A Ship Made of Paper (12 page)

She turns when they come in. She has been looking forward to this meeting. Her plan to save Eight Chimneys is her gift to Ferguson; she hopes it will put them on equal footing and allow them one day to have a life together. She is dressed for business, in an oatmeal-colored tweed suit and a strand of pearls.

“I’m here with Daniel Emerson,” Ferguson says. “The lawyer?” His a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

voice booms without effort, it seems like an unwelcome miracle of acoustics, he opens his mouth and a shout emerges.

“Mr. Emerson.” Marie extends her hand and strides across the library to greet Daniel. She moves easily through rooms she has known her whole life.

“So you want to turn this place into a museum?” Daniel says, as soon as they are seated at the library table.

“Not all of it!” Susan says, with some alarm. “Not the whole house.”

“We’re thinking of just the main floor and the cellar,” says Ferguson.

“And maybe some of the land, the property right around the house.”

“And a swath going down to the river,” adds Marie.

“A swath?” says Susan.The word feels vulgar, like “hopefully,” or “be that as it may.”

“Let me give you a little background,” Ferguson says. “You need to understand why we’re considering . . .”

Susan rises to light the stubs of candles in various holders around the room. With unconscious frugality, she tries to light them all with one match. Suddenly the green shaded lamp on the desk flickers on, and a moment after that comes the whine of the water pump down below in the cellar coming back to life.

But the respite is momentary.The lamp goes dark again and the pump is still. Ferguson laughs his strange, grating laugh. “It’s a mess, the electric company around here,” says Ferguson. “And it was from the outset. Our uncle used to be on the board of directors of Windsor Power. Clare Richmond.

People thought he was a woman. In fact, at one point I had an Uncle Clare and an Aunt Michael. Do you remember Aunt Michael?” he says to Susan.

Susan doesn’t like to dwell on the fact that she and her husband are related, however distantly, and she ignores his question. “You can’t cut out a swath of land, it doesn’t make any sense.”

The snow-filled windows are darkening, and the sudden sound of a splitting tree is like the deadly bark of a rifle. Ferguson returns to the subject of the museum. He makes something of a show of telling Daniel about the financial pressures facing Eight Chimneys. Good professional

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manners dictate that Daniel take this to be shocking, distressing news, though everyone in the area is fully aware of the perpetual peril in which the Richmond estate operates, and even if Daniel weren’t privy to the local gossip, one look at the place would tell him all he needed to know.

“If we can’t figure out this money business fairly soon,” Ferguson says,

“this property might very well fall into the hands of developers and end up as Eight Chimneys Estates, or be turned into a rest home, or a mental hospital.”

“Some people think it already
is
a mental hospital,” Susan can’t keep herself from saying.

“Something you said makes me curious,” Daniel says. “You said you wanted to use the main floor and the cellar.”

“Oh, the cellar!” says Marie. She has turned her eyes toward Daniel.

They are bright and somehow thick, like the inside of oyster shells. “That’s one of the most important parts. Do you know the Underground Railroad?”

“Yes, sure.”

“Well, as you know, it wasn’t really a railroad, it was really a whole lot of hiding places. Like a system of them. And the cellar here was part of it. There are these secret rooms and passageways. Slaves, mostly from Georgia, they were kept there.”

“We’re so lucky to have Marie, aren’t we?” says Susan, turning around. The corners of her mouth are turned down and her wide-set eyes blaze with anger. “Not only does she come to us with all her knowledge of arts administration, but she knows history, too.”

“They’re for storage now,” Marie says, unfazed. “But we’re going to clean them out and make them like before.You can go down there, if you want.You can still feel the spirits of the escaped slaves.”

In unison, the four of them turn to a clatter of noise coming from the hall, and a moment later the library door swings open and two men walk in, one of them middle-aged, with a warm, beatific smile, a down vest, and a maroon beret sparkling with snow. He cradles in his arms several brightly printed Tibetan silk ceremonial flags. The other man is tall, an-gular, with long, black hair grown past his shoulders and a patch over his eye; he carries a large wooden box filled with fireworks.

a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

“I’m sorry,” the smaller man says, in a low, Spanish-accented voice,

“we knocked and there was no answer.”

