The After, Scribd Version

the

After A novel, by Briane F. Pagel, Jr.

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One: Saoirse tried not to think of how much she hated airplanes, something that would have been impossible had she known for certain that the plane she was going to board soon would crash shortly after that. It was going to crash, but she didn’t truly know that. She just believed it, at this point. The plane ride was only going to be four hours, but, Saoirse thought, she would spend two and one-half hours waiting for the plan, plus another two and one-half hours in the airport for the trip back in five days, so that plus four hours on the plane each way meant that she’d be spending 13 of the next 120 hours on or around an airplane. Or so she thought. She did those calculations sitting in the passenger seat as they pulled off of the main road and approached the airport. She watched as the line of cars ahead of and behind them trundled slowly up to the gate, waited for their ticket, and then pulled into the parking lot. “Do you want me to drop you at the gate?” asked Ansel. He was happy, excited. He liked to travel, liked packing, liked airplanes. He liked going to new places, seeing new things. He liked the change of scenery and the freedom of not getting up to go to work and the ability to read the whole paper and, he always said, he especially liked that once he was on the plane there was nothing to do but sit and enjoy the flight and maybe read. Ansel had his book with him, a book he didn’t even put in his carry-on, but carried in his pocket.

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Saoirse considered his offer: Would it be better for her to try to guard the luggage at the gate and also keep tabs on the kids while waiting for him to get to and from the long-term lot, or should she and the kids all help unload the luggage and drag that around the parking lot while trying to keep the kids from getting run over, getting them all onto the shuttle? Then she tried very, very hard to banish those thoughts and think something pleasant. That was a new idea she’d heard people suggest: when things got overwhelming and she went negative, she’d heard she should think of something pleasant. So here, in the car, not long before her plane would crash, she tried to focus on the way the sun on her back would feel as she laid on the beach maybe later that afternoon. But it was hard to picture the sun when she sat in the dark and cold car. It was 4:30 in the morning, and as she tried to picture the beach all she could think about was how Austin would likely not be helpful with Chuck and Stephanie would probably be moping anyway and Ansel would be distracted by his book or his camera. In the end, she thought she would not be lying on the beach dozing, but instead would have to be making sure that Chuck did not get eaten by a shark and other motherly tasks. Focusing on those, on the things she would have to do instead of relaxing, for some reason, took her mind off the impending plane ride. “Drop us at the gate,” she said, finally. She sighed, and when Ansel did not look at her she thought her exhalation might be imperceptible. They drove up to the terminal, where Ansel put the van into park and Saoirse opened her door. She stepped out onto the sidewalk and left her leg there for just a second. She grimaced. She had a bad feeling.

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“I have a bad feeling,” she said. She looked up at the sky. “Mom, you always have bad feelings,” said Stephanie. “Always. Every day. Every hour. All the time. Always.” Stephanie left the driver’s side door open as she got out. Ansel was already unloading luggage from the back of the minivan. “S,” he said, “Would you help Chuck get out of the car?” S was his nickname for Stephanie. Saoirse just watched, standing by Austin now. Austin was holding his own book in his hands. She looked up at the sky again, and said: “Stephanie, get Chuck out of his car seat, please.” Stephanie was over on the curb looking at the group of Asian men about ten feet away who were chain smoking and talking rapidly to each other and didn’t hear her, or at least didn’t respond. Ansel shook his head. “Austin, take this,” he said, coming around the car and handing a duffel bag of carry on items to Austin. Ansel then worked his way around to the passenger side, where Chuck still sat in the car seat quietly watching. He paused as he saw Saoirse. “What’s wrong?” he asked. “I’ve been telling you. I don’t feel right about this. I have a bad feeling.” He looked at her, squinting a little. “Do you want to not go?” She saw Stephanie pause in her gum-chewing. Austin looked up at her. Chuck didn’t; he just looked at the back of the seat in front of him. Ansel watched her. “I’m serious, honey. If you say not to go, we won’t go.” She bit her lip. “We’re already here. We spent all this money. We packed. Let’s get on the plane.” Her heart felt a little cold. She and the three kids and the luggage waited just inside the door of the airport for Ansel to return from parking the car. Then, they herded the luggage and through the

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velvet-roped maze that was check-in, and security, and the walk to the gate, with Chuck periodically clinging to Ansel’s leg or her own and then beginning to wander away, causing her to lean over and grasp at him, nearly dropping her own bag, or bumping into someone else. Eventually, she said, “Ansel, can you hold his hand?” and Ansel tried, with a suitcase in one hand and Chuck’s hand in the other, lodging (when they were moving) the second suitcase he was responsible for under his arm, or nudging it forward with his foot when they moved, which was not often. Saoirse had a headache. Her chest hurt. She wondered if she was having a panic attack. Her palms were sweaty. She looked out at the planes taxiing and crews working on them and men standing and women standing and men walking and women walking and worried. She fretted. She had seen, a few days before, an air-traffic report on one of the 24-hour news channels, a map of the US with little airplanes superimposed on it, and the planes had overrun the map like locusts, overlapping each other. How do they not hit each other, she wondered. Why aren’t there more plane crashes and collisions? She pictured that, both against and because of her will: she did not want to picture it but she forced herself to, anyway, thinking it might be a kind of therapy or calming effort. She pictured one jet airliner running directly into another jet airliner, in midair, and in her mind the noses of both crumpled in until they were each about 1/3 shorter than the other, and they began to fall from the air. The image, which was not what would happen to her shortly, was disrupted by Ansel leaning over to her and saying “Do you want to get a cup of coffee? Or a snack?” “Do we have time?” she asked. She wanted to be home having coffee at the kitchen table.

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“I hope so,” said Ansel, “Because I want some coffee.” He looked at his watch. “We’ve got some time.” “Get some coffee. I’ll stay by the kids,” she said. She was trying, trying to make it okay and be a good sport and thought that it would look bad if she told Ansel to take the kids and she’d get the coffee, thought he might interpret that as pouting or something. “A large one. A really large one, for me.” she said, pointing to herself. “Got it.” He handed off Austin Saoirse put her hand on her middle child’s shoulder, and at that precise moment Chuck broke free from her grip. “Stephanie, get Austin,” she said, but Stephanie did not hear again and so she had to jog a couple of steps to get Chuck while waving her arms in a manner that she hoped would convey to Stephanie the message turn around and watch your brother. She grabbed Chuck’s hand again and thought again about the wisdom of taking a 2 ½ year old on vacation. Just as quickly, she tried to banish those thoughts. The children wanted to go on the vacation. Ansel wanted to go on the vacation. She wanted to go on the vacation, she told herself over and over: I want to go on the vacation. She didn’t. Ansel had not gotten back when the the flight attendant began having people line up and began checking their tickets and IDs. Saoirse fretted about what to do. “Stephanie,” she said, and then pulled one earphone out of her daughter’s head and said again, “Stephanie,” and Stephanie looked around in annoyance. “What?” Stephanie said and Saorise thought for just a moment that Stephanie was using her show-offy voice, maybe because the flight attendant looked not much older

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than Stephanie and Stephanie would want to make clear that she was independent, even though she was not. Saoirse decided to ignore that and handed off Chuck’s hand. “Take the boys and go in and get to our seats. I’ll wait here with the carry-ons for your father.” “Why?” “Because he’s not here yet and I have his ticket.” Saoirse had handed all the tickets to the flight attendant, who was ruffling through them and picked out three and handed back two, while Saoirse scanned the crowd for Ansel but still did not see him. She looked forward again and saw, with a start, that the children were gone. She almost panicked but got herself under control. She was just nervous. She breathed deeply and looked towards the jetway, where the three must have gone. “Ma’am, can you step aside?” asked the flight attendant. That’s why she jumped when Ansel touched her elbow. She turned to him and saw that he had no coffees. “What? Where are the coffees?” “I was waiting and waiting and I was about five people from the start of the line and realized that the plane was boarding, so I jogged up here because I didn’t want to miss the flight. I can’t believe how slow the line was. They had only one person there waiting on everyone and everyone’s got these complicated coffee orders.” He shrugged. “I know it’s early in the morning but you’d think they’d realize that the earlier it is the more people will want coffee.” Saoirse wanted desperately to grumble about the lack of coffee, too, and to join in grousing with Ansel and maybe let it darken her mood a little more, too, but because he

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was feeling that way she could not. For as long as they’d been a couple, only one of them could feel outrage at any given moment, it seemed. If she came in from the store furious about the way that a checker had let the person before her get the discount without the little special “Grocery Club” card, only to then tell her that she couldn’t get the same discount without the card, even though she, like the prior shopper had such a card but just didn’t have it on her, if she was bubbling over with anger at that, Ansel would shrug and say that it was not that big of a deal, it was only a thirty-cent discount, and, conversely, when Ansel, like now, was bugged at a coffee company putting one employee on duty during a busy time, then all Saoirse could do was pat his elbow and say things like “That’s corporations for you.” She was surprised that Ansel was bothered by it, as they moved onto the plane, and found herself in the not-ordinarily-hers-role of “the moderate one” in the emotional equilibrium that seemed to govern their relationship. Usually, it was Saoirse who found everyday life pecking at her mercilessly, leaving her angry in traffic jams, fuming about people in line, and annoyed by weathermen on TV taking too long to tell the temperature the next day, about which Ansel would generally remain calm and reasonable. On the jetway, the walls were too close to her, her carry-on bumping against them, and the doorway she squeezed through even smaller. The other flight attendant rotated between: “Hi, good morning, hi, hello, good morning,” as Saoirse and the other passengers turned right towards their seats. People edged through the aisle, putting up bags, pulling them back out, and she looked around for the kids, looking randomly around at the seats instead of just going methodically front-to-back. When she didn’t see

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them at first, she got a small tightness in her throat. Where were they? Had they not gotten on? Was there a way off the jetway? “I see Stephanie,” said Ansel, and then Saoirse did, too. Saoirse sat down in her own aisle seat, with Chuck on her lap. Ansel sat across the aisle from her. He was belted in and had pulled his book out of his jacket pocket and set it on his lap tray which was folded down in spite of the warnings to not do so until the plane was in the air. He had not opened the book, though, and instead looked at her. “Want me to hold Chuck?” he said. He seemed in good spirits again. She shook her head, no, and put her arms around Chuck’s belly, feeling her wrists settle on his little stomach, that tiny paunch that toddlers get when they sit down. She tickled him a little with one finger and he squirmed. She put her nose down and smelled his hair. “You should put your tray up,” she told Ansel. “They don’t want it down before take-off.” Ansel picked up his book and lifted the tray. He tried to turn the latch and the tray flopped back down again. He picked it up again and latched it and it fell back down. He smiled at her. “Maybe I broke it,” he said. Next to him, the businesslady who was reading the newspaper looked up as it dropped again. “The latch is bent,” she said. Ansel leaned in and examined it. “It was staying up before I put it down,” he said. He frowned at it and fiddled. Saoirse saw him chewing on his lip and wanted to tell him that it was not important, that he could leave it down, but did not. She smelled Chuck’s hair again and patted his belly. Her stomach felt sick. She hated take-off. She hated the lifting, the run-up, the noise, the ear-popping. She wished she could have taken a tranquilizer or something but leaving

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Ansel to deal with the kids the whole flight was out of the question. She had to watch them. The plane started taxi-ing and the flight attendant started talking and Saoirse just watched and watched as Ansel put the tray up again and again, and gave up after about ten times. She rested her chin on Chuck’s head and he squirmed again and she shifted her head and laid his cheek on her head. “Do you have your seatbelts on and tight?” she asked Austin and Stephanie as the plane turned onto the runway. “Yes,” said Austin. Stephanie just looked out the window, earphones in. Saoirse leaned over and pulled one out. “You can’t listen to that until we’re in the air! Are you trying to crash us?” she hissed. The plane was moving forward more quickly now. “Relax, Mom. It’s not like playing an iPod would drop the plane out of the air.” But Stephanie turned it off and went back to looking out the window. Saoirse leaned back again and pulled Chuck to her. The plane began moving forward more quickly. Her mind raced with the need to watch the children on the plane and the need to make sure that Chuck’s diaper did not need to be changed, and to make sure they got all their luggage when they got there, and Austin would have to go get the rental van. She hoped he still had the directions to the house they were renting, and wondered if he’d remembered to bring along the tickets that they had pre-purchased for Busch Gardens. Tickets and car keys and luggage tags and traffic jams and flight attendants swirled around in her head and she tried to clear her thoughts, tried to tell

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herself that she made life more complicated than it needed to be and that she didn’t need to worry about all of these things right now. She patted Austin’s hand. “Make sure you’re belted up,” she reminded Stephanie, who sighed. In a few hours, we’ll land, and then we’ll just have to hassle around Florida for a few days, and then there’s the flight back and then I’ll be back to normal life, she told herself. She closed her eyes, and felt the nose go up. She clutched Chuck tighter and her throat was dry with fear but she told herself that was just nerves and stress and her own mind working overtime. She tried to pat Chuck’s hair and ignore the terrible awful sense of dread she got as the plane lifted off the ground and pulled back and up and up and turned and she felt it straining. She felt dizzy with anticipation of the troubles ahead, she wanted coffee, she felt annoyed that Ansel’s tray was still down and bothered that he was not looking at her but was trying to see out the window as the plane banked towards his side. Then there was a horrifying ripping clunking mechanical tearing sound and someone screamed and someone else screamed and Chuck started crying and the plane dropped like a rock out of the sky and the last thing Saoirse could remember was that Ansel had looked over at her and she at him and she felt Chuck’s hand grip hers. Then it all disappeared.

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Two: It was probably the first time Saoirse had not tripped over Chuck’s chicken dancer. The chicken dancer was a small chicken that danced to a tinny version of “The Chicken Dance” when a button was pressed. Chuck watched the chicken dance, then left it laying wherever he got tired of it, usually by the refrigerator, where Saoirse usually stubbed her toe against it when she was getting out the milk for dinner. This time, she was getting out the milk for dinner and did not stub her toe against the chicken dancer and she realized that for the first time in probably 300 days the chicken dancer was not laying in front of the refrigerator. She looked down. The floor was clean. The floor was spotless. It gleamed. She could see her reflection in it. Growing up Saoirse had seen advertisements on TV for various products to clean floors, each of which promised that when that product was used, the floors would be so clean that it would reflect back the homeowner’s smiling face. Saoirse had always thought that would be a fantastic thing to have, a floor that clean, a floor that gleamed. The house she and Ansel lived in even had the right kind of tile in it to do just that, to gleam when cleaned properly, but she had never seen her reflection. Years and years of dirty shoes and spilled macaroni-and-cheese and toys like the chicken dancer scuffing the tile, and her own habit of kicking things under the refrigerator instead of sweeping-and-waxing and more had left the kitchen clean-but-notperfect.

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And, she had to admit, most days it wasn’t even clean, but just dirty-out-of-sight. Until today. Today she could see her own face reflecting back at her. She looked around. Dinner was on the table. The table was set nicely. The kitchen was immaculate. The knife rack was filled with knives. The kids, Ansel, even she never put the knives into the rack. Nine knives arranged by size would fit into the wooden rack, but nobody took the time to pull the knives out of the dishwasher rack and put them in properly. Everyone, including her, just ended up putting the knives in the silverware drawer with everything else. But there they were, arranged by size, handles pointing the right way, no empty knife-slots. She walked over to the knife rack and pulled one out. She put it back. She looked again at the dinner table in the middle of the kitchen. The food was steaming and moist and warm and tasty looking. When had she cooked it? The house was quiet. She stood and listened and could hear the sound of the bubbling of the sauce. She had cooked spaghetti. She looked back around the kitchen. There was only one pan on the stove, with the simmering sauce in it. There were no dishes in the sink. No spaghetti sauce stains or splots or blotches anywhere. There was a set table including a tureen for the spaghetti sauce waiting. She paused. She never used the tureen because she always just served the spaghetti sauce right from the pan, or, more often, from the jar. She could not remember the last time she’d had time to come home

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and make fresh sauce and then pour it into a whole separate dish. With Stephanie rarely home for dinner, with Austin and Chuck were too little to really help, and Ansel generally trying to help but not doing so very effectively, she did not do things like this. She listened. The sauce was boiling, bubbling, slower and slower. She watched it, watched a red-tinted bubble slowly expand and pop! She listened again. She could hear, off in the distance, a television set. The sound was turned down, but she could hear voices talking through a speaker. “Dinner’s ready?” she said. It wasn’t a declaration and she didn’t say it loudly. It was not even said to anyone but was questioning herself. She felt a little dizzy, until that feeling went away immediately. She took a sip of the glass of water in her hand and wondered when she’d poured it. Stephanie came walking downstairs with Chuck. “I changed him,” she said, and began putting Chuck into his high chair. Austin followed just behind them, down the stairs. She looked at him. His hair was neat. He was not covered in markers or fingerpaints or bruises or all the other things he was always covered in. From the family room she heard the television noises stop. She held her breath. Austin came walking in. “Smells delicious,” he told her, and gave her a kiss on the cheek. He sat down and put a napkin on his leg and began handing around French bread pieces. She stood there, holding the glass of water, still wondering where she’d gotten it from.

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Stephanie scooped noodles onto Austin’s plate, and Austin put a napkin on his leg. “Are you going to sit down, honey?” asked Ansel. “Do you need some help?” Saoirse sat down. She set her water glass on the table and looked around. Her eye caught the window next to the table, the window that Chuck liked to look out of, the window that usually had about a hundred handprints on it. She used to clean that window every night. Then it was every other night. Then it was once a week. Then it was when company was coming over, because she had grown tired of cleaning it and grown tired of trying to get Chuck to stop touching it. The window was clean. “Aren’t you having any, Mom?” asked Stephanie. Saoirse spooned some noodles and sauce onto her plate and stared at her family. Something bothered her about this all. Her family talked around her. Stephanie was explaining about a science fair project she was working on with her friend Laurel, how they were going to electrify something or de-electrify something, and Ansel was telling her to be careful and Austin asked whether it would hurt if they got electricitied, and Stephanie said to him, “No, you mean electrified.” Austin nodded and ate some spaghetti and paused to wipe the splotch of sauce off his chin. “What did you just say?” asked Saoirse. Stephanie looked up at her. “I said we’re going to study whether a low-level electric current can…” but Saoirse interrupted her.

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“No, I mean to Austin. What did you say to Austin?” Stephanie finished her chewing and swallowed and answered. “I corrected him. I told him he meant ‘electrified.’ Not ‘electricitied.’” Ansel was watching her. Austin was watching her. Chuck was not. He was eating quietly, picking up one noodle at a time and putting it into his mouth instead of throwing them on the floor or rubbing them in his hair. Stephanie was watching her. “Honey, are you okay? Are you not hungry?” Ansel put his fork down and dabbed at his own mouth. “You didn’t make fun of Austin.” Saoirse said to Stephanie. She looked at her glass of water, at Austin’s clean face. She listened in the silence her comment had created and realized that, yes, the TV was off. She continued: “You didn’t insult him or tease him or mimic his voice or just ignore him.” “Right,” said Stephanie. She did not roll her eyes at Saoirse. “Everything okay?” asked Ansel. “Sure.” It was. “Sure, I guess,” she said. But it wasn’t a guess. Everything was okay. “Maybe I’m just tired.” She knew that wasn’t it. “You look great,” said Ansel, completely unexpectedly. She looked up. “What?” “You look great.” He said it louder.

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“No, I heard you. What do you mean, I look great?” She was guarded. Ansel was complimentary, more complimentary than many husbands, probably, but, still…she felt off-balance. “I mean you look great. That’s all. This is really good. What sauce did you use?” Saoirse did not know what sauce she used but didn’t want to say that. She didn’t want to begin discussing the weird feeling she was having. It was like déjà vu but not really. It felt weird, to not know what sauce she’d used, and she thought maybe she should just make something up. But that did not feel… possible. “I’m glad you like it,” she said, instead, and felt a nagging tug in her mind before that, too, slipped away. What had she been thinking? “What did you do today?” asked Ansel, looking at Stephanie, who shrugged and finished her mouthful of noodles and said “Climbed Mount Everest.” “Free climbing?” asked Ansel. “Yeah. Yes,” Stephanie said, correcting herself before anyone could. Saoirse admired her spirit, tackling the world’s largest mountain free climbing. Saoirse wondered when Stephanie had learned to mountain climb. And how Stephanie had gotten home for dinner. Then she wondered what she’d been wondering. “Difficult?” asked Austin. “It was pretty hard, yeah – yes – but I liked it. I wanted a challenge.”

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“That’s in keeping with your personality, I expect.” That came from Chuck, who had stopped toying with his food and looked over at Stephanie. Saoirse gaped at him for a second and dropped her fork in surprise. Then she wondered why she was gaping at him. Then she wondered what had just happened. Chuck was looking at her, all wide eyes and with spaghetti sauce on his chin, which she reached up and dabbed off for him with her finger. His chin was clean but her finger no longer was, and she looked at it and then reached for her napkin. When she brought the napkin up to her finger, though, she noticed it was no longer dirty. Her water glass was full again. The spaghetti was delicious. Ansel and Stephanie were talking about the merits of solo climbs and somewhere in their conversation there was a mention, too, about flying, but Saoirse felt a little dizzy again. She looked over at Chuck. “Did you say something, Chuckles?” she used her pet name for him. Chuck just looked at her and chewed, a noodle hanging out of his mouth limply, slowly being worked inside. “What’s wrong, honey?” asked Ansel. “Nothing … something… nothing feels quite right. Is there something wrong?” asked Saoirse. She looked at Ansel, who met her eyes. “That’s what I asked you,” he said. “Are you sure you’re okay?” “I… I…” Saoirse paused. She looked around the table. She looked at the spaghetti and her ice-cold water glass and at Chuck, who regarded her with his usual

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look, the quiet two-year-old face she was used to and she looked out the window at the scene outside, the cul de sac their kitchen window looked out on, the circle of pavement surrounded by four houses including their own, the lawns all well-kept and shaded with trees and she noticed that there were no leaves on the ground. “Everything’s perfect,” she said. It came out a whisper. She did not know why. “Yes, it is,” said Ansel. “It’s wonderful.” Saoirse stood up and walked to the front window. She was looking now at the neighbors’ houses, and at her own driveway. In their driveway, the asphalt had cracked a year after they’d moved in. It had never been sealed up. Each year, the crack grew a little wider because each year, the result of winter and ice and time. Weeds would grow into the crack and Ansel generally dealt with those by scuffing at them with his shoes as he walked to and from his car, or running over them with the mower. They resolved, each year, to reseal the driveway or have someone look at it but had never done so because each year, something else went more dramatically wrong. Stephanie’s braces had to be paid for. The stove stopped working. The shingles blew off the roof. Whatever it was, there was always something more necessary to do than the driveway and so the crack grew wider and she could feel it when she backed the car over the crack, worried that the tires would pop. The crack was not there. It was sealed up. Or had never existed. She looked at Ansel.

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“When did we fix the driveway?” she asked. “Hmmm?” he asked. Stephanie looked up at her curiously. Ansel took a sip of milk. Saoirse looked around. “The Remberts. Look at their yard. It’s mowed.” “Right,” said Ansel, standing to join her. “It’s never mowed. They were growing it out, remember? Giving everyone hay fever? They were letting it all go wild. I talked to Susan about it, told her that all she’d get letting it go natural was long grass and dandelions, and that the dandelions would just spread, and she said that they’d take care of it…” her voice trailed off. The Rembert’s lawn was mowed and not covered with dandelions. She sat down. On the floor. “Everything’s wrong,” she said. “No, it’s not,” said Ansel. “You just said yourself: everything’s perfect.” “I don’t know.” “Let me help you up,” and he gently held her hand and elbow and she stood. He looked at her. He looked her in the eye, then kissed the tip of her nose in that playful way he had. “Maybe you just want a nap.” She noticed he put it that way: maybe you just want a nap. Not maybe you’re just tired. She was not tired. She was… what? Exactly what did she feel?

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She couldn’t tell. Ansel looked at her. He was not concerned, not upset, not scared. He was loving. She could see that in his eyes. She’d always been able to see that in his eyes, more or less, but she could see it clearly, now. She looked back out at the perfect lawns. The sun was shining. She knew, somehow, that if she went outside, there would be only the slightest stirring of a breeze. There would be shade enough to protect her from the sun. It would not be humid. The air, she knew, would smell of fresh-cut grass. She said again: “Everything’s perfect.” “Come on, sit down,” said Ansel. He led her to her chair and sat her down. He handed her the water glass. She sipped from it and this time the thought but where did I get this slipped from her mind almost before it could begin. Almost. But it did begin and she felt, momentarily, bewildered. Nobody was looking at her right now. Ansel had gone back to talking about Stephanie’s day. Austin interrupted, telling about a comic book he was reading. Saoirse looked at Chuck as a thought occurred to her. “You talked, just like a grown-up, didn’t you? You talked like that but then you stopped,” she said to him. Chuck just stared at her, wide-eyed. She recalled why she had wanted to get pregnant again. When they’d decided to have Chuck, Stephanie was in her teens and Austin had been five. She’d missed having a toddler. She loved when Stephanie and then Austin were about two, when they could walk and climb and kind of say things and could understand you but were still so new to the world that everything was fun and everything was a challenge, the age when they

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would fall asleep on your shoulder and their head fit right into the crook of her neck perfectly, and they’d wrap arms around her neck and legs around her ribs and cling to her while they slept and she walked. She’d missed that and wanted to experience it again, and so she and Ansel had decided to have one more, and Saoirse had been absorbing every possible minute with him, trying to experience it all again one last time. Chuck looked at her and for a millisecond she saw understanding there. Suddenly, she knew he would not talk again and, too, that she did not want him to talk again. It hit her in a flash: Chuck would not talk again because she did not want him to. She didn’t know how she realized that, or why it was so, but she knew that it was. Her head whirled, just for a moment. Ansel and Stephanie looked at her again, and Chuck got off his chair to come crawl into her lap. She rested her chin on his head, as she liked to do, and smelled his clean, curly blondish hair. It was exactly what she needed at times like this, exactly what she wanted to calm her a little and help her relax… Then that bothered her too. Why was everything so perfect? The doorbell rang. She looked towards the front door, seeing it at the end of the front hall. “Who’s that?” she asked. They all just sat there. Stephanie shrugged. “Are you expecting anyone?” she looked at Ansel. He shook his head. “Nope.” “Stephanie?” “No, Mom.”

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Saoirse stood up and went to open the door. Standing, framed in the half-window of the screen door, slightly obscured by the screen itself, and shadowed a little by the porch, stood a portly man with a large moustache, the kind of moustache one never saw anymore. The man took up most of the small space and his silhouette extended beyond the view of the screen door. He was slightly balding and looked concerned, a little hot, and expectant. “Hello,” he said. “Hello,” answered Saoirse, a bit uncertainly. The man’s suit was at least a century out of date, although she did not know that, precisely, she just knew that it was old-fashioned. It had too many buttons and a vest and the cut looked… off. “May I come in?” the man asked. “Of course, yes,” said Saoirse, not sure what the etiquette was here. She just knew that she wanted the man to come in. He came in and looked around. He hunched a little as he walked into the living room, though he did not need to. Saoirse thought that his hunch was the reflexive action of someone, such as him, who was habitually too big for the rooms he was in. He looked around and did not quite straighten up. He took his coat off and folded it, neatly, over his left forearm. “Well, this is very nice,” he said. He looked at Saoirse. “Do you like it?” She looked around the room. It had been a long time since she’d looked at her house and wondered whether she liked it. It just was her house. She liked it just fine, most of the time, except maybe when things went wrong like a pipe bursting or when she stopped to ponder the fact that none of the furniture appeared to belong with any of the other furniture.

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“I do,” she said. It was true. She liked her house. “I really do.” “But?” the man asked. She did not yet wonder who he was; he had commanded the room as soon as he walked in, had taken over the space and was clearly in charge, not just because he was so big, but because he appeared used to being in charge. Saoirse did not mind. She wanted, she knew suddenly, someone to come in and be in charge. And so this man had done that. She thought about that for a second, but the man said again: “But?” “But…” Saoirse did not have to ask him to finish his sentence; she knew he was expecting her to finish hers. She did so: “But it’s not quite right.” He looked like a man who would harrumph, who would chew on his moustache and declare things to be preposterous in his voice, a voice that could obviously become booming if he wished it to. But he spoke quietly. “It is, in fact, quite right.” Ansel and Stephanie regarded him without curiosity. Austin was looking at him from right by his foot, staring up the bulk of the man almost in awe of his height. Chuck, Saoirse saw, was poking the man’s shoe. She wondered when Chuck had stopped being afraid of strangers. As she wondered that, Chuck came over and grabbed onto her leg and hid halfbehind her, peeking out. The man watched him. So did Saoirse. Ansel and Stephanie

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and Austin appeared to regard it all as normal, this large man in their living room, Chuck’s change of personality, the conversation. “See? It’s quite right.” Saoirse looked down at Chuck. “Did I… make him do that? Did I make him be afraid of strangers again?” The man regarded her. “Yes,” he said simply. She looked down at Chuck. “You made him talk intelligently, too,” the man added. Saoirse picked up Chuck now and held him close. “You then made him stop talking intelligently and go back to being a toddler.” The man then looked at Stephanie. “Did you enjoy the mountains?” Stephanie nodded. “It was fun.” “Dangerous?” “Only a little,” Stephanie said. “As I’d expect.” The man considered his massive knuckles. “As you’d expect, I should put it.” Ansel put his hand on the man’s shoulder, reaching up to do it. “Can I get you something? We were just starting dinner. You’re welcome to stay.” The man looked at the dinner table. “It appears excellent, as always. But I’m afraid I don’t care for the Italians’ foodstuffs. I will pass on your repast.” He chuckled and looked back at Saoirse. “I expect you like food from the Mediterranean.”

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She looked over at the table. “I don’t know,” she said. “Sure.” “You must.” Why would he say that? But she knew. “I do like them,” she said. “I like all of the food on the table,” she added. “But I didn’t prepare it,” she finished. Everyone now looked at the table, then back at her. “Did I?” she asked. There was a blink. She was sitting on the couch. The large man was sitting next to her, a respectful distance from her. The couch leaned towards him, leaned severely towards him, he was so heavy. Ansel and Stephanie and Chuck and Austin stood nearby. As she sat there, Ansel sat down and took her hand. It was exactly what she needed. The man leaned in. “You’re okay.” he said. He did not ask it. It was a statement, a fact. He said it the same way he might say The sky is above the ground—the tone of his voice emphasized that this was not even open for debate, was not a subject of questioning or even, in the long or short run, something that needed to be said. But he said it again: “You’re okay.” “I am,” said Saoirse, and though she meant it as a question it came out with the same tone as the man had used. “See? You understand.”

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“I don’t.” “You do. You just don’t know that you understand.” The thought skimmed across her mind, briefly, stored away to be mulled later: If I don’t know that I understand, then how can I understand? It was one of those riddles like the sound of one hand clapping or a tree falling, something that she would lie awake sometimes and think about in a pleasant way, savoring the way that there were no good answers and no bad answers, no answers at all and everything was an answer to it. “Okay,” she said now. The man put out his large hand, took hers in it and put his other hand on top. In a formal, old-fashioned way, he said “I’m very pleased to meet you. I am William Howard Taft.” “The president.” “Yes.” “The dead president.” Saoirse did not feel any surprise. She knew why. But she persisted. “You’ve been dead a long time.” “Yes.” They sat in silence. Having hit the limit of politeness, William Howard Taft placed her hand back on her lap. Ansel rubbed her back lightly. “How long have I been dead?” asked Saoirse.

