Before, During, After

by Richard Bausch

  “Hello,” Natasha said to him.

  He turned to Faulk. “I congratulate you on your choice of a young wife.”

  Faulk heard the slight emphasis on the word young. “Thank you,” he said.

  The other man stood close, offering his hand. He smelled of the cigarette he was smoking. “I was just sitting out on my porch over there, you know, and I saw you pull in. Can I interest either of you in a glass of something cold? Orange or grapefruit juice?”

  “We’re fine.” Natasha saw the aggravation in Faulk’s face.

  “You had some luck, didn’t you,” Baines said to her. “Stuck in paradise for three days like that. I wish somebody would stick me in Jamaica for three days and tell me I can’t leave.” He seemed about to laugh and in the same moment to realize the inappropriateness of the joke. He went on: “Of course it’s just a terrible thing.”

  Natasha said nothing.

  “Yes,” Faulk said quickly. “Well, excuse us.”

  Baines cleared his throat again. “If I could speak with you for just a few seconds.”

  “I’ll come back out,” Faulk said. “Let me get Natasha inside.”

  “I should have an extra key made?”

  “We’ll talk.”

  Natasha followed him into the building. When he had gotten the door to the apartment open and turned on the light, she saw the front room—no paintings, no pictures on the walls, books crammed into a makeshift cinder-block-and-pine-plank bookcase. He sensed that she was discouraged by it and moved quickly to get her bags into the bedroom, where there were pictures—photos of him in college, of his mother and Aunt Clara, of Natasha and himself from his summer visits to Washington, and also some prints of famous paintings—Sargent’s Carnation, Lily, Lily, Rose with the girls in their pure white dresses and the lovely lit paper lanterns and Vermeer’s Milkmaid and The Music Lesson. They had discovered in their trips to the galleries in Washington that they both prized the way the two artists created the sensation of luminescence, Sargent’s sharp flashes as opposed to Vermeer’s muted glow. Faulk had admired how she accomplished similar effects with her watercolors. Now she walked to the Sargent print and appreciated it while Faulk went into the bathroom. He decided that things weren’t clean enough and ran more water in the sink, making another effort to lessen the rust stain on the porcelain under the faucet. The room smelled like the Ajax he had used to go over it. He opened the window and fanned the air.

  She undressed and lay down. On the wall next to the window was a cross, the only sign of his former life. She considered it in that context and then tried to dismiss the idea. It was—emotionally, anyway—the same life.

  When he came out of the bathroom, she got up and moved gingerly around him to go in. He stopped her for a moment. “I’m so happy.”

  “Me, too,” she told him. “We’re going to be so good together.” She wanted it to be true; she would make it true. In the little room, she saw the open window and breathed in and then out slowly, fully, working to imagine that all the badness of the past few days was being expelled. The white curtain blew inward with a stirring of air from the outside. She heard a train, near sounding. The breeze died, then came back. He had put her makeup bag on the space next to the sink.

  “I’m going to take a shower,” she said.

  From the other room, he called, “Want me to join you?”

  “Not this time, honey. I kind of need to have this one alone.” She waited. “Okay?”

  “Sure,” he called. He was sitting on the bed, looking at the door, which she had closed. Her shadow moved in the strand of light at the bottom. He heard the water running and lay back on the bed, hands behind his head. He felt good. Rested. They could begin their lives together, with this warm-feeling domesticity, her calling him honey from the other room, ministering to herself, preparing for this day with him, the first in what seemed such a long time.

  There was a knock at the front door. Baines. “I was coming down,” Faulk told him.

  “Uh, no need,” the other said, looking past him.

  Faulk stepped out and closed the door. “Well?”

  “I wondered if you’d met with any progress about subletting.”

  “Not yet, no. And I think I might just keep it, for a studio.”

  “Oh, well, then,” Baines said, and cleared his throat. “That’s—well, anyway, I wanted to make sure you knew that I could forgive the rest of the lease if it would help.” He gave a small smile. There was something almost pleading about it.

