A Ship Made of Paper

ofit pierces him.She seems a perfect mother:calm, present, able to adore without consuming.Nel-son is a handsome boy, strong, bigger than most ofthe children in the day care, several shades lighter than his mother.There is something regal and disdainful in him.He has the air ofsomeone forced to live around peo-ple who don’t understand the full extent ofhis excellence.He nods im-patiently as his mother speaks to him, and when his eyes light upon Ruby he bolts and the two children greet each other wildly, almost in a bur-lesque ofhappiness, holding hands, jumping up and down.Iris heaves a sigh and stands up, shakes her head.

“Sorry about that,”Daniel says.

”Those two,”says Iris.

”It looked like you were giving him some last-minute instructions,”

Daniel says.

Iris looks around to make certain she will not be overheard.“There was a note in his cubby from Linda.It seems he hit one ofthe other chil-dren yesterday.”

“Oh well, these teachers have a way ofcatastrophizing everything.”

“I just don’t want the oneAfrican-American child in the whole school to be the one committing little acts ofviolence.”

She never refers to race around him, and Daniel wonders if her saying this now is a way ofinviting him in, or pushing him back.

“Do you have time for a cup ofcoffee or something?”he asks her.

She looks at her watch.“I’ve got a meeting with my thesis advisor in halfan hour.”

“That’s nothing compared to the tight schedule of an unsuccessful, small-town lawyer,”he says.

“Where would be fast?”Iris says.

”The Koffee Kup.The coffee’s so bad they spell it with a K.And the lighting is so bad, it’s impossible to sit there longer than fifteen minutes.

I’ll race you there.”

He drives behind her, not wanting to risk letting her out ofhis sight, and feeling the juvenile, slightly demented thrill oflooking at the back ofher head, her hands on the steering wheel.A Marlowe College sticker is on her rear window.The sight ofit ignites a little fizz ofpity and tenderness in him—at thirty-three, she’s new to Marlowe’s graduate program, and her fixing that sticker to her car connotes some desire for definition, a will to belong, or so it seems to him.She maintains the exact thirty-five-mile-per-hour speed limit all the way to Leyden’s miniature Broadway, and when she pulls into a parking spot in front ofthe diner she uses her turn signal.Such devotion to the rules, such commitment to the princi-ples ofhighway safety—it would be ludicrous to believe that a woman like her could ever entertain the possibility ofsome sexual adventure, of entering into the grim geometry ofinfidelity.

He is astonished by his own ardor.He is like a man who suddenly discovers he can sing, who one day opens his mouth in the shower and mu-sic bursts out ofhim, each note dipped in gold.But the timing is wrong.

He is thirty-six years old, he has commitments, and until now he gave no more credence to the transforming, commanding power oflove than he did to the myth ofAtlantis.Yet this desire, this overwhelming need to look at Iris—who he is convinced is not only beautiful but beautiful in a way that only he can fully appreciate, a beauty somehow designed espe-cially for his eyes—is something he has allowed himself to succumb to.

What harm, really, can it do?

Daniel wants to do no harm, nor does he want any harm to come to him.In fact, he has moved back to Leyden, home ofhis bucolic, mediocre childhood, leaving a prosperous career back in NewYork City, largely because he had lived for months with the fear that either one or severalAfrican-Americans were going to beat him within an inch ofhis life, or perhaps go that extra inch and kill him.It was not an idle, racist fantasy;he had been told flat out that his time was near.He had unsuc-cessfully defended a black man accused ofdealing drugs, and on the day ofthe sentencing, a short, mild-looking black man in a blue suit, a white turtleneck, and a diamond earring whispered to Daniel,“Keep your eyes open.You know what I’m saying?”Within a week, Daniel’s own dread had wound itselfaround him so tightly that he couldn’t see a person of color—a cleaning woman, a bus driver, acrobats and break-dancers in Washington Square Park, a bunch ofhigh school kids horsing around on the subway platform— without thinking that this one, or that one, might be an emissary from his furious client.“I’m afraid ofblack people,”he fi-nally said to Kate.It was the most shaming thing he had ever told another person.He felt like an insect, a fool.Kate, for her part, was entirely sym-pathetic.And to think you defended that fucking idiot for free,she kept on say-ing.Did anything she said make him feel better? He can no longer remember.He spent another two months crossing the street to get away from suspicious-looking blacks, spending a fortune in cab fares, exhaust-ing himself with gasps and double takes, feeling weak and loathsome, and they caught up with him anyhow.

