What Comes After

by Joanne Tompkins

  The girl smiled, directly at me then. “So, it is good? It isn’t just me, because I was so hungry?”

  I agreed it was good. And it was. This food, the small lightening I felt in my chest.

  11

  Daniel’s father led Evangeline down a hall lined with four ornately carved doors. He passed one with a chair jammed under its handle and opened the next. The door moaned loudly as it swung, a gilded chandelier blazing with the flip of a switch. The room was freezing, no warmer than under the tree.

  Isaac—he’d said she could call him that—carried towels that he set on the bed, a double with a worn blue quilt and a headboard carved fancy like the door. He went to a corner vent, lowered one knee and then the other. Using both hands, he strained against the lever until it gave way abruptly, clunking over with a dull metallic thump. Within seconds, a warm, musty smell rose, and she imagined the months—or had it been years?—of dust and mold, desiccated remains of insects, and flakes of dead skin the vent had been storing, remnants of past lives released once more into the room.

  The man wrangled himself upright, awkwardly, as if not only his knees but all his joints had turned on him. He removed a wool blanket from the closet and set it on the bed. “I don’t generally heat in here,” he said.

  Evangeline stood, clutching her backpack to her chest. This hadn’t been Daniel’s room. She was glad about that. But she hadn’t expected such spareness behind that fancy door. The walls were empty, just a floral pattern ghosting through dingy white paint. Other than the bed, there was only a nightstand, a lamp, and a ladder-back chair—not even a small rug on the battered wooden floor. She was afraid to move, not wanting to touch anything for fear of leaving a stain.

  “You can set your bag on the chair,” he said. “There are some drawers in the closet if you want.” He paused, looked around, said he’d be right back.

  After he entered the hall, a door opened—not the one with the chair—and she heard the weight of him going down a set of stairs. There must be a basement, and she knew without seeing that it was a cavern of dirt and stone and raw-cut old timbers. He returned a minute later carrying a large cardboard box, the letter K marked on its side. “Clothes,” he said. “They’re old but clean. I meant to take them to Goodwill.”

  He set the box on the bed, left again, and returned with a new toothbrush. “You saw the guest bath in the hall. Should be some shampoo in there. Takes a while for the hot water to arrive.”

  She thanked him and asked, “Do you mind if I shower now? I won’t wake anyone?”

  His lips fell open, and then he said, “No. You won’t wake anyone.”

  He started to leave, hesitating at the hall. “I’m going to close your door now, and you should too, after you shower. If you hear something scratching, it’s just Rufus. Might do a little whining. Don’t let him in, though. I’m trying to train him . . . After my boy . . .” He trailed off and straightened.

  “Well. That’s fine, then,” he said, as if all had been explained.

  * * *

  —

  EVANGELINE HAD BEEN SURPRISED when she’d seen Isaac’s picture in the paper. She’d expected Daniel’s father to be muscular and firm jawed, handsome in a middle-aged sort of way. But the man in the paper looked older than she would have guessed, tall and thin with an angular face, his pale eyes nearly vanishing on the page. His hair, which she’d imagined as dark and neat, was a decidedly untidy gray.

  She’d been drawn to that photo. Something complicated and odd about the man, the way he appeared broken beyond all hope yet indestructible at the same time. The word “stoic” rose in her mind, a word she couldn’t quite define but felt as a hard emptiness in her gut.

  In person, these effects were magnified. With legs too long for his body, Isaac seemed off-kilter, almost wobbly, as if a gust might topple him. He carried a certain softness that she’d initially mistaken for weakness. But already she could feel that his core was fixed, like a steel stake driven through him, a rigidity that both anchored and pained him. She couldn’t have expressed these things—she often bore her most valuable knowledge wordlessly—but she sensed it, the pitiless, bitter sweetness of him. She liked Isaac. She liked his bitterness most of all.

