

  dent center, and he decides she’s more likely in the center and tries there first, where he immediately spots her, in the cafeteria, seated at a small wooden table in the company ofa prematurely gray, olive-complexioned man in his late thirties.He wears a silk shirt and a long, luxurious scarf, and he holds a pen as ifit were a cigarette as he leans toward Iris.Iris is dressed in a smart black skirt and a dark-green chenille sweater, with a silver bracelet and matching earrings.Daniel, struck by the sight ofher, and then further struck by seeing her in conversation with the handsome man at her table, freezes in his tracks.A steady stream ofyoung students flows past, parting
ways to walk around him.Daniel is fixed to his spot, suddenly gravely dubious about having come here, and feeling a sick stir-ring ofjealousy at the sight ofIris seated with another man.Within mo-ments, however, Iris happens to look in his direction and gestures for him to come and sit with her.She doesn’t ask what he is doing here, and, of course, gives no indication that they are anything but two people whose children go to the same preschool.She introduces him to JohnArdiz-zone, who, it turns out, is her newly appointed thesis advisor in the American Studies Department.Daniel, though unasked to account for his sudden appearance, says that he has come to use the college’s library to check up on some local history as a part ofhis research about Eight Chimneys, but as soon as he is embarked on this unnecessary fiction he regrets it and simply lets it trail off.Ardizzone quickly excuses himself, saying he has a departmental meeting.He taps his pen a couple oftimes, as ifdislodging an ash from its tip, and, before hurrying off, he tells Iris that he likes her new ideas for her thesis and he hopes she can have a draft ofit before the end ofthe spring semester.

  “You have a new thesis?”Daniel asks, as soon asArdizzone is safely away.

  ”Yes.So, what are you doing here?”

  “I don’t know.I think I’m stalking you.I’m sorry.”

  “It’s strange seeing you here.”Her voice drops to a whisper.“It’s strange seeing you with your clothes on.”

  “Don’t excite me,”he says.

  “You missed a spot shaving,”Iris says, touching his upper lip.Her short hair glistens and her fingers smell ofthe oil she has rubbed into her scalp.“Are you having trouble facing yourselfin the mirror?”

  “No.”

  “I am.”

  “I’ve given myselfover to a higher power,”Daniel says, smiling.“And you’re it.”

  “Sounds convenient.”

  “It’s a lot ofthings, but ifconvenient is on the list, I haven’t noticed.”

  “It’s okay,”Iris says.“I’m not trying to hassle you.But I’m finding this verydifficult.”

  “I’m sorry, Iris.I don’t know what to do.”

  “You want to know the truth? I’m miserable, frightened, guilty, sleepless, I feel like a criminal, and I think I’m getting a flu or something, and I’m happy, happier than I’ve ever been.”She looks over her shoulder.