Machias.Man, I loved busting that guy, and he’s like trying to strike a bargain with me while I’m leading him out to the car, he’s saying,‘Mr.
Pabst, we’re both men ofthe world.’Men ofthe world.His poor old wife’s in there with a broken nose and a chipped front tooth and he’s try-ing to bond with me.”
“So what are you saying, Derek?That it’s a bad neighborhood?”
“Here’s what I think.There are no bad neighborhoods, there’s just bad people.”
Oh, thank you for your hard-won wisdom of the streets.“Daniel looked really uncomfortable, having me in his house,”she says.“He was swaying back and forth, talking a mile a minute, and he had his hand sort oftucked be-hind him, massaging his kidney like he does when he’s very, very nervous.”
“He was nervous? He should beashamed.He should be on his knees begging you to forgive him.”
Kate shrugs, but Derek is saying exactly what she wants to hear.She finds that she has a practically limitless need to hear her side ofthings af-firmed when it comes to the breakup ofher household.Once, she would have guessed that she would want to preserve her pride, that she would put up a brave front and mount the traditional romantic defense ofnon-chalance, or philosophical acceptance.But that hasn’t been the case.Kate wants there to be no mistake in anyone’s mind about whose idea it was to separate.She is the wronged party, any spin on that is immoral.And whenever she thinks she has had her fill ofpity, she finds that she has a craving for just one more helping.
“He looks terrible,”Kate says.“He must have lost at least twenty pounds, and he’s got these crepe paper dark patches under his eyes.His health is shot.”
“He shouldn’t even be talking to you about his health,”Derek says.
“He’s lost that right.”
“It’s not like cops and robbers, Derek, this is real life.Whatever he’s done, he’s still important to me.And ifhe’s developed some kind of heart condition…”
“He had a heart attack?”
“I don’t know what he had.But I do know he’s wasting away.And for what?”
“HamptonWelles,”Derek says softly.
”But that wasn’t Daniel’s fault!”
Derek nods.It is, in fact, what he, too, believes, but he doesn’t like to hear Kate say it.
“And I do think,”Kate continues,“that in terms ofhim and Iris, it’s been devastating to them.I think it’s hard for them to even see each other.”
Derek is entirely sure that Daniel and Iris are seeing a lot more of each other than Kate cares to realize—he has seen them coming out of theWindsor Bistro, seen her car in front ofDaniel’s house—but he thinks better ofmaking the point.Sometimes you can lose by winning.
“You’re a very brave lady, Kate,”he says.“I mean it.You’re really taking it well.”
“Can I offer you another cup ofcoffee?”
“No, I better not.I’m having trouble sleeping anyhow.And this stuff is a whole lot stronger than anything I get at home.”
“Meow,”says Kate, making Derek laugh with such a burst ofmanic nervous energy that his face goes crimson.Kate looks at him with a mild gaze, but soon she is laughing, too, and they continue to laugh, as ifher joke were a kiss and they wanted to prolong it.
And then the laughter subsides and they are left with each other and the silence, which Derek, finally, cannot endure.
“You ask yourself,”he says, shaking his head.
”What?”
“What you’d do in her particular individual situation.”
“Iris? WithDaniel, youmean?”
“Whatever anyone says about it being an accident, Daniel lit the fuse.
What would you do with someone who did something like that to yourhusband?”
“Well, first I’d like to actually have a husband.”She realizes as soon as the words are out that it’s not a good or even acceptable joke.She knows Derek is attracted to her, that he has been coming around with the hope ofone day taking her to bed, and she doesn’t want to encourage him, any more than she would want to absolutely discourage him.And, sure enough, the wisecrack has made him uncomfortable.He shifts in his seat, recrosses his legs.
“You know Hampton, don’t you?”Derek asks.
”A little.”
“What’s he like?”
“Extremely dignified, what people used to call a Credit to His Race.”
“Man,”Derek says, with a sad shake ofthe head, as he so often does when Hampton’s fate is discussed.He touches the hollow ofhis own throat, also a practically ritualized gesture between them.
“Poor Daniel,”she says.“I can’t help thinking Iris is sort ofholding him hostage.”
“Hostage?”
