Before, During, After

by Richard Bausch

  This was the third time he had said exactly that. Faulk looked at Iris, who looked back at him with a helpless frown. Natasha had eaten one plate and then taken seconds, surprised at her own appetite. She stood and began taking away the dishes. Iris helped her. They also exchanged glances. Iris shook her head.

  “Guess I’ll wait to tell him about the baby,” Natasha told her.

  “Well, till we’re gone, anyway.”

  She went on clearing the table and taking the empty wine bottles. Faulk saw the sour, down-turning expression around her mouth and had the thought that a little hospitality toward Adams was not too much to ask; that it wouldn’t cost her so much to be a little forbearing. He did not examine the feeling, though some part of him was vaguely aware of the resentment in it. Adams was loud, drunk, and dull as he tried once more to describe all the processes of thought that had led him to decide about moving home. And then he was rattling on again about New York and the attacks. “Nobody knew how go about an’thing.” The white beard was ruffled now and wine-stained around the mouth and down to the chin.

  “I felt like a refugee in a war,” Faulk said to him.

  “Tha’s right.”

  “Right.”

  “We all were. An’ strange things. Poor dumb guy—cheat’n on ez wife. S’posed to be at the office. Calls’er, tells’er he’s at work. Eighty-sixth floor. Building’s already c’lapsed. Frien’ amine’s uncle, died that morning, in’ a hosp-eh’tal. Natur’l causes.”

  The two women cleared everything away and started doing the dishes. Natasha had to go sit down, and she moved past the men to get into the living room. Her grandmother finished the dishes, standing against the sink with the cane resting on it at her side. Then she made a cup of coffee and went in to where Natasha was.

  “Awf’l,” Liam Adams said, as if proclaiming something to a crowd. “So many refugees.”

  “All of us.” Faulk was drunk, and did not quite know how drunk, and now he felt that he had made a wonderful new friend. He went into the refrigerator and found a half-gallon bottle of Pinot Grigio that his wife had just brought home from the grocery store. He opened it. “Mind if we switch to white?”

  “Love th’ whites.”

  He poured both glasses full, ignoring the little pocket of red in each one. The white wine was therefore faintly tinted pink. They drank, now, for some reason, with excessive politeness, setting the glasses down with great care.

  Natasha murmured to her grandmother, “Did he drive to your house?”

  Iris nodded. “He had a glass of wine at my house before we came over here.”

  “What will you do?”

  “Maybe he’ll stay here.”

  “Oh, please, no. Where would we put him?”

  Faulk sat with the side of his head resting against his own palm, that elbow on the table, looking into the living room where the two women were seated side by side on the couch, talking in low tones. Adams was holding forth. “There’s no hope f’rus win this one.” He belched low, tucking his chin, the stained white beard. “R’lidgus wars. Las’ one las-ed five hun’ed years. No fight for freed’m anymore. Bullshit.” He lifted his glass, which was now empty, and seeing this, he reached for the bottle. As he poured he went on. “Fight for oil. Tha’s what th’ fuck it is. Scuse me.” He belched. “Oil. Tha’s all.”

  “Right,” Faulk told him, though now in the back of his mind he was beginning to worry about where this night would end. Adams was in far worse shape.

  “Th’ buildings—terr’bull. Jus’ gone. I din’ see ’em come down.” He started crying now, without sound, sitting there slumped back in the chair, looking at nothing. “Both of ’em. Gone. People dyin’ of anthrax. Boys dyin’ oveh there.”

  “It’s late,” Faulk said, because nothing else came to mind.

  Adams sat forward, and when he spoke now his voice was curiously less garbled sounding, the words more slowly pronounced, though plainly it was all coming from what he’d had to drink. “I don’t really handle”—again he belched—“I’m … I’ve not been so good at be’en by myself. You know?”

  “Yes,” Faulk said.

  “You know?”

  “I know.”

  “You know.”

  “Yes.”

  “Since a long time, really.”

