He went to the opening and looked in at them and saw that they were working together, Iris leaning on the cane and taking things out of the refrigerator, Natasha at the sink, pouring water into the kettle.
He walked in, hesitated, and then opened the cabinet over the stove and brought out three plates and three saucers. Iris broke eggs into a bowl and whisked them and sprinkled thyme in them, and salt and broken bits of feta cheese. Faulk laid strips of bacon in the big iron skillet, and Natasha, with trembling hands, spooned coffee into the French press.
Watching him tend to the bacon, she thought, I don’t know how we’ll manage it, now, my love. She started to speak the words and then felt the tears come, turning herself away, going on with the tasks, setting the table, pouring orange juice, laying out silverware.
He wiped his wrist across his mouth, watching the bacon sizzle. To his left, Iris, pouring the eggs into another skillet, began suddenly to cry. “I’ll be better,” she said quickly, standing there with the bowl in one hand, her hip against the counter. “It’s not so strange, I guess. I’m thinking about my poor girl, my daughter. After all these years, it’s — it’s still the same pressure here.” She touched her chest.
Natasha came and put her arms around her.
He looked at them, and the whole of what they had been through moved in him under his skull, a terrible pressure.
“Please,” he said. “It’ll never come up again. Ever.”
“What will never come up again,” his wife said. It was a challenge. And as the words came from her, she felt her own strength, her own separate being, not his, not anyone’s. Hers.
He said nothing. The helplessness in his gaze was hard to look at.
They went on with the preparation of the meal, and when it was all done they sat at the table, and Iris spooned eggs onto each plate and parceled the bacon. Natasha poured the coffee and set down the small plate of buttered toast. There was a long silence. And then Iris bowed her head and extended her hands to them.
Faulk took his wife’s hand, because this was grace; it was nearly habit.
“For what we are about to receive,” Iris said in a trembling voice. “We pray that you will make us truly thankful.”
Natasha saw the worry in his expression, the frowning anticipation. Without words, she had the rush of knowing: they were living in the new, terrible reality — war and broken expectations and suspicion and rape and masses of people dying for nothing they had done, even from a thing as harmless as the mail — and she had been frightened that she had lost him forever, and here he was, at her grandmother’s table, the family table, not lost: an essentially good man carrying the weight of his blunders and failures of faith or understanding, a man full of inconsistencies and anxiety, subject to the terrors of the time, and, withal, someone who desired to be better than that and who might even find a way to make up for the things he had done and felt out of his anguish. And perhaps, through the long and difficult and — she understood this, too — doubtful journey back, she might find again the man she had fallen in love with, the one with whom she had been so happily at ease, so much at home. The one whose child she was carrying.
“There’s something else I have to tell you,” she said.
September 7, 2007—October 6, 2012
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This book was begun in Memphis; worked on and titled in Knoxville; continued in Galway, Ireland, while in the hospital with a head injury; then again in Memphis; in Ireland again; in France; and finally finished in Orange, California. Allen and Donnie Wier provided hospitality and good company throughout the composition, and my grown daughters, Emily, Maggie, and Amanda, gave nurturing and support. Lisa Cupolo was beautifully helpful through it all.
A NOTE ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Richard Bausch is the author of twelve novels and eight volumes of short stories. He is a recipient of many awards, including the PEN/Malamud Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the Lila Wallace — Reader’s Digest Writers’ Award, the Literature Award of the American Academy of Arts and Letters, the Dayton Literary Peace Prize, and, in 2013, the Rea Award for the Short Story. He is currently professor of English at Chapman University in Orange, California.