“My God, listen to you,” Daniel says.The dull sheen seems to be lifting from his eyes, he is coming alive suddenly. “You really have a problem with it.You feeling a little racist in your old age?”
“My old age? How fucking dare you.”
“You see? You’re more worried about your age than you are about being called racist.”
“Well, my dear, the fact is that I
am
getting older, so I’m sensitive to it. And the fact also is that I am
not
racist, so I’m not sensitive to that.
Okay?”
“You’re obsessed with the Simpson case, and the Star of Bethlehem kids—”
“Those black delinquents were in our house and it seems like you’re on
their
side.”
“I’m not on their side. But the fact is, half the kids in that place are locked up because they’re black.You know it, I know it, everybody knows it.”
“They were in our house,” says Kate, her voice rising. “How did I know what they were going to do? They could have easily killed me, or raped me, or both. I was alone, I was completely alone.” She is standing now. She walks toward Daniel, stops. They are facing each other, less than a foot apart. “While you were all cozy and warm at Iris Davenport’s house.”
“I know, I know,” says Daniel softly. “It must have been frightening.
I’m sorry.”
“What was really going on at that house, Daniel?” Kate says. She reaches for him, but he moves away.
“Let’s not do this, Kate.”
“It’s too late for that, Daniel. I want to know what was really going on in that house.”
“We were snowed in, just like everybody else.”
“I know you were snowed in. That’s not what I’m asking.”
Daniel shrugs, as if unable to imagine what more she could want.
“What I’m asking is did you sleep with her?” As soon as the words are
[ 211 ]
out, she regrets them. And in the ensuing silence she casts frantically about for some way to turn this conversation around, or off. Is it possible to simply throw her arms around him and say,
Never mind, I don’t
want to know
? It seems she could go for decades not knowing, but if the knowledge is there it will pierce her, it will shoot its poison into her, and then she will have to save herself from it.
“Well?” she says. “You’re very quiet.”
He backs up a little, he seems to be shaking. He seems to have an appetite but no talent for treachery. “What do you want me to say, Kate? I don’t know what to do here.”
“What kind of question is that? You want my fucking guidance, for Christ’s sake? Just tell me, get it over with. Did you sleep with her?”
“Yes. I’m sorry. I did.”
For a moment, she doesn’t believe him. He’s just throwing it in her face, giving her a taste of what it would be like, trying to shock her into shutting up. And then the moment passes, and she still does not believe him, yet at the same time, she knew it all along.
“Did you really?” she says, sitting on the bed again.
“I’m sorry, Kate. It kills me to think of hurting you.”
Kate laughs, but she can see by his expression that laughter, or any other sign of instability, will be playing right into his hand. He would like nothing more than to withdraw into the relative safety of deciding she’s a little crazy right now.
“I think we should leave,” he says.
“Really? Any place in particular? Do you have a hot date or something?”
“No,” he says quietly.
“Do you mind if I ask you a question?” she asks. “Would that be all right?”
He shrugs. His eyes are suddenly bright red, as if the sight of her is like knives going into them.
“Are you in love with her?”
He is trying to say something, but his lips are trembling, he will not a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r
allow himself to cry, he will not try to elicit her sympathy. He nods his head.
“Is that a yes I see?”
The handle toward my hand. Come let me clutch thee.
He covers his face. It seems suddenly important to Kate, a matter of life and death, that he not do that. She springs from the bed, grabs his hands, and pulls them down. His face is soaked with self-pity.
“Get out of here!” she screams. “Just get out of here!”
He backs away, gives her a wary look, somehow implying that the problem between them is her mental health. He seems to like the idea of just getting out of there. His hand is on the door, but he keeps his eyes on her, as if she might attack him. Is he going to take the car? Drive back to Leyden, go right to Iris’s house?
I told her, she knows,
he’ll say.
“Where are you going?”
“I don’t know.You said . . .”
“No, don’t go. We’re going to work this out, okay?”
“Kate.”
