Before, During, After

by Richard Bausch

  “I’m not a lesbian.”

  “I have nothing against it in principle. I am no rightist.”

  “To progress.” She drank.

  “My wife is a lesbian, and she did not tell me of this until one month ago and we were married five years.”

  “Maybe she didn’t know it until one month ago.”

  “There are stories from her brother. It is painfully probable that she always knew. From when she was a girl in school. The brother did not tell me until it was too late.”

  The thought occurred to Natasha like a small autonomic impulse running along her nerves that in a crisis of this magnitude, people felt the need to confide.

  “I’m sorry,” she said to him. “You know, it’s nobody’s business.”

  “I wish I could put it into perspective.” His voice broke. He took a long drink, then set his glass down. “I do not want to go home.”

  “Where’s home?” she heard herself ask.

  “I have lived a long time in Florida.”

  “That’s right. You said that.”

  “Orlando.”

  “Never been there.” She felt careless, reckless, the sensation stirring like a tic in the nerves of her face. It couldn’t matter what she said.

  Perhaps a minute went by.

  “Yes,” he said, with an air of acknowledging something, though she had said nothing.

  She went shakily out to the bank of elevators and stood in a small group of people waiting to get on. Two young girls murmured and laughed, and the sound filled her with a powerful urge to tell them to shut their mouths. She saw one of the girls make an effort at another joke, some element of what they had been laughing at, but then she sobbed, suddenly, convulsively. Natasha touched her shoulder.

  The girl said, “My dad’s best friend—he’s like an uncle to me—works in the Pentagon. I wish I knew he was all right. I wish I knew everyone was all right.”

  The doors of one elevator opened, and a lot of people, all older men and women, filed out, muttering low or being silent, with the dazed look that seemed to have settled into so many of the faces. Natasha waited until the elevator was empty, then stepped in, and the others who had been waiting followed. No one spoke. At her floor, two people exited with her, a man and a woman. They did not seem to be together, though they both went the opposite way from Natasha, nearly touching, the woman a step in front of the man. They were in their sixties or seventies, and she heard the man mutter something in Spanish. The woman laughed. Natasha made her way down the hall to her room. Inside, she went to the window and looked out at the beach. People down there stood at the water’s edge, and some had gone into the water and were floundering in the wake of the slow waves. Nobody seemed to be swimming. She could not see Constance. The sun was sinking toward the mountains, behind towering dark-edged clouds. The wind had picked up, moving the palm fronds and riffling the cloth of the big umbrellas jutting from the picnic tables. She stepped to the bed and lay down, trying not to cry anymore and feeling what she’d had to drink. The gray light was warm. She heard the sea, voices rising, and wondered if she was imagining the distress embedded in each utterance, a panicky note in the cries, even those of apparent pleasure in the chill of the water, and the few bursts of laughter. She closed her eyes, intending, if she could, to sleep through until morning. But sleep wouldn’t come.

  She rose finally, steadied herself, then moved back to the window. Time wouldn’t budge. There was the whole dreadful night to go through. Picking up the room phone, she called the front desk and asked for an outside line. The line was busy. “Will you ring my room when there’s a line open?” Nothing. The desk clerk had simply punched the numbers for the outside line and gone on to something else or someone else. She waited a moment, still shivering, and when she repunched the number, this time she got the line. All cell-phone signals were still busy out of Jamaica or into New York; there was no telling which. She tried Iris at home.

  And got her.

  “Oh, I’m so relieved to talk to you, you poor thing,” Iris said. “How will you get home? Are you all right?”

  “Have you heard from Michael?”

  “No.”

  “He’s there, Iris, in the financial district—where the towers were. He’s—I don’t know if he’s—”

  “He’s probably all right,” Iris said in a shaking voice. “A lot of people were there. You saw it. He wasn’t in one of the buildings, was he?”

  “He talked about looking at the city from the top. Oh, God. I’m scared. Constance said they don’t open that early, but I can’t stop worrying and I know it’s selfish.”

