But in that case she would have to tell him everything. She thought of trying to explain what it was like there, on that beach, and on those wasted nights in Adams Morgan, all that. For the first time, he looked sixteen years older, going on down the stairs, and she had a moment of knowing his age difference as difference: his different life, and all the years he had as a priest, and his young years and the seminary.
Turning as he went out of sight, she stopped and held on to the wall for a moment.
No. The thing was to live it down, live past it, find a way to forget it ever happened. Her first decision had been right. She told herself that things were slowly getting better, and she must only keep struggling to recover in this incremental way the ease and loveliness she had known with him. Except that now there was this new worry, of what Constance had told her. All the anxiety kept folding in and out of itself, and she wished with all her heart that Constance had not come.
She took a fast shower, dressed, and returned to the kitchen. Faulk was sitting in the living room drinking coffee and reading the newspaper. Iris had gone out to cut flowers. On the table in the kitchen were two bundles of chrysanthemums that she had already cut, along with the bouquet from the Norlands.
“Dad and Trixie went shopping,” Faulk said. “I think he was just looking for an excuse to get away.”
She sat next to him and took his hand. “Were things okay this morning?” she said.
“No mention of anything. Pure joviality like nothing was said at all.”
“Maybe he’s embarrassed.”
“He’s not blessed with that capacity, believe me.”
She kissed him. “You smell like lemons.”
“Probably the flowers,” he said. “It looks like a funeral parlor in here.” He put the paper aside and turned to kiss her. It was a long kiss, and she worked to empty her mind of everything else.
For him, as they broke apart and she went about tidying the room, things were freighted with what he feared and suspected about her. He watched the frenetic way she moved getting the room ready, and he saw the pale cast of her skin and the way she seemed to be glancing at him, as if to gauge his mood.
7
Iris had planned the party as soon as she knew the date of the wedding. She hired a catering service that sent two young Mexican men who were very efficient and very quiet. They went about their business, setting out plates of vegetables and cheese and chicken wings, and they sliced a big ham. Iris had ordered five bottles of red wine and three bottles of white and a case of beer, which, along with the white wine, they put into a galvanized tub of ice. They placed all the food on a long folding table with a white linen cloth over it. Iris had them put the tub of white wine and beer on the back porch and the red wine in the kitchen, with a corkscrew and a bottle opener.
“We’ll let people help themselves,” she said to the two caterers, who had marginal understanding of English. Natasha drank coffee, watching her grandmother get everything ready. Iris would not let her help.
“Done,” she said to the two young men. “Good. Now you can relax.”
The darker of the two looked at her with comical puzzlement, half smiling. The other touched his shoulder and repeated the word: “Done.” Then: “Relájete.”
Iris went on into the other room using her cane and moving with obvious discomfort. When Natasha offered to help with the final touches, she smiled and waved away the thought, and she was working on the room right up until time for the party, fussing and rearranging things—she had Faulk begin putting chairs around from the kitchen and then moved a couple of them herself, using the backs as braces. Then she took more flowers she had cut from the garden in front of the house and trimmed the ends of them and placed them in vases around the room. Faulk went upstairs and changed clothes, and Natasha followed.
They said very little, moving around in the room and being quietly considerate of each other. “Should I put on a tie?” he said.
“No.”
“Sure? Leander’ll wear one, I can guarantee it.”
Clara and Jack arrived first, bringing Constance. They had just met at the Holiday Inn, and they were already in animated discussion of the news, mostly about the anthrax, Jack expressing worries about biological agents and the new terrorism of mass suicide. Most doctors, he was saying, wouldn’t even recognize the symptoms of exposure to anthrax early enough to help. He brought up the use of mustard gas in World War I. “Everybody’s been working on that kind of thing,” he said. “Chemical agents and biological agents like anthrax. Germs and chemicals. All the big boys: us, the Russians, the British, the Chinese. We’re gonna see that kind of thing again. Refined and more efficient than it was back in the trenches. It’ll be in grocery stores and subways and schools. Count on it.”
