“Has Iris seen it?”
He sighed. “Not yet.”
She took his arm at the elbow. “I just need a little time. Everything was so awful when I couldn’t reach you.”
“I know.”
“I think Iris’ll like this house.”
“You can do physical therapy with her every morning for her knee, or just visit with her in the rose arbor and have coffee, and then spend the mornings painting.”
“That sounds lovely.” She reached out and touched the soft petals of one of the roses. “I’ve been hoping to get started again.”
“There you go. And, you know, I could keep my little apartment and you could use it as a studio, so you won’t be interrupted. I hadn’t thought of that until just now. Whatever you want to do, babe.”
“I like it when you call me that.” She thought horribly of his innocence. “You’re so sweet.”
“Babe,” he said.
Any moment, he would be able to read what was rushing through her mind. The tips of her fingers came to her lips, touched softly there. Then she dropped her hands to her sides and offered herself for another kiss.
He put his arms tight around her.
She made herself smile, looking up into his eyes, and she forced the light tone. “And what will you be doing while I’m painting?”
“A friend of mine named Lawrence Watson runs a service for the parole board. I start Wednesday. Job counseling.”
“That’ll be helping people in trouble. Working with people.”
“Exactly. One at a time, you know.”
“But what about France?” She could not help bringing it up.
“It’s not permanent. Just helping out.”
“Isn’t that really what you were doing anyway? Helping people one at a time?”
He noted the tone of feigned interest in her voice and once more received the urge to soothe her. “I’ve been thinking. I don’t know how to put it. I can’t seem to get my bearings after what’s happened.”
All the color went out of her face. “Me, too.” She reached for him. “Oh, baby. I feel so sad for everything and everyone.” It seemed to her that this was the first completely honest thing she had said to him since her arrival.
“You should’ve seen the cabbie that drove me to Clara’s in D.C. A Palestinian Christian. He had quite a story to tell about his day.”
“It’s all so hideous.”
He began telling her about the poor cabbie and the near violence that had come at him solely for his appearance.
She interrupted him. “Let’s not talk about it now. Please?”
“Well, but you know we’re all supposed to go on with our lives and shop up a storm. You’ve been hearing that, right?”
“No.”
“It’s true. If we change anything they win.” He took her hand, felt the thin bones there. “You think the truck will arrive on time at Iris’s?”
“How are we supposed to just ‘go on’ with our lives?” she said. “It’s all changed, hasn’t it?”
“They’re playing football games this weekend. And the baseball teams are going on with things. We’re supposed to not become paranoid. Not show any fear.”
“And what about rage?” Her eyes shone.
“I know.”
“Let’s go,” she murmured. She put her arms around him again.
He stood there hugging her while she cried a little more, and some part of him stirred with annoyance, like a breath of air at a window. It passed through him and was gone.
As they went back out to the car, she asked what he had to do to secure the house and close the deal, and as he explained it his gladness in seeing her returned. He marveled at the little creases in the corner of her mouth, the perfect dark shine of her hair in the sunlight. They were together, and the fact of her physical presence lifted him. He felt suddenly quite strong and resilient and free of doubt. The disquiet he had felt earlier, the apathy — that had been caused by having to be away from her. He was almost proud of it. “I’m so happy,” he said.
She smiled, and her eyes welled up again. “Yes — happy.”
She wanted to drive to Iris’s. So much time had gone by since she had driven a car. It felt good to get in behind the wheel, with him at her side. On the little two-block jaunt over to Bilders Street, they talked about Iris’s most recent fall, and he remembered the first time he had ever seen the old lady coming into his church, asking to talk to him. He described how it was to see Iris yesterday, none the worse for wear, constant as ocean waves.
Iris was in front of her small house, watering the flowers in the wooden box that ran along the window. She had her cane with her, and when she saw the car pull up, she put the watering can down and started toward them across the lawn.
Natasha got out and said, “Stay there,” but lost her voice on the second word. She ran to her, and there was Iris, arms spread wide to greet her.
2
The truck with her belongings had been delayed by traffic on Interstate 70 and by bad storms in the mountains near Knoxville. It would not arrive until tomorrow morning. Most of what was on it would be moved into storage for the time being anyway, since they could not occupy the house until the end of the month. Late that evening, they drove back over there with Iris, to show it to her. Once again, Faulk saw the beset look in his future wife’s face and heard notes of a kind of hectic, feigned cheer in her speech — something dark coursing under the timbre of her voice, the slightest tremor there, giving her away. He wondered if Iris heard it as the two women went through the rooms and out to the back, Iris moving quite well with her cane, actually going in under the drooping branches of the rose arbor to sit in the little wooden swing there. Natasha joined her, and Faulk watched as they swung back and forth, Iris talking about how nice this would be when the first real fall weather arrived.
It was full dark now. The smell of the roses was in the air, and of the leaves that kept dropping with the light wind that stirred. Faulk studied Natasha’s face in the glow from the kitchen window of the house. She saw him watching her and tried to ignore it, turning to her grandmother and saying that she would plant a garden in the little dog-run area, as someone else obviously had. But whereas it looked from the tilted tomato stakes as though it had been a vegetable garden, she would make hers all flowers, wholly for the color. “It’s a perfect spot, don’t you think?” she said, and heard the infinitesimal quaver in her own voice, aware of him attending to it, standing there, a shadow in the light from the window. He had his hands clenched down in the pockets of his white slacks, and though she couldn’t see his face, he seemed calm and glad to be where he was.
This, she knew, was for Iris’s sake. Inside the house, she saw the inquisitiveness in his eyes, the wish to know more, to question her, because clearly he had seen the turmoil she had concealed so poorly. She found the strength to remark placidly to Iris that she, Iris, would have to make it a practice to have her morning coffee here, perhaps in the rose arbor. “After you’re fully healed, of course. It’s just a two-block walk for you. And you’re already so much better now.”
“I thought I was going to need more surgery,” Iris said. “At my age.” She turned to Faulk. “You picked a very nice little place. Are you sure it’s enough for you?”
“Oh, yes. I like it a lot.” He addressed Natasha. “You sure about it, darling?”
“I adore it,” Natasha said, smiling but not looking at him.
Back at Iris’s house, the old woman put the lights on and then lit candles, too, insisting on making coffee. They sat in the kitchen and breathed the aroma of the coffee and of the candles, and they talked to her, also by her insistence, about the last four days — their separate journeys home. In the paper there was a report that the plane that went down in Pennsylvania might have been shot down. Several witnesses reported two fighter jets flying near it. The deputy secretary of defense was denying that any planes had been in the vicinity. And the first intimations were surfacing that the passengers of the hijacked airliner had caused the crash. Faulk read this aloud from the paper while they sipped the coffee. And then he told Iris about his Palestinian cabdriver. “I couldn’t really say anything, and I guess I felt the smallest bit chary of him — the way I bet a lot of people will feel for a while about everybody from that part of the world.”