A Ship Made of Paper (3 page)

Sheila hangs up the phone as Daniel closes the outer door of his office behind him. She is quick to end what was obviously a personal call, but her smile is warm and unrepentant.

“Everything okay here?” he asks.

She puts a short, bejeweled finger over her peachy lips, and then quickly scrawls a note to him on a yellow Post-it. “Your parents are waiting for you inside,” it says.

In truth, he has forgotten they were coming, and he
does
feel a little dismayed, but he exaggerates his feelings to amuse Sheila—his face a stark, staring mask of mock horror. He crumples the note, his eyes dart back and forth, as if he were about to bolt.
What am I going to do?

His lips soundlessly form the words. His hand goes to his throat. Sheila laughs, also soundlessly, and then she leans back in her high-tech swiveling office chair, and the contraption tilts back so abruptly that it seems as if she is going to tip over, which elicits a scream of shock and delight from her.

Great,
Daniel mimes to her, and then he strolls into his inner office, where Carl and Julia are seated on the sofa, but leaning forward, their heads tilted, looks of concern on their faces.

“What was that scream?” Daniel’s father asks.

“Sheila,” Daniel says. “Tipping over.” He greets his parents with affection, which he presents to them mildly, delicately, with the kind of reserve you expect in a funeral home or in an intensive care unit. He kisses his mother gently on the cheek, shakes his father’s hand while keeping his own eyes down. He sits at his desk, runs his hands over its clear, waxed surface.

“So what’s the problem with your wills?” Daniel asks, wanting to take charge of the conversation. The last thing he wants to do is to answer their bread-and-butter inquiries about Kate and Ruby, neither of whom they have bothered to try to know very well, but whom they would be likely to ask after, for the sake of form.

Carl and Julia exchange nervous looks, openly, as if they are a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r

communicating over a client who is facedown on the chiropractic table.

Daniel, for his part, pretends not to notice. When he was young, he was curious to discover what lay behind his parents’ ceaseless secrecy and reserve, what horrible little habits they might conceal, what gooey sexual secrets, what hidden morsels of biography. Maybe they carried some deep malice, perhaps they weren’t really married, perhaps he was adopted, maybe his father was a quack, maybe his mother ended every evening in bed sniffing at a rag drenched in ether, and just maybe they were from outer space. It’s puzzling to him how his curiosity has persisted, but now he fears that if they were ever to suddenly confide in him he might want to clap his hands over his ears. It’s too late for that. His effort has been to make peace with the people who raised him, the creaky couple who always winced if he raised his voice, the punctual pair who had a clock in every room and who marked the passing of the hours with their sighs, their meals, their TV programs. If they were to show him something different now, it would upset that peace, the treaty would be nullified, he would have to start to try to understand them, and he did not care to.

Somehow, in their little exchange of glances, it is decided that Carl will present the problem to Daniel. “We’ve made some changes in our will,” he says, in his calm, authoritative voice. “And Owen strongly advised us to go over them with you.”

“Okay,” Daniel says, stretching the word out. He is looking closely at his father, imagining himself looking like him in forty years.Worse things could happen. Carl is fit, leaner than Daniel is now. His blue eyes are sharp beneath spiky, emphatic eyebrows. There is something strange in the intensity of his father’s gaze.When he looks you in the eye it doesn’t feel like frankness, it feels like aggression. His hair is still dark and abundant, his posture a living advertisement for his particular branch of the medical arts. He looks scrubbed, well rested, prosperous—pleased with life, and pleased with himself. Julia, however, is starting to age rapidly.

She has become frail, a little trembly, and her once imperious features look surprised by her own onrushing mortality.

[ 15 ]

“Well,” Carl continues, “as you know, in the past three or four years your mother and I have become much more involved in the Windsor County Raptor Center, over in Bailey Point.”

“No,” Daniel says. “As a matter of fact, I didn’t know.” Raptor Center?

And then it hits him: his father’s eyes are those of a hawk, an eagle, a falcon.

