What Comes After

by Joanne Tompkins

  * * *

  —

  WHEN SHE WAS SPENT, when she’d collapsed off the dog’s body to the floor, she felt arms slide beneath her as if to lift her like a baby. She tried to press herself up. With his bad back, Isaac shouldn’t be doing this.

  As she rose to her knees, pain gripped her ribs and spine and pelvis, her bones shot through as if electric, and she collapsed to her side.

  Isaac’s voice was near. “Where’s the pain?”

  “My back . . . my belly.” Speaking was an effort. Her face and arms had gone clammy, and a warmth was spreading down her legs.

  “I’m calling 911.”

  When he was at the phone, she tried to push up, grabbing the arm of the chair. Once again, she collapsed to the floor. Even as Isaac confirmed the address, a siren rose in the distance, and Evangeline loved this little town, loved everything about it—the haunted old buildings, teachers at bus stops on Saturday nights, how everything you needed was always near. How an ambulance might arrive in minutes to save you and your baby.

  Isaac hung up, knelt beside her, and took her hand. “They’re almost here.” Something caught his eye, and he touched the chair’s arm. “Did Rufus bleed?” He yanked his hand from hers. “Dear God. You’re the one bleeding. Where?”

  “Down there. Something happened.”

  Isaac gripped her hand again. “It’s okay. Just breathe. Another minute.”

  A siren careened up the drive, and he lumbered to a stand. “I’ll be right back,” he said, and went to direct them in. As she waited, she touched Rufus’s paw, but it wasn’t his paw any longer. It was something emptied and stuffed with hard cotton batting, like the old lumpy mattresses she’d slept on as a kid.

  When three uniformed men burst in, she was wondering if she and the baby were dying. She couldn’t describe the men, other than to say one was old and the other two young. The young ones were at her side, touching her reassuringly, taking her blood pressure, listening to her heart and the baby’s. They kept asking questions, repeating them, but she was distracted by the older man a few feet back, with his energy of command and his radio that staticked on.

  “Engine 19,” he said, “requesting dispatch PD.”

  Static again. “What’s the nature?”

  “Could use officer assistance.”

  His voice, though not alarmed, was firm, and Evangeline realized how it must look with the dead dog and the blood smeared about. Isaac hadn’t mentioned blood in his call.

  “Try to focus,” said the young one near her face. His breath smelled of peppermint and taco-truck burrito. “Tell us what happened.”

  She answered their questions as best she could, but it seemed Rufus was key to it all, and they didn’t see it that way.

  “We’re going to pull down your leggings, check things out, okay?” said the young one by her hips.

  The older man took Isaac by the arm and led him across the room, and the young guy pulled at her leggings, each tug blinding her with pain. He stopped, and she heard scissors cutting, felt cool air on her belly and thighs. The one by her hips said to the one with Isaac, “Significant vaginal bleeding.”

  “The baby?”

  “Recommend transfer.”

  * * *

  —

  EVANGELINE WASN’T SURE OF THE SEQUENCE AFTER THAT, except the words “placental abruption” appeared in the room and with them a flurry of activity. It was hardly a minute before a blanket was laid over her bare legs and she was lifted onto a gurney, placed on her left side, and rolled out the drive.

  A police car swung in as she was being loaded into the ambulance. She couldn’t see the officer, but she heard his car door slam, the crunch of gravel under his steps.

  “Isaac,” she called. “Isaac!”

  “He won’t be coming with you,” said the officer, not bothering to come into view.

  Already she hated him.

  She started yelling, “He didn’t do anything! I was upset about the dog. Please.” But it was as if no sound came from her. One of the young guys placed an oxygen mask over her face as the other inserted an IV into her arm.

  “They’re waiting for you in L&D, Labor and Delivery.”

  The peppermint-burrito guy said that, and through the haze of oxygen and pain she thought he was sweet-faced, hardly yet shaving, like Jonah.

  “Am I having the baby?” she said into her mask.

  The guy lifted the mask, and she asked again.

