A Ship Made of Paper (14 page)
“I can’t believe you like almond-flavored tea,” she says to Daniel as they enter her kitchen. “To me, it tastes like arsenic or something. What is it, a guy thing? It’s the only tea my husband will drink.”
Iris cannot bear chaos. Beyond the rituals and reassurances of daily life lies danger. Go off the road—danger. Swim in the dark—tragedy.Those people in London all huddled in the subway stop while the bombs dropped? She would never have been able to do it. She’d hang herself first. Life without its presumption of reasonable safety—intolerable.
She is aware of a slow, engulfing terror growing within her. She has been holding her panic in check for a couple of hours now, telling herself that the storm and all those exploding trees are part of Nature, and she is fully capable of taking it in stride. But she cannot take it in stride, she cannot even
stride,
she feels trapped, waiting for something terrible to happen. And knowing that it’s all in her head doesn’t make it better; in fact, it makes matters worse—how do you hide from your own mind?
Night has come. It seems to be snowing harder now than it was an hour ago. The daytime sky was just running out of snow when the night a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r
sky rolled into place with a fresh supply.There is no fear that is not worse in the darkness.
Daniel. It astonishes her how closely he listens to her, how he leans toward her when she speaks and nods his head, yes, like the ladies in her grandmother’s church, the Amen choir, in front of whom you could sing, or cry, and never feel the slightest shame. He seems to remember everything she has ever said to him, starting with their first hello. Like most married people, she is used to being heard only by half, and has even gotten used to being ignored. Daniel not only listens, he seems to possess, to embrace the things she says to him. Six months ago, she said she had decided her thesis dissertation would be on some aspect of Parchman Farm, and today, sitting in her kitchen, with the candles in their holders and a box of Ohio blue tips at the ready, she learns that Daniel has read
Worse
Than Slavery,
one of the best books about Parchman. It initially gives her a guilty, embarrassed feeling because she’s moved on from Parchman, it just didn’t feel right—she might, in fact, have abandoned it later the same day she’d mentioned it to Daniel. She has been having a difficult time settling on a thesis; jumping from one possible topic to the next has been the source of no small number of nasty remarks from Hampton, who wants her to get her Ph.D. and move back to the city. But Daniel doesn’t mind when she softly confesses that she has left Parchman behind.
“I switched to the music,” she says. “I couldn’t read about all the beatings, it was ruining my life.”
“The music?” Daniel says excitedly.
“People survived, they made songs, it’s very rich material.”
He gets up from his seat at her kitchen table, suddenly full of animation. “I’ve got just the thing for you! Do you have a tape player in here?”
She points to a boom box on the kitchen counter.
“I’ll be right back,” he says. He goes out to the car to retrieve a tape from the glove compartment. He is unjacketed; wet clumps of snow slither down his back as he paws through lumpy old maps and a dozen cassette boxes, most of them empty, until he finds what he is after, one of the Alan Lomax Southern Journey compilations. It’s not the one he
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was hoping to find—he wanted the field recordings of prison songs—
but this one will have to do. “Sheep, Sheep, Don’tcha Know the Road.”
He shakes the box and hears the rattle of the tape within.
Thank God.
On his way back to the house, another limb snaps off the maple tree in her front yard and it comes hurtling down, plunging into the ground not ten feet from him.
Thanks again, God.
Inside, he plays her “You Got Dimples in Your Jaw,” sung by a man named Willie Jones. Daniel stands near the tape player and does his best not to dance along with the music, knowing it will make him appear foolish, but the music is so sexy and good, it’s hard to stay still, with his arms folded professorially over his chest. The song is a paean to the beauty of the singer’s girlfriend, especially her dimples. “I love the way you walk, I’m crazy about the way you walk, I got my eyes on you.You got dimples in your jaw.You my babe. Got my eyes on you.”
When the song ends, Daniel pushes the stop button and releases a deep, satisfied sigh. “It gives you such insight, I think. It’s a love song to a woman whose physical being has been devalued by racism, slavery, poverty, and this guy’s saying to her: I see you, I notice every little thing about you, and it makes me so happy. It’s sexuality subverting the whole system of slavery.”
“You think so?”
