Richard Bausch - Before, During, After

There was nothing at the apartment in town but a folding cot and two folded easels, leaning against the living room wall, so it was decided that Natasha and Faulk would stay with Iris, while Leander and Trix stayed at the house on Swan Ridge.

That first evening, they all went in Faulk’s car to Rendezvous for dinner. Trixie was so deferential to Leander that Faulk found it awkward to be around her, and her conversation seemed stilted, as if by some inner conviction that no one would listen to her. It was clear, though, that coming to Memphis for the wedding was her idea and that she had insisted on it. Faulk was grateful to her for the effort, and he tried hard to draw her out, but reticence was clearly in her nature.

The old man would begin to talk, or tell a story, and she would sit watching him, rapt, eyes wide.

Natasha stayed close to Iris, who had her cane with her and complained that the bad knee was giving her a little trouble. They all ate ribs and corn on the cob and drank cold beer in tall iced mugs, and when they walked out of the place, the foyer was packed with people waiting to be seated. They stood at a traffic light on the corner of Union and Third, and they could hear the uproar of Beale Street, three blocks north. It was a warm, cloudy night, and the various strains of music — drums and bass and wailing guitars and brass, and from somewhere an electric piano — went up to the low sky. It felt as though the whole block were a vast echo chamber.

“Do you want to go over there and have a look at it?” Faulk asked his father. “It’s really something, truly. Every warm night in Memphis.”

“Not tonight, Son. I’m tired. My foot hurts. This gout.”

They got into the car and drove back to High Point. Iris and Natasha got out at Iris’s, and Faulk drove the other two around to the Swan Ridge house.

“Let’s have a nightcap,” the old man said.

They went in and sat in the small newly painted living room with the dark picture window and had whiskey in shot glasses. Trixie threw hers back and then asked for a glass of water. “I wish I liked that stuff more,” she said. Faulk got the water for her, and she drank it down and lay on her side on the couch, head resting on one folded arm.

“Let me get you a pillow,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

Leander said, “She’ll be asleep in two minutes.”

“I’m listening,” she said.

“I should go on back to Iris’s.”

“Have another drink.”

Faulk poured more. They sat there quietly sipping it while Trixie began to snore. “Told you,” Leander said, smiling.

“Well, it’s a long drive from Little Rock.”

“Clara and Jack coming in the morning?”

Faulk nodded. “They’re driving, too. They stopped in Knoxville tonight.”

“You don’t mind if we sleep in tomorrow?”

“Of course not.”

“I miss your mother.”

Faulk looked over at the sleeping woman not ten feet away and then took a little more of the whiskey and said nothing.

“Funny thing,” Leander went on. “She wasn’t at all religious when I first met her. She’d thrown off the Catholic thing before we met, you know. She came from all of that and was in rebellion against it. Wild as hell. Parents were furious at her, of course. And she hardly spoke to them. Wild and beautiful. Nobody would’ve believed she would become so — churchy.”

Faulk sipped the whiskey and waited.

“Meaning no offense, there, bud.”

“No offense taken,” Faulk told him. “Bud.”

A moment later, the other said, “A man’s gotta do what a man’s gotta do.”

Faulk filled the little glasses, not looking at him. “I don’t have any idea what you’re talking about.”

“Talking about you.”

“Okay. I guess.”

“What do you think she’d say about you leaving the church?”

“I’m not leaving the church.”

“You know what I mean.”

“I don’t think it’s useful to guess such a thing.”

“She was a strange lady, that woman. And I do miss her.”

“Dad.”

“Well, I do. It wasn’t always misery and strife.”

“What did you think of the barbecue tonight?”

The old man looked at him. “This bothering you?”

“I don’t know what good it does.”

“What good is talking about a barbecue?”

“It’s refreshing to speak of pleasurable things. The barbecue was good. I like it dry, and I noticed you asked for it wet. How did you like the wet?”

“The barbecue was delicious. Wet and dry. I tasted both. Now, do you want to talk about the damn coleslaw?”

Faulk sipped the whiskey, and kept silent, watching him sip his.

“Or leaving the priesthood.”

“Neither, really.”

“You know Theo Ruhm was talking about coming out here for this.”

“That would be a happy thing. I felt so bad for him when everything came down in New York.”

“Ah, he’s a tough bird. He actually helped with some of the triage, early.”

“I spoke to him on the phone. What a thing — the church where his son was supposed to get married.”

“Well, they got it done anyway, two blocks from his house in Brooklyn. That weekend. Should’ve planned it there in the first place.”

Faulk poured still more of the whiskey.

“I gotta say, I do miss your mother.”

He took another sip. There was no sting from it now.

“I started cheating on her pretty soon after she went with that church you’re in. Your particular church. You might as well know that.”

“She’s gone ,” Faulk told him. “It’s all over now. Please. Can we talk about something else?”

“Might as well have some truth.”

“Please stop it. There’s no reason to say any of it. I’ve left the priesthood.”

“But you’ve still got that old-time religion, don’t you.”

“I’m gonna go.”

“Wait. Finish your whiskey.”

Faulk took it in one gulp and set the glass down on the coffee table. His father reached for the bottle and poured another shot into it.

“Let’s change the subject,” he said. “Okay?”

“Good idea,” said Faulk.

“Well, boy, I hated feeling like an apostate in my own house.”

“Look. I really don’t want to talk about this. It’s none of my business.”

“What if I tell you as a priest?”

“Please cut it out, will you?”

“You know what I think? I think we all come from blankness and we all go back there. Back to the way it was before we were born. The great null and void. No darkness at all. We’d have to be able to perceive that. Just blank.”

“I think it’s safe to say I know how you see things, Dad. And nothingness isn’t a particularly original idea, is it.”

“Nor is the idea of a merciful God.”

“Oh, but that’s actually pretty radical. People believed it back when painkillers were unknown. When the world was a savage place full of unmitigated suffering.”

“You mean it’s not that now ?”

“You know what I mean.”

“Tell it to those people in New York and Washington and Pennsylvania.”

“You know what I mean, Dad.”

The old man sipped the whiskey and looked off. “Well, we do seek comfort.”

Faulk sipped the last of the whiskey in his own glass and poured a little more. He could feel it now, on top of the beer he’d had earlier.

“I guess I just didn’t like it when you started sounding like her,” his father said.

“Did you hector her this way?”

“Hell, after a while it wasn’t worth talking about.”

“I heard plenty of the talk, Dad. From my earliest memory.”

“Really. It was all that bad, was it?”

“Let’s drop it,” Faulk said. “It was what it was. Sometimes it was fine.”