“Oh,” Faulk, who was standing over him, said. “I do.” He laughed and looked up at the bulges of darker shapes in the low heavy clouds. He wondered why some men slurred so when they got drunk, as if the alcohol went to their tongues. He himself was proud that the times when he had gone over the line had not been so obvious to people; he could always carry it. “Gonna rain,” he said to Adams.
Adams was silent.
“How long did you say you were married?”
“Twent’ years”—he made a sweeping gesture with his other arm, the one that was not holding him up—“gone.”
“I think you told me that.”
“You’re newl’wed.”
“Yeah.”
“Lucky guy, huh. Your age.”
“You got somewhere — can I get you a cab?”
“She’s veh’ pretty. Don’t think she likes me.”
“She’s the nervous type.” Faulk was surprised to hear the words come from his lips. The fact of it had a sobering effect.
Adams lay back on the grass and put one arm over his face.
Faulk had thought that they might just walk it off, but now the other man was either asleep or passed out. And here was Iris, driving up in her Taurus that had only twelve thousand miles on it. She parked along the curb where they were and got out with her cane.
For a space the two of them just stood looking at each other, Iris over the roof of her car, and Faulk standing next to the unconscious Liam Adams.
“He can’t stay there,” Iris said.
“Thought we’d just walk it off,” said Faulk.
“Yeah. Well.” Neither of them moved.
“Is Natasha—”
“She went to bed.”
Adams spoke from the ground. “I b’lieve I’m be sick.”
“Sit up,” Faulk told him. “Sit up. You’ll choke to death, for God’s sake.”
Silence.
Iris came around the car, slowly, using the cane. She was in some discomfort. He put his hand out. “No,” she said.
Adams began to snore.
“How cold will it get tonight?” Iris asked.
“Don’t know. Cool enough right now.”
“I’ll call a cab. He can stay here until it arrives, and then I’ll wake him.”
“He’ll be all right laying here?”
“I can have a cab here in fifteen, twenty minutes. He won’t freeze to death in twenty minutes. It must be sixty-something, right?”
Faulk looked at the sky and then back at her.
“Course, getting the cabbie to let him get into his cab. That’s another story. Especially if he gets sick.”
There was a pause, where they seemed to be thinking about it.
“Ridiculous,” she said. “You know? The two of you.”
“He seemed bent on getting plowed.”
“He wasn’t alone.”
Faulk waited for her to say more.
“You better get on home. I think your wife’s waiting up to tell you something. Something important. And son—” She stopped.
“Yeah?”
“I hope you’ll be up to it.”
He started down the walk.
“You want a ride?” she called.
He halted and turned. “I’ll walk.” Then he indicated Adams lying in his stupor on the grass. “You’ve got that to deal with.”
“Good night, son. Remember.”
“Good night.” He went carefully on, concentrating. He took each step as if balanced on a ledge, but he did not sway or wobble. At the end of the street he turned and looked back and saw her still standing over Adams. She raised one hand to wave. He waved back. He thought of all the years she raised Natasha alone, grieving the loss of her daughter and son-in-law, no help. Just now, the history seemed an element of the woman’s strangeness.
And then, thinking about Iris, he felt suddenly as if the difficulty inside his own marriage was in some way connected to the history: a girl raised by a woman keeping so much of her inner life to herself.
He walked up the street, full of sudden foreboding, feeling precarious, susceptible, even frail, resolving to face his anxiety and tolerate everything, determined to be kind, and not ask for more than his wife, his beloved wife, for whatever reason or reasons, could give. Probably she had done something in Jamaica that she herself considered a betrayal of him. In any case, it would have come from her belief that he, Faulk, had died in New York. So he would find a way to forgive whatever it was and go on. He faltered, nearly fell at the corner, and continued walking, overcorrecting, but then setting himself straight, being cautious with each stride, considering his own magnanimousness. Then, through the fog of what he had drunk, he saw it for what it was and felt foolish and penitent.
Lord, send my roots rain.
No. It seemed that this was all gone from him, now. The sky was only a limitless emptiness. He shook himself, stopped, and raised his fists, and then simply let his hands come back to his chest, as if praying and waiting for someone to come to him. Far off, the sound of a speeding car rose, the tires squealing.
I have believed my whole life. Help thou my unbelief.
At the house, all the lights were still on. He entered quietly and stepped into the kitchen. There was almost half of the big bottle of Pinot Grigio left, sitting in the middle of the counter. He had a glass of water from the tap, then poured the wine into the water glass and drank it down, standing wavering in the light — bereft, marooned. All these weeks he had been wanting to know. And now, apparently and at last, when he wanted so desperately not to, he would know. The wine had increased the haze of his thoughts. He took more of it, then stumbled into the bedroom, where he found her sitting up, asleep, with the book open on her upraised knees. Gingerly he removed the book. She woke, raising one hand to her face.
She was unaware of having been asleep.
“Just me,” he said.
“Oh.” She reached to embrace him, and he sat down and took her into his arms. For a little while, they simply sat there clinging to each other. The smell of the wine on him made her uneasy, and even so she kept her arms tight around him.
“Iris says you’ve got something to tell me. You don’t have to tell me.”
“We’ll talk — let’s talk tomorrow. You’ve had too much to drink.” She was fighting the shaking in her voice, feeling the muscles of his back, his shoulder blades, the solidness of him.
He said, “You don’t have to say anything. I don’t care what happened in Jamaica.”
“What?”
“I don’t. I forgive you.”
She paused, only a little. “You what?”
“I do. Forgive you. Whatever you did in Jamaica.”
“Oh, God,” she said. “This again. Jamaica again.”
“You don’t have to tell me about it. In fact, I don’t want you to. I forgive you.”
She sighed sadly. “Forgive me for what?”
“I don’t even want to know who it was.”
“Who it was.” Now she pushed at his shoulders, and when he sat back, she stared, frowning.
He said, “You had something to tell me. If it’s about Jamaica, I don’t care about it. I forgive you for it — whatever it was. Okay? The whole world was coming down on you, and I don’t care about it anymore.”
She said nothing. There was no change at all in her countenance.
For her, something had moved at her heart, a grabbing sensation. She thought she might lose consciousness.
“You thought I was dead,” he told her. “It could’ve been that you were drunk. You got into things with somebody or ran into someone — someone you knew from before—”