What Comes After

by Joanne Tompkins

  The buck stared at us, his eyes looking fake, which was good, because I felt bad enough. Kept thinking how that beautiful animal had been bounding and running around, enjoying its life, probably humping a cute doe here and there. It seemed kind of a waste.

  Every time we killed something, I went through this. But as my dad taught me, “It’s not like they were going to live forever anyway.” Once, in meeting for worship, I heard Daniel’s father say, “From death, life springs,” which I liked and made me think that on a net basis maybe a kill didn’t change all that much. Though I doubt that was his point.

  I took the last swig and got started, everything by the book: screaming-sharp blades, rubber gloves, and those first careful incisions around the anus. Daniel slugged back a beer, narrating the action in mock hushed tones: “Ladies and gentlemen, quiet, please. The buck fucker’s going for it. Shhhh. Check out that form . . . straight hard in at that bunghole . . . and . . . and . . . he nails it!”

  He’d been on me all week, more than usual, even, puffing out disgusted breaths every time I said something, calling me a “pathetic dumbshit” when anyone was around. Now he fell quiet. I sliced off the testicles, then dissected around the penis and slid it through the same opening as the anus. Daniel popped open another Bud and handed it to me. I chugged it down, switched to my gut-hook knife, and slit the belly from pelvis to rib cage. The hot, coppery odor of fresh blood rose up. I didn’t so much as scratch the entrails or we’d have been dealing with a whole new order of stink.

  Daniel started grumbling about Sammy. A while back she’d been the one nagging for a commitment, but the tables had turned. She was applying to Ivy League schools and had a decent shot of getting in. Rumor had it that she was planning on dumping him. I half wondered if she already had.

  “Why would she want to be with those asswipes on the East Coast?” he said.

  I severed the windpipe from the base of the skull, my new blade slicing that tough cartilage like warm butter. I half listened to him singing that song of loss, surprised it’d taken him so long to figure out that if a girl’s smarter than you and beautiful besides, it’s your ass that’s going to get kicked.

  That’s when his eyes slid sideways at me. “Hey, dickbreath.” He waited till I stopped, till he had my full attention. “I did that girl from the park.”

  “What girl?” I said. He didn’t mean Red. That wasn’t possible.

  “You know. From a couple days back. That skanky redhead. That ‘better’ thing you had to do tonight. That girl.”

  And even then it took a moment, because the Red I knew was most definitely not a skank. She was beautiful. Her green eyes radiated crazy fierce sweetness, wounded yet tough as hell.

  I did that girl from the park. I kept hearing it in my head, but I don’t remember feeling pissed or jealous or anything at all, really. Like I said, he had to be talking about somebody else. I don’t remember moving. I only remember seeing an odd twitch of his lips, like he was enjoying how those words tasted in his mouth. And then somehow I was airborne, that blade singing through the air.

  When it struck his neck, our eyes met and the same thought flashed over our faces: What the fuck?

  In all our years together, I’d never before landed so much as a single solid punch on the guy. No one could dodge incoming like Daniel Balch. The pure blind luck of such a spectacular hit, something straight out of a kung fu movie, would have made us burst out laughing, would have brought us back from our hateful last week. The two of us would’ve been snorting and rolling around on the damp ground, puking from laughing so hard, just like we had when we were kids. “You should have seen the look on your face!”

  But of course Daniel’s neck was severed clean through, and I’d swear it was my own blood that was spilling out of him.

  It’s hard to explain why I kept hacking after that, except that it was necessary, what with his eyes screaming every kind of pain at me and him gurgling and drowning in that horror show of a throat. I loved the guy. Who else was going to make it stop?

  When it was over, I pressed myself up, his blood still warm on my skin. I told myself I’d only been kidding around, swinging at him like that. What were the odds he’d lean forward at the exact wrong moment? A freak accident. The freakiest of the freakish. But I knew better. For those few seconds, I wanted him dead. I wanted him dead with a clarity beyond thought. Maybe not the moment before or the moment after, but while I was swinging and whaling on him.

  It’s strange how you discover what’s been hiding in you all along.