“Get another room, but you’re not leaving me here.You can sleep in another room, you can dream of your little sweetheart in peace. But you’re not taking the car and abandoning me. We’re going to work this out in the morning, or whenever. But I’m not letting you do this, you understand me? You’re not doing this to Ruby, or to yourself, or me.”
“Kate, I think we just have to move on.”
“Move on? What kind of talk is that? Move on. What are we? Cowboys? You get another room and we’ll talk in the morning.”
He stands there. He is silent. He closes his eyes. Is this an act of contrition, or is he weighing his options?
“All right,” he says.
Her heart floods with relief. His agreeing to get another room gives her a sense of direction and triumph. She has come up with a plan and he has agreed to it. She stands there as he goes to their overnight bag and takes out what he needs.
And then he does something intolerable. He flips his toiletries kit up
[ 213 ]
in the air—a light-brown leather bag that she gave him a couple of birthdays ago—and catches it. She feels the blood in her face. Her muscles tighten so swiftly it feels like she’s growing taller.
“Call Ruby,” she says, as he is about to let himself out. “Let her know what you think is important.”
Their eyes meet, and she feels what she believes to be the miracle of her own strength, her own survival. Thoughts come to her like the drip of anesthetic. He has not destroyed her, and he has not destroyed
them
.
The bomb has exploded but the hole is not big enough for him to crawl through. And just look at him, he knows it, too, he’s not going anywhere.
Let him have this night, let him weep and tear out his hair. Tomorrow in the cool morning she will appear freshly bathed and combed, she will be wearing faded jeans and a black cashmere sweater, a little bit of makeup, the Arts and Leisure and the Book Review sections of the Sunday paper tucked under her arm, the car keys in her hand, and a bag full of breakfast goodies for the road. Then, once they are rolling, she will say the words that will end this insanity: she will forgive him.
Carol Davenport has spent the past two hours reading to her nephew, who lay in his little bed, staring up at her with his dark obdurate eyes—
even as he yawned, he refused to close them. After going through a dozen of Nelson’s books, Carol was feeling frantic with boredom and exhaustion. If she had to keep reading to put the kid to sleep, she could not bear to read any more about headstrong bunnies and brave little toasters, so she read to him from the novel she herself was reading—a Barbara King-solver book chosen by her reading group back home in Baltimore—and that, in fact, did the trick. Now, she stands in the darkened second-story hall of her sister’s house, listening anxiously for any signs of wakefulness from Nelson’s room.
Hearing none, she goes downstairs, wondering if she is tired enough herself to go to bed. She has forgotten her book back in Nelson’s room, a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r
but she doesn’t dare risk waking him by going back to retrieve it. She sits on the sofa, picks the TV remote control up off the coffee table. Suddenly, the phone rings and she lunges for it, afraid that the high electronic twitter of it will awaken Nelson, who has been so stubborn and confrontational and whom she fears she will throttle if he says another word to her before morning.
“Hello?” she whispers into the phone.
“Oh, thank God it’s you,” a man’s voice says on the other end. “I know you can’t talk. Can you? Are you alone?”
Carol is so startled by the urgency—and the whiteness—of this voice that she is momentarily speechless. She feels exposed, out there in the middle of nowhere, with only white people, whites in cars, whites in their houses, whites in the police station and the hospital, she feels fantastically and perilously alone.
“I told Kate, she knows,” the man says. “I just wanted you to know.
And this too, this too. I love you. When can I see you?”
Carol summons her courage. She grips the phone tightly and brings it close to her mouth, so that this man can feel the heat of her scorn.
“Who the fuck is this?” she says.
“I think we’ve already been here,” Hampton said.
“Really? What makes you think so?”
It was too dark to see Hampton’s face, but Daniel could tell from the quality
of the silence that Hampton was glaring at him. Even friends would have begun
to get irritated with each other by now. Being lost brought out the sort of fear that
dovetails into rage.
