A Ship Made of Paper

Ruby stares at it with no small measure ofawe, her eyes open so wide that the whites show above and below her pupils.Daniel gathers her closer, though he, too, stares at the tree, feeling creepy but spared.

No one has yet come out to shovel a sidewalk or clear a driveway, though the snow has finally stopped and the sky is a ridiculously cheer-ful blue.The blanket ofuntouched snow stretches as far as he can see—untouched, that is, except where trees or branches have plunged through the surface.At the far end ofthe block, a long coil ofpower line lies curled into itselflike a snake in a basket, every now and then spitting out a warning venom ofbright-orange sparks.

“We’re going home, honey,”Daniel says.His hands caress her cheeks, smooth as glass.

Though there is no road to drive on, Daniel goes through the motions ofleaving anyhow.Feeling at once drunk and ill with the flu, he brushes the snow offthe front-door handle, yanks the door open, breaking the brittle spun- sugar sheet ofice, slides into the car, and gets the engine started.Ruby climbs into the back and puts herselfinto the child seat, slip-ping the straps over her shoulders.While the engine warms, Daniel clears the windshield and the back window, and then brushes snow and debris off the roof.He gets back into the car and looks at Ruby.Her eyes are swollen with exhaustion, and she is shivering.“You all set?”he asks, and she nods.

He puts the transmission into reverse and guns the motor, hoping to shoot over the hump ofsnow at the end ofIris’s driveway.It doesn’t quite occur to him that ifthe road crew hasn’t cleared Iris’s street right in the center oftown, then there is no possibility ofany ofthe roads being cleared, least ofall the dirt road where he and Kate live, well out oftown.

His car’s back wheels spin uselessly.He puts the transmission into reverse, goes back a foot or two, and then puts it in drive, hoping to free himself by creating a rocking motion, back and forth.Soon, however, the spinning tires are melting the snow beneath their treads, and soon after that there rises the sharp odor ofburning rubber.

“You know what?”Daniel says to Ruby, turning to look at her, smiling, trying to be as casual as possible.“Even ifwe get this stupid car out ofthe driveway, we still might not be able to drive all the way home.

There’s so much snow, honey.”

“What about Mom?”Ruby asks.

”Well, she’s the lucky one, isn’t she? She’s already home.”

“Can’t we go home, too?”

“Don’t worry.We will.”He looks back at Iris’s house and tries to gather the courage to go back in.She is likely tending Nelson’s abused sensibilities, but he has a little girl out in the snow.

Just then, he hears the urgent whine ofa small engine revved to its upper limits, and a moment later an oversized, gaily painted snowmobile careens into view.It’s Ferguson Richmond—airborne for a moment, as he comes over a rise, and then bouncing offthe snowy street, raising up fans ofpure powder.He takes a long, looping turn, and a moment later he pulls into Iris’s driveway.

Daniel looks up at the second story, expecting that curiosity about this noise will have brought Iris to the window, but all he can see is a blaze ofreflected sunlight in the glass.

“EnjoyingArmageddon?”Ferguson asks.“Beats the hell out oflocusts, doesn’t it?”His voice rings out like a blacksmith’s hammer.He wears neither a hat nor a helmet.His thinning hair is soaked, his bushy eyebrows hold little balls ofice.“What are you doing here?”

“Trying to get home,”Daniel says.“What about you?”

“Iamhome,”Ferguson says, with an excited, expansive wave.“And I wanted to see ifthis thing would work.”He pats the snowmobile as ifit were a horse.His hands are so red it looks as ifthe skin has been peeled offthem.“And this Mexican kid who’s doing some tile work for us was going crazy, so I took him over to the trailer park to be with his wife and kids.Since then I’ve just been cruising, surveying the damage.It’s fan- tastic.Worse than I expected.”He smiles broadly.“Want a lift?”

“Can you manage both ofus?”

“We’ll soon find out!”

They set offwith Ruby sandwiched between them.Block after block ofutter stillness and silence.Ferguson makes educated guesses where the turns would be, trying to adhere to what be believes is the road, and then he slows down as they drive through the center oftown.No store is open and no one is on the street, except in front ofthe old brick fire-house, where a dozen volunteers are trying to clear the way, using chain saws and snowblowers.

