Scott Spencer - A Ship Made of Paper

“Fine,”he says,“I’ll be glad to.You should get some rest.”

She looks him up and down, wanting to quarrel but too exhausted and too full ofwine to bother speaking.She is wearing flowing black trousers, a white satin blouse, she has braided her hair up in a little deft twist, but all her beauty has fallen into a heap.She drags her feet as she trudges across the kitchen, the little squared heels ofher black pumps scrape and bang against the floor;they are the noisy, tottering footsteps ofa little girl wearing her mother’s shoes.Daniel doesn’t say anything more, he is afraid to look at her.He doesn’t want to do anything to im-pede the progress ofher retreat.All he wants her to do is go upstairs, lie down, and then pass out, dressed, undressed, makes no difference.

He rinses the dishes, the glasses, the silverware, sticks everything that fits into the dishwasher, and then, thinking that ifKate is really going to pass out she will have done so by now, he creeps up the steps and looks into their bedroom, where, sure enough, she is not only in bed but un-der the covers, with the lights out.A little exhausted sigh oflight from the hallways casts its pale dull depressive patina into the bedroom; Daniel can make out what seems to be Kate’s white blouse and the tips ofher shoes on the floor.So:she has undressed.Meaning:she is not nap-ping, she is turning in for the night;this is not a pit stop, this is a crash.

Kate rarely mentions her briefhusband, but more than once she has told Daniel that Ross loved to fuck her when she was passed out loaded.Al-cohol was like cement blocks tethered to her sleeping brain, sinking it twenty fathoms deep, rendering her impervious to human voices, bark-ing dogs, sanitation trucks, phones, alarm clocks, light, cold, heat, shaken shoulders, kissed lips, fingers up her vagina, and, from time to time, full copulation.Every so often, however, she would be briefly aroused from her stupor and come streaming up to the surface ofcon-sciousness like a scuba diver swimming up through a thick red velvet ocean ofwine, and catch Ross at it.She would either tell him to stop it, or she would not—both responses had their dark satisfactions.

The result ofone ofthose sneaky copulations was Ruby, and now Daniel slips out ofthe bedroom and goes downstairs to check on the little girl, who has dozed offin front oftheTV.Some nitwit in charge ofpro-gramming has decided to show Platoon on Thanksgivingnight.TheSamuel BarberAdagio for Strings is on the soundtrack, its piercing melody ac-companying the men as they kill and die in the lush jungle.Daniel digs be-neath the sofa cushions and finds the remote, mutes the sound, hoping to protect Ruby, but the sudden absence ofsound awakens her.

“Hey, Monkey,”Daniel whispers, hoping she will remain drowsy.

”What’s this?”she says, looking at the screen.

”Nothing,”he says, hitting the offbutton.“It’s time for bed.”

“What was that?”

“A movie.”

“Can I watch it?”

“You won’t like it, honey.It’s not for kids.”He sits next to her.“Are you feeling okay?”

She hates to admit it—mainly because she doesn’t want him to use it as an argument against her watching theTV.Nevertheless, she would like some sympathy, the occasional magic ofan adult’s commiserating voice.

”My stomach hurts.”

“Still?”he asks.

She nods.She detects alarm in his voice and it brings tears to her eyes—the strange kind, the kind she knows will not be shed.

“Where does it hurt?”

“My stomach.”

“But where?”

She moves her hand in an indistinct circle around her abdomen, as if waxing a tabletop.

“Does it feel more throw-uppy, or more poopy?”

She shrugs, looks away, suddenly delicate.He has the feeling ofhaving misspoken on a date.

“How long have you had it?”he asks.“Since dinner?”

“Every day,”she says.She reaches for the remote control;Daniel pulls it away from her, but she persists, and he gives it to her.She presses the on button and the set comes on just as one ofthe soldiers in Platoon catches a bullet in the back.Her face is so impassive, Daniel can’t tell if she has registered the image.She begins to scroll through the channels, one after the next, looking for a station showing cartoons.

“Where’s Cartoon Network?”she asks.

They have had a satellite receiver on their rooffor months now, but with hundreds ofchannels to choose from, Daniel is still the only one who knows where the various networks and cable stations are on the scroll.

Even Kate, a hard-core aficionado ofCNN, often asks Daniel for her show’s three-digit address.He is the one who brings the groceries home, who lugs them from the car, he is the one who mows the lawn, rakes the leaves, shovels the snow, salts the icy sidewalk, carries the firewood in from the shed and stacks it next to the hearth, he is the one who opens the flue in November and yanks it shut again in May, he is the one who pushes the reset button on the boiler when it inexplicably shuts down, who sets the Havahart traps for the squirrels in the kitchen, who traps the milk snakes in the dirt-floor cellar, who opens the windows so that the occa-sional bat can escape, he is the one who changes the batteries in the smoke detectors—what in the world will they do without him?

“It’s too late for cartoons,”he says to Ruby.

”What time is it?”A note ofdesperation in her voice—she knows what’s coming.

“Almost ten,”he answers, yawning.

”Where’s Mom?”she asks.

”She’s sleeping, too.Come on.”Daniel stands.He grips her by her armpits, the heat comes straight through the fabric ofher cotton turtle-neck.He lifts her, she grips his ribs with her knees.What ifthis is the last time he ever lifts her into his arms? Ofcourse it’s not, he tells himself.

But he also knows that day will come.In the end, she may come to love him again, but first there will be hurdles to jump in a long steeplechase ofhate.

The usual bedtime ritual for Ruby—the washing, the brushing, the stories, the back scratching—usually runs close to an hour, but tonight she allows herselfto be put to sleep in twenty minutes, after which Daniel checks in on Kate again, and after that he goes downstairs, puts on his overcoat, and leaves.The night air is cold and tastes ofwood smoke.The stars pulsate like wounds.He slides into his car, starts the en-gine, and backs away from the house without putting on his headlights.

When he is safely away from the house he switches on his lights and sur-prises two deer who have been standing on the side ofthe road.He won-ders ifhe is making a terrible mistake—the kind you can never live down, the kind that defines your life, that creates a before and an after—byleaving Ruby alone in the house with her mother.But he comforts himself:Isn’t that how the world goes?Aren’t there at this very moment millions ofkids in their little beds, with their drunken parents right down the hall?

When he has put that proverbial country mile between himself and his house, Daniel realizes that once again he has no destination.The Bistro is closed for the holiday—though surely halfits clientele could use a place to repair to—and he neither wishes nor dares to drive by Iris’s house.He finds his cell phone in the glove compartment and dials her number.One ofDaniel’s clients, a postmarital stalker, from whom Daniel has unconsciously learned certain desperate techniques ofinfor-mation gathering and track covering, has told Daniel that ifyou want to make a phone call and don’t want your number to show up on caller-identification hardware, or to have your number retrievable by the re-cipient’s pressing*69,then you can block your number from coming up bydialing*67before making the call, which Daniel does now before di-aling Iris’s number.His plan:IfIris answers, ask her to meet him at his office;ifanyone else picks up, simply terminate the call.