  * * *

  —

  I’M LYING ALONE ON THIS BED, but I swear I hear Red breathing somewhere near. I whisper to her, tell her she’s in no way to blame. I was born with the potential to explode. She had seen that.

  As for the fuel that propelled me into the air? It had been loaded over the years, one tiny drop at a time.

  45

  The nights grew longer, and an unyielding chill landed over the town. The house too grew colder. A week in, Isaac arrived at Evangeline’s door with a down comforter, muttering that the furnace was old, likely needed to be replaced. She thanked him and curled beneath it, once again warm enough to sleep. But the comforter brought terrors rather than dreams, landed her in the shadows of a night wood, snakes curling along branches, a buck’s eyes locked in accusing stillness. A knife would flash in a lantern’s light, and she’d bolt upright, gulping for air as if her own throat were filling with blood.

  Nightmares pursued her until she began to dread falling asleep. Yet each night, she did. Each day, she got up and went to school. Each day, Isaac was still there. She got used to it, all that horror. Then, a week before Christmas, she woke in the early-morning hours needing to pee, and when she entered the gloomy hall, she didn’t jump at imaginary shadows or clutch her robe against unexpected chills. The house had shifted, as if whatever malevolence it had needed to vent had passed like the flu.

  By Christmas morning, though darkness still lingered in empty corners, she felt nearly content. When she heard the knock shortly before noon, Evangeline warned Isaac to “be nice” and rushed happily to the door. Nells carried a plate of decorated cookies and Lorrie a pan of scalloped potatoes ready to be baked. They wore silly matching Rudolph sweaters with plastic red noses that blinked off and on.

  Isaac, who was at the sink rinsing greens, glanced up when they entered and said, “Merry Christmas.” Evangeline thought he might as well have said, “Get the hell out,” given his gruff tone.

  If Lorrie noticed, it didn’t show. She set the potatoes on the table and drew in a breath. “Smells wonderful in here.”

  “I made a pie,” Evangeline said. “See?”

  Nells, her thick, dark hair gathered with a red scrunchie, went to inspect. “I don’t like pumpkin pie.”

  Lorrie shot her a look.

  “What? I’m just saying.”

  Isaac shook out the last leaf and turned, drying his hands. “More for us, then,” he said. He glanced at the plate she was holding. “Maybe you can make do with those pretty cookies you brought.” His tone was decent, familiar and a little teasing. Maybe he’d come around.

  The day the house shifted, Evangeline decided Christmas would include Lorrie and Nells. She’d felt terrible all Thanksgiving for not inviting them. Lorrie had done so much for her. And it’d been more than the salads. The night before Isaac returned from Pennsylvania, Nells was off with a friend and Lorrie had stayed and eaten dinner with her. Evangeline got to talking, and that talking caused more talking, and more, until she was drunk on her words and everything came spilling out. Almost everything anyway. She didn’t mention what had happened in Bremerton. Given her due date, that nasty event didn’t factor in.

  Lorrie knew that either boy could be the father and that it’d been only once with each. Evangeline didn’t give details about the night with Daniel, only that she hadn’t really wanted
to but guessed she hadn’t been clear. Lorrie’s face reddened when she said that, the muscles of her jaw pumping. She said quietly, “As long as you know it’s the boy’s job to make sure you’re on board. This is no longer a go-for-it-unless-the-girl-is-screaming world.”

  Evangeline said yeah, she knew, and left it at that.

  What she couldn’t get over was this: Lorrie had to know she was likely the reason Jonah and Daniel were dead. Yet here she was. How did that even make sense?

  Of course, Isaac knew none of this, and Evangeline couldn’t bring herself to tell him. She hoped Lorrie would fill him in somehow and spare her the embarrassment. In the meantime, when Evangeline said she planned to ask Lorrie and Nells for Christmas dinner, Isaac glared at her, opened his mouth and shut it a couple of times, then said, rather pompously she thought, “I’m glad you’re inviting them. They’ve been through so much.”