Daniel and Iris walk into the Koffee Kup together.Ofthe three breakfast spots in Leyden, this is the oldest, and the core clientele are na-tives ofLeyden.It’s a simple, sparsely decorated storefront, with a high ceiling and overhead fans, a row ofdark wooden booths, a long Formica counter, and a scattering oftables up front.The women who run it—country women with checkered domestic lives and a penchant for teas-ing and wisecracks—open for business at six in the morning, when the truckers, contractors, and farmworkers gather for ham and eggs.Now that Leyden is changing, with more and more city people moving in, there are fancier and, to be honest about it, better places to have break-fast, but Daniel still frequents the Double K, where his parents took him for his first restaurant meal.He holds the door open for Iris, knowing there will surely be people here whom he knows, people to whom he will have to nod, or greet, or perhaps even speak with.Kate, however, will certainly not be among them.It is not yet nine o’clock and she is probably still sleeping, or ifshe is awake she isn’t out ofbed yet.She is probably pouring herselfa cup ofViennese roast from the thermos he al-ways places at her bedside before leaving with Ruby in the morning.

Daniel and Iris sit at a table near the front window.The youngest of the Koffee Kup waitresses, ponytailed and pierced Becky, brings Daniel a coffee and a glass ofwater, which is what she always does as soon as he sits down.She brings nothing for Iris and seems, in fact, not to register her presence.

“I think we’re going to need another coffee here, Becky,”Daniel says.

Becky looks momentarily confused, and then she turns and looks at Iris as ifseeing her for the first time.

“Oh, sorry,”she says, her voice flat.

”Do you have decaf?”Iris says brightly, smiling.She has a space between her front teeth.

“Do you want decaf?”Becky asks.She heaves a sigh.

”That would be great,”Iris says to Becky.

What Daniel does not see:Iris’s foot is tapping nervously.The waitress’s slight stubbornness about the decafis potential trouble.All Iris wants is for it to go unnoticed;the small rudeness is the sort ofthing that her husband would be fuming about, ifhe were here right now.He’s thin-skinned, his radar for slights is always on, always scanning the social horizon for incoming missiles.Iris has sat with him in innumerable restaurants while he has glared at the waitress, gestured impatiently at the waiter, sent back the soup, sent back the fish, asked to speak to the manager, and let it be known with a few choice words that he was no one to be trifled with.And it’s not just in restaurants that this highly tuned sensitivity to insult turns what Iris always hopes will be a simple outing into a kind ofdespairing war against prejudice.At aYankees game when the usher asks a second time to check his tickets, in the first-class cabin on a flight to Hawaii when the stewardess forgets to bring him an extra pillow and then tells him there are no more macadamia nuts, at the Jaguar dealership where the salesman will not let them take the car out for a test drive without xeroxing his license and taking an imprint ofhis American Express card.

“I guess they’re brewing up a fresh pot ofthe decaf,”Daniel says.“Are you going to have time?”

They talk about the children, and Daniel feels the minutes ticking away;it’s like feeling himself bleed to death.He wonders, wildly, ifIris remembers that he is not really Ruby’s father.How can he bring that up without it seeming small-minded? Iris’s coffee has still not arrived, and she checks her watch, looks quickly over her shoulder at Becky, who is at the far end ofthe counter leisurely chatting to an old man in a tractor cap and suspenders.

“I’m having such a hard time in school,”Iris says.“And I can’t be late for this meeting with my advisor.He already thinks I’m a flake.”

“He can’t think that.”

“I’m getting my doctorate inAmerican Studies, and I can’t even figure out my thesis.I keep changing it.The thing is, I really want to get my de-gree, but another part ofme would be happy to stay in school forever.It’s so much fun, and it’s not like I’ve got to put bread on my family table.”

“When I first met you, you were thinking aboutThurgood Marshall.”