Scott Spencer - A Ship Made of Paper

“I agree,”says Daniel.“But let me get these questions out ofthe wayfirst.”

“He said no questions, Daniel,”Kate says.

”You’ve had your chance to cross-examine me.Now it’s time for thedefense.”

“The whole idea ofcouples counseling,”Fox says,“is to keep you out

ofcourt.”

“Have you ever felt the kind oflove for me,”Daniel says to Kate,“that you’d rather die than live without me?”

“What do you want me to do?Audition?”

“I’ll make it easier for you.I don’t think you ever have, at least not toward me.And I think it’s a sad life, and a waste ofheart.We are capa-ble ofit.IfI am, then you are…”He points to Dr.Fox, who seems to be staring at him with alarm.“And you are, too.We all are.It’s in our wiring, in our DNA, it’s the poetry that we all are capable ofwriting, if we can find the goddamned courage.”

“I think you have lost your mind,”Kate says, slowly taking her hand away from him.“Who are you?The fucking JohnnyAppleseed ofLove? How can you say these things to me?”She looks for a moment as ifshe is going to be furious, as ifshe is going to scream at him, smack him, rake him with her fingernails, but then her face crumples and she begins to cry.She takes a handkerchiefout ofher handbag and covers her eyes.

Ifshe thinks what he says is awful, she should hear what he does not say.He is here trying to mollify Kate, when what he might really be in-terested in is shaking her until she sees how he has changed, that he is no longer the emotionally anemic man she somehow chose.He wants to ask her: Have you ever made love for six hours barely stopping? Have you ever had nine orgasms in a night? Have you ever seen me weep from the sight of your beauty?When was the last time we slept in each other’s arms? Have you ever seen my savage side? Have you ever known me to be absolutely helpless with passion? Has anyone ever stuck their tongue up your ass? Have you risked disgrace for me? Have you made a double life and been willing to hurt another person for the love of me? Have you ever been willing to give up everything for another person?You wouldn’t even do that for Ruby.

Fox finally releases them, and they hurry out ofhis office, angry and ashamed, with their eyes down, their faces closed.They have made an ap-pointment for nextWednesday, but they both know they will not keep it.

Neither ofthem ever wants to be in this place again.The medicine here cannot cure them.

The November sky is the color ofa cellar sink;a cold wind blows through the parking lot as Daniel follows at a safe distance behind Kate on the way to her car.She lets herselfin and he waits there for a moment, giving her a chance to pull away without him, ifthat’s what she wants to do.His car is at his office, a ten-minute walk, which he would prefer to being in cramped space with Kate.Yet he cannot bolt out ofthe parking lot and make a run for it;despite the danger, he feels the logic oflife, the rules ofdecorum insist that he get into the passenger seat, close the door behind him, strap on his safety belt.The car’s engine turns over.The radio comes on, a blur ofexcited talk that Kate instantly switches off.

“Ready?”she says.And then, without waiting for his answer—he was about to say sure, fire away—she throws her car into reverse and backs it quickly and without hesitation across the center’s small parking lot, straight into the front end ofa blood-redToyota.Daniel is hardly dis-lodged from his seated position, but Kate, lighter, has pitched forward and banged her forehead against the steering wheel.She barely reacts to this, not so much as touching the oozing welt with her fingers.She throws the car into drive, her car extricates itselffrom theToyota, and she drives it headlong into a gray Honda parked on the other side ofthe lot.By the time the center empties out—no one inside has failed to hear the twisting metal and shattering glass—Kate’s car is immobile and she and Daniel are screaming at each other.

The next morning, desperate to see Iris and to tell her what has hap-pened at the counseling center, Daniel brings Ruby to My LittleWooden Shoe at the normal time, but to his ravishing disappointment Nelson is already there.As he helps Ruby out ofher jacket, Daniel’s eyes search the suddenly grim and airless little day care center in case he has some-how overlooked her presence, in case she is talking to a teacher, or maybe helping out in the kitchen.Stiffwith unhappiness, his fingers fum-ble with the buttons, and Ruby looks up at him with dismay.

