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Summary
Summary
From the recipient of the PEN/Malamud Award, the Literature Award from the American Academy of Arts and Letters, and the Rea Award for the Short Story: a gorgeously rendered, passionate account of a relationship threatened by secrets, set against the backdrop of national tragedy.
When Natasha, a talented young artist working as a congressional aide, meets Michael Faulk, an Episcopalian priest struggling with his faith, the stars seem to align. Although he is nearly two decades older, they discover in each other the happy yearning and exhilaration of lovers, and within months they are engaged. Shortly before their wedding, while Natasha is vacationing in Jamaica and Faulk is in New York attending the wedding of a family friend, the terrorist attacks of September 11 shatter the tranquillity of the nation's summer. Alone in a state of abject terror, cut off from America and convinced that Faulk is dead, Natasha makes an error in judgment that leads to a private trauma of her own on the Caribbean shore. A few days later, she and Faulk are reunited, but the horror of that day and Natasha's inability to speak of it inexorably divide their relationship into "before" and "after." They move to Memphis and begin their new life together, but their marriage quickly descends into repression, anxiety, and suspicion.
In prose that is direct, exact, and lyrical, Richard Bausch plumbs the complexities of public and personal trauma, and the courage with which we learn to face them. Above all, Before, During, After is a love story, offering a penetrating and exquisite portrait of intimacy, of spiritual and physical longing, and of the secrets we convince ourselves to keep even as they threaten to destroy us. An unforgettable tour de force from one of America's most distinguished storytellers.
Author Notes
Richard Bausch was born in Fort Benning, Georgia, in 1945. After serving in the U.S. Air Force as a survival instructor, he entered George Mason University, from which he received a B.A. in 1974. He then earned an M.F.A. degree from the University of Iowa and worked as a singer and comedian while writing fiction. He became a professor of English at George Mason University in 1980.
His work includes the novels Real Presence, I Don't Care If I Never Get Back, The Last Good Time, Mr. Field's Daughter, and Violence. He has also published two collections of short stories, Spirits and Other Stories and The Fireman's Wife and Other Stories. He was shortlisted for the 2015 Bad S-x in Fiction Award. for his title Before, During, After.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (6)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Set amid the chaos of 9/11, this novel from Bausch (Peace) is an adequate addition to the author's oeuvre. After meeting at a fundraiser, D.C. congressional aide Natasha Barrett and disillusioned Episcopalian priest Michael Faulk fall into a whirlwind romance. Engaged, and intending to relocate to Memphis, the couple find themselves separated when the 2001 terrorist attacks occur: Michael is in New York City at a wedding; Natasha is in Jamaica, vacationing with a friend. As Michael frantically tries to escape the city, Natasha, fearing that her fiance is dead, wanders the beach heavily intoxicated and is raped by a fellow vacationer. Once home in Memphis, Natasha keeps the assault to herself, and Michael grows frustrated with her new emotional distance as their wedding day nears. He suspects Natasha has been unfaithful, but is afraid to ask. A tale of trust and loss, the novel strives to fit Natasha and Michael's personal problems into the greater story of America's turmoil. Bausch excels at capturing the mood of Americans in the days and weeks following 9/11-equal parts camaraderie and suspicion-but only rarely engages the reader emotionally. (Aug.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The premise is simple: two people find each other relatively late in life after having been unsuccessful in love for many years. She is Natasha Barrett, a thirtysomething congressional aide. He is Father Michael Faulks, a divorced Episcopalian priest pushing 50. Both are dissatisfied with their careers. She would love to be an artist; he wants to leave the priesthood. After the proverbial whirlwind courtship, they set a wedding date for the fall of 2001. But first, she reluctantly goes on a preplanned vacation to Jamaica, and he attends a friend's wedding in Manhattan. Then September 11 happens, and they are unable to contact each other. Natasha assumes Michael has been killed. Bereft, she drinks too much and lets down her guard with another vacationer, who viciously rapes her. When Natasha and Michael are finally reunited, Natasha takes advantage of the general post-9/11 malaise to hide her trauma. Michael suspects something is wrong, yet neither can honestly broach the obvious breach in their relationship. Sublimely probing what it means to lose trust in one's self and in those one loves, the masterful Bausch (Something Is Out There, 2010) delicately ponders the consequences of devastating loss on both a grand and personal scale. A luscious, sweeping heartbreak of a novel.--Haggas, Carol Copyright 2010 Booklist
