A Ship Made of Paper

by Scott Spencer

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

  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 oforder 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 ofher 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 ofcolor 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?”

  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 ofthe eyes, they are that much in synch—and they both back out ofthe playroom.

  In the kitchen, they take their places at the table again.Outside:the crack offalling 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 offthe 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 ofconversation is heading, it’s stopped by the huge groaning snap ofanother falling tree and then the flickering ofthe 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 imperative.“I better get Ruby ready and get out ofhere,”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 ofthe bourbon.It tastes suddenly chemical.And she doesn’t want to get drunk.But shecoulduse a little pat on the be-hind, like the in-flight trainers give the paratroopers.She is amazed by her own rectitude.Frankness is one ofher qualities.Orwas.Six years of Hampton have worn down her confidence.The peculiar degradation of living with a man who won’t say so but whothinksshe is not smart enough for him.It used to be easy with men—just something she could 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 ofwhat 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 herselfforward.

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

  shesays.

  “Jumping up when I hear a loud noise is one ofmy 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 ofa 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 ofthe water, push-ing 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 backto 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 herselfto 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 ofbed—”

  “With your robe on?”

  “Are you trying to annoy me?”

  “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 ofan exhibitionist.”

  She usually laughs when Daniel jokes, now it seems as ifhe is scrambling to put some distance between them, backing out ofthe whole thing.Chicken,she thinks.She only wants to go forward.And ifhe 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 ofwhohe is.Family and all that terrible stuff.”

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

  ”I know.”

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

  “Well, to Hampton, family’s everything.His family, that is.You got a taste ofthat, 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 ofNeee-groes who look down on everyone else in the community.”She points to herself.

  “You?”

  “First ofall,”she explains,“too dark.Second, bad hair.”

  “You have wonderful hair,”Daniel says.

  ”You don’t know anything about my hair,”she says, laughing.“I can’t stand when people talk about my hair, especially…Anyhow, myfam-ily wasn’t part oftheir crowd.Hampton’s people are really amazingly provincial.They’re all intertwined with each other, mixed up in each other’s business.My folks had enough money, that wasn’t really a prob-lem.I mean I wasn’t from the projects or anything.My father’s a hospi-tal administrator, my mother taught kindergarten, before arthritis hit her.But I didn’t belong to any ofthe right clubs.I wasnota Girl Friend or a Jack and Jill.I didn’t know shit about Oak Bluffs or Sag Harbor.I think o
ne ofthe things Hamp liked about me was I wasn’t perfect in the eyes ofhis family.I was his little rebellion.A dark-skinned girl, with rude politics.But…youknow.The rebellion runs its little course and slowly but surely he turns into all those people who he swore he’d never be like.He really and truly wishes I was lighter, and I think he feels the same way about Nelson.And the really strange part ofit is Hampton is obsessed with being black, he’s black twenty-four hours a day, it’s all he thinks about.He sort ofdislikes white people, but at the same time he’s like most ofus:He really wants white people to likehim.And that, by the way, is the dirty little secret oftheAfricans inAmerica.We really want y’all to like us.”

  The electricity cuts out for about the time ofa long blink, the world disappears, then shakes itselfback into existence.When the lights come back, the digital clock on the stove flashes12:00over and over.Daniel and Iris sit across from each other, silent, waiting to see what will hap-pen next.And then a few moments later, the lights go out, and this time they don’t come back on.This time it’s for good, they both can feel it.

  The children cry out upstairs, with more delight than alarm.

  “I love you,”Daniel says in the darkness.

  [7]

  Suddenly, in the distance was a pop, and then a plume of iridescent smoke rose above the trees, a vivid tear in the dark silken sky.

  “Someone’s got her,”Daniel said.“I just saw a flare.”

  Hampton looked up.Only a small circle of sky was visible through the

  trees.“What was a damn blind girl doing out here? Even with eyes you can’t make your way.”

  “She was raised here,”Daniel said.“Her father was the caretaker.She came

  back to look after him when he got sick.Smiley.”

