A Ship Made of Paper

keep him quiet.I used to go to Daddy’s office every Saturday and Mrs.Sinclair—”

“You called her Mrs.Sinclair?”Hampton asks.

”Not at the time.We called her Irma.She weighed two pounds, shoes and all.”

“Poor Leroy,”says Iris.

”I used to read to Leroy.I was precocious.I’d bring a book every Saturday and read to him while Daddy worked in his office, two hours of paperwork, nine-thirty to eleven-forty-five, every Saturday, to the minute.I used to read Leroy these bedtime books, right there in the mid-dle ofthe day, sitting on the inside staircase ofthis little medical arts building out on Calhoun Boulevard.And Leroy had all this candy his mother gave him, stuffed in his pockets, little red-and-white mints, but-terscotch sucking candies, all fancy wrapped…”

“She probably took them from one ofthe houses she cleaned during the week,”Iris says.

“Yes, I suppose she did.Stolen sweets.What could be better?”She narrows her eyes, lets Iris draw her own damn conclusions.“I read him Goodnight, Moon,and he put his head right in my lap and closed his eyes and I patted and rocked him and he pretended to fall asleep.And when I was finished with whatever I was reading, I kissed the palm ofmy hand and pressed it against his cheek, over and over, hand to my lips, hand to his cheek.And I remember thinking:I love Leroy.I love Leroy Sinclair.

And just saying those words put me into a kind ofhypnotic trance.”

The high school girl has cleared the plates away.The waiter hovers over to the side, waiting for a break in the conversation.

“And then one day I saw my father talking to Mrs.Sinclair,”Kate is saying,“and I knew she would never be allowed to bring Leroy to work with her again.And I was right.The next time I saw him, maybe two years later, he was on his way to his school and I was with a couple ofmy silly, awful little girlfriends from Beaumont Country Day School, and I called to him across the street—Hey, Leroy—and he just looked at me as ifI was the most ridiculous thing he had ever seen, and he didn’t say a word.

But whose fault was it?We were both caught in something so large, and so terrible.His people came over in chains and my people sat on the porch sipping gin.Something that begins that badly can never end well…”

Kate looks around the table, smiling.

”How about you, Hampton?”she says.“Did you ever fall in love with someone not ofyour race?”Ifhe finds this offensive he gives no indica-tion—but Kate quickly looks away from him, throws her slightly bleary gaze first at Iris, and finally at Daniel.“Anyone?”

[2]

Once they were in the woods, the remains of the afternoon light seemed to shrink away.The shadows of the trees—a shocking number of which had fallen over to the ground from the weight of last month’s sudden snowstorm—seemed to pile on top of each other, one shadow over the next, building a wall of darkness.Once, there had been paths through the woods, made by the herds of deer, or left over from the old days when there had been enough money to maintain and even man-icure the Richmond holdings.But the October storm had droppedthousandsof trees and the paths were somewhere beneath them, invisible now.Daniel and Hampton could not take two steps without having to scramble over the canopy of a fallen tree, or climb over a trunk, or a crisscross of trunks, slippery with rot.And where there weren’t fallen trees there were thorny blackberry vines that furled out across the forest floor like a sharp, punishing fog.

The evening was not a success.After Kate’s story about Leroy, the silences became prolonged.When Kate ordered an after-dinner cognac, neither Iris nor Hampton ordered anything, putting Daniel in the position ofhaving to order a cognac for himself, which he feared might create the impression that he and Kate were both heavy drinkers.As soon as Kate drained her snifter, Hampton announced that they had promised their baby-sitter an early night, and it was over.

In the car, Daniel and Kate do not speak.Daniel has the car’s cassette player tuned low.Etta James singing“Love’s Been Rough on Me,”then Buddy Guy doing“HoldThat Plane.”WhenAlbert King’s“I Found Love in theWelfare Line”comes on, Kate rouses herselfout ofher torpor and hits the offbutton.“No singing Negroes, please.”

“Fine.Whatever you like.”

“Are you feeling like Herman Melville, darling?”Kate asks, her breath rich and fermented.

“Am I?”

“‘In the soul ofa man there is one insularTahiti, full ofpeace and joy, but encompassed by all the horror ofthe half-lived life.’Did you have a little peek atTahiti and now you have to go home to your half-lived life?”

Daniel remains silent.He doesn’t want to argue with Kate, doesn’t want to spar with her, to feel the flick and jab ofher.He is content to be driving and thinking about the various little gestures Iris made during the dinner.He thinks about what she ate.He thinks about how she had refolded her napkin at the end ofthe meal and placed it next to her plate, good as new.He thinks about her expression as she listened to the oth-ers speak, a quality ofappreciation and grace, as ifher mind lapped up information like a cat with a bowl ofmilk.He thinks about how she con-tinually turned her wedding ring around her finger, as ifit might be im-peding the flow ofher blood.She had been wearing that perfume that he had come to associate with her—Chanel No.19.Afew weeks ago, in the city, he had gone to Saks and sniffed thirty tester bottles before finding which fragrance was hers, and then he bought a small bottle and kept it in his desk at the office.May I help you? May I help you?The clerks on the main floor had kept trying to make themselves available to him.But they couldn’t help him;nobody could.

“Feel my forehead,”Kate says.“I think I have a fever.”

He touches her with his fingertips and then the palm ofhis hand.A jolt ofremembered love goes through him.The car drifts left, the tires bite at the gravel at the side ofthe road.“You’re warm.”

“I’m dying.”

She closes her eyes and their silence reasserts itself.

”Did you have an okay time tonight?”Daniel asks.As his sense ofguilt increases, his tolerance for silence decreases.He knows he’s just blather-ing, but she did seem to like Hampton.She who likes no one.

“Not really.It felt like work.”

“You seemed to be enjoying yourself,”he says.“You and Hampton—”

“Fuck me and Hampton,”Kate says, and turns her face away from him, as the two-lane blacktop turns into a narrower dirt road that leads to their secluded old house.They drive past a neighbor’s rolling fields, a pond ringed by weeping willows.A pebble driveway leads from the road to their house, and as the stones crunch beneath the tires, Kate opens her eyes.Their car’s headlights shine on the red wreck ofthe baby-sitter’s car.

“I hope Mercy treats children better than she treats her car,”Daniel says.He turns offthe engine;the lighted windows in their front rooms shimmer before them.

“Why did you tell that story about that little boy?”he asks her.

Kate sits up, rubs her eyes with the heels ofher hands.“Did you like that story?”

“I never heard ofLeroy before.I thought I knew about every boy who ever passed through your life.”

“I think what I was saying was Leroy and I could never be friends.”

“Why? Because he was black and you were white?”Despite everything, he allows himself to feel indignant.He thinks Kate’s white south-ern girlhood is asserting itselfin a highly unpleasant way.

“Be glad I didn’t tell the story ofwhy we left NewYork City, how you were scared to death ofevery black person you saw.”

“Why would you ever say anything like that?”

“Because it’s true, you were.”

“My life was threatened.And the people who made the threat were black.I overreacted, I admit it.”

“You were scared to death.”

“Let’s just drop it,”Daniel says.“I’m over it.”He opens the door to get out, but Kate catches him by the arm.

“Ifit’s any consolation to you, the marriage won’t last.”

“What marriage?”

“Iris and Hampton’s.He’s on edge all the time, looking for little slights against his dignity.She wants to live in a