  She heard his steps tracing back toward the kitchen and guessed he’d be up awhile. She desperately needed a shower but didn’t have a robe. In the box, she found faded tees, pilled sweaters, a pair of khakis torn at the knee, a light cotton nightgown. It was all a little big, but close enough, and she might be able to roll up sleeves or tie the tops, tear the pants a bit more, make them work somehow. She grabbed the nightgown and held it to the light. Thin but not see-through. Good. If she ran into Isaac in the hall, no one could say she’d been indecent.

  The shower ran a good half hour as she shampooed her hair over and over until the water ran clear. She used a rusty razor to shave her legs and armpits, peeling back to the girl before she turned feral, then dried herself with the towel that, though scratchy, seemed the epitome of luxury. Afterward she stood before the mirror untangling her hair with a wide-toothed comb and saw in the reflection a prettier girl than she’d remembered. Leaning in, she touched her cheek, freckled skin as flawless as satin. She had that at least, a certain beauty.

  She’d thought she’d be able to use that here, her beauty. Not in direct seduction, God no, but in the mild flirtation she’d found made men more generous. But Isaac was an odd one. On first entering the kitchen, she’d tested him with a sly loitering glance. He’d looked away firmly, not in embarrassment or judgment but with a clear message: he would not be seduced, not in the slightest, and he was allowing her that moment to reset. She dropped all pretense of attraction then, and things had gone better after that. But what else did she have to offer him? What would keep him from reporting her to the state?

  There was the baby, yes. That’s why she’d come. But he couldn’t know that. Not now. Not when the wounds were so fresh, not with two dead boys and the town looking for a girl to blame. She would have to make do with the truth of her situation, that she was alone and in need.

  By the time she headed to bed, the musty smell had settled, and the miraculous combination of clean skin and clean sheets made her momentarily forget all that had happened. It seemed possible she was in the midst of another life, one in which this house was her own, and when she woke in the morning, she’d find her mother making breakfast in the kitchen, a life where there were no dead boys, where she wasn’t pregnant and alone and guilty of countless small crimes, one in which bad luck and bad choices had passed her by.

  There was no point in such thinking. It only made one sick with wanting. As she sank into the downy pillow, Evangeline realized she hadn’t puked once since she’d arrived, though she’d eaten a large meal of ground meat and cheese and thick sauce. It had to mean something. Some kind of approval of the decision she’d made. Whoever decided who got what was finally giving her a break.

  She drew the wool blanket to her neck and turned off the lamp. She’d obeyed Isaac’s instructions and closed the door tight. It couldn’t have been a minute before something heavy landed against it with a low whump. She heard it shifting on the other side, its hair—for she assumed it was the dog—rubbing against the carved door.

  “Rufus?” she whispered.

  The motion stopped. A remarkable quiet; even the wind abruptly died. She waited a moment, then rolled onto her side. The rubbing started again, but only briefly. Then, as if the creature had been waiting for the perfect pitch of silence, there rose from the hall a long and mournful sigh.

  * * *

  —

  THOUGH EXHAUSTED, Evangeline couldn’t sleep. She sensed Daniel in the house, her eyes drifting to the ceiling, certain his room had been up there.

  After their first meeting, she’d seen Daniel once more. She was on her table in the park the next night, wondering if the boys would appear, a possibility tha
t had set up a confusion of wanting and not-wanting. She forced her eyes across the water to the soft blue islands in the distance, trying to shut down all that unnecessary longing. But the glittering Sound seemed nothing more than a thinly painted mural compared to the dazzle of heat that rushed through her when she pictured the boys.

  She examined the sky. Still light, but everything would change in the next hour. A purple-tinged exhaustion would seep into the upper reaches of brightness, drift lower until it met the dark line of the horizon. An eye closing against the safety of the day. She decided to head back to the empty trailer. Best to enter that place before the night filled its corners with all that can menace a mind.

  She had turned away from the water and was about to slip from the table when Daniel strode from the black trees. Even without Jonah to show him to advantage, he radiated beauty: tight through well-muscled shoulders, loose through narrow hips, a worn leather belt riding his movements. This was a boy who, though annoyingly full of himself, could protect a girl if he wanted, could protect her no problem at all.