New York Review of Books Review
MARRIAGES, DIVORCES, rebound affairs, second marriages, adulterous liaisons, thwarted desires, unhappy celibacy, empty intercourse, rape: "Before, During, After" is awash in romantic turmoil and sexual predation. At the center of a landscape of almost unrelieved alienation, of relationships not so much broken as revealed as conceits, are Michael Faulk and Natasha Barrett, hurtling toward matrimony. The title of Richard Bausch's 20th work of fiction refers to the fractured trajectory of their relationship as well as to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001, which provide the novel with both elements of plot and an ever-present threat of annihilation that amplifies how his characters strive, and fail, to connect. On the morning of 9/11, Michael, a divorced Episcopal priest who has just left the church, and Natasha, a fledgling bureaucrat and frustrated artist living in Washington, D.C., are many miles apart, he in New York with plans likely to have placed him at ground zero, she in a Jamaican hotel on a prenuptial getaway. With phone lines overwhelmed by call volume and flights home delayed indefinitely, the increasingly nervous hotel guests split their attention between the bar and the lobby, its television displaying an endless loop of carnage. Among those drinking with the abandon granted by catastrophe, Natasha, long orphaned by a fire that took both her parents, falls prey to unmanageable panic. She can't help imagining her fiancé taken from her, incinerated like her parents, their bodies never recovered. And alcohol doesn't soothe her any more than it does the rest of the overwrought guests. Instead, it loosens already fraying inhibitions and precipitates further chaos. In a narrative where wedding days align with news of envelopes stuffed with agents of mass murder, anthrax spores spilling over the desks of The National Enquirer, the prospect of marriage soon presents more dread than optimism. "Before, During, After" doesn't take terrorism as a subject so much as use its overwhelming violence to physically separate the fiancés and then incidentally provide the catalyst for the emotional rift that will threaten to destroy their new life together. What Natasha fears doesn't come to pass; Michael is unharmed. But by the time the two are reunited, they discover themselves thoroughly shaken and, unexpectedly, unable to comfort each other. That Natasha leaves in happiness and returns in "hectic, feigned cheer," that their former easy intimacy is transformed into the small talk of strangers even before they are married, Michael attributes to a holiday infidelity. After all, how could an act of war that didn't directly affect his fiancée come to have so tenacious a hold on her, enough to erode her disposition? Something else, something personal, must have transpired during the time they were apart. As it did. For Natasha, the national tragedy's insidious power lies in providing a false explanation for the crippling anxiety and misery she brings home from "paradise." Pretending, without success, to be happy is all Natasha can manage in the aftermath of a brutal, alcohol-and-drug-fueled rape on an abandoned beach. While Americans collectively suffered a disaster with the power to change the state of the union indefinitely, her single life, although far from this terrorist threat, was also broken into a "before" and an "after." While she didn't initiate any physical contact, the rape followed a kiss she failed to refuse, and even briefly reciprocated. Having been, like her attacker, under the influence of both alcohol and marijuana, Natasha, when sober, falls prey to doubts about her own role in the assault. She doesn't report the rape to the police, and once home can't bring herself to speak of it with Michael. Unable to determine the extent of her culpability, she will ultimately break down in an attempt to withhold such a huge and toxic secret. As for Michael, his suspicions about his wife-to-be inspire a more general crisis of faith in a man who has already begun to suspect that he's spent his life hiding in the rituals of the church, rituals that provided him a much needed "haven" as a teenager. The son of parents "in fundamental disagreement about the whole human journey," the ex-priest cleaves to his faith even as he wonders if his early absorption in religion was a way of exiting rather than entering the world to serve his fellow man. Bullied by a father who believed in the "great null and void" and encouraged in his vocation by a mother whose "murderous resentment" revealed her "pietistic attitudes" as those of a hypocrite, Michael grew up "a boy in hiding, buried, separated - even from himself." Perhaps, he worries, his calling was never more than a self-centered escape plan. Between these two damaged individuals steps a destructive specter - not of the rapist, but of dishonesty, which follows them into the bedroom and inspires an "undeniable and increasing unease in lovemaking" that prevents them from connecting on any level. Natasha finds herself not keeping a secret but being kept by it. No one can extract her from its hold, least of all Michael, whose own insecurities