A Ship Made of Paper (15 page)

“I saw you going to church in July. I was driving past St. Christopher’s and I saw your car turning in.”

“I go to church three times a year, on Christmas and Easter, and in July, around the Fourth. My baby brother, Leonard, drowned on the Fourth of July when he was six years old. I light a candle for him and I pray and I cry, but I don’t even know why I do it.”

“There’s not too many places where you can go and have those feelings.”

“Do you have a place?”

“The movies. Sometimes I cut out of work and go across the river to one of the mall movies. I sit there in the middle of the afternoon with a box of popcorn and some M&Ms, and kind of cry a little. It’s totally pathetic and what’s really pathetic is you’re not even the first person I’ve told this to. I tell it to everyone.”

“Maybe you want people to know you’re lonely.”

“You think that’s what it is?”

“It must be strange for people to think of you that way, lonely.”

“I know, I know. Because I’m such a cheerful presence.”

[ 99 ]

“Well, you are. And—”

“I know,” Daniel says. “Everybody likes me.”

“It’s good that people like you. I like you.”

“Good. I like you, too.”

“I know.”

“Well, that’s settled, anyhow.”

“Can we be honest here?”

“We can try. It’s not that easy.”

“I just think we can be honest, that’s all, I mean: why not? Maybe this is Armageddon.”

“The snowstorm?”

“It’s something,” says Iris. “It’s an occasion. We hardly ever get to say what we mean to say. That’s why people who have crises in their lives, real ones, huge ones, they turn out to be more honest.”

“Okay, some people have the Battle of Algiers, we’ve got the snowstorm. Anyhow, I think I know what you’re going to say.”

“What am I going to say?”

“You’re going to say, ‘I know you like me and I also have become increasingly aware that you stare at me and you seem unduly excited whenever we happen to meet.’ ”

“That’s right,” says Iris. “Except for ‘unduly.’ I wasn’t going to use that word.”

“So you don’t think it’s unduly.”

“Maybe it is. I wasn’t going to put it like that.”

“How were you going to put it?”

“I was going to say you’ve been looking at me in a way that makes me uncomfortable.”

“I’m sorry. I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”

“It
used
to make me uncomfortable. Now it doesn’t. Now I like it.”

“I think I might be having a heart attack.”

“Look, please, don’t make more out of this than what it’s meant to be. I shouldn’t have said anything. I’m indulging myself. Taking a little time off from reality.”

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

“This is reality.”

“It’s just that the past couple months, since Nelson and Ruby have gotten to be such buddies, and you and I cross paths fairly frequently, it’s been this little secret pleasure in my life. It’s like a river under the road.

Let’s talk about something else.”

“Do you have anything to drink?”

“More tea?”

“The tea is not good. The tea was a mistake. Something stronger?”

“Bourbon okay? I’ll have one, too.”

At home, Daniel is the designated driver, with or without an automobile. He has made it his job to not drink and through his example to somehow discourage drinking. This course of action, or inaction, has never met with the slightest success, but he cleaves to it nevertheless, limiting his consumption of alcohol to a glass or two of wine with dinner once or twice a week. Now, he sits in Iris’s kitchen, watching her reach up to a high cabinet to retrieve a bottle of Jack Daniel’s, watching her muscles move beneath her clothes—and he thinks:
What if this were really my life?

What if I could spend a part of every day watching her? What if it were easy? What
if I come behind her, put my arms around her, kiss her long bare neck, cup my
hands over her breasts, push my groin against her awe-inspiring ass? Could I tolerate living with such happiness?

She pours their drinks, they hold their glasses up and then move them very slowly together until they touch.

Iris is hoping a drink will soothe her nerves—the intense labor of appearing calm is wearing her out. And a drink might loosen up both of them, could even throw up a little makeshift bridge between them. Earlier, with Ruby in tow, knowing that Daniel would be coming to her house, Iris had felt that here, now, was the logical and perfect time to finally make something out of those months of flirtatious glances. It seemed, then, that all she had to do was to let him know she had seen them all, felt his eyes on her, heard what he did not say. All she had to tell him was that she is caught up in a marriage that has turned out to be a mistake. It would be simple, a simple thing to do. She does not worry

[ 101 ]

about being attractive to him. He has already made all of that clear: she has never felt so desired.