“John Lee Hooker made it a semi-pop hit, for this little outfit in Chicago called Vee-Jay records, in 1950-something.” He knows that it was in 1956, but he decides at the last instant to be imprecise, not wanting to seem like one of those geeks who memorize music trivia.
“I’ve heard of him. My uncle Randall used to have his records. He used to wear a turban or something? A cape?”
She must be thinking of Screaming Jay Hawkins,
Daniel thinks. “Maybe,”
he says, not wishing to embarrass her. “I’m not sure.” His fingers graze the controls of the boom box. “Do you want to hear another? There’s this fantastic version of ‘The Prayer Wheel,’ by the Bring Light Quartet.”
“Well, the truth is, I’m not doing the music thing. I had to let that one go, too.”
a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r
He decides not to ask her why; surely she’s had enough questions about that. “Have you decided on a new topic?” he asks her.
“I’m not sure. American Studies, you know. Lot of choices.The thing is . . .” She stops, lowers her eyes. Daniel looks at her. He feels it would be permissible to reach across the table and touch her.
“The thing is,” says Iris, lifting her gaze. Her eyes are clear, with little flecks of amber in them. “All my topics have been African-American, and I think that’s why I haven’t been able to stick with them.” She takes a deep breath. “I’m really getting
tired
of being African-American. I always thought of myself as just me. I know that sounds sort of weak, and when a
sister
says it, people think she’s trying to get out of something, or she’s like a traitor or something. But that’s not it, not for me. I’m just exhausted by it, it’s so much
work
being black. And no days off, either. And the pay stinks. But what am I going to do? It’s my life. But I don’t think I want to make it my academic life, too. Maybe I’ll write about Eisen-hower or
I Love Lucy,
or something. Something white, or better yet something that doesn’t even have a color, if there is anything like that. I wouldn’t mind being in school forever. I love learning. I realize it’s not the most highly regarded occupation in our society, I realize you’re nothing in America unless you’re making money, but learning stuff makes me really happy. It’s like being beautifully and luxuriously filled with all the knowledge there ever was.”
“They’ve got a lot of old Lucy tapes at the video store, if you’re really interested.”
Outside, the trees continue to explode beneath the weight of the snow. It sounds like a long, nasty war is being fought.
“It breaks my heart to listen to all those dying trees,” Iris says.
“It’s a nightmare,” he says softly.
“If only the snow had waited. I love the snow. But the leaves . . .”
“If it wasn’t for the leaves, the snow would just fall right through the branches and not touch a thing.”
“Everything’s timing,” she says. “The most wonderful thing at the wrong time? Disaster.”
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“But you never know,” he says.
“Until it’s too late,” Iris says. “I’m afraid of things that can’t be taken back. That’s another reason I keep changing my thesis. I just don’t want to create a document that says,This is what I know, this is who I am. I really admire your . . . what do you like to call her? Your . . .” She smiles.
“Lady?”
“Kate.”
“Well, I really admire Kate for just writing it down, sending it out, and getting on with it.”
“The thing she most cares about—her novel—she can’t write that.”
He feels his stomach turn over. “I better call her, actually. She’ll be wondering where Ruby is.”
Iris brings him the phone. She can hear Kate’s hello clear across the kitchen, powerful voice, formidable, not someone you’d want to cross.
“Ruby and I are at Nelson’s house,” Daniel says. Oh, Iris thinks,
Nelson’s
house. She turns slightly in her chair, not wanting to see what he looks like when he’s being so devious and clever. “I think we better let things settle down before we try to make it home.”
“I don’t think the snow ever
will
stop,” says Kate. She is in her study, facing her desk, where there sits an old Smith Corona manual typewriter and a dozen candles of different sizes, their flames dancing in the draft, an ecclesiastical whiff of paraffin in the air. “And when it does, it’s going to take a lot more than the little men in their trucks to get things going again. The trees! They’re everywhere and each one of them is going to have to be sawed up and dragged away. How about where you are?”
“It’s pretty bad.”
“Do they have electricity?”
“Yes, for the time being.”
“Oh, you’re lucky. That means you have heat, too. And water.”
“For now.”
“I don’t blame you for wanting to stay there. Is the husband there?”
But before he can answer, she blows right past it. “You know what I wish?
That there was a radio in this place I could listen to.”
a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r
“The one in Ruby’s room runs on batteries,” Daniel says.
“Ruby’s room? She has a radio in there?”