“Yes, you did,” Julia says, a little accusingly. “Don’t you recall my showing you pictures of your father and me at the center? Father had a falcon on his arm?” Her throat seems as if it were irritated by the work of talking, and she coughs into her hand.

“You know me, Mom. I have a terrible memory. But I do know the place. An old friend of mine from fifth grade runs it.”

“Lionel Sanderson,” Carl says, with a smile.

“Right,” says Daniel. “How is he?”

“Overworked, but what dedicated man is not?”

“He remembers you, of course,” Julia adds. “He often recalls the nice afternoons after school at our house.”

Daniel is both stunned and amused by the untruthfulness of this. First of all, he and Lionel were never close friends and did not spend their time after school in each other’s company. And secondly,
no one
came to the Emerson house after school, or on weekends, or during the summer, or any time at all, except to quickly call for Daniel and be on their way. His parents found the racket and clutter of boys unbearable.The house itself was a meticulous and unfriendly place, and the pictures on the walls were of skulls and spinal cords, giving the place a kind of permanent Halloween ambiance—a chilling, childless Halloween. But Daniel knows better than to challenge their take on the past—he has tried it before when other inconsistencies have arisen, and it has caused hard feelings.

“Well, it’s not that we have any plans to be kicking the bucket,” Carl says, “but we wanted you to know that we’ve decided to leave the bulk of our estate to the Raptor Center. Right now, the whole operation is squeezed onto twenty-five acres, and there’s not a building on the property that doesn’t need some major repair.What they would like to do—”

“Need to do,” Julia says.

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

“Is double the acreage, and create facilities that can safely house fifty birds.”

“I see,” Daniel says. He senses the injury of what is being said, but he can’t feel it. It’s like cutting your thumb with a fine blade and seeing the little crease in the skin but not yet the blood. “Well, that sounds good. Raptors.”

“What we wanted to avoid at all costs,” Julia says, “is having you learn about this after we’re gone. And then feeling that we’ve done this
against
you somehow.”

“Because nothing could be further from the truth,” Carl adds.

“Yes,” Daniel says. “Well. Raptors.You’re not planning some early departure scenario, are you?” He sees the confusion on their faces, clarifies.

“You know, ending it all. Suicide.” He raises his voice on that word, startles himself.

“Absolutely not,” says Carl.

“But we’re not getting any younger,” Julia says. “Dan, let’s concentrate on what is important here. If your father and I thought you needed money, then of course we would have left every penny we have to you.

But here you are.” She makes an encompassing gesture, indicating his office, the Moroccan carpet on the floor, the glassed-in bookshelves, the antique oak file cabinets. “The Raptor Center is barely making it.”

“We’re assuming you must have salted away a pretty penny from that job in New York—or else why would you have retired from it?”

He’ll let that pass. “I just never knew you two were so involved with birds of prey,” he says.

“It’s recent,” says Carl. “We don’t want this to cause any hard feelings.

Your mother and I have been talking this over for months, and that’s the most important thing, that there be no hard feelings. This is in no way meant to indicate what our feelings are for you, Dan.You’re our son.”

“Our only son,” says Julia. “Our only offspring. Our only family.”

“Are we talking about every penny you have?” asks Daniel.

“And the house,” says Carl.

“Not the contents, however,” Julia says, prodding Carl with one finger.

[ 17 ]

I couldn’t care less,
Daniel thinks.Yet the affront of this is unmistakable.

I’m read out of their will? Why are they trying to punish me? Did I miss a Sunday dinner? Did I fail to rake their leaves, clean their gutters, haul their empties
to the recycling center?
And then, in an instant, a huge and unhappy thought presents itself to him:
I came back here to be near them
. And, in the next instant, the thought is gone.

Carl has opened his briefcase and produced a manila folder contain-ing Polaroids of the various pieces of furniture and works of art Carl and Julia have deemed the most valuable of their possessions. The grandfather clock, with its long, tarnished pendulum, which Daniel was always forbidden to touch, the spindly nesting table, which he was also not allowed to touch, the blue willow setting for twelve, also out of bounds, the purple and red Persian rug, which he was allowed to walk across, but only without shoes, the antique hat rack upon which Daniel was never permitted to hang his hat—parenthood came late to the Emersons, and when Daniel was born, they did not childproof their house, they house-proofed their child.