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Three: Saoirse realized she was dead with a suddenness like the flipping on of a light switch; suddenly, the knowledge was just there, the way an optical illusion switches so that you are looking at two people about to kiss instead of a vase, and you can’t go back to seeing the vase. Then she focused on William Howard Taft. Why was he here? “Why are you here?” she asked. He had not yet answered her other question, about how long she had been dead. Now, he said: “I don’t know.” Saoirse wondered which question he was answering. William Howard Taft looked at her and said “This is the After you have made.” “The After is where we are.” Saoirse said. She did not need to make it a question. “Yes.” “Heaven?” “Maybe.” “Is it?” Saoirse asked. “There are no pearly gates or angels or clouds or hosts of people singing the praises of any eternal beings.” She paused and looked out the window again. “Or are there and I just haven’t seen them yet?” “There are, and there are not.”

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Ansel and Stephanie and Chuck and Austin were all watching this with interest but not with any sort of disbelief or surprise or shock or emotion, period. They were watching it just as they would watch Saoirse talk with her mother or a guest at the house who was saying nothing more interesting than boy the traffic sure was bad on the way up here. “Come with me,” William Howard Taft said. “Well, that’s not quite accurate. Let me come with you.” “I don’t know what you mean,” Saoirse said, as William Howard Taft stood up and held out his giant hand. She took it and stood up and he led her to the door. Ansel stood up. “Should we come, too?” “No,” said William Howard Taft, but he said it to Saoirse. She looked back at her family, standing a few feet away as William Howard Taft held the door open. “No,” she said. They stepped outside onto the porch. William Howard Taft looked at her. “Go ahead,” he said. “Go ahead what?” she asked. But he just stood there. She wondered what he meant, and as she did so she was standing suddenly in the middle of a desert. She looked around surprised. She had not even blinked. William Howard Taft was there, and had already broken a sweat. She could see the drops beading on his nose. Her feet began to skid on the giant sand dune. This was a real desert, the way she’d always pictured one… … the way she’d always pictured one…

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“That’s right,” said William Howard Taft, encouragingly, his sentence unfinished – yet. They were on a rocky seacoast. The breakers sploooshed against the rocks, throwing themselves against the stone in seeming futility. It seemed they were ineffective but Saoirse knew they were not, that those rocks were broken down over the eons. She looked down at her feet. A small pool of water near her contained two starfish, one larger, one smaller. A sea urchin sat beside them, and a few plants, and a small fish swam there. She recognized a tidal pool and knew that when the high tide came back, these small creatures would be swept back out to sea to rejoin their lives there. … rejoin their lives there… … seemingly futile but not… “A tidal pool,” she said. William Howard Taft squatted down and looked at it. He poked a starfish with one meaty finger. “That’s right,” he continued, but he looked at her now. They sat on a plastic-feeling bench in a shopping mall and Saoirse saw shopping bags sitting in front of her as William Howard Taft looked around. She leaned forward and saw the shopping bags contained clothes, clothes she liked and would probably wear. She saw price tags bearing prices far higher than any amount she would have allowed herself to spend. She saw a compact disc of music Ansel would like if he were here. … if he were here… “Is he?”

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She turned to William Howard Taft, sitting in the bustling mall. “Is Ansel here? Are they all?” She looked down at the CD. “Did we all die?” “Is that important?” William Howard Taft asked. Saoirse lost track of what William Howard Taft had just asked her, though, because something worked through in her mind. “I’m dead…” she said. Before William Howard Taft could confirm that again, she thought … the way she’d always pictured one… … rejoin their lives there… … seemingly futile but not… And looked up at him and said “I can go back.” William Howard Taft looked surprised, and said “No, you cannot,” but she interrupted him, rushing into her speech: “Yes, I can. That’s why you took me to those places… why I took me to those places. To show me that I can go back. That this is not permanent.” She felt as though she should be breathing more heavily, or having her heart speed up, but neither of those things happened, and she reminded herself that she was dead, and went on before William Howard Taft could derail her. “That’s why I feel so disoriented, that’s why none of this makes sense to me, that’s why I’m so… out of it and nothing’s working, isn’t it? That’s why you came to me. Because I’m not supposed to be here and I can go back. “Those three places, these three places. The desert. That was, that was symbolic. It was how I sometimes used to view my life, this harsh thing that I had to deal with, this

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environment that I was not ready for, the constant stress and worry. It was my life the way I’d always pictured it, but then we went from there to the seashore, to the birthplace of life itself – that’s what the sea is, it’s where life began,” “No, it did not,” began William Howard Taft, but Saoirse held up her hand and he stopped, politely confused. “And the tidal pools, little bits of life trapped where they’re not supposed to be, swept there by forces that they weren’t prepared to cope with, stuck, it seems, in this limited place that’s like their life but it’s not,” Saoirse paused for a moment, worked it through, and said: “They could rejoin their lives, they have a chance to do that, a chance that’s seemingly futile but not and as I thought that, don’t you see, we came here, to the mall I usually shop at,” Saoirse dug into the shopping bag “And it’s filled with presents for my family, just like I’d bring after a trip, so I can go back. I can go back, and I don’t have to stay dead.” She was both calm and excited, and wondered how that was possible. In mere moments, she had gone from bewildered at dinner to certain she was dead to positive she could be not dead, and tried to sort out how she should feel. “No, no, no, you cannot do…” William Howard Taft protested, but he was interrupted by Saoirse standing up in the middle of the mall, holding the shopping bags, and closing her eyes. She squeezed them shut, squeezed them so hard that William Howard Taft could see the lines of strain and stress. Her lips moved; she was mouthing the words I’m coming back I’m coming back. People in the mall paid no attention to her.

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After a few minutes, she opened her eyes again and looked. Tears formed in the corner of her eyes, but before they could do more than well up, slightly, she set her mouth firmly as she put the shopping bags down. “I can go back,” she said. She repeated it. “I can go back.” “You cannot,” Taft said, but stopped talking because everything shattered into fragments around them, the After collapsing into an exploding swirl of images and pieces and hazy notions, an array of Saoirse’s thoughts jumbling and tumbling faster and faster, spinning around them with a beautiful but still frightening speeding twirl. They were moving, then they were not. The flurry stopped and they stood in the mall, still. Saoirse looked around. Her lips grew flat and hard. She began walking, picking up the shopping bags, and then a few steps later dropping them. Taft followed her, and people swerved around them, looking no more surprised at the two of them than they would any other two people in a mall moving that rapidly. Before she could begin to wonder why nobody was surprised to see a dead president (and a dead woman?) walking through a mall rapidly and angrily, everything dissolved again into the shards of images and smells and emotions that swirled around them again, disorienting her like she was caught in a snowglobe that had fallen off a shelf. This time Saoirse kept walking, though, purposefully, although she could only tell she was walking because she kept her legs moving. “Please,” Taft began, but she was not listening to him. “I can go back,” she said and kept walking through the flurry. Behind her, Taft was drifting; now perpendicular to her, now off to her left. He kept trying to walk, too, but seemed to be having a harder time.

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She stopped then and turned and the swirling grew more tempestuous and dark. “Why are you still here?” she asked. “I’m trying to help you,” he said, but she shook her head. “Why are you here,” she said, and gestured around her at the maelstrom of the After. “This is mine,” she said. “Or is it ours?” She added, and chewed her lip, pausing in her maybe-walking. The blue-black fragments around them coalesced and the two of them dropped into the ocean. William Howard Taft spluttered and splashed and righted himself. As he began to tread water with his hands and get himself under control, Saoirse watched him and tried to gather her senses. “It’s only about 4 feet deep,” she said. Her hands were waving gently in the water. She watched him touch bottom and stand up, moustache dripping. He picked up his hat and set it on his head. They both looked around. On either side of them, blue-black water stretched off to infinity. The water farther out was as flat and still as a pane of glass. Nearer them were the ripples that remained of their blustery entry, traveling outwards from the epicenter that was Saoirse. She saw that. She saw that the ripples were focused on her and not on William Howard Taft. There was no land in sight. Anywhere. The sky overhead was spackled with stars that were at least four times larger than ordinary, stars that did not twinkle but which were closer or larger or brighter than the

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stars she was used to seeing. They did not reflect in the water. The scene was lit with luminescence. “Where are we now?” William Howard Taft asked it, but Saoirse had been about to. They both looked around some more. The water was warm, as warm as a bath. Saoirse wondered if anything lived in it. She cupped some in her hand and looked at it. It remained blue-black in her hand, not clear, so the color was in the water itself, she realized, not the result of the way light glanced off of it or did not glance off of it. She held the water up to her mouth, then stopped and wondered if it was safe. Then she remembered where she was. “It’s safe,” she said, to herself, and sipped it. Fresh. Not salty. Her hand dripped water back into the sea. Her hair was wet. She tried to remember whether in any dream she’d ever had she had been able to feel things, to feel wet or taste fresh, but all she could think of was a dream she’d had where she thought that she’d parked her car on a hill but the brake did not work and she ended up rolling backwards rampaging through the city. She wondered why she’d thought of that. “Why are you here?” she asked William Howard Taft again. She did not wait for an answer but began striding off in the water, in a random direction. She felt sure that this freshwater ocean with its large stars was a clue, a signpost. A half-hour later she was still sure of that but was not seeing any progress as she walked along. The ground under the water was sand, smooth and malleable and soothing

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to her but it made the going slow. She began to wonder if this was a real landscape or something in her head. William Howard Taft had not moved. When she looked back, he was almost a quarter-mile away, still standing in the same place where she’d left him. He was not even looking at her. He was looking up at the stars. He had his hands clasped behind his back, or so she guessed, because the actual hands were hidden by the blue-black water. She stood still. She did not know how long she stood still. What did time matter anyway? She then looked up at William Howard Taft again and wished him away. She said it to herself: go away. He did not. She looked at the stars and said to them: Go away. They did not. She clenched her teeth and clenched her fists and furrowed her brow and fervently desired that the water, the stars, William Howard Taft, would all go away, trying to want it more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. They did not go away. She then thought she was doing it wrong and instead tried to relax. She tried to feel at peace. She remembered, just after giving birth to Stephanie, years and years before, she’d tried yoga, and the yoga instructor had emphasized relaxation as the key to something, the key to yoga was how Saoirse had remembered it, being sure that wasn’t what he’d actually said. Every class had ended with the entire class relaxing for several minutes, just laying there breathing. It was the only part of the class Saoirse had enjoyed. She tried that now, letting her eyes droop almost shut, letting in the view of only a small sliver of the water with its ambient-light feel. She let her arms relax so that they hung at

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her sides, not straight but half-bent. She squished the sand in her toes and let her feet settle into the ravine that the squishing motion created. The water lapped at her chest. Her hair was dry. She breathed in through her nose, held it to the count of four, breathed out through her mouth, held her breath to the count of four once more. She sat like that and tried to feel calm. She let her mind drift as she pictured scenes from her life, not in any order, letting her mind drift. Stephanie in the eighth-grade spelling bee popped up. Her drapes needing to be vacuumed, dusty. She tried not to think that this was all a way of willing herself back out of the After, and as soon as that thought popped up, she instead made herself remember the orange flowers Ansel brought her every anniversary, and tried to think of what they were called, trying not to think how deep down inside she’d always wondered why he bought her the orange flowers, tried not to think how deep down inside she’d been a little disappointed that it was never roses, that she never got her a dozen or more roses. Then she tried to turn her mind away from the thought that her feelings probably were not so deep down inside, how she was terrible at trying to hide them, how Ansel had probably known how she felt. Then she stopped trying not to think of things and instead wondered if Ansel had known how she felt but still kept giving her the orange flowers, whatever they were called. She was sure that he had known they disappointed her. He was… is… a smart man and was empathetic, so he must have felt her disappointment. Then she remembered the two of them walking on a busy street, crowded with people, but also with tables and racks and shelves and dividers. It was a sidewalk sale.

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She remembered it was excruciatingly hot and they were holding hands, her hand sweating in his larger hand. They came to a florist, and they were admiring the flowers, the expanse of sidewalk-sale flowers that had been put out in large white buckets of water, beautiful but somewhat wilted in the heat. She had picked up one of the orange flowers and admired it. Ansel had bought her a bouquet of them, and a vase, and had carried them all day. That had been one of their early dates. She opened her eyes and saw she was still chest-deep in the water, still in the water with the stars and off in the distance, William Howard Taft standing and looking in her direction. “I need to go home,” she whispered to herself. She did not, though, get whisked anywhere. She sloshed forward, more slowly than she’d moved out here, and began crying a little. A tear ran onto her lip. She licked it with her tongue, tasting the tiny salty drop. She was crying at the memory of Ansel carrying the vase through that whole sidewalk sale. As she waded, she wondered what to do next. Would she have to go back to the house she’d left? Walk all the way from wherever this water was to the house where Ansel and Stephanie and Chuck and Austin were waiting? Her mind questioned if it was really Ansel and Stephanie and Chuck and Austin, there, if it was really William Howard Taft here. She sloshed forward and tried to decide how she could tell if there was a difference between the real people and these people. Her house had been cleaner, her cooking better, the neighbor’s yards neater. Would Ansel be… Ansel? Or Ansel-er? She opened her eyes and looked up at William Howard Taft, still standing in the water. He had not moved, did not come closer but did not move away. Where was there

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to move to? She realized there was nowhere to go. The water stretched all around them. She had no idea how long they’d been standing in the water. The sand still felt cool beneath her toes. She was unconsciously squishing it, over and over, still. “You’re here to help me, right?” she called. “No,” said William Howard Taft. Saoirse was stunned. “Why are you here, then?” she asked again. “You keep asking me that. But I might as well ask you that.” “Why did you come over?” “I don’t know. I told you that.” “You were answering my questions.” “I can do that.” “So you’re some sort of guide, sent to help me get oriented, right? That’s the way it’s supposed to work. Every book, every movie, every story, has some sort of afterworld guide who helps the spirits get oriented. Sometimes it’s an angel, or an old guy with a beard, sometimes it’s the people you know who died before you…” she paused and thought about that and said “… who I’m sure I’ll meet soon.” She thought of something, and added: “That old saying Where there’s smoke, there’s fire? That’s true to an extent, isn’t it? If enough people think or believe something, it’s probably based in fact, isn’t it? I mean, it may not be true that, say, some movie star is gay, but there’s something at the bottom of the rumors, so if it’s not that the story is true, then some fact that could make the story true, is true. So all those movies and legends about there being a guide in Heaven…”

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“… this isn’t really Heaven,” Saoirse was interrupted and said “But you said it was.” “I did not.” “All those stories have to have some basis in fact.” William Howard Taft spread his hands. “I don’t know. I only know what a movie star is as secondhand knowledge.” “Why isn’t this Heaven, since you said it was?” Saoirse demanded. “I did not say it was. Or wasn’t. But it’s not Heaven as you think of that phrase, I expect.” “You expect?” “I told you, I’m not your gypsy.” Saoirse wondered that that meant, and thought maybe it was some old expression of his. “And you’re not here to help me.” “No.” “Why isn’t it Heaven?” William Howard Taft steepled his fingers, looking professorial even though he was nearly waist-deep in water. Saoirse realized they were both waist-deep even though there was nearly a 1-foot difference in their heights. “The way you use heaven, and what you said earlier about the gates and such leads me to think that you have something of a classical view of Heaven: clouds and angels and a giant community of all the dead souls who were saved, living in blissful harmony.” “Yes. Pretty much like that. Yes.” “Clearly, this is not heaven, then.”

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“But it is, maybe? Why?” “Because you are dead and heaven is where one goes when dead.” “You sound like a guide.” “But I am not.” “Then why are you here?” It came back to that again, Saoirse thought. She now was starting to believe that William Howard Taft held some clue for her, that he was a key to figuring out how to go back. She was sure that she could go back, sure that she would figure out a way to reverse all of this and get back to her life, get back to… … to the moment the plane crashed? What would she be returning to? Who would be there? If she’d been ‘dead’ long enough, would she be able to return at all? Would she have a body? … She felt some urgency, then, and also wondered again who was really here with her. Who else did she know that had died? Had her whole family? William Howard Taft had been considering her question, and he said now, “I’m here because you want me here.” “How can I want you here if I don’t know why you’re here?” “Nevertheless, it is true,” William Howard Taft said. “There is nothing in the After that exists unless you want it to exist.” “So you do have answers.” “Of course I do.” “And you can tell me what I need to know?” “Maybe. If I know the answers.” “Do you know any answers that I don’t know?”

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“Maybe quite a few.” “Are you just a figment of my imagination?” “That is doubtful.” But she saw him press his fleshy hand to his fleshy cheek, press it in so his fingertips sunk in as if he had, for a moment, doubted whether he existed. Would something created in her own mind doubt that it existed? She wasn’t sure. As she worked it through, she through could create a figment of her imagination that did not think it was a figment of her imagination and would not want to be exposed as just that… if her mind didn’t want it to be exposed. She had been moving closer and now stood only about 10 feet from William Howard Taft. There was near-absolute silence around them, no sound other than a slight slapping made by the water, generated by her motions and his. She realized that subconsciously, or almost subconsciously, she’d been repeating in her mind the mantra send me home send me home send me home. Upon realizing it, she stopped, she thought. “Where is God?” She asked. William Howard Taft looked surprised, then raised his hands and held them out, almost in supplication. He raised his eyebrows, and chewed his lip a bit. “I do not know,” he said. “Do I know?” she asked. He considered but didn’t answer. Then Saoirse said: “He’s not here.” She looked around the water, the stars, the water again. “I don’t mean not here as in not here in this water, but he’s not here in the After.” She cupped water in her hand and looked at it, let it drip out, watched the ripples fade. “I don’t know why I know that, but I do. Just like I knew I was dead. I guess when I need to know things, I just will.”

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Saoirse waved her hands through the water, held them up, watched the water run down her arms. It still looked blue-black, a little, as it ran down. “That’s why I know I can leave. Because I know it just like I knew I was dead and I know God’s not here. There’s got to be a way to leave. I’ve just got to find it.” She watched him for a reaction. He did not react much. Much. But she saw a flicker. “What?” she asked. William Howard Taft lifted one hand, held it up before her while he considered and spoke. “There are people who leave,” he said. “What? There are? But you said that people could not leave…” As Saoirse talked, The After began to whirl around her again. The water flumed up, dissolved, sprayed, disappeared. The stars grew and grew and grew until they burst as the After resolved itself into the house she and William Howard Taft had left before. She was dry. She was home, or as home as she could get. William Howard Taft was not there. Ansel and Stephanie were sitting on the couch waiting.

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Four: “Ansel, did you die, too?” Saoirse asked him as they lay next to each other on their bed. She was in her underwear and t-shirt but lying on top of the bedspread. He was tucked underneath the covers. Since finding herself back in this house, since looking at and out of the windows and doors, since realizing that she did not want to go back outside, Saoirse had been lying on her side of the bed without getting under the covers. It had been maybe a day but she wasn’t sure how much time had passed and whenever she wondered about that, she then wondered why does it matter and if it mattered. She had slept, she thought, having had the distinct feeling of waking up from time to time, but each time she did, everything around her appeared unchanged and that disappointed her so she tried not to sleep. At one point, she’d been laying on the bed, looking up at the beam of sunlight over her head, the sun that sprayed in through the window at the head of the bed, landing on the footboard. As she’d looked at, she realized it looked different, and had pondered why for a long time: Was it because she knew it wasn’t really sunlight? Was it really sunlight? Was it because she knew that she was dead and that the warm feeling of the sunlight on her shins, the feeling of the comforter below her warming up, was no more real than the way the sand had felt between her toes? Or was it real? If she felt something, wasn’t that feeling real?

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After some time like that, she had understood suddenly why the sunlight looked different. It had nothing to do with the sunlight itself but with what was missing from the sunlight. There was no dust in the sunlight, no specks flickering around and drifting and falling. Once she realized that, she waved her hand through the sunlight: Nothing. She then thumped the comforter with her hand, to make it poof out some dust. Nothing. That had made her roll onto her side, then, looking at the bedstand next to her where all the books she’d had lined up were sitting there, exactly as they were in her life. She’d run her finger over the top of the books and realized that there was no dust on them. the After, paradise, apparently meant nobody ever had to dust their bedroom. She’d felt like she should cry at that but didn’t know why. Later that night was when she’d posed the question to Ansel: Ansel, did you die, too? Ansel rolled over and looked at her. “What do you mean?” “We were both on the plane. Are you really here? Did you die, like I did? Or did you live and you’re down there…” is Earth down? “... living your life still, and mourning me?” A thought occurred to her. “Or are you dead but you’re in some other part of the After, living some paradise that doesn’t include me?” She bit her lip. “Don’t answer,” she said. “Wait a minute.” He looked at her with all the concern that Ansel could muster, which was quite a lot. He was a caring person; he had always tried to look out for her, had always tried to shield her. She stared into his eyes, trying to figure out the answers to her questions, wondering what he would say if she told him to answer and wondering what she wanted him to say.

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She said finally, “I suppose anything you say is what I would want you to say. I can’t trust it.” She rolled back over away from him and looked at the dustless dresser. The books that sat there not collecting dust, books that she wanted to read and had never had the chance to read in a leisurely way. She supposed that she could, now, read them if she wanted to do so. She reached out for a book. She was aware, in the way that married people are, that Ansel was behind her, looking at her; she could feel his look the way she felt his love, the pull of his look making her want to roll back over. Resiting, she did not grab a book after all, but instead picked up the television remote control. She wondered what TV in the After would be like. Would every TV show she wanted to watch be on? Would she never again have to say There’s nothing on TV and try to find something to do when she really didn’t want to do anything? She wondered if she could spend all eternity watching television. If she opted to do that, would it be so wrong? Watching TV had always felt decadent, in a minor way, because it was wasting the precious time that she had in life; life was short and the world was large, and all that. If life was no longer short, if she had all the time in the world, or in any world, all the time in any world, then why shouldn’t she watch TV? She clicked the remote on and then Ansel said “I died, too.” She turned to look at him, ignoring the sudden drone of noise from the TV in the background. “You did?” she said quietly. She believed him. Not because of what he said, but how he said it. She felt he was telling the truth from the tone of his voice alone.

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“I did,” he said. She saw him swallow. She saw his eyes close slowly and then open again, even more slowly. They were wet, a little. His pupils wavered behind water. They were, she realized, were the same color as the blue-black water in which she’d stood for so long with William Howard Taft. She stared into them.

“I think I

remember it, a little,” Ansel said. Neither said anything for a long time. “The crash, I mean,” he said, finally. “I remember that, a little. And life, a little.” Saoirse did not know how to respond. She did not remember anything, even a crash. Ansel was watching her to see if she wanted to talk. When he saw that she did not, he went on: “I think maybe, too, I remember the… end.” “I don’t,” said Saoirse. “I’m not sure if we’re supposed to or not.” Saoirse reached out her hand and touched his face. Her finger pressed the flesh in slightly on his cheek just below his eye,. She lifted it up and saw the lighter spot, watched it flush back pink as the blood came back. Ansel, always understanding, just watched her. “I don’t mind if you think I’m not real,” he said. “I can’t tell what’s real or not,” Saoirse said. “I mean, it’s all real, as real as Heaven, as the After…” “The After?” “That’s what William Howard Taft called it.” “Where did you go?”

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Saoirse wanted to finish her thought: “It’s all as real as I can be, as things can be, but how can I know? How can I be sure that it’s real? Our neighbor’s houses are here, after all. Are the people here, too? Have you seen them?” Ansel nodded. “They were outside a while ago, before you came back. I saw them.” Saoirse wondered if Ansel had actually existed while she was gone. She wasn’t sure. She said: “That’s what I mean. They’re not real. They can’t be really here because it doesn’t make any sense that just as we die, just as our whole family dies, our neighbors do, too? That couldn’t happen.” She thought about that for a second, and touched his hand again. “So I don’t know who’s really here and who’s really not.” “I don’t mind if you doubt me,” Ansel said again. “I know that I’m really here. And I know that you’re really here.” “How…” Saoirse breathed it. Her hand rested, now, palm down, on Ansel’s cheek. They were lying side by side, only inches apart. She could see his lips move as he breathed but could feel no breath. “I saw you die first.” He said. He began to cry, then. “And I wish I didn’t remember that.” “How…” Saoirse stopped. She couldn’t finish the question. She wanted to ask How did I die? but she couldn’t finish the question. She could not cry. She could not ask him how she died. Why could he cry?

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Why could he remember? Was he really Ansel? Ansel was looking at her. “I don’t know why I remember it. I asked Stephanie about it and she said that she doesn’t remember anything about it. She knew we were dead; how could she not? She went mountain-climbing today, after all, just got up this morning and then was at a mountain and had the gear she needed and was climbing and there were people helping her. She said it was just tough enough to be satisfying.” Ansel rubbed his eyes, brushed away the tears; talking about other things seemed to have driven the thought of their deaths from his mind. Saoirse just listened to him. “I saw someone flying today, too. Here and there are these strange things that people do. Stephanie is mountain climbing. Chuck talks to me. He came downstairs and just talked to me today, and he did that a lot until dinner when he stopped and he wouldn’t talk to me like that anymore, even while you were gone with… William Howard Taft. “I haven’t been doing any of that, though. I’ve just been hanging around here, reading, today, and I watched some TV. Is that weird? That I spent time in the afterlife… the After… watching TV?” Saoirse smiled, then laughed. “I thought that same thing, just a minute ago, when I was going to turn on the TV. But if it’s set up so that we can do anything we want, and we want to watch TV, and we watch TV, then that’s okay, right?” “Do you think that’s how it is? That whatever we want, we can do?” Saoirse considered that. “I think that’s mostly how it is.” They laid there for a minute, pondering. Saoirse asked Ansel: “Is this what you wanted?”

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He leaned in then and kissed her, kissed her hard on the lips and her mouth opened in surprise and in a sudden passion. She put her arms around him and pulled him to her. His face was pressed into hers and their mouths were almost mashed together. Her mouth opened up and his did and their tongues were pressing each other, caressing. She did not notice that he’d taken off her shirt, her bra. She pulled at his t-shirt, the one he always wore for pajamas, the one that read Slippery Rock after an obscure college that he always claimed to have wanted to attended just for the name. She pulled it over his head and he rolled over, shirtless, on top of her, hands roaming around and mouth still held against hers. She felt his chest push out with breath as hers went in; they breathed in rhythm and he was taking off the shorts she wore, she was pulling down his pajama pants and underwear and they were making love, they were more than that, they were having sex, ferociously, all the passion they had in them coming out, pushing aside the questions they had, the fact that there was no dust, the wondering who the other was. Saoirse rolled him over, she sat on top of him, naked, she pushed his chest down with her hands and arched her back, and let out a yell and closed her eyes. She saw, as she did that, not the blinding explosion of light and heat and passion that she usually expected, but instead, this: William Howard Taft, standing in a forest clearing with trees around him, trees towering hundreds of feet above him. She gasped and rolled off of Ansel. “What is it?” he asked her. She could feel the concern flowing from him, washing over her. Was this really Ansel? Was he this concerned in life? He was sweaty and

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leaned over to her. She licked her lips, tasted salt from Ansel’s lips there. Her hair felt tight on her head; her skin crackled. “Trees…” she said. She struggled to catch her breath. Her hands, she realized, were scraping at the sheets, she was drawing her nails backward and forward, as though trying to scratch the sheets away. “Trees?” Ansel said. She looked at him. “I’ve got to get out of here,” Saoirse said. She didn’t know why she felt compelled to move, but she felt the pull, the tug, the need to do something, and as she sorted, quickly, through the tugging, she decided that the movement was needed to go back. It had been late in the day when she first thought about turning on the television, almost evening. She looked at the TV now, still turned off, and noticed that the sun did not glance off the screen the way it usually did late in the day, making her have to turn it a little to avoid the sun glare rather than to close the blinds and block out the daylight. Even the sun glare is not here, she thought. Is everything supposed to be perfect? She tried to gather her thoughts. Ansel sat up, too, putting his arms around her from behind. “What’s wrong?” he said. “I’m going back,” she said. “How? Why?”

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“I don’t know,” Saoirse answered both questions in that phrase. “But I know I can do it.” She looked over her shoulder at him, and turned halfway, twisting. “Can you help me?” If she’d thought of that as a test to see if this was really Ansel, if in her mind deep down inside she imagined that real-Ansel would of course help her but a fake-Ansel, an After-Ansel here only because some part of her mind, her soul, wanted him here, because her happiness, her perfection, was, apparently, to have a dust-free house with Ansel and her children even if they were not the real things, if she’d thought that the question Can you help me was a test to root that out, she realized quickly how useless it would be. “Yes,” Ansel said. That was what Ansel would say whenever she asked him for help. Any Ansel anywhere would say that to any question she asked, she realized. She put on her sandals. She wondered if she should put on shoes. Or boots. Would it matter? Her sandals would be fine, she decided as she stood up. Behind her, she heard Ansel scrambling off the bed, heard the whooomp of blankets pulled onto the floor. He did not bump into the nightstand (as he almost always did when he was in a hurry). By then she was in the hallway outside their bedroom and he appeared in the doorway, still naked. “Where are you going?” he asked. Saoirse edged him aside and peeked into the room, curious. The bed was made. So people could not stub their toes and leave beds unmade in the After. Not in her After, anyway. What if they wanted the bed unmade? What if she wanted the bed unmade and Ansel wanted it made? Would there be an infinite series of Afters, each time

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there was some sort of split like that? Was Ansel actually in his own after, where Saoirse was, too, but in that one she was maybe not so uptight and did not want to go home? In that After, did Ansel and she agree on whether the bed should be made? Was there dust in Ansel’s After? She wondered. “Did you want the bed made?” she asked him. “What? Saoirse, what’s going on? Why did you stop like that?” “I’ve got to go.” “Where? Right now?” “I … we … can do whatever it is we like, so why not right now?” Saoirse actually sounded petulant to herself; she had never been fond, during life, of the children’s habits of trying to turn her arguments back on her. She would tell them to do something, maybe to go upstairs and clean their room and not leave the room until it was done, only to then call them to give her a hand while cooking dinner, and inevitably get back but you told me not to leave my room until I was done cleaning. She did not like hearing herself do the same thing, now, but she did it. Ansel had no answer as she walked down through the house and saw her car keys sitting on the counter where she had thought they would be, even though up until that moment she had not thought about car keys in the whirlwind that was her existence here so far. She picked up the car keys (and they did not tangle like they usually did) and she walked briskly to the back door that would let her out to their detached, messy garage and the car that was parked outside it. “If you’re coming with me,” she said as she turned to look over her shoulder at Ansel, but she stopped what she was saying as she realized what she was saying was

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incorrect, and then she finished differently “… then it’s good that you put clothes on.” She hesitated, her hand on the handle of the back door. Would she be able to control things outside of the house, after what had happened the last time she’d left this house? She looked back over her shoulder at Ansel. Stephanie was there, now, too. “What’s going on?” Would the children be okay without her? Of course they would. That was the whole point of the After, right? Nothing bad could happen here? Saoirse wondered what “bad” meant and how the After would deal with “bad.” Suppose she stayed away so long that the children would starve? Would food appear? Would she be summoned back here? If she didn’t want to come back here, then she couldn’t be summoned back here, wasn’t that how it should work? But if they wanted her back here, wouldn’t the After have to compensate… … she looked again at Ansel and shoved aside that thought, and tried not to wonder, too, whether, why Ansel’s and Stephanie’s and Chuck’s and Austin’s After were all exactly the same as hers? Was there an infinite number of Saoirses out there, one sitting quietly by her elderly mother and father and chatting with them while one cheered on a teenage Austin at his afterworldly track meet while one stood here in the kitchen and stared at her family? Would one come and show up after her if she left? “I’ve got to go somewhere,” she said. Chuck and Austin looked nervous. Stephanie did not react visibly. “Do you all want to come?” she asked. “Depends on where you’re going,” said Stephanie.

