“Guess I’ll wait to tell him about the baby,” Natasha told her.
“Well, till we’re gone, anyway.”
She went on clearing the table and taking the empty wine bottles. Faulk saw the sour, down-turning expression around her mouth and had the thought that a little hospitality toward Adams was not too much to ask; that it wouldn’t cost her so much to be a little forbearing. He did not examine the feeling, though some part of him was vaguely aware of the resentment in it. Adams was loud, drunk, and dull as he tried once more to describe all the processes of thought that had led him to decide about moving home. And then he was rattling on again about New York and the attacks. “Nobody knew how go about an’thing.” The white beard was ruffled now and wine-stained around the mouth and down to the chin.
“I felt like a refugee in a war,” Faulk said to him.
“Tha’s right.”
“Right.”
“We all were. An’ strange things. Poor dumb guy — cheat’n on ez wife. S’posed to be at the office. Calls’er, tells’er he’s at work. Eighty-sixth floor. Building’s already c’lapsed. Frien’ amine’s uncle, died that morning, in’ a hosp-eh’tal. Natur’l causes.”
The two women cleared everything away and started doing the dishes. Natasha had to go sit down, and she moved past the men to get into the living room. Her grandmother finished the dishes, standing against the sink with the cane resting on it at her side. Then she made a cup of coffee and went in to where Natasha was.
“Awf’l,” Liam Adams said, as if proclaiming something to a crowd. “So many refugees.”
“All of us.” Faulk was drunk, and did not quite know how drunk, and now he felt that he had made a wonderful new friend. He went into the refrigerator and found a half-gallon bottle of Pinot Grigio that his wife had just brought home from the grocery store. He opened it. “Mind if we switch to white?”
“Love th’ whites.”
He poured both glasses full, ignoring the little pocket of red in each one. The white wine was therefore faintly tinted pink. They drank, now, for some reason, with excessive politeness, setting the glasses down with great care.
Natasha murmured to her grandmother, “Did he drive to your house?”
Iris nodded. “He had a glass of wine at my house before we came over here.”
“What will you do?”
“Maybe he’ll stay here.”
“Oh, please, no. Where would we put him?”
Faulk sat with the side of his head resting against his own palm, that elbow on the table, looking into the living room where the two women were seated side by side on the couch, talking in low tones. Adams was holding forth. “There’s no hope f’rus win this one.” He belched low, tucking his chin, the stained white beard. “R’lidgus wars. Las’ one las-ed five hun’ed years. No fight for freed’m anymore. Bullshit.” He lifted his glass, which was now empty, and seeing this, he reached for the bottle. As he poured he went on. “Fight for oil. Tha’s what th’ fuck it is. Scuse me.” He belched. “Oil. Tha’s all.”
“Right,” Faulk told him, though now in the back of his mind he was beginning to worry about where this night would end. Adams was in far worse shape.
“Th’ buildings — terr’bull. Jus’ gone. I din’ see ’em come down.” He started crying now, without sound, sitting there slumped back in the chair, looking at nothing. “Both of ’em. Gone. People dyin’ of anthrax. Boys dyin’ oveh there.”
“It’s late,” Faulk said, because nothing else came to mind.
Adams sat forward, and when he spoke now his voice was curiously less garbled sounding, the words more slowly pronounced, though plainly it was all coming from what he’d had to drink. “I don’t really handle”—again he belched—“I’m … I’ve not been so good at be’en by myself. You know?”
“Yes,” Faulk said.
“You know?”
“I know.”
“You know.”
“Yes.”
“Since a long time, really.”
Faulk looked into the living room and saw that Iris and Natasha had gone from there.
“You know?” Adams said.
“Yes, I do know.”
“Wife’s gone five years.”
“Sorry.”
“Five years.”
Faulk was aware that sympathy was required but was unable to feel anything like it.
“B’cause it’s a man’s right,” Adams went on.
“I see.”
“A man’s right.” He appeared to have settled some conflict in his thoughts.
“Come on,” Faulk said, rising. “Let’s go for a walk.”
In the small bedroom, the women sat on the bed and listened to them struggle out the door, Adams still talking.
“Oh, Christ. No,” Natasha said to her grandmother. “Not tonight.”
“Do you want me to stay?”
“I’m going to bed.”
“Don’t be too discouraged. They’re entitled — it’s been awful for them, I’m sure.”
“Poor babies.”
“Hey.”
“Well?”
“Give ’em a break, honey. Come on.”
Natasha patted her grandmother’s thick-boned wrists.
“You must be exhausted,” Iris said to her. “Can I tuck you in?”
“I have to take a shower.”
She looked down. “Of course. Well.”
“I won’t take long.”
She smiled.
In the shower, Natasha got the water as hot as it would go and stood there. For a while she didn’t even use the soap. She thought of being a mother, and of the child she was carrying, imagining a little girl. Someone to grow up and live in the world. She saw again the burning towers. She saw the starry quiet sky in Jamaica, and the pictures of suffering and sorrow and confusion, and she made a forlorn, hopeless effort to shut it all, all thought, away. Finally she turned the water off and dried herself and went out to the bedroom where Iris, hearing her come, had stood and with one hand pulled the blankets back. Quickly Natasha got into her nightgown and crawled into the bed, and Iris pulled the blanket up over her shoulder, then leaned down and kissed her cheek. Iris smelled of the wine and of her perfume. Her hair was strawlike, but somehow soft, too.
“My sweet girl,” the old woman said. “I’m so proud of you.”
“Sorry about today,” Natasha said.
“Today was lovely.”
“I was short with you.”
“Stop it.”
“What do you think they’ll do?”
“They might end up in jail if they make enough noise.”
“They wouldn’t — they wouldn’t get into his car … Mr. Adams’s car.”
“I don’t think they’ll go that far. But I’ll go see. You rest. You want the light out?”
“No. I’ll read.”
“Good night.” Iris kissed her again, then made her way out on the cane.
Alone, Natasha rolled to her side in the bed and closed her eyes, feeling suddenly almost groggy. She remembered that she was pregnant. She sat up, arranging herself in the bed with pillows behind her back, and opened a book to read, a biography of Mary Todd Lincoln. But she kept reading the same sentence, over and over. The words would not register in her mind.
9
Adams sat down on the lawn in front of Iris’s house, out of breath, claiming that he was going to be sick. It had taken them some time to get this far, struggling along, Adams’s arm over Faulk’s neck, and Faulk mostly having to carry him, holding on to his wrist, hauling him when he dragged his feet. The night was shrouded by low clouds, and the air had become damp. The wetness of the grass made a dark place on the seat of the older man’s white pants where he sat. “Neveh drink like this,” he got out.