  But every bit of the planning and decorating had been a torture to him. At first, he claimed Quakers didn’t believe in celebrating Christmas, that every day was a holy day and no single day should be called out. When she pointed to the decorations stacked neatly in the basement, he claimed they were Katherine’s, that Catholics were into all that.

  “But you went along,” she said.

  “I was willing to accept it as a cultural holiday, that’s true.”

  After that, he didn’t argue, but when he was on the ladder stringing lights on the tree, he started gagging like food was coming back up. He scrambled down, almost falling, and fled to his room. Evangeline knocked on his door to make sure he was okay, then finished draping the lights and garlands and hung all the ornaments she could find.

  She lit the tree and thought it was beautiful. She believed it would cheer him, because it did her. But when he came out hours later, his head twisted at the sight as if it burned his eyes. She saw then how the tree might look, the dark wings of branches beneath the bright lights, like a glowing angel of death.

  After dinner that night, she climbed the ladder and began to dismantle the lights and ornaments. When Isaac saw her, he said, “No. Leave it. Please.” He seemed unable to say more. She didn’t know what to do. “Please,” he said again, and she stopped and came down.

  Afterward she had worried how Christmas would go, but it had been too late to cancel. So she was happy to see Isaac peeking at the potatoes saying scalloped were his favorite and accepting Lorrie’s offer to glaze the ham.

  * * *

  —

  OTHER THAN THE AWKWARD CAR RIDE, Evangeline hadn’t spent much time with Nells. The girl had shown up with Lorrie a time or two but had barely said a word. Thirteen was a lifetime ago. Evangeline was struggling to remember what middle-schoolers talked about when Nells saw the dining-room table and said, “It doesn’t look very Christmassy. Can we make it more festive?”

  Given Isaac’s reaction to the tree, the prospect worried Evangeline, but she guessed they could come up with something that wouldn’t trigger the past. After rummaging in the basement, they draped the buffet at the head of the table with a fake pine garland and strung it with gold lights. Outside, they collected pinecones and holly and wreathed them around a few worn candles. They cut gold and silver curling ribbon into short pieces and tossed them on the table like confetti. It was a mess but had a certain exuberant air. Nells lit the candles and drew the curtains, saying, “It’ll be magical.” But the curtains were thin lace, so nothing much changed, and Nells’s shoulders slumped.

  “It’ll be beautiful later,” Evangeline said, reaching out, touching Nells’s back.

  Nells startled, swung around swatting just as Evangeline’s hand flew to her belly.

  Evangeline had been having tiny flutters for a week. The doctor had dismissed them as gas, said it was too early for anything else. But there it was again. No doubt about it now. It was the baby! How strange that her body had done this thing—created a separate being, a creature who lived inside her and was now knocking as if asking to be let out.

  “You okay? I didn’t mean to hurt you. I really didn’t.” Nells was talking fast and alarmed, as if she had a history of inflicting grievous injury with the bat of a hand.

  “I’m fine,” Evangeline said. “It’s just some stomach stuff.” Lorrie hadn’t told Nells about the pregnancy. At not quite four months, Evangeline’s baby bump could still be hidden in the abundance of wintry clothes.

  Nells settled a bit, said, “I’m sorry. Sometimes my arms just do stuff on their own.”

  “I shouldn’t have surprised you like that. And don’t worry, your hands aren’t quite the dangerous weapons you think they are.”

  Nells laughed. Evangeline liked her. Sure, her default setting was pissed off, and she had Jonah’s jumpiness, but given everything she’d been through, Evangeline thought it was a miracle she was breathing at all.

  With the table done, they scanned the radio stations, found one playing Christmas music they liked—“Jingle Bell Rock,” “Grandma Got Run Over by a Reindeer,” not the churchy stuff. Lorrie and Isaac were talking in the kitchen, even laughing. Evangeline peeked in. They stood side by side, studying Isaac’s mother’s recipe for cranberry-orange butter. Maybe Evangeline had it wrong, but for the first time their bodies seemed relaxed near each other, and when Isaac turned toward Lorrie, he didn’t seem the slightest bit angry. In fact, his old worn face looked a little glowy.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN THE BROWNED HAM AND POTATOES were done and the salad had been tossed, when the house was filled with the smells of sweet meat and baked rolls, when the candles were relit and “The Chipmunk Song” was playing, they stood at the table. They bowed their heads, and Isaac said, “We are blessed.”