  “Honey,” Iris said. “There’s nothing selfish about worrying over someone you love.”

  “Will you call Aunt Clara for me? Can you do that?”

  “Of course. And I’m sure he’s fine.”

  As Natasha started to say the number, Iris interrupted her. “I already have the number, honey.”

  “Ask if she’s heard from Michael.”

  “I’m sure he’s all right. We’d have heard by now—”

  “No, that’s the thing,” Natasha told her. “We don’t know that. All the cell phones are down or too clogged to handle the calls. I can’t get through to him.” She sobbed. “Nobody can find out anything here. I feel so trapped.”

  “I’ll call Aunt Clara. Honey, please, now. You have to stop letting your mind run away with you. I’ll call Clara, and then I’ll call you right back. Please try to calm down.”

  “I’m sorry,” Natasha said. “I will.” She pushed the button to end the call, then tried Faulk’s cell number. Nothing but a jangle of electronic noise.

  Lying back down on the bed, she stared at the ceiling and at the angles of wall and door and the entrance to the balcony. She looked out at the shining water. In an odd optical illusion it appeared to be a faintly shimmering black wall, until she raised her head and saw it clearly, stretching on to the horizon. The phone rang.

  “Honey,” Iris said. “I can’t seem to get through. A voice keeps saying that all circuits are busy. The volume of calls. I’ll keep trying. I just got through to you right away.”

  “That’s because these are landlines.”

  “Yes, but Clara’s phone is a landline.”

  “Will you keep trying for me? And if you don’t get me when you call back, will you leave a message at the desk?”

  “I will. And you come home as soon as you can, darling.”

  She got up and went out on the balcony and looked at the scene before her, a vacation beach, people moving through the fading shadows of the palms or playing in the shallows. She looked at the darkening sky and thought, for the first time in her life, of her country as a separate thing, a nation, harmed, at some kind of war, and unreachable.

  5

  Faulk reached Penn Station, limping from a catch in his knee, and stood in the center of the big space, holding his suitcase. People wandered aimlessly, many of them without luggage. A great roar of voices reverberated in the high vault of the ceiling, and yet no one appeared to be speaking to anyone. Everyone looked isolated and bewildered. In the waiting area, others were already lying down—preparing for a long wait. The board with the scheduled departures showed a list of cancellations. Faulk moved to a small space near the wall and set down his suitcase. His hand was stiff; his arm and shoulder ached from carrying the thing. His knee hurt. He sat on the suitcase for a while, feeling the fatigue of the long walk and waiting for some sign about what the trains were doing—he heard someone say that the authorities were calling for people to leave the city. But nothing changed. Absurdly, the sight of a small dark bird gliding and dipping in the upper reaches of the high ceiling saddened him beyond measure. Tears ran down his face. He attempted to lie down, but the floor hurt his hips, and then he thought of getting as close to the gates as he could. He had an intimation that something was coming, an announcement. The numbers and town names inside the slat-sized windows of the schedule board suddenly began revolving w
ith a wild clicking sound, as though a whole new schedule were about to be revealed. But the clicking stopped, and the board was blank. He got to his feet, lifted his bag, and started to the nearest ticket counter, in the close, low-ceilinged far end of the station. Surprisingly, he did not have to wait long—the woman there was being very brief with each person. She looked bone weary, her round, dark face glossy with sweat. He stepped up to the window and asked when the next train to Washington would leave.

  “Nothing from here right now, and not for several hours,” she said. “One coming in soon, going to Newark. You can get on that one. There’s one from Boston that stops in Newark. It’s not an express. It’ll end up in Washington.”

  “I have an express ticket to Washington from here.”

  “No tickets, sir. First come, first served. They just want everyone to get out. I don’t know what it’ll be like in Newark. The one from Boston’s not an express.”

  A woman standing behind her, holding a stack of what looked like tickets of some kind, said, “The mayor just said everybody should stay. Guess to show ’em we ain’t beat.”