  Again he carried a paper sack that he set on the table. “Hey,” he said, pulling out a beer and popping it open for her.

  She took a swig and leaned back. “Hey.”

  He opened another and joined her on the table, his thigh casually touching hers. He began talking away as if they were old friends, as if this happened every night, just the two of them sitting in the park, shooting the shit.

  He’d spent the day at football camp. The new coach was a “kick-ass guy,” and Daniel was glad they’d finally brought in someone who understood “the importance of discipline.” No one took the game as seriously as Daniel did. They pissed him off, “that bunch of wusses.” He was the only one who’d head to the gym after practice—could she believe that?—but it was their loss, because you got out of things what you put in. As he spoke, he guzzled a couple of beers, crushed the empties in a powerful hand and tossed them into the bag.

  Evangeline kept her focus on the horizon, nodding and muttering agreement here and there. She wasn’t interested in sports, especially not football, but was struck by his passion, aroused by an intensity she imagined turned toward her. True, there was a lot of judgment in him. The boy was arrogant as hell. Ugly edges. But that was a given, wasn’t it? If anywhere there existed something pure, she’d never found it.

  They fell silent a moment, and then he turned to her. “You want to grab some pizza?”

  She hadn’t eaten since midmorning, not since she’d snagged an apple fritter from under a plastic-domed plate in a neighborhood grocery. She was dying for something with meat.

  “Sounds good,” she said. She searched her pockets as if expecting to find something there. “Sorry, must have left my money at home.”

  He smirked a little, said it’d be on him.

  As they headed to his car—a Ford sedan she guessed was his dad’s—the thought of going to a restaurant, even a hole-in-the-wall pizza place, walking straight in the front door and sitting down like a normal person, not having to sneak around and worry about getting caught, was so pleasant that Evangeline brushed up against him and let him take her hand. True, she sort of hated Daniel’s handsomeness, his self-aggrandizing stories, his assumption that of course she would want to be with him, but she found herself looking forward to how his small-town celebrity—for she had no doubt of this—would shine on her.

  Daniel drove the mile or so to Watertown Pizza, and though there were plenty of spots in front, he parked around the corner on a narrow side street. She opened the door to hop out, but he said, “Wait here. I’ll only be a minute. Pepperoni okay?”

  When he returned, he said he knew a perfect place to eat it and headed out of town, the smell of the pizza so intoxicating Evangeline grew sick with desire for it. He drove straight toward her place, and she half wondered if the boys had followed her home the night before. But a few blocks before her road, he turned down a wooded street with a No Outlet sign and parked at the end. He handed her a blanket and lantern, then grabbed the pizza and the last cans of beer.

  She’d done plenty of trail walking since moving to Port Furlong but hadn’t discovered this one. As they moved into the woods, the path grew narrow. Saplings—ten, twelve feet tall—leaned over the trail, blocked the last of the evening light. Daniel kept stooping to avoid branches, each time grabbing and holding them back for Evangeline. The foliage grew so dense it was hard to see. She clicked on the lantern, a battery-operated job that lit the undersides of entwined limbs, and they pressed on another few minutes.

  Then the trail opened up and they made what became their final turn.

  * * *

  —

  NOW, LYING IN DANIEL’S HOUSE, Evangeline felt the weight of him above her, and from the dark center of herself a breath rose as loud and pressurized as it had been that warm September night.

  12

  Day of My Death

  The wind is still rattling that rake around, but I barely hear it. I’m using everything in me trying not to think of Red. I have to open up space for other things, because all those tangled feelings with Daniel, the ones that led to this night, started years before I met her. Love, shame, jealousy, pity. Name an emotion, any emotion, and I guarantee it lived somewhere in that space between Daniel and me.

  Red floats up again—that girl with her pale skin and wild eyes. This time, I place her on a raft, let her drift to the shadows. And it works, this sailing out of sight. As soon as the brightness of her hair disappears, I’m watching myself at fourteen.