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“Yes,” said Austin, and Chuck said “Bye Bye.” Saoirse looked at him, and realized she liked him talking that way. So he would stay that way, now? “Come on, then,” she said. Ansel put his hand on hers. “You haven’t told us where you’re going,” he said. “We haven’t packed anything. We haven’t even gotten the kids a change of clothes.” “That all doesn’t matter.” Ansel considered. She could see he realized she was right before she even went on: “We have everything we need. We don’t even need to change Chuck’s diaper.” “Are you sure?” Ansel asked. “I am, now.” She was. How could the After not allow dust but allow dirty diapers? “I’m sure.” She looked at Stephanie. “You don’t want to come?” “No.” That seemed pretty normal. Saoirse still had her hand on the doorknob. She looked at them all. Did it matter which of them were real and which were not? Of course, it mattered. But she couldn’t decide why and didn’t have time to think about it. The urgency was growing in her. “Okay. You all saw William Howard Taft here before, right?” They all nodded. “Your dad and I were… upstairs… and I had a vision of him. Standing in the woods. He came here, I thought to help me, us, to help, I don’t know, deal with this, deal with the fact that we’re all… “ she looked at Chuck, realized that he knew anyway “Dead.” Were they? Were they all?

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“But he couldn’t help me and then I was back here. And I saw him standing in some trees. I think he knows the way and isn’t telling me.” She realized as she spoke that was what she thought, why the urgency existed. He knew something. That was why he had come. “Now I’m going to go find him in the woods where he was standing. There, you’re all caught up. Anyone want to come?” “Why?” asked Ansel. “Why are you going to find him?” Saoirse looked down at her feet. “Because I know he has a way for me to go back. He won’t say it. Maybe he can’t. I think he’s somebody official here. This place, he called it ‘the After,’ and I think he’s sort of a big shot, and can help me go home.” She didn’t say Go back to the real you, if you’re there. What if he isn’t there, a part of her thought. Suppose I make it back and they’re all dead? She turned again to the door. “I’ll come with you.” Ansel stepped forward. “We’ll all come,” said Stephanie. “Yeah,” said Austin. Chuck did not say anything. He was rubbing his ear. Saoirse saw that as she turned towards them. She wondered if he was acting, or really now was like that, whether she could make him talk again if she asked him to. If he was really like that, but he was also dead, then he couldn’t possibly be here unless it just so happened that he wanted to be like that and also wanted an afterlife where his Mom was going to make him be like that, stay two years old, and also where

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his Mom was going to go running off on crazy errands like this, she reasoned. So did that mean it wasn’t him? She had to stop thinking like that. She resolved to stop thinking, period. She turned towards the door and opened it and stepped outside, closing her eyes even though she didn’t mean to. Her foot landed on the doorstep and the door swung back slowly, in time for her to catch it before it hit her (of course) and she stepped all the way out onto the sidewalk where ordinarily there was grass growing up through the cracks. She saw no weeds or grass, and in fact no cracks in the sidewalk. (of course.) Also, nothing crazy happened. She let down her guard a little and walked carefully to the garage. The car was shiny and looked waxed, and was clean inside. The crumpled paper towels used to wipe faces, the wrappers from Chuck’s snacks, the empty coffee cup she’d been meaning to pick up were gone. Also gone were all the old magazines she kept in the car to thumb through when waiting to pick up one of the children from some activity were stacked neatly. Would everyone always be on time in the After? Would there be no downtime, sitting in the car waiting for Austin as his soccer coach talked to the team while she sat in her car listening to the radio and flipping through “People” magazine? She opened the car door, which was not locked, and sat down. The car seat that was warm but not too hot despite the sun shining through the window. Ansel moved around to the passenger side. The kids were climbing into the backseat and Stephanie was strapping in Chuck. “Where are we actually going, honey?” Ansel asked, as Saoirse started the car.

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“I don’t know.” “That’s not a good start,” he tried to joke, but it fell flat. Saoirse was backing the car along the driveway, noting that the driveway was still two gravel paths with a near-dead strip of grass between them. In the years they’d lived here, they’d never gotten around to paving it. Every summer, Ansel would announce that was the year they’d pave the driveway, and every fall he said Maybe next summer. It startled her to realize the driveway, in the After, was not paved. Do I like it that way? She wondered. “I saw him standing in woods. Large trees. Really big trees,” she said to her family. “Like redwoods?” offered Stephanie, from the back of the car. “Yes, actually. Exactly like redwoods. Or how I picture redwoods, which makes it probably the same here.” “So we’re driving to California?” asked Ansel. “Driving?” “I don’t know any other way to get there,” Saoirse pointed out. She did not want to think about flying. “Where’d you go before?” Ansel asked. They were driving out of the cul de sac now. One of the neighbors looked out the front door and waved. Saoirse did not wave back. Ansel did. “I went to the ocean, and the desert, and the mall. And another ocean, I think.” “How’d you get there?” “I think William Howard Taft took me there.”

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She felt a tap on her shoulder, and looked back as she slowed to a stop before entering the street that led out of their subdivision. “That’s not how it works, Mom,” said Stephanie. Saoirse looked over her shoulder, nearly turning around before putting her attention back on the road. Only later would she first wonder whether she would be able to get into a car accident, here. Stephanie continued: “You don’t get taken. You go where you want to go.” “How?” asked Saoirse. “I don’t know. It just works. You have to want to go somewhere and then you go there, I guess.” Saoirse considered what Stephanie said, still driving. The gas tank read “Full.” The compass on the dashboard said they were heading west. She thought that was where they wanted to go, but beyond “West” she didn’t know how to harness it or do what Stephanie suggested. “Didn’t you go mountain climbing yesterday?” “Yeah, for, like, a week.” “You were gone a week?” “Yeah, about. I guess.” “You were home for dinner.” “Yeah, I know.” Saoirse glanced at Ansel, trying to convey How did that work? in her expression. She wasn’t sure it got across, as Ansel looked at her and shrugged. “How long have we been dead?” she asked him.

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Ansel looked out the window and didn’t answer. “Does time mean anything here?” Saorise demanded. “Does anything?” “What does that mean?” he asked. The car was now moving onto the larger road that led away from their subdivision and towards the Interstate, where Saoirse guessed they had to head. She glanced in the mirror and saw that Austin was eating Cheetos. His fingers were clean, despite him repeatedly digging into the bag, picking two or three Cheetos out, and putting the snack and his fingers into his mouth. No cheesy fallout stuck to his fingertips; there were no orange smudges down the front of his shirt. She merged into the left lane; the Interstate on-ramp was only a mile away. She drove and tried to put together how could she think her way to where William Howard Taft was?She looked in the rearview mirror at Stephanie, who had her eyes closed and was rubbing the side of her nose with the back of her ring finger, hand curled around as though holding an ice cream cone. Stephanie’s eyes opened. “Didn’t work?” asked Saoirse. “I don’t think I can do it, go where he is. Maybe I don’t want to.” “But you wanted to come along.” They were cruising in the left lane, passing everything else. The speedometer read 70 miles per hour. What would happen if I simply floored it and took my hands off the wheel? she wondered. She didn’t try it. “Right, but I don’t want to go there, maybe.” Stephanie seemed about to say something else but stopped. Or, thought Saoirse, you’re not really here, you’re in your own After or you’re back on Earth, maybe standing in front of my casket and crying. I hope you’d be crying.

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She pictured, again, the woods that William Howard Taft had been walking in. They were thick; it looked as though it would have been hard for him to get where he was, as large as he was and as thick as the woods were. The trees were tall, so tall that they registered only as broad brown columns, the tops not visible to her in her mind, the trunks not fully pictured in her image. There were no branches on the trunks, not for as high as she could see. In her mind, she had seen him as though she were standing about a quarter-mile away from him, a quarter-mile away that somehow had a clear view of him even though the woods were thick around him and full of undergrowth and vines and ferns and brush, the woods had parted and Ansel yelled, interrupting her imagining, and she opened her eyes and only then realized that she had closed her eyes. Flipping her eyes open, she expected to see a car coming at her, or a rail, or something else on the highway. She saw trees. All around her were the same trees that she had seen in her vision. The car had stopped, although the engine was still running. The air in the car felt still, and humid, and thick and wet. It felt like the breath of trees. She looked around, noting all the details. The ticking of the car engine as it idled. The scraping sound of Chuck’s shoes on the back of her seat. Ansel’s hands, sitting flat on his legs, wedding ring on his left ring finger. Stephanie’s head craned to the left in the rearview mirror. The flutter of sunlight through the leaves. Saoirse opened her door. “Everyone out,” she decided. They got out and stood there, waiting.

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“Is this the spot?” Ansel asked. “Where you saw him?” “Yeah. Yeah, I think so. It was from further away in my… vision… but I think this is the spot.” Saoirse held her hand up to shield her eyes and looked around in the distance, trying to see if this were the spot or if the spot was about a quarter-mile away as it had been when she’d seen it. Then she realized that the sun wasn’t in her eyes and lowered her hand, a little sheepish. She wondered if the sun could be in her eyes, here. Only if she wanted it to be? “It’s the spot. He was standing by this tree.” She shuffled over and waded through the ferny underbrush, and looked up. “He was touching it.” “Feeling it?” asked Stephanie. “No, he had his hand on it, like this,” she held her hand out to the tree and just before it touched the palm, she stopped. What would she feel? She reached a little further, put her palm on the bark, and shut her eyes tightly. It felt like bark. She opened her eyes again. “And he was looking up at it. That’s all I could tell. That’s all I could see.” “Is he still here?” asked Stephanie. She held Chuck’s hand. Austin was pulling leaves off of a fern. “I don’t know.” She closed her eyes. She listened. “I don’t think so.” What had William Howard Taft been doing here? “Spread out,” she said. “Look for… something.” They didn’t question the directive. Saoirse looked at Ansel, who smiled at her. He closed his car door and turned to his right, stepping carefully through the growth. Stephanie and Chuck moved off towards the back of the car. Stephanie had stopped holding his hand; Saoirse was about to say something, but then thought What could

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happen to him, here? He’s either already dead and nothing worse can happen, nothing BAD can happen, or he’s not here at all. She turned back to the tree that she thought William Howard Taft had been touching. She put her hands on it again, both hands this time, and pressed against it. She leaned her forehead against it. She tried to picture again the scene as she’d envisioned it. She had been in the After for only about a day now but had twice seen William Howard Taft and had been taken places by him. He must, must, know something, she thought. The bark of the tree was scraping her forehead. She heard footsteps around her, her family receding in the forest as they looked for something for her. She stood there, head against the tree, and tried to just think. A leaf tickled her right calf. She heard the leaves stirring around her, in a slight breeze. She remembered the desert. The tidal pool. The ocean. She tried to cast her mind back: how had she gotten them here? If everything was exactly the way she wanted it here, and that was a big if, then shouldn’t she know already what William Howard Taft was doing here? Why he was appearing to her in visions? She opened her eyes and looked around again. Ansel was about twenty feet away, swishing his foot around and brushing aside branches as though he was looking for a golf ball. Stephanie had come back to the car and was sitting on the trunk and looking at her. “I don’t know what we’re supposed to be looking for. I’m not even sure who William Howard Taft is,” she told Saoirse by way of explaining her lack of effort. Austin was just off to Stephanie’s left, holding a dead branch that he was using like a sword, slashing at bushes around him. Saoirse got momentarily saddened when she

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thought that Austin would never get to play that game again in real life, but then caught herself. He may not be here, she thought. Then she wondered, if he was, if he had died, too, then wasn’t he better off here, where everything he ever would want would be given to him? And if so, wasn’t she better off here? Suddenly, she had a crazy notion that if the After was Heaven, and Heaven was in the sky, then maybe she should dig down, just keep digging down and down and down until she fell through the bottom of the After and landed back on Earth. She tried to take a deep breath and wondered if she’d inhaled any air at all. She looked off to her right then, and saw William Howard Taft talking to Chuck. Chuck was standing and staring wide-eyed at William Howard Taft, one finger in his little mouth, the other hand held up behind his head. William Howard Taft said something, smiled, and tousled Chuck’s hair. Then he stood up and disappeared. Saoirse ran over there and knelt down in front of Chuck, feeling the moist dirt release water and her knees getting wet. She turned Chuck to her and held him by the shoulders. “What did he say to you?” she asked, nicely. Chuck just stared at her. “Did he tell you what he was doing here?” Chuck just stared. Stephanie walked up behind her and knelt down, too. She looked at Chuck and then at Saoirse.

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“There’s no footprints,” she said. Saoirse looked and saw she was right. Chuck’s footprints were there, and when Saoirse stood up, there were knee prints from her own knees (but not, she saw, any mud-stains or smudges on her knees from the damp earth) but no footprints from William Howard Taft. “Also,” Stephanie said, “I don’t know if Chuck can answer you.” Because I don’t want him to, thought Saoirse, but she did want him to answer her, very much. Or thought she wanted that. She was confused and stood up, fists clenched at her sides. “How does this stupid place work,” she said. “How does it work and how can I get out of it?” She did not expect an answer. She sighed and looked down at Chuck. “You could answer if I really wanted you to answer, couldn’t you?” He just looked at her and dug in his ear. She turned back around towards the car, then turned around again and picked up Chuck, hugging him to her. “I don’t want you to answer.” She looked at him. “I want you to be like this and I want us to be getting off the plane and everything’s fine.” He leaned in and put his forehead against hers. They touched noses. She loved that he did that. She smiled and wanted to cry but she didn’t, not right away, and she wondered if she could cry, here. She felt like she should be able to cry if she wanted to, if she really wanted to. But how could she cry? What was she crying about? She wanted to cry because this was not her life… but it was. It was her life, her family, her son pressing his forehead to her own, all her life except that she was still standing in the

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middle of this forest, and William Howard Taft had been here – twice – and those parts were not her life. And not what she wanted. She carried Chuck back to the car, sat him on the trunk, but quickly pulled him off of the trunk and put him on the ground. The mud, she knew, was squishy and wet and he’d like that and she didn’t have to worry about laundry anyway. She decided to get the keys to open the trunk but found she had them in her hand. She opened up the trunk and wondered: Why wouldn’t it just open when I wanted it to open? Why do I need keys? Why do things have to be locked in the After? In the trunk was a picnic basket and she pulled it out and began unfolding the blanket. “Are we staying here?” asked Ansel. “Why not?” asked Saoirse. She swallowed, hard, and looked at him. “Isn’t here as good as anywhere?” “Sure. I suppose.” “Why is it?” Saoirse asked him, suddenly. “Why is what?” Ansel asked. “Why is here as good as anywhere for you? Sure, it might be good enough for me, but why is this your After, also? How can we want the exact same things?” Ansel sat down and ate a sandwich. “I don’t know,” he said, simply. Saoirse wasn’t satisfied with that but did not know what to say. Stephanie sat down, too, and Saoirse looked at her for a long while. “Do you remember?” Saoirse asked her. Stephanie knew what she meant.

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“No,” she said. They both looked at Ansel. “Dad?” Ansel looked away. Saoirse did not press him and looked at Stephanie again. “Do you want to be here?” Stephanie did not, as she might have in life, play it dumb; she did not say “What, here?” and look around the forest. She did, though, shrug, and said “I don’t have a choice,” but then thought about that and said “Why would I want one?” “Why would you want a choice?” Saoirse asked. “Right.” Saoirse was stumped by the question as well as the fact that there was no answer she could think of. She dropped some crumbs from her sandwich. She looked down and saw the crumbs were gone. She wondered if Stephanie meant she had no choice to be here in the After, or here in Saoirse’s woods in the After. “It’s everything anyone wants,” said Stephanie. “Everything I could want, right here. Right now. Anytime. Why wouldn’t I want that? Why wouldn’t I choose, if I could, to be somewhere where nothing bad ever happens, where everything is exactly the way I like it, where I can do what I want when I want and how I want, and nobody is in my way and we never have to work and never have to suffer or be delayed or… hindered.” She took a bite of her sandwich and Saoirse waited for her to go on, but she didn’t. “But that’s not life,” said Saoirse. “It’s not the way things are supposed to be.”

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“Mom,” said Stephanie, but paused. Ansel leaned in, instead. “We’re not in life anymore.” He touched her knee. Saoirse swallowed. “I know,” she said. “But I want to be. If this is supposed to be anything I want, it’s not. Because it’s not life.” “I don’t know what you think is wrong with it,” Ansel said. “Nothing is wrong with it,” Saoirse agreed. They sat in silence a moment. “That’s what I don’t like,” she admitted. “I don’t know how to say it, exactly, but it’s that, I think, that nothing is wrong with it. I guess I thought at first that I just missed being alive, and didn’t want to be … dead… but it’s not that, because I don’t feel dead, anyway. Stephanie’s right, this is perfect, or it’s supposed to be, and I don’t feel dead at all. I don’t feel like a spirit. I can sit here and eat my sandwich and feel the dirt underneath me, feel that and know that I’m not going to have to worry about these pants and I suppose I don’t have to worry, either, about tooth decay or getting fat from eating mayo on a sandwich, so it’s not that I miss life that way because this is life, only it’s better, I know. “But it’s not. Even though I can sit here and eat a sandwich that I didn’t have to make and didn’t have to worry about spoiling and didn’t have to worry about having the grocery money to pay for it, it’s not perfect. So something’s not working for me…” her voice trailed off as she looked up from her sandwich, because when she looked up, she realized that William Howard Taft was standing there. “Come with me,” he said, and leaned down and touched her shoulder.

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Five: They were back in her house, her perfect house with no dust and no mess and the neighbors not annoying her. Her family was not there. No Ansel, Stephanie, Chuck, or Austin. They were sitting at the table. “How did you do that?” she asked William Howard Taft, who was toying the centerpiece on the table, an arrangement of small glass bottles on a lazy susan that she had made years ago, selecting little interesting bottles from a crafts store, gluing the bottles to the rotating base and then filling them with powders and colored liquids and putting little stoppers in them. Apothecary Rotation, she’d called it when she showed to Ansel, who had applauded her for it and declared that it should be the centerpiece of the table. There it had sat for years and years and years. And here it was now. Had it been brought here? She decided not: the Rotation would still be in her house, now. Or, she suddenly thought, thrown out by whoever got it when I… She stopped as William Howard Taft interrupted that train of thought. “I did not do it,” he said, spinning the centerpiece slowly, watching the liquids slosh a little. Saoirse remembered that the liquids in the bottles had dried up some years before, and the powders had faded. Here they were full. “So I did it? I brought us here?” “Yes.” “How?” “You wanted to be here, I assume. When I touched you, you wanted to be here.”

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“That makes no sense. When I wanted to be there before, I had to start driving there, get on the highway…” but she trailed off because William Howard Taft was holding up a big hand. “I do not make the rules here. I do not even understand, fully, how it works. I have been here a long time, yes, that’s true. A long time. Looking. But I do not yet fully understand how the After operates and I am not sure that anyone in the After does. Maybe after being here more than the near-century I have. Maybe several centuries. I do not know.” “Haven’t you ever found someone like that and asked them, then?” William Howard Taft shook his head. “I can’t,” he said, “because there is nobody who has been here that long, not that I can find, and I have been looking for a long time.” Saoirse tried to parse this. She heard the car pull up and look out the window. Ansel waved at her from their car. “Are you saying,” she began, thinking it through as she talked, “That you’ve been here about a hundred years and never found anyone who’s been here longer?” “Yes. That is exactly what I am saying,” said William Howard Taft. The car doors slammed outside. She heard footsteps on the gravel. She heard Chuck babbling. “And does that mean… does that mean that over 100 years ago, nobody was, what, good enough to get here?” William Howard Taft shook his head again. “I do not believe that to be the case.”

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“Did the After not exist more than a hundred years ago?” The others were coming in the back door they’d gone out not too long ago. William Howard Taft sucked his moustache in a little, and whuffed a sigh out. “As odd as it might seem, I had not considered that.” He tapped his fingers on the table. He tapped them rhythmically, the result being muted drumbeats from fingers so large that they caused the table to vibrate slightly and made the liquid in the centerpiece slosh slightly. “I do not think,” William Howard Taft said as the rest of the family came in and sat down, “That is the case. I think the After has always existed. That, certainly, is more simple than to assume that it came into existence 100 years ago, and Occam’s Razor dictates that I begin with that explanation.” “Why is that simpler?” asked Saoirse. “Why is it simpler to assume it’s always been here? It might have come into existence because people believed in it. Or it was created by God 100 years ago as, I don’t know, as a purgatory or something. Maybe that’s it. Maybe this isn’t Heaven. Maybe it’s purgatory. That would explain…” She paused as Ansel squeezed her shoulder. “Explain what, honey?” he said, quietly. “Why I’m not happy.” Saoirse looked down at the table as she spoke. William Howard Taft steepled his fingers. “I’ve given that some thought,” he said. “But I do not think this is purgatory because everything is too perfect. Or as perfect as can be. For most people, at least. It is perfect for most people. It is perfect, for example, for your daughter. Or it was. It was until one of the not-perfects came along. Until you came along,” William Howard Taft put his hand down on the table, fingers curled up. He looked pointedly at Saoirse. “You

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are one of the people I look for in the After, one of the people I have been looking for for decades now. A not-perfect, I call them. Someone who is unhappy in the After despite the fact that everything in the After is perfect. I can sense people like you, now, I can track you, I can find things, and each person I meet is a clue, each person like you, a notperfect that I meet gives me a little more of the puzzle. And then each of you figures it out before I do.” “Figures out what?” Saoirse asked. William Howard Taft said, first, “I must apologize to you.” He looked at her, with sadder eyes than she could imagine him having. She, like many people, never thought of big men as having emotions like sadness. Big men were blustery and harumpphed and were brash and violent. Not sad. Big men did not sit at one’s kitchen table, or the afterworldly simulacrum of one’s kitchen table, and quiver their lips and look sad. “I must apologize to you because I misled you. But I did so because I was afraid. “I misled you when I told you, in the water, that I was here because you want me here. It is not that simple. I am here not just because you want me here but because I want you here.” He took a deep breath. “You are in my After, and I am in yours. And so while I know of you because you want to know of me, I know of you because I want to know of you. I want to know of you, and everyone like you, because in my century here, I have run into many notperfect people, and each of them has found a way to disappear. Sometimes quickly, sometimes not so quickly. In my century-plus of living in the After, I have learned much

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about how to affect my own After, learned much about how to control it and shape it, but I remain here, a century in, not perfect myself. “I was, when I first arrived here, just like you: not happy. Not unhappy, because I do not think that is possible for long; but not happy, either. Not perfect. Dissatisfied. Searching for answers. But I did not know what to do about it. Certainly, I did not immediately begin to think, like you, about going home. In fact, very few of the notperfect do think of that, or talk of that. “I know that because over time, I searched out first one, then another, and so on, of the other not-perfect people. I have met just over a dozen, including you, now. Each of them has at some point, as I said, disappeared and I have never seen them again. That is what I thought you had done, in the ocean, there. I am relieved to have found you again, because I think you can help me. You can help me leave the After.” Saoirse sat and absorbed William Howard Taft’s rambling. Ansel sat down next to her. He took her hand and looked from William Howard Taft to her. “You really want to leave?” Ansel asked her. Saoirse looked at him and nodded. “Mom,” said Stephanie, but Ansel held up his hand. “Why?” he asked. “You heard him,” Saoirse said. “I’m not happy.” They all absorbed that for a minute, and Saoirse broke the silence by saying to William Howard Taft “How can we leave?” “That’s what I want to know,” the large, sad man said back to her. Saoirse reached out and pulled Chuck onto her lap, resting her chin on his hair, hair so clean and

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fine it felt shiny. She remembered for a brief instant doing that same thing on the plane but her mind stopped then and would go no further. “Let’s think about this,” she said. “No,” said William Howard Taft. Saoirse looked up from Chuck’s hair, surprised. “No?” “I don’t want to think about it. That’s the exact wrong way to go about it. I want to just do something. That’s what we were doing in the first place when I found you and you were right. It was getting us somewhere. Then you stopped to think about it and you left me.” “Why didn’t you tell me that’s what you were doing, trying to get me to take us home?” “Because I was afraid that you would, like all the others, simply go and disappear.” “So you lied to me?” “I apologized.” “How can I trust you now?” William Howard Taft looked down his nose at her. “Nothing bad happens in the After. What could I be doing to harm you?’ “So you say, but how do I know that’s accurate?” “How do you know anything? How can you take anything at face value? How can you be sure that anything that surrounds you is real or not real or partially real?” argued William Howard Taft. “You have already experienced a shift from one reality,

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that of life, to another, that of the After. So a better question would be how can you not take everything at face value? How can you doubt the only thing that you can trust, which is what you are hearing and seeing and experiencing right now?” Saoirse tried to work her way through that. “Besides, nothing bad has happened to you yet, has it?” William Howard Taft pointed out. That was true. Still, she did not like that he had not answered her question. But she also felt, deep down inside, that he was right. Nothing bad happened here. Nothing bad could happen here. So she could trust him or not trust him or go with him or not go with him and nothing bad could happen. “What do we do?” “Stop,” said Ansel, suddenly. Saoirse looked at him. “I don’t want you to do this,” he said to her, and held his hands out, palms up. One thumb touched the centerpiece. “Why?” “Because I don’t want to leave and if you manage to leave, I won’t have you here.” Saoirse looked at him. “Ansel, honey, if I leave, you won’t be here.” “What?” Ansel asked. Saoirse had what she meant all figured out and was about to talk. Then she was not going to answer, and she wondered: I can’t not tell him,can I? She looked out the window. She looked at William Howard Taft and then put her nose down to Chuck’s

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head again. She looked, finally, back up and met Ansel’s eyes. “You’re only here because I’m here. All of you. If I leave, my After won’t exist anymore and you will be gone.” She reached out a hand. “Or you will be wherever you are now and you will also no longer be part of my After.” She looked at Stephanie and Austin. “You, too.” After a moment she added “I’m sorry.” Then she looked at William Howard Taft and said “Let’s go.”

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Six: They walked to the door again, the front door. Ansel, behind her, said “I don’t want you to go, Saoirse. Honey.” Sshe turned and looked back at him and said “That’s why I have to go.” When he just looked at her, confused, she went on. “It’s because you don’t want me to go that I need to leave. I don’t think you’re you, Ansel. I think you, real-Ansel, is back home in Life or is in his own, your own, After, and not here with me, because real Ansel would want me to be happy.” She pursed her lips and tried to decide how much of that she’d just made up. “You, I think, are just a version of Ansel I apparently wanted. An Ansel who, I don’t know, wants me around all the time.” “I did want you around all the time.” “That’s not the point,” Saoirse said, and then wondered what the point was and felt lost. “You didn’t… never mind. I don’t want to talk about it.” “What?” asked Stephanie. “I don’t get it.” Ansel turned and looked at her. “She’s talking about the time she almost left me,” he said. Saoirse was only momentarily surprised that Ansel knew what she was getting at. Then she remembered that this Ansel, just a creation she was sure, an Ansel, would know everything that she knew. She knew again that she would never, ever be able to tell whether he was the Ansel or not because she could not figure out a test that wouldn’t depend on her own knowledge. \

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“She wanted to leave me to … I still don’t know,” Ansel said. He looked at Saoirse. Saoirse remembered, and remembered her embarrassment over how headstrong she had been (was?) each time this came up in life. She said: “We had just graduated college. We had just married. We hadn’t had you, yet, Stephanie, or any of you. I was feeling not ready to settle down. I didn’t like, for a while there, being married. I was dissatisfied and I didn’t even know why. I just didn’t want to go to work and come home and eat dinner and watch TV and go out with friends who were also couples and then play racquetball on the weekends. I didn’t want that. “But I didn’t know what I did want and so I didn’t say anything, for about two months. I just got more and more miserable and more and more depressed and couldn’t figure it out. “One night it all came to a head and I was lying in bed and not sleeping and had to get up to go to work in the morning, and I just laid there watching the digital clock numbers click over, one at a time, counting down the time until I had to get up and go through it all again and I got more and more upset because at least sleep was one place where I wasn’t miserable and now I couldn’t even do that. I sat up in bed, really slowly because I didn’t want to wake Ansel up.” Ansel took her hand, the one that wasn’t holding Chuck’s hand. “But you did wake me up. I woke up and I heard you get up and go sit at the foot of the bed.” He was looking at her as he talked. “I heard you sit down and I heard you scuff your feet and I heard you start to cry, muffled and quiet and sad.” He pulled her in close and hugged her. “Remember what I said?”

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“You asked me what was wrong, and I said…” “You said you were going to leave me. You said I’m leaving you, Ansel. I’m not happy and I’m going to leave. And I didn’t even hesitate. I remember that.” “You told me if that’s what you need to be happy then you have to do it.” Ansel bit his lower lip. Just like Ansel always did. “I did.” He said. “I said that.” “That’s why I have to go.” Saoirse said. “That’s part of it, anyway. You’re not you.” She looked at the rest of them. “I hope you understand.” She wondered if the After would make them understand. They stepped outside the door and Saoirse closed her eyes at the exact moment they did so, feeling William Howard Taft take her hand and pull her ever so slightly forward. Her right foot stepped onto the front porch and then her left foot did, too. She felt William Howard Taft holding her hand. After a few seconds of just standing she opened her eyes. She was still on the front porch of the house, holding William Howard Taft’s hand, and with her left hand slightly outstretched, expectantly. She was leaning forward slightly. Just inside the door, Ansel was holding Chuck and looking at her. Stephanie peered over his shoulder. She felt a little foolish. “What happened?” she asked. “What do you mean?” William Howard Taft asked. “We didn’t go anywhere.” “Quite.” Saoirse tried to quell her impatience with that.

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“Weren’t you going to take me somewhere?” “I thought you were going to take me somewhere.” “But I don’t know where we’re supposed to be going.” “Yes, you do,” said William Howard Taft. “We’re supposed to be going home.” “Maybe you are home,” Ansel said behind them. Saoirse looked back at him, then at William Howard Taft. “Is there any way to be sure whether they’re dead or alive?” she asked him. She guessed that William Howard Taft knew what she meant as he shook his head. She looked back at Ansel and the children and wondered what if I make it out of here and go back home and they’re all dead? The fact that they’re here with me means that I want them here with me to be happy, right? So if I go back home that means I won’t be happy? Unless they’re also there, too? But what she said was “How do I work the traveling part?” “I don’t know,” admitted William Howard Taft. “Well, how do you do it?” “I don’t know that, either,” he said. “You don’t know how you got us to my house from that forest?” “No.” WIliam Howard Taft spoke thoughtfully. “These things always seem random to me. The way they did with you. When you first traveled, that is. The traveling happens and you end up someplace you needed or wanted to be. That is how I got into the forest: I was sitting and pondering how you had moved us from the beach to that ocean and the building with the stores, the mall, and I ended up in the forest. Then, when I wanted to talk to you again… what are you doing?”

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He stopped because Saoirse had climbed up onto the rail that skirted the porch, a cast-iron railing that in her life was rusted and needed painting and was loose and rickety, but here in the After was perfectly maintained; she would have to spend even a second, it seemed, reminding Ansel that this year they were going to definitely fix up the porch. In seconds she was gripping the edge of the gutter. “Help me,” she said. Ansel came outside and said “What on earth..” but he stopped as William Howard Taft, delicately for such a big man, cupped his hands lifted Saoirse onto the roof. The house was a split-level house; she was on the lower roof now, looking down at them from a height of only about 3 feet above Ansel’s head. But her brain did not measure the height from her feet to Ansel’s head; it measured from her eyes to the porch, and she felt a little dizzy as she looked down. She shook it off, secure in the knowledge that nothing was going to happen here that could hurt her -- unless I want to be hurt? She wondered. The thought was shelved; she did not want to be hurt. She then wondered, as she grabbed the side of the brick chimney, whether she could want to be hurt. What do masochists do in the After? She thought as she began using the brick chimney to get on the upper roof. “Saoirse,” Ansel called, “Stop!” She didn’t stop. She clutched at the edge of the bricks and felt their gritty sides below her fingers. The sharp edges did not cut her; she did not fear that they would. I should just wish myself up the chimney, she thought, but she knew by now that the After did not work that way. It’s not a genie, she thought to herself, propping her knee on a small indentation in

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the chimney that formed almost a step, and reaching up to grab the gutter at the upper edge of the house. It’s not a genie, but I can maybe make it work to do what I want consciously.

She reached her other hand up and dangled from the gutter, feet flailing.