and neediness blind him to the nature of her fear. If "Before, During, After" is a literary rendition of "Can this marriage be saved?" it's also an elegantly constructed novel in which the catastrophic destruction of two monumental structures provides the backdrop to the fracture and crumbling of smaller couples. Like the towers of the World Trade Center, Michael's first marriage pancaked, releasing its own little cloud of fatal dust and obfuscation and prefiguring an exponentially greater loss. The ripple effect carries debris, whether airborne particles or emotional wreckage, from "before" to "after," poisoning the atmosphere and stranding survivors in the dark. "He's quit that," says a colleague, explaining that Michael has left the church (in his case, a church aptly called Grace Episcopal). He has just "walked away from it" - and, by implication, from God's love. Finding herself polluted, irreligious Natasha crawls, as she must, no matter what she believes, toward the great font of the ocean, its salt like tears. Her need for purification is so strong that it eclipses any thought of getting to a rape kit before the evidence is washed away. One of Richard Bausch's many talents is the forthright ease with which he delivers his characters - and readers - to the gravest questions of love, faith and ultimately God, even as he nimbly hides the answers in plain sight. When Michael and Natasha wed, bearing their freight of hidden anguish, they stand before a self-righteous Anglican priest who subjects them to a "bizarre" homily. God does have a habit of choosing unattractive oracles, in this case not a beggar but a bore. There is but one way to face "all the cataclysmic history" of the species, the fatuous father tells those gathered before him. Before performing the sacrament of marriage, he "asked everyone to learn first to forgive oneself, to see the enormous effect we have upon one another, and to acknowledge the undeniable significance of changing one's moral compass." Of course, trapped as they are in a novel by Richard Bausch, the newlyweds and their guests dismiss this advice as that of a "party hack spouting the line." "Pompous" in the opinion of Michael, "way off-key." For a newly married couple, the aftermath of 9/11 precipitates further chaos. KATHRYN HARRISON'S latest book, "Joan of Arc: A Life Transfigured," will be published in October.
Guardian Review
This is an accomplished and, at times, harrowing novel full of the kind of psychological power and exactitude that first-rate fiction does so well. I found myself wincing half the time, whispering, wishing, willing the characters to take other courses. For those unfamiliar with Richard Bausch, he has long been celebrated in America as a practised purveyor of Chekhovian precision. Before, During, After is his 12th novel and it again gives primacy to the observation of character. For Bausch, it is in the moment-to-moment detail of life that devilry and virtue vie for the human soul. This time, though, he has also written an explicitly widescreen book, since the action takes place against the backdrop of 9/11 and the inner lives of his two protagonists are detonated on the same day that the twin towers fall. Thus the title, and thus does Bausch seek to have the private refract the public. Natasha Barrett is 32. Ostensibly, she is committed to her work for a senator in Washington, but she has entered a period of lassitude following a heartfelt affair with a married photographer. Michael Faulk is 48, three years out of a failed marriage and only just out of the Anglican priesthood. Ostensibly, he is warm and well adjusted, but inside he is having a crisis of faith and self-belief. These two people find each other and love does all the things that love can do - rescues them, remakes them, rekindles their desires. They decide to marry. But before this, Natasha must honour a holiday commitment to go to Jamaica with Constance, a wealthy friend. And it is on this holiday - "during" - while trapped in a luxury hotel and uncertain if her fiance in New York is still alive, that Natasha is raped on the beach. Two-thirds of the book concerns itself with "after", and here Bausch's subtle art is everywhere on display. Or, rather, not on display, because Bausch is an expert at invisibly managing intensity and human complexity. Natasha is unable to talk about what has happened to anyone. She perseveres with the wedding, although her "deepest self" is "fractured". Part of her hell is that Constance witnessed her, drunk and stoned on the beach, "leaning over [her attacker], kissing him. Deep." Yes, says Natasha, "I - I kissed him. I kissed him. I felt sorry for him. But that was the end of it." But this tragically mistaken reading of what happened will transform in Faulk's imagination into a mushroom cloud of suspicion, jealousy and rage. And eventually, the once-priestly Faulk falls into a fury and smashes through a locked bathroom door to demand of his wife what she is hiding. It is an act of masculine violence that the reader is all too aware could not be worse for Natasha as she cowers, terrified, behind the shower curtain. What world can they live in after such trauma? Bausch also dedicates fine writerly attention