  “Smiley?What do you mean?”

  “That’s what everyone called him.I used to see him in town whenIwas

  akid.”

  Hampton shook his head.“These people, they’re living in another cen-

  tury.They got their old family retainers, their fox-hunting clubs, their ice boats, they play tennis with these tiny little wooden racquets, and NewYear’s Eve they put on the rusty tuxedos their grandfathers used to wear.”

  “Just a small percentage,”Daniel said.“They can be pretty absurd, but it’s

  okay, if you have a sense of humor about it.”

  “That was the first thing Iris ever said about you, how you have this ter-

  rific sense of humor.”

  “Class clown,”said Daniel.“In my case, middle class.”

  In the city, Hampton comes home to what used to be his and Iris’s apartment and which is now his alone.It’s four rooms in a high-rise down on Jane Street, in theVillage.On a block ofpicturesque town houses, most ofthem over150years old, the building is a twenty-five-story eyesore, but the saving grace is that once Hampton is inside he doesn’t have to see it, all he looks out on are tree-lined streets, and pastel blue, pink, gray, and cream brick Federal town houses, with their tiny backyards and steep tiled roofs and the crooked old chimneys right out ofMary Poppins.

  He’s taken the subway home, the most efficient way uptown after work.A taxi fromWall Street to Jane Street would take an hour, whereas the subway gets him there in ten minutes.And the cost is a token, not the fourteen to twenty dollars a crawling, ticking taxi would cost.Hampton is becoming more and more careful about spending money.This creeping fiscal conservatism has nothing to do with how much he’s making, be-cause he’s making more money than ever before, and it has nothing to do with rising expenses, because his expenses are stable.It just seems that the older he gets, the more watchful he becomes about his expenditures.

  He is still a long way from the miserly habits ofhis grandfather—who, ac-cording to family lore, held on to a dollar until the eagle grinned—and he will always disapprove ofhow his haughty, judging, acid-tongued mother would say things like“That Negro spends money like a nigger.”But lately it seems to Hampton a breach oftaste to squander money.When shop-ping, he counts his change carefully, increasingly certain he is about to be cheated.On the train up to Leyden he looks with contempt at the pas-sengers who have paid nearly double to ride in that dopeyAmtrak Busi-ness Class.For what?A bottle ofSaratoga water and the mandarin delight ofsitting in a seat that is exactly like every other seat on the train, except that the upholstery is blue rather than red.Yet even carefully monitoring his own expenditures leaves Hampton unsoothed and insecure.He wor-ries over his investments, suffers the manic fluctuations ofthe NASDAQ, the slow attrition ofsome poorly chosen mutual funds.But even more than he worries about the stock market, Hampton worries about Iris’s management oftheir household accounts.In his view, she remains a child with money, without impulse control, with no sense ofsobriety, or plan-ning, or self-denial.Sometimes in the middle ofthe day, like one ofthose mothers you read about who are suddenly certain that their son has just fallen on some battlefield halfway around the world, Hampton will look up from his work and practicallyfeelIris making some ill-advised pur-chase, an antique rug, a digital camera that will never be used, a halfgal-lon oforganic milk at twice the price ofregular milk, a full tank of premium gasoline, even though he has told her over and over that a friend who covers petrochemicals has assured him that the so-called high-grade gas doesn’t extend the life ofyour car’s engine by so much as an hour, nor does it protect the environment.

  He is sitting in the L-shaped dining room, with its narrow window looking out onto Hudson Street.Rain is falling in sheets, it’s loud enough to drown out the usual sound oftraffic, the taxis bumping over the cob-blestone street.He flips through today’s mail—statements from Smith Barney and Citibank, two phone bills, a Con Ed bill, requests to sub-scribe to magazines, buy golfclubs, upgrade home security, vacation in Portugal, switch credit cards, purchase vitamins, support the United Ne-gro College Fund, and, on the bottom ofthe pile, an actualletter,with his name and address written in ink.