“Oh, Ramon!” Susan says, springing up from her chair. “I didn’t realize you were bringing all this over today.”

“Tomorrow I go to Bogotá, and then to Buenos Aires.”

“There’s more outside in the truck,” the taller man says. “We better hurry.”

Susan accepts kisses from Ramon on both cheeks, and then peers into the crate filled with Catherine wheels, Roman candles, gigantic orange sparklers. “Come on, Ferguson,” she says. “Help us unload this, please, before it’s all spoiled. Let’s get it off the truck and into the ballroom.”

“The ballroom?” Ferguson says. “What’s it going to do in there? What is this stuff anyhow?”

“It’s for a purification ceremony two weeks from yesterday.We’ve got a van filled with monks coming up for it.”

Ferguson reluctantly rises. “I’m surprised at you, Ramon. I thought you were a good Catholic.”

“I sit at the feet of anyone with wisdom,” Ramon says, beaming.

“If we don’t do this soon, it’s not going to happen,” the tall man says.

“Please, Ferguson, let’s hurry,” Susan says. For a moment, it seems she is going to clap her hands, but she instead reaches out to him imploringly. “Marie can tell Mr. Emerson everything he needs to know, and what she forgets we can fill in when we get back.”

When the Richmonds and the two men leave the library—their footsteps soon disappear into the dank, porous silence of the house—Daniel and Marie sit silently in the flickering gloom for a few moments. Daniel glances at Marie, afraid that she might sense it if he simply stared at her.

She sits silently, her fragile hands folded. She has a prominent forehead, which, combined with her pale skin and dark hair, gives her the appearance of someone temperamental, a worrier, a sufferer, someone who is capable of lashing out. She breathes in; the nostrils of her long, stern nose practically close, and then she exhales and sits deeper in her chair, lets her head fall against the cracked leather back.

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“It’s so sad when love dies,” she says.

“Yes, it is,” Daniel says.

“This used to be a very happy house,” she says.

“Ferguson’s pretty excited about this idea of yours,” Daniel says.

“My father loved this house, and everything connected to it.”

“I met your father a couple of times,” Daniel says. Marie has no no -

ticeable reaction to this; perhaps she, like the masters of the house, believes that everyone in Leyden knows her and her family in some way.

“He saw my father a couple of times. He came to the house.”

“Who’s your father?”

“Dr. Emerson. He’s a chiropractor.”

“My father had terrible back problems all his life,” Marie says. The sound of a tree breaking nearby resounds like a cannon shot, making Daniel jump in his seat but leaving Marie unmoved. “I remember him talking about Dr. Emerson. He liked him, he thought he was good.”

“I’m glad my father could help.”

“Is he still alive, your father?”

“Yes.”

“Does he ever work on you?”

“Oh no, never. I was always sort of physically afraid of my father.The thought of him cracking my back, or yanking my head and cracking my neck—I could never put myself in that sort of position. He’d put me on that table of his, I might never get up.” Daniel means this to be amusing, but Marie frowns and nods her head.

She gets up and glides to the tall windows. She places her palm against the darkening glass and then presses her cold hand onto her cheeks. Daniel sees that she is flushed; beads of sweat have formed along her hairline.

“Everyone in this town talks about Ferguson and me, don’t they,”

Marie says, turning toward the window again. She presses her other hand against the pane, then touches her forehead, her throat.

“People like to gossip, Marie. I don’t pay much attention to what they say.”

a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

When she turns again, Daniel sees that a solitary thread of blood has crawled out of her right nostril and is making its way through the pale down of her upper lip.

“You’re bleeding, Marie,” he says. He feels in his pockets for a handkerchief, but all he comes up with is the plastic wrap from this morning’s gas station bagel, the touch of which triggers a startling flash of memory: those magazines. He is beginning to understand the unbridled nature of desire when it is confined to the realm of make-believe, how without the reality of an actual person in its path, it races headlong, blind and frothing.

Marie seems not to have heard him. “I don’t care what people say.

Something amazing has happened between Ferguson and me. And that’s all there is to it. If people are upset, then they’ll just have to deal with it.”

“Marie . . .”

