“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.
On the contrary, It is impossible to suppose that one’s sense of the trouble is all the product of imagining, or even partially so, though the suspicion about the former lover is imbued with what I do imagine of my wife on the beach in Jamaica, with someone. But there is a definite change in her feeling toward me which is unacknowledged but demonstrated in ways that she answers for with her experience of 9/11. She herself acknowledges, at least tacitly, the unease; and the panics in the night, the anxiety and trembling, are all manifestations of the trouble. They are undeniable. Therefore, I have sufficient reason to seek an answer for myself beyond our unhappy silences and the sense, even as she seems all right, that something is haunting her. It is a reasonable thing to expect a man to seek some communication with the person she was with in Jamaica, Constance, and, if my suspicions are shown to be correct, with the someone else my wife saw there.
I answer that, it makes no sense to look for something that could be purely in the realm of imagining, especially if one has to confront a person who showed such clear sign of being part of the conspiracy of silence. And it would be something bordering on psychotic to seek some sort of confrontation with the photographer, because he is only one possibility, and it should be simple enough to rule him out: one has only to find out where he was during that period in the middle of September. Lacking him as the possible other the whole question of distrust deepens further. This is a sufficient answer to the Objections.
8
That evening, Iris came over to the house for dinner, as planned. She brought Liam Adams with her. She introduced him by saying, “This is my friend from the mayor’s office.” Faulk simply stared at them, as if waiting for some kind of punch line.
Iris said, “I guess Natasha hasn’t talked to you since you got home.”
For Faulk, it was another aspect of what he did not want to think about: his wife’s previous life. The fact that it was from her childhood meant nothing against the rush of feeling that it was a further complication, and it made him irritable. He offered wine to them both. Natasha, returning from the store with a bag of groceries, said, “Oh, I’m sorry. I thought I’d be back before you got here.” She looked at Mr. Adams and smiled.
Apparently he had come calling shortly after Natasha dropped Iris off from their lunch. Natasha put the groceries away and started heating oil to fry chicken. Faulk had poured two glasses of Rioja. Liam Adams drank his rather quickly and then spoke about taking the liberty of having another glass. “If no one minds,” he said, pouring it full.
Natasha saw this, and marked it, and then went about making the dinner while the three of them talked in the other room.
They discussed the Afghan war for a while, and then Iris said, “Let’s change the subject. I’m so sick of the whole awful thing.”
Adams had emptied the first bottle of wine, so Faulk opened another. The new wine was a Côtes-du-Rhone, and Adams talked about how this wine seemed lighter. Natasha made the dinner with help from Iris while the two men went on about Faulk’s having left the priesthood and about Adams’s deciding to move back to Memphis, where he was born and raised. He reminisced about Memphis in the old days, when he was a boy and it had been a segregated city. “Beale Street then was nothing like it is now, let me tell you.”
The women set the dinner out, and they all sat down to eat. Adams kept pouring wine for himself and Faulk until the second bottle was empty, and Faulk took the last bottle of red that he had, a Brunello, and opened it, feeling a little drunk himself, and watching Adams fill his glass again. Adams drank most of the glass and then poured more, talking too loud about deciding to come home and then taking five years to do it.
This was the third time he had said exactly that. Faulk looked at Iris, who looked back at him with a helpless frown. Natasha had eaten one plate and then taken seconds, surprised at her own appetite. She stood and began taking away the dishes. Iris helped her. They also exchanged glances. Iris shook her head.