“Saoirse,” Ansel said again. “Mom, come on down,” said Stephanie. They’re worried about me, she thought. But are they worried that I’ll fall? Or that I’ll go away? She did a chin-up and flopped her left arm onto the roof, splaying out her hands. She rocked her legs back and forth and swung her left leg up, hooking her foot onto the gutter. Clenching her legs, she rolled over and pulled up and she was lying on her back on the rooftop, breathing hard and beginning to sweat and thinking: So things could still be hard to do in the After. I guess I wanted that to be hard to do. She sat up and looked down over the edge; the distance was only double the height of the lower roof, but it seemed to increase her dizziness exponentially. She backed away from the edge and looked around the roof. All summer long, before the vacation, there had been an action figure up on the roof. Austin had thrown it there when he was mad at her for having to come in from the backyard for dinner. She had stood in the backyard, hands on her hips, and told him “Get over here and get inside.” Instead of getting inside, he had stood his ground and tried to grab his action figures and glared at her. She had come towards him, picking up some of his toys, little men with guns and robes and swords and horns on their heads, and carrying them as she got nearer him. “Give me that one, too,” she had said, demanding the final toy he’d been able to hold on to, but he had run around her and dodged her and ran towards the house and thrown the action figure onto the roof.

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She’d left it there. It wasn’t here now. The roof was clean. The small depression in the roof, the one Ansel had pointed out to her when they’d gotten up on the ladder, the dip in the shingles that meant an expensive repair would be needed, and probably before the winter, was gone, also. She walked up to the peak of the roof and noted that they still had their satellite dish. Why would we need satellite television in the After? Shouldn’t we be able to watch any show we want? The satellite dish was there, she knew, because she wanted to get her television through a dish on the roof. Saoirse was briefly chagrined to realize that her After, the existence in which she could have or be or do anything she wanted to have or be or do, included television. With all eternity ahead of her and a multitude of possibilities, her deepest desires included watching game shows in the afternoon. She turned around. Ansel had continued calling after her. “Don’t worry,” she told him. “I’ll be fine.” There was a silence, and then Ansel said “I know that.” William Howard Taft’s voice drifted up. “What are you doing?” “Forcing the issue,” she said. “Forcing what issue?” he asked. “If I can’t directly control the After, maybe I can indirectly control it,” she told him. “When you and I left before, I was bewildered and not thinking clearly. My subconscious took over, I think, and took us to those places while my conscious mind was overwhelmed. I need to do that again: overwhelm my conscious mind and let my

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subconscious mind take over.” She took a deep breath and finished: “That’s why I’m going to jump off the roof.” “Mom! It doesn’t work that way!” yelled Stephanie, but Saoirse didn’t listen; this daughter would of course try to stop her from this; she was the daughter Saoirse had created for herself here, a daughter who what Saoirse wanted in a daughter. Just as she began to run, Saoirse also wondered why Stephanie persisted being the daughter who wanted to keep her in the After instead of becoming the daughter who wanted to help her get out of the After, but Saoirse had no time to ponder it because she was already at the edge of the roof and then off of it, her momentum carrying her forward in an arc, out out out over the porch and the sidewalk, a glimpse of Ansel and Chuck and Stephanie and Austin and William Howard Taft below her and then into the trees, crashing through the branches until she landed in the neighbors’ yard, on her feet, slumping to the ground and standing up to brush herself off, only to realize there was nothing to brush off. And, no part of her was hurt or scratched. She had landed on the ground with the same impact she would expect from stepping out of a car. The neighbors were looking at her from their front porch. “Hello,” the woman said, the one whose name Saoirse always blanked on at first. She fumbled again for it, here in the After, even, until it came to her: Cheryl. Saoirse lodged the name in her head as she stepped out of the bushes and wondered if there was something significant or profound in the fact that even in the After she was not great at remembering people’s names. Probably not, she decided.

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“How are you doing?” Saoirse asked, mere moments before realizing that was a dumb question; they were doing okay; it was the After, she knew, so they had to be doing okay, even better than okay. They should be doing perfectly, shouldn’t they? Or should they? Is it essential to my happiness that Cheryl and her husband…she momentarily could not think of his name, either, then had it… Tom be happy, too? She wondered. They’re not really here, after all. She had to assume that Cheryl and Tom were not really here at all because of how unlikely it was that she, her whole family, and her neighbors would die, and then that they would all want exactly the same thing, that thing being to go on living in their little cul de sac with all their same neighbors – albeit now their neighbors occasionally took running leaps off of rooftops that would never need repairing. That all raced through her mind as Tom said “Fine; we’re fine. How are you?” and a rustle in the brush behind her caused her to look over her shoulder as she answered. “I’m fine. How else could I be?” she asked, as Ansel came through the bushes. Cheryl and Tom looked puzzled. Saoirse moved away from Ansel, closer to them. “What do you mean?” asked Cheryl, not unkindly; she was, Saoirse, saw, genuinely confused. “So you don’t know?” “Don’t know what? Has there been some trouble?” asked Cheryl. She looked at Tom, then back to Ansel and Saoirse.

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“They don’t know,” said Saoirse, looking to Ansel. There was more rustling behind them. “Know what?” asked Ansel. Saoirse was beginning to feel that everybody simply talked in questions. She turned back to Cheryl and Tom. “Don’t you find it the slightest bit weird that I came flying down off the roof and into your bushes?” They looked at her and then at her house next door. “I guess I didn’t realize that you’d jumped off the roof,” Tom said. “If that’s what you did. I just thought you’d stumbled in here or something. I didn’t hear anything or see you come flying down. I was reading.” “I wasn’t looking either,” Cheryl said, “But I heard you come down. I heard the branches and things. I looked up and you were coming down. I thought maybe you’d fallen from the tree. Why were you jumping off your roof?” Stephanie and Chuck had come up the driveway. “I was… trying something.” Saoirse looked hard at them. She walked up to Cheryl and looked into her eyes. “Saoirse, you’re acting very strangely,” Cheryl said. “Did you hit something? Should we take you to the doctor?” “It’s okay,” said Ansel, walking up behind Saoirse and taking her elbow. Saoirse pulled it away from him and put her hands on Cheryl’s cheeks, holding them between the palms of her hands. “What’re you doing?” asked Cheryl, her voice slightly muffled because she could not open her mouth all the way.

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“Is everything perfect for you?” asked Saoirse. “What?” Cheryl asked. Saoirse put her hands down. “I asked is everything perfect for you?” She said again. Cheryl looked at Tom. “Maybe we’d better go inside,” said Tom. “Is there an inside?” asked Saoirse, looking suddenly at their house. “Can I see it?” Tom looked at Ansel. “I’m trying,” Ansel said. Saoirse looked at him, then, sharply. “Trying what?” “Honey, let’s go back.” “No.” Saoirse said it firmly but not angrily. She looked back at her house. “William Howard Taft!” she called. She saw that Tom and Cheryl seemed concerned. “Saoirse,” Cheryl said. “Do you mean, well, no, you don’t,” said Tom. He stopped talking as William Howard Taft pushed through the bushes. “That’s William Howard Taft,” he said then. Saoirse watched Tom carefully, trying to gauge how this would go, but not just that: trying to see how she wanted it to go and how she thought it would go and see if there would be a difference.

“Aren’t you?” asked Tom.

“I am,” said William Howard Taft. “But you died a long time ago,” said Tom. “I did. That’s why I’m here.”

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Tom looked at Saoirse, Ansel, the others, and back to William Howard Taft. “Here?” Saiorse looked at William Howard Taft, too, and the large man said “This is the After. It’s where we go when we die.” Tom looked back at Cheryl. “Are we dead?” “No,” Cheryl said. “No,” Saoirse said, and they looked at her. “I don’t remember dying,” Tom said. “That’s because you didn’t die,” Saoirse said. “You didn’t die at all. You’re here because I created you here. This is my After, not yours, not anyone else’s. Everything in this… world… is here because I want it to be here, even if I don’t think I want it to be here, and even if I myself don’t want to be here,” she paused and looked at Tom. “You don’t remember dying,” she said to him. “No,” said Tom. “But you said—“ “Never mind what I said.” Saoirse turned to Stephanie. “Do you remember dying?” Stephanie shook her head. Saoirse looked at Austin, who held Stephanie’s hand. “Do you? Sweetie? Do you remember anything about dying?” Austin shook his head. He opened his mouth, and said “No,” and looked curious and a little scared. She knelt down. She took his cheeks in her hands. “It’s okay, honey.”

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She looked at Ansel, and said “But you do. You do remember dying.” Ansel said “Yes. A little bit.” He was tearing up, again. Saoirse stood still and thought. She didn’t think about the After. Instead, she tried hard to think about what her life had been like. She tried to remember tasting something. She tried to remember feeling things. She tried to picture the way a stocking cap felt scratchy on her head in the winter, when she pulled it on and it pressed down onto her hair and matted her hair to her head, the smushy feeling her head had with the hair all tucked up against it, then the staticky, light feeling when she took the hat off and her hair floated up at first, needing to be patted down and combed and re-set, needing to have the energy drained from it; she’d always pictured static electricity as pent-up energy, the energy of hair and feet that were cooped up in hats and slippers, looking to escape, as though her body was full of two-year-olds who were impatient to get out of the car at the park. She could remember those things, could almost feel them, but could not remember dying. “I didn’t die,” she said, finally. “I didn’t die.” She turned to Ansel and hugged him. “You did,” she said.

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Six: They all sat around a table. Tom and Cheryl had joined them, an incongruity that Saoirse tried not to mind, her not-dead-maybe neighbors eating with them at the local restaurant, a restaurant she could not remember going to or arriving at. She wasn’t, as she sat there, sure whether this restaurant had existed in her ‘real’ life at all. She was aware, as she thought that, of her putting mental quotes around the word “real.” “I do not believe that you’re interpreting this the correct way at all,” insisted William Howard Taft, taking a sip of the coffee that the waitress had just refilled for him. Saoirse looked at him and marveled that in the After he could have little driplets of coffee cling to his moustache – but that the mess disappeared before he had to wipe it away. PIs the mess part of the experience of drinking coffee? She wondered. Why have the mess, at all, if it’s just cleaned up automatically? She looked over at Ansel, and looked around, wondering at the detail he had created here, and how far it existed. Did the rest of the world exist, still? Or was the only part of the world that existed that part around Ansel, changeable at will? His will? Maybe we spend our entire afterlife in one spot of the… firmament? … and it just changes around us? She wondered how to test that. Or if it matters. Ansel was looking at her. “What?” she asked him. “William Howard Taft asked you something,” Ansel said.

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She looked over at William Howard Taft, ignoring the question he might have asked, and said “If I walk away from Ansel, do I cease to exist?” “I do not know if you and your husband are both dead, Saoirse, but I assure you that you are.” William Howard Taft ate some French fries. “And, no, you would not cease to exist. The After exists in an infinite variety of forms and times and places, I believe.” “You believe. But you don’t know.” “I do not. Still, I have seen a great deal of it in my time here.” “But you don’t know if that’s the part that exists only around you.” “I know that I did not create your After--“ “—Ansel’s After” “-- your After,” William Howard Taft persisted. “I did not create your house and your neighborhood and your neighbors.” “What do you mean, create us?” asked Cheryl. “See?” Saoirse pointed at Cheryl. “She’s just like me. She doesn’t know how or why she got here and doesn’t remember anything about it. Same with the others. The only person who does remember anything is Ansel.” Saoirse looked at him and held his hand. “And you, William Howard Taft. What about you?” “What about me?” “Do you remember how you got here?” “I died of a heart attack in 1930,” William Howard Taft said. “See? Only people who are really dead remember how they died. That makes sense, don’t you get it? It makes sense because I can’t remember how I died because I

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didn’t die, and Stephanie didn’t die, and Austin didn’t die, and Chuck didn’t die.” Saoirse tried not to focus on that logic, instead hoping it held up better without examination. William Howard Taft ate more French fries. Saoirse looked at Cheryl and Tom. “When did you realize you were here?” she asked. Cheryl answered: “Here meaning…I didn’t realize or not realize I was here. I was just here.” “What did you do yesterday?” Saoirse said. “Honey, this is not right,” Ansel said. Just like Ansel, Saoirse thought. Don’t rock the boat. Don’t question. “I…” Cheryl thought. “I’m sure I worked in the yard and cleaned up the house. Didn’t we?” she asked Tom. Tom shrugged. “We just did the same old stuff.” “That doesn’t prove anything, honey,” Ansel butted in. “They weren’t trying to remember what they did yesterday; if you’d told them to mark it down they might have.” Ansel took her hand and then said “Plus, that doesn’t show who created them.” “I’m very very confused,” said Cheryl. “You’re not the only one,” said Stephanie. “I don’t see what it matters, Mom,” and she took a sip of her own milkshake. Saoirse had been startled when Stephanie ordered that, since she was always watching her figure. But Stephanie had shrugged and said the After and that had explained it all. “Plus, Mom, you’ve done stuff that Dad couldn’t have done.”

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“Like what? You mean the ocean and that stuff? Why couldn’t he have done that to me?” “This is wrong,” said William Howard Taft. “Terrible.” “Why?” asked Saoirse. “Why is it so terrible, so wrong?” ”Because you are the person I realized was here; you are the person who is aware of what was going on, of your presence here in the After. None of these others knew anything was… different, knew about their changed state of existence, before you became aware of it. None of these others had any idea that they were in any way altered until their presence around you affected their knowledge and behavior. “You, Saoirse, you have to be the key. You were aware of the change. You were disoriented. You understood the difference.” William Howard Taft turned to Ansel. “When did you realize you remembered your death?” Saoirse watched Ansel think, but she was thinking herself, too, and as Ansel answered, she looked at Stephanie. Ansel said: “I don’t know when I realized it; I just knew it, the way you know your name. I don’t remember ever one day saying hey, that’s my name; it’s just one of those things that you know because it’s a part of you, it’s been applied to you. That’s how the death was. I just remembered it, without any feeling of having experienced it. I remember it like it was a movie, a movie I’ve seen a lot, maybe, or a movie I really liked, or a play I was in, I guess, might be more like it. I remember it as though it was something I experienced that wasn’t real.” Saoirse waited for him to stop and then said to Stephanie: “Didn’t you go somewhere yesterday?”

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Stephanie stopped licking ice cream off of the long spoons that come with shakes in only some kind of restaurants, family-friendly restaurants where the shake is served in a large glass container with the metal cup holding the excess shake on the side. She looked at Saoirse. “Yeah.” Pause. “I went mountain climbing.” Saoirse looked at William Howard Taft. “What did you do yesterday?” “Before coming to see you?” “Yes.” Saoirse’s hands were shaking. “I spent the day riding a horse on a plain, for the most part. I rarely got to ride horses when I was alive, because,” he indicated his waist, “Horses did not like me to ride them. Due to my size,” he added unnecessarily. Saoirse wondered why he didn’t change his appearance here in the After but couldn’t ask him that yet. She was on the trail of something she did not want to be on the trail of. “What did you do yesterday?” she asked Cheryl. Chuck and Austin were throwing French fries at each other. Saoirse thought about stopping them, then thought if they’re doing it here, it can’t be wrong to do it, true? Only good things can exist in the After so it must be okay for kids to throw French fries. She thought at some point she should work out what centuries of theologians, and decades of parenting-scholars, would make of her using her knowledge of what comes after human existence to justify poor parenting. But not right now. Cheryl shrugged. “Same old things, I guess.” She still seemed mystified to be here, mystified by the conversation and the fact that William Howard Taft was sitting

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with them in this restaurant dabbing at his hands with a paper napkin, but she also somehow someway accepted it. “No, specifically,” said Saoirse. “Why? I guess I would have…” “Not would have. Did. What, exactly, did you do?” Cheryl thought. “I can’t remember.” Saoirse looked at Ansel. “I don’t want to ask.” Ansel said “Ask what?” Saoirse instead turned to Austin. “Austin, honey, can you take a break from putting French fries in Chuck’s ear, please?” Austin looked at her. She said “Remember how we had spaghetti yesterday for dinner?” “Yeah,” said Austin, and squirmed. “What were you doing before dinner, honey?” “What?” “Before dinner. Were you playing?” Austin picked up a french fry, ate it, and said “I wasn’t doing nothing. I didn’t do anything.” “You’re not in trouble, honey. I was just wondering what you were playing before we ate spaghetti.” “I don’t know.” Saoirse didn’t push it farther. She looked at Ansel and said “What were you doing?”

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Ansel stared into her eyes. Saoirse waited. “Please, honey. Tell me what you were doing,” she said, finally. Ansel would not look away. But he did not say anything. For a long time. Then he finally said “I read a book. The book was The Old Man And The Sea. I found it on the shelf and I thought I would read it; I remembered Stephanie read it in high school and said it was really good so I thought I’d give it a stab. I sat in our recliner for two hours and read a book. It had the parts that Stephanie had underlined, and at one point, she’d written in the margins gross.” Saoirse smiled at him. “You’re lying, aren’t you?” Could you lie in the After? Ansel looked away. Saoirse got up and said “I need to be alone.” She walked towards the door and the world swirled around her and dissolved and resolved and formed and reformed and she heard William Howard Taft yelling but she couldn’t find him in the mixture of wind and color and smells and textures and when the world reformed she was sitting on a fence near a cornfield. Alone.

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Seven: She was crying again. The fence was hard underneath her, the edge of the split rail digging into her thighs. Her feet were bare. She didn’t know when that had happened, but she could feel the wood beneath the soles as they held her from falling forward, as she pressed them onto the lower rail. Hands to her face, she cried. “How can I be crying in the… the After?” she wailed. It was said, to nobody, in the sniffling, overly-dramatic manner from when she was 13, or 17 wishing she was 13, or even later, when she was 23 and Stephanie was only 6 months old and not sleeping through the night and colicky and Ansel was never home when she needed him to be home, times when she’d thought maybe he was staying late at work simply because he didn’t want to come home and didn’t want to help her, and she’d wished, again, to be 13 and had talked like it. I miss that, she thought and realized it was true. She missed even the parts of life that she’d hated. Crying, still, she looked around even though she knew where she was. She’d known the moment that she realized she was on the fence, a knowing realized more fully when she’d seen the picture-book-perfect farmhouse. It was white with barn-red shutters. It had the little windows sticking out of the roof that she’d always associated with window seats, the type of windows Saoirse had always looked at, and had always thought looked as though they would be a cozy nook in which she could curl up, on a sunny afternoon, with a cup of coffee and maybe some

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Club crackers, the buttery kind. She could read a book, and look out the window at the front yard and wait for Ansel to come home. Saoirse used to look at those windows in those houses, too, and try to imagine if she would actually sit in the window. Sitting in a window was like going outside to study. Saoirse had known people in college who had taken their homework with them to the grassy spot outside of the rec center and had sat there and studied, or who went to the library, or a restaurant. Why do that, she’d always wondered. Why go to all that trouble to take your physics textbook and highlighter down to the rec center and sit there and study? She herself had studied in her dorm room, and then her apartment. She went to the library only if she had to research something. She had tried once, to study at a coffee shop. People coming in, leaving, ordering, talking and walking by, all had made it impossible and distracted her. That, and she couldn’t stop wondering if people were looking at her and trying to guess what she was studying. Those experiences had always led Saoirse to look at window seats and doubt that that she would actually have taken a book to sit in the window nook, rather than sit in a chair; she knew, at least of herself, that doing things outside the usual way was difficult and that unless she made a special effort she’d just keep on with things the way they were – and that the special efforts, when she made them, did not often work. Still, she liked to think that she would have sat in a window seat and read. And that she’d have enjoyed it. She and Ansel had driven by the house once on their way to a wedding out-ofstate. A partner with Ansel’s firm was getting married, and Ansel had said they should make the best of it and make it a weekend away. Saoirse had not wanted to go,

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especially, in keeping with the way she had never wanted to go anywhere, especially. On the drive down she had tried to make the best of it. Flipping through radio stations, she’d begun enjoying the ride as the empty countryside whipped by. “Who do you suppose lives out here?” she asked. “Farmers,” Ansel supposed. “Farmers, and people who want to get away.” “Do you think anyone owns this land?” Saoirse watched the miles and miles of land flow past. It seemed odd, to think of someone owning all this empty land, but it seemed odder still to think of nobody owning it. “Don’t you think someone has to own all this land? There’s no land out there that’s not owned by someone, land you can just take, is there?” Ansel looked at the emptiness, the grass, the trees, the land that must have once been prairie or forest but now had been cleared and then seemingly returned to the wild, land that appeared wild to them but was far tamer than it had been 200 years before, 100 years before. “Corporations, I guess. Land developers. Maybe the government.” “Maybe,” Saoirse said. She decided she’d like it better if nobody owned the land, even though Ansel was probably right. They drove on, and she clicked the buttons on the radio. “You could put in a CD,” Ansel said. “I kind of like seeing what’s there to listen to out here.” “Not much, it seems.” They drove on some more. Saoirse opened her coffee thermos and poured a little out. It was only lukewarm. It was midday. They’d been driving for hours now, having left early in the morning and driven almost straight through. The plan was to arrive in

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mid-afternoon today, Friday, and then check into their hotel. The wedding and reception were Saturday. If they were going to arrive mid-afternoon, Saoirse realized, they were almost there, and the thought made her feel sorry that the trip was almost over, that they were almost at their destination. She had come to like this interlude where they had nothing to do but look at land and flip through radio stations and chat. “Look at that,” said Ansel, and flicked a hand towards some horses that were standing besides a white fence, the white glaring against the horses’ brown bodies and the green and tan grass and weeds that grew around it. The fence tracked alongside them and ran up and down little hills and valleys, for nearly a mile. They were traveling sixty miles an hour, a mile a minute. She did the math in her head. A mile a minute was 5,280 feet per hour, which was 88 feet per minute, which was 1.4 feet per second. Every heartbeat was a foot of distance, she calculated. As she worked that out, the farm house whipped past, the white farm house that was the same color as the fence which the horses had stood by, the fence that suddenly opened up and let into a long dirt driveway that led to the white house with the red shutters and the two windows poking out of the roof, windows that Saoirse saw as she turned her head back and looked, a little. She briefly thought what a nice little house, briefly entertained a picture of her and Ansel and Stephanie and Austin moving there. (Chuck had not been born yet, or imagined.) The four of them could live there, she could watch Stephanie and then eventually Austin catch the bus to school every morning, the bus visible a long way down the long straight road. They would stand inside the white fence until it pulled up by the dirt driveway, the kids climbing onto it with backpacks of books and lunches. After they

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left and Ansel left for work, she would go and get the book she was reading and would curl up in the window nook and look out at the front yard and drink her coffee. “Like that house?” Ansel asked, a minute or two later. “I suppose,” Saoirse said, feeling carefully guilty about it. She did not want to make Ansel feel inferior. She did not want to make him feel like she didn’t like their current house, so she was always careful about what she said she liked and did not like. “I suppose,” she said again, “But it sure is in the middle of nowhere,” she added, to run it down a little in his mind, to let him know that she loved the house he had bought for them. Now, in what she’d once supposed to be the middle of nowhere, sitting on that white fence, Saoirse tried to stop crying and wondered why this house had stuck in her mind-- why it was here. She got down off the fence, and looked around. It looked just as she remembered it -- of course -- and she could not find any detail that was out of place or off kilter. The grass was yellowed. It was fall, mid-autumn. She tried to think back to the restaurant that they’d been in, to her house, and tried to think what the season was. It had been summer when they got on the plane to go on vacation. The grass snapped and quivered under her bare feet. Why are they bare? She wondered. She walked away from the two-lane country highway stretching, behind her, off in either direction. She wondered whether she was alone here. The sidewalk cement was cold under her bare feet, cold stored up through the chilly autumn night and sealed in by frost in the morning, only slowly released during the day. She turned around then, looking for the

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sun. It should be off directly behind her, setting, shouldn’t it? They’d been eating dinner at the restaurant. Instead, it was high in the sky, just past where noon might be and her shadow was small below her feet. She turned back to the house and stepped onto the porch. What am I supposed to do here? She wondered, and pressed the doorbell. She waited and realized she was holding her breath. Nothing happened. Where had the people gone? Where are they? Had they been here at all? When she’d driven by with Ansel, after all, she’d seen nobody living here. If the After was populated entirely by what she wanted… … but it was Ansel who was dead, wasn’t it? She reminded herself. Only she wasn’t so sure, and looked to where the horses had been as she heard a whinny. Two horses stood at the fence again. They looked like the horses she remembered but horses look like horses she thought and rang the bell again. Could I put someone in here? As she thought that she had to admit to herself: it was not Ansel who was dead. Ansel was not dead and Stephanie was not dead and Austin was not dead and Chuck, Chuck probably was not dead, either. That thought made her start crying again and she looked up at the sky. She said: “I thought everything was supposed to be perfect here!” It was not a question. It was a challenge. Tears rolled down her cheeks and she stabbed, savagely, at the doorbell. As she did so, she realized she was not angry. She wanted to boil up anger inside her but could not find it in the swirl of thought. So she mimicked what anger looked like and felt like and she scowled as her tears dried again and she pressed the doorbell one two three four times, ringing it over and over.

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“I thought everything was supposed to be perfect here,” she said, more quietly, speaking to the door and then leaning her head against it, feeling the cool of the wood against her forehead and swallowing hard with a throat that felt sore for just a moment and then felt fine. She tried the door, then, and it opened, leading into a hallway paved with blondewood boards that shone with the feeling of softness which only very old, very-muchwalked on wood gets. She longed to feel it under her toes and so she put her right foot forward and touched it, stepping inside. The hallway was empty. A stairway led upstairs, off to her right, and a few steps down was a doorway to another room. A door at the end of the hallway was solid and blocked her view; another door off to the right was closed, also. Standing in the hall, she saw on the walls lighter areas in the paint, rectangular and square, where pictures would have hung. She saw scuff marks on the floor near the door where boots and shoes would be kicked off. She saw the frayed ends of carpeting where knees and feet wore it down on the stairs. She wondered again where are they and moved on into the living room, off to her left, with a large picture window letting in the sunlight and shining on more hardwood floors and a fireplace. There was an area on the floor, more pale and demarcated where an oval-shaped rug had sat. More rectangles, larger, marked the yellow-painted walls out here, walls that were faded now to the color of old dried sunflowers. She moved through the room quickly and saw the fireplace was clean and that there were markings where fireplace tools had hung in a rack. The rack was there; the tools were not.

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She went through the empty alcove off the kitchen that would be a dining room and then into the kitchen, all bare cupboards and hooks and more rectangles. The kitchen was painted blue. It was probably a sky-blue at one time but had slowly gone gray-blue, the color blue would be if blue existed only in the winter. The refrigerator was there, an old one, only about five feet tall. She opened it. It was empty and somewhat mottled looking, as though it had not been cleaned for a long time until one day someone had tried their best. There was no stove. There were drapes hanging in the kitchen and she pushed them aside to look out the back window where she could see a swingset, the swings brightly dangling in the sunlight. She went through the other door and found herself back in the front hall. The carpet on the stairs as she started up was soft but matted down under her feet. She ran her hand over the rail as she walked. It, too, was worn smooth with years and hands and toys sliding on it. There were little holes in the wall, she saw now, nail holes previously used for holding up pictures or decorations or, at the bend in the stairs at the base, probably a coat rack. A small window at the base of the stairs let light up onto her path. She walked up and the stairs curved left. Two doors on the right, two doors on the left. The first door on the right let into a small, empty room. The second door on the right, too. Both empty, both bland. She looked at the two doors on the other side, and chose the one in front of her, at the end of the hall. This would be the master bedroom. She went in, and realized it took up most of the front of the house. It was not carpeted. There was a fireplace here, too, a continuation of the chimney from down below. The two windows were there. The one on the left was empty, a small wooden ledge looking out of the house. The one on the

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right, though, had a cushion in it. On the cushion was a pillow, and a cup of coffee. And a book. She walked over. The coffee was hot. It still steamed. It was the color of the coffee that she would make, with just a little cream. The book was the one she’d planned on reading on vacation. She sat down and picked up the coffee and moved the book over, not losing the place that was marked, and looked out at the horses as she sipped her coffee, which was warm but not too hot. She didn’t know later how long she sat there the first day, sipping the coffee that stayed the right temperature, out of a cup that never emptied. She did not remember, later, whether she read the book at all. She did not keep track of how many minutes, hours, she spent looking at the horses as they stood at the fence and looked at her, or looked at each other, or looked off in random-seeming directions, directions that seemed random only to her because she did not know what the horses were thinking. At some point during the day her tears had stopped for a long while. She wondered, only once, if the horses were real, real in the sense that they had once had a life and now didn’t, but then she stopped wondering that and stopped her train of thought before she could imagine horses coming to the human afterlife because that would make her remember the human life she missed and she did not want to cry anymore. She wanted to sip her coffee and look out the window and maybe read. So she did that.

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She wondered if the horses could talk. Or if she could make them talk. She spent a few minutes thinking about that and decided, then, it would be better if they did not talk. As the sun set, it brightened the window seat more and more. The light rolled up and over the top of the house and eventually followed the sun as it passed down the sky directly across from her, above the trees. It was a giant orange disk only at first and then it turned red, after which she could then look in its general direction although not directly at it. When the sun disappeared the sky remained all the colors that sunsets should be, with bands of purple near the top of the sky fading into the black of night where stars were popping out barely visible but brightening, the purple becoming blueish red turning into reddish-orange and then orangeish-red right at the horizon. She sipped still at the cup of coffee which stayed at the perfect temperature, the temperature that coffee should always be but is, actually, only for a few seconds. Except here. Then the sun was gone and the purple was lower and there was more black. One of the horses remained at the fence. The other had wandered away. The room she sat in was getting dark and she still sat and watched the stars coming out. They were nearer than she remembered stars being; not as near as they had been at the ocean with William Howard Taft but nearer than they had ever been otherwise.. She still sat while she watched as the moon glow illuminated the landscape turning trees silver and the trunks black. The remaining horse’s side became a milky brown. She could not see the moon, but only how the grass reflected the light of the moon (which she knew was reflecting the light of the sun, the light bouncing back and

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forth a million times before hitting her eyes), the grass forming a billion tiny luminescent dancers flickering in a breeze. She could almost feel the cool blades of grass beneath her toes but still she did not move. She held the coffee cup in one hand. She pressed her thumb onto the binding of the paperback book. It was cracked and bent. This book had been read many times: none of them by her. She ran her thumb up and down the u-shaped spine of the book and watched the horse sleep standing up, the grass flicker, the trees stand. She yawned. The moonlight grew brighter as the night progressed. She was not hungry. The horse eventually moved away, slowly, maybe walking in its sleep. She thought maybe that horses did that, walked in their sleep, and because she believed it they must do so here, she supposed. Horses in the After would walk in their sleep whenever she was around. She stopped thinking of that. The breeze was not strong enough to shake the trees. The road sat flat and black, a dividing line between this yard and the forest and field across the street. She yawned again and the room became bright behind her. A warm yellow glow suffused the area around her and she turned, setting down the coffee cup and book finally. She saw a nightstand, and a small lamp on it gave off a lemon-colored light that created a small, warm, inviting circle around the nightstand, light which lost strength before it reached the corners of the room, which remained dark. The nightstand stood

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next to a bed, the kind of bed she would expect in a bed and breakfast, the kind of bed that stood more than three feet off the floor, a bed with mattresses so thick and soft, and so piled with comforters, that she would have to hoist herself up, climb onto it. Six pillows lined the solid blonde-wood headboard. She got out of the window seat. She went over and did hoist herself up onto the bed. As she pulled the quilt back she was not surprised at all to find she was wearing her usual sleepwear: a t-shirt and a pair of old jogging shorts. She was surprised to realize that she did not remember what she’d been wearing moments before as she sat looking outside. The t-shirt read UW OSHKOSH in peeling white letters across a faded navy blue shirt. It was soft as only old t-shirts can be. Her running shorts had a number 30 on them. She pulled the quilt up, rolled onto her side, turned the lamp off, and slept. The next day she woke up with the room clear and bright and mostly empty. She sat up on the bed, her feet not reaching to the floor, sitting on the only furnishing in the room. When she slid down off the bed the floorboards were cool but not. She stretched and yawned once and looked at the window. The book was there, and a cup of coffee was there. She turned back and the bed was not there. She wondered if there was any furniture in the rest of the house. Then she wondered if the horses were outside. She went over to the window and picked up the cup of coffee and sipped it and found it to her liking again. Out on the lawn there was frost still on the grass in the shadows. Neither of the horses was at the fence and she could not see them anywhere. She sat down in the window and watched the road as it laid there.