Iris offered her hand to Constance. “I don’t think we’ve met.”
Natasha hurried to introduce everyone while Jack apologized about his choice of subject matter. Marsha Trunan drove up shortly afterward, as did Leander and Trixie. Leander had bought a bottle of George Dickel. Natasha performed the introductions, and everyone gathered in the living room. There were remarks on the food and the fine weather and the promise of a sunny day for the wedding, and Constance made friendly observations about the art on the walls, Iris’s nice house. Faulk stood in the entrance of the kitchen with a glass of cold beer. Leander and Trixie were drinking the bourbon, and the old man asked Natasha if she wanted some of it. Without thinking, she said, “Sure.”
Iris talked about plans for the ceremony, set for three o’clock tomorrow at a little place called Lucy Wedding Chapel, in Millington. A simple civil ceremony, though it would be presided over by a priest. Faulk explained that this was a matter of principle for him, and Natasha, squeezing his arm above the elbow, said, “It’s me. I’m the one who doesn’t want the wedding in a church.”
Faulk looked at the faces and resisted the urge—simply for the sake of clarity—to launch into an explanation about having left the priesthood.
But then, almost as if by some inevitable shift in mood, the talk returned to the war and the attacks. People began trading stories about how it was for them. Clara told of finding out about the Pentagon while taking a walk through her neighborhood. She got to the top of the hill near Wisconsin Avenue and saw the smoke rising over in the direction of the river. The smoke went high into the sky, and she heard the sirens and knew that something awful had happened.
She asked Faulk to tell about his journey, and he obliged, watching Natasha gaze at him as he did so and feeling as though he ought to apologize for the fact that she had to hear it all repeated.
She nodded at him, as if to encourage him to continue, and took a sip of the bourbon. It tasted sweeter than she liked just now. Remembering the turmoil of the crowded bar in Jamaica, she put the glass down on the coffee table. Faulk went on about the terrible look of the skyline in New York as the train headed away from it, and she stepped past him into the kitchen, got a wineglass, and poured red wine. Marsha Trunan, having followed her, poured more for herself. The caterers were there apparently having some sort of argument, muttering hotly in Spanish, the one leaning on the frame of the back door and the other standing out on the stoop. The one on the stoop had lit a cigarette and was blowing the smoke into the dimness.
Natasha had a long slow sip of the wine.
“Wonder what those two are talking about,” Marsha said. “Only subject of the day, right?”
“Did you drive out?” Natasha asked. “That looked like your car you pulled up in.”
“I did. I’ve moved back for good. You knew that, right? I’m middle-of-the-country from now on. You know where I worked back there. Imagine. I come up out of the metro station at Crystal City on my way to the office like every day of the last five years, and there’s the fucking Pentagon burning. And I smelled jet fuel. I’m sure of it.”
“You knew right away, then?”
“Well, the airport’s so close, right. So yeah, I smelled the fue
l and knew instantly it was a plane. I mean what could it be but a plane? Remember the one back in ’81 that crashed into the Fourteenth Street Bridge?”
“I was twelve and thought the world was going to end every day anyway because Reagan had just taken office—nuclear cowboy, Iris and her friends called him. So, yes. Yes, I remember it. Iris and I watched it on television.”
“Didn’t everybody.”
Presently, Marsha said, “So tell me about Jamaica.”
Natasha turned quickly to her. “What do you mean?”
“Excuse me?”
They stood there.
“It’s a pretty straightforward question, Natasha. I ask it and then you answer, you know, Great. Or Okay, or Really shitty. Right?”
“Well, but you knew we were stranded—what did Constance say about it?”
The other’s voice took on the tone of another question. “Um, well, she said you were stranded?” Then: “Jesus, kid. You want to tell me what’s going on with you? I just asked how it was in Jamaica. You were there almost two weeks before you got stranded, right?”
