Richard Bausch - Before, During, After

“It’s our wedding,” she said, fighting tears.

“I’d just like to get on with things.” His tone was nearly that of a little boy, distressed and wanting a thing fixed that could not be fixed. He turned and went on down, head slightly bowed. She wanted to call him back, take him into the bedroom, and close the door and tell him what had happened to her.

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.