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At the end of that day, she was still in the window. She put the coffee down as the sun turned red above the trees. She picked up the book and wondered how much, if any, she had read that day. Neither horse was there presently, although she had seen them once or twice throughout the day, she thought. She had not left the window seat that day. The book had some of the corners of pages turned down, as she would sometimes do when she wanted to mark a page to later read something to Ansel, or sometimes the children. She turned to one of the pages in this book and looked to see what it was she might have wanted to remember later and read to someone but could not pick out a phrase that seemed to be important enough to remember. She watched the sunset again and watched the moon come out again and watched the trees stand stolidly under the moonglow again and saw the horses walk by and when the lamp came on behind she stood up and realized that she was wearing the UW OSHKOSH t-shirt again and again could not remember what she had been wearing a moment before and again laid down in the bed, turned out the light, and slept. It went on that way for some time. She lost track of the days and did not know if she should keep track of the days. Sometimes she wondered if she shouldn’t be doing something, trying to set out on the road, or maybe a horse, to find the rest of her family, but when she thought that she would realize that she had no car and could not ride a horse and did not know where they might be or how to get there from here; she was certain that this was the house she and Ansel had driven by, so long ago, but that certainty did not help her because she could not remember where her house -- their house-- and her family might be in relation to this place. It wouldn’t have helped anyway, if she knew what

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direction to go, as she could not think how to make a car appear. She ate nothing and was not hungry; she had her coffee and the book that each time she could not remember reading. She tried to not to think of what she should be doing because when she did, she got teary-eyed again and a lump came in her throat. One day, she wondered if she had sent them all back or banished them or done whatever it is that happens to the people one creates in the After. She forced herself to consider the idea. It seemed the straw she had grasped at -- the idea that Ansel or someone else was dead instead of her and that she existed in someone else’s world -- was not correct. If it were, she reasoned, she could not have walked away from them and they would be here; if Ansel wanted her in the After, he could keep her there, couldn’t he? But thinking that had then made her wonder well, don’t I want him here? She followed that with the idea that she must not want Ansel around because he was not here, which had made her cry again. She’d noticed that when she cried, it rained. That was one day. On another day she made an effort to determine whether she had made everyone else disappear when she’d gotten up and said she wanted to be alone. If she could do that, if saying something, could make it happen, why was she just sitting here day after day after day? Why couldn’t she make a car appear, or make her family appear and bring them here? Why hadn’t they been here? Why weren’t they here now? Were they out there looking for her? Thinking about those things had not made them happen. A different day, she tried to piece together why there was no furniture here and what had been shown in the pictures on the wall.

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Each time, she stopped thinking about these things because they made her cry and that made it rain and that made the day go by faster and she did not want the days to go by faster. She did not want the days to go by at all, and it seemed they did not, not really, as each day seemed to be about the same as the day before. The sun set at about the same time as far as she could tell, each day-- she was only guessing because she did not know what time it was, ever, without any clocks here. On the wall in the room a faded round spot might have been where a clock hung, but it might have been only a mirror. It did not matter what had been there, because now there were no clocks in the house. Day after day it was just her, the window seat, the coffee, the book, and when she needed it, the bed and nightstand and table trio. And, one day, a distant sound, one she heard just before the lamp came on. It was like the wind, rushing, she thought, and she looked out the window. It was the first thing that had been different in a long time and it caught her attention. It was not the wind. It was a voice. It was a voice from very far away. It was a voice that was distant and small but sustained and growing closer. She tried to hear what it was saying. Was it calling the same thing over and over? Was it just howling? She could not tell. She got a thrill and wondered if Ansel had come looking for her. Had she wanted him to come looking for her? It caused a lump in her throat, a muted sorrow, when she realized that Ansel in all this time had not come looking for her and it hurt her. It was not that she believed Ansel did not want to come looking for her. She knew it was not that.

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Instead, she had come to realize that the absence of Ansel looking for her meant that she did not want him to come looking for her. And she tried to tell herself that she did not want him to come looking for her because she wanted him to be alive and to be well and to not be moping around the farm house with her. She wanted to believe that and didn’t entirely. But the voice, the calling that she could hear, was that Ansel? Did that mean that she really did want him to come looking for her? Or that Ansel, too, had died and was here, in the After with her, that they were together because they were meant to be together? She could not decide if that would be better, or worse. Just as she could not decide whether it was good or bad that she did not have her family with her, that she had left them behind. In the days she sat on the window seat and read and sipped coffee and looked at the horses, she had periodically been proud of herself that at least the initial version of the After had included Ansel and her family and then had choked up that the current version she was in did not. What was she supposed to do here, if not spend time with her family? She peered out the window in the strange almost-dark of sunset, the twilight that made it difficult to see, even though it appeared perfectly light out: it was the kind of light that filled the last part of day just before sunset, light that acted as if the darkness was there already and so the light was not really trying anymore. She gazed into what soon would be shadows. She looked at the fence where the horses were not today, and she watched the woods. She heard the yell, growing louder and louder. There was no doubt that it was someone calling. It was someone calling out, in a sustained yell,

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growing louder and louder. She wondered how the person could maintain that yell for so long. She could not pick out the word and could not identify the voice. It might be Ansel. She hoped it was Ansel and then hoped that the hoping counted. For something. The voice grew louder as she stared out the window. Her knuckles were tight around the coffee cup and she could feel them, she knew that in life they would hurt but here they did not. She expected Ansel to drive up or stumble out of the woods or maybe ride up on one of the horses with the other next to him waiting for her. Still the voice grew and now it could plainly be heard and she wondered how far away it had been at the start, and wondered if it was a voice at all, it was so sustained and so constant, a groan, almost, but too loud, a cheer, almost, but too sad. Saoirse had attended only one football game in college, and the only part she remembered liking was the part during the kickoff when the crowd, as the team started to line up to kick the ball, would begin a low rumbling yell that grew and grew in volume and in pitch oooooooohhhhoohohohohohohoOHOHOHOHOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOH! Hitting fever pitch and highest volume as the kick went off, at which point the crowd would fall silent, and this reminded her of that and she heard it growing and coming closer. Her eyes remained glued to the outside, peering from her window seat. She hoped it was Ansel. She hoped that the fact that the sound had made her think of the school yell was a hint, a clue that it was Ansel, that it was so because Ansel and her college memories were tied up together.

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She listened and stared and the sound was almost identical to the college-kickoffyell. She stared at the woods, at the road, at the fence, as it grew. As the sound hit fever pitch, she saw William Howard Taft carrying a bundle of something fall right past her window, dropping straight down from above at great speed only to fall flat on his stomach on the ground and lie motionless. And the yell was silenced.

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Eight: Saoirse ran outside trying to hold back her disappointment that it was not Ansel. Why,she wondered if everything here is the way I want it is nothing ever the way I want it? Then she was kneeling by William Howard Taft, who was pushing himself up to his hands and knees and looking at the bundle he carried. As she put her hands on his back and asked if he was okay, he looked frightened for a moment and pulled at the bundle of blankets and opened it up and she saw Chuck there, smiling at William Howard Taft and then at her. He sat up and hugged her and she did not wonder what had happened, for a moment, as she hugged him back and began crying, happy tears from the smell of his hair the way it tickled her nose, his little hands tickling the back of her neck the way he did whenever she hugged him. “Give Mommy a kiss,” she said through her tears and he leaned back, eyed her up the way he always did, cocked his head, the way he always did, and then pursed his lips and leaned in with a wet peck like he always dead and she cried harder and hugged him tighter and sat on her legs rocking back and forth and pushing her nose into his hair. After a while, she looked up. William Howard Taft, his shirt looking damp from the dew, was standing and inspecting the surroundings, curiously. He looked down at her. “We have been looking, quite literally, all over for you.” He sniffed and patted his back. “I don’t even know how we found you. He” pointing to Chuck “Did it, I surmise. I wish, though, that he had found you in a different and more orthodox way.”

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“Where … Where were you coming from?” She hugged Chuck again. “You fell right past the window.” William Howard Taft pointed straight up. “From the sky,” he said. “We fell out of the sky.” “Was that you yelling?” “I began yelling quite high up. I do not like heights, and I do not like falling, either.” He sat down on the porch and Saoirse was aware that her knees were growing damp and cold from kneeling on the lawn, but it was a good feeling and she didn’t want to move from her pose because Chuck had his arms wrapped around her neck and was leaning his head into her shoulder. “Why,” she began, but that wasn’t right. “How?...” That was better but she didn’t have any words to come after it. “We were in a fire engine,” William Howard Taft said, “A large red fire engine that was operated by men who were very friendly and very helpful and were driving us around the city. I do not like fire engines, either” he said, pointedly, and looked at Chuck again, “We were driving from place to place, a great many of which I did not recognize and could not understand in some cases. Places that were mostly balloons, in some cases. And lots of beaches and the ocean. You and he seem to have those in common.” Saoirse had, before the vacation, spent a great deal of time showing Chuck pictures of the beach and the ocean and trying to teach him what they were and assuring him that he would love swimming in the ocean. She did not explain that to William Howard Taft.

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“The fire engine was not getting us much of anywhere, although Chuck certainly enjoyed sitting in the front seat and watching things, and I mentioned to the driver that we were not finding you.” William Howard Taft put his head in his hands, then looked up again. “And then we were falling.” He looked around. “There is not much to this part,” he said. “What do you mean?” Saoirse asked. “From the sky, I could see. You have only a little land around here, all bounded by forests. The land extends about as far as you can see from here, and then it ends.” “Ends?” “It ends. There is nothing beyond that. You are on a little island of land floating in a void surrounded by faraway stars. We fell onto that from a great height, dropping for what seemed hours. I tried to protect Chuck and it seems that I did.” “We had better go inside,” Saoirse said. Chuck kissed her again. The house was still bare inside except now for the kitchen where a small blue table sat, big enough for four to share, with four chairs. On the table were sandwiches and frosted animal cookies of the kind that Chuck liked, with glasses of milk for the adults and a sippy cup of juice for Chuck. She noticed that one plate had a fold-over peanut butter sandwich, which Chuck picked up. She sat down, suddenly hungry, and wondered when she had last eaten. William Howard Taft sat on another chair and Chuck wandered around the kitchen eating cookies and sipping at his juice and touching the walls with his right hand. They did not talk for a

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long time, and then Saoirse said “You’d better explain what you mean by there’s not much to this part,’” and looked at William Howard Taft, who said: “I meant simply that. It is as if this is an island, and a not-very-big island to boot, floating in a void. I don’t know why we appeared here so high up, or far off, depending on how you view it, but we did and we fell a long ways. Perhaps it was because he wanted to do so.” Chuck paid no attention to William Howard Taft’s looking at him. Saoirse ate some more of her sandwich and watched him. “How do you mean?” she asked. “Has he talked at all?” William Howard Taft asked her. “No. You’ve seen him the whole time.” “I mean since you’ve arrived here in the After.” Saoirse thought back. “A little,” she said. “He has not said a word to me, other than mumbling and babbling occasionally.” Chuck came over and crawled up onto her lap and sat there. He reached out for his cookies, which she pulled over towards him. Out of habit she broke a few into pieces for him, before realizing that may not matter. It’s not like he could choke here, she thought. It was now dark outside. “Why do you suppose that is, that he doesn’t talk anymore?” William Howard Taft asked her while looking at Chuck. “I don’t know,” Saoirse said. “Think.”

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Saoirse did. She remembered the restaurant where Ansel had told her that Chuck talked to him. She remembered how Ansel said that Chuck had stopped when she told him to do so. Taking his cookies, Chuck squirmed off of her lap and onto the floor. She heard his little shoes pattering as he walked around the kitchen. He went to the doorway to the kitchen and she got up and picked him up and set him back down. William Howard Taft continued. “We did not stay long at the dinner after you got up and walked away. You announced that you were going to be alone and then you disappeared. I watched the others carefully and they looked after you for a while and then talked among themselves as though nothing had happened and did not seem to pay attention to me, except for Chuck, who kept staring straight at me. “Then the others faded away and it was Chuck and I sitting there, alone, in the yard of your house. He was on a swing, sitting on a swing on a swingset and looking at me. So I pushed him on the swing and wondered what to do. “I haven’t seen the others, your husband and other children, since then. We spent a lot of time swinging in the backyard and Chuck appeared to be looking for something. I thought maybe he was looking for you. I kept trying to talk to him, to get him to talk to me. But he would not do so. He didn’t say anything.” Saoirse couldn’t understand what William Howard Taft wanted from her, after that story, and she did not reply. They sat quietly again. The food and plates and cups were gone. The table was clean. The moon was coming up over the trees outside. Chuck got up and tugged on her hand.

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She followed him and they went out of the kitchen and up the stairs and to the room at the end of the hall across from hers. She opened it and inside was a small bed for him, a crib that converts into a child’s bed. There was a dresser and a toy chest. The toy chest was filled mostly with fire engines and fire engine-related toys. Chuck had pajamas on and held up his hands to her. She picked him up and sat down on the floor with him in her lap. Holding him, she read him a book like she used to do, letting him turn the pages. When she was done, she put him into the bed and flopped the blanket over him, loosely, over his head. He giggled and flipped around to his stomach. She tickled his back and patted him on the head and let herself out. “You’ll find, I think, a bedroom inside that other door,” she said to William Howard Taft, who stood at the top of the stairs. “I’m going to sleep.” If she partially expected that in the morning they might not be there, she was wrong. Chuck woke her up by climbing into her bed, and she was awakened by a hand pressing her nose down onto her face. He climbed under the covers and laid down next to her, and together they watched the sky outside the windows go from black to dark blue to light blue. Saoirse heard music, then, very faintly, and voices, and mechanical sounds. The music grew louder and the voices grew louder and a balloon drifted by her window and she finally stood up and went and looked outside the window seat where she had sat so long and contemplated the same unchanging scene every day. The yard and tree and fence and road were still there but they were surrounded now and overwhelmed by a carnival: a Ferris Wheel and a Merry-Go-Round and a TiltA-Whirl and games and pony rides and little-kids’ jump castles and fried foods, and there were people wandering around and through the scene, lots of people, people who did not

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find it unusual that a carnival had sprung up with a house in the middle of it. The horses stood off to the side, by the fence; the carnival had not set up inside their pasture, and people stood near them and patted their faces and fed them cotton candy. Saoirse looked at it and held Chuck’s hand and looked at him, too, and then the two of them went down the hall. She knocked at the door to the room she’d showed William Howard Taft and when she got no answer lightly opened the door. It was empty – literally empty – and the two of them went downstairs. William Howard Taft was in the kitchen eating breakfast, a large plate of scrambled eggs and bacon with a mug of coffee next to him. Saoirse sat down and helped herself to some eggs. Chuck’s plate was there, with a banana and a foldover peanut butter sandwich again. “Did you see outside?” she asked. He nodded. “Yours?” “I doubt it,” and they looked at Chuck. “But it overlaps with mine,” she said. Then she ate some eggs and asked William Howard Taft: “What’s your After?” He put his napkin down on his lap. “This is.” “How is this your After, sitting in a country house with a carnival outside it? How can that be what you want?” “I want to find others like me. Like you. Like him,” and he pointed to Chuck. “Because you want to go back,” she said. “Yes.” “To life.”

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“Yes.” “Why?” she asked. “Why do you want to go back? And where do you want to go back? You know, life has passed you by, or passed your era by, at least.” Saoirse wondered: Could he go back to his own time? Resume his life again? Could she? What would she be going back to? How long had it been since she died? She tried to remember but could not; she could not even remember dying. And now when she tried to count the days she’d been here in the After the number just faded into the haze of all the time spent watching the horses and maybe reading. “I know that, I suppose. I know that I would not be going back to my old life. Or even my old me. I don’t suppose that if I can get back to life I would still be the president and a person of eminence. But I still … want … to go back.” William Howard Taft spoke deliberately. They were walking through the carnival, and everyone else around them seemed perfectly normal. Everyone at the carnival seemed as though they were having a day at the carnival, as though they were alive, and nobody acted in any way that she thought was unusual. They ate corn dogs. They squirted water guns at clowns’ mouths to fill up balloons. She and Chuck and all the normal-seeming people rode on the Tilt-A-Whirl and Chuck mushed into her as the car spun around, and Chuck squealed, exactly the way other small children did with their mothers or fathers, and she could not tell the difference between them and her and Chuck but she knew there was a difference between them all and her life. She could tell that there was a difference between the way Chuck held her hand in this carnival in the front yard of her house on the island in space, and the way Chuck had

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held her hand when they had gone to the grocery store before… she had come here, to the After. Physically, it felt the same, but there was something different anyway about it. She needed to pay for their rides, for some reason. She wondered about that even as she found she had the money she needed, discovering at the last moment that she just then had her purse. When she played a game with Chuck, she won. She’d never won a carnival game before this and tried not to be disappointed that her imagination, that a place where everything was the way she wanted it, where anything, she assumed, was possible, was set up so that she could win a giant stuffed animal? Nobody noticed that there was a former president sitting on the front porch and not joining in the carnival, a president who wore an outdated suit and steepled his fingers and who would periodically disappear into the house, a house, too, that nobody at the carnival seemed to think was oddly placed, just outside the carnival. Saoirse did not talk with William Howard Taft the rest of that day. She spent the day at the carnival with Chuck, and it did not make her sad to hold his hand, to smell his hair, to watch him petting the ponies while waiting for his turn to ride one. She did not worry about putting him on the little roller-coaster that she would never have allowed him to ride before -- although she did feel a pang at the thought that in life nobody would be there to protect the children (what if Ansel had actually died ,too?) but she tried to forget it as Chuck gave her a cotton-candy kiss and the day took on the feel of an old videotape of a family vacation, a strange almost-like-deja-vu sense coming over her as she carried Chuck when he got tired and watched him play games and slid down the Giant Slide with him. The day felt as though she was experiencing it and remembering it

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and dreaming about it at the same time, or like she was having a realistic dream about a story someone had told her of their day at a carnival. When she put Chuck to bed, he had a piece of caramel corn stuck to his cheek and she brushed it away and kissed his forehead. He smelt of sweat and popcorn oil and sunlight. She pulled the covers up and he was already fast asleep, hand clutching the crazy-straw he had bought to drink chocolate milk through, the milk curlicuing and swirling and twisting to get to him. She then went outside and hugged herself in the chilly night air, feeling the dew on her bare feet, at first too cold and then not. The carnival was gone. She wondered if it would be there in the morning. She wondered if Chuck would be. And William Howard Taft, who she had not seen since lunch time when he’d declined (politely) to join them for lunch. (He had, though, accepted the plate of funnel cake she’d given him, and had taken it inside to eat.) As she thought over those events, and curled her toes in the dew, she stared up at the moon and wondered what Ansel was doing, and where.

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Nine: They stood at the edge. She was not worried and did not have vertigo, there was no fear in the After, but she still did not like it. The island, the small house and trees and forest and two horses and the road, did indeed end, just as William Howard Taft had said when they had arrived here a few days ago. She and Chuck and William Howard Taft looked now into the void, at the edge of the island. The edge was smooth. It was as though someone had simply sliced this portion of the world out of the rest of it and then put it adrift, not in space exactly but close. She could walk right up to the edge, could wave her hands out into the openness beyond, could lean down and touch the smooth edge that looked sanded, rounded off. Saoirse wondered if they would be able to simply walk over the edge and if they did, then what? Would they drift off into the space that surrounded them? Would something else take over? She watched Chuck walking around on the grass and patting the trees and looking up at them. She heard birds and a squirrel, not far away. The sunlight came from her right, which was where the sun rose every day. They had followed the road here, just gotten onto the road and walked and it had not taken that long to arrive at the edge of this part. “Do we have to leave, to do anything?” she asked. “I don’t know for sure,” William Howard Taft said. “But I am at a loss as to how to accomplish anything else while we are here.”

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The carnival had not come back. The house had continued to be an empty house with furniture existing only as people needed it; when she walked through the living room it was empty unless she went into the living room with the idea that she was going to lie on the couch for a while, in which case the couch would be there. She had tried to test it, one afternoon, she had resolved to walk through the living room to get to the kitchen only and then had tried to change her mind midway through to want to sit and watch the fire, but when she had gone into the living room the fire was lit and there was an overstuffed chair next to it with a cup of hot chocolate and a magazine on a table by the chair. “Why is it like this?” Saoirse asked, about the island she had created. She did not expect an answer. Is it because I don’t want to go anywhere else, she thought, even if I think I want to? How could she think she wanted something but not really want it? Wasn’t thinking she wanted something the exact same thing as wanting something? If she thought she was experiencing an emotion, then wasn’t she in fact experiencing that emotion? Throughout her life, Saoirse had seen movies and television shows and read books in which a character said something like I think I’m in love. That had always bothered her because it felt a bit like it created a fake-almost-emotion, a love-like emotion that was almost, but not quite, love. As though love and thinking one was in love were like butter and margarine – nearly the same but not the same. I can’t believe it’s not love, she used to think to herself when she heard someone say they thought they were in love. Now, she wondered if she had not been wrong about whether experiencing an emotion, and thinking you were, were the same thing-- because she wanted to leave this island and

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help William Howard Taft; she had decided that morning that they should try to do so, but it seemed she did not want to do that because if she wanted to do that then she would have left the island, just like she had come here. Right? She wasn’t sure. She was worried, a little, that she could not know what was going to happen next and that seemed wrong. She had left behind Ansel and Stephanie and Austin, and briefly, Chuck, and what if she woke up tomorrow and Chuck was gone? She did not want that, but what if really she wanted that? William Howard Taft had moved along the edge of the island now, negotiating between the trees and the edge, carefully, a hand on the trunk of a tree, and lifting a branch. She watched him, and then watched Chuck walk over by him and tug on the coat William Howard Taft wore. He turned around and was about to say something but stopped because Chuck was pointing, out into the void. She looked where he was pointing, too, and saw nothing. “What is it, honey?” she said, and Chuck looked at her. He mumbled and hummed, the way he would when he wanted her attention and did not know how else to get it. “You should have him talk,” William Howard Taft said. Saoirse knew why he did not, though. She wondered why she had won that battle, why he had talked just the once and she had won.

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Chuck continued to point into space and neither of them could see why. William Howard Taft turned away from that and looked again at the trees that surrounded them. He put his hand on the nearest one and closed his eyes. “Why are you always doing that?” asked Saoirse. “Doing what?” William Howard Taft asked her. “Touching trees. That’s what I saw you doing in my vision, too, in that forest where we first found you after the first time I met you. What’s going on with the trees?” “It …” William Howard Taft paused. Then he said “The trees are important to me,” and turned away again. “Why?” Saoirse asked. As she asked that, she felt Chuck pushing her. He was standing on one side of her, on her left leg, and pushing against her, trying to get her to turn or to go right; she was not sure what he wanted other than that she move. She also saw that he had a toy truck in his hand and wondered for just a moment where it came from. She stepped to her right and he continued to shove so she turned to her right and was face to face with a tree, herself. When she turned back around to ask Chuck what she was supposed to look at he was drifting off into space. “What?...” she gasped, and without thinking launched herself off into space, too.

Later, she would tell herself that it was not so brave of her to do that because this was the After and she could not be hurt; what could happen to a soul that was dead

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already? But she was still proud that she had not hesitated at all, that even as she’d said “What?” she had launched herself into space, and had grabbed onto Chuck (as she had almost immediately then felt her own leg being grabbed by William Howard Taft.) She pulled Chuck into her arms and folded herself around him. William Howard Taft sat up next to them and they looked back at the island of land they’d just been standing on. “How do we get back?” she asked. “I do not know. We just fell onto it the first time. But we were above it, then. Now, we are at the side of it.” She looked down at Chuck. “What were you thinking?” she asked. He looked at her and pressed his hands against her cheek and then against her left eye. It made her close her eye and she said “Don’t poke Mommy’s eye, honey,” as he moved to the right eye, pressing his palm over that so that her right eye closed now as she blinked her left eye open. He moved back to the left and then wriggled both hands free as she said again not to poke her in the eye. “I think he wants you to close your eyes,” William Howard Taft said. Chuck burbled a little and pressed both hands against her eyes so she closed them both, not because she wanted to but because she did not want Chuck’s palms pressed against her eyeballs. She felt the bottom of the world drop out from underneath her, heard William Howard Taft roar. They were falling. Fast. She felt air rushing up below her and passing her by, the little eddies of currents and momentary vacuum that she left in her wake, and she clutched Chuck tightly with both her arms and held onto him while he held

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his hands over her eyes and so she could not see where they were falling to. She reasoned that it was probably better that way. “Where are we going?” she yelled to William Howard Taft, or Chuck, but didn’t hear any response other than the wind rushing by. She and Chuck, and maybe William Howard Taft, fell and fell and fell and dropped down and down and down, until she was sure that they must be moving at a prodigious rate. For just a moment she worried, but her mind took over again and reminded her of William Howard Taft and Chuck falling out of the sky and she knew she could not die again and then she felt like the air was slowing down a little, and noticing that she also sat down, rather harder than she wanted to, on a pile of round smooth objects and Chuck took his hands away. She was sitting in the grocery store she’d always gone to, the grocery store that she’d taken Chuck with her to at least once or twice a week. She was in the produce section, and it looked exactly like the produce section of the grocery store she was used to – Kragens, was the name of the store – it smelt damp and a little musty, the way her store always had, like the produce was a day or two too old (she’d never liked thinking that but she’d never worried too much about it, either. She knew as a parent she was supposed to make sure her children ate fresh corn on the cob and broccoli and tomatoes and salad, but most of the time she didn’t and instead bought a small assortment of fruit from the store, small enough that it was not a total waste of money when it went rotten because she didn’t force them to eat it, the point for her being that she could feel like a semi-decent parent because at least she bought fruit for the children.)

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They were sitting on the apple display and she felt some of the juice gooshing through her jeans. They had landed hard enough to wreck a few apples, smushing them in their skins. (As she stood up, she saw the apples pop back into shape and wished that they hadn’t, because the rest of the illusion was very realistic and lifelike, right down to the chipped tiles all over the place.) But the apples were perfect, again. “Why is your chosen method of travel to drop us everywhere?” asked William Howard Taft, who had landed on the green apples and was picking up his hat from where it had fallen onto the floor. The green apples—there were many more of them wrecked than the red ones – were restoring themselves with a shimmering effervescence. William Howard Taft looked around. “A supermarket?” he asked. “How do you know what this is?” Saoirse asked. “I’ve met other people from your time, as well as people who were older. I’ve seen many versions of Afters. The question is why we’re here. Did you bring us here?” “I don’t think so.” Chuck picked up an apple and handed it to her. “No, thank you, Sweetie,” but he kept pushing it into her hand until she took it and picked him up again. She looked around. “It’s deserted.” “That’s why I thought you brought us here,” William Howard Taft said. “Why?” “Because your island was deserted, as well, whereas Chuck seems to favor more crowded places.” “Chuck,” she asked, “Why are we here?” He just looked at her, and then held his hand out, pointing to her.

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“Do you mean I brought you, us, here?” He shook his head and stuck his lip out. “Chuck, it’s okay. You can talk. I didn’t want you to talk before but I do now.” He stared at her and then stuck a finger in his mouth. Then he picked up another apple and held it out to her. She took that, one, too, and said “Seriously, Chuck. You can talk. Tell Mommy why we’re here.” Saoirse wondered if she was still his mommy in the After. Then Saoirse wondered if her own mother were here, and if so, why she hadn’t put in an appearance yet. Chuck did not talk, so she took his hand and walked over to the other aisles of the store. The store was eerie and she did not like it much: it was empty, but not empty like it would be when closed. There were carts in the aisles, some with food in them. The registers were turned on. Nothing was out of order or in disarray; it was just as though everyone had been grocery shopping until suddenly deciding that they had better things to do, things that did not involve grocery shopping but which were so much better than grocery shopping that the people could not be bothered to put their carts away or shut the cash registers off or turn out the lights, they just had to go. William Howard Taft hung back a bit looking around the produce department. He continued looking over his shoulder at it once he walked to catch up to them. Saoirse walked through the store, gradually gravitating towards the frozen food department; she smelled pizza and was walking towards the scent. Turning a corner, she was pizza samples, sitting on the tray on the corner display where Kragens, her Kragens, sometimes has samples on Saturday afternoons. Saoirse looked at these and realized they

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were still hot. She had always liked the pizza samples; as crowded as the grocery store was Saturday afternoons, she still liked to go then because of the pizza samples. An older lady came out from around the corner of a display case and surprised her. Saoirse had evidently surprised the lady, too, because she heard a small gasp and the woman dropped the two pizzas she was carrying. Saoirse bent down to pick up the pizzas and help her. “I’m sorry,” she said. “Oh, no, I’m sorry. I just thought everyone had left and I didn’t know you were still here.” “Everyone left?” Saoirse asked. The woman looked puzzled. “I suppose they did,” she said. “It’s so quiet here.” “When did they leave?” Saoirse asked. Chuck was reaching up for a slice of pizza and she took one, blew on it automatically before remembering that the pizza couldn’t, here, be too hot for him, and handed it to him. She wondered how the woman could have dropped the pizzas and been surprised. Had she, Saoirse, wanted to surprise the woman? Had the woman wanted to be surprised? “I’m not sure,” the woman said, forcing Saoirse, who had forgotten she’d asked a question, to refocus. The woman was looking at Saoirse. “Do I know you?” “I don’t think so,” Saoirse said, studying her back. “I don’t think so, either,” said the woman, and then busied herself opening up the new pizzas, expertly tearing open the side of the package and sliding the pizza off of the

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cardboard and putting it onto the tray. Saoirse watched and recalled the spaghetti dinner she had first prepared, here, if she had prepared it. Saoirse had gone through a phase … in life, she thought to herself, now… when she had enjoyed watching cooking shows. Some of the chefs had cooked very complicated, very phenomenal dishes, and had made everything from scratch. They had made pie crusts by hand, rolling them out and then cutting the slices to make the interwoven pie-crust-tops. They had made their own potato chips, on one show. She recalled wondering who made their own pie crusts when you could buy a frozen pie crust that tasted just as good and didn’t take hours to make only to fall apart. And who would make their own potato chips? She had finally decided that some people must like the process. People who wanted to make their own potato chips were people for whom the process of making the food, rather than the eating of the food, was the fun. For Saoirse, it had seemed a chore and it had been easier to just buy the pie crusts. Or the pie. She watched as the woman began cooking the pizza. She looked at the pile of coupons to the left of the little oven, the coupons that the woman was supposed to hand out. Who would need to bake a pizza here? Who would need coupons? Saoire thought. The woman was looking at her again. “Not hungry?” she asked. She didn’t wait for the answer, but instead looked over Saoirse’s shoulder at William Howard Taft and asked him if he wasn’t hungry, also. She phrased it in the negative, too, Aren’t you hungry, sir? Saoirse stepped aside as William

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Howard Taft set down his apple and picked up a slice of pizza. He did not blow on it and simply ate it, agreeably. Chuck was pressing his face against the freezer doors and making smudges shaped like little Os. She was about to stop him but then realized that she had no need to do so. Could paradise really be pizza samples all to oneself and face-smudging freedom? She felt embarrassed again, for herself, that this was what she wanted, and then looked at the lady again, because the lady was staring at her. “I don’t know you at all,” the woman said. Saoirse nodded. “Okay,” she said. “Where did everyone go?” the pizza lady asked. “I don’t know,” Saoirse said. “What day is it?” the woman asked her then. Saoirse realized she did not know that, either. She did not know what day or week or month it was. She didn’t even know what time of day it was. “You don’t know, do you?” the lady asked. “I guess I don’t,” Saoirse said. “Hmmm,” and the lady took the new pizza out and began cutting it, looking at it as she did so. Saoirse realized that the old pizza was gone, even though there had been a full pizza there when the three of them had arrived, and only two slices had been taken. There was a jumble of noise and she heard a cart wheel squeaking. Around her, in the background, was music that she almost recognized, string-instrumentals that as she listened she realized were a version of a pop song. Muzak. Muzak in the After?