  Faulk reached over and patted the side of his arm near the shoulder. Baines made his way back down to the street. When he waved, Faulk waved back.

  On her side of the bathroom door, Natasha stood with her back facing the mirror and looked over her shoulder to see if there was any bruising. She could see none. She kept the water running, cleaned her teeth. Then she turned the shower on and got into the hot stream, thinking of Jamaica and the long night there, the hour of running water over herself trying to get clean.

  Here, the stream was soft, without much pressure, but it was very hot. In her mind’s eye she saw the crowded veranda at the Ratzibungens’ resort and Mrs. Skinner with that fanatical judgment of poor Mr. Skinner. She saw Constance and Skinner dropping down into the cold water on the beach. And then she saw Duego as he stumbled toward her in the sand under the moon, with his dope and his perfectly enunciated English.

  Her hands shook as she turned the water off and reached for a towel. She heard Faulk moving around in the room. She rubbed her hips and felt the slight soreness and searched once more for any sign of a bruise. “Stop it,” she whispered to herself, looking at the face in the mirror, which she did not quite recognize with its glittering eyes and beset look, seeking not to let thoughts come, since thoughts flowed inexorably into all the bad possibilities.

  He had come back in and taken his clothes off, and he lay in the bed and watched the little moving shadow at the base of the door. Finally the door opened, and she emerged, wrapped in the towel. She let it drop and got in with him. “Oh,” he said, “you are so beautiful.” He put his mouth on hers. The light was coming in the window, and she recalled that they had both liked making love in the light. But the brightness of it now seemed vulgar to her.

  “Can we close the curtain?” she said.

  “What?”

  “Please?”

  “Sure, babe. I’m sorry.”

  “No, it’s nothing. I just want it to be a little more romantic.”

  He got up and went to the window.

  “Just—this time,” she told him.

  He pulled the curtain shut, and they were in dimness. “Well, this is a little like candlelight.”

  She held the soft blanket open for him as he came back to her. Again he was kissing her, and when he moved over onto her, she couldn’t breathe. She waited for him to let up, lift his head to take a breath himself, but he exhaled into her mouth, and now she thought she might choke. She pushed on his shoulders, and he quickly moved off her, lying on his back at her side. “Is something wrong? Was I too heavy?”

  “No, I want to come over and be on top.”

  “Darling.”

  She turned, got herself to her knees, and then straddled him. She was sore; it hurt, and he thrust up into her. “Easy, honey.”

  “You’re a little—dry.” Her apparent rush troubled him faintly, but he made himself savor the wealth of her being so close, with her smell of scented soap from the shower. The ends of her hair were wet. “Maybe let’s kiss some more.”

  “No, I want you. I want you inside me. Please.”

  “Baby, are we all right?” he asked, hearing the boylike plea in it. He felt like an adolescent, nervous now and worried about himself.

  She touched his face. “It’s just that—it’s been such a long terrible time.”

  He reached for her shoulders to bring her down close and put his arms around her. They lay very still. He was inside her and flexed slightly. “That okay?”


  “Good,” she murmured. “I wanted to be close. Yes.”

  He thought she might be crying, felt something like a shiver go through her. “Babe, is it all right?”

  She couldn’t lie about this. The dryness was hurting, and she could tell that it was making him tender. “I’m just still adjusting,” she murmured.

  He gently disengaged, turning so that she lay down at his side, and he kissed her cheek, her neck, her breasts. The whole thing felt labored now, forced. Her nipples were soft, and when he licked them she moved to bring him up to her lips. He stopped. “Maybe we should just go get a few things for the house.” Irritation sounded in his voice despite his resolve not to show it.

  “No,” she said. “Come on. I’m sorry.”

  So he rose and came over, and she lifted her legs and felt him push against all the sore places along the backs of her thighs and inside her, too. She said his name and moved to help him, and he came.