“Psychologically.”
Derek glances away, as ifthis were a bit rarefied for his tastes.
”Daniel feels responsible…AndIrisisnofool.She’s perfectly capable ofmanipulating the hell out ofDaniel, without even halftrying.
He’s doing her shopping, he’s mowing the lawn, he’s like her servant.”
“I can’t believe you,”Derek says.“You’re sitting here feeling sorry for him.The whole town’s talking about what a rat he is, and the person he hurt the most is feeling sorry for him.You’re a very understanding person.”
“I’m not understanding.I’m hurt.I feel incredibly hurt.It’s just…
well, it’sDaniel.He’s a sweet man.But he’s rootless, that might be the problem.I should have put it together when he came up with the plan to move back to this place.He wanted to be near his parents, strange as it sounds.All that unfinished business, it’s true what they say.Some of those unloved kids have the hardest time leaving home.They think it’s al-ways just about to happen, the things they’ve been waiting their whole life for.And then they get fixated on the idea ofpassion, some big bang theory.You know what I mean?An explosion that will create, or re-create, the world.Maybe that’s why he got so attached to this woman, this woman who is really basically a stranger to him.He wants to be res-cued from his own emptiness.And I think he sees her as the perfect mother, too—even though she was willing to throw her marriage out the window.But she’s very touchy-feely with her kid.Daniel loves that, be-cause he understands it, and it’s what he missed.Then you take all that, and you mix in all ofDaniel’s goddamned pro bono idealism, and his whole fixation on theblackthing, and how they’re supposed to be more feeling than us, more emotionally present.All that nonsense.”
“Nonsense?You call what he did nonsense?”
“Daniel doesn’t want to hurt anybody.”
“But he has,”says Derek.“He’s lucky he’s not facing charges.”
“It was an accident, I think that much was obvious to everybody.It was just the worst horrible freak luck.That thing, that rocket goes off and severs poor Hampton’s carotid artery.God.It would have been bet-ter ifhe’d died right then and there.”
“He pretty much did.”
“That’s not true.He’s getting around, he’s walking, feeding himself.
He’s probably fucking that wife ofhis.”She puts her hands up as ifto shield herself.“Sorry.I don’t know where that came from.”
A silence descends upon them.From outside the house, they can hear the blue jays raucously quarreling around the bird feeder;they seem per-fectly willing to slaughter each other over a beakful ofthistle.Sometimes it seems so obvious:the world is a place ofrelentless brutality, the only reason anything is alive is that it can kill something else.
Derek has left the window down in his car and the squawk ofhis radio drifts toward the silence ofthe early evening.
“Your radio,”Kate says.
”I can hear it.”
“What’s it saying?What’s going on?”
“Not a damn thing.”And then, in a moment ofinspiration, he decides to risk it all in one sentence.Suddenly it’s easier than holding back, eas-ier than pretending he has not been dreaming ofKate, has not fallen in love with her.All that has happened has happened for a reason, starting with Daniel get
ting kicked down the stairs and moving back to Leyden, and then the freak early snow, and those black kids terrorizing Kate, the whole karmic chain ofevents, including MarieThorne getting lost in the woods.It all had to click together just so.
Kate is frowning at the open window, through which the noise ofthe police radio drifts.
“Should you be paying attention to that?”she asks.
He takes her hand.“Everything I really want to pay attention to is right here,”he says.