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Then there were shoppers around. A few came up and Saoirse stepped aside and the pizza samples were taken by shoppers who crowded around. A woman said “Excuse me,” and edged her cart around William Howard Taft and Chuck. A man picked up some ice cream and carried it off towards the register. The PA system told everyone that there was a special on hot chocolate in aisle 7. A few seconds later it announced that there was a small red car with the lights on and gave the license plate number. Saoirse watched it all and wondered why the people had come back. She took Chuck’s hand and held it. She looked down at him. He was reaching for more pizza and she decided that the unspoken limit of one-sample-per-person limit would not be enforced here, not in her After, and so she handed him another one. As she did, the lady said to Saoirse “come with me,” and she took Saoirse by the hand and led her around the corner, still in sight of the pizza samples, but standing by the frozen vegetables, a dead backwater of frozen foods that was not as heavily trafficked as ice cream and bagels and pizza rolls. The woman sized up Saoirse and then said: “You’re one.” Saoirse stared at her. “You are, too?” “Yes.” “How long?” The woman shrugged. “Who can tell?” “How’d you recognize me?” asked Saoirse. “Because you changed my world.” “I did?”

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“It’s hard to tell, sometimes, for me. It hasn’t happened much. But every now and then something happens that I didn’t plan on and that I don’t like or understand. Sometimes it’s because I guess I want it and sometimes it’s because someone changed it.” “You’ve been around a while.” “Again, who can tell?” “I can tell. I haven’t been here that long.” “I guessed,” the woman said. “Who’s the man?” “William Howard Taft?” “The president?” “Yeah. I guess.” “I don’t like him,” she said.

They both looked back at William Howard Taft, who was looking at the ice cream displays and picking up boxes here and there, studying them, trying to stay out of the way of the shoppers around him. He seemed uncomfortable with the crowds. Saoirse recognized the level of people as a Saturday-afternoon-crowd, the number of people that would be at this store on a Saturday afternoon, even if this wasn’t a Saturday afternoon. Maybe every afternoon in the After was a Saturday afternoon? What would that be like? “What about the boy?” the pizza lady asked.

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“He’s my son. Chuck.” The woman studied Chuck, watching the crowds go by. “He’s okay.” She decided. She looked back at Saoirse. “You should leave the big man, the president, though. I have a bad feeling about him.” “He’s helping me,” Saoirse said. The woman put a finger to her mouth, chewed the knuckle for a moment. “Helping you what?” she asked. Saoirse hesitated. She did not know the Pizza Lady. She was not sure what to think of her, and had no bad feelings about William Howard Taft. The train of thought made her suddenly wonder whether there could be bad things in the After, whether this woman could try to trick her. Could William Howard Taft have been wrong? Is everything not perfect here? She wondered, for a moment: things certainly had not been perfect yet. It seemed as if they tried to be perfect... but they just were not. For a person living in an eternal paradise she’d spent a lot of time crying and a lot of time not being happy. “Helping you what?” the woman prompted again. Still, nothing bad had happened to her. She had not been hurt and had not been in danger, even when falling, even when she’d jumped off the roof, Saoirse remembered. “Go back,” Saoirse said. It was a whisper. She felt it was wrong to say that, aloud, to this woman. The woman frowned more deeply. “Why?” I don’t want to be dead, Saoirse thought. I don’t want to have my husband here with me but not really here with me and I don’t want him dead. I don’t want my sons and

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my daughter dead. I don’t want… her mind raced and the world quivered just a little and she looked at the pizza lady and said “I don’t like it here.” The other woman smiled, then, firmly, the kind of smile a high school principal gives when telling people to have fun on prom night but let’s keep it smart, people. “I didn’t either, at first.” She looked around. “Most people would not, when they realize it. For that reason, I think most don’t realize it or they just aren’t self-aware, enough, maybe, or maybe there’s a glitch somewhere. I’m not sure why some realize they’ve died and are here in the After, but not many do. I’d say I’ve only met, counting you, about three.” She looked at William Howard Taft and Chuck. “Five, now, with them. Not counting me, of course.” “Don’t you want to leave?” “Not anymore.” “Did you?” “A little, at first. Just a little. I missed everyone. Nobody came here with me, nobody in my family. I was just suddenly here – actually not here, in this store, but here, in the After. I was in a grove of trees. I think they were apple trees. I never was very good at knowing plants and it doesn't matter, anyway. "I was walking along a dusty path in this grove of trees and enjoying the sunlight. It was deserted. The sun was beautiful, it was a warm fall day, the kind that feels almost a little too warm, maybe, and I took off my sweater and walked. When I got thirsty, I drank from my water bottle.” The woman shook her head as William Howard Taft came walking over. Saoirse looked around for Chuck, but then tried to tell herself not to worry

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because what could happen to him here? But she did not want to be separated again, so she found him and pulled him over by her and held his hand. “That was what tipped me off,” the woman continued. “I didn’t remember having a water bottle with me. It was just suddenly in my hand and I got confused, wondering if I’d been carrying it all along and why it wasn’t warm or covered in condensation or otherwise reacting to the heat. “Then I noticed I wasn’t sweating, that I wasn’t uncomfortable in any way even though on a … real… fall day, I’d have probably been a little sticky in my blue jeans and tired from walking.” The woman looked off into space. “Then I wondered where everyone else was and everything went blue.” “What do you mean?” William Howard Taft asked. He was eating a peanutcovered, chocolate-dipped ice cream cone he’d picked out of a box. Saoirse supposed that shoplifting didn’t exist in the After. But if that was true, why, then, were people paying at the cash registers? Why were there cash registers at all? Was it because she expected them? Or did the other people? She wondered if the Pizza Lady and William Howard Taft would help answer some of these questions, eventually, if they knew. The Pizza Lady said “I mean it went blue, that suddenly I was in a field of blue, that surrounded me. It was like falling into the sky, somehow; all around me was just blue, and it was somehow kind of tangible, like water, or maybe very thin water. Like mist; I could almost feel it and I was drifting in it and could feel it around me, and I spun around and floated there and then I wasn’t there anymore, I was in an ocean.”

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“Like me,” Saoirse said. Excited. “Like us,” she looked at William Howard Taft. “We went to oceans, too.” “Hmm.” William Howard Taft was noncommittal. “What did your ocean look like?” Saoirse asked. “It was broad and bright and blue, too, almost the color of the blue I’d just been in. I was about shoulder deep in it, and there were little waves jostling me. I could see a beach nearby and I remembered the scene. I remembered being there before. It was from my honeymoon. I was in Cuba in 1953. I waded to the shore and confirmed that.” Saoirse was disappointed and tried not to be. Why would it have mattered if the oceans were the same? she asked herself. But she’d hoped there was a pattern, maybe some sort of afterlife introductory course to settle people in, like an orientation. The woman stopped. “The rest of it is what you’d expect.” Saoirse didn’t know what to expect. But the woman seemed not to know that. “I kept popping, periodically, from place to place in my life. I always looked like this,” she motioned to herself, “Always the age when I died. I don’t know why. I thought maybe when I died I would have the image and appearance I wanted. That’s what I always used to think about in church, actually.” She laughed. “I used to imagine Heaven and think that when I went to Heaven I’d be perfect, that I wouldn’t be so tall,” for she was tall, “And I wouldn’t be so skinny,” she wasn’t, really, Saoirse thought, but maybe as a young girl she’d been skinnier, “and that my hair would work the way other girls’ hair worked, too, and that I’d be considered beautiful. “Instead, I just keep being the me I was used to being -- the last version of me.”

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William Howard Taft appeared bored with this. Chuck was swinging from her hand, letting himself go limp and using her hand like a rope swing. Saoirse thought about what the woman had said. “I haven’t relived anything, really,” she said. “Really?” the woman asked. Saoirse looked around. “So why are you here?” she asked. “Why are you working in this store?” “Because I did this for a while, just before I came here,” the woman said. “How did you… come here?” The woman looked confused. “I don’t know. I don’t remember.” “I don’t, either.” Saoirse looked around again. A woman pushing a cart nearly bumped into her, touched her shoulder and apologized. Saoirse nodded and the woman moved on, pulling a tub of ice cream from the freezer. “So do you want to be here?” Saoirse took another slice of pizza and ate it. “Do you want to spend eternity serving pizza samples?” “I guess I must,” said the woman. William Howard Taft had drifted back and held out his hand. The woman took it but did not fully commit to the handshake as he introduced himself. “I know,” Pizza Lady said. William Howard Taft looked confused. “She introduced me,” Pizza Lady said and pointed to Saoirse, who then realized that she had not introduced herself. “I’m Saoirse,” she said, and held out her own hand. “I’m glad to meet you,” the Pizza Lady said.

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“What’s your name?” asked Saoirse. “I don’t recall,” the Pizza Lady said, and seemed not to be bothered by that fact. “What?” William Howard Taft asked that, before Saoirse could. “You don’t know your own name?” “No, I suppose I don’t,” the woman said. She eyed William Howard Taft warily. “I didn’t give it any thought up until now.” She handed a shopper a piece of the pizza and smiled at the customer. The shopper took a coupon for the product and moved on. Saoirse wondered whether the shopper, too, was dead. “How long have you been here?” William Howard Taft asked. The Pizza Lady simply bent down and took another pizza from the display case and began preparing it. She did not look at William Howard Taft who after a moment said to her “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to pry or badger you. But I really would like to know.” “I know you would.” The Pizza Lady continued her preparations. “It’s important to me,” William Howard Taft said. “And to Saoirse, as well. To all of us.” “I’m not so sure it’s important to her,” the Pizza Lady said, and her eyes looked at, and through, Saoirse for a moment. The woman paused. “What do you see?” William Howard Taft asked. “What?” the Pizza Lady looked at him now, directly. Saoirse took Chuck’s hand. “What did you see? When you looked at Saoirse?”

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The Pizza Lady appeared a little unsure of herself, now, for the first time. “I don’t know, really,” she said. “I don’t know,” she repeated. William Howard Taft took Saoirse’s elbow and led her over to the side. “I don’t want to upset her,” he said. “But I think we should stay near her. If we can. I think that she is nearing a transition.” “She’s what?” Saoirse looked back at the Pizza Lady, who was chatting with another elderly woman shopper. The two were talking about the weather, commenting on how it had been rainy for a few days now but had cleared up enough to let the elderly woman come get some groceries, which was good, the elderly woman said (and Saoirse overheard her say), because they were running low on dog food for her little dog. Saoirse wondered if the elderly woman was dead, and if so, how she had died. If not, then who had brought her into this scene? William Howard Taft spoke as she thought about that. “Remember: some people move on. Or disappear, at least, from the After. They cease to exist here. I think she may be nearing that point where she is going to do just that – leave the After.” “Why do you say that?” “I think she is reliving her life, and I think she is near the end of the life she is reliving.” “Reliving her life?” The woman’s discussions of what she had experienced in the After did seem like that. “You may be right,” Saoirse said, but added “I don’t know why that’s important?” And she thought, why am I not reliving MY life?

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William Howard Taft went on. “She cannot remember her name. She is reliving a portion of her life which is near the end of her earthly life, and from what I understood as she talked, her After has been proceeding in chronological order.” Saoirse looked at the woman, who patted the older shopper’s hand and then took a sip from a thermos. “What was that you asked her about what she saw?” “I think she had a vision.” “Are you telling me everything you can?” “Yes.” Saoirse wasn’t so sure. She did not like what the Pizza Lady had said. She wondered if she should mention it to William Howard Taft but decided not to, just yet. It’s not like anything bad can happen here, she told herself… but whose word did she have for that? She turned back to the Pizza Lady. “Did you see something?” Saoirse asked her. “When, just now?” the Pizza Lady watched William Howard Taft, who hung back from this conversation. She kept her voice low. “What did he say?’ Saoirse did not want to answer that question. She wanted, instead, to tell the woman to tell her that William Howard Taft was okay, but didn’t know how to put that into words. So she said “He thinks you had a vision.” The Pizza Lady stared down. “I did. I don’t know how he knew, but I did.” “He’s been here a long time. He’s trying to find people like me, and you, and him. People who know where we are and why we’re here. People who know this is the After.”

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“Why?” “Why what?” “Why does he want to find them? You said you want to get out, but why does he want to find people?” “I don’t know. I guess he wants to go back, too, to leave.” “Why do you want to go back? Why do you want to get out?” A million words ran through Saoirse’s head, the kind of jumble of thoughts that put her in mind of a kaleidoscope: Ansel her driveway needed paving ice cream cones Stephanie and Chuck sunsets snow days from school birdfeeders her wedding day grandfather clocks that time the car broke down at 2 o’clock in the morning on the way back from her high school reunion and they’d had to walk home Stephanie’s first day of school and she wouldn’t let go of Saoirse’s hand they kept tumbling around and Saoirse just bit her lip. Finally, she said, “I miss it. I miss life.” That wasn’t it, though, not exactly. As soon as she said it, Saoirse knew that it wasn’t quite what she meant. “This is life,” Pizza Lady said. “No, it’s not.” “It’s the same thing.” “No, it’s not.” The Pizza Lady sighed. “Maybe it’s not. But it’s better, isn’t it? There’s no troubles. No worries. No traffic jams, no arthritis, no… no bad things.” “I know. I know that.” Saoirse felt guilty. She felt guilty because she did not appreciate how good the good things could be, and she felt guilty because she had been

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on the verge of saying to the woman is paradise really handing pizza samples to ladies with Chihuahuas for all eternity but who was she to judge? Because her paradise, apparently, was watching a woman hand pizza samples to ladies with Chihuahuas for all eternity. “I saw a tree,” the Pizza Lady said, after a pause. The shoppers disappeared. “A tree?” Saoirse asked. “A tree. I saw a tree. When I looked at you, for a moment, things went kind of blurry and I thought it was going to change again and I saw a tree there and then I was here and it was gone.” With that, the Pizza Lady threw down her little pizza-server and turned and ran. Her feet made slapping sounds down the aisles as she ran off through frozen foods and Saoirse out of instinct began running, too, trying to figure out where the woman had gone. The store she stood in was empty again, disorienting her as she tried to find the woman. “Wait,” she called out, not yelling, as she ran up to the front of the store, by the cash registers standing beside half-full carts with half-bagged groceries on the conveyor belts and checkbooks lying out. Pens still swung by the chain linking them to the cash register. Lights blinked. But nobody else was there. The front of the store was glass windows postered over with specials and advertisements. Through the gaps between posters Saoirse could see rain pelting down outside. As the door in front of her swung open automatically the sound of the rain outside was deafening. It fell on the parking lot like a splashing thunder, so fast and thick and solid that walking outside dampened her just from the water splashing up from the ground. Saoirse did not enter the rain; she stood under the awning.

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The world was deserted outside, too, just rain pouring on the grocery store and a few others around it. There was no traffic and no other shoppers, just empty parking lots. About a hundred yards away, the Pizza Lady stood in the rain and stared back at Saoirse, drenched and bedraggled under a lamppost that had lit up, so dark was the sky and so thick was the rain. The rain somehow began to intensify. When the water began to flow back from the parking lot into the store Saoirse backed up until she stood in between the two automatic doors. She felt the doors repeatedly try to close, nearly hit her, and then open again. She stood there and looked at the woman almost obscured by the rain, the woman who appeared smaller and more lonely now as she stood there, arms folded in front of her and her hands clasped. Saoirse wondered whether she should go out there, and just then lightning began striking. Arc after arc of lightning crashed between the clouds and made everything white and pale for a brief moment after which it seemed darker than before. The world was strobe-lit: Lightning struck over and over bright dark bright dark bright bright dark as Saoirse’s eyes tried to keep up, adjusting over and over. She saw that the woman had now bowed her head. She was praying, Saoirse realized. Who would one pray to in the After? She didn’t know. She had not been a praying person in life and now… she stopped thinking that and watched as the Pizza Lady unbowed her head, unfolded her hands and stood calmly in the deluge. The lightning crackled and roared around her, an almost-constant thing now, throwing the dark storm clouds into sharp contrasts, almost-white areas surrounded by too-dark lines that looked drawn on by charcoal pencil. The white electric

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glare blazed off the the water that flooding the parking lot and made it seem as if the woman stood ankle-deep in light rather than water. The lamplights flickered on and off in opposition to the lightning; when the lightning flared went off, then tried to come back on and shine their orange-ish glow in the gloom until the lightning turned everything to more-than-day a second later. The woman’s mouth was moving. Saoirse stood under the edge, the rain spattering her, and listened but she could not hear. She moved all the way into the rain, trying to hear. Her clothes pulled her down, sodden, and her hair went stringing down on her head, rivulets of water running down into her mouth so that she sputtered as she walked. Water filled her shoes and leaked out the sides around the ankles, squishing in the bottoms of her shoes. Her pants felt heavy and pulled down, and she realized that , there was water in her pockets. She walked on, carefully, as she could feel the lightning around her, sizzling and crackling until it blossomed into thunderous booming jolts. The crashes of light struck lampposts and water and the stores and the ground around her but in contravention of everything she knew about lightning and electricity, it did not strike her and she was not electrocuted when jagged shards of power scorched down from the clouds and struck the water she was standing in, struck just inches from her feet. She made her way slowly to the woman, who was pointing back at her intermittently and saying something to her, words that were drowned out until Saoirse was right next to her: “… here!” the woman was screaming. She paused to take a breath, to clear her mouth of the water that ran in it off her face and Saoirse got a step closer and the woman repeated herself: “Why did you…” but a lightning strike crackled between them,

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temporarily blinding Saoirse. After it ended, the woman said again: “Why did you come here?” and then leaned forward and hugged Saoirse while repeating over and over Why did you come here Why did you come here Saoirse closed her eyes against the rain and light and hugged the woman back. Everything grew silent. She opened her eyes. Everything was blue. It was the area the woman had described, the blue hazy area, like being caught in the sky, like being suspended in the air but not like that at the same time. They stood in the middle of nothing but blue, two people, and the woman had been right, it was not empty, it was not just the sky. There was no feeling of falling, no feeling that this was an impermanent place. It was just blue. Saoirse pulled back slightly. The woman said “Don’t let go,” and Saoirse told her it would be all right. The woman was shaking. “What’s the matter?” Saoirse said. “You should not have come to me,” the Pizza Lady said. “I was happy.” “I didn’t mean to,” Saoirse said. “But you did. You came to me. Nothing happens without someone wanting it to, not here, and I didn’t want you to come here and I don’t want to leave here and you came to me and I was happy,” the woman was babbling. Saoirse leaned back again and took her by the shoulders. “I didn’t mean to. I don’t even know who you are,” she told her, firmly.

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“I don’t even know who I am,” the woman wailed, “And I didn’t need to know until you came here and now I know that I don’t know who I am and I know that I’m leaving. I’m leaving, aren’t I?” she asked Saoirse. “I don’t know,” Saoirse said. The woman pulled away, turned away from Saoirse and suddenly they were back in the parking lot, rain crashing down around them. Saoirse pulled her arms around her and shivered for a moment although she was not cold. The woman turned back around. The lightning was more fierce than ever. The Pizza Lady pointed again at Saoirse, who could not hear her. The woman came closer and grabbed both of Saoirse’s arms with hers… … and they were back in the blue, with the woman shouting incoherently. Saoirse did not know what to do. She stood there, her arms in this woman’s grasp. “It’s okay. If we’re here, it must be a good thing. It must be,” Saoirse told her. They stood there, motionless. Saoirse watched the woman, who was watching the rain: just shivering and staring. Saoirse wondered why she was shivering; the water was warm. Then again, maybe the lightning and thunder and magnitude of the rain was daunting and made her a little fearful… and she had not just been realized that she was coming, somehow, to the end of her time here in the After, a place where time was not supposed to end. She looked over her shoulder, and saw William Howard Taft, standing in the doorway. He looked odd; his face was whiter than she thought it should be. She saw him touch his face, and thought, from this distance, through the rain, that his hand shook. But it may have just been the rain, she thought.

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She continued to watch Pizza Lady and also tried to watch him at the same time. He stood motionless, staring at her and once took a small step forward and then stopped, pulled his foot back. He looked down at the floor and then up at the sky. He straightened his lapels and otherwise fidgeted. He’s afraid, Saoirse thought. “What are you afraid of?” Saoirse called out to him. “Why are you so nervous?” She continued to hold onto Pizza Lady. William Howard Taft did not answer. “Tell me,” she said. Chuck walked up, and took one of William Howard Taft’s hands and held it, holding it by the two end fingers, and looked out at them, she and Pizza Lady. William Howard Taft spoke, then, his voice barely carrying over the monotonous, crushing roar of the rain interspersed with thunder and flashes of lightning still. “I do not like mystery,” she heard him say. “I do not like not knowing what comes next.” He chewed his lip for a moment. “This was supposed to be the end.” Saoirse looked back at the Pizza Lady, who closed her eyes and bit her lip. William Howard Taft’s voice carried out in a lull in the sound: “There is nothing I know of …after the After. All through life, there was supposed to be an afterlife, and there was. That provided me some comfort when I knew I was dying, that I knew what to expect next. It did not matter that I turned out to be completely wrong. What mattered was that I believed I knew what was next and was comforted by it. Then I found out that there was something else, that we do not stay here forever, not all of us. And I did not know what comes next, and I still do not.”

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Saoirse hugged Pizza Lady and they together huddled against the rain as it intensified again. “Don’t you think that’s crazy?” Saoirse asked, finally. She said it softly, but William Howard Taft heard. “Why is it crazy?” William Howard Taft said back. Chuck continued to hold the large man’s hand. “Because why would there be nothing after … this?” William Howard Taft did not answer. “It doesn’t make any sense. Have us live our lives and then go here and then just nothing and it’s over? What kind of system is that?” Pizza Lady stood up straighter at that, and the lightning abated a small amount, although Saoirse was not totally sure: there was not much difference between constant lightning and near-constant lightning. She wanted to finish her thought, to reassure William Howard Taft that of course there was something after this, or that if this was it then those people were not disappearing they were just disappearing from his After, which made a lot of sense to her, but she couldn’t quite in her own mind make it so that things had to make sense, so that people could not simply disappear forever, and then she couldn’t think about that because Pizza Lady suddenly said: “It’s salt water.” Saoirse opened her mouth, let water in. It was salt water. “I want to go back there,” Pizza Lady said, almost absently, and hearing that as the rain lessened a little more William Howard Taft pulled back, pulling Chuck back with him.

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“I need you,” Pizza Lady said. Saoirse looked back at William Howard Taft. “She means a different place,” she said, struggling both to have him hear her and to have the sentence make sense. She knew what Pizza Lady was talking about and wanted to try to communicate it to Chuck and William Howard Taft. Pizza Lady pulled back from her, pushing Saoirse’s arms down and away. She backed up a few feet, the warm, salty water around her ankles sloshing as she did so. Saoirse reached for her. The rain felt like mist now, the thunder only a distant roll. The lightning, though, still flickered above them. “Grab my hand,” Saoirse said to the Pizza Lady, who looked at it and reached out her own hand, but then stopped and stood motionlessly. In her eyes, Saoirse could see blue, the light blue of the place they’d gone to briefly, twice. As she watched, the blue changed, slowly, going darker and darker, until it was an indigo, nearly black in the gloom and staying black when the now-high-up-anddistant lightning flared. “Thank you,” Pizza Lady said. “For what?” Saoirse said. “For being here,” Pizza Lady said. “I wish you hadn’t come but since you did, I’m glad you’re here with me.” The woman stared off into space for a few moments. Then she blinked and shook her head. “I’m leaving here.” “What do you see?” Saoirse asked. “A tree.” “Just a tree?”

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“Yes.” “Where is it?” “I don’t know.” “What does it look like?” “Like a tree. Larger. A big tree.” “Why a tree?” The woman looked at her. “You don’t know?” Saoirse shook her head, no, she did not know why a tree. “Now,” Pizza Lady said, and then sat quietly for a few seconds. Saoirse thought for a moment that she’d meant now is the time. Saoirse watched her, and Pizza Lady went on: “Maybe now is a reward. Maybe this is a reward for a life well spent and then nothingness. Maybe God gives us this final interlude of everything-is-perfect and then we fade away. Or maybe now I meet God. Maybe there’s just a series of steps to get to Heaven, and this is purgatory.” There was another pause as the woman’s dark eyes stared at nothing. “I don’t know,” she said again. Saoirse watched her and wondered: Could this be purgatory? She’d always heard that purgatory wasn’t real, that it was made up by the Church, but what was real? “You have to stop him,” Pizza Lady said suddenly. “I know why I’m seeing a tree and you have to stop him,” she told Saoirse. “He’s trying to find the tree.” “What tree?” “The one I saw. The one you might see.” “Where is it?”

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The woman closed her eyes. Saoirse grabbed at her, saying: “This is ridiculous. This only happens in movies. You can’t do this. Nobody gives cryptic clues and then disappears. Tell me what’s going on.” “I’m watching,” the woman said. “I’m not going, yet.” “What do you see? What are you watching?” But the woman, Pizza Lady held up her hand over Saoirse’s mouth, a move that would have been incredibly insulting but she did it so gently that Saoirse did not feel angry. “I can’t tell where it is. Maybe it’s not anywhere in particular. But he’s trying to find it because he’s scared and he wants to do something…” She opened her eyes. “It’s gone. I can’t see it anymore. Listen to me. William Howard Taft wants to find The Tree because he doesn’t want to leave the After. Not the way I am. There are people like him, like us, who know where we are. He has met many of them and has figured out that The Tree exists and thinks that he can go back to life if he gets to the Tree.” “Can he?” ”Maybe.” Saoirse was thrilled. “How do you know this? Where is it? Can I go back?” The woman shook her head. “I don’t know where it is, I told you. But I know this: when I see him near The Tree, in my vision, I get scared. You have to stop him.” “How?” Saoirse asked. There was no rain around them, now.

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The woman knelt down on the ground. “I’m going soon.” She said. “I’m back… in that blue area.: “Where are you going? Do you know?” “I’m not afraid,” the woman said. “That’s good,” Saoirse said. She knelt down in front of the woman and held hands with her. “I’m not afraid at all,” the woman said. Saoirse gripped the woman’s right hand with both of hers. “I’m not afraid of anything,” the woman said. There was a final rumble of thunder across the sky. The rain stopped. For a brief moment, everything was blue, and Saoirse thought there had been a lightning strike. She blinked, and Pizza Lady was gone.

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Ten: When Saoirse slept now, her visions got clearer each time. At first, they had just been visions of green, just a greenish area, like the blue that had surrounded Pizza Lady in intervals, as Pizza Lady had… gone. Then the green had resolved into shapes. Skinny lines. Blobs. Rolling shapes. The shapes had then sharpened and additional colors appeared. The rolling shapes, the humps and mounds, became low hills, hills that looked ridiculously comfortable to walk or sit on. The blobs had become the tops of trees and bushes here and there. Skinny lines were edges of weeping willow trees or tall blades of grass, waist high in some places and then improbably mowed in others. By that point, in her dreams, it was obvious she was looking at a meadow or field or maybe a sparse forest or garden. Garden. When she had thought that word, she had realized this area in her dreams was manicured. In her visions-that-were-dreams-while-she-slept, she had realized that it was a garden she was seeing, in part because the area was obviously tended. She was not initially in the visions. She saw only shapes, colors, blobs, blurs that stuck with her when she woke up. But each day found her waking with a clearer picture

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of the garden, too, and it was that fact, the fact that it was clearer and sharper each day, that gave her hope that she and Rory and Chuck would find William Howard Taft. The visions, she was sure, the dreams, were showing her where William Howard Taft was headed. She also thought maybe at some point that Ansel would join her, and Stephanie, and Austin. She hoped that they were okay in their lives, worried about them sometimes. There could be worry here, she realized, in the After, because she was worried. Worried that she might fade away like Pizza Lady and like those others William Howard Taft had described. Nobody in the… was it weeks? since Pizza Lady had gone?-- in that time, nobody else had faded away, and nobody she had met seemed to understand where they were. Rory did not, certainly, and she wondered why Rory was here. Rory had never been her boyfriend, not really, and not for very long. She worried that they would run into Ansel and Ansel would ask who Rory was and why he was here, and I don’t know did not strike her as the appropriate answer for why Rory was here. He was here, she supposed, because she wanted him here. Wasn’t that how it works? But she did not know whether she believed that, or how to explain it to Ansel if he showed up. And why, she wondered often, didn’t Ansel show up? Was he here, really here somewhere? Saoirse didn’t know what she wanted to expect because if Ansel was here, then he was dead, too, and what would that mean for the children? For Stephanie and Austin and Chuck?

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She sat at the table sometimes and watched Chuck and wondered how she would ever know who had died and who had lived, if anyone had but her. She sat and listened to Rory move around and worried that Stephanie would go off to college sad that her mother could not see her go. And then she worried that Stephanie would not be sufficiently sad, that she would grow used to not having a mother. That Stephanie and Austin would be okay being raised by a father only, by Ansel, and that she had not made any significant impact on her life of the sort they had made on hers. She wanted to be there, to protect them, to help their lives move forward the way they should. When she did not think those things, she instead thought that she would see Ansel again in the After and he would be Ansel, and that Stephanie and Austin would be alone in their life with nobody to look out for them. Her coffee, each morning, was accompanied by questions. If Ansel came to the After, would he not come to her? She felt terrible because she wanted Ansel to want to spend eternity (if that was how long people stayed in the After) with her… But she had walked away from him the last time she saw him here. She felt terrible about that. In all this time… weeks… she had not found him again and in all this time she had not stopped feeling badly about leaving him behind and had not stopped wondering if she would ever see him again. She wondered if in walking away from him she had banished her own version of Ansel – if he was really alive and if her Ansel existed only here in the After. Or if she simply cast the real Ansel out of her own After.

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When she thought those things she would go find Chuck again and hold his hand or touch his head. She did not want to keep losing people. She made sure that Rory slept apart from her, here in this building that for some reason was an exact replica of the home of a character in a movie that she had loved that had been set in England. In the movie, the star had lived in a charming little house, and now she shared that house with Rory and Chuck while they waited to move on. It was the third place they had been in since Pizza Lady had gone away. When Saorise thought back to that, she wondered sometimes if Pizza Lady had actually left the After… or simply left Saoirse and Chuck and William Howard Taft? The jumble of possibilities made Saoirse’s head hurt and she tried to avoid wondering about that. It never lasted long, as she went back to trying to remember her life before the After, and pondering what her family’s life would be like without her. But Pizza Lady’s warning about the Tree, and William Howard Taft, was always lurking around in her mind and Saoirse thought of it, turning the warnings over and over in her mind and trying to decide if Pizza Lady had been real, and if not, whether the warnings were real or were something her subconscious or the After or whatever had made up to shake her out of her funk and give her something to do? Was she going to spend all eternity on some futile quest invented for the sake of giving her something to do? Is that the limit of my imagination, she asked herself, as she heard Rory turn on the TV upstairs. Saoirse thought as she got out of bed: Anything imaginable is mine, and I set myself chasing after a dead president who’s trying to find a tree?

