What Comes After

by Joanne Tompkins

  When she climbed into that car, she had no home, no family, no friends. No one in the world who cared what happened to her. As far as she could tell, no one knew she existed at all. She had started to wonder if she did. Condom or no, how could it possibly matter?

  When it was over, when he’d come in a burst of rigidity as if electrocuted, she retrieved her panties and her small purse that’d fallen to the floor. Beneath the seat was a Barbie wearing a sparkly pink gown. She pulled it out. He took it from her and held it, looking small and ashamed. He smoothed down the doll’s dress, almost tenderly, then set it on the backseat. He peeled two more twenties from his money clip and tossed them into her lap, his gaze, like Peter’s, fixed in the distance. It was as if he were throwing money into an empty seat.

  And that was that. Her one and only john. She could not survive more. Her mother had undoubtedly managed the life longer. Maybe her mother had been stronger. Or weaker. Maybe it was all the men and the universe of ways they had restrained her, entered her, spewed on her, that had made it not only possible but necessary to leave her teenage daughter.

  The baby shifted. Evangeline rubbed her belly, cooing, and the baby stilled. Had she known for a while that neither boy was the father? Sometimes she thought she had. That she had purposefully fooled herself. She needed one of the boys to be the dad. Why else would Isaac or Lorrie care about her? Sometimes she thought she’d known she was pregnant before she ever met the boys. Maybe that’s why she’d been so reckless with Daniel and eager with Jonah. Maybe she’d wanted to create other possibilities for her child.

  She got up again, needing to pee, wanting to stop thinking of all her lies and how they’d poisoned what might have been. On her way back, she heard George and Isaac talking in the kitchen. She was shuffling up in her stocking feet when she heard her name. She stopped. There it was again. She realized Isaac must think she was on her way to Silverdale and inched forward, pressing herself to the wall just outside the kitchen door.

  “You’re right, but I can’t be her mother. I’m an old man.”

  “Fifty hardly makes you old. You’re the same age you were with Daniel.”

  “Look at these hands. They belong on a ninety-year-old. But you’re right. Maybe it’s the thought of the baby that makes me feel old.”

  They were quiet a few moments, just the sound of mugs being lifted and set down. “This thing with Evangeline. It was a mistake. She—”

  Evangeline didn’t hear what was said after that. She tried but couldn’t. A voice in her head was mocking her. How many times would she be made a fool! She retreated down the hall, threw herself onto her bed. She began beating her thigh with her fist. Harder and harder, not able to stop. She needed to prove she was real, made of blood and bone and flesh that could bruise. She beat herself until she was certain of the proof, then let her arm fall limp at her side.

  She stayed in her room, sore and exhausted, staring at the ceiling. She stayed until she risked peeing right then and there, barely making it to the bathroom in time. When she came out, Isaac stood in the hall.

  “I thought you were in Silverdale.” An accusation.

  “I canceled. I was awake all night, so I went back to bed after breakfast.”

  He searched her face. “You okay?”

  “Sure,” she said. She walked toward the kitchen, saying over her shoulder, “When is George going to take us out on his boat again? That was fun.”

  “You know,” Isaac said, his voice brighter, “I didn’t ask him, but it’s a good idea. You think you’d be up for it?”

  She said absolutely, though this made no sense. She couldn’t manage a shopping trip with Natalia. Isaac followed her into the kitchen, as if to examine her features in better light. The pleasant expression she planted on her face must have been convincing, because he gave a relieved sigh and said cheerfully, “I’ll ask him. I will.”

  He started to leave, then turned. “In fact, he invited me over for dinner tonight. I’m sure he would have invited you too, but I told him you planned to eat on the way home. Should I give him a call?”

  Evangeline said no thanks, she was still pretty tired and thought she’d head to bed early.

  “I’ll stay and fix dinner.”

  “No,” she said. “You go.”

  “You’re sure?”