“What makes me think so?” asked Hampton. His voice seemed completely unconnected to his feelings; even in anger, it was melodious. Or maybe there was a
connection, but Daniel didn’t know him well enough to make it.
“I think we’re making progress,” Daniel said.
“Well, we’re not, we’re going in circles.”
“Hampton. I’ve been following you. All right?”
“We’re going in circles.”
“Well, you’ve been taking us there.”
“Daniel?”
“What?”
“Can I make a suggestion?”
“Sure.What?”
“Go fuck yourself.”
There was a rock nearby, embedded deeply into the forest floor, covered with
moss and lichen. Hampton thought to scale it, hoping to see a break in the woods,
a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r
but the soles of his shoes were slippery, and as soon as he stood on the rock he
slipped and fell hard onto his hands and knees, and just stayed there, with his head
down, for several moments.
Daniel went to his side, touched him softly on the shoulder.
Hampton glanced up at Daniel.“Damn,” he said.
“Here,” Daniel said. He put out his hand. Hampton’s fingers were hard and
cold; he grasped Daniel’s hand like a statue come to life. Daniel stepped back and
pulled Hampton to his feet. It was strange to be touching this man who had once
had, and was now losing, everything.
Weeks pass. Anxiety. Cunning. Lies. Daniel and Iris meet whenever and wherever they can.The danger is, of course, an aphrodisiac—
an Afro-disiac, Daniel thinks, but does not say it. Iris has made it clear that she is not going to be his Black Girlfriend. She has also made it clear that she is not ready to tell the truth to Hampton, which means Daniel must somehow make certain that Kate doesn’t speak to Hampton herself. And so when Kate wants to make love he makes love with her, and when she insists that they begin to repair their relationship by seeing a therapist he must acquiesce to that, as well.
And now it is Tuesday, two days before Thanksgiving, three in the afternoon, and Daniel and Kate are in the waiting room of the Windsor Family Counseling Center. Daniel picks up an old, well-worn copy of
Redbook,
just for something to do with his hands and eyes, opens it up to a picture of a delirious golden retriever bounding up to its human family in an open field, an ad for canine arthritis medicine.
They are going to talk to a therapist on Kate’s insistence, but they have come to this specific office on Daniel’s recommendation. Daniel asked the shrink who worked down the hall from his law office for a name and was told that the best person for that sort of thing was Brian Fox. But getting the referral didn’t complete Daniel’s manly reparations, nothing could. “You call him, this mess is your doing, you make the appointment,” she said, and rather than argue the matter, Daniel found it
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simpler to make the call. Now they are here, and Kate seems appalled by the informality of the place, already in some agony over what they have come to discuss, already feeling that her privacy is being invaded, her dignity compromised, her wounded pride put on display.
Daniel stretches his feet out before him, looks at the tips of his shoes, places his hands on his knees. He must gather himself, think of what he will say, what he will not say, when Dr. Fox brings them in for their two-fifteen. He closes his eyes.
A couple of days ago, after making love to Iris in her bedroom, they were both covered in perspiration, and Iris pulled from her closet a small tan-and-blue rotating fan. She plugged it in, placed it on top of her dresser, and then grabbed his hand to pull him out of bed and stood with him in front of the cooling, drying breeze. “This is better than a shower,”
she said. “I don’t want you to just wash me off you.”
He tries to rivet his attention on the magazine. He looks again at the ad for canine arthritis medicine and thinks about Scarecrow, poor Crow, slowing down week by week, day by day, tottering around Iris’s house and yard exuding beneficence. Daniel has never known such a perfect dog in his life, though he realizes that his virtually worshipful attitude toward the dog is consistent with his virtually worshipful attitude toward everything in Iris’s house, the orderliness of her spice rack, the scent of her hand soap, the clarity of the ice cubes, the amusing nature of her computer’s screen-saver (kangaroos in sunglasses), the silk Turkish carpet her brother brought back from Istanbul, the black-and-white photographs of Nelson in their austere wooden frames, pictures Iris took and printed herself during the brief period she was interested in photography.