“Ever been back?”
“Not to live. Had a few days there a couple of times, taking pictures.”
“Not painting them.”
“Working for a travel magazine. And now how about you? What’s the happiest you’ve been?”
“Actually, I’m pretty happy right now.”
“Not fair. Come on.”
“I don’t know. Maybe I’ve never been really happy. Maybe that’s why I asked the question. I’m still trying to figure out if it’s possible.”
“You’re a little old for that kind of questioning, don’t you think?”
“I know.” He laughed. “Even at my age, I’m incomplete.”
5
They spent the rest of the day together, looking at the famous sights of the city that neither of them had ever gotten around to — the Washington Monument, the National Archives, and some of the Smithsonian. It was a lark, a sweet game. For her it seemed a charm against having to part ways. In the evening they had dinner at a small French place she knew in Georgetown. The day’s experience had made clear to her — it was a disconcerting little revelation — how rarely she had been herself with any of the men she had known. It was as if she’d always had to labor through some unspoken contest of wit. The insight made her hesitate. Perhaps it was the age difference. She got quiet while they ate and thought about finding an excuse to go on her way. Suddenly the whole gloomy history of the past two years blew through her. She sat straighter, attempting to fight it off. She had taken to calling this feeling the white sustenance, except that now she felt anxiety, too. She took a long sip of her wine and finished it, keeping her eyes on him.
He ordered two more glasses, then said, “Be right back.” He rose and went toward the restrooms. The server, a long-faced, grouchy-seeming old man, set the glasses of wine down, and she took a small drink from hers and breathed deeply, wanting to calm down. It had been such a good day. She possessed the necessary detachment to admit that her emotions about it might be sentimental, that she could be producing them in some way, a self-deception born out of where she had been and what she had been through. She looked across the room at the bar, where a man and woman sat close, murmuring.
People got along in the world. People provided comfort for one another.
She took the rest of the wine and signaled the server for another. He brought the bottle over and poured more for her, without saying a word. She saw the wrinkles across the back of his neck as he moved away. Faulk came back to the table and sat down. He was an interesting man, and she could just enjoy him. He was not that much older: sixteen years. But they could simply be friends. She could leave it there.
He sipped his wine and looked at her, and she looked away.
“Something hurt you a minute ago. Did I say something wrong?”
She touched the back of his hand. “No.”
“This is fun,” he said.
She found herself talking more about Iris, how it had been growing up orphaned in that old house. “Of course I never thought about it then, but I was being raised by a woman who had lost everything except me. Her husband had gone off, and she never heard another thing from him or about him until news came from a cousin that he’d passed away on a street in San Antonio. I still don’t know what made him leave, except that she was pregnant with my mother. But, you know, I don’t feel deprived. Life was — well, itself. And then I went off to France. And of course we don’t — she doesn’t live in Collierville anymore. Not since my last year of high school. But I always had a sense of this — this sad past I couldn’t know about, and Iris has a thing about time. There’s a pillow she embroidered that she keeps on the piano bench. It says, The dark backward and abysm of time. I don’t have any idea where it comes from.”
“ ‘The dark backward and abysm of time.’ ”
“I was fourteen when she did it.”
“Strange thing to embroider on a pillow.”
“So tell me about you,” Natasha said. “Your parents.”
“My father’s Leander. Lee. From Gulfport, Mississippi. He used to practice what he calls small-town law. His joke is that all he’s ever missed in life is the n-e-r at the end of his name. Then we’d be Faulkners. We have what you might call a complex relationship, since he thinks the religion, um, makes me a fool. He and my mother argued about it and about me all the time, and finally they broke apart when I was in divinity school. Basically she believed and he didn’t. And in his mind she coddled me. And I guess she did. In his mind, anyway, that explains my being a priest. Her obsessive piety.”
Natasha took a little more of the wine. “Still?”
“I guess. He’s retired and he has a new wife I haven’t seen.”
“He doesn’t visit you in Memphis.”
Faulk shrugged. “Something about his peripheral vision makes it so he can’t drive anymore, but he talks of getting the new wife to drive him over one day. They were married this past fall, and of course he was glad to have me know it was a civil ceremony. Her name’s Trixie. I’ve talked to her on the phone. Soft, sweet voice. And I’ve seen her picture with him on the Christmas card.” Sitting back, folding his arms across his chest, he sighed. “I’d like one more glass of wine, I think.”
“Yes,” she said. “Let’s.”
As he signaled the server, he said, “By the terms of my mother’s last will and testament, I have a trust fund, really enough to live on if I don’t go crazy with it. So if I leave the priesthood I won’t—”
The server came and poured, still without saying anything, and they sipped the wine.
A little while later she said, “I think I’m getting blotto.”
So they ordered coffee and stayed until all the other patrons were gone from the place — the old grouchy server and the bartender talking quietly at the bar.
She was telling him about being eighteen years old and arriving in France with only the vaguest ideas of what she might do with her life. The world was wide and welcoming. As she talked she was suddenly aware of the coarseness of her hands, the bitten fingernails. She folded them under her chin and looked out at the street. Then, slowly, with a small soundless breath, set them down on the table between them, fingers spread, in plain sight. “Anyway, it was a good time. I felt like I’d found the place on earth where I belonged. I took a job as an au pair for a Dutch liquor wholesaler and his wife and two children after I graduated, because I didn’t want to come back to the States. I met my friend Constance Waverly working for them. My rich lady friend. She’s older. So you see, I have experience, I guess because of Iris, really, being friends with—” She stopped.
“You were going to say ‘with people who are so much older’?”
“With people who are a good deal older, sure.”
“That’s — reassuring.”
She sipped her coffee and sought something else to talk about.
“And how old is Constance?”
“Fifties. I’m supposed to spend some time with her in Jamaica in September. A little vacation she’s offered me. All I have to do is pay my way down.”
“Ever been there?”
“No.”
“Nice place.” He stared. “I hear.”
“I’m sorry if I said something wrong,” she said. “I didn’t mean anything by it.”
“It’s all right, really.”
Deciding to pretend that she’d already forgotten about it, she said, “What’re people saying about you leaving the priesthood?”
“Well, you’re the first person I’ve told other than the warden of the vestry about my — difficulty. And he doesn’t really know I want to leave.”