  She said she was, and he said well, okay.

  Her room, when she returned to it, appeared no more real than the set of a childhood play, the chandelier and carved headboard mere props. How strange that she’d ever believed she belonged to this place. Isaac was right: any thought that she had, that she was a relative of sorts, was based on a mistake.

  She took a deep breath and released it into the room. So, she thought, this is my last day with the man.

  55

  With Peter’s resignation, the faculty lounge transformed into an amphitheater where tidbits of information—the age of the girl, other affairs—were tossed into the ring to be salivated over and torn apart. I began isolating myself, eating lunch in my locked classroom, entering and leaving the school through a service door.

  More and more, the one relief of my day was arriving home to Evangeline and Rufus. But George too was a source of comfort. Since halting the clearness committee, I’d seen more of him than I had in years. He’d stop by in the evenings with a quart of ice cream or a mini-cake from Safeway or both. Each time we dug into the caramel swirl or layers of gooey chocolate, I’d look at that belly of his and think it couldn’t be doing him any good.

  While he enjoyed sharing a vice, it was more than that. He hoped to persuade me to reconvene the committee. But when I said no with firm conviction, he never raised it again. Freed of that tension, our conversations took on a more relaxed shape, and I remembered how close we’d once been.

  One evening after Evangeline had gone to her room, he stretched his arms across the back of the sofa as if planning to stay awhile. He talked about the aging of our meeting, the loss of the young people, and questioned how our meeting could continue in the decades to come. I expressed regret that Daniel had quit years before.

  George was quiet for a bit. “You know,” he said, “I don’t think any of my children will continue as Quakers. Not after they leave home. It’s not that they disapprove or are rebelling. Nothing like that. It’s just that silence doesn’t speak to them.

  “Sometimes I wonder what is happening to their brains, the way our devices are making us all ADD. We’re like birds pecking at a feeder for the next fix of seed . . .”

  George went on like this, the lilt and gravity of his ponderings familiar. Sounding, I realized, like my father. And I remembered then the times my father had not been silent, the times he opened his heart and mind to me. That night, I entered a room I’d forgotten was there. It’s hard to fully express the feeling it roused in me, being in my home with this man named George, this man who, though never having learned the lyrics or melody, was somehow singing a lost song from my childhood.

  * * *

  —

  I DIDN’T USUALLY SEE GEORGE on the weekend and was surprised when he knocked at the door on a Saturday morning in early April. When he landed at the kitchen table and helped himself to the buttered toast I’d planned to eat, I suggested we take Rufus for a long walk.

  A few minutes later, the dog was trotting down the trail before us, the alder and birch in tender leaf, bush roses starting to bud. We talked about his wife’s job as comptroller for the hospital and struggles with his kids—an adolescent crush, a disappointing SAT score. It’d been a long time since anyone had talked to me about their own concerns, particularly about their children. It was the most generous thing he could have done.

  When we arrived home, I poured him a final cup of coffee, and he asked how I saw things going after the baby arrived. I told him I was feeling a little overwhelmed, that Evangeline desperately needed a woman in her life. I worried
I’d made a mistake taking her in.

  “I was certain God sent her to me for a reason. I’d just lost Daniel, and there she was. Alone and pregnant.”

  “You knew about the baby?”

  I nodded. “From the first days. But I still don’t know who the father is,” I said. “I don’t think she does either. She did know the boys though. She met them shortly before the murder.”

  “And what about Lorrie? Does she know about the connection?”

  “I think so. She and Evangeline got pretty close when I was in Pennsylvania.” I puffed out a laugh. “You should have seen them together, the way they would talk.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “To Lorrie?” I was being purposefully dense.

  “Yes, Lorrie.” He lifted an eyebrow. “The woman in Evangeline’s life. Didn’t you just say she needs one?”

  I fumbled with my coffee, took a sip. “Lorrie stopped coming by.”

  “Stopped? Just like that?”