  Eagerly he opens the envelope.The letter is from his old friend Brenda Morrison, now Morrison-Rosemont, sent fromAtlanta, where she and her husband, Clarence, are doctors—he’s an allergist and Brenda’s a pedi-atrician.The letter is written on Brenda’s professional stationery, at the top ofwhich the first and last letters ofher name seem to be toppling over, held upright only through the efforts oftwo hardworking teddy bears.She has sent along a snapshot, and Hampton notes that Brenda’s weight gain continues unabated.She is now two hundred pounds, with two chins and working on a third.Hampton has known Brenda since they were children and she was a wild and bony thing, with scouring-pad hair and furious eyes, and enough ofa survival sense to work her way into theWelles family fabric, first as Hampton’s sister’s best friend, and then as a kind ofhon-oraryWelles—Hampton’s parents ended up sending Brenda to college.In the snapshot, she sits next to Clarence, with his prim little mustache, good-natured smile, his baby-blue turtleneck, and, on either side ofthem, golden retrievers, Martha andTiconderoga, mother and son.The Post-it on the back ofthe picture explains:Tiwas the runt of Martha’s litter and we just didn’t have the heart to give him away.But now he’s nearly eighteen months and he still acts like he’s a baby.Except he think’sI’mhis mommy.

  Hampton finds himself staring at the note.He is stuck on the fact that she has spelled“thinks”with an apostrophe.A sharp twist ofracial impa-tience goes through him, about how his people have had three hundred years to learn the language and here they are still misspelling the easy words.Dear Hampton!

  Hampton looks up from the letter.Why in the world would she put an exclamation point after his name?

  How are you?You wanted us to send you some material pertaining to Clarence and my idea for a business—helping patients collect what is due to them from their insurance companies.Well, we’ve been hard at work on a prospectus, and ifI do say so myselfwhat we’ve come up with is pretty damn impressive! Unfortunately, the computer design company we entrusted with our work was in the process ofmoving.I’m sure you would have advised me again
st doing business with family, but Clarence’s nephew is really amazing with computers and graphics and that whole world I feel so uncomfortable with.Unfortunately, he’s pretty disorganized.I think he’sADD or something, he just races from one thing to the next.I guess a lot ofcreative types have that problem.All this is to say, our work got lost in the shuffle.Clarence’s nephew was really upset and we all spent a whole weekend looking everywhere for the stuff.It was really heartbreaking and quite a pain in the butt, and it’ll set us back a couple of weeks.In the meanwhile, I didn’t want you to think I’d forgotten about you or this project.We’d still love to get this thing up and running and you are still our favorite investment banker.(All right, you’re the ONLY investment banker we know, but even ifwe knew others you’d still be our favorite!)

  Amateur hour.Does she really expect him to raise money for her little cottage industry? Hampton senses her nervousness coming right through her handwriting.Just as he could once detect the hesitations, the soul-stammers ofdesire back in the days ofcourting and conquering women, so now, too, in these moneyed days ofhis early middle age, can Hampton radar out the slightest tremor ofanxiety before someone de-livers a pitch.That this fumble for poise should come from Brenda is sad, in a way—she’s like family and she doesn’t even need the money.But it also gives him the grim, burnt comfort ofthriving in a world that is, for the most part, brutal and uninhabitable.He spends the best part of nearly every day surrounded by people who make money, only money, not houses, or soup, not steel, not songs, only money, and who quite openly will do anything for financial gain, anything legal, and a few things a little less than legal, too.But Hampton’s proximity to this school of sharks is more than physical, he has made analliancewith these squan-dered souls, these are his people, his teammates, and among them he feels the pride ofthe damned.His friends are the guys who will fly halfway around the world to convince someone to take a quarter ofa percent less on a deal.Everyone else is a civilian, all those fruits and dreamers who do not live and die by that ceaseless stream offractions and deals that is the secret life ofthe world, that reality inside reality, the molten core ofprofit and loss that burns at the center ofhistory and which everything else—temples, stadiums, concert halls,everything—has been built to hide.