to his minor characters; the novel is thronged with walk-ons who come instantly to life and furnish half a dozen excruciating side-scenes that echo and recapitulate the turbulent themes of the main narrative. Those themes are most obviously to do with trauma, but also with theology. The attacker is oddly formal in his speech and his name, Nicholas Duego, is deliberately suggestive of the devil. Faulk and his aggressively atheist father argue drunkenly about barbecues, fidelity and whether God is merciful or wrathful in what is one of the best painful father-and-son scenes I've ever read - "Thought I'd tell you a few things, son . . . Get to know you better." Madly, Faulk writes down his foolish doubts about Natasha in a private journal in a prose style that apes the cool argumentative phrasing of Aquinas's Summa Theologica - "Reply Objection 2: There must be some demarcation between love as possession and love as it was . . ." But beneath all this, Before, During, After is about psychological isolation. Even "before", Natasha finds it a "disconcerting revelation - how rarely she had been herself with any of the men she had known". And "after", Faulk struggles "each moment to forget his suspicions while at the same time seeking to have them answered once and for all". This precisely piloted psychology is Bausch's greatest proficiency. When Faulk arrives at Penn Station, trying to leave New York a few hours after the attacks, there are two sentences that might well stand as a summary of Bausch's vision for the whole novel: "A great roar of voices reverberated in the high vault of the ceiling and yet no one appeared to be speaking to anyone. Everyone looked isolated and bewildered." Edward Docx's The Devil's Garden is published by Picador. 368pp, Atlantic, pounds 14.99 To order Before, During, After for pounds 11.99 go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. - Edward Docx Caption: Captions: Rubble from the World Trade Center after the terrorist attack of 9/11 Two-thirds of the book concerns itself with "after", and here [Richard Bausch]'s subtle art is everywhere on display. Or, rather, not on display, because Bausch is an expert at invisibly managing intensity and human complexity. [Natasha Barrett] is unable to talk about what has happened to anyone. She perseveres with the wedding, although her "deepest self" is "fractured". Part of her hell is that [Constance] witnessed her, drunk and stoned on the beach, "leaning over [her attacker], kissing him. Deep." Yes, says Natasha, "I - I kissed him. I kissed him. I felt sorry for him. But that was the end of it." But this tragically mistaken reading of what happened will transform in [Michael Faulk]'s imagination into a mushroom cloud of suspicion, jealousy and rage. And eventually, the once-priestly Faulk falls into a fury and smashes through a locked bathroom door to demand of his wife what she is hiding. It is an act of masculine violence that the reader is all too aware could not be worse for Natasha as she cowers, terrified, behind the shower curtain. What world can they live in after such trauma? - Edward Docx.
Kirkus Review
Thehorror of 9/11 intersects with the horror of rape in this latest from Bausch (SomethingIs Out There, 2010, etc.).Natasha Barrett and Michael Faulk meet at a dinner party in the Washington,D.C., suburbs. She's the top aide to a Republican senator; he's an Episcopalpriest in Memphis. Natasha's still recovering from the messy end of an affair;Faulk's been bruised by a divorce. There's an age gap (she's 32, he's 48), butlove leaps across it; they will marry and leave their professions. Natashaisn't credible as a political animal; Faulk has lost "something unnameable" incarrying out his pastoral duties. The future looks rosy (Faulk's trust fundwill cushion them), but hard times are coming for this pleasant, fuzzilydefined couple. It's September 2001. Faulk is in New York for a friend'swedding and has mentioned visiting the twin towers. Natasha is vacationing inJamaica with Constance, an older woman, when the news breaks. Is Faulk safe? Thephones are down; Natasha is frantic. She starts drinking heavily, as do theother hotel guests. On the beach at night, she allows a handsome Cuban-Americana kiss. Things get out of hand; he rapes her. She can't confide in the cynicalConstance, who's seen that consensual kiss but not the aftermath. By the timeshe reunites with Faulk in Memphis, she's a nervous wreck. Bausch faithfullyreproduces the high anxiety of the time, having us ponder the irony thatstrangers, rubbed raw, confide in each other while Natasha, consumed byirrational guilt, cannot confide in her darling Faulk, who knows something isterribly wrong. As the situation drags on, it's hard not to become impatientwith Bausch's failure to force a resolution.Disappointing; the 9/11 material is a distraction from Bausch's core story: theplight of the rape victim. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