  I nodded.

  “Evangeline must miss her.”

  I nodded again.

  “And when you talked to Lorrie about why she’d abandoned Evangeline, what did she say?”

  I swallowed, said I hadn’t had that conversation with her.

  He regarded me awhile. “Well, you’re a persuasive man, Isaac. I’m sure when you do, she’ll reconsider. When the heart leads, way opens.”

  He stood. “Amy put together a big lasagna for tonight, and the kids all have better things to do. You want to come over and help us eat it?”

  I said I would and saw him out.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN I ARRIVED BACK FROM GEORGE’S AROUND NINE THIRTY, Evangeline’s door was closed, her room dark. Though Rufus was sleeping in the kitchen, I thought nothing of it. She often left him out if I was getting home late, not wanting him to wake her on my return.

  It wasn’t until ten the following morning that I finally knocked on her door. She could easily sleep till noon, but I hadn’t heard her even once during the night. When she didn’t respond, I cracked the door.

  “Everything okay?”

  Again, no answer, and I flipped on the light. Her bed was made, the floor empty of its usual clutter. On her pillow was a folded piece of paper, my name on the outside. My hands trembled as I opened it.

  I don’t want to be anyone’s “mistake.” Evangeline.

  I flipped it over thinking there might be more. Finding nothing, I stood there, unable to move for several minutes. Then I stormed to the kitchen, threw the note on the counter. I ransacked a drawer, yanked out an oven mitt in which I’d stashed a hundred dollars. The money was gone, another note in its place: I’m sorry. I’ll pay you back somehow. I promise.

  I slumped onto a kitchen chair and stared at words written in a girl’s language I had yet to learn. Jolting upright, I tore the notes into bits and kicked over a chair. When that solved nothing, I sent another chair flying, then rampaged through the house, throwing open closets and drawers. Finding the girl’s once-cluttered medicine cabinet now bare, I slammed it shut, the mirror cracking down the middle. I opened and slammed it again. Then again. And again. I slammed it until glass broke free and sliced the air in arcs of fragmented light.

  I slammed it until the last shard exploded in the bathroom sink.

  56

  Simplicity had been easy to find, and Evangeline remembered that George kept a key in the aft-deck storage. She hadn’t seen a soul on the docks last night, not even when she’d used George’s big slicker to trek multiple times to the marina’s head.

  When morning came, Evangeline stayed below with the curtains drawn, wondering when Isaac would find her note. By nine, people were walking the docks, playing radios as they hosed down decks and sanded wooden rails. She had to use the boat’s head after that. She trusted that it’d been pumped recently. George seemed meticulous about such things.

  At the chart station, she found a manual on the Yanmar engine but set it down a few minutes later and stared at the boat’s teak walls. They were curved and hand-fitted. She pictured George running his fingers over them as he placed each board. It made her sad somehow, this imagined tenderness, the way everyone—even old Quaker men—had lives of quiet passions.

  She wondered how she’d ended up in this place. Last night, Isaac had been halfway out the door when he stopped and poked his head back in. “Sure you don’t want to go? George says there’s plenty.”

  She should have gone with him. She had wanted to, wanted to forget what she’d heard, wanted to be part of this family she’d made up in her head. And that was the thing—this family wasn’t real. Maybe no family was. She went over the list—her mother and father, Jonah and Lorrie, even Isaac—all people who’d left her one way or another. So she’d said no thanks, figuring if leaving was part of life, she’d better get good at it herself.

  Packing gave her pause, being forced to touch all she’d been given. But what choice did she have? Isaac had made a “mistake.” He would probably report her to the state. And what would bureaucrats do with the infant of a homeless teenage girl?

  The kitchen was the hardest to leave, with its memories of meals shared, with Rufus curled on his chair. When she entered with her packs, the dog glanced blandly at her. She went to him, put her face close, and stroked his ears. “I love you, Rufus. Do you love me?” He refused to answer, accepting her affection with bored blinks of his eyes.