[16]
Despite his being in a constant state oftension from recalling and reliving the moment he lit the fuse ofthat Roman candle, despite his flulike feelings ofremorse over breaking up his family, despite his con-stant worry over Ruby’s well-being, her psychological health, her physi-cal health, and even her moods, despite his having taken down the photograph ofthe dear little girl because the sight ofit on his beige bed-room wall makes him weep, despite the many times he has called her on the telephone when she seems indisposed, distracted, and does not want to talk, despite his taking her to feed the swans that live near the shore ofa nearby monastery and turning around for a halfminute and her dis-appearing for nearly ten minutes, despite having received numerous nighttime drink-and-dial telephone calls from Kate, despite his some-times wondering how he could have thought for a moment that he could live without her, despite his having let down more than a few ofhis clients, despite the wreckage he has made ofhis practice, his career, and his reputation, despite his going from a respected and well-liked figure in his little town to a person about whom people gossip, ofwhom peo-ple do not approve, around whom people seem less than comfortable, despite the difficulties he and Iris have seeing each other since Hampton’s injury, despite his having developed a searing, steely pain in the middle ofhis heel, as ifit has been pierced by an arrow, especially in the morn-
ing, when he can barely get out ofbed the pain is so severe, despite the fact that his assistant, SheilaAlvarez, has turned contemptuous toward him, and snapped her fingers in his face and said,“Hello?”when he failed to answer one ofher rapid-fire inquiries, despite Iris’s little boy’s con-tinuing in his dislike for Daniel, his squirming away from his touch, glar-ing at him from across the Burger King booth, despite bouts offeverish nostalgia for his old domesticity, its regularities and comforts, despite his more or less despising where he now lives, where he has yet to get a de-cent night’s sleep, where he is obliged to buy cumbersome, backbreak-ing bottles ofspring water because what comes out ofthe tap smells like leprous frogs, where the idiot landlord, who has never had a tenant be-fore, continues to hover around, mowing the lawn on Saturday morn-ings, watering the scraggly, parsimoniously producing rosebushes, pruning the juniper bushes, which smell like cat urine, and who com-pulsively continues to chaperone Daniel’s relationship to the house as if the depressing little bungalow were a young virgin and Daniel himself a notorious Lothario, despite his having lost ten pounds ofmuscle and not an ounce offat, despite wiry curls ofgray hair suddenly appearing on his sideburns, despite his having begun fifteen books without getting to the end ofany ofthem, this is the happiest he has ever been.
Much ofthis happiness is purely physical.It is an animal joy, a stunning erotic completeness such as he has never experienced.Daniel had always secretly believed that people who went on about their sexual hap-piness wereexaggerating, they werelike those restaurant reviewers who compare a bowl ofsoup to a glimpse ofheaven.They were sexual gour-mets, they were like those wine critics who justify their expense-account indulgences with words that not only elevated their simple human plea-sure into some bold adventure ofthe senses but also claimed to be ex-tracting arcane nuances ofpleasure that only they could discern.
Yet now that he is with Iris, Daniel has becomeone of those people.Since the night ofthe October snow, he is a connoisseur ofsex, and ifthere wereanyone in the world with whom he could share his newly found joy, he would have become a proselytizer for the holy church ofphysical love.
For one thing, he is finally able to make love while positioned on top, which he has not been able to do since getting kicked down the stairs back on Perry Street.The long fall left him with a strained lower back, a pro-clivity toward muscle spasms, and a sciatic nerve that was like the third rail in a subway tunnel, humming with pain.It also left him unable to do what the missionary position requires, and so, week by week, and then month by month, Kate mounted Daniel and, in her words,“did all the work.”But now the pain is gone and its absence is fantastically rejuvenat-ing to him.Daniel is restored to his youthful self, shot through with the vigor and flexibility ofa man in his twenties, but a chastened, wised-up man in his twenties, one who will not waste his youth.
It is night and Daniel hovers a mere fifty feet above the town, sitting in the air just as comfortably as ifit were a chair, his legs crossed, his hands folded in his lap, his thumbs tapping each other.The first couple of times he became airborne, he expended absurd amounts ofeffort mov-ing around, or just staying aloft.He would thrust his arms in front ofhim because this is how Superman made himself aerodynamic in the movies.
Then, after a while, in a moment ofirritation and exhaustion, he thought to himself:I don’t really mind if I come crashing down,and he gave up, he simply offered himself to the elements like a swimmer succumbing to the sea, and it was fine.His presence there is as easy and uncontested as his presence on earth.He has already flown over the entire town, beam-ing down his prayers oflove and happiness to all who are sleeping, and to all whom sleep eludes.