Natasha Barrett and Father Michael Faulk, an Episcopal priest, had at least one thing in common the evening they met at Mississippi Senator Norland's house: neither wanted to be there. Yet within a few -alcohol-fueled months of dating, they chose to ignore their misgivings, 17-year age difference, and dearth of information about each other's pasts and planned a September wedding. As each tied up loose ends, Michael in New York City and Natasha in Jamaica, the unthinkable happened: September 11, 2001, which gave Americans a collective case of post-traumatic stress disorder. For -Natasha, stranded in Jamaica and convinced that -Michael is dead, an assault of a different nature has a similar effect. When they finally reunite in Memphis, they seem like strangers to each other. Michael's loss of faith in both his vocation and himself coupled with Natasha's inability to trust him with her devastating secret, threaten the relationship. The author deftly illustrates the strain between them through maddeningly tepid, inconsequential conversations that disguise their agonizingly painful and authentic interior monologs. -VERDICT Recipient of the Pen/Malamud Award for his short fiction and the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and the American Library Association's W.Y. Boyd Prize for Peace, Bausch has created flawed characters searching for the courage to move forward through uncertainty. This dark, emotionally exhausting novel has the feel of a Tennessee Williams play, and though at times Natasha's stubbornness may test the reader's patience, it is a compelling read.-Sally Bissell, Lee Cty. Lib. Syst., Fort Myers, FL (c) Copyright 2014. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
Ms. Barrett and Father Faulk 1 Not to be lonely, not to look back with regret, not to miss anything, always to be awake and aware. And to paint. Beautifully. Natasha Barrett had written this in her journal when she was seventeen. Favorite watercolorists: Sargent and Gramatky. Favorite sculptors: Bernini, Donatello. Favorite book: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Favorite music: rock, particularly Men at Work, the Police, Dylan; and also for music: jazz, especially Chet Baker and Billie Holiday. Biggest fear: rejection. Biggest ambition: to travel and to know the world by heart. Seventeen. And she had come upon it this past winter, years away. You could be a little proud, looking back. You could even find some comfort in the recollection. In early April of the year she was to turn thirty-two, what she thought of as the chastened later version of that young woman attended a fund-raising dinner hosted by her employer, Senator Tom Norland of Mississippi, at his mansion in Arlington. The mansion was on a high bluff overlooking the Potomac River, and from the road it was just visible at its roofline after you crossed into Virginia--an immense redbrick Colonial. She had visited several times before, and there was always something warm and welcoming about it in spite of its imposing size. Behind the house was a flagstone patio, and walking paths wound through the tall oaks that stood at the edge of the bluff above the river. Along the paths, iron benches were placed decorously amid flower beds and statuary. People would gather in this wide shady space when the senator was entertaining guests. This evening she arrived late and was greeted by Norland's tall pretty wife, Greta. "Come right in, darling." Greta smiled her white smile and then frowned. "Are you all right? You look a bit downhearted." "Oh, no, I'm fine," Natasha said. "Just tired." "Well, good to see you, honey. Go right through." The younger woman reflected that there were people for whom cheerfulness was a trait, something they were blessed with like good bone structure and silky blond hair. She went along the polished hardwood floor of the hall and stepped out onto the patio. Cocktails and wine were being served to the left of the entrance, a young dark man standing behind a table there. Natasha asked for red wine, and his gaze went over her. She could have imagined this. Moving away from the crowd and out onto the lawn, she walked among the statues--small, delicate-looking angelic figures in supplicating poses. Please, they all seemed to be saying. The winter had been long, colored by the aftermath of the end of an affair. She was in no mood for a party and had wanted very badly to find an excuse not to come. But it was Friday, still part of the workweek, and her presence was required: the gathering was for the benefit of the Human Relations Conference, one of the senator's pet projects. She was his chief organizer. Wandering back to the patio, she stood sipping her glass of wine, surrounded by people whose evident curiosity about the senator's "assistant"--two people actually referred to her that way--made her irritable and cross. She wasn't there five minutes before she found herself desiring with adolescent fervor to disappear into the rooms of the house. She kept forcing a smile, listening politely to what was said to her. The guests, many of them local celebrities, were talking about the upcoming conference and about politics--the new president's withdrawal from the Kyoto Protocol on global warming. It was a signal, someone said, about where things were headed with the Republicans back in power. Others speculated about all that. Someone else remarked on the perfect weather, trying to change the subject. To Natasha it all began to seem depressingly