  “Tell that to all these people here.”

  “Do you think there’ll be seats on that train?” Faulk asked. “The one to Newark?”

  “I can’t say, sir.”

  He heard the announcement for track 9 as he started toward the stairwell down to the gates. In the crush, he got to track level and walked along the length of the just-arrived train, a long line of tall cars that were packed to the windows, though people were hurrying to board and being helped by the conductors. He took the entrance to one car and stepped up into the mass of others in the aisle, the thick odor of those tight quarters mingling with the smell of the tracks, the diesel- and ozone- and creosote-heavy air. He was carried on the tide of these others almost to the far end, where more people were entering or seeking to gain entrance. Seated next to one window was a woman holding a little boy. She was making an effort to entertain him by talking in an excited voice about all the people out there.

  “Is everyone going home?” the boy said.

  “Yes, they are,” his mother answered with the brave fake cheer of a parent lying to a child.

  Finally, the train jolted into motion. Holding on was difficult without touching someone else. Faulk, reaching to brace himself on one side of the two seat backs where he stood, felt the wrist bone of a gray-eyed old woman, who glanced at him and then looked away. There wasn’t anything for it.

  “How would they get pilots to fly their own planes into buildings?” a man said.

  “Maybe the pilots were in on it,” said someone else.

  “I don’t believe that. My brother’s a pilot. This was some kind of hijacking, I guarantee it. Some suicide fucks. Excuse me for the language.”

  There was just the rocking motion of the car for a time, and the difficulty everyone was having staying in place with nothing really to hold on to. Faulk saw an elderly black man rise in the little space he had and offer his seat to a woman with an infant. She took it, and the infant began to whimper, and the man, whose dark face looked too slack to be healthy, had to use her shoulder to keep standing. He had large ears and thick gray hair, and he smiled at the baby.

  The windows slowly gave way at last to brightness, the train leaving the confines of the station. Faulk saw other tracks, buildings and billboards, the tall blue shadows of the city, and, visible out the windows to the left, the smoke where the towers had been. The train picked up speed. The ash-and-smoke cloud was appallingly defined, a gigantic, ragged-edged, domelike shape, too strange a sight for belief. Bright, unblemished blue sky still shone far above its dissipating outline.

  No one spoke to anyone.

  Faulk watched until the cloud was no longer visible, and the many others watched, too, the harmed city behind them in the too-bright sun, and the silence felt almost supernatural, as if everyone here were already dead, spirits being carried away. Even the infant was completely quiet, staring at the faces. The ground on either side of the tracks gave way to tenements, yards with laundry on lines, and a view of the East River beyond, the factory silos and fortresslike walls of coal and metal, the auto junkyards, the cranes of the harbor lifting into the sun. It was all a confusion of commerce and waste, and the people in the packed car gazed at it out the windows, quietly taking in the vast industrial insignia of the country where they lived.

  In Newark, there was more confusion and crowding, people hurrying to the escalators that would take them to the ticketing area. Faulk made his way up there and out of the building. The air was heavy and smelled strongly of gasoline and burning. He thought of the fires in New York. He saw a big barrel-shaped metal trash can with flames licking out of it. Someone had evidently thrown a lit cigarette into it. A man stood pouring a can of cola onto the fire. Faulk went on across the street, to the Hilton. In the lobby he saw men, women, and even some children lying on the furniture and on the floor along the walls. At the reception desk, which was surprisingly empty, he got the attention of a young man whose black string tie was hanging loose around his neck. The young man was bleary eyed, his reddish hair disarranged. He looked like someone recovering from a long night of overindulgence. He removed his coat, and Faulk understood that he was at the end of his shift. There was effectively no one behind the reception desk. The young man shook his head and gave him a commiserating look. “We don’t have any more rooms, man. Absolutely nothing. We’re letting people stay in the lobby.” He indicated the others, one or two already sleeping on their bags.