  “You will be. A C-section, I suspect.”

  “Is the baby okay?”

  “We hope so,” he said, but she heard the softness of doubt. “I’m putting this back on. Just try to relax.” When he’d secured the mask, he placed his hand on her wrist as if to take her pulse, but Evangeline was certain he just wanted to touch her.

  “I was upset about the dog,” she whispered to herself.

  She closed her eyes, blotted out the siren wailing, and let herself imagine—it seemed a reasonable enough allowance—that it was her mother’s fingertips searching out the beating of her heart.

  67

  Day of My Death

  I take one last moment to listen to the world at night. A plane banks overhead as a distant cargo ship sounds across the water. Frogs bellow songs of love and battle and I wonder if in all that ruckus I’m hearing the one I caught for Red.

  The coyotes start up, their throats churning bloody melodies, and I push myself upright, put the note in a plastic snack bag—in case things get soggy—and tuck it into my jacket pocket. My backpack is set with everything I need. I climb out my bedroom window and head to my truck. Earlier in the day, I parked it a few blocks away, at a road end where its engine won’t be heard.

  I take my time walking. Always did like being out in these early-morning hours. How the dark and quiet make me feel part of it all, just one of nature’s animals. Thin clouds move across the nearly full moon, scattering its light into a bright patch of sky. A small animal darts across my path—a rabbit, I think. Always surprises me how fast they can move. I’ll miss it. Life. Because for everything that has happened, it can fucking make you cry sometimes how beautiful it is.

  I stop then. I almost go back, but I would always smell Daniel on my skin, and Dad would always be pacing.

  * * *

  —

  WE NEVER TALKED ABOUT IT, Mom and Nells and I, but we’d all noticed something was off that last morning. Nells elbowed me when Dad was busy yelling at Mom, mouthed, What the fuck?

  Dad’s eyes were bloodshot, even more than usual. By the end of breakfast, he was on his fourth beer, ranting about how the motherfucking bureaucrats were jacking utility rates for no other reason than they could—how in the hell did they expect a man to take care of his family? And the doctors, now they were another story, acting like a man was lying when he said he was in pain, acting like he was some kind of addict. Had those sons of bitches ever had a rack of lumber crush the shit out of their spine? Turn their nerves into some goddamned torture chamber?

  We’d seen him like this, lots of times, but never so early in the day, never so locked in. Then Brody had another accident, peeing all over the chair and floor. The old guy looked embarrassed like he always did. He tried to get up but collapsed in a heap, landing in the puddle. His eyes were so pathetic with shame and confusion that I almost understood why Dad did what he did. Why he walked out of the room, came back with the SIG Sauer, and shot Brody in the head.

  Nells lost it, screaming, throwing herself on Brody. My father ripped her off, twisted her arm behind her back, held her there, that SIG pressed to her temple. “You love him so much? Do you? Want to join him?”

  My mother and I leaped up, and the gun pointed at us. “Fifteen rounds. Plenty for all of us.” Tears were dripping down his cheeks, but he didn’t seem to know it.

  My mother spoke, her voice strangely calm. “Roy, yo
u did the right thing with Brody. He was suffering. You did the right thing. It hurts. I know. We all loved him. Now, let Nells go. We need to bury Brody.”

  My father was weeping harder, shoving Nells around the kitchen, trailing Brody’s blood.

  He was muttering how maybe he should put us out of our misery, do us all a favor. Every time Mom or I made a move, he yanked Nells’s arm back tighter, dug that SIG Sauer deeper. After a while, Nells quit sobbing and her eyes went dead.

  Mom kept talking, soft, soothing, like he was a kid in bed hallucinating from a high fever. She told stories from when we were little, the camp-outs and barbecues, the school plays and dance recitals, going back and back till she was going on about meeting him at a school dance when they were sixteen.