  It’s cool and fresh outside, but my room turns sticky with heat, fills with the sulfurous aroma of the paper mill south of town. Mostly we didn’t smell it. But when the trade winds from Mexico or the Antarctic or wherever blow just right, there it is, and we remember. It’s always spewing its foul odors, only usually in someone else’s direction, so it’s no concern to us. I’m in my back lot, and there’s Daniel walking out of that stench across his field on an August afternoon. Rufus is loping at his side. The dog flops onto his back, switches his hips one way, then the other, kicking his feet in a wild-assed jig, probably thinking the smell comes from the dead lawn and there’s no better heaven than a good wallow in a rotten-egg stink. I’d call my dog, Brody, but he’s inside where it’s cooler. Just as well. He’s moving slower these days, and Rufus plays pretty rough.

  Daniel’s a head taller than me, and he refuses to wear a shirt if he’s got the slightest excuse. Always showing off those new muscles of his, especially when they’re glistening with sweat. He’s carrying his BB gun and a wooden bench. We had been pitching a slimy ball for Rufus, and it’d gotten pretty old, so I said, “How ’bout some plinking?”

  Rufus moaned when I said it, gave me the evil eye. Rufus understands everything we say. He’s a strange one, that dog, if that’s even what he is. I mean, he’s a dog all right. Definitely a dog. But something else too. He’s always staring at you like he sees everything you’re hiding. If he sniffs out you’re sad, he’ll climb into your lap and lay his big old head on your shoulder. He’ll make this whimpering sound in his throat like he’s doing the crying for you.

  But right now, he’s pissed, and while he doesn’t hate guns enough to just up and leave—I mean, we aren’t forcing him to stay—he wants it known he doesn’t approve. He keeps nudging Daniel’s gun with his nose, giving off a low growl like he’s warning that gun it better watch itself. Finally Daniel yells at him to stop, and he drops to the ground sulking, plops that anvil head onto his paws with a sigh.

  I’m coming across the field with my own BB gun and a paper bag of cans. Rufus jumps up, runs to me, and sticks his head in the bag, rooting around, tearing it a little. He probably smells tuna, but the cans are all empty, and he gives me another hateful look. I’m definitely on his shit list today. Daniel sets his gun down and goes to the back of the lot. I put mine next to his and take the cans to where he’s setting
up. I start lining the targets on the bench, but Daniel follows behind, knocking them off faster than I can get them in place.

  “What the fuck are you doing?” I say.

  And he says, “Whatever the fuck I want. You gonna do something about it?”

  I’m supposed to take a swing at him now, and he’s supposed to grab my arm and pull me to the ground, and we’ll roll around awhile, his body hot and sticky against mine in that summer heat. And so I play my part and he plays his. Only this time, when I make to get up, he keeps me pinned to the ground, his full weight on me, our faces close.

  “Get off me, you fucker,” I say.

  He’s got forty pounds of muscle on me, and if he wants me pinned there, that’s where I’ll be. He doesn’t say anything but grinds his hips into me a little, and the look on his face is some concoction of malice and gloat and giddy dominance. There’s something else there too, a sort of violent tenderness, and for a second I think he’s going to kiss me, stick his tongue down my throat. I try bucking him off, but I’m getting nowhere when Rufus piles on like this is a fun new game, and that gets Daniel laughing, and I start laughing too and we all scramble to standing, set up the cans, and go back to our weapons as if this were all part of the fun.

  Daniel and I are both decent shots, and we make those cans leap. Rufus shakes his head, walks halfway back to the house and lies down, keeps an eye on us from there. After a while, we grow wild, laughing and taking random shots at trees and distant birds, as if all the animals and plants of the world are targets we can make jump at our command. Long shadows cross the field, and the wind picks up, the dead grass in motion. Daniel lays down his gun and leans against the old oak, the one with the rotting clubhouse in its branches. I’m about to join him when an animal darts in the shadows near the bench.