“I’m telling you this because I want you to be careful with Susan. She once loved this place, but not now, not anymore, and she never loved Ferguson. And she’ll do anything to wreck what we’re trying to do, she’d rather Ferguson lose the house and everything else—which would kill him. This is his habitat. He can’t live anywhere else. It’s pretty funny, when you think about it, she’s into all these world religions, the Muslim, the Buddhist, the goddess, the meditation, the drumming, the spinning around in circles, but she’s cruel and she’s selfish, she can’t stand the idea that other people might find happiness.” At last, the trickle of blood reaches her lip and she tastes it. She gasps and her fingers go to her lip and then her nose. “Blood,” she says. She has smeared the blood over her upper lip.

“I don’t have a handkerchief or a Kleenex or anything.”

“If you could go to the kitchen.” She has seated herself and tilts her head back.

“Where’s the kitchen?”

“Walk out the nearest door, which will put you in the portrait gallery, go through the double doors, turn right, go to the end of the hall, and there it is.”

The portrait gallery is barely lit by the anemic pearl light coming in

[ 81 ]

through three adjoining sets of French windows. Here, paintings and drawings of the Richmonds and the various families related to them by marriage have been hung on the blue plaster walls with such economy of space that the frames touch, though here and there appears an 18 x 24 sun-bleached blank, where a portrait has been removed and sold at auction.

Daniel hurries through the double doors and into a long hallway, which is lit by a few bare bulbs. As the electric power continues to come and go, they flicker off and on, as if a child were playing with the switch.

A small South American man in his twenties, wearing a serape and a fe-dora, and with a crow perched on his shoulder, leans against the wall, pulling a nail out of his sneaker sole with a pliers. He gives no indication of noticing Daniel, who rushes past him to the kitchen, a dismal, catastrophically disorganized room, where Ferguson and Susan are in the midst of a bitter argument.

“I didn’t hear you say anything, Susan,” Ferguson is saying.

“You were deliberately ignoring me,” she answers. “You love to negate me.”

“You’re insane, Susan.”

Daniel has entered the kitchen and there is no backing out. He stands next to the old eight-burner stove, every burner of which holds a cast-iron kettle or skillet. Herbs that were hung to dry from the overhead beams have long ago turned gray and powdery. The double sink is filled with two towers of dirty dishes; a calico cat with a rawhide collar swats at the drops of water that swell and then fall from the silver faucet. Ferguson and Susan have turned to face him.

“I’m sorry,” Daniel says. “I need a paper towel or something.”

“What for?” demands Susan.

“Marie has a bloody nose.”

Susan’s laugh is surprisingly throaty and warm. “Did you hit her?”

“We don’t carry paper towels here,” says Ferguson. He pulls a not very fresh-looking handkerchief from his back pocket, and as he is handing it to Daniel the lights cut off and then come back on—it seems as if someone were shaking the room—and then they go off again and that’s a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

it.They are not in total darkness but in a deep opaque grayness, as if they have been woven into the fabric of a sweater.

“Hurry, Ferguson,” says Susan. “Run. She needs you.”

“I need
her,
Susan.That’s the mess we’re in, and if you won’t see that, you won’t see anything.”

Daniel feels like a servant in front of whom the lord and lady of the house think nothing of undressing. Clutching Richmond’s handkerchief, he backs out of the kitchen, but before he is out, the door swings open and the two men who delivered the Tibetan flags and fireworks come in.

“Everything’s put away,” says the older of the two. He uses his beret to dry his forehead.

“Before the snow gets worse,” says the younger. “I never seen anything like this.”

“Thank you, Ramon,” Susan says pleasantly. “You’re an angel.”

“I’m working on it,” Ramon says, smiling. “May I ask you? Who is the young man with the crow on his shoulder?”

“He’s our friend from Slovenia,” says Ferguson. “He lives in Albany.

He came down from Troy in July to work on the roof of the piggery, and for some reason he hasn’t left yet. He found that crow near the river and he’s made something of a pet of it.”

“I’m going to see to this,” Daniel says, backing out of the kitchen. He is seized by anxiety, thinking that if he doesn’t leave in the next minute, then he could be facing impassable roads and a long entrapment in Eight Chimneys. As he makes his way down the hall, he notices a door to the outside is open. It is not the door he came in through, but finding this way out is irresistible to him, and rather than deliver Ferguson’s handkerchief to Marie, he stuffs it in his pocket and heads out of the house.