Before, During, After

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Not to be lonely, not to look back with regret, not to miss anything, always to be awake and aware. And to paint. Beautifully.

Natasha Barrett had written this in her journal when she was seventeen.

Favorite watercolorists: Sargent and Gramatky. Favorite sculptors: Bernini, Donatello. Favorite book: The Age of Innocence by Edith Wharton. Favorite music: rock, particularly Men at Work, the Police, Dylan; and also for music: jazz, especially Chet Baker and Billie Holiday. Biggest fear: rejection. Biggest ambition: to travel and to know the world by heart.

Seventeen. And she had come upon it this past winter, years away. You could be a little proud, looking back. You could even find some comfort in the recollection.

In early April of the year she was to turn thirty-two, what she thought of as the chastened later version of that young woman attended a fund-raising dinner hosted by her employer, Senator Tom Norland of Mississippi, at his mansion in Arlington. The mansion was on a high bluff overlooking the Potomac River, and from the road it was just visible at its roofline after you crossed into Virginia — an immense redbrick Colonial. She had visited several times before, and there was always something warm and welcoming about it in spite of its imposing size. Behind the house was a flagstone patio, and walking paths wound through the tall oaks that stood at the edge of the bluff above the river. Along the paths, iron benches were placed decorously amid flower beds and statuary. People would gather in this wide shady space when the senator was entertaining guests.

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