“Yes, the red one. My First Sony, or something like that.You’ll see it.”
“I just want a way to tune in some news and keep track of the storm.”
“I put fresh batteries in it a couple days ago,” Daniel says.
“Oh, you’re so good,” says Kate. A little lurch in her voice. And then something being poured. He realizes she’s getting loaded. Hard to remember, but there was a time when he liked her drinking, liked the free-wheeling, southern bad girl aspect of her, the nocturnal romance of it.
Those drunken nights were the occasions of their most uninhibited sex.
Sweaty, a little mean. It was like screwing an escapee. The concentration was all on Kate. What would she like, what could she take? Her body arching and jerking as if she were being electrocuted. Enthralling, those nights, some strange combination of honeymoon and porn flick. Nasty and private and never spoken of afterward. But even then he felt those moments weren’t quite valid, like those sports statistics that go into the record book with little asterisks after them, indicating a shortened season or a muddy track.
“Kate’s out of her mind with happiness,” he says to Iris, giving the phone back to her.
Another tree explodes, this one, from the sound of it, just a few feet from the house.
“Every tree that’s falling took so long to grow,” Iris says.There will be no more talk of Kate. “Some of them a hundred years.”
“Maybe even more.”
“I can’t stand to hear them dying like this. It’s like witnessing hunters shooting a herd of elephants.”
“That’s what I was thinking,” says Daniel. “The elephants. It’s what I was going to say. But don’t worry. It’ll be all right.”
“You’re the type who thinks
everything’s
going to turn out all fine and dandy.”
“How do you know that?”
“Aren’t you?”
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“Maybe I’m a bit of an optimist.”
“I think you are.”
“Could be that it’s sort of . . . a white thing?” Daniel asks.
“Well, it sure ain’t no black thing, honey child.” Iris laughs, a little surprised at herself.
“Do you miss being around black people?” he asks her—much to his own surprise.
“What makes you think I’m not around black people?”
“There’s not many around, not here.”
“True. And here is where I am. I like it here, and, frankly, it’s hard to find a really nice place that also has a lot of African-American families. I like to ski, and sail, and take walks in the woods. I like having a garden and I’m in a really good program at Marlowe. Anyhow, I’ve come a long way from that cave at Ruby Falls. I’m used to being in a white world.”
Scarecrow totters into the kitchen and goes straight to Daniel’s side, leans against him and groans softly, with deep canine contentment.
“What do you want, Scarecrow?” Daniel says. “Why are you looking at me? Because I said you look like Jesus?”
“Let me ask you something,” Iris says. “Why did you say that?”
“About the dog being Jesus? I don’t know. She seems very deep. Did it offend you?”
“I had the same thought. Just yesterday. It seemed sort of nutty and now you’re saying the same thing today.”
“That is strange. Is Jesus a big thing in your life?”
“Not too big. I think we’re alone.There’s no one to forgive us or punish us or help us in our hour of need, and I think nearly everybody deep down knows that. When I was an undergraduate, I took a course called
‘Death and Dying.’ ”
“You did?”
“Oh yes, I’ve always been very interested in death. Anyhow, as part of my course work I volunteered in a hospice and I got to know quite a few people who were dying, mostly of cancer. My supervisor told me we weren’t supposed to push any sort of religious ideas on the people we a s h i p m a d e o f pa p e r
talked to, but it was all right to subtly, in some general way, offer them the comfort of faith, maybe mentioning heaven and meeting up with loved ones, that kind of thing. But you know what I noticed? The closer dying people got to the end, the more they knew that there was nothing next.
The knowledge was in their bodies, they knew that was all, there was no heaven, no God, just blood and bones and pain and then silence.You could see this knowledge in their eyes. Even the ones who had been religious all their lives, and the ones who just were so scared they were willing to believe in heaven at the last minute, desperate for something to hold on to, to ward off the fear, you could even see it in their eyes—God was an idea, it was something out there, far far away, it was a story people told, a beautiful story, or a dumb story, but it was in the province of the living, and these dying bodies didn’t have time for it anymore, they were too busy dying, the work of it. Even if they were praying out loud, holding on to the rosaries, calling on Jesus, be with me, Jesus, be with me, their bodies knew, there was a final knowledge right in their cells that it was all over.”