  Faulk looked into the living room and saw that Iris and Natasha had gone from there.

  “You know?” Adams said.

  “Yes, I do know.”

  “Wife’s gone five years.”

  “Sorry.”

  “Five years.”

  Faulk was aware that sympathy was required but was unable to feel anything like it.

  “B’cause it’s a man’s right,” Adams went on.

  “I see.”

  “A man’s right.” He appeared to have settled some conflict in his thoughts.

  “Come on,” Faulk said, rising. “Let’s go for a walk.”

  In the small bedroom, the women sat on the bed and listened to them struggle out the door, Adams still talking.

  “Oh, Christ. No,” Natasha said to her grandmother. “Not tonight.”

  “Do you want me to stay?”

  “I’m going to bed.”

  “Don’t be too discouraged. They’re entitled—it’s been awful for them, I’m sure.”

  “Poor babies.”

  “Hey.”

  “Well?”

  “Give ’em a break, honey. Come on.”

  Natasha patted her grandmother’s thick-boned wrists.

  “You must be exhausted,” Iris said to her. “Can I tuck you in?”

  “I have to take a shower.”

  She looked down. “Of course. Well.”

  “I won’t take long.”

  She smiled.

  In the shower, Natasha got the water as hot as it would go and stood there. For a while she didn’t even use the soap. She thought of being a mother, and of the child she was carrying, imagining a little girl. Someone to grow up and live in the world. She saw again the burning towers. She saw the starry quiet sky in Jamaica, and the pictures of suffering and sorrow and confusion, and she made a forlorn, hopeless effort to shut it all, all thought, away. Finally she turned the water off and dried herself and went out to the bedroom where Iris, hearing her come, had stood and with one hand pulled the blankets back. Quickly Natasha got into her nightgown and crawled into the bed, and Iris pulled the blanket up over her shoulder, then leaned down and kissed her cheek. Iris smelled of the wine and of her perfume. Her hair was strawlike, but somehow soft, too.

  “My sweet girl,” the old woman said. “I’m so proud of you.”

  “Sorry about today,” Natasha said.

  “Today was lovely.”

  “I was short with you.”

  “Stop it.”

  “What do you think they’ll do?”

  “They might end up in jail if they make enough noise.”

  “They wouldn’t—they wouldn’t get into his car … Mr. Adams’s car.”

  “I don’t think they’ll go that far. But I’ll go see. You rest. You want the light out?”

  “No. I’ll read.”

  “Good night.” Iris kissed her again, then made her way out on the cane.

  Alone, Natasha rolled to her side in the bed and closed her eyes, feeling suddenly almost groggy. She remembered that she was pregnant. She sat up, arranging herself in the bed with pillows behind her back, and opened a book to read, a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln. But she kept reading the same sentence, over and over. The words would not register in her mind.

  9

  Adams sat down on the lawn in front of Iris’s house, out of breath, claiming that he was going to be sick. It had taken them some time to get this far, struggling along, Adams’s arm over Faulk’s neck, and Faulk mostly having to carry him, holding on to his wrist, hauling him when he dragged his feet. The night was shrouded by low clouds, and the air had become damp. The wetness of the grass made a dark place on the seat of the older
man’s white pants where he sat. “Neveh drink like this,” he got out.

  “Oh,” Faulk, who was standing over him, said. “I do.” He laughed and looked up at the bulges of darker shapes in the low heavy clouds. He wondered why some men slurred so when they got drunk, as if the alcohol went to their tongues. He himself was proud that the times when he had gone over the line had not been so obvious to people; he could always carry it. “Gonna rain,” he said to Adams.

  Adams was silent.

  “How long did you say you were married?”

  “Twent’ years”—he made a sweeping gesture with his other arm, the one that was not holding him up—“gone.”

  “I think you told me that.”

  “You’re newl’wed.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Lucky guy, huh. Your age.”

  “You got somewhere—can I get you a cab?”

  “She’s veh’ pretty. Don’t think she likes me.”