  “I guess there’s nothing at any of the other hotels near here?”

  “Everything’s booked.”

  Faulk went to a side wall and set down his bag but a second later thought better of it and walked back to the station and to the ticketing area to wait along with the others. Hours went by, people moving incrementally closer, bending and picking up bags and setting them down, or simply standing with arms folded. The murmurous racket of the hall went on, and there was something nearly solemn about it. He thought of his training, the things he knew to say to shock and grief, but there was nothing to say, here, with everyone seeking only to go home. A priest came by him, hurrying somewhere, and Faulk saw his not-quite-looking-at-anyone face—he was just a man in a rush to get wherever he had to go, a little frightened and sick at heart.

  Trains were leaving for Boston and points north. When he got to his window, he handed over his ticket for Washington and asked when the next train was. The clerk was a leathery-faced ruddy man with large green eyes and sandy hair. “There’s one coming into the station in about fifteen minutes from Boston. But it’s not an express.”

  “I don’t care about that,” Faulk said.

  “This ticket’ll work, then. Go right up those steps.”

  Faulk thanked him and started for the stairs, feeling the need to hurry and expecting many people to be rushing behind him. But no one followed. He went up the stairs and out on a platform, thinking that he must not have understood the directions properly. He believed the train he’d arrived on was below this floor, and he almost started back down. But here on the platform was another man, Asian, a boy, really, no more than twenty-five years old, sitting on the bench, leaning forward with his hands folded, his elbows resting on his knees. “The train from Boston,” he said, simply. Faulk sat down next to him and adjusted his bag at his feet. The young man wore a business suit without the tie. His shirt was unbuttoned. It was very hot here. He turned and looked at Faulk and then looked away. He folded and unfolded his hands. Finally he looked over and said, “Were you there?”

  Faulk nodded. “Up on Fifty-Fourth Street.”

  “I was in the second one, the south tower,” the boy said, and took in a deep breath. It was as if something had struck him in the chest. He straightened, attempting to collect himself. “They—they told us—we were all going down the stairs—and they told us it was all right, we could go back up. But I didn’t like it, and I kept going down.” He gaspe
d, trying to master himself. “They—all my friends—they—they went back.” And with that he let go, crying quietly, hands over his mouth. Then he reached in the pocket of his coat for a handkerchief, opened it, and put it over his face. “I’m going home, to Baltimore. My parents live in Baltimore.”

  “Washington,” Faulk said. He felt the uselessness of it. “I’m a priest. If there’s anything I can do …” The words seemed false, and in the next moment he realized that they were false. “I was a priest,” he said, low, wanting to be exact. It was ridiculous.

  The boy’s demeanor seemed to underscore the thought. He sat and stared off and waited for the train, and around them the noise of the station increased, a wave of distraught voices and sounds coming from the very walls. The train was coming in. The sound filled the hot little space where they sat, and it seemed strangely out of place, not something sensibly connected to this narrow room with its bench and its posters on the opposite wall advertising Broadway plays. They moved to the doorway leading out to the track. When the train stopped before them and the conductor jumped down and set the stool for them to step up, the boy hesitated. Faulk saw him wait to see which way he, Faulk, would go—into which car, the left or the right. He went left, took the first seat—the car was nearly empty—and glanced over his shoulder. The young man had gone the other way. The train pitched forward, rocking, and Faulk looked out the soiled window at the yellow lights, the empty platform, the vague shapes in the dimness beyond the wide expanse of other tracks, the cement abutments, switches, painted signs and symbols. The train was gathering speed, and once more, out of the tunnel, the light changed to daylight. But daylight was fading. Gazing at the burnished glow along the marshy fields south of Newark, he thought of how he had failed to be of help to anyone—how, until the minutes with the young man on the station platform, his one concern had been getting away from the city. He had spent most of his adult life performing the very tasks that were called for in this situation, yet he had only reacted, a numb, fearful refugee, like all the others, trying to get out.