What Comes After

by Joanne Tompkins

  Emma was sleeping now, her lips making soft burbling sounds. Evangeline whispered to her, “I don’t know shit, you know that, right? But I’m trying to arrange things the best I can.”

  She didn’t say she’d be the mother she had wanted for herself, because she wasn’t sure she could manage that. She only knew she would try.

  The nurse returned with a bottle of warm formula. Evangeline unwrapped the baby, stroked each perfect limb and the soles of her feet. The baby cried and made rooting motions with her head. Evangeline laid her against her bare belly and breast, tickled her nose with the bottle’s nipple until Emma latched on. And though it wasn’t her own breast, though it’d be another five days of throwing her milk away, Evangeline felt each tug of the baby’s mouth and her milk let down again, though she had pumped only a half hour before.

  She heard Lorrie and Nells coming up the hall toward her room. She stroked the baby’s downy head, this child that was her and not-her and everyone else all at once, and a ferocity of love flashed through her like lightning.

  Emma. This sudden bright meaning of her life. This life. This life she was holding now.

  73

  The house was waiting when I arrived, one side shining in the gold light of a waning sun, the other in shadow. I stood before it as I had last fall, only this time not even Rufus waited inside.

  It’s a monstrous thing, really, this empty Victorian. It resides heavily on the land, alive with the terrors and joys of its passing inhabitants, not only humans and their animals but all the wild creatures that burrow under floors and creep between walls, that nestle into dark basement corners. The house breathes with the earth, sits without judgment of those who travel through.

  I enter, slip off my jacket. My eyes fall on baby bottles in the sink, a spit-up rag on the arm of Rufus’s old chair. It’s an effort to breathe. I try to relax into this place, let it breathe for me. The walls expand and contract, expand and contract, and a low beat thrums in a steady rhythm as if I’m residing in an enormous heart.

  Words echo from years ago. Some hearts are stronger than others. I have a choice to make, and it is much larger than the one Evangeline has set for me. I must decide how strong my heart is. How strong I want it to be. I can choose. And knowing this, I have no excuse. My life depends on it. Other lives too. Likely more than I know.

  I rise. I make it up those slatted stairs to Daniel’s room. The space is musty. Dead. I go to the window and lift off the rod with its heavy dark curtain, lay it on the floor. Though it is early evening, light floods the room.

  I picture the walls mudded and painted, a door installed. I go to the landing, and in the dim expanse of the second floor I see a study, another bedroom, a family space of some type. More windows form in dark walls, and from the rafters skylights appear, dispensing brightness like a blessing. The voices of a woman and a girl sing from a dark corner, and a baby coos nearby.

  The house is lifting, drifting on the promise of an approaching summer. And I remember the months each year when windows and doors are thrown open, when the house billows with the slightest breeze, transformed into a vessel with sails, its occupants in glorious flight.

  I return to the bedroom and open the window to cleanse the stagnant air. The back field radiates a stunning teal, and beyond that, Lorrie’s kitchen shines like a star. Even as my eyes rest on all this, the fence between our lots begins to shimmer, then disappears. A dog barks, and a small girl laughs, their shadows darting between the border trees.

  * * *

  —

  I AM DOWNSTAIRS NOW. I hesitate by the phone, my hand unwilling. But I manage it, those last few steps. I pick up and dial. It rings three times without answer. I worry she’s seen my name and is refusing the call. The fourth ring breaks halfway through.

  “Isaac?” Her voice is breathless, as if she’s dashed to catch the call. “Isaac? Are you there?”

  I hear the Divine seeking a response to all that has been offered. Am I here? Am I willing to be truly alive to what is before me?

  My heart answers yes, pummeling my ribs with a percussive rhythm so fierce I am certain Lorrie can feel it in her own chest. I try to shape words, but my lips are trembling, vibrating with the ferocity of the Divine. At long last, I feel God beating my heart, and I understand. God has been in me all these years, never once leaving me. God has been waiting patiently all this time, waiting for me to say yes.

  “Lorrie,” I say, and my heart finds a sudden calm, an unexpected peace. I take a breath, and it’s easier now. I hear Emma mewl, a soft whimper, so close. She must be in Lorrie’s arms.

  “Lorrie,” I say again, her name spoken as benediction, as proof of what is possible. I pause and feel inside me the pulse and weight of this woman and child. When I speak, the words form a prayer.

  “I know it’s getting late, but I’m wondering if I might stop by.”

  Epilogue

  I shatter, and in that moment I see myself for the first time. I am an ocean of light. My Jonah mind is there, but it feels ridiculously small, as if I’ve been stumbling around this whole time in bottoms made for a newborn when I’m so huge there isn’t anything anywhere that could hold all that I am.

  Not that this is news. Prophets and mystics are always talking about this stuff. Hell, Mr. Balch’s Quakers could never get enough of the One, going on about how we’re all part of a greater Divine. Only I didn’t think they meant it literally. And I definitely hadn’t put together that I was two guys: the baby-pants guy and the guy carrying a sun in him, one that could blind the world with its light. I didn’t see either of those two coming. Seems like information I could have used before now.

