In the novel “Before, During and After,” Natasha Barrett is a lovely young woman who aspires to be an artist. She dreams of one day returning to France to pursue her creative passion for the play of paint and canvas. Such hopes have been set aside as she works a job on the staff of a United States senator. Not a bad life, but she is unfulfilled. Her amorous relationships have gone nowhere.
Still reeling from her last affair with a married man, Natasha is once again adrift. She attends a posh D.C. gathering at the sumptuous home of her boss. She would prefer to skip the event but feels obligated to go. There Natasha meets Michael Faulk, an Episcopal priest from Memphis, the city where she grew up. He is 16 years older but there is warmth and pleasure in his presence. Divorced from his wife, Michael is also adrift. He is on the verge of leaving the priesthood with no specific plan about what will follow.
The serendipitous encounter brings refreshing light into their lonely and uncertain lives. Michael postpones his return to Memphis. The following day he asks Natasha if she would spend some time with him. They find each other’s company truly enjoyable and before long a whirlwind romance ensues. They agree to marry. But prior commitments require that they spend a brief time apart. Natasha told her wealthy friend Constance Waverly that she would accompany her to Jamaica for a vacation. Constance is older and considers Natasha a surrogate daughter. Michael must go to a wedding of a family friend in New York City. He tells Natasha, “[T]he wedding’s in the afternoon, and since it’s down where the World Trade Center is, I just might go in the morning and have a look at the city from one of the towers. Be fun to get breakfast a hundred floors up.”
Their period of separation is punctuated by two calamities. The first occurs on 9/11 when America and the world are stunned by unprecedented attacks on U.S. soil. The second occurs in the nighttime darkness on a Jamaican beach where Natasha is assaulted.
On their last day in Jamaica, Natasha and Constance are enjoying a calm sundrenched morning amid the pristine surf and sand. Natasha wades leisurely in the “cold, clean and lucid” water. She “wondered why people weren’t strolling down to the beach, as on all the other mornings.” As she gazes at the waves she thinks lovingly of Michael and the bright promise of their new life. They plan to visit France in the spring. Natasha imagines “herself painting in a sunlit room with the lovely countryside of Provence out the window and Michael Faulk somewhere close by, writing perhaps.” She and Constance go back to the resort for lunch. In the lobby, Natasha views the terrifying TV images of the towers of the World Trade Center “capped by the churning clouds of smoke.” She is doubly horrified knowing that her fiancé might be trapped in the conflagration.
All air flights are canceled. Natasha and Constance are stuck in paradise. Everyone is staggered by what they have witnessed on the television. It is impossible to get through by phone to loved ones back home. Many repair to the resort’s bar and begin drinking, Natasha and Constance among them. The resort’s atmosphere is transformed by the sudden crisis. Conversations and interactions that would have been unlikely the previous day erupt spontaneously. Constance attempts to console Natasha and assure her that Michael is all right. Her efforts do little to dissipate the young woman’s worry and anxiety. Day fades into night, and Natasha is alone on the beach. She has had too much to drink. Her mind veers from a conviction that Michael is alive to a morbid fear that he is dead in the destruction of the towers. Quietly she utters, “Please let it be all right.”
Her solitude is breached by a man she met for the first time earlier that day. He too has been drinking. Though she states her wish to be alone, the man plops down nearby and offers her a toke of marijuana. Too much booze and psychic turmoil have left Natasha emotionally exhausted. Instead of removing herself she accepts the joint. He rolls another and she shares that as well. Later in the night the man sexually assaults Natasha, nearly killing her.
Out of fear, guilt, anger and confusion, she tells no one what has happened. The unspoken event is a slow acting poison. When she is finally home it becomes gradually apparent to Michael, who wasn’t killed, and others close to her that Natasha has changed.
Ricahrd Bausch has written a finely woven story of the confluence of two gruesome events. The carnage of 9/11 is a looming backdrop to the assault of Natasha. Physical hurt, fear, mistrust and misunderstanding pulsate ineluctably from the trauma she endures in dread silence.
The mutual pain and perplexity experienced by Michael and others are etched in aching detail.
The incremental welling up of tension eventually rips through the lives of these good, albeit flawed, people. Still there is an inkling of hope. Reconciliation and healing might eventually restore wounded lives and shattered relationships.
Don’t approach this book lightly.
Book Review - Before, During and After by Richard Bausch