“Whenever you see something you really and truly want,” Julia says,

“just turn the picture over and put your name on it.”

“I don’t really see the purpose of this,” Daniel says.

“We wanted you to have first choice,” says Julia.

“First choice over whom? You don’t have any other children. Do you think the birds are going to want your china cabinet?”

Again, Carl and Julia trade worried glances, gesture back and forth, as if they are alone.

“This is exactly why we wanted to get this done when all three of us could sit calmly together and hash it out,” Carl says. “We don’t want any misunderstandings.”

“The thing is, I don’t want your money. I make a decent living—I
am
charging you for this appointment, by the way.” Daniel laughs but is not surprised when his parents don’t join in. Once, about twenty-five years ago, he made his mother laugh at a knock-knock joke, but he hasn’t been able to get so much as a chuckle out of either of them since.

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

“But you see?” says Julia. “That was exactly our thinking.”

“You’re doing fine,” says Carl. “You always have. From the very beginning. I hope you realize what a blessing it was for your mother and I to have a son whom we trusted, who did the right things, who kept out of trouble, and who was never a danger to himself or to others. Believe me.You may think of your mother and me as living in a bell jar, but we see what other people have gone through with their children. Drugs and homosexuality being just the most lurid examples.The great luxury you afforded us was that we never needed to doubt your basic stability. It was such a relief to know that no matter what, you were always going to be just fine.Your head was always screwed on right.”

“Well, that’s really incredibly moving, Dad,” Daniel says, gathering up the photographs, closing the folder, handing it back to his father. “Maybe you better hang on to these, okay? Who knows? I might disappoint you after all, and you wouldn’t want any of this fine furniture falling into the wrong hands.”

Throughout that day he taps his feet beneath his desk while he pretends to listen to clients, and then in court he keeps one hand clenched in his pocket while he enters a plea of not guilty in a criminal mischief case.

Thoughts of Iris have completely eclipsed any reflections he might have had over being cut out of his parents’ will.All he can think of is getting out of his office and driving past her house. He likes to see where she lives, the house, its reality pleases him. There is something at once sacred and pornographic, knowing she is in there. Today is Friday, a particularly important day to drive by. It is the day that Hampton, her husband, returns from the city for his weekend at home. The sunset looks like melted vermilion, the houses and trees are drawn in black ink. He navigates his car down Juniper Street, listening to Dinah Washington sing “What a Difference a Day Makes” on the car stereo, and it strikes him that all his life he has been in love with black women—Dinah Washington, Billie Holiday, Irma Thomas, Ivie Anderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith.

[ 19 ]

Juniper Street is only four blocks long, lined on both sides by single-family houses, some with a will toward grandness, others compact Dutch dollhouses, tight little structures painted brown or yellow, with churchy windows and bronze plaques over the doorway announcing the year of their construction. As he rolls closer to Iris’s house, he turns off the music, slows to practically a stop. Her house is white clapboard, with a small porch, red shutters, a quartet of maple trees on the front lawn.

The windows are dark, they hold a faint reflection of the sunset. Iris’s car is not in the driveway, and Daniel, no stranger to her comings and goings, in fact having more knowledge of them than he would ever admit to anyone else, realizes she has left for the train station to pick up Hampton, whose train is coming in at 6:05. Daniel can hardly bear to think of this—imagining her on the platform peering into the windows of the train as it pulls in, trying to see if it’s him, or him, or him, and then there he is, the conquering hero, home from a week of shuffling expensive paper, with his Hugo Boss suit and shaved head, his Mark Cross leather satchel, his Burberry raincoat draped over his shoulders like a cape, here comes the Count of Venture Capital, and now the inevitable kiss, the child between them, symbol of their unbreakable bond, the little wink over Nelson’s head, a promise of a fuller, more intimate reunion later on: by now Daniel’s mind is a scorpion stinging itself to death.