Scott Spencer - A Ship Made of Paper

“Good.And ifhe’s there with her—”

“He’s not.”

“Just remember, ifO.J.can get away with it, so can you.”

After hanging the phone up, Kate sits in her chair and finishes her glass ofwine, waiting for her pulse to stop pounding.She goes to the window at the front ofthe house—the repairman who replaced the panes did a sloppy job and there are smears ofputty on the mullions—and looks out at the night.The sky is a steep dome ofbright stars.The moon is pale and wafer-thin;it casts its light down on the split and top-pled trees around the house;a little patch ofbrightness reflects on the chrome ofher car’s back bumper.

She remembers:Ruby, with a kind ofstart, the way you do when you drive away from the house and suddenly remember you’ve left the stove on.How can she go to theWindsor Bistro and leave Ruby all alone? How far away is it?Ten minutes, okay that’s twenty minutes round-trip.Let’s call it twenty-five, allowing for petty delays.And all she would need is fifteen minutes at the Bistro.That’s forty minutes altogether, and possi-bly a lot less.

She walks into Ruby’s bedroom.The room is softly visible through the glow ofa fairy princess night-light.Kate stands over her daugh-ter’s—her captor’s—bed and gazes down at her.She sleeps on her back, with the satin border ofthe blanket drawn up to her chin.Her skin is creamy, her brows dark and sensuous.Deep childish breaths, with a lit-tle bronchial burr at the end ofeach one.Ruby is a deep sleeper, she plunges down through the barely lit terrain ofher own inner life, one hundred fathoms deep, dreaming ofgigantic doors and talking animals.

She almost never wakes during the night—even those wracking coughs left her sleep undisturbed. Forty-five minutes, thinks Kate. She’ll never know the difference. Yet a moment later anxiety takes its customary spot in Kate’s consciousness, sits with the authority ofan old fortune-teller and turns the cards over one by one:here is the child waking, she is calling your name, here is the furnace leaking noxious fumes, here is an invisi-ble frayed wire festering in the wall, here is a thief, here is a kidnapper, and this card is five black boys coming back for who knows what.What are you thinking?What could possibly be in your mind?You are staying in this house.And he knows it.

The problem was there was no space to walk in;the woods had imploded.They were walking in circles, continually tripping over vines, stumbling over fallen trees, get-ting scraped by branches, stomping into sudden pools of still water, sometimes walk-ing right into a standing tree.It was strangely insulting, like being toyed with.

Isolated in their despair, they walked for half an hour without speaking.

Then, suddenly, a stretch where last month’s storm seemed to have done little

damage.They walked for three minutes without having to change course.And though they didn’t know what direction they were going in, the mere fact of keep-ing a constant course gave them a bit of encouragement.They were not, after all, in the middle of some vast uncharted wilderness.They were only a hundred miles north of the city.How far could you go without ending up on some stretch of asphalt or in someone’s backyard? But then they reached a devastated grove of locusts, the saplings with bark spiked with thorns, like giant, petrified roses.There were so many of them down on the ground, or leaning against each other in a swoon, that it would have been impossible to get through them or past them even in daylight.

Nightlife.Daniel comes down the stairs.In flannel pajamas, a House ofBluesT-shirt.Here comes the approximate orphan, here comes the almost father, here comes the world’s worst ersatz husband.But he feels none ofthese things.Night is the time ofdesire and love seizes him, shakes him silly.Outside:a gay dancing little flurry ofsnow blows past the porch light.His heart sings like a cello inside his chest.

Being alive is a ceaseless project ofself-forgiveness, and Daniel forgives himself.He knows he is acting badly.He knows he ought to be feverish with shame.But he’s not, he has resisted it, like those doctors who tend a ward full ofinfected patients but who themselves don’t fall ill.Daniel has resisted his own feelings ofguilt, he has become immune to himself.

The beauty ofthe world is, finally, overwhelming, it’s too fragile, too perfect, he must turn away.He faces a wall and glances at the aerial photo-graph ofhis house hanging there.Last year two men appeared at the door, a squared-offpilot with a rough face and a failed mustache, a lanky pho-tographer inTrotsky glasses and a Planet Hollywood satin windbreaker.

For three hundred dollars they offered to fly over the house and take a pic-ture ofit from above.“We can see ourselves as God sees us,”Kate had said, strangely enthusiastic about the idea.The finished product was delivered six months later when the barnstormers were back inWindsor County, and it hangs now in the living room, behind the green sofa.

Daniel, whose lover’s heart has sprouted wings, now is airborne himself, and he enters the photograph in full flight, hovering above his own house and its snow-dappled ten acres.The smoke from his chimney, a slightly darker gray than the cold, sunless air, rises up, stings his eyes.His arms are extended, he swims away from it, wondering ifat any moment he will come crashing down to earth but somehow knowing he is safe.

He points his hands upward, hears the whoosh ofthe air as he zooms to-ward the dawn moon, which remains fully risen, stuck in the sky like a coin frozen beneath a thin sheet ofice.He tucks his chin in, peers down at the little town—the cold air crashes like cymbals against his eyes.

There is the river, a blue-gray serpent upon whose chilly scales the wan-ing moon reflects.The mountains to the west are humped in mist and darkness;the lights ofa few houses and headlights flicker like the sparkle ofdew on the coat ofa sleeping bear.

He flies in through the window ofhis parents’bedroom, where Carl and Julia sleep side by side on their backs, as still as carvings on a sar-cophagus.The electronic numbers on their digital clock, burnt-orange, pulsate in the darkness ofthe room.On Julia’s side ofthe bed, the night table is stacked with books, but all Carl’s table holds is a lamp and a wristwatch, as ifhe already knows everything he cares to know.Upon the old Crouch and Fitzgerald trunk at the end ofthe bed, where extra blankets and fragile quilts are packed in mothballs, they have lain their matching plaid robes.The tidiness and modesty ofthe room makes Daniel ache with love and a mysterious sort ofpity, a pity that is also the deepest kind ofrespect.The room smells ofliniment, eucalyptus, deter-gent, and slow human decay.Daniel hovers above them, wanting to touch them but hesitating, for either he is incorporeal or they are.He rests his ear near his father’s chest, listens to the ruminative thump ofthe old man’s heart.It is time to start spreading all that forgiveness he has been giving to himself. Thank you for feeding me, thank you for sending me to school, thank you for staying the course. He kisses Julia’s cool forehead, a smooth stone in a rushing stream. Thank you thank you.

He backs out through the window, the branches ofa tall hemlock scrape against him as he gains altitude.He sees a police car, the beams of its headlights are going from side to side.He flies alongside it.His old friend Derek Pabst is at the wheel, sipping from a Styrofoam coffee cup, his uniform cap on the seat beside him.He has xeroxed pictures ofthe boys who escaped from Star ofBethlehem taped to the dashboard ofhis car.He is driving fast, his lips are gray and pursed, they are like a wall through which no words can penetrate.Derek pulls offthe county road and speeds across a short, singing bridge onto an unpaved road.His tires churn up long choking curls ofdust.