But now she realizes that it will not be that easy, will not be easy at all.

Yet the giddiness of all this cannot altogether obscure her prescient view of the misery she would cause if she reached across the table and touched Daniel’s soft, lank hair. It finally takes so little, a kiss, and now she’s thinking about it, imagining it.

There’s music from the second floor.The kids are listening to the Village People singing “YMCA.”

“Nelson!” Iris turns, looks up at the ceiling. “Turn it down.”

“How did that ever become a children’s song?” Daniel asks. He’s still making small talk, wanting only to keep her attention and to make sure there are no silences. “It’s so completely West Village, cruising Christopher Street, 1978. It’s strange the way the culture absorbs things and makes whatever use of them.”

She refills their glasses, very judiciously, as if this were a familiar ritual.

Suddenly, there’s a thud right above them, unnerving in its suddenness and force. Daniel’s response is instant. Out of his seat, out of the kitchen, up the stairs, taking them two at a time. Iris follows. They both hear Ruby’s plaintive little cry. Iris has a sinking feeling.

They reach the children. Daniel, wisely, has slowed himself down, trying not to add his alarm to the volatile mix. Ruby is just picking herself up. Her swollen blue eyes glitter with unshed tears and her face is scarlet. Without a word, she stretches her arms out toward Daniel. He lifts her up; her knees grip his rib cage, she wraps her arms around him, notches her head into the space between his neck and shoulder. Iris realizes her hands are clenched into fists; she forces herself to relax them.

“What’s wrong, Ruby?” Daniel asks.

Nelson is simply standing there, his arms folded over his chest, his body rigid beneath his cargo pants and sweatshirt, a look of stony defi-ance on his face.

“She’s all right,” he says insistently. “She’s not hurt.”

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

The room in which they’ve been playing has a wide plank floor and a large circular orange-and-blue rug. The walls are decorated with travel posters from Bermuda and Denmark.The ceiling is slanted, the windows small, low—an adult would have to get down on her knees to see out of them. The sense of order in that room is fierce. The shelves and cubbies are filled with action figures, cars and trucks, books, tapes, CDs, dolls, paints, blocks, and Legos, all neatly kept.

“Nelson pushed me down,” Ruby whispers.

“Oh Nelson, Nelson,” Iris says. “Why do you do these things?” She tries to take his arm but he yanks it out of her reach. “Is she all right?”

Iris asks Daniel.

“She’s fine,” he says. “Aren’t you, honey?”

Ruby presses her face harder against Daniel and vehemently shakes her head no.

“What happened here, Nelson?” Iris says. She reaches for him and this time he cannot escape.

“Nothing.” His eyes are mutinous and self-righteous.

“How did it happen that Ruby fell down?” Iris says.

“Kids fall all the time,” Daniel says, stroking Ruby’s head.

“I’m waiting for an answer, Nelson,” Iris says. “How did she fall down?

Did you push her?”

Nelson continues to glare at his mother, and Iris suddenly turns her attention toward Ruby. “Are you all right, Ruby?”

“I’m fine,” Ruby says. She starts to squirm and Daniel sets her down.

Her face is no longer flushed, and now without its wrapping of color they can see a pale little lump on her forehead.

“Oh Nelson,” says Iris.

“I didn’t do anything!” Nelson cries. “She was trying to kiss me!”

“I was not!” Ruby practically bellows.

“Ruby is a guest in our home, Nelson.You know what the tradition is.”

Nelson lowers his eyes.

“Are you two going to be okay?” Daniel says. “Or are you going to continue acting like children?”

[ 103 ]

He wants peace, at any price. He wants Iris to be put at ease, and he wants to be able to go back to the kitchen with her. He signals for them to leave—a little flick of the eyes, they are that much in synch—and they both back out of the playroom.

In the kitchen, they take their places at the table again. Outside: the crack of falling trees. Again, it seems they are going to lose electric power. Darkness stutters but does not yet pronounce itself.

