Richard Bausch - Before, During, After

“Yes, you will be that,” Natasha told her. “You already are that.” Sometimes the bad possibilities did not play themselves out in life, and people were lucky and knew it and appreciated it. Two months. Two months. This was Faulk’s child.

“I actually like the sound of it,” Iris said. “Great-grandmother.”

The day was cool and sunny, and they stopped for lunch at the Otherlands Coffee Bar and sat out on the wooden deck in the shade of an umbrella and were happy. With Iris’s happiness, Natasha could believe that this was a happy thing. Suddenly she thought of sitting here with Constance the day before the wedding, and it made a little cloud of unrest in her soul. She looked at Iris’s lined face and loved her for the calm that always seemed to reside there. “Come have dinner with us tonight, okay? That’s when I’ll tell him.”

“Oh, tell him when he gets home from work.”

“No, I want you there. Please?”

Iris smiled and nodded, thinking it over.

“Come help us celebrate. I want to have a party.”

“Well, it’s up to you, sweetie.”

There was a brief pause.

“It was good seeing Liam after all these years,” Iris said, and then bit into her sandwich. “He didn’t remember that I met his wife. They visited a couple of times at the beginning.”

“Were you in love?”

Chewing, she seemed to be trying to decide for herself what the situation had been. “We were very good friends, I guess you’d say now. Nothing happened. We had fun, though. I was grieving, raising a child alone.”

The cool air and the heat of the sun was on them. Natasha realized that she did not want to know more. All of it was past, and she wanted the past to be past. Gone.

“I have pictures from those days,” her grandmother said. “You should see your face in them — this little kid with deep shadows under her eyes and a look like grief itself. The irises of your eyes didn’t touch the bottom lids. It made you look sadder than you were.”

She heard this without quite taking it in. She was thinking about the fact that this was Faulk’s baby and not Duego’s — and then she was beset with the idea of Duego, wherever he was in Florida … or Memphis; that was also possible. Two people knew what had happened on that beach in Jamaica. The thought had not quite registered with her before she imagined him witnessing her silence and deciding to leave her alone. Perhaps this moment he was with some other unfortunate young woman, still being who he was and what he was. It seemed wrong of her not to have thought of it earlier in this way.

Iris was talking about Natasha’s mother. “When she was pregnant with you she was the bloom of health. She had no morning sickness at all. No discomforts. It was like she was made to be pregnant. And that was when she got the idea of getting away from Memphis. The grime of Memphis. That was the way she talked about it. Grime . She got big as a house, and she was happy that way, and all she could talk about was finding a way out of this town. Grime. I’ve always loved this town and felt at home in it. It’s the best of both worlds — a big city that feels very much like a small town. But she wanted out of it in the worst way. I thought it was odd.”

“Well, we’re all odd, aren’t we? If you scratch the surface.”

“I had a beau,” Iris said, and gave the small nodding gesture that admitted it was Liam Adams. “For a little while when I was left alone. And I needed it, then.”

Natasha reached over and touched her wrist. “You never told me this.”

The old woman stared at her with brimming eyes. “ ‘The dark backward and abysm of time.’ ”

“I didn’t mean it that way.”

“It’s all right if you did.”

“I have one memory that’s pretty clear,” Natasha said. “The two of them sitting in the front seat of a car and snow outside the windows. I was in the backseat. They were talking low, and we were waiting for someone. But that’s all. I don’t know who we were waiting for. And I remember crying once because I couldn’t tie my shoes, and Daddy trying to show me — and she said, ‘You’ve hurt her feelings.’ And I cried harder, milking it, but I can’t see their faces, and I don’t know where we were. A sunny living room somewhere and summer outside the window.”

“You were the prettiest little baby, you know.”

“Even with my old soul?”

“Yep.”

Presently, Iris said, “I’ve wondered what might’ve happened if we had been in love, that man and me. He looks so old now. Well, he is old, isn’t he.”

“I think he looks nice,” Natasha said.

After another pause, Iris said, “Regret hurts pretty awfully, doesn’t it.”

“Yes — more than anybody ever tells you.”

She tilted her head, as if trying to see into what she had just heard, but also, now, gazing stonily at the younger woman. “Go on.”

“No. It’s — I was just saying.”

“Are we talking about the same thing?”

Natasha said nothing.

“Will you please tell me what’s going on with you?”

“Nothing. I’m pregnant.” Too much time had passed. No one would believe her after so much time. Or, no, they would believe her, and what would they do then?

“You have been so inward and not yourself,” Iris said. “It’s very plain. Poor Michael is painfully and obviously aware of it.”

“Has he said something?”

Iris considered for a moment.

“Has he talked to you, Iris?”

“I said it’s painfully obvious that he’s worried about it. No, he hasn’t talked to me. Not directly. I was trying to find the words to explain how it is. It’s — it’s in the way we speak to each other in your presence, like we’re both tiptoeing around an invalid.”

“Oh, well, God! That’s good to know. That makes me feel so confident and strong. Thank you.”

“I don’t mean it as a criticism, honey.”

“You could’ve fooled me.”

“Well, I didn’t. I’m worried about you, and so is Michael.”

They said nothing for a few moments, Iris eating her sandwich and then wiping her fingers. Natasha watching her, but not eating.

“I’ve ruined your lunch.”

“I felt a little nauseous before we sat down,” Natasha said.

“Maybe have a little milk.”

“I’m all right.”

A while later, she said, “God. I’m pregnant,” and she sniffled.

“Well, that explains a lot.”

“I don’t know what it explains. I’m having a baby, that’s all.”

“Look, we all love you.”

“Who is ‘we all’? Have you all been talking about me?”

“I wasn’t saying it about anybody. Me, Michael. Marsha. Your friends. Everybody who ever really got to know you. That’s all I mean.”

“I feel so watched ,” Natasha told her.

7

ARTICLE 4 Whether it is justified to seek answers by confronting people outside the marriage who may be possible sources of enlightenment concerning the problem, if a trouble goes unanswered for so long .

We proceed thus to the Fourth Article: It seems that it is justified to seek answers by confronting people outside the marriage who may be possible sources of enlightenment concerning a problem, if a trouble goes unanswered for so long.

Objection 1 .

It is possible that the trouble itself is colorated with imagining, and therefore might smack of the hysterical, and introduce further trouble without the benefit of further understanding.

Objection 2 .

The fact of confronting anyone is by its nature extreme, and may therefore be unfeasible on the face of it, given my own character, which is to keep things inside.