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She knew what the Tree was, not surprisingly, and the symbolism of the Tree, now that she understood where and what it was, worried her that maybe this was all an elaborate construct she’d made up. That worry had not risen until recently, probably because she’d only recently in her dreams realized that she was dreaming of a garden, and probably because it had all been so bewildering when Pizza Lady had gone, and Saoirse had blinked and realized that not only was Pizza Lady gone, but she herself was at Wembley Stadium during Live Aid, with Queen on the stage. She hadn’t known immediately that was where she was. She’d only known that Pizza Lady was gone, and she was surrounded by raucous cheering. She was sitting on a folding chair, Chuck on her lap, an empty seat next to her. All around her were people with spiky hair and pierced ears, or people wearing shirts with collars up and with pant cuffs rolled, or just t-shirts and shorts. All were on their feet waving their arms in a crisscrossing motion as Freddie Mercury on stage waved at them and sang. Saoirse had gripped Chuck tightly so he would not get lost in the crowd. Chuck had put his hands over his ears because it was loud, and they both had looked around, wide-eyed. Someone had tapped her on the shoulder. A security guard was saying something to her, but it was too loud to hear, so she had said “What?” and he had leaned in and talked directly into her ear, shouting to be heard over the crowd’s chant: “We need you to come with us!” “Why?” she’d said.

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The guard had just motioned; talk was not very easy there. She’d picked up Chuck and carried him with her. The guard appeared unperturbed that she had a toddler with her at a rock concert as they made their way past the crowds of people, near the speakers which blasted out sound with an almost-physical feel and to a small side door that led under the stands, The crowd roaring behind her, guitars swelling, made Saoirse pause at the doorway and she’d looked back at the sounds briefly before going underneath the stands into the tunnels. The sound was muffled. Chuck leaned his head on her shoulder and took his hands off of his ears. He sucked his cheeks in and she looked at him. “Fish face” she said, and he put his hand up and patted her nose. The guard looked back. “Excuse me?” he said. “Talking to my son,” Saoirse told him. He nodded. “He’s in a sorry state,” the guard told her then, confusing Saoirse a little. The guard did not have a British accent, and that had kept her from realizing what concert she’d ended up at, right away. Later, sitting at the table in the house with Rory above her making muffled sounds, she realized that not everyone in this London had an accent. She wondered why that was, as a distraction from trying to remember the Garden in her dreams, and the path she’d taken, and as a distraction from wondering how to find that Garden, which she thought she ought to be doing. Or was she supposed to be finding William Howard Taft? It was starting to seem like Pizza Lady, and her warning, had not actually existed, and whenever Saoirse thought that, she got all confused about what existing meant, here, anyway.

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She preferred to mull, now, why not everyone in her London spoke with an accent. There appeared to be no pattern to who did or did not. She didn’t mind it, she just wondered about it. She thought back again to when she’d first arrived here. They had paused, with the guard, by a door underneath Wembley Arena, and the guard had looked over at her. “We didn’t clean him up, I’m afraid. Not really something we could do. Wasn’t until a few minutes ago that Tommy thought to check him for a ticket stub and see who he might be here with, and so we did that. That’s how we found you.” Saoirse didn’t even have time to wonder who she was here with before before the guard opened the door and she saw Rory laying on a canvas stretcher, hair matted down with sweat and shirt messy from what must have been vomit. His skin was pale and a washcloth lay on his forehead. There was a bucket next to him. He wasn’t the only person in the room, and he wasn’t the worst or messiest either. The surprising thing to her, later, was how quickly she had recognized him. She had not seen Rory – in life – for, 21 years, since he was 18 and she was 17. So he should have been 39 years old, she’d have guessed – shouldn’t he be 39, here? His real age? Or, she sometimes thought, he should be 18. If he was based on Saoirse’s memories of him, he should be 18; she couldn’t remember him after she’d never seen him again, so he should be 18. But he wasn’t. He was actually in between both of those ages. When she first watched him laying there underneath what she’d later learn or recall was Wembley Arena, Saoirse guessed that Rory was about 25.

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Rory had rolled over on the cot and groaned. “Oh, God, Saoirse, I wish I’d eaten lunch after all.” She looked at the guard, baffled. The guard shrugged and looked away. “Um. Hi. Hi, Rory.” She looked to the guard and said “What am I supposed to do? Is he in trouble?” The guard shook his head. “He didn’t do anything other than pass out. Probably the heat.” The guard winked at that. “He hasn’t been any trouble, but once they’re able to get up and around, more or less, we like to clear the bed and make room for the next one.” And indeed, a group was edging past them and bumping into them, a woman and man each in uniform and a young girl was helped in, muttering about calling her mum and being supported over to a cot. Saoirse looked from the new arrival to Rory, who was sitting up now and holding his head. “You were right,” he said, looking up at her and then wincing. “I shoulda at least had a sandwich. Or something. Plus this English beer. Geez. Too thick.” He tried to smile but it came off as tired. He stood up and swayed. “Oh, God, I’m gross. Sorry. Sorry about that. God, I suck. Sorry.” He appeared to be randomly apologizing. He came over, staggering just a little, still drunk just a little, and the guard helped him by putting a hand on his shoulder. “Oh, thanks. Thanks. Sorry,” Rory went on, and then looked at Saoirse “Who’s he?” he said, looking at Chuck. “This,” said Saoirse, “Is my son, Chuck. He’s just over two.”

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Rory said “Hi, Chuck. Sorry to you, too. Can I go?” directing the last question to the guard. Rory mumbled and talked as he went out. “Got to get something to eat and I suppose I oughtta buy a shirt. God, I’m sorry. You know me. I always think I can drink more than I can. You must hate me. I’m still a little drunk. I didn’t mean to, though, and you were right when you told me that I shoulda ate something. I know better, I guess, but maybe it’s the time change and I just didn’t feel like eating. Funny how I felt like drinking but not like eating, isn’t it? Maybe not so funny. We can go back out to the concert if you want. I’m going to go in here and get cleaned up,” and he disappeared through a bathroom door. Saoirse stood there and tried to figure out if she had been here earlier. Who had been telling Rory that he should eat? Not her. She patted Chuck’s head as people walked past her, most of them as drunk as or more drunk than Rory appeared to be now; some of them, she suspected, would be on the cots before long. She remembered Live Aid only sparsely. She had not paid much attention to it when it had first actually occurred, other than to think it was kind of a nice idea to raise money and also to think that it would be terrible to have to sit through a fourteen hour concert. She wondered if that made her being here ironic but couldn’t decide. Rory came back out, shirt off now and smelling a little better. He was still talking and Saoirse wondered if he’d stopped while in the restroom. “Messy in there. I think someone was getting high. Have you seen a place selling t-shirts? I can’t even remember which direction our seats are in. Did you want to go back to the seats, and watch the rest of the concert? I’m pretty sure I could last a little bit at least. I’ll just sit and maybe nap.”

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“No. I’m fine,” Saoirse said. “Oh, right. Chuck, you said his name was? Is he tired? Maybe he wants to go. I just don’t want to make this a waste of your time.” “Don’t worry about it.” She followed Rory in the direction from which they’d come. “I guess I maybe should eat something. I’m not really hungry. I just feel empty, you know? I threw up a lot.” Saoirse wondered, later if she should have just walked away at that point. He couldn’t have found her if she’d disappeared, right? Maybe he could have. Who knew? Instead, she’d followed him to buy a t-shirt and some food and then they’d left, walking out into a London that looked exactly like the London she’d seen only in movies. That had been a while back. Saoirse now sat in the house they shared, platonically, and thought again about whether it wouldn’t have been better to have simply said something like “Well, then, good-bye, have a good life,” and left. She wondered what would have happened, if she’d done that instead of getting on to a bus which had let them off a block from this house, Chuck nearly asleep on her shoulder. The key to the door was in her hand, something she only realized when Rory had turned to her expectantly. And with the key in her hand, she hadn’t felt like she could just leave. Rory entered the kitchen, now, and looked at her. “Oh, hello,” he said, with the same sort of odd look he gave her each morning. It was maybe shyness, she thought. “Good morning,” she said.

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Chuck walked in, sleepy, and shook his head. He walked over to the table. As Saoirse sat, watching, Rory pulled down a box of cereal and poured him a bowl. Chuck picked out the pieces one at a time, no spoon. “There’s coffee,” she said to Rory. “Thanks,” he said. With a cup poured, he sat down across from her. “Well,” he said. The newspaper was sitting on the table. She did not look at it and had not read it the entire time they’d been here. She wondered what news was in it, but never had the urge to pick it up. They sat in silence for a few minutes. “Okay. I’m going to shower up,” Rory said. “All right,” Saoirse said. Rory left. A few seconds later, the door upstairs closed and then shortly after that, water started running. Saoirse leaned down on her arm and turned her head to Chuck. “What do you suppose we’re to be doing?” she asked him. She looked up over his head as she said it, out the window to the blue skies that marked another perfect day. London was supposed to be gray and cloudy, wasn’t it? Chuck shrugged. She looked back down at him. “Did you answer me?” she asked. He nodded. “Are you talking now?” He shook his head.

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“Why not? Shrug. “But you’ll say yes and no.” Nod. “Hmmm.” Chuck continued eating. “So you don’t know what we’re supposed to be doing, either?” He shook his head. “It’s been three weeks, I think, and I’m starting to get worried.” “So am I,” said Rory from behind her, and she turned around, startled, to see Rory dripping wet in a towel, hair plastered to his head and water running down his nose and a puddle forming on the floor. The shower was still running upstairs, which was why she hadn’t heard him come down. “What?” she asked him. He came over and sat down on her left, moving the cereal box a little further away. Chuck continued eating, watching them. “It’s been three weeks. How long are you going to be mad at me?” “Mad at… I’m not mad at you. Why would I be mad at you?” “Look, I got drunk, all right? I got too drunk and you were right and I should’ve eaten something. But it’s not like I’ve got a problem. I drink maybe once a year or something like that and it was early and it was a concert, so yeah, I should’ve eaten something and the beer was stronger than I expected but that’s no reason to have everything fall apart…” he trailed off.

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Saoirse crazily thought, for just a second I should just get up and go. She wondered if she’d end up back at the farm house. She said: “I don’t know what you’re talking about.” “Don’t you? Why this treatment? Why the cold shoulder? You acted that night like you didn’t even want me to come inside and then you’ve been distant and we’re not even sleeping in the same room, let alone the same bed and all you do is sulk around.” Had she been sulking around? The same bed? “Oh my god,” she said. She looked at Chuck, then back at Rory. “Are we married?” she asked him. Rory sat up and clapped his hands on his lap. “Look, I know, all right? I know. I know you don’t want to get married. I don’t know why, but even so, that doesn’t mean that we have to live together like roommates. I mean if you’re going to get mad at me, this mad, and be this mad for three weeks then what in the heck am I supposed to do about it? I mean, what do you want? Flowers? Should I buy flowers? Should I go into treatment?” “So… we’re … not married.” Saoirse frowned. Rory stared at her. “That’s not even funny. Whatever. Do what you want.” He stood up again and walked back upstairs. She heard a door shut, and wondered why he hadn’t slammed it.

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In the quiet of the house she could hear Chuck crunching his cereal. “I have no idea what I am supposed to do here,” she told him. He pointed, back over her shoulder. She looked there. “What are you pointing at, the door?” He nodded. “You think we should just leave?” He shook his head. “I heard that,” Rory said from behind her as he came down the stairs. “Will you stop sneaking up on me?” she demanded of him. He had a backpack. He looked like he had tears in his eyes. Saoirse wondered if everything was supposed to be perfect here, why is there so much crying? “You don’t have to leave,” he said. “I’ll leave. I’ll go.” She stood up. “Rory, I don’t think you get exactly what’s going on here,” she told him. “I’m sorry,” But he interrupted. “I don’t think you are sorry. And maybe you don’t need to be. I don’t know. But I can’t take it anymore and I don’t know what to do. It’s been a long time. You act like you don’t even know me.” “That’s because I don’t know you.” He looked back at her from the front hall. “That’s a fine thing to say,” he said. “Stop,” she told him. He put a hand on the door. “Rory, you have to listen to me. You think all of this…” she waved her hand around in intending to take in the house and the city of London around them and the concert and the Pizza Lady and everywhere else she’d been, “Is real. But it’s not. Or maybe it is. I don’t know. But it’s not really real, it’s…”

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She stopped talking because he’d opened the door and London was not outside. A meadow was. A manicured meadow with small trees and bushes and rolling hills, ridiculously, sat outside the door. “Oh my god, that’s it,” she said, and dropped to her knees. Rory, seeing her drop, closed the door and said: “What’s the matter?” “No!” Saoirse shouted and lunged from her knees, for the door handle, hearing it click closed as Rory tried to help her without knowing what he was helping. She pulled frantically at the handle and opened the door again. A small street in London lay outside. “Rory,” she groaned. Could she be mad at him? She sat back on her legs and rubbed her face. “Now, I don’t know what to do,” she muttered. “What’s going on with you?” Rory asked her, crouching down. “Is everything okay?” Chuck had wandered into the front hall, holding his bowl of cereal. He sat now and ate it and watched them. Saoirse moved herself back against the wall and looked up at Rory. “What’s going on with me?” she asked. “Didn’t you see?” “See what?” “Outside the door, Rory. Outside the door. You opened the door and the street wasn’t out there, it was the meadow. The garden.”

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She had recognized the garden instantly, from her trip each night further into it, in her dreams. Each night she’d gotten further into it, and she was certain what was at the center of it, now. She’d not even tried to dismiss the visions as just dreams: If ever there was a time and place that dreams could not be shrugged off as just random thoughts, she felt, it was when one’s life had led her to a world where she could end up living in a house in a never-existed-version of London with a man who may or may not have been the slightly-more-grown up version of one’s boyfriend from the life one used to lead before one died. “You’re kidding, right?” said Rory. “You didn’t see it? You didn’t?” Saoirse asked him. “See what?” Rory asked and opened the door again and the meadow was there. Saoirse yelped and started to stand up as Rory reflexively muttered something like it’s just a street and started to close the door. She dove and stuck her arm in the door, so that when he did swing it closed, the door bounced off of her arm and stayed open. Arm in the door, she rolled onto her side and looked up at Rory, who’s mumbling about there’s nothing there had trailed off. As he looked out the door and felt the warm, fresh breeze coming in, she sat up, keeping herself in the doorway and the door from closing. He looked at the meadow and said “Okay, well, I’ll be going.” “Look outside, Rory,” Saoirse said. He did so. “Yeah?” he asked. “Don’t you see the meadow?” “Of course I see it.”

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“And it doesn’t bother you?” “Why should it bother me? What bothers me is you, acting like this. You won’t talk to me, you won’t sleep in the same bed as me, after all this time,” She interrupted him: “After all what time? How much time, Rory?” Before he could answer, she said “Don’t answer that. You don’t find it the slightest bit odd, Rory, that outside of the door of our… our?... London house there is a rolling meadow in a cultivated garden? Has that always been there?” Rory looked at the meadow and then at her. “I don’t know what you’re getting at,” he said. “You really don’t,” Saoirse said. It wasn’t a question. She stood up, keeping herself carefully placed in the doorjamb so that he could not close the door. “You really don’t, do you?” But that wasn’t a question, either. “How long have we been together, Rory?” she asked him. “I don’t know,” he said, and appeared to be thinking. “A long time. A couple of years.” She wondered if Rory had died, and how. “Don’t go, Rory,” she said. “Don’t go.” She sighed. “We’ll get through this. We will.” They all stood there for a second, and then she said “Want to take a walk with me?” She motioned towards the garden outside the door. Rory looked outside, and down at Chuck and then at her. He took off the backpack. As he did that, Saoirse remembered last night’s dream, the one in which she’d seen the Tree.

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In her dreams, Saoirse had seen the Tree, but only in silhouette. And last night, there had been a silhouette of a large man sitting there. He had started to turn around to face her in her dream but she’d woken up. She was sure it was William Howard Taft, and she had realized, when she’d seen that in the dream, and today, too, that she was supposed to be looking for him. Or stopping him. .“Yeah,” Rory finally said. “Okay.” They turned around and walked into the garden.

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Eleven: The night before in her dream Saoirse had gotten close enough to the Tree and the man underneath it to see for certain that it was William Howard Taft standing there. Now she expected to see him everywhere as they walked. As they walked into the garden and out of the tiny London house she, for some reason, was sharing with Rory, Saoirse expected the trip to be relatively quick. She walked briskly, consumed with memories of the dreams in which she’d already gone through the garden, bit by bit, and thinking also that maybe underneath it all, in the After, everything was a garden, overlaid by a meshing together of the desires and half memories of the people who came here, people who were let back into the Garden. Her thoughts made her sad and kept her quiet. She stayed just ahead of Rory, who was also quiet, and let Chuck roam a little, thinking things through. S She hoped that the After was not individual to each person – that the people in her After were not merely “people” but were… real. She thought they weren’t – that the people around her were people who had actually been, and that she was a part of their existence the way they were part of hers. She had Chuck here, after all, and Rory, and they seemed real, and there were people like William Howard Taft and Pizza Lady had felt like they were people she hadn’t created. Why would she create Pizza Lady? How could she? Pizza Lady had thoughts and feelings and memories of her own, adventures of her own, scenarios of her own – things that Saoirse was sure she could not have invented.

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After all, she told herself the best I can do for the perfect life is a house in London with an ex-boyfriend. She wondered where Ansel, and Stephanie, and Austin were. She wanted to go looking for them, too, but had the feeling that it was more important to be in this Garden. She wanted them here with her in this Garden… and then she didn’t, because she knew that they would not want to be here, they would want to be doing whatever they’d been doing before she’d messed it up and gone off with William Howard Taft and they’d realized where they were or what they were. She thought back to that moment in the kitchen just before dinner, the moment she’d first realized things were off, or not off. How long had she been here, then? Had she just arrived? At one point, she’d looked at Rory and saw him give her a faint smile back. She wondered if he’d died, and how, and why he’d showed up like this for her. Saoirse had not thought of Heaven in some time before getting here and even when she’d had, she’d never given much thought to how Heaven would look or what she would do there. She remembered having a vague image of some palaces, and maybe clouds. She had never thought about how one would spend eternity after dying. She walked in the garden and remembered going to church once and reciting, with everyone else, a prayer that included a phrase about being allowed to spend eternity with the saints and angels singing the praises of God. She could recall thinking that would not be much of an eternity, just singing. But what kind of eternity involved living in a house with a brief-high-school crush?

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The day passed without much talking. They took a break at what felt like her to be lunchtime. She’d paused, and looked back to tell Rory she was hungry and needed to stop, and had seen a small basket just off to Rory’s left. It was a picnic basket that they had not brought with them, she knew. I can wish up a picnic basket but I have to walk to find this tree, Saoirse thought to herself, and they’d eaten lunch with Chuck sitting on her lap and Saoirse ruffling his hair while she ate, and Rory chewing and looking down at his feet, and Saoirse feeling guilty because the rest of her family was not there and Rory does. She had a small start when she took a bottle of orange juice out of the basket and it was cold, as though it had been refrigerated. Then they’d walked again and kept going until it was nearly, Saoirse felt, dinner time. She began wondering what would happen at night – if they had to sleep. Would they leave the Garden? Would it separate the three of them? Would that matter? It was growing darker and the sun was lower, behind them, which meant they were walking east. That struck Saoirse as odd because her memory and sense of direction told her they’d started out heading west. She was certain they had not turned one-hundred eighty degrees. Rory broke the silence that had accumulated and said “So what are we looking for here, then?” Saoirse was startled. “Looking for?”

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“We must be looking for something, the way I’ve seen you today. You keep going in one direction. And you’re looking at everything we pass and scanning the horizon and all that. Are we looking for something in particular, or just exploring?” Saoirse chewed and wondered how to answer. Could I lie here? She wondered. She and Ansel had a discussion one time, sitting on a break from shopping. In a mall food court, with Ansel sipping at a shake, and she had suddenly, out of the blue, asked: “How many people did you sleep with before you met me?” Ansel shook his head and laughed and swallowed his milkshake and said: “No.” “What do you mean, no? That’s not an answer to the question,” she said to him, then. “It’s the only answer I’m giving. I’m not getting into that,” he'd told her. “Why not?” “Because there’s no good answer. Suppose I… never mind. There’s just no good answer.” “I don’t know what you mean. Just tell me. What is it, three?” Ansel had not been very old at that time. Saoirse sat now in the garden, ready to eat dinner and looking at another picnic basket, one that would have cold drinks in it, she assumed, because that was paradise, too, wasn’t it? Food never going bad and not needing to lug a cooler around? Just having picnic baskets appear like prizes in a game is paradise. She thought back to that

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conversation with Ansel and wondered what to tell Rory, now, about what they were doing in the Garden. Somewhere, she thought, somewhere in their own Afters, people are finding out what it’s like to explore other planets. Or living life as a bird in a rainforest. Or are waking up to find out they’re just … a color... or something. Other people's afterlives, she thought, must be amazing, beautiful things. For her part, here she was, walking through the Garden of Conveniently Placed Picnic Baskets, with her son and an ex-boyfriend and wondering whether she could lie in the After. Ansel, in the food court, had insisted he would not discuss ex-girlfriends and people he’d slept with and had said, finally, “If I tell you, then you’re going to want to know more about them. You’re going to want to know if they were pretty and if they were long-term relationships or if they were one-night stands or why I slept with them, and it’ll either be a bigger number or smaller number than yours, and that will make you wonder if I’m promiscuous or not and will make you wonder if you’re too promiscuous and it’ll just keep raising all kinds of doubts.” “But I told you how many people I’d slept with,” she had said. Telling him that had been easy for her: it had been none. She’d confessed that on their third date, and had wanted to ask him how many he had slept with, then, but he hadn’t said anything in response to her confession and she had not known him well enough to bring it up at that point... or until the conversation at the Mall food court. “Yes, but I didn’t ask, you know," Ansel had said. “Why don’t you just make up a number?” she'd asked.

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“That’s even worse. Then I’ve got to remember that number and if I cut people out then I have to remember, if it ever comes up, who I cut out of the list. And what if I add people, and then someday break down or we go to my high school reunion and the numbers don’t add up? Then what? I’m a liar.” “It wouldn’t be a bad lie,” Saoirse had said. “It’s not like you would be trying to hurt me with it. You’d be trying to help me.” “There’s no such thing as a good lie,” Ansel had responded. There’s no such thing as a good lie, Saoirse thought now, and missed Ansel and his straightforward way of looking at things, the way he’d taught her to see things sometimes. “We’re looking for a Tree. And William Howard Taft,” she said. “I was told to look for him by a woman we met, because he’s trying to find a Tree and we need to stop him.” Rory looked surprised. “What lady?” “Pizza Lady.” Rory looked around and waited before he asked “William Howard Taft the president?” “Yes,” Saoirse said, looking at him. “He’s dead, right?” “That’s right.” “He’s in this garden?” “I think so.”

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Rory looked down, picked up some grass, tore it out, and let it fall out of his fingers. “Where’s London?” he asked. “I don’t know. Back that way, maybe,” Saoirse said. She watched him carefully. William Howard Taft had said that there were only a few people like herself and Pizza Lady and himself, people who knew what was going on and had some degree of direct control over their After. Could she make Rory one of those people? She didn’t want to just tell him he was dead, and she wasn’t sure that he was dead. He might have been something that she conjured up. As Rory thought, Saoirse desperately wished that there was a priest or minister or professor or even television psychic to help make sense about this and impose some rules on it, the way that people had done in life, the way churches had described Heaven and what you had to do to get there and Hell and what you had to do to avoid it, the way psychics and movie makers had then come up with their own versions of the afterlife, ghosts and Purgatory and other dimensions and reincarnation and karma, none of it fit together but you at least had an idea of what to expect, you knew that there were rules and how they shaped things. You knew that poltergeists were harmful malicious spirits and that zombies ate brains and that angels came down from Heaven to deliver messages and that the world could flood and that if you did or didn’t do certain things you’d either spend eternity in a white robe singing, or boiling in a lake of fire, depending. Right now, it didn’t matter to her that they were all wrong, in the end. Saoirse didn’t care, right now, if the answers she was given were wrong. She just wanted someone to give her some answers. Ansel, she knew, could have done that.

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But she had walked away from him. Why had she done that? Rory sighed and said “Can we at least quit for the day?” Saoirse was disappointed that he had not suddenly said I’m dead or leapt to his feet or snapped his fingers and dissolved the scene. Instead, he gathered up the remnants of a dinner she now didn’t remember eating and looked up at the darkening sky. “It’s a beautiful night, isn’t it?” he said. “It is,” Saoirse agreed. She laid back on the wonderfully springy grass that did not scratch or irritate or tickle her but instead simply supported her and gave her something soft and nice to relax on. It was not like laying on carpet, but rather like laying on grass that had learned how to behave. She rubbed her head a little, and Rory leaned over. “Headache?” he asked. Saoirse shook her head. She continued to be honest. “I don’t think it’s possible to have a headache here, Rory.” He held up his hand and rubbed her forehead for her. She closed her eyes and let him do that, feeling as though it was wrong to get a head rub from him, but she did not stop him. She heard Chuck walk a few feet away, and popped her eyes open, stopping Rory’s hand. Chuck was sitting next to the rocks, one hand reaching out to a firefly that was buzzing around in that too-slow way that they had. He wasn’t looking at her. Saoirse sat up. “Saoirse,” Rory said.

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“What?” she asked. She didn’t like the tone of his voice. It sounded too romantic. “Why didn’t we get married?” he asked. Saoirse looked at his face. The sun was down under the horizon and the stars were already shining, creating a strange sort of light. She didn’t want to have to answer Rory’s question. She almost caught herself wishing for the farmhouse, her cup of coffee, her book, but stopped. As much as that drew her, she felt as though she could not go there, yet. So she answered him: “I don’t know,” Saoirse said. “I didn’t know that you wanted to marry me.” She worried for a moment that if this was Rory’s After, that the statement wouldn’t make sense and would throw him off or upset him, but decided that if the disappearance of London and the mysteriously-appearing picnic baskets and her explanation that they were looking for a dead president didn’t cause him concern, her statement wouldn’t do any harm even if it directly conflicted with something he believed had happened “I don’t know how you couldn’t know.” “Rory,” she asked, leaning back again. “What did you do?” “I asked you a lot,” he said. “Not that. What did you do for a living?” “I was a teacher.” He said. Saoirse sat up straight at his answer. Rory was thinking. The starlight, with no sun left at all, shone like Christmas tree lights, soft and twinkly and all around but not bright enough to see details. Rory’s face

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was visible, barely, the edges fading into the night. “I am a teacher,” Rory said. “I don’t know why I said it in the past tense.” He laid back. Then he sat up again. “Why? Why do you want to know?” “Because I didn’t know and I wondered,” Saoirse asked. She didn’t know whether this Rory was the real Rory, whether the goofy teenager who would get overly angry when his dad wouldn’t let him use the car, who tried out for every sport but made none of the teams, who ran for Treasurer on the student council and who never seemed to have his homework done, had become a teacher. “Rory?” She asked again. “Yes?” Rory said. His voice still sounded romantic. She tried to be neutral. “What happens, do you think, when we die?” There was silence. She waited. She looked around, trying to remember where the rock was, where the bushes were. “We go to Heaven,” Rory said. “I suppose, if we’re good. That’s what I’ve always thought.” Saoirse watched the moon rise on the horizon from the way they’d come. “What does Heaven look like, do you guess?” She asked, quietly. There was no answer, only breathing sounds. She wanted Ansel here. She wanted someone to lay against her and provide her with a connection while she slept. Ansel used to edge up to her and put his arm around her while they slept. When she would complain that it was too hot or she needed space,

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he would hold her elbow lightly while he slept, and she’d let him do that because she liked to know he was there, and because he’d told her once that he slept better if he was touching her. Only Rory was here and she didn’t want him to do that. So she laid down next to Chuck and listened to him breath. She watched his hand clench and unclench and saw his relaxed eyelids flutter as he dreamt. She yawned, and she fell asleep. The dream began immediately. She recognized that and knew that she was dreaming. She was in the garden in her dream but not in the place where she and Rory and Chuck slept. In the dream she was at the spot they were looking for. It was daylight and she was walking forward without the lovely grass that skimmed under her bare feet. William Howard Taft sat quietly on a little hillock near the Tree which stood in the clearing in a center of a small grove. The Tree he sat by had a large round trunk that was the width of many trees. One person could not have put her arms around it; five would maybe have accomplished the task of encircling the Tree. The Tree’s branches sprung out from that truck about six feet above the ground, running out horizontally to great length, twenty or thirty feet at least. The branches ran out and ran up and ran straight, giving the tree the shape of a leafy half-globe. That was all she could see of it on her approach: a shape like a fluffy orb cut in half and perched on a wide trunk. William Howard Taft watched the Tree, not her. His legs were stretched in front of him, and he had his hands on his lap.

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She floated up to him. He turned as she got within an arm’s reach of him. “Hello,” he said. She hadn’t realized he would talk to her and was surprised for a moment. “You can see me?” she asked. “Why couldn’t I?” he asked her. “Because I’m dreaming this, aren’t I? It’s a vision?” “It is a vision,” he agreed. “But why should that matter?” “Are you actually here yet?” She meant outside the dream. He knew that. “I suppose I shouldn’t tell you. But you may realize it anyway. I think you are seeing the future, here.” She was confused. “You think so?” “Yes. I do not believe that I have reached the Tree yet. Although I am not sure of that, entirely. I have only opinions and hunches and theorems about much here in the After, and few hard facts.” “But you’re right here, now.” “I am right here in your dream, but I do not think I am right here in the After.” “Where are you, then?” Saoirse asked, then said: “Are you real, or am I only dreaming you?” “I shall answer the second question, and not the first. I know what you mean by real versus dreaming, although I suspect that those words do not mean the same thing in this existence. And the answer to your second question is this: I am real, and you are dreaming me.” “You’re trying to confuse me. Or I’m trying to confuse me.”

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“Sit down,” William Howard Taft told her. He patted the ground next to him. “You are not afraid of me, and you have no reason to be.” She wasn’t afraid of him and did sit down. Although the Garden was brightly lit, she could see no sun or source of light. She looked at the Tree. “Is this real?” Saoirse asked, then. William Howard Taft said “Yes,” and then added, “I’m fairly certain, and afraid, that it is.” “You know what I mean by real, right?” “That we are actually existing in it, living in it, moving forward. That the After is not some fevered dream you are suffering while waiting for medical attention, not a hallucination, not madness imposed on your mind from the parts of your brain you cannot control. That this is now your state of existence.” That was better than Saoirse could have put it. She said “Yes.” “By those standards, then, this is real.” “How am I doing this?” “Dreaming?” “With you in it.” “I am having the same dream.” He cocked an eyebrow at her. “I have been having these dreams for some time now. Each night, I get a little closer to the Tree. And each night you get a little closer to me. And each night, I see a little more of the Tree. Each night it becomes more distinct. I think I will be here, soon. And I will get to see it, then. Outside of the dream. See it and stand beneath it.” “What will you do?”

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“How much of the Tree can you see? How much detail?” William Howard Taft asked her, instead. “I can see the whole thing.” “Details?” She shook her head. “No. Just a shadowy outline. Maybe a little more than I could see last night because tonight I see the little bumps and edges of the leaves around the shadows. Last night, I could barely tell they were leaves.” “I don’t know if seeing it more clearly means I am closer to it,” Taft confessed, and steepled his hands. “Or perhaps it simply means that I have a better imagination, that I am more capable of fully realizing what the Tree might look like.” He looked at her. “Do you know how I know it is real?” he asked. She held up her hands. “No. How?” “I will tell you what I see. I see a wide thick trunk, wider and thicker than any tree I have seen before. It has brownish, yellow, and white bark on it, which I know even though I cannot tell if the bark is smooth or rough. The Tree is thick enough that at least five or six men would be needed to encircle it. At a height of just above my eye level the branches begin to spread out from the trunk, even and straight for the most part, in a glorious circle that stretches back some forty feet, all around. The Tree is amazingly uniform. The branches form a half-globe, almost, as though the Tree was a full circle of leafy branches but someone cut it in half and then balanced it on the trunk. And there are…” but he stopped himself. “There are what?” she asked. He did not answer.