  “She’s the nervous type.” Faulk was surprised to hear the words come from his lips. The fact of it had a sobering effect.

  Adams lay back on the grass and put one arm over his face.

  Faulk had thought that they might just walk it off, but now the other man was either asleep or passed out. And here was Iris, driving up in her Taurus that had only twelve thousand miles on it. She parked along the curb where they were and got out with her cane.

  For a space the two of them just stood looking at each other, Iris over the roof of her car, and Faulk standing next to the unconscious Liam Adams.

  “He can’t stay there,” Iris said.

  “Thought we’d just walk it off,” said Faulk.

  “Yeah. Well.” Neither of them moved.

  “Is Natasha—”

  “She went to bed.”

  Adams spoke from the ground. “I b’lieve I’m be sick.”

  “Sit up,” Faulk told him. “Sit up. You’ll choke to death, for God’s sake.”

  Silence.

  Iris came around the car, slowly, using the cane. She was in some discomfort. He put his hand out. “No,” she said.

  Adams began to snore.

  “How cold will it get tonight?” Iris asked.

  “Don’t know. Cool enough right now.”

  “I’ll call a cab. He can stay here until it arrives, and then I’ll wake him.”

  “He’ll be all right laying here?”

  “I can have a cab here in fifteen, twenty minutes. He won’t freeze to death in twenty minutes. It must be sixty-something, right?”

  Faulk looked at the sky and then back at her.

  “Course, getting the cabbie to let him get into his cab. That’s another story. Especially if he gets sick.”

  There was a pause, where they seemed to be thinking about it.

  “Ridiculous,” she said. “You know? The two of you.”

  “He seemed bent on getting plowed.”

  “He wasn’t alone.”

  Faulk waited for her to say more.

  “You better get on home. I think your wife’s waiting up to tell you something. Something important. And son—” She stopped.

  “Yeah?”

  “I hope you’ll be up to it.”

  He started down the walk.

  “You want a ride?” she called.

  He halted and turned. “I’ll walk.” Then he indicated Adams lying in his stupor on the grass. “You’ve got that to deal with.”

  “Good night, son. Remember.”

  “Good night.” He went carefully on, concentrating. He took each step as if balanced on a ledge, but he did not sway or wobble. At the end of the street he turned and looked back and saw her still standing over Adams. She raised one hand to wave. He waved back. He thought of all the years she raised Natasha alone, grieving the loss of her daughter and son-in-law, no help. Just now, the history seemed an element of the woman’s strangeness.

  And then, thinking about Iris, he felt suddenly as if the difficulty inside his own marriage was in some way connected to the history: a girl raised by a woman keeping so much of her inner life to herself.

  He walked up the street, full of sudden foreboding, feeling precarious, susceptible, even frail, resolving to face his anxiety and tolerate everything, determined to be kind, and not ask for more than his wife, his beloved wife, for whatever reason or reasons, could give. Probably she had done something in Jamaica that she herself considered a betrayal of him. In any case, it would have come from her belief that he, Faulk, had died in New York. So he would find a way to forgive whatever it was and go on. He faltered, nearly fell at the corner, and continued walking, overcorrecting, but then setting himself straight, being cautious with each stride, considering his own magnanimousness. Then, through the fog of what he had drunk, he saw it for what it was and felt foolish and penitent.

  Lord, send my roots rain.

  No. It seemed that this was all gone from him, now. The sky was only a limitless emptiness. He shook himself, stopped, and raised his fists, and then simply let his hands come back to his chest, as if praying and waiting for someone to come to him. Far off, the sound of a speeding car rose, the tires squealing.

  I have believed my whole life. Help thou my unbelief.

