Scott Spencer: A Ship Made of Paper

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

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

I’m read out of their will?Why are they trying to punish me? Did I miss a Sun-day 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 itselfto him: I came back here to be near them .And, in the next in-stant, the thought is gone.

Carl has opened his briefcase and produced a manila folder containing Polaroids ofthe various pieces offurniture and works ofart Carl and Julia have deemed the most valuable oftheir possessions.The grandfa-ther clock, with its long, tarnished pendulum, which Daniel was always forbidden to touch, the spindly nesting table, which he was also not al-lowed to touch, the blue willow setting for twelve, also out ofbounds, 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 childprooftheir 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 ofthis,”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 ifthey are alone.

“This is exactly why we wanted to get this done when all three ofus 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 ofeither ofthem since.

“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 oftrouble, and who was never a danger to himself or to others.Believe me.You may think ofyour 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 reliefto 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 ofthis 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 ofnot guilty in a criminal mischiefcase.

Thoughts ofIris have completely eclipsed any reflections he might have had over being cut out ofhis parents’will.All he can think ofis getting out ofhis 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 im-portant 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 ver-milion, the houses and trees are drawn in black ink.He navigates his car down Juniper Street, listening to DinahWashington sing“What a Differ-ence a Day Makes”on the car stereo, and it strikes him that all his life he has been in love with black women—DinahWashington, Billie Holiday, IrmaThomas, IvieAnderson, Ella Fitzgerald, Ma Rainey, Bessie Smith.

Juniper Street is only four blocks long, lined on both sides by singlefamily 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 oftheir 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 ofmaple trees on the front lawn.

The windows are dark, they hold a faint reflection ofthe sunset.Iris’s car is not in the driveway, and Daniel, no stranger to her comings and go-ings, in fact having more knowledge ofthem than he would ever admit to anyone else, realizes she has left for the train station to pick up Hamp-ton, whose train is coming in at6:05.Daniel can hardly bear to think of this—imagining her on the platform peering into the windows ofthe train as it pulls in, trying to see ifit’s him, or him, or him, and then there he is, the conquering hero, home from a week ofshuffling expensive pa-per, 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 ofVenture Capital, and now the inevitable kiss, the child between them, symbol oftheir unbreakable bond, the little wink over Nelson’s head, a promise ofa fuller, more intimate reunion later on: by now Daniel’s mind is a scorpion stinging itselfto death.

He resists speeding over to the train station and instead drives home, out six miles east oftown to Red Schoolhouse Road.It’s Kate’s house, her down payment, but surely his halfofthe monthly mortgage entitles him to feelings ofownership.It is a two-hundred-and-fifty-year-old farmhouse, calm and elegant like Kate herself, with French doors, an im-mense fireplace, ten acres, the remains ofa barn.The dark gray night has healed over the gash ofthe sunset;a wind is coming offthe river.When he pulls into the driveway, he sees an old winter-ravaged Dodge parked next to Kate’s impeccableToyota, and when he lets himself in he sees Ruby in the living room, sitting on the sofa with her baby-sitter.

“Look, Daniel! I have a baby-sitter!”Ruby cries out, with incongruous elation.

The sitter is a high school girl named Mercy.Daniel figures Ruby’s joy must mean she has extracted a promise from Mercy to let her watch TV.He chats with the two girls for a minute, and then goes upstairs to find out where he is going tonight, since as far as he knew there was no plan in place.

He finds Kate in their bedroom, a dark-green room with odd angles, wide plank floors, a Persian rug.She is putting on lipstick and keeping an eye on the portableTV, which has become indispensable to her.The sound is offand she continually checks the set—sometimes in the mir-ror, sometimes turning around to face it—in order to see ifthere’s any-thing on the news about O.J.Simpson, who for the past several months has been on trial for the murder ofhis ex-wife.