automatic, like the chatter of birds on a shoreline. Species noise. The weather was indeed fine: clear and cool, breezes stirring like whispered secrets in the leaves of the oaks bordering the property, the new leaves gold daubed with sun, nearly translucent. The gravel and flagstone walks skirting the edge of the bluff afforded a lovely view of the dark green river far below, with its ranks of sculling boats from Georgetown. The air was flower scented. Norland approached through the confusion of others, grasping the upper arm of a man who seemed reluctant to be handled in that way. She saw that the man wore a clerical collar. "Natasha," Norland said. "You grew up in Memphis." The senator had a gift for tautology. She nodded and smiled at him. "I'd like you to meet Father Michael Faulk, pastor of Grace Episcopal Church in Memphis, Tennessee." Father Faulk was tall, solid looking, bulky through the shoulders. She saw his dark brown eyes and, when they shook hands, felt the roughness of his palm. "Actually, I grew up in Collierville," she said to him. "Collierville. I don't get out that way much." "In Memphis people decide not to go somewhere if it's more than five minutes away. I had Memphis friends who would talk about Collierville as if it was Knoxville, four hundred miles down the road instead of fifteen." "You say you had Memphis friends." His black hair was receding. He looked to be in his late forties or early fifties. She said, "Former friends, yes." "I won't ask." "They all moved to other cities?" she said in the tone of someone speculating. "I'm still not asking." They talked a little about Graceland and other attractions. It was the usual informal kindness of social occasions. She did not feel up to it. "I've never really thought about the distance to Collierville," he went on. "Is it fifteen miles?" "Fifteen miles from Beale Street to where I lived growing up." She turned to acknowledge the greeting of a coworker, Janice Layne, who was the senator's press secretary. Father Faulk moved off, having been pulled in another direction by one of the donors to the event--and perhaps having sensed her reluctance to chat. Janice frowned slightly. "Mmm. Who's the one in the pretty collar?" That was Janice, boy crazy by her own account, and probably, secretly, nothing of the kind. Natasha had an indulgent sense of knowing affection for her. "I've just been introduced. You don't know him?" "He does look a little familiar. And he's hot. And Episcopal. I already got that much. And so if he's single, he's fair game. I'll find out for us." "Go, girl," Natasha said automatically. She was already beginning to forget him. But they got seated next to each other at the dinner, and he turned a charmingly sidelong smile her way, talking about how he could never get used to the grandeur of places such as this--with its atrium and its wide entrances and the original Rembrandt on the wall in the next room. He had been raised in Biloxi, in a decidedly middle-class environment, though his mother, just after he turned seventeen, was the recipient of a large inheritance from a great-uncle who had made a lot of money building houses. "Most of my boyhood," he said, "was spent so far from this. Anyway, I don't think I'll ever get used to it." The humor in his face and the rich timbre of his voice brought her out of herself. He asked, through the smile, if she liked Washington. "I do," she told him. "Mostly." "Exactly how I feel about Memphis." "How long have you been there?" "A long time, now. I went north out of high school. College in Boston--not Harvard." The smile widened. "Went to seminary in Saint Louis, and then down to Memphis." "Your family still in Biloxi?" "My mother died three years ago," he said. "My father lives in Little Rock. I have an aunt here in Washington." She leaned toward him and murmured, "The, um, senator's press secretary wants to know if you're married." He looked down the table toward Senator Norland and Janice Layne. "You mean Ms. Layne." "The very lady." He grinned. "Divorced." "I'm sorry. But she'll be glad to hear it." "Not interested." This occasioned a pause, and they watched the others talking and sipping their wine. She thought she might have stepped over some line. He was gazing at the room, evidently far away now, hands folded at his chin. She said, "Did you like Biloxi?" And he seemed to come to himself. "I did. Very much. Yes." Another pause. "How about you?" he asked. "Does the senator's press secretary want to know if you're married?" "Janice was just curious," Natasha told him. "I was joking." "She was, too--a little." He grinned. "Actually, my former wife is getting remarried. It's happening in the next couple of days." "How's that make you feel?" "It's--as we say--in everyone's best interest." Natasha nodded, unexpectedly on edge now. She thought of excusing herself. But there wasn't anywhere to go in this place without being seen leaving. She watched the senator talking to a big florid man about Virginia horse country and drank down her wine. It left an almost-syrupy aftertaste. "I never feel comfortable at this kind of gathering." Father Faulk spoke softly, only to her. "I can't help seeing it all as a series of gestures," she said. "Makes