  “You kids wouldn’t believe your dad back then. I’d never seen a boy dance like that. Remember, Roy? The names you made up? The Snake? The Jumping Jellyfish? Your father could move.” He laughed a little and seemed to relax. But when he saw the hope on our faces, he jerked Nells’s arm like it was a crank, like he was aiming to squeeze out that whimper of pain. The war inside him was building again. All the little twitches and curses and sweat beading on his forehead, it crushed the breath right out of us.

  Then something shifted. He let Nells go. Mom rushed to her, held her. Nells didn’t seem like Nells anymore. She looked like a rag-doll version they hadn’t made quite right. Dad watched Mom stroking her hair, his hands limp at his sides, his mouth hanging open. After a few minutes, recognition came over his face, like he was remembering who we were. And with it came the agitation, rising like sewage in his eyes.

  “Jesus,” he said. “I have to take a leak so bad. The last goddamned thing I’ll ever do, and I’m going to end up pissing my pants.”

  That’s when he put the gun to his temple and pulled the trigger.

  As I walked the final block to the truck, I understood I’d witnessed my father’s last battle with his monster, the end of his lifelong war with evil. He’d wrestled it into submission but knew he couldn’t keep it down for long. Knew he only had seconds to save us.

  My father sacrificed everything for us.

  My monster? It’s already murdered Daniel. I have to be brave like Dad. I have to stop it at that.

  * * *

  —

  IT’S A SHORT DRIVE TO THE SHERIFF’S STATION. I circle the place, making sure everything is dark, and park in Sheriff Barton’s spot at the side of the building abutting a stone wall. It’s a narrow passageway, just a few dumpsters and the sign Absolutely No Parking Anytime. If you’re driving by, you can’t see whether he’s there or not. He likes how he can sneak out a side door as certain people enter the front.

  Sheriff Barton needs to find me. He’s always been nice to my mom, especially when Dad died. I’m sorry for the mess I’ll make, and it’s important that he deal with it, not Mom. He’ll be the one to tell her. He’ll hold her when she falls.

  It’s four fifteen. Unless there’s an emergency call, it’ll be hours before anyone arrives. From the pack, I pull out the contractor bags and duct tape, spend the next ten minutes covering the seat, back cushions, and floor, even the windows and dash. Maybe Mom can make a buck or two off this old truck even yet.

  When everything is covered except the driver’s-side door, I pull out the SIG Sauer and set it on the seat. I check things over and get out. I don’t notice if the trees are swaying or the clouds sliding in front of the moon. I’m not hoping to spot skittering bunnies or meandering deer, don’t even glance toward the Sound. I’ve said good-bye to all that.

  I go behind the dumpster and take a final leak.

  68

  Evangeline was being rushed down a long hallway, the gurney clattering as if it were broken.

  “Dr. Taylor just arrived. We’re going to try a spinal.” The woman’s voice, which came from behind Evangeline’s right shoulder, was directed not to her but to others Evangeline couldn’t see, people who jogged near, who seemed in need of direction.

  A spinal. She’d be awake for the surgery, then. She imagined a blade filleting her like a fish. Not that it scared her in the slightest. A scalpel would be a kindness compared to the claw that was digging its long-spiked nails into her muscles and guts. But even this pain, pain that would have been the end of her a week ago, was of no consequence. She was no longer Evangeline. She was simply a body—two bodies—in need of emergency repair.

  The gurney burst through double doors into an OR. She was stripped and swabbed. People entered and left. A needle was driven deep into her low back. And again she didn’t mind. Not a bit of it. Not until a nurse dropped a drape like a wall at her chest, dismembering her lower half.

  “You’re going to feel some pressure now.”

  There was pressure, but it was removed. She was half a woman on a table, alone with sounds of flesh being cut somewhere out of sight.

  A terrible begging started up in her mind, an unrelenting pleading for her mother. If only her mother would appear, the long-ago mother who’d held her, whispered words of love—I could just gobble you up—before the addictions to drugs and Jesus and men; if that mother appeared, then everything would be all right.