“Nelson can sometimes be a little rough,” Iris says.

“Really? He always seems so mild and considerate.”

“He is, I really believe he is. But there are times . . . His father is teaching him how to box, it’s the worst thing he could do. As soon as he gets off the train Friday night Nelson comes running up to him and Hamp gets into a crouch, like it’s round one. That can’t be good. Nelson needs to be gentled down, not . . .”

But wherever this line of conversation is heading, it’s stopped by the huge groaning snap of another falling tree and then the flickering of the lights.

Iris whimpers, covers her eyes.

“Are you all right?” Daniel asks.

“It kills me. It’s like watching your relatives die.”

He looks at her, amazed. Everything she says makes her more imper-ative. “I better get Ruby ready and get out of here,” he says. “While we still can.”

“You really think it’s safe?” Iris says, her voice showing alarm.

“Then what am I going to do?” he says.

“What can you do?”

Iris takes a small sip of the bourbon. It tastes suddenly chemical. And she doesn’t want to get drunk. But she
could
use a little pat on the behind, like the in-flight trainers give the paratroopers. She is amazed by her own rectitude. Frankness is one of her qualities. Or
was.
Six years of Hampton have worn down her confidence. The peculiar degradation of living with a man who won’t say so but who
thinks
she is not smart enough for him. It used to be easy with men—just something she could a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

do, like swimming, or being able to sing. It had little to do with beauty, or even sex, it was an affinity, an unconscious knowledge of what they were thinking, what they wanted. She was raised with four brothers, and their fifty friends. Yet here, with Daniel, she cannot get it started. She takes a deep breath, pushes herself forward.

“I liked the way you jumped up when you heard your kid fall,”

she says.

“Jumping up when I hear a loud noise is one of my talents.”

“I’m serious. Last summer, Nelson was in the backyard playing with his tricycle. He had it upside down and he was spinning the front wheel around and around and throwing little stones into the spokes. He said it was his popcorn machine.”

“I used to do that, the exact same thing.”

“Then somehow he got his fingers caught in the spokes. He was fine, but it hurt and he let out a yell. Hampton was just getting out of a bath, he’s got this Saturday ritual.”

Daniel envisions him, prone in the tub, his head tilted back and resting on a terry cloth square that had been folded with Japanese precision, his eyes closed, his cock floating on the soapy surface of the water, pushing through the bubbles like a crocodile through lily pads.

“And he just stood there,” Iris is saying. “He heard Nellie screaming. I was in bed, I was sick, and I was calling out to him. He started down the stairs, but when he was halfway down he stopped, turned around, went
back
to the bathroom, and got his robe. His kid was screaming and he went back for his robe.”

Daniel doesn’t know what he can possibly say. She is comparing Hampton unfavorably to him, she is offering herself to him, she is saying she is unhappy.

“It just seems to me,” Iris says, “that with your kid screaming the first thing you do is get to the kid, not run in the opposite direction. I got out of bed—”

“With your robe on?”

“Are you trying to annoy me?”

[ 105 ]

“No, amuse.”

“It really appalled me. I felt something . . .” She is going to say either

“close” or “die,” but she says neither. Instead, she asks Daniel, “You wouldn’t have done that, would you? Stopped for your robe with Ruby crying out in the yard.”

He shakes his head No.Then, smiling, “But I’m sort of an exhibitionist.”

She usually laughs when Daniel jokes, now it seems as if he is scrambling to put some distance between them, backing out of the whole thing.
Chicken,
she thinks. She only wants to go forward. And if he takes another step back, then she will have to take another step forward.

“You’d think Hampton would be an exhibitionist, too. He’s so proud of
who
he is. Family and all that terrible stuff.”

“I’m not really an exhibitionist,” Daniel says.

“I know.”

“And I don’t have much of a family. Two parents who were too old for the job and sort of gave up on it, no brothers or sisters.”

“Well, to Hampton, family’s everything. His family, that is.You got a taste of that, didn’t you?”

“It wasn’t so bad.”

“It wears on you. Those people, maybe you have to be black to really be angry with them. But it’s that bunch of Neee-groes who look down on everyone else in the community.” She points to herself.