“It was good for the two weeks. There’s nothing else to tell. I mean, I—we got stuck there. We were having a really good time until it happened.” She swallowed; it was a gulp. And with a rush of buried wrath at her continuing disquiet, she took another long drink of the wine.
“You turned green when you sipped that bourbon, and just now you turned the same color when I asked you about Jamaica.”
She managed a shrug. “I had too much bourbon in Jamaica the day it happened, okay? It made me sick. All of it. The whole thing, and the whiskey.”
“You liked bourbon so much. Is the love affair over?”
Natasha stared.
“You and bourbon are done with each other.”
“Okay. Yes.”
“Did you think I was talking about Mackenzie?”
“I knew what you were talking about. Mackenzie. For God’s sake, Marsha.”
“Well, why’re you so fucking nervous?”
She said nothing.
“I was talking to Constance, and she said you were really nervous. Scared, I think is what she said. Scared. I mean you’re living a dream, right? What’s to be afraid of?”
“Oh, well, Marsha, you know—obviously I’m in a panic. And it’s so sweet having a person like Constance worrying about me and putting her own interpretation on everything and then reporting it to the whole fucking civilized world like Reuters news service.”
“Hey, honey. Hey. Hey.”
She swallowed more of the wine.
“You didn’t actually have much fun together on that trip, did you.”
She took another long drink.
“Go easy, kiddo. You don’t want to be hungover on your wedding day.”
“Oh, you too? You’re going to worry about me, too?”
Marsha took her own long sip. “I’m glad I didn’t go with you guys. I think I’d’ve gone batshit stuck like that. Even in a place like Jamaica.”
Faulk saw them talking, and even as he himself continued with his story, the fact registered at the back of his mind that there were a large number of associations and incidents in Natasha’s life of which he had little or no knowledge. He went on telling about the little girl on the train who was going home with her father and who had seen the disaster close up from a highway in Virginia, but he wanted to go stand with Natasha. He looked at Constance, who was sipping a beer and listening to Leander talk about the role of religion in the world’s violence. Constance had been there, in Jamaica. Faulk determined that he would speak to her about it. He stood and moved across the room in her direction, but then Andrew Clenon arrived.
Because Clenon was a priest, the others assumed he was the one who would perform the ceremony, and so Faulk took him around the room introducing him as the best man. “We were in seminary together.”
Leander shook Clenon’s hand and smiled at him warmly. “Another priest,” he said, having his own little joke.
“Our numbers seem to be dwindling in some quarters,” Clenon said.
Faulk guided him across the room to the kitchen, where Natasha and Marsha Trunan were still standing. Constance had joined them, with Clara and Jack. They were pouring more wine—Saint-Estèphe—which Jack had bought for them and which Natasha had opened. Faulk stood with Constance in the entrance of the room, while Clenon exchanged pleasantries with Jack about the wine, and they watched Aunt Clara swirl it in her glass, making a sardonic show of being about to taste it. Everyone seemed lighthearted now, and Natasha’s smile was broad and lovely as she lifted her own glass to her lips.
Faulk leaned slightly toward Constance, as if to confide something. “You flew in from Maine?” he said, feigning interest.
“California,” she told him. “I have a house in Maine.”
“Natasha mentioned that. Guess that’s why I thought—”
“I may be selling it.”
“It was kind of you to give her that trip to Jamaica. Even if it worked out so badly.”
“Well, she was good company for me. You know.”
He saw the narrowing of her eyes, the color in her face. Her cheeks were blotchy now, and she sipped her wine without returning his gaze. “I can’t get her to talk about it much,” he said. “It’s still got some kind of hold on her emotions.”
“Well, wouldn’t it? It was so terrible being—being stranded like that. And—and thinking you’d been in one of the towers, you know. An awful time for her. I’m still having nightmares about it myself.”
“Were you together when you found out?”