Now, rocking back and forth on the currents ofnight air, able to move himself from here to there on the power ofthought, he hovers protectively over Iris’s house, feeling all the ferocious animal longing for her that he once felt when touching her was but a dream, feeling, in fact, more desire for the Iris who he has come to know than he had ever felt for the phantom Iris.The Iris he has come to know, the Iris who he has kissed, the Iris he has is not exactly the Iris for whom he once longed.That Iris was cast into the shadows when Hampton had his stroke.None ofthe changes that have come over her are really what he would have once hoped for.The Iris he once so deliriously craved was languid, while the Iris he knows now is ex-hausted, the Iris he courted wanted to be amused, and the Iris he has achieved wants to be comforted.And not necessarily by him.
And then, as he floats back and forth, just a few feet above her roof, but unable to enter her house even as a specter, Daniel first learns that he is not alone in the nightlife ofthe skies over Leyden.At first, he thinks he has seen an owl or some other nocturnal bird ofprey, and his second thought is that some small object has fallen from space, a meteorite, a scrap ofcosmic garbage.He turns and sees, ofall people, Derek Pabst flying rapidly, wildly due west, dressed in a pair ofdark-blue boxer shorts and a Boston Red SoxT-shirt.Derek seems not to have noticed Daniel, and though Daniel has no desire to speak to Derek, some instinct ofcamaraderie overtakes him and he calls out to his old friend.Derek, a look ofgreat anxiety on his face, turns toward the sound ofDaniel’s voice, fails to see him, and then begins to tumble head over heel, zoom-ing out toward the outskirts ofthe village like a ball oflightning.
When he turns to resume his watch over Iris’s house, she is there, facing him.She is only inches away, her nightgown streaming behind her, a look ofwonder and bewilderment on her face.
“Am I dreaming?”she asks.She starts to drift away and he catches her by the wrist, pulls her close to him.
“You’re awake.”
“I’ve had a terrible night, such a terrible, terrible night.”
“Hampton?”
“When you spend all this time with someone who cannot speak, it forces you down into yourself, but in the worst way.We’re not meant to be silent, but to him words have no meaning.So I sit there with him, and I think about you, and ifthere’s no one else around…”She stops herself, looks down.She starts to lose altitude and Daniel catches her again.She presses her lips to his palm and then places it on her breast.Her breath comes in broken pieces, as
ifit must turn at right angles to escape her.“Ifthere’s no one around,”she says,“I just say what I’m thinking.I say,‘Hampton, I’m in love.I’m in love with a man who thinks I’m smart and beautiful.”
“Everyone thinks you’re smart and beautiful, Iris.”
“I stopped loving him, Daniel.Long ago.Being with someone so broken—even ifyou love them, it takes everything.How do you do it when you already stopped loving them?When you already felt trapped.When your heart is…elsewhere.He’s grotesque now.He’s frightened, he cries, and every day he gets physically stronger.But how can I leave him?”
A sudden wind comes offthe river and pushes her closer to Daniel.
“Everything in the world is telling us we don’t belong together,”he says miserably.
“Don’t you love me anymore?”
“Ofcourse I do.But it doesn’t have anything to do with that, not now.How much can love do? It’s buried.”
“I don’t feel buried.I used to, but not now.Look at me!”She spreads her arms and then raises them above her and begins to gain altitude, slowly at first, and then she soars.
“I want to see him!”Daniel shouts after her, but ifshe hears him she gives no sign ofit, she continues to rise.Unnerved, Daniel returns to his own bed.
He switches on the light on his bedside table.The lamp is shaped like a calla lily;he bought it in town, thinking that it was an iris, and that Iris would be touched by it, or at least like it.But no matter how many times she has come to this room, she seems never to notice the lamp.Nor has she mentioned the expensive brass bed he’s installed, or the five-hundred-dollar goose down comforter, or the black lacquered end tables, or the Navaho rug, or the Parisian jazz club poster, with a piano keyboard curling across it like a black-and-white woolen scarf.It all seems like a miscalculation, the fancy boudoir accoutrements.He props a pillow against the chilly brass bars ofthe bed’s headboard, picks up the book he’s been reading.He remains on his back, turns the page, and then switches to his side, propping up his head with one hand.The hand covers his right eye and the world instantly disappears.He sits bolt upright, his heart rac-ing;as soon as he removes the heel ofhis hand from his right eye the world returns.He covers the eye again.Darkness.He is blind in one eye.
A Ship Made of Paper Page 33
