“France,” she said. “I’ve been trying to save money to go there for a year and live.”
They talked about Iris a little. He paid for the coffee, and they took their walk. An image came to her mind of clouds lifting. She paused to appreciate the quality of light through the cherry trees. He bent down to pick up a blossom and then tossed it.
“You didn’t name any of the states as a possible place to live,” she said.
His smile was slightly sardonic. “Somewhere far away. California? Alaska? Hawaii?”
“Not Alaska.”
“Too cold,” he said. “Right? I wasn’t serious.”
“My mother was a bit, well, crazy. I mean that’s the only way to describe it. She had an idea that my father and she should find some way for us to live in Alaska. Anchorage. Think of it.”
“A lot of nice happy people live there,” he said.
“I wonder if she would’ve been happy. I don’t know that I would’ve.”
They went on a little.
“So she got my father to get a job on this Norwegian cruise ship to Alaska. My father was a trained chef. They were going to make the money to move. But there was an explosion, and the ship caught fire, and they jumped into the ocean. Several people did that to get away from the flames.”
“Iris didn’t tell me any of this, of course.”
“She didn’t tell me the real specifics of it until I was out of her house a couple of years. All I knew was that they were gone, lost at sea off Vancouver. I never knew them. Iris is — well. I used to wonder sometimes what she was thinking. And she never complains. It could be pretty quiet in the house, and anybody might think we were angry, or sad, but it was both of us sitting within four feet of each other reading. Perfectly glad of the quiet. I used to imagine her raising my mother alone. What that was like. And I guess it must’ve been like it was with me.”
“And your mother wanted to live in Alaska.”
“She actually wanted the cold. Loved snow, Iris says. I don’t think much of her survives in me.”
“Do you think Iris would say that?”
“Probably not.”
Presently, she said, “But really, I’d like to go back to France. The southern coast. I went to school there. Let’s say I like to imagine living in France and — painting.”
“Making enough money to live on it?”
“Sure, why not?” She smiled.
“You paint every day?”
“I don’t paint at all just now. But I have done some watercolors. But this was about fantasy, right?”
“Did you study painting?”
“Studied art.”
“What would you say is your best trait?”
She had the feeling that he was talking now just to talk. “Doing the watercolors.”
“That’s your best trait?”
She decided to change the subject. “Is Clara your mother’s sister or your father’s?”
“My mother’s half sister.”
They were quiet for a few paces. The Tidal Basin was awash in blue shade with patches of sun, and on the fresh-cut grass shirtless young men threw a Frisbee back and forth. Only yesterday she would have seen them as cruelly separate from her, spending a carefree morning.
The day was growing lovelier by the minute. The white linen slacks she wore were comfortable and cool. She had tied her hair back in a chignon, and the breezes pleasantly brushed her neck. Butterflies flew around her.
“I think they’re drawn to your pink top,” he said.
At the water’s edge they stood, watching the ducks glide by and several geese that kept honking. He reached over and, in a way that seemed natural and uninvasive — like the gesture of an older sibling — undid her hair. “I didn’t know I was going to do that,” he said. “I was appreciating the shine of it in this light, and I wanted to see more of it. Sorry. I don’t usually do that kind of thing.”
“It’s fine.” She was a little surprised at how much his worry about it pleased her.
They walked along the bank of the river. Sailboats glided past out in the brightness, and one motorboat sped by heading the opposite way, creating a white wake that churned at the banks. He placed his hand gently at the small of her back as they moved to the lane, into the cooler shade. A woman came by, pulled along by two large black dogs whose panting and striving — long nails clicking on the pavement — were the only sounds in the stillness. At a stone bench near the memorial, with its classic circle of columns and the tall shadow of the statue inside, they sat together and talked idly about the dinner party the evening before and about Senator Norland.
“Ten years dry now,” he said about the senator’s famous alcohol troubles. “But when they handed the presidency to Bush, that was tough for him.”
“We’re not allowed to mention that.”
“I remember John Mitchell saying the country was going to go so far right it would hardly be recognizable. And here we are, not even three months out of the Clinton administration, and Mitchell, that crusty old bastard, looks like a prophet. It’s so strange that the very people who are hurt most by them are their most vociferous supporters. An unforeseen flaw. The Founding Fathers couldn’t have imagined television. What to do about a duped population.”
“Do you talk about any of this from the pulpit?”
“Actually, I’m leaving the, um, pulpit.”
She turned and waited for him to explain. But he sat back and sighed.
“You can’t just say that and leave it there.”
“Well, I’m not a very good priest. I feel like I’m lying.”
“You no longer believe in God.”
“No, I do. Very much. You don’t have to leave the religion, you know, if you renounce your vocation.”
They walked over to the memorial. Staring at the sculpted face, he murmured, as if out of respect for it, “This is one of my favorite places in the city. He’s actually an ancestor on my mother’s side, I’m told.”
“Tell me about your aunt Clara.”
Thinking about the woman gave him obvious pleasure. “She’s lived here all her life. My mother’s younger sister by twelve years. Got a big old pretty house in Cleveland Park, and it’s constantly filled with people. She’s not slightly involved in politics, either.”
“And you?”
“I’m fairly insulated in Memphis. My coming into town to see her and her husband is usually as close as I get.”
“I’ve lived here for years,” said Natasha, “and I’ve never come to this memorial. A lot of this town I’ve never seen. And these are places people travel thousands of miles to see.”
“What did you paint when you did the watercolors?”
“Not this.”
He was still gazing at Jefferson. “There’s a lot of places here I’ve never been in, too.”
“How old are you?” she asked.
“I won’t make you guess. I’ll be forty-eight in June. And you?”
“Thirty-two in July.”
They went back toward the Ellipse and on to the Lincoln Memorial. School buses were lined up, emptying out, children gathering to go in. The air was full of diesel exhaust.
“Tell me the happiest you’ve been,” he said.
She didn’t have to think. “When I was in France. Aix-en-Provence. One day I was standing in a little café waiting to order a baguette. I’d come on my bicycle down a long mountain road overlooking the Mediterranean, and it was cool and sunny and I realized I’d never felt so much at home, and I was happy. Really happy. And I’d been happy for weeks.”