me feel judgmental." "Not us. We're too cool." It was pleasurable to be included in that way, even jokingly. "Want to talk about Collierville?" he asked. "Sure." He waited. "Do you like bluegrass?" "Don't know much about it, but I like it." She described summer evenings when people would gather in the charming old town center to play music. "I have seen that," he said. "Wonderful. I like the antiques shops, too, and the old train station museum. I should go out there more often." "I guess it's different if a person lives there." "You couldn't wait to get away." "No," she said. "Not really. It was just--you know--it was home." He had a pleasing weathered look. Realizing her own growing interest in him, she experienced a surprising stir of anticipation. It had been months since she had felt much of anything but weariness. She sipped the ice water before her, and her hand shook a little when she set the glass down. She wanted more wine. He was talking across the table about the Rembrandt to a narrow-faced middle-aged woman who had spectacles hanging from a little chain around her neck and deep lines on either side of her mouth. "I joked about all the little age cracks in the original painting," he told her, "you know, going on about them to this fellow who--doesn't seem to be here now. Hope I didn't frighten him away. I told him that I have one just like it that has no cracks at all in it and that I bought it at Walgreens for less than five dollars. He was not amused. I'm pretty sure he thought I was serious." The woman across the table was not amused, either. "Forgive me," Natasha said to her. "I didn't get your name." "I'm Mrs. Grozier. My husband is on the board." "Oh, yes, Mrs. Grozier. I've worked with your husband." Mrs. Grozier nodded civilly and then turned her attention to the other end of the table. Father Faulk turned to Natasha and said, low, "I keep thinking it was funny about the Rembrandt." She smiled. It was as though the two of them were in cahoots, looking at all the others. She felt herself calming down. She saw warmth in his eyes, a sort of reassurance radiating from them. "What about you," he said. "You still have family in Memphis?" "My grandmother. She's responsible for my having this job. She worked in the mayor's office in Memphis for years, and she knew a lady who came here to work for the senator." "Is the lady still working for him?" "Retired a couple of years ago and moved to California. Somewhere near L.A. I didn't know her very well." "And your grandmother? Do you still go to Collierville to visit her?" "We moved into the city the year before I left home. A little house in the High Point district. I visit her there, of course." "I know a woman in High Point who used to work in the mayor's office. Iris Mara." This gave her a pleasurable little jolt. "That's my grandmother." "I worked with her on a project to make books available to schoolkids in some of the poorer neighborhoods. Iris Mara from the mayor's office. Retired. Right?" "Yes. All that--but she never mentioned a project." "She comes to my church now," the priest said. "Church?" Natasha said. "Iris?" Grinning, he said, "Hmm." Then: "Yes. The very lady." "We talked on the phone two days ago. We talk a couple of times a week. She's never said anything about going to church." He was silent. "Well. I've been away so much since I left for college." At the head of the table, the senator stood and clinked the end of a fork against his wineglass until the room grew silent. He thanked everyone for attending and introduced some of the principal organizers of the event. He congratulated Natasha for her work on the project. Then he sat down, acknowledging the polite round of applause. Faulk turned to her and said, "I didn't know you were so important." "Hmm," she said. "Sarcasm in a priest." His face betrayed no sign of amusement. "I wasn't being sarcastic. Honestly." After a pause, he said, "So Iris didn't mention going to church." And they both laughed. There was something so incongruously familiar about the remark. His soft baritone voice when he laughed rose wonderfully to another register. He held up his water glass and offered it, as for a toast. She lifted hers, and they touched them and drank. "I'm probably slandering her by my reaction," Natasha said. "But she's always been so secular." "She's been coming for several months now." "You notice when someone starts coming to your church?" He gave forth another little laugh. "In her case, yes. She came to see me first." "It's so strange--Iris going to church. She never went to any church. We never went to any church. As far as I know, my parents never did either." "You say as far as you know." "They died when I was three. I never knew them." "Oh, Lord--forgive me," he said. "Of course. I should've remembered--I knew that Iris lost her daughter and son-in-law." "And Iris just goes on through the days being Iris." "She's a brave lady." "I can't wait to talk to her about you," Natasha said. "And church. I'll spring it on her. Be fun to hear her reaction." "Please don't tell her I'm as stupid as I must have seemed just now." Excerpted from Before, During, After by Richard Bausch All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