  At the house, all the lights were still on. He entered quietly and stepped into the kitchen. There was almost half of the big bottle of Pinot Grigio left, sitting in the middle of the counter. He had a glass of water from the tap, then poured the wine into the water glass and drank it down, standing wavering in the light—bereft, marooned. All these weeks he had been wanting to know. And now, apparently and at last, when he wanted so desperately not to, he would know. The wine had increased the haze of his thoughts. He took more of it, then stumbled into the bedroom, where he found her sitting up, asleep, with the book open on her upraised knees. Gingerly he removed the book. She woke, raising one hand to her face.

  She was unaware of having been asleep.

  “Just me,” he said.

  “Oh.” She reached to embrace him, and he sat down and took her into his arms. For a little while, they simply sat there clinging to each other. The smell of the wine on him made her uneasy, and even so she kept her arms tight around him.

  “Iris says you’ve got something to tell me. You don’t have to tell me.”

  “We’ll talk—let’s talk tomorrow. You’ve had too much to drink.” She was fighting the shaking in her voice, feeling the muscles of his back, his shoulder blades, the solidness of him.

  He said, “You don’t have to say anything. I don’t care what happened in Jamaica.”

  “What?”

  “I don’t. I forgive you.”

  She paused, only a little. “You what?”

  “I do. Forgive you. Whatever you did in Jamaica.”

  “Oh, God,” she said. “This again. Jamaica again.”

  “You don’t have to tell me about it. In fact, I don’t want you to. I forgive you.”

  She sighed sadly. “Forgive me for what?”

  “I don’t even want to know who it was.”

  “Who it was.” Now she pushed at his shoulders, and when he sat back, she stared, frowning.

  He said, “You had something to tell me. If it’s about Jamaica, I don’t care about it. I forgive you for it—whatever it was. Okay? The whole world was coming down on you, and I don’t care about it anymore.”

  She said nothing. There was no change at all in her countenance.

  For her, something had moved at her heart, a grabbing sensation. She thought she might lose consciousness.

  “You thought I was dead,” he told her. “It could’ve been that you were drunk. You got into things with somebody or ran into someone—someone you knew from before—”

  She interrupted him. “What are you saying?”

  He said, “Listen to me.”

  “No,” she said. “What are you saying.”

  “I’m saying if someone you knew before—”

  “Someone I—”

  “I’m saying
I don’t care. We weren’t married yet. You’re human.”

  “I’m—”

  “It’s all right,” he said. “Please.”

  “But what’s all right. What’re you talking about. Say it to me, Michael.”

  Now he spoke in an overly patient, almost-preening voice: “I’m saying—and I think you know quite well what I’m referring to, and I want you to be honest with me about it at last—that if you ran into someone, you know? Someone you used to be with, one of the others, an old lover, or someone completely new”—and with this, his voice took on the tone of an inquisitor, a lawyer prosecuting a case before a judge—“I want you to know that you don’t have to tell me anything about it, because I do, I forgive you. All right? I understand and I forgive you. Whatever it was.”

  “You …” she began. But then she was silent. Glaring at him.

  “I mean we’re adults. We can work all this out.”

  “Work what out,” she sobbed. “No. You tell me.”

  “Aren’t you listening? I don’t care who you ran into in Jamaica. I don’t care who you had sex with in Jamaica. There. Is that clear enough? Do you get it now?”

  “Oh.” She pushed away from him, and as he stood she was out of the bed and around him, heading to the bathroom. She closed and locked the door. It was as if she were back there on the island, with a door between her and a stranger.

  “Natasha?” he said on the other side. “I don’t understand. I’m telling you it’s all right. I’m letting go of it. It was the situation. We’ll go on.”

  She took a breath, pressed the flats of her hands against the cool wood surface. “I want you to leave me alone now. Please. Just—leave me alone.” And she was crying, sobbing. “We can talk in the morning. Please?”

  Silence.

  “Please go.”

  Fury rose in him, a hot needle traveling up his spine. So this was how he would be treated now. After the weeks of trying to look past all the signs of her failing love, and after reaching this decision to forgive her and go on, this was what he got for it, this—for his understanding and his care—this was what she repaid him with. He couldn’t speak, standing there shivering with rage.