Paper Boats (Novel Excerpt)

This amazing man became my mentor and inspiration while he was Distinguished Writer in Residence at Wichita State University from 1973 to 1982 and life-long friend and kindred spirit. I miss him every day (as he once predicted I would), and everything I write is inspired by him or something I wish I could share with him and laugh and/or lament over. 

My novel in progress, Paper Boats, covers my time developing and running a learning center in Wichita for boat people, but it was Bien who first taught me about exile and the palpable human hunger for belonging.


Today ghost hands still push along the shore
my paper boat the shape of dreams 
which never went under in the flood 
that frightened me away.  

—Bienvenido N. Santos, Distances, In Time

(Bio: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bienvenido_Santos) 

CHAPTER ONE

The trees along the bleak Kansas horizon look like dandelions half blown away.  Startled by a flapping exodus of birds that have been feeding on the shoulder of the road, Joy grips the steering wheel more firmly and checks the speedometer.  The needle quivers between seventy-five and eighty.  

She lets up on the accelerator and glances over her shoulder at the kids in the back seat.  Cammy, just six, sleeps with her mouth open and her head vibrates against the window in staccato jolts.  Trey, two years younger, is scrunched up on the seat next to her with a pillow under his upper torso.  She cannot tell if his eyes are open.

It isn't worth it.  The phrase repeats itself in humming revolutions, like the tires against the highway.  Leaning over, she confronts her gaze in the rear-view mirror, rubs her fingers along the shadows beneath her eyes.  

It will help if they get to the hotel in time for her to shower and rest before going to the church to drop off the children for her ex-sister-in-law’s wedding rehearsal and dinner.  Joy has been invited, of course, the proper thing.  She has declined, not so proper, perhaps, but realistic.  She hasn’t seen any of her ex-husband’s family since the divorce. In that small gathering, her single presence would figure too prominently. 

As she leans back again, the highway rushes at her, and she wonders how long her attention has strayed from the road this time. There are few landmarks between Wichita and Hastings, Nebraska.  Silos and billboards swing by like cardboard ducks in a shooting gallery.  It isn't worth it, almost audible this time.

The message at the front desk tells her what time the children need to be at the church Friday evening for rehearsal and Saturday afternoon for pictures before the ceremony.  It is in her former mother-in-law's precise, diminutive script.  The room is just off the indoor pool and has been paid for, less a surprise than a relief.  

While Cammy and Trey fling themselves in and out of the pool, Joy keeps checking her watch.  Her new swimsuit is still in the suitcase.  She was to have worn it two months earlier in Las Vegas, lounging around the pool while Andy attended the R.E.I. national meeting.  It would have been their first trip together, but he learned that there would be several others going from his division and decided it would be awkward since her divorce had not been final then.  

Besides, the children might have learned of her being there with Andy, and Joy knew that they could not have dealt with that easily, especially Trey, who had taken to clomping around in his father's out-of-season hunting boots, and slipping into her bed early in the mornings, and whispering, "Is the divorcement final yet?"

Joy stands up, searching the surface of the water for the children, who have grown too quiet.  She walks to the edge and discovers them bobbing along the near side of the deep end, their fingers curled around the curved concrete ledge of the pool.

"What do you think you're doing?"  Her voice is a hollow broadcast in the moist enclosure.  She looks out through the trellised walkway into the huge hall with its impressive atrium under which the wedding reception and dinner will take place the following evening.  Two workers are parking a long cart stacked with chairs along one wall.  One of them, a Latino man in a crisp white coat, looks up, she thinks at her, but it's hard to tell from that distance. "Stay in the shallow end," she says, looking back down at the children, their hair sleek and glistening against their scalps, beads of water on their smooth, eager faces, "or you'll have to get out right now."

Cammy raises herself half out of the pool, her feet splashing the surface of the water.  "There's a mermaid down there.  At the very bottom." Trey grabs hold of his sister's shoulders, slips loose, then paddles back again, wrapping slippery arms and legs around her.

"Cut that out," Joy warns him.  "It's too dangerous in the deep end."  She watches them flail toward the buoy-rope and duck under, to the relative safety of the shallower water.  She peers into the deep end.  The image is imperfect in the wake of the children's waves, but she can make out the pale green body of the mermaid, a mass of yellow hair quivering like tentacles.

By the time Joy is settled back into the chaise lounge with a book, a family has joined them, settling their gear at the far end of the pool.  Their three children and Joy's two bob and paddle around in one another's orbits fairly randomly at first.  

Joy is sorry now that she didn't fix herself a drink before she left the room.  Eventually, the children's voices rise and blend as they adopt roles and design a watery game of  Star Wars.  She sees the mother of the other children looking over at her, returns her smile, and looks away, feeling alien.

Once back in the room, Joy mixes scotch and water in one of the plastic cups, and takes it into the bathroom with her.  She intends to take only a quick shower and then run the children to the church before going somewhere for dinner, but instead, she steps into a steaming bath. 

She sinks back, closes her eyes, and feels the familiar tension in her shoulders and stomach start to ebb.  The steam will undoubtedly frizz her curly hair, and there won't be time to tame it.  She will arrive at the church to drop off the children looking slightly undone. Reaching over to get the cup from the toilet tank lid, she takes another sip, then lies very still and feels herself drifting toward that safe little inlet that shelters her from caring all that much.

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