  This being I am, this One, is surrounding that tiny human mind, swallowing it, and it’d be easy to lose that lone consciousness, like misplacing a particular grain of sand on a thousand-mile shore. But I cling to it—that puny Jonah mind—longing for one last moment of small-scale tenderness. It’s probably nothing more than a habit of desire or maybe the reflex of a dying organism. But that’s not how it feels. It feels like love, like truth, which are just different ways of saying the same thing.

  See, once you understand what you’ve been all this time, understand your true dimensions, you feel sorry for what you’ve missed, for living your life completely blind. You want to tell someone you love so they won’t miss it too.

  I decide to go one more place with that Jonah mind, because it turns out far more is possible in death than I imagined. I search the ocean of light for Red and find her on a boat eight months from now—or, in truth, at this very instant, because all of it is here, caught in this moment, the past and the future. She is late in pregnancy, and I am neither surprised nor unsurprised. I do not wonder who the father is. The child is mine, has to be mine. Given who I am, this One, it couldn’t be otherwise.

  I feel the draw away from this pinprick consciousness, back to my true oceanic self, but I stay with that floating dot of a mind long enough to sweep into the boat. I will say the words that filled me in Quaker meeting a year ago. Words I refused to speak because I did not understand them, because I did not believe that God would choose someone like me, because I felt too small to pronounce them.

  Isaac is in the salon, waiting, and Red is in the bow berth, waiting too. With the last trace of this old consciousness, I draw close to Red. I whisper into that salted air, air as thick as the sea itself, the words I was chosen to speak.

  The syllables multiply a thousandfold and land on the sails and pillows, on the book Red is reading, on her wondrous hair. They glisten on the lashes of her eyes and on her warm lips, they quiver delicate and alive as if she is the one who has spoken them.

  I am glowing. You are glowing.

  The entire world is aglow.

  Her hand goes to her belly, and she coos to the baby. Then she rises and moves toward Isaac in the salon, who glows with his own quiet light.

  Acknowle
dgments

  If ever there was a novel that has been blessed with every conceivable type of support, it is What Comes After. It started at Goddard College, where the dedicated MFA faculty—and in particular my gifted advisers, Micheline Aharonian Marcom, Victoria Nelson, and Aimee Liu—urged me to remain open to my story’s mysteries even as they assisted me in finding its shape. My book then had the good fortune to land in the in-box of Mariah Stovall at Writers House, who found it in the slush pile, saw merit in that early draft, and put it before the woman who would become my wonder of an agent, the remarkable Susan Golomb. Susan and the brilliant Genevieve Gagne-Hawes helped me restructure and refine the work before sending it out into the world. Other members of the incredible Writers House team include Maja Nikolic, Peggy Boulos Smith, Natalie Media, Ana Espinoza, and Jessica Berger. And how lucky to have Rich Green representing media rights, a man with the heart, vision, and skill to help my characters find life in a new form.

  There are so many to recognize in my writing life, including Jentel Artist Residency Program; the Friends at Pendle Hill, who surrounded me with stillness and loving hearts; and the Community of Writers at Squaw Valley, where I met Jordonna Grace and Kim Rogers, two amazing writers who have provided friendship, insight, and love for more than a decade. And I must thank the many other wonderful writers who have provided critique and support along the way. These include my Goddard cohort and alums, my Seattle and Fort Mason writing groups, and the entire Port Townsend writing community. Particular thanks are due to Nancy Kepner, who is singularly responsible for guiding me into the writing life, and to Karen Clemens, Mark Clemens, Ellie Mathews, Carl Youngmann, Debra Borchert, and the late John Zobel.

  There are many family members and friends who read my work and provided much needed feedback and encouragement, in particular: Alexa Curry, Susan Smith, Becky Fulfs, Ray Tompkins, Jen Schorr, Kris Houser, Larry Cheek, Al Bergstein, Liz Leedom, George Finkle, and the late Rosselle Pekelis, who was my staunchest ally from my earliest writing attempts and whom I miss terribly. Jon Schorr should be singled out for his decades of moral support, for his joy at my slightest success.

  Which brings me to Riverhead Books and the entire Penguin Random House team. I cannot imagine a better experience as a debut novelist. I have been given the highest possible level of editorial assistance, production design, and marketing. I have been treated with great kindness, respect, and responsiveness. Many thanks to Geoffrey Kloske, Jynne Dilling Martin, and Kate Stark for their faith in this project, for their work in seeing it into the world. Thanks also to Alison Fairbrother for her insightful editing, Randee Marullo for missing nothing, Helen Yentus and Lauren Peters-Collaer for their gorgeous design work, Shailyn Tavella for helping this work find readers, and Delia Taylor for making my life easier throughout this process.

  And, finally, my deepest gratitude to the incomparable Sarah McGrath, my editor at Riverhead, for sharing her heart and vision and extraordinary talent with me, for challenging, guiding, and inspiring me every step of the way. What Comes After is very much Sarah’s book too.

  About the Author

  JoAnne Tompkins was inspired to become a writer by the human resiliency she observed in her first career as a mediator and judicial officer. She lives in Port Townsend, Washington.

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