Richard Bausch - Before, During, After

He endeavored to concentrate on the ride, the streets and sporadic lights sweeping across the windows. He thought of Natasha in Jamaica. He looked at the night outside the car window, trying to picture her warm and asleep. And there her image was, clear and true, and his heart ached.

“Washington is your home?” the young man said suddenly.

Startled by the sound of the voice, Faulk took a few seconds, then said, “No.”

“You’re visiting.”

“Yes.”

“I have lived here twelve years.”

He searched his mind for something neutral to say.

The other spoke first. “Twelve years. I love America.”

“Me, too.”

“I’m a citizen, and some men wanted to beat me up today. Me. An American. They wanted to take my life.”

“Sorry to hear that.”

The young man seemed about to cry. “I’m not a Muslim.” He was looking in the rearview mirror, waiting for Faulk to respond.

“Well, in any case you’re not a terrorist—”

“My family — they — we’re Palestinian Christians, and I’ve lived twelve years in this city, and I’m an American citizen.”

“It’s been a bad day for everybody. Some people don’t know how to handle it.”

“They wanted to do me harm. For the way I look. An American citizen.”

“Hysteria.” Faulk shook his head at the inadequacy of his own expression, staring out at the city in the sparkling dark, the houses set back from the street with their warm lights and open windows. He saw some people sitting on a porch in the light from a doorway.

“My driver friends, they helped. They protected me.”

He did not want to talk now. He let a moment pass, watched the traffic coming the other way. Out the window to his left was Dupont Circle, with its little knots of people smoking and talking and drinking. He saw litter on the grass under a tree with a broken branch drooping onto the sidewalk. The streets feeding into the circle were full of glittery light. All the cafés and bars were closed, but there were people on the sidewalks, standing in the false brightness, talking. He saw two women embracing. The cabbie had grown quiet, and now Faulk worried that there was something hurtful about not taking the man’s part more.

He said, “People get scared and it makes them stupid.”

But the cabbie drove on quietly, having expressed his outrage. Someone called on the dispatch, and he spoke in another language into the little microphone. Then he turned his music up.

The rest of the ride was silent, but for the low music and the occasional sputter on the dispatch speaker. Faulk looked at the streets of his second home, and at the back of the cabbie’s head.

When they pulled up in front of Aunt Clara’s house, the cabbie tipped his cap back on his forehead and said, “You’re a kind person.” Then he smiled — there was something dimly hangdog about it.

Faulk paid him, smiling, and nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “You, too. Keep the change.” He got out of the car, pulling his bag, and pushed the door shut with his hip. It didn’t close all the way. Putting the bag down, he opened the door and slammed it, then leaned down and waved. The taxi pulled away. Michael Faulk watched it go down to the end of the street and turn, on out of sight. The bag had never felt heavier. He strode across to the porch and up the steps to the door. Aunt Clara opened it and pushed the screen toward him. She was in her nightgown. “God,” she said. “You scared me to death.”

“I’ve never been on a longer ride.”

“It’s three-thirty in the morning.”

He put the bag down in the living room. She came to him and put her hands on his shoulders. “You all right?”

“Have you spoken to Natasha?”

“The lines are all jammed from here out of the country. I tried. Believe me.”

“I’ve got to call Iris.”

“I spoke to her. She knows you’re all right. She had another little fall. But she’s all right, she says. The hurt knee was unscathed. That’s how she put it.”

“She wouldn’t say anything if it wasn’t unscathed.”

“Well, she says she’s fine. She doesn’t sound fine, I have to say. But she says she is. And who can be fine after a day like this. What am I talking about?”

“I’m not thinking straight, either,” Faulk said to her.

“Greta’s upstairs in her old room. Her hubby’s in meetings or something with Congress and Senate people.”

Faulk nodded and sighed, and felt his exhaustion like a form of failure.

“Somebody said the Pennsylvania one was headed for the Capitol Building or the White House.”

“Jesus.”

“Can I fix you something to eat or drink?”

“I think I just want a glass of water.”

They went together into the kitchen, and she put ice in a glass and poured the water. “Jack went to bed at nine. He hasn’t been feeling all that well. He’s been fighting the first cold of the year. And then this business has really upset him.”

“Still can’t quite believe it,” he told her. “The whole thing.”

“Nobody can believe it. Everybody’s in shock.”

Then Jack was there, leaning on the frame of the doorway. “I’m feeling all right,” he said. You could hear the congestion in his voice. “Don’t get up, son,” he said as Faulk started to rise. He shuffled over to the refrigerator and got a beer. “Do you believe this shit?”

“That’s exactly what my father said,” Faulk told him.

“We were just saying—” said Clara.

“I heard you.” Jack opened the beer. “And I still end up saying: do you believe this shit?”

“I remember being so appalled at the bombing there in ’93. At what they were trying to do.”

“The cabbie who brought me here got attacked this morning,” Faulk told them. “Poor guy only looks the part. A Palestinian Christian, for God’s sake.”

“What will happen next, I wonder,” Clara said. “I mean we’re at war with somebody . Maybe the whole rest of the world.”

Greta came to the doorway now, wrapped in a light blue robe, looking at each of them. She walked over and hugged Faulk. “Hello, Cuz.”

“Hi.”

She looked at Jack. “Can I have a little of that in a glass?”

Jack got a glass out of the cabinet and poured some of the beer. Greta sat down across from Faulk. “I can’t do this at home unless there’s a big gathering.” She shook her head and smiled, turning to Faulk. “Have you got in touch with Natasha? And congratulations, by the way.”

“Thanks. And no.”

“Imagine. Stranded in paradise.”

“How are you?”

“We were sitting outside eating breakfast and watching the rowing crews on the river. We heard the explosion. It shook the water glasses on the table. And then we saw the smoke. Tom knew immediately it was a plane.”

Jack stood leaning on the stove and drank the beer. He said, “I heard tonight on the news that the bastard who did it, the mastermind, is a guest of the Taliban. In Afghanistan.”

“I can’t remember the name,” Faulk said.

Greta said the name. “Tom’s been talking about him for years.”

“Clinton tried to get him,” Jack put in. “A goddamned rich kid from Saudi Arabia. Big oil family.”

“So we’re gonna be at war with Afghanistan?”

“Looks like it.”

They were silent for a few moments.

“I’d like to see us rebuild both towers even taller than before,” Jack said. “And with both buildings culminating in the shape of a fist with the middle finger raised, facing east.”

“Jack,” Clara said. But she smiled.

“Tom’s afraid they might use this as an excuse to go after Iraq.”

“That’s alarmist,” said Clara. “Isn’t it?”