“On the beach together, yes, like every morning. The two of us. Every morning we would go down to the beach. But you knew that. Anyway, we came in, and it was already going on.”
“She must’ve—you both must’ve felt so alone.”
A small silence followed. She glanced down at the wine in her glass. Then: “Yes. Exactly. All the Americans felt that. Being alone. I know I did. It was very strange.”
“Even when you were with someone.”
She stared.
“I mean you and Natasha were together and—and alone at the same time.”
“Yes.”
“The feeling of being alone.”
“I didn’t know where anyone was for a while. I’m afraid I got pretty drunk. A lot of people just went off the deep end. There was a man there—” She stopped, having apparently seen the change in his features.
“You were saying.”
“A man there with his wife who said he hadn’t had a drink in something like ten years. He announced that he was an alcoholic, and—and, well, he already smelled of it when he said it and he went on and drank himself silly. He fell off the wagon in a big way, and I’m afraid I helped him do it.”
Faulk waited, thinking there was more.
Her head tilted slightly to one side. “How does it feel to leave the priesthood after so many years?”
“I’d been wanting to leave for quite a while.”
She nodded, without quite seeming to take it in.
“So you lost track of Natasha, too, that day?”
“Everybody lost track of everybody that day.”
“And this man …” Faulk saw the glimmer of relief in her features as she realized what he had meant.
“Yes,” she said. “Stinking of it when I first saw him and he was claiming he hadn’t touched it in years.”
Natasha walked up to them and took Constance by the upper arm. “Please, let’s not have any talk about all that tonight. This is the night before my wedding.”
“I was telling him about Skinner,” said Constance as if to explain herself. Faulk considered her expression, the uneven color in her cheeks. “Poor Skinner,” she went on. “Married to the most awful woman. A harpy.”
Natasha shook her head, looking pleadingly at Faulk. “I don’t want to think about any of that now. Please?”
He gave her a light kiss on the cheek. “You’re abso
lutely right, my darling.” He smiled at Marsha Trunan, who had walked over and put one hand on Natasha’s back. The two of them chatted with Constance about Memphis, Natasha and Marsha the returning natives, and laughter and gaiety rose all around them. Faulk kept the smile, but he was full of darkness inside. He stood there while the three women went on to speak of Natasha’s and Marsha’s travels in Italy. He had lost the thread.
“Where was it,” Marsha was saying.
“That little gallery behind the Duomo,” said Natasha.
“Oh, that’s right. I never saw such a statue.”
“Which is that?” Faulk asked.
“Donatello’s Magdalen.”
“That, to my mind, is the greatest statue in the world,” he told them. “Did you notice how quiet it is around it? That statue shuts up everyone who walks into that room.” He felt pompous and stiff. But he couldn’t stop himself. “I think it’s much more impressive than the David.”
As the others took up the subject, Natasha moved closer to his side and put her arm around his middle. He took it as a signal that she wished for him to stop. But she nodded and smiled at him and seemed proud. Over the next few moments they were separately aware of the appearance they made: the center of attention; the happy couple. They did not acknowledge this, even to themselves. He struggled each moment to forget his suspicions while at the same time seeking to have them answered once and for all. She kept trying to wipe the shadows from her heart, drinking more of the wine and staying close to him.
The party went on, and Leander insisted that Trixie dance with him. Iris put music on, and they danced, and soon Marsha and Clenon were dancing, too, then Aunt Clara and Uncle Jack. The song was “Knock on Wood,” and Iris played it three times, loud. She was the only one who did not take a turn; she stood clapping her hands.
It looked like an effortlessly happy occasion.
But as things went on, Natasha could scarcely hold on to herself inside, for the way Faulk kept watching her, and she was growing panicky about what Constance might have said, or would say. She was afraid about Marsha Trunan, too, for that matter. They knew too much about her, even being ignorant of the one thing, details about her involvement with Mackenzie; and Constance unmistakably still believed what she believed.
Before, During, After Page 27