  “I can keep going,” he said, still moving, though it stung him, too, now, a little.

  “No, darling. It’s fine. I think it’s just that it’s getting near my period.”

  He pulled out of her and turned over, and took her hand, sighing. “It was beautiful. Beautiful.” He seemed happy, lying there.

  They spent the day buying things for the house—a few pictures, some tableware, place mats, wineglasses, two chairs and a sofa that would be delivered, a duvet and comforter, sheets and pillowcases and towels, four one-gallon cans of off-white paint. They stopped at the Michaels store, and she bought watercolors in tubes and some new paper and brushes. Together they visited two antiques stores, and she picked a group of photos from one bin. There was one face in particular—that of a woman with soft rounded features, lovely skin, from 1921, and she looked to be in her late thirties or early forties. She had the saddest eyes. It was an old color photograph, and the color had faded to a yellowish tinge, and Natasha wanted to capture it exactly. The image had sunk into her as she picked it out of the others in the bin, most of which were sepia photographs of the many occupants of a large house. A group portrait showed them all on some sunny summer day, ranged across the veranda and the steps in front of the house, a place that, from the note on the back of the photograph, was no longer there. The woman of the color photograph that Natasha wanted to paint was at the very end of the veranda, younger, holding a child. Faulk, looking at that picture, pointed to the child and said, “Think of it. That baby, if it’s still alive, is more than eighty years old, now.”

  “This is the same woman.” Natasha held up the color photo.

  “Wonder what’s broken her.”

  “Don’t be glib.”

  “I mean that entirely, from my heart.”

  She kissed him and felt as though she had harmed him somehow. “I’m sorry. Of course you do, my love.” She was near crying.

  He saw this and busied himself gathering all the photographs from the bin and putting them in a manila envelope. “Riches,” he told her.

  “Yes.” She brushed the hair back from her forehead and took the envelope from him, forcing a smile.

  They put everything in the house, and in midafternoon they met with Mr. Rainey to sign the lease. They sat talking with him about his daughters. Natasha felt warm and glad of him, this quiet and benevolent old man with his watery eyes and stern-looking eyebrows and his obvious loneliness. He wanted to extend the appointment, insisted on walking through the house with them one more time.

  When he had driven away, they stood in the mostly empty living room with the boxes stacked haphazardly around them and looked at everything.

  “Now what,” said Faulk.

  “I guess let’s put away what we can.”

  They had dinner with Iris—the leftover beef—and then went back to his apartment for the night. He waited for some sign from her about lovemaking, and when she gave none, he let it go. She sensed this but could not bring herself to do anything about it. She was still very tired, and sore, and she wanted sleep, and anyway it was true that her period would start soon enough. They lay talking softly about the day, and about Mr. Rainey and his nine grandsons. It was just the sort of back-and-forth observing that people do in circumstances where there are certain subjects that cannot be brought up. To Faulk, it felt false; but he was certain that he would be bullying her if he mentioned it. So he went along, craving contact with her, aching with desire, but wanting, too, not to think so much of his needs. She grew drowsy, trusting him, nestling close. They went to sleep like this.

  4

  In the middle of the night she woke with a start and thought she was still in Jamaica. The realization that she wasn’t filled her with relief so great that she shuddered pleasurably, pulling the blanket tight over her shoulder. He stirred, then settled back. She moved closer and had the sensation of trying to live down a betrayal of him. She knew rationally that this was not so, that even in those few despairing, drunken, exhausted moments on the beach in Jamaica, feeling afraid and sorry for herself and for the other, too, and allowing him to kiss her—even then there was no real betrayal. It was a thing born of the anxiety and distraction of the moment and it had ended there; she had ended it, stopped it. Stopped that. What happened later was ruthless force, nothing she could help because finally it wasn’t within the bounds of ordinary human relations to think anyone would do such a thing. Yet lying wakeful in the dark, hearing another train haul its moan across the night, she felt it all as something guilty to hide from him, and once more it was as though he were the one who was so much younger.

