Scott Spencer - A Ship Made of Paper

Daniel and Hampton were paired by chance and against their wishes.They were not friends—Hampton did not particularly like Daniel, and Daniel had every reason to avoid being alone with Hampton.But Daniel’s girlfriend or partner or whatever he was supposed to call her, Kate, Kate went home to relieve the baby-sitter who was minding her daughter, and Hampton’s wife, there was no ambigu-ity there, his wife, Iris, with whom Daniel was fiercely in love, had gone home to look after their son.Daniel and Hampton stayed behind to search for a blind girl, a heartsick and self-destructive blind girl who had run away from today’s cocktail party, either to get lost or to be found, no one was sure.

The searchers, fourteen in all, were each given a Roman candle—whoever found

the lost girl was to fire the rocket into the sky, so the others would know—and each of the pairs was assigned a section of the property in which to look for Marie.

“ Looks like you and me,”Daniel said to Hampton, because he had to say something.

Hampton barely responded and he continued to only minimally acknowledge

Daniel’s nervous chatter as they walked away from the mansion through an untended expanse of wild grass that soon led into a dense wood of pine, locust, maple, and oak.Aside from the contrast of their color—Daniel was white, Hampton black—the two men were remarkably similar in appearance.They were both in their mid-thirties, an inch or so over six feet tall, broad-shouldered, reasonably fit.They were even dressed similarly, in khaki pants, white shirts, and blue blazers, though Daniel’s jacket was purchased at Macy’s, and Hampton’s had been sewn specially for him by a Chinese tailor in the city.

Two years after he was kicked down the stairs ofhis apartment building in NewYork City, which shattered his wrist, chipped his front tooth, and, as he himself put it, broke his heart, Daniel Emerson is back in his hometown, driving Ruby, his girlfriend’s four-year-old daughter, to her day care center, called My LittleWooden Shoe.The drive is ten or fifteen minutes, depending on the weather, and though Daniel is not Ruby’s father, nor her stepfather, it usually falls to him to take the little girl in.Daniel cannot understand how she can so willingly and unfailingly absent herselffrom the beginnings ofher daughter’s day;Ruby’s mother, Kate Ellis, cannot bear to rise early in the morning, nor can she bear the thought ofhaving to deal with Melody, orTammy, Keith, Tamara, Grif-fin, Elijah, Avery, Stephanie, Joel, Tess, Chantal, Dylan, or any ofthe otherWooden Shoers, not to mention their fathers and their mothers, a few ofwhom Daniel knew thirty-two years ago in this very town, when he was Ruby’s age.

It’s fine with Daniel.He welcomes the chance to do fatherly things with the little girl, and those ten morning minutes with dear little four-year-old Ruby, with her deep soulful eyes, and the wondrous things she sees with them, and her deep soulful voice, and the precious though not entirely memorable things she says with it, and the smell ofbaby sham-poo and breakfast cereal filling the car, that little shimmering capsule of time is like listening to cello music in the morning, or watching birds in a flutter ofindustry building a nest, it simply reminds you that even if God is dead, or never existed in the first place, there is, nevertheless, something tender at the center ofcreation, some meaning, some pur-pose and poetry.He believes in parental love with the fervency ofa man who himself was not loved, and those ten minutes with Ruby every weekday morning, before he drops her offat My LittleWooden Shoe and then drives over to his office, where he runs a poorly paying, uneventful country law practice, in the fairly uneventful town ofLeyden, one hun-dred miles north ofNewYork City, those six hundred sweet seconds are his form ofworship, and the temperamental eight-year-old black Saab is his church.

Or was, actually, because, unfortunately, this is no longer the case.

The drive is still ten minutes, Ruby is still snugly strapped in her child safety seat in the back ofthe car, her sturdy little body encased in lilac overalls, her short-fingered, square hands holding a box ofraisins and a box ofgrape juice, and today she is commenting on the familiar land-marks they pass—the big kids’school, the abandoned apple orchard where the wizened old trees wreathed in autumn morning mist are so scarily bent, the big yellow farmhouse where there is always some sort ofyard sale, the massive pasture where every July the county fair assem-bles, with its cows and snow cones, Ferris wheels and freaks—but today it is all Daniel can do to pay the slightest bit ofattention to Ruby, because his mind is seized, possessed, and utterly filled by one repeating ques-tion: Will Iris be there?

Daniel has been carrying the unwieldy weight ofthis desire for months now, and so far his behavior has been impeccable.When it comes to Iris the rules he has made for himself are simple:look but don’t touch, long for but don’t have, think but don’t say.All he wants to do is be in the same room with her, see what she is wearing, see by her eyes ifshe has slept well, exchange a few words, make her smile, hear her say his name.

Until recently, it was a matter ofchance whether their paths would cross.Iris’s deliveries and pickups ofNelson were helter-skelter, one day she’d have him there at eight o’clock, and the next at nine-thirty—it all depended on her class schedule at Marlowe College, where she was a graduate student, as well as Nelson’s morning moods, which were un-predictable.But now, suddenly, she is exactly on Daniel’s schedule most days, herVolvo station wagon pulls into the day care center’s parking lot atvirtually the same time as his.He wonders ifit’s deliberate on her part.He has reached the point ofthinking so often ofher, ofso often go-ing out ofhis way to pass her house, oflooking for her wherever he goes, that it’s become difficult for him to believe that Iris is not thinking, at least some ofthe time, ofhim.

Daniel pulls into My LittleWooden Shoe’s parking lot and sees her car, already in its customary spot, directly facing the playground, with its redwood climbing structures, sandbox, and swings.He is so glad to know that she’s here that he laughs.

“What’s so funny?”Ruby asks, as he unsnaps her from her car seat, lifts her up.Her questions are blunt;he guesses one day she’ll be a tough customer.

“Nothing.”

“Then why are you laughing?”She smiles.Her milk teeth are tinged brown:as a baby she was sometimes allowed to fall asleep with a bottle of juice in her crib and the sugar wore away her enamel.Now the dentist says the best thing to do is just let them fall out.Yet the brown, lusterless teeth—along with her slight stoutness, and her ruddy complexion— make her look poor and rural, like a child in the background ofa Brueghel painting.

“Just crazy thoughts,”Daniel says.“How about you?Any crazy thoughts lately?”

“I want to go to Nelson’s house after day care.”

“That’s not a very crazy thought.”

She thinks about this for a moment.“I want to sleep over.”

“You never know,”Daniel says.He swoops her up into his arms, turns her upside down.She clutches her knapsack, afraid that her snack and box ofjuice will slip out.Daniel restrains himself from suggesting to Ruby: Ask him, ask Nelson if you can spend the night.

Today, Iris is wearing plaid cotton pants that are a little too short for her and a bulky green sweater that is a little too large.Her clothes are rarely beautiful, and it has often struck Daniel that Iris herselfmay have no idea that she is lovely to look at.Her dark hair is cut short, she wears no makeup, no jewelry, everything about her says, I’m plain, don’t bother looking at me. Maybe he has drifted into the periphery ofher life because somehow in the grand design ofthings—and this private, pulverizing love he feels makes him believe in grand designs—he is the man who must awaken her to her own beauty.Is there some casual, defused way he can say to her: Do you have an idea how lovely you are?