At the far end oftown, Ferguson cuts through a thirty-acre cornfield, taking a shortcut.The snowmobile hits an unexpected bump in the field.

A splash ofwet snow.The curved tip ofthe skis thrust black against the scrubbed blue sky.Daniel grabs hold ofRuby’s jacket.Up.Up.And then down with a thud.

“Are you okay?”he cries out to her.

She nods nervously, her shoulders hunched, breathing shallowly through her mouth.

I’m putting her in danger,he thinks.Is anything worth putting her in harm’s

way? Or even hurting her feelings?What was I thinking?And poor Nelson.What must it have been like for him to see his mother in bed with a stranger? Poor Iris.

And now he is going back to Kate, whose intelligence he suddenly fears like a loaded gun.They are speeding through a landscape ofruined trees and blinding snow.They come to Chase Farms, where a dozen Holsteins stand in a foot ofsnow, staring at one another, and then at the ground, and then at each other again.They seem puzzled by the sudden disappearance oftheir pasture.Above them, the blue dome ofsky is start-ing to crack away like cheap paint, showing the cement underneath.

“Stop here!”Daniel calls out.Without asking why, Ferguson slows to a stop, and Daniel slides offthe seat, gives Ruby a little squeeze, and then runs into the wrecked and tangled woods opposite Chase Farms.He is sure Ferguson assumes that he is going into the woods to take a pee.As soon as Daniel’s out ofsight, he pulls offhis gloves, then scoops up a large handful ofsnow and presses it to his face, scrubbing back and forth.

He must.Most adulterers have the luxury ofmodern plumbing with which to wash the scent ofsex offbefore they return to their official life.

But Daniel feels he bears the scent ofevery kiss, every secretion, on his hands, his face, his hair.It’s a painful business, washing himself with snow, but his anxiety acts as a partial anesthetic, and when he finishes with his face he grabs still more snow and squeezes it between his hands.

As it happens, Kate is not in a position or a mood to detect the scent ofin-fidelity on Daniel;she is frightened and a little drunk, and when Daniel and Ruby enter the house they find her in a frenzy ofactivity, trying to maintain some sense ofdomesticity in a house without lights, heat, or water.The only household appliance that works is the kitchen stove, which runs on gas that comes from two silver cylinders near the back door, and Kate hovers continually over this stove, cooking everything that would otherwise spoil, grilling the salmon, scrambling the eggs, broiling the chicken, and steaming the vegetables—without tap water, she uses club soda that she allows to go flat in the bottom ofthe pot before turning on the flame.At one point, Kate has something simmering on all six burners oftheir Garland range (inher-ited from the house’s previous owners) and is swigging on a bottle ofver-mouth as well as a bottle ofgin, as ifto mix a martini in her mouth.

When she is not discussing in hair-raising detail last night’s invasion by the Star ofBethlehem boys, Kate’s spirits are darkly manic, her jocularity seems to scan the horizon for likely targets.To Daniel, she says,“This is some romantic, ain’t it?”and pulls his hair, not quite hard enough to be thoroughly aggressive.“I hope you’re hungry,”she announces to the house, singing it out, like some nutty kid imitating an opera singer.“And I hope you like really really shitty cooking.”Though it is cold in the house, she is flushed, little drops ofsweat collect in her facial down.“Come on, Ruby, I’ll play hide-and-seek with you.”And when Ruby declines the in-vitation—the last thing the child wants to do is slip into a closet or slide under a bed in a house filled with darkness and cold, a house that is in-creasingly unnerving to her—Kate doesn’t only look disappointed, she seems offended, as ifshe herselfwere a little girl, a lonely little girl, suf-fering the rejection ofa playmate.

Without electricity, home life is less private than ever.They are cast back to some preindustrial reliance on each other.When the home technolo-gies are up and running, each member ofthe family can be a self-sustaining unit, in a private room with its own source ofheat and light, listening to music on his own set, watching a movie, purchasing dried apricots from Haifa via the Internet.With only the fireplace for heat, the hearth becomes the locus oftheir lives.IfKate takes a candle to light her way to the bathroom, Daniel and Ruby are left in darkness.

Rubyhas to be next to atleast one ofthem, and the constancyofher presence, along with her nervousness and her boredom, begins to wear on Kate.Finally, however, Kate is able to coax Ruby to go upstairs, giv-ing her a candle