Richard Bausch - Before, During, After

“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.