Nelson, seeing Ruby, comes to her side and tugs at the sleeve ofher shirt.“Come on,”he commands her.Generally, Ruby is compliant around Nelson, but today she resists.She raises her little square hands to-ward Daniel and puckers for a good-bye kiss, while Nelson glowers at them both.

“Okay, you guys, have a great day,”Daniel says.

”I don’t even like you,”Nelson replies, raising his eyebrows, extending his lower lip, shrugging.

Ruby is appalled by what Nelson says.Her cheeks blaze as ifslapped.

“Yes you do!”she fairly cries.“He’s my dad.”

“No he’s not,”says Nelson.He smiles as ifRuby has walked into his trap.

Tocomplete his mastery ofher, he takes Ruby’s arm and pulls her away.

Daniel drives away from My LittleWooden Shoe, with no destination in mind, only vaguely aware oftraffic and the fact that he is in charge of a heavy moving machine.His mind is not so much processing informa-tion as pinned beneath it, pierced on one end by the absence ofIris and on the other by the fact that Nelson is harboring a great malevolence for him.At the end ofthe winding, residential road that the day care center shares with a scatter ofone-story houses, where Daniel would normally turn right to head toward the village and his office, he instead turns left, which brings him to Chaucer Street, which in turn empties out onto the state highway leading six miles north to Marlowe College.He presses the power button on his cell phone to tell SheilaAlvarez he’ll be in an hour or so late, but the battery has worn down and the phone remains dark.

I’ll call my office when I get there, he thinks.

But get where?All he knows is that there’s a good chance that Iris is at the college, and a good chance that ifhe drives over to Marlowe there is hope offinding her.

Life, it seems, can be really very simple:you feel where you want to go, and you go there.You let your legs take you.At least the body, dog that it is, tells the truth.

Seventy years ago, Marlowe College was a sleepy, mediocre Episcopalian school with an enrollment offive hundred young men.Now, it is nondenominational, with four thousand students, twenty-four hundred ofthem women.The original old buildings still exist—ivy-covered, gray stone buildings, with leaded windows and burgundy slate roofs—but they are now overwhelmed by the modernist additions, the glass-and-steel fitness center, the broken geometry ofthe art center, the Bauhaus-ian dorms.The campus has grown, but it is still only thirty acres, with one north-south road winding through it, and another going east to west, and now Daniel is navigating his car, driving slowly as students stroll across the road without so much as a cautious glance.The air, cold and humid, is like a soaking sheet.A couple ofvery large crows land on a power line and swivel their heads toward each other as the wire sinks beneath their weight.

Daniel finds Iris’s car in the parking lot between the gym and the stu-

dent center, and he decides she’s more likely in the center and tries there first, where he immediately spots her, in the cafeteria, seated at a small wooden table in the company ofa prematurely gray, olive-complexioned man in his late thirties.He wears a silk shirt and a long, luxurious scarf, and he holds a pen as ifit were a cigarette as he leans toward Iris.Iris is dressed in a smart black skirt and a dark-green chenille sweater, with a silver bracelet and matching earrings.Daniel, struck by the sight ofher, and then further struck by seeing her in conversation with the handsome man at her table, freezes in his tracks.A steady stream ofyoung students flows past, parting ways to walk around him.Daniel is fixed to his spot, suddenly gravely dubious about having come here, and feeling a sick stir-ring ofjealousy at the sight ofIris seated with another man.Within mo-ments, however, Iris happens to look in his direction and gestures for him to come and sit with her.She doesn’t ask what he is doing here, and, of course, gives no indication that they are anything but two people whose children go to the same preschool.She introduces him to JohnArdiz-zone, who, it turns out, is her newly appointed thesis advisor in the American Studies Department.Daniel, though unasked to account for his sudden appearance, says that he has come to use the college’s library to check up on some local history as a part ofhis research about Eight Chimneys, but as soon as he is embarked on this unnecessary fiction he regrets it and simply lets it trail off.Ardizzone quickly excuses himself, saying he has a departmental meeting.He taps his pen a couple oftimes, as ifdislodging an ash from its tip, and, before hurrying off, he tells Iris that he likes her new ideas for her thesis and he hopes she can have a draft ofit before the end ofthe spring semester.