  No sleep.

  The train was gone, and she heard the continual high-pitched ruckus of the insects in the trees, a sound so constant that you almost ceased to notice it. And then you did. It was such a noisy place at night, Memphis. You did not hear the thrum of the city; you heard the insects, and the train in the night, fading, giving way again to the insects.

  She turned onto her other side, facing away from him, and attempted not to allow anything into her mind but the calming hours of the day before with Iris, the being together again with her husband-to-be. She was back in the world. She had come home and could have a life now and be happy. She told herself that she was happy. He mumbled something unintelligible, and then said, clearly, “No.”

  It startled her. “Honey?”

  He turned, put his arm over her hip, said “Darling,” fidgeted for a moment, and grew still. She heard only the soft breathing of sleep. She lay there and drifted, dreaming that everything was fine, and she was fine and she could let her mind wander, like a person without anything to hide and no distressing memories.

  In the morning he was up first. She heard him moving around in the small kitchen, and the aroma of coffee came to her. She got out of the bed and into a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and strode to him across the spare, monklike cell of the living room.

  The kitchen was very small: refrigerator at one end, small sink and counter across from an oven and a stove, and a table not much bigger than a TV tray, with two hard-back chairs. One window above the sink looked out on leafy shade. The sun was bright beyond the leaves. He was sitting at the small table, reading the newspaper and drinking coffee. His night had been a blankness, restful and deep, and when he woke, and got carefully out of the bed so as not to wake her, he received a sweet intimation of how it would be when they had already been married for months or years, and the chaos and terror, the war, whatever this was, had receded into the past.

  “Didn’t want to wake you,” he said now. “You were sleeping so well.”

  “What time is it.”

  “After ten.”

  “I did sleep. But I woke up and thought I was still in Jamaica. Then I was awake for a long time.”

  “What happened in Jamaica?” he said suddenly.

  She could say nothing for a moment. “I—you know. I was stranded, and I couldn’t get through to you. I thought you were dead.” The tears came to her eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he told her. “But
we’re safe. It’s over now. We’re home. Together.”

  “Yes.” She ran the back of one hand across her cheek.

  “Let’s just concentrate on each other,” he said. “Let’s try to forget it a little, and stop dwelling on it all the time.”

  “I’m not dwelling on it.”

  “I am, a little. Let’s not. I wasn’t—I didn’t mean just you.” As he spoke the words, he believed them, even as part of him recoiled at the falsity of it: he had indeed been talking only about her.

  “I want to never talk about it or think about it ever again,” she said.

  “All right.”

  He stood to pour her some coffee and saw out of the corner of his eye that she had picked up the paper. Something in him wanted her not to look at it, not to see the horrors there. But then he decided to stop worrying so much about her reactions; she was a grown woman.

  “They think it might be as many as six thousand people,” she said, settling into the chair.

  “God.”

  He set the coffeepot back in its place on the stove.

  “You talked in your sleep,” she said.

  “What did I say?”

  “You said ‘No.’ It was like you were giving orders to someone.”

  “I can’t imagine who.”

  “You do that. Talk in your sleep.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It felt like the sweetest discovery the first time I noticed it.”

  “You’re so sweet.” He put the cup of coffee down for her and sat across the table. They said nothing for a moment. She sipped the coffee. He saw the frown of concentration in her features. “The fires are still burning,” he said. “And—and apparently one Saudi didn’t get on board one of the flights and took a train west.”

  She did not look up.

  “Imagine,” he said. “Nineteen men committing suicide. Planning it and then carrying it out. For murder. Twenty people committed to it, and one decided it wasn’t something he would do.”

  “They haven’t found him? The other one?”

  “Guess not. And there may be others. If you can get nineteen, I guess you can get others.”