  She gave him another chance, once again putting her face close so he could lick her, get his snot and saliva all over her. He loved doing that. But he refused even this, turning dully away. She stood. To hell with him. Hadn’t she known from the beginning his love was a con?

  In the drawer with the oven mitts, she dug out the green one crammed at the back. She felt shitty about the money, but Isaac had told her it was there if she had a sudden need.

  * * *

  —

  SHE SPENT THE REST OF THE MORNING ON SIMPLICITY, peering out portholes, studying the lines that held the boat to the dock. If you took off all but the front and rear lines and looped those once around the cleats, you wouldn’t need any help off the dock. You could pull them up on your own and sail away.

  At noon, she ate another can of cold stew and figured Isaac must have found her note by then. She was certain he’d search for her on his own. He didn’t seem like a man who’d go public with his concerns.

  She busied herself studying the control panel. Some of it was easy. The cabin-outlets switch was flipped on. That explained why the heater and lamp were working. But what did 240VAC, 50HZ, and LPG Control do? Why were there different kinds of power? She searched for instructions for over an hour and found nothing. How could she leave without knowing these things?

  By two, she collapsed in the salon, frustrated at the complexity of Simplicity and furious at Isaac. Not for saying she was a mistake—she knew in her gut she’d gotten it wrong—but because he had failed to find her.

  * * *

  —

  WHEN SHE HAD LEFT THE NIGHT BEFORE, she’d headed to the bus that would take her an hour south to the Seattle ferry. As she neared, she saw two women chatting inside the bus shelter, their faces slick and yellow in the dim light. She stopped and squinted, swore under her breath. One was Ms. Swanson, her chemistry teacher.

  Evangeline darted around a corner. This was why she had to escape this town—everywhere you went, people knew you, kept tabs on what you did. She decided on a different ferry, only ten minutes on foot. She could walk right on board. It’d put her well north of Seattle, but she could catch a ride on the other side.

  By the time she’d hauled her belongings to the landing, she was sweltering in her jacket. The ferry rose out of the dark, its car deck gaping like a mouth waiting to be fed. Just then, the baby unleashed a series of furious kicks, doubling her over in pain. She stumbled to a nearby
bench and studied the far shore. Nothing but an unlit wall of black. Even if she made it to Seattle, it’d be a waste of time. Her mother never returned to places she had left. And her mother, she knew, was why she was here. This wasn’t about Isaac or the jerks at school, it wasn’t even about the state. She was searching for a mother who didn’t want to be found.

  It was harder than you’d think, giving up on something like that.

  That’s when she noticed the marina lights down the shore, glowing warmly over swaying masts.

  * * *

  —

  ISAAC DIDN’T APPEAR. Not at four or five or five thirty. At six thirty, with the world going dark, she began pacing the salon. Maybe she hadn’t twisted his words. Maybe he had meant exactly what he’d said and, like her mother and Lorrie, was relieved to be rid of her.

  At seven, she decided to quit thinking for the night. She was so exhausted she felt certain she could manage it. In the morning, she would have to face her options, but for now she curled in the bow berth with its moldy cushions and sails. Using a small flashlight, she tried to read Gunkholing in the Puget Sound. She was staring at a picture of a lone boat in a pristine bay when Simplicity lurched dockward, bowing under the weight of a man climbing on board. She clicked off the light, pulled a sail over her, the damp heat of her breath falling like mist.

  When she recognized the weight and rhythm of his steps, her heart went crazy with relief.

  He was coming down the companionway. “Evangeline?”

  She ran her hand over the mound of her belly, glad the baby was sleeping. Though it was childish, she wanted to be found right where she lay. Isaac passed through the galley but stopped in the salon, landing on the cushions with a tired sigh.

  After a while, he said, “I know you’re in the bow berth. I saw the light. And these are your packs out here.”