A Ship Made of Paper

He steps into the corridor and they walk to Nelson’s room.Daniel turns offhis flashlight, relying on hers.He is right behind her, with the dog at his side.The dog loves him, he feels this working in his favor.

Iris stops short, forcing contact.They collide softly, his toes on her heel, his chest against her shoulder blades.

She doesn’t so much step back as shift her weight slightly toward him, increasing the contact.Contact displaces the still water between them, and in the splash ofit intimacy rises in the wake.

Daniel lowers his forehead so it touches the back ofher head.They are still.He breathes her in.She notches backward.His lips find her nape.She lifts her chin, exhales.He wraps his arms around her.

They have crossed a line, but it seems to him they have not ventured too far, not yet, they can still go back, no one will be the wiser.

Iris takes a step forward and Daniel releases her.They go to Nelson’s room.Nelson is in the upper bunk;he has flung offthe covers, his legs stick out over the side ofthe mattress.Ruby is on the bottom, a slowly dimming flashlight poking from the bedclothes and casting upon her sleeping face a cold white light, like the shine ofa dying moon.

“I want to tell you something,”Iris says, barely whispering.It’s as if she is willing to wake the children.

“Let’s go,”Daniel says, pulling softly on her.“We don’t want to wakethem.”

In the hallway, she pulls the door to Nelson’s room three-quarters closed.“They’re really sleeping deeply,”she says.“They’re so cold, the poor babies.”

“Ruby always sleeps soundly.”

“I can’t sleep at all,”she says.“I never can.I doze, I go in and out.I think sleep is too much ofa commitment for me.”She laughs.

“Maybe you have too much on your mind,”he says.Is that it?She is suddenly exotic to him, opaque and unknown.No, that’s not it.He just doesn’tgether, he lacks that little snap ofinstant understanding.He must concentrate, she is something he mustworkat.

Daniel remains silent.It is like sitting quietly in the woods, things come to you, the life ofthe forest forgets about you and resumes.After a few moments, his silence draws her out, she comes softly to the edge ofit like a deer.

“I’m going to tell you the truth right now,”she says.

She sees alarm in his eyes and she places a comforting hand on the side ofhis face.

“I’m not going to say anythingbad.”

“Okay.”

She is puzzled, she tilts her head, regards this strange creature.

”When I first saw you,”Iris says,“I liked you so much.I mean right away.It was a very strange experience.You seemed perfect.”

“That’s me, all right.”

“I’m serious.It was sort offrightening.First ofall, you were taken and so was I.”

She’s talking about it in the past tense,thinks Daniel.As if now we were free.

”And second, I mean the thing that was even more frightening was sensing that ifwe were to get together and something happened, ifyou turned out not to even like me, or ifyou took advantage ofme, I would never recover from it.I just knew from the start it would be fatal.”

“I would never hurtyou,”he says.He hears his voice in the strange dead air ofthat house.

“You wouldn’t mean to,”she says.She moves her hand away from him, but he catches her, presses his lips against her palm.The kiss goes to the pit ofher stomach.

Ruby awakens.Their voices have found her in her sleep, carried her toward them.She calls for Daniel, her voice dry, cracked, and low.

Daniel goes back into the children’s bedroom, sits on the edge ofher bed.He feels something poking at him, at his ear, the side ofhis head.He realizes it’s Nelson’s foot, waving back and forth, though Nelson is still asleep.

“Are you all right?”Daniel whispers to Ruby.

”Yes,”she says.“I have to go to the bathroom.”She raises her arms, as ifit’s a matter ofcourse that he will lift her, carry her.

When Ruby is finished, Daniel carries her back to Nelson’s bedroom.

Daniel carefully places Ruby onto the bed, she is practically asleep, but somehow the touch ofthe cold pillow awakens her.Her eyes are sud-denly large, curious.

“We’re staying here all night.Right?”

“That’s right, Monkey,”he says.

She is silent.A minute passes;he imagines her asleep.But then her cold fingers come to rest on the top ofhis hand.“I love you the most of everyone,”she says.

Daniel lies next to her, and Iris cannot sleep.Her thoughts skip like stones over water.Nelson, the storm, a Japanese maple her father planted in their front yard, which she was always convinced irritated the white neighbors with its unseasonable purple leaves…Irishas never been able to fall asleep next to someone with whom she was in bed for the first time;choosing someone always meant giving up a night’s sleep.

Making love as a teenager was easier—she had to end up in her own bed, alone, and she could sink into sleep as ifit were a kind ofinnocence.

Even in college—and why why why did she allow her parents to talk her into attending Spelman, more than ninety percent black, a hundred per-cent female, a vast poaching ground for the men ofMorehouse, brother-sister schools conceived, it seemed, for conception—even at college she developed a small reputation as the girl who always had to end up in her own safe little bed, the girl who says she has to get home because her teddy bear misses her.

It’s been years since she has slept with anyone but Hampton.She has a moment ofintense pining for him as ifhe were oceans away, irretrievable, dead.She misses the ease and comfort ofbeing with a man who has seen her body week after week, year after year, and who is, as far as she can tell, blind to its small deteriorations.It has all happened gradually, and he has failed to notice.Hampton’s criticisms ofher are intellectual, spiritual, practical;he is more distressed by her forgetfulness than by her having grown older.He would rather her finish her doctorate—or junk it—than get a boob job.Even when it seems to her that Hampton holds her in con-tempt, his voraciousness for her body seldom varies.I love your body,he has said over and over, so many times and with such suddenness and dis-regard for her mood ofthe moment or what has been passing between them that she has come to find it an affront.It’s all he seems to praise, his entire celebration ofher is confined to that simple statement.He does not sayI need your adviceand he doesn’t sayYou fascinate me,he surely doesn’t ask her what is on her mind.He has little interest in her thoughts and sometimes she can barely blame him.But ifher life is a little dull, then she sees no reason why that must be held against her, this life and her role in it is, after all, something they both made, it’s a joint project.And when she has the emotional energy to refuse to be silenced, to speak up no matter what, she can see himpretendingto pay attention, while it is heart-freezingly, face-slappingly clear that his thoughts are elsewhere.

And after so disrespecting her, for him to look up and say how beautiful she is, how fucking hot she makes him:he may as well be saying,Too bad you’re not operating on my level.Too bad you’re an idiot.

Daniel seems to want to know everything about her.It’s his nature, there is nothing he can do about it.He will want to know ifshe has ever been unfaithful to Hampton before, and ifshe tells him she has, then it’s her guess that he will eventually want to know with whom, when, where, the reasons, and the results, and even ifshe says no, he will ask why not.

He will ask her what she dreams, how the day was spent, what she had for lunch, where she buys her clothes, the names ofher relatives, the route she takes from her house to school.He will devour her with love bites, he will lick the surface ofher as ifshe were a scoop ofice cream until she gets smaller and smaller, until she disappears.

Iris reaches over Daniel’s sprawled body, with its deep sonorous buzz and smell ofsleep, and she gropes for the flashlight on the night table.But it’s been knocked over in the commotion, it has tumbled onto the carpet, rolled onto