  When it became clear that was it, Lorrie said, “Amen.”

  They straightened. Isaac sat on the side nearer the kitchen, fussing with his napkin. Lorrie sat next to him, across from the two girls. He startled when he realized where she was. Anyone with eyes could see he didn’t want her there. Which made no sense. They’d almost been cuddling in the kitchen.

  Lorrie sprang up, asked if she could sit at the head of the table, would he mind? “It’ll be easier to run to the kitchen.”

  “If that would be more convenient,” he said, smiling in a thoroughly unconvincing way. It was an odd arrangement, the two girls on one side, Isaac alone on the other and Lorrie at the head.

  Things got quiet for a few minutes, just Charlie Brown’s “Christmas Song” and the clinking of food being served. Then Lorrie ventured how tasty the butter was, and Nells said she’d rather have plain old butter, and that made Isaac smile. He asked who she had for social studies, and Nells told him Mr. Reynolds, and Isaac said, “Good man. He got you reading the paper every day?”

  “Yeah. Last week we read how robots might have feelings someday.”

  “If they really do have feelings, would they still be robots?” asked Lorrie.

  “What else would they be?” Nells said.

  “I don’t know, but isn’t a robot by definition a machine, and isn’t a machine something without feelings?”

  Evangeline jumped in. “They wouldn’t have real feelings. They’d be programmed, like fake feelings, pseudo-feelings.”

  “No, Mr. Reynolds said it’d be more than that someday,” Nells said. “That they’d have actual feelings they’d make up on their own.”

  “Who can say,” Lorrie said, “whether one feeling is real and another not?”

  Isaac spoke for the first time. “My question is this: would the robot be capable of true suffering?”

  Capable of suffering. Now there was a festive thought. And that odd way of saying it, as if suffering were a skill or an art form one could practice or have a gift for. An awkward minute passed, and then Nells said, “I read in People magazine that Sarah Dellerin—you know, the actress?—is married to a guy twenty-five years younger. She’s like
forty-eight, and he’s in his early twenties. Don’t you think that’s weird? She could be his mom or something.”

  “Guys marry women that much younger all the time,” said Evangeline.

  “That’s different.”

  “But why? I don’t get why.”

  The girls argued back and forth, then turned in unison to Lorrie and Isaac.

  “Sounds like they’re both adults,” Isaac said. “Love is what matters. The rest is trivia. Our meeting has recognized all kinds of marriages for decades now. Age and gender are irrelevant.”

  The girls glanced at each other, and then Nells turned to Lorrie. “What do you think, Mom? Don’t you think it’s pretty weird?”

  “Isaac’s right. When two people love each other, it shouldn’t matter whether it seems strange or wrong to anyone else.” She kept her head down, speaking to her plate, as though afraid of what she’d reveal if she dared look up.

  46

  Peter, Elaine, and the three girls stopped by the house the afternoon before New Year’s Eve. When I opened the door, six-year-old Hannah, the oldest child, stood front and center. Bundled in a pink puffy jacket and clutching a glittery gift bag, she tossed wavy blond hair so like her mother’s and said with great imperiousness, “This is for the celebration.”

  Though she showed no intention of releasing it, she added, “I made it for you. Oh! And for . . .” She glanced at her father, a question on her face. Peter nodded silent encouragement. “And for Evange . . . Evange . . .”

  “Evangeline,” Peter said.

  “That’s right,” Hannah said firmly, as if she’d only been testing his knowledge.

  Three-year-old Zoe, with her curly dark hair, swayback, and impressive round belly, wriggled out of her mother’s arms and lunged at the bag. “I helped! I sparkled them!”

  Hannah batted Zoe’s hand away. “Stop it! You’re ruining the surprise. Isn’t she, Mommy? Isn’t she ruining the surprise?”