  But this begging failed to return her mother to her, and Evangeline tried bribing whoever it was that decided such things. She wouldn’t lie or steal or screw around. She’d study her ass off, get a good job, be the best mother ever. Still, there was no one—no mother, no Isaac, no Lorrie—and she’d run out of inducements. She was left with an inner chanting: You’re a body, just a body. Over and over she repeated, Just a body, just a body.

  She told herself that the rest of it—the pain and fear, the mystery of everything that was approaching, everything that would transform her life—could wait. Right now, she was an animal who needed to survive. Only she kept remembering who she was, that she was sixteen, giving birth alone, no one at her side who knew her, who cared if she bled out on the table. No one who cared if the baby lived or died.

  She might actually have spoken. She might have said some of these things out loud, because a voice came from behind her head.

  “I’m here,” Isaac said, not as reassurance but as apology, as if saddened to have only himself to offer.

  She twisted at the sound of his voice.

  “Stay still!” came from behind the curtain.

  She straightened, and Isaac moved forward, took her hand. He was gowned and gloved and masked, but it was him, and it didn’t matter that she couldn’t really see him, didn’t matter how or when he’d arrived. He was there, and that was everything.

  “I’m scared,” she whispered.

  “I’m right here.” His voice carried the same pain as it had with Rufus, and she wondered if soon he’d begin to sing. Remembering the words, she pictured herself as the ocean, her lungs swelling like waves, rising and falling, rising and falling. And she wanted to fall away, fall from her wounded body, fall from the world itself. She’d only ever stayed on this planet by clinging with all her might. What a relief it would be to just let go.

  She caught herself as if waking. “The baby,” she said.

  A deep ache like a dull blade sawing muscle.

  “They’re working on it,” Isaac said. “You’re both in good hands.”

  From behind the curtain, “Retractor. Another couple centimeters. Good. Hold that.”

  More blunted tearing or cutting or stabbing, she couldn’t tell which, and a sudden fear caught her. “Don’t hurt the baby!” she shouted.

  Then she was hit with a force like a car being driven into her belly, set in reverse, and backed out. A moment later, the room shifted, a river of light flooding from behind the curtain. A bloody baby girl was held above the drape, but only for a second, long enough for Evangeline to see her mouth open wide in a wail. But there was no sound. Evangeline wondered if she’d gone deaf? Shouldn’t the baby be crying? And something e
lse was off. Under the blood, the baby appeared the color of twilight.

  Gowned people whisked the baby to the side of the room, set her on a counter. A moment later, the baby found her lungs and throat and mouth and began to wail. Evangeline and Isaac whooped at the sound, but the nurses and doctors did not. Why weren’t they happy? Didn’t the baby have a right to complain?

  “I want to hold her,” she said.

  But a new doctor had arrived, a youngish woman who bustled to the crying infant without speaking to Evangeline. After a moment, the doctor lifted the baby and carried her from the room.

  “Where’s she going?”

  Evangeline had been forgotten. Even Isaac had left her side.

  “What’s happening?” she asked the emptiness.

  “They’re taking her for observation. Just a precaution.” The woman’s voice came from the far side of the curtain. Evangeline hadn’t been completely abandoned.

  “Why?”

  “Just a precaution,” the voice said again.

  “Isaac!” she shouted, and he appeared at her side.

  “She’s okay,” he said. “She was a little blue at first, but she’s all pinked up now. They’re going to monitor her awhile.”

  Behind the curtain, someone was gathering pieces of Evangeline and suturing them back into place. She pictured her belly with Frankenstein stitches, hideous and beautiful and perfect. She heard her baby’s wails heading down a hall. And already she ached for her. This child she had yet to touch.

  She wondered if this is what it meant to be a mother. To ache for a life that was not your own, to long for a child who could, without the slightest input from you, fall completely out of view.

  She could no longer hear the baby, only the snip of final sutures behind the surgeon’s drape, but she felt her daughter there, curled tight and permanent in the emptiness of her, and she understood that her own mother, wherever she was, could never have outrun an ache like that.