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“Tell me,” she said. He just looked at her. “Come on,” she said, leaning in to him. “We’ve cooperated so far. Haven’t we?” “You’re trying to stop me.” “Pizza Lady told me to do that. She didn’t tell me what you were going to do. She said you were going to find The Tree because you wanted to leave the After.” “I wonder how she knew?” William Howard Taft said. He chewed his knuckle. “Where did you go with her?” “Tell me what you just now didn’t tell me, and I’ll answer that.” They sat in silence for a very long time. The light did not shift. A breeze sprang up. Finally, William Howard Taft said: “There are flowers on the tree.” Saoirse thought about that. Why wouldn’t he have told her that before? William Howard Taft looked at her. Watching her work it through. She remembered the apple tree, from their yard, when she was little. She remembered when it flowered. She remembered her own mother, explaining to her that the flowers would turn into fruit. “You’re going to eat the fruit,” she said. William Howard Taft nodded. “Why?” she asked. Then she realized, and felt stupid. “Nevermind,” she said. “I know.” William Howard Taft said, very softly, “I want to get kicked out.” “You don’t,” she said. “Not really.”

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“Yes. I do,” he said. It was barely a whisper. She looked at him. His eyes were narrowed, almost closed. Was he crying? Trying not to cry? She could not tell. “And you think this is The Tree, that this is the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil?” “It is. How could it not be? I have decided that it is, and I have tracked it down. Over decades and decades I have been looking for it and studying the clues and I learned that this Tree, the Tree, exists. And I have found it, or at least found the location where it exists, and soon I will be near it.” They sat for a moment. “I have been let back in the Garden,” Taft told her, “But I do not want to stay here.” “Why?” “Why do you want to leave?” Taft asked her. “You tried to leave. You are trying to leave, aren’t you? You think about it.” She hadn’t for a while, but she thought about it. Would she leave, if given a chance? Her mind bothered her and she felt as if she was being watched. She rubbed her face. She looked at William Howard Taft. “I don’t want to not be alive,” she said. “I want to live, not have… this. I don’t even know what this is, whether it’s real or what parts are real or how it works or anything and none of it feels right. I want things to be real.” “Do you?” Taft asked. He looked intently at her. “Yes,” Saoirse said, wondering what he was seeing.

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“How can you say this is not real?” Taft asked. In the dream, Saoirse did not say, the grass did not feel like anything that she could think of. And she was dreaming the grass, dreaming this, and even her dreams here in the After were different. Once she realized that, she tried to remember how dreams had been in life, but could not, really. Life was slipping away from her. How long have I been here? Her memories of life were fuzzy at best, barely registering and disjointed, like images stored in blurry 3-by-4 inch photos, tucked together with a residue of feelings. She tried to think whether, in her life, she had remembered things more clearly. Had she been able to remember smells, and feelings, and images before? She couldn’t tell anymore. She sat there with those ideas tearing around her, and fought the tugging persistence of feeling she was supposed to do something, fighting because she wasn’t sure what she should be doing. She stood. She sat down again. She knelt, and then stood again. She fidgeted. She heard her name called and spun around. Nobody was there. She turned back again and William Howard Taft was standing up in front of her. She was surprised, a little startled, and looked up at him. He put his hands on her shoulders. “I wish I had more time to know you,” he said. “I probably would have enjoyed it. I will always, I suppose, wonder if you would have wanted to continue to leave or if you would have changed your mind and decided to stay.” “Don’t…” she said, suddenly afraid. Could bad things happen? Was he going to hurt her? She couldn’t believe that, but what was he doing? What was he saying?

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“If I let you stay here, in the Garden, you will try to stop me. And I do not want to be stopped.” “Don’t hurt me,” Saoirse breathed out. He was so much larger than her. William Howard Taft smiled, but it was sad. “I can’t hurt you, not here. And I would not even try. But you will not like this.” He looked off in the distance. Saoirse felt her arm twitch as though pulled. Her head itched a little and she blinked several times rapidly.” “What in the…” she said. Taft leaned down almost as though he was going to kiss her. Her foot twitched now. She pulled back slightly. He looked into her eyes. He said: “Florida.”

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Twelve: Good god, it was hot, she thought, as she sat up. The dream was in her mind, still fresh and clear but rapidly fading, parts of it blanking away. She tried to capture it, to hold it there. She sat on the edge of her bed… … her bed? She tried to focus, tried to capture the dream before getting distracted by her surroundings. She told herself she would look around in a minute. Hold the image hold the image she thought, trying to remember the Tree and the Garden so that she would know where to go. Sweat dripped down her nose and there was a distant rumbling or hissing in the background that distracted her. She tried to focus, clenching her eyes shut until she heard Ansel’s voice: “Well, I’m sorry but I don’t know what happened to the air conditioner. Nice,” he was saying as she popped her eyes open and closed her suddenly-gaping mouth. Ansel looked at her and said “What’s going on?” She sat on the bed, all thoughts of the Garden driven out of her head. “You’re back!” she said. “Back?” “Are you… you?” she asked. Ansel set down the cup of coffee he’d been carrying for her and sat down next to her on the bed. “Am I… what, now? Are you awake?”

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She looked at him. He handed her the coffee, pointed to it, then her mouth. She took it and sipped it, giving her time to think. “Where’s Chuck?” she asked, then. “Sleeping, I think. If anyone can sleep in this heat.” “And… Stephanie and Austin?” she watched him as she spoke, trying to find clues. Was this real Ansel? The same Ansel as had been at the house? Or a new Ansel? “Probably asleep, too. I thought I heard the TV from the other room, maybe, but I’m not sure. So Austin may be up.” “How long… No. Wait. Is that all?” Ansel smiled at her and said “More coffee, maybe.” He put his hand on her head and rubbed her ear lightly. Saoirse looked around the room. The bed took up most of the space, leaving little room for a small dresser and nightstand. Through the window she could see the ocean. That was the background noise she’d heard: the breakers. Florida, William Howard Taft had said. She took another sip of coffee and looked at Ansel. There were sounds from the other room, and sounds from outside, and heat, already heavy and oppressive and tiring. “Ansel,” she said. He looked at her. “Awake yet?” he asked her. He moved his hand down to her back, in the middle, and rubbed lightly. She hunched down over her coffee and looked back up at him. Why Florida? She wondered.

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“Anything you want to do today?” he asked her. “I’ve got most of everything packed up.” “Packed?” she asked. “Yep. All except some of your clothes and your stuff. I’ve been up for a while. I think we should get a refund of some money, though, for the night without air conditioning.” Saoirse looked back at the bed she sat on. There was a thin blanket and a sheet on it, both twisted up and bunched at the end of the bed. She sat and ran her finger around the edge of her coffee cup. “Where are we going?” she asked. Ansel just rubbed her back. “You okay?” he asked. She looked at him and said “You don’t know anymore?” The other Ansel – was that her Ansel? -- he had known that they were in the After. He had known, he’d said, how they ended up here. Known there was a plane crash, and known that she was unhappy here. Now this Ansel did not seem to know those things, did not seem to understand, didn’t wonder how she had just woken up in this bed after how many days of traipsing around in London and elsewhere… Saoirse suddenly wondered: had she just woken up here? Had she been here before? Had she always been here and also in her farm house and also in London? Was she everywhere? “Where are we going?” she asked again, looking now at the suitcase sitting on the floor near the door, Ansel’s suitcase, she recognized, the same suitcase he’d had for over twenty years now, the same suitcase he’d used the very first time he’d come over, as her fiancé, to stay at her parent’s house.

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Ansel’s suitcase, here, even had the same sticker on it, a sticker that said Milwaukee. She remembered asking about that when she’d first seen the suitcase. “It was sort of a plan of mine,” Ansel had said at the time. “What kind of plan?” She’d been lying on his couch, feet on his old coffeetable, watching him gather things up to get in the car and drive to her parents house. “I was going to put a sticker on there for every place I traveled to, each time I went somewhere, until eventually it was covered with those stickers.” “When did you begin that plan?” “Five years ago, or maybe. I don’t know.” He’d grabbed his car keys, and said “Ready to go?” She’d stood up. “So you went to Milwaukee?” Ansel had shaken his head. “No. A friend gave me the sticker to get it started. Want to know the craziest part?” She had nodded and put on her coat. “Yes.” “I got the idea from Bugs Bunny cartoons. Remember, how he’d go to Australia or Pismo Beach and he’d always have that trunk – steamer trunks, they were called – and he’d pull it out of the rabbit hole and it’d have all those stickers on it, from places he’d been?” Saoirse had just smiled at him. She hadn’t watched Bugs Bunny cartoons and didn’t know about any of that. Ansel had paused and said “But I am not actually sure that it was him, you know, when I think about it. Maybe it was some other cartoon” Saoirse had laughed. “So your whole plan for your suitcase is based on remembering a cartoon that you’re not sure you remember.” Ansel had admitted, “It’s not exactly the best-thought-out plan in the world.”

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That suitcase, with its Milwaukee sticker, sat in the doorway, now, in this bedroom which was sticky with humidity and oppressed by heat, already. “You’re not you,” Saoirse said, a little sadly. Why Florida? She wondered, realizing at once that was where she was. How had he done that? The doorbell rang. She looked up at him. “Are we expecting someone?” Ansel looked out the window, a window which must, she realized, look out on the front of the house. The vacation… Saoirse remembered. They were going to Florida on vacation. Before the plane crash. Ansel said, now, at the window: “Who’s that?” “Who’s who?” she asked him and set her cup on the nightstand. She stood up and peeled her shirt away from her stomach, away from her back a little, trying to air-dry her sweaty skin, but it did no good. The shirt clung back to her almost immediately. “Some weird guy,” said Ansel. “I’ll get it,” Stephanie said from the other room, and Ansel said “I’d better go see what’s going on.” He walked out of the room, edging past her. He gave her a little pat on her side as he walked by and said “Have the rest of your coffee. Wake up a little. He’s probably some check-out guy from the condo place.” Saoirse went over to the window as she heard Ansel’s footsteps go down the stairs, slippers flapping on what sounded like tile. She looked out and peered down, and saw Rory standing there.

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Rory did not look up and Saoirse did not give him a chance to see her, pulling back from the window quickly. “Why is he here?” she asked herself. She sat back down on the bed and felt her thighs begin to sweat into the sheets. “And how did Taft send me here?” she asked herself again. Below, she heard the door open, voices mingling dimly, almost drowned out by the rattling of the air conditioner that for some reason was still on but which was not blowing cold air at all. She could not make out voices, and when she looked out the front window the stoop was empty. She looked at the ocean while she wondered what to do. Along the beach, people were walking, and breakers were washing up. Condos and houses stretched off to both sides. There were already a few walkers and a few bikers and a jogger here and there, glistening with sweat from the heat and humidity. Off to her left on the beach were some rocks and a rocky outcropping. She wondered about them, watching the breakers come rushing up against them to try to climb the rocks, water hurtling upward until it ran out of cohesive and propulsive energy and broke into foam and spattered down harmlessly on the stones. She watched the water pull away then and wondered if when the tide came in, or when the tide went out, whichever it was not now, wondered whether those rocks would be more or less covered. When she back, she saw again Ansel’s suitcase packed and in the doorway. Ansel always packed up the day before they left – packing up on the last full day of vacation. This must be the day they were leaving Florida, she realized. When they left Florida, where would they go? Back to their house, where this had all begun, both here and in life? Would they have to fly? Or would she wake up

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tomorrow in their house, or would the garden be outside of the door to their condo like it had been in London? The thought made her rush towards the door and through a hallway. Momentarily lost, she spun around, saw the stairway, and went down that, her feet slippery on the wooden steps. At the bottom, she got oriented and turned to where the front door should be and ran towards the opening in this room and through that and into the next, where she grabbed the front door and flung it open. A man was jogging by on the path in front of her, and the waves were louder. Behind her, she heard a voice. “Well, I didn’t say I was married to her. I just said… that I thought we were supposed to get married.” It was Rory. “But we’re married,” she heard Ansel say. He was calm. Much more calm than she herself might have been had the situation been reversed. Saoirse leaned against the doorway, wishing that the blue-green of the ocean would just become the manicured green lawn of the Garden. It did not do that, though, and she heard Ansel speak again from the kitchen. “And where did you come from?” “London. Well, kind of. It’s sort of confusing,” Rory said. Saoirse put her head up, then, and propped her face on her left hand. Rory was talking, still. “We were living in London, with her son.” “She has two sons. And a daughter.” “I don’t know anything about that,” Rory interrupted. “I don’t know about that at all. She had a son, Chuck, a quiet kid, didn’t talk much.”

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Saoirse wondered if she should go in there. Rory was explaining to Ansel: “ We were living together, and one day she just, I just, we just were going to … well, we were arguing, or something, and then there was a garden or park or something, and we all were walking in it. Me and her and Chuck went for a walk in the garden, spent the whole day doing it, and then I woke up and she wasn’t there. There was some other guy there, a big guy. He said his name was William or something. He said that Saoirse and Chuck had gone to Florida.” “He did?” Saoirse wondered what this-Ansel was making of the story. She listened when he spoke: “If you were in a garden, in England, in London, this morning…” “I told you, I’m not sure it was England, anymore. I don’t know what’s all going on.” “And if you were there, in this garden or park or something,” Ansel tried to continue. “She said it was a garden. I heard her call it that. Saoirse, I mean.” “If you were there just this morning,” Ansel continued, “Then how are you here?” Saoirse went to their voices and saw in the kitchen Rory, sitting there, in the brightly colored, cramped, sandy-in-the-corners kitchen with sky blue walls. She tried to remember, briefly, if she’d ever seen pictures of the place they’d been planning to stay in Florida. “There, she can tell you,” Rory said, seeing her first. Ansel turned around.

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“Hello, Rory,” said Saoirse. Ansel looked up at her. “You know him? He’s really telling the truth?” Saoirse resisted the temptation to say what is truth and instead nodded. “Sort of.” She sat down at the table in between them, and took Ansel’s hand. “He’s kind of right. There’s a garden and a park and we were there…” she sighed. “It’s hard to explain.” She looked at Rory. “But Rory, I’m married to Ansel.” She squeezed his hand. “I’m not married to you. I barely even know you.” “That doesn’t make any sense,” Ansel said, slowly. “You can’t be… he can’t be right. Saoirse, you’ve been right here, on vacation with us.” Saoirse was startled. “I have?” “Yes,” Ansel said. “You have. We’ve been on vacation and you’ve been here, every day, with me. Every day.” “I have?” Saoirse said again. She looked at Rory then back. “For how long?” She asked Ansel. “For our whole lives!” Ansel’s voice went up a notch in pitch. “I’m not sure I get this. Is it a joke?” Ansel stood up, then sat back down. “Are you having an affair? Is that it?” Saoirse wondered if it was possible to have an affair in the After. Or if it would be “an affair” at all? She looked up. “He sent you here to delay me,” she said to Rory. “But how?” “Nobody sent me here. That is, nobody made me come here. What do you mean?”

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Saoirse slumped a little at the table and wondered how to explain. Ansel leaned over and said “What’s going on?” Saoirse decided to just say it. She straightened up and said “We’re all dead. Or I am. I’m dead, for sure. We’re in the After. It’s hard to explain. It’s where we go when we die. It’s Heaven, maybe, only not so much. I think it’s not actually Heaven. I think it’s the Garden of Eden, only I don’t know that for sure because it’s not always a garden. You can see. But nothing bad is supposed to happen here, only bad things do because if nothing bad is supposed to happen then it’s not clear to me how Rory can be so unhappy and now you’re unhappy, too, Ansel, and I’m not happy, either. But nothing bad is supposed to happen here, and we come here when we’re dead and stay here, maybe for a while,” Ansel said “This is not making any sense.” Saoirse looked up at him and then in the doorway saw Stephanie holding Chuck.. Austin was just behind them. “What’s going on?” Stephanie asked. Saoirse remembered Stephanie saying something about climbing a mountain. She thought about that and said “Stephanie, tell your father what’s going on. You know, don’t you?” Stephanie looked at her curiously. But she didn’t say anything. She put Chuck down on the floor and came and sat at the table. “Who are you?” Stephanie asked Rory. “I’m Rory,” said Rory to Stephanie. “I’m Saoirse’s… your mom’s…” but he got flustered and then he leaned back and said “Well, what is going on here?”

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Stephanie looked at Saoirse. “Tell them,” Saoirse said. “Tell them what?” Stephanie asked. “Don’t be difficult,” Saoirse said, but even as she said it she realized that Stephanie didn’t have the challenge in her voice, the teenager show-off quality that Saoirse sometimes had heard… in life. Stephanie seemed sincere in not knowing what to say. Saoirse reached over and took her daughter’s hand, wondering how those hands could be so small when Stephanie was almost a grown-up. “Just tell them. About the mountain climbing. About the After.” Stephanie just looked down. Ansel watched her, and then looked at Saoirse. “I really don’t understand this,” he said, and Saoirse could sympathize with him. “I’m not crazy,” she said. “You don’t have to believe me but I’m not crazy. I don’t know how to prove it to you and maybe I don’t have to. I don’t know what I have to do or not have to do.” She reflected on what she’d just said and amended it. “What I have to do or don’t have to do.” They all still looked confused. Saoirse continued, to Ansel and Stephanie: “But I know you know what I’m talking about.” She turned to Rory. “I don’t know if you do or not. I don’t know why you’re here. But I’m not going to sit around here, either. I’m going for a walk.” She carried Chuck to the door and then looked down at herself. She was wearing pajamas, or what she usually wore for pajamas, a pair of old shorts and a t-shirt. She was barefoot. She wondered if she should go change before she went outside and decided that

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she did not have to, at all. Nobody outside that door knew that what she was wearing was actually her pajamas, that she had slept in these clothes. And everybody outside that door existed only because of her, anyway, so if she wanted to walk around in pajamas, she could do so. The idea that the entire world existed for her had just popped into her mind and she thought about that as she opened the door. She wondered where she should go and wondered how far she could push that. Should she go put on actual pajamas and walk around? See what people did? Behind her, Ansel’s voice came: “You can’t go anywhere. We’ve got to be on a plane in an hour.” She stepped out the door onto the planks of the front porch and felt the sand grit under her feet. She looked at the people, distant on the beach. She took a step forward and felt Ansel’s hand on her elbow. “Saorise,” he said, and she turned into him and wrapped her arms around him and buried her head into his shoulder, right in the hollow between his neck and shoulder and chest, in that little dimple where her face had always just reached to. Her nose was able to rest there and she could have her whole face pressed against him without discomfort and often when she’d done this she’d wondered whether that was a sign that they had been meant to fall in love with each other, the proof that they were really a good couple shown in how they fit together so well. As she hugged him, she could not find any detail that was not perfect, that was not Ansel, and she tried to stop wondering if this was really Ansel instead of just an Ansel. She held him and they fit together perfectly like a child’s puzzle, like interlocking shapes,

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as always. She’d always loved to lay up against him in bed while he read or slept. He’d lay on his side and she would lay next to him, her head against the back of his neck and her knees coming almost to his, her trying to mimic his shape, exactly. She would sometimes try that in the middle of the night. When he was asleep she would snuggle up, trying to match up to him even if he was on his back or facing her. She liked to feel that they fit together. “We’ll … figure this out,” he said, his arms around her. Saoirse, hugging him, heard footsteps go by but she didn’t care. She would have stood there like that forever, and in fact tried to. She willed them to just stay there, to not do anything, to spend as much of this time as possible doing just this. It didn’t work. From inside Stephanie called “I’ve got the little kids ready,” and Austin said “I’m not a little kid.” Ansel pulled back and said “I’ll load up the car,” and Saoirse regretfully let him go and brushed her hair with her hand, feeling a few grains of sand in it. He disappeared around the corner of the house, returned in a few moments backing a minivan down the driveway. Chuck joined Saoirse, his hand patting her head. She looked over her shoulder at him and patted her lap. He sat on her leg and pressed his hand against her cheek, pulling it back, then pressing it in again. He smiled. “Why don’t you talk?” she asked him. He continued his game. After a moment, she said “It’s okay. You can talk.” After a minute or two more, she said “I won’t be bothered by it.” Chuck didn’t answer. Ansel came over and said “That guy’s still sitting in the kitchen.” He ruffled Chuck’s hair and called for Stephanie. “I haven’t said anything to him about anything.”

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Saoirse sighed. “I don’t know what to tell you,” she said. “Are you having an affair?” “No. Ansel. I haven’t slept with him. Or touched him. Or kissed him. I don’t even really know him. I mean, I know him a little now but only because… look, I tried to explain and you just gave me that look.” “Why don’t you just tell me?” “I did.” Now Ansel sighed but before he could say anything Rory spoke behind them. “I don’t want you to leave me here,” he said. He opened the screen door of the house and said “I’m not sure what the deal is with this because I’ve been sitting in there thinking and I can’t figure it out but you,” he pointed at Saoirse “Left me in that garden thing and I’m not getting left behind again.” He looked up at the house. “Plus, I’ve got no money. I can’t find my wallet.” Saoirse said “You won’t need money.” Ansel said “We’re going to the airport.” Rory said “I’m coming with you.” Not much else was said and somehow Rory was in the minivan, sitting in the center row between Austin and Chuck. Stephanie was in the back row, with some extra luggage, and she did not say anything, either, leading Saoirse to wonder if here in the After Stephanie must be dead, must really be here, because Stephanie was not the type to let a man who claims to be in love with her mother and claims to be supposed to be marrying her just get into a van with them and not say anything, or if instead this

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Stephanie who watched the highway slip by was the ideal Stephanie that Saoirse had just created for herself, now, a 17-year-old who did not do all the things that 17-year-olds usually do. Nobody spoke as they drove along the road. Saoirse sat tensely in the front seat, after she had decided not to be tense but had not been able to avoid it, and she felt awkward as they merged onto a four-lane road. Ansel seemed to know which lane to be in and shifted the rental over there. Saoirse stared around, wondering how she could know what Florida looked like if she’d never been there. Was this what Florida looked like, after all? How could she tell? Her throat felt a little tight and she rubbed her finger absently along it. She was also nervous about getting on the plane. She didn’t remember anything after getting on the plane the last time and then she had woken up here. She wondered, momentarily, whether this meant that she was leaving the After, too, like Pizza Lady, and felt her throat become more dry at that thought. “He’s afraid,” she said, surprising even herself. She looked at Ansel. She hadn’t meant to speak out loud but there it was, she’d said it. “Who? What?” Ansel said, looking up at her suddenly. Saoirse sighed. Explain it again? Or not? “How long until the airport?” she asked. Ansel looked at her again, taking his eyes off the road. “It’s only about 10 minutes away,” he said hesitantly. Saoirse did not want to get on the plane but she did

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not know how to say that, this time any more than the last. “Who’s afraid?” Ansel asked her. Saoirse did not answer. She felt she should and felt bad about that, but she did not know what to say and was tired. That made the ten minutes seem to stretch out infinitely and she felt worse than on her last trip to the airport. She could feel in her skin the memory of the worrying and stress below the buildup of new worries, like layers on layers forming on her and with the silence in the car, the worry had nothing to dissipate it. Ansel pulled up to the rental car drop-off and Saoirse sat there in the passenger seat as everyone else started getting out. Ansel opened his door and looked back over his shoulder, caught sight of Rory and paused, then said, “Everyone out.” Doors opened. Ansel was giving directions and picking up the folded papers that had their tickets, Saoirse presumed. She sat there. Ansel got Chuck out and Stephanie helped Austin and luggage was placed on the curb and Saoirse still sat there. She glanced in the rearview mirror outside her window and noticed that Rory was still sitting there. She wanted to ask him why he was there, too, but she did not want to talk. She looked at the people going in and out of the Orlando Airport, the cars lined up behind them, at Ansel as he came back over to her side of the car and opened the door. He did not look back towards Rory. He said “Come on, honey,” and held out his hand. “I don’t want to get on the plane,” Saoirse said. Rory leaned forward. “What’s wrong?” he asked her.

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“Can you stay out of this, please,” Ansel said, irritation and maybe some sadness in his voice. “It’s okay, Ansel, you go ahead,” Saoirse said. “What?” Ansel looked at her uncomprehendingly. Then he looked at Rory again. “No. No. Wait. What?” He seemed to be searching for the right word to start a sentence. Behind him, Stephanie held Chuck and kept a hand on Austin’s shoulder. She sat on the biggest suitcase. A man came over, his rental-car-company shirt glaring in the sunlight, his baseball hat brim perfectly straight. “We need to move this car, sir. Ma’am,” he said, looking at Saoirse. “It’s not that,” Saoirse said to Ansel, suddenly realizing what he was thinking. “You’re leaving me? Like this? Here, in the airport? The kids…” Ansel was looking for the ends of sentences now. A sound, in the distance, began. “I’m not,” Saoirse began, but the rental car man interrupted. “I need to move this car,” he said. He said it mechanically, as though he wasn’t really trying to end their conversation at all. Rory leaned forward again. “What are you trying to say?” he said, and Saoirse wished that he wasn’t so hopeful about it. “I’m not trying to say anything,” she said, as the sound grew louder around her and she grew more nervous. People kept walking by but a few looked over their shoulders at the impromptu gathering and then moved on. Nobody had stopped yet. “Saoirse, this is not the time, the place, the… just, look, we’ll talk about this. I don’t know what’s wrong, I didn’t know anything was wrong,” Ansel said.

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“Nothing is wrong. Nothing is wrong with you,” she clarified. “I don’t want to get on the plane. I don’t want to get out of this car, even, but I don’t want to get on the plane.” “Why?” Ansel said it. The rental car man raised his hand, put it back down. Saoirse met Ansel’s eyes. “You really don’t know?” she asked, pleading a little. He looked back blankly. There were tears in his eyes but they weren’t ready to fall, they weren’t emotions yet, they were just held there in readiness. He shook his head. “What’s the matter?” he asked, softly. “I told you earlier this morning,” Saoirse said, and looked down at her feet. Rory got out of the car, then, and closed the sliding door. “I’m the problem, aren’t I?” he asked. Saoirse looked up in surprise. “Look, you probably are the problem,” Ansel told him, and then continued “Maybe you should just go and let me work this out with my wife.” He rarely called her his wife and Saoirse realized how upset he was. She marveled that she could create a paradise that had people upset in it, one that had her at an airport where she feared she was going to get on a plane and… what? Re-crash? Re-die? Would she just start it all over again? Was she going to go somewhere else? She didn’t know and she didn’t want to find out right now. When she’d been sitting on the stoop of the house trying to figure out where the Garden was now, she’d thought, a little in the back of her mind, that it might not be so bad to stay here in Florida for a while. Yes, there was Rory and yes, she was still here in the After but maybe, she’d thought, she needed a little time again, like at

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the farmhouse, even if that little time again kept her from finding out what William Howard Taft was doing. And now they were making her leave. “I’m only trying to help,” Rory said. “And to figure this out, too. I’m just as confused as you are.” The sound was louder and Saoirse realized it was a jet taking off. She felt her heart jump just a little and she looked around again. Crowds of people flowed around the car, most of them moving in the directions they wanted to go but a few stopping and looking, or slowing down. There was a line of cars behind them and rental car people moving back and forth more hurriedly and men raising their voices and a woman sitting in the car and above it all she heard the sound of the jet engines getting louder and louder. She began to cry and wondered about that, too. Why could she be sad here? Ansel broke away from the other two men, Rory telling Ansel again that he meant no harm but wanted to know what was going on, too, and that he wasn’t sure who Ansel was, but before Ansel could say, again, I’m her husband, he’d turned away and saw Saoirse crying and leaned in and held her, pressing her head down to his shoulder. Saoirse let her head rest there and looked through blurry eyes at the road and the cars and the people and the sign and thought If I’d tried to I couldn’t have invented this scene, I couldn’t have come up with a description of this scene or told a story or drawn a picture about it, so how can I make this happen now? She knew that most people have a fairly limited imagination, a modest subconscious. She knew that most people had reasonable desires and only wanted tiny incremental improvements in their lives, she knew all that without thinking about it before now but now, as she thought about it, she

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realized it was true: Most people don’t want all that much and what they want is not all that creative. Ask a person what they’d do if they won the lottery and around the world the answers are likely to be the same: new houses, pay off bills, help friends and family, travel the world. In other words, live my life only with fewer troubles and nicer things and people said they would move to Southern California or Hawaii but rarely did. Someone from Connecticut, if asked about coming into wealth, might say they would move to France or Brazil, and maybe they would, but the answer was always the same now matter how different it seemed: Live my life only with fewer troubles and nicer things. People prayed that their sickness would be cured, that their cancer would go into remission, that their legs would heal – but did not pray that cancer would cease to exist or that illness would fade from human memories. Incremental changes in their lives. Would clearer-thinking people pray that humanity never suffered? Would more expansive people, asked about winning millions, say that they would bankroll a project to improve exploration so that one day people could live on other planets or under the sea? Nobody ever did, and neither did she, and so she ended up in the After, in a world entirely of her own creation, and in that world entirely of her own creation, cars backed up behind her at the airport and honked their horns while she cried in the seat and wished there was a way she could not get on the airplane again and hugged her husband and was secretly grateful that she’d at least made him so faithful to how he really was. She got out of the car and stood on the curb and then the scene disappeared entirely, went blank and she clung to Ansel, clung to him with a ferocity that she could hardly believe was her own, pulled him to her and clutched at him and then heard him say “Okay, okay, okay,” and she opened her eyes and looked at him, lying sideways on the

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pillow and smiling at her and he whispered “But we’ll have to be quiet because I think the kids are awake.”

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Thirteen: Saoirse did not immediately realize what was happening.

She wondered what

had happened to the airport, for a moment, only, and during that moment had started to say “Where is the airport?” but got as far as saying only Where is the before pausing. Ansel said “Where is the what?” and she had looked up to be enthralled by how close his face was and how big his eyes were. She leaned in then and on the spur of the moment, on the spur of that moment, kissed him as though she might never kiss him again. Her lips opened very slightly, her hands pressing into his back and pulling him to her as her mouth opened more and her tongue slipped out between her lips but not between his. She began sweating on her forehead as she heard the air conditioner turn off and she used the sweat to her advantage, pressing closer and rubbing her nose along side his. She pulled him to her so that their bodies lying side-by-side pressed up against each other and then it was impossible to tell where her mouth ended and his mouth began, and soon it was impossible, she felt, to tell where her body ended and his body began. She clutched at him throughout their lovemaking, wanting to yell at the peak of it but instead pressing her mouth even more into his, turning her cries of passion into more kiss, more of the same kiss that had begun this. After it ended, as Ansel was lying on top of her with his eyes closed and lips pressed lightly against hers while she stroked his hair and rested her right hand lightly on his shoulder, holding him to her ever-so-subtly, there was a knock on the door. When she did not answer the knock at first but kept her lips pressed together with his, he opened his eyes and looked into hers, again too closely and too large, but deliciously so.

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“Whatever,” she heard Stephanie’s voice outside the door say “We’re going down to the beach because Austin wants to look for shells. We’ve eaten breakfast and I promised him,” and Ansel sat up, then, Saoirse’s hands were too weak with sweaty exhaustion to hold him back from getting up. Saoirse didn’t get up. Ansel looked back at her and smiled and she pulled the covers up while he put on a pair of shorts. Saoirse looked around the room as he did so. The suitcases were not evident. The drawers to the dresser that Ansel must be using were slightly askew, t-shirts and shorts and button-up shirts of the kind that he brought on vacations to have something that was “dressy enough for Red Lobster,” as he always said. It was a fragment of an expression that had survived all these years of marriage, or even longer than that because he’d been saying it before she met him and it continued to be said now. In all the time Saoirse had known him, they had never gone to eat at “Red Lobster.” “It’s from something my dad said, once,” Ansel had told her when they’d been only dating for a few months. It was in the summer and he’d come to pick her up and had been wearing a pair of brown shorts and a button-up blue shirt, the kind with the mostly-ornamental pocket on the front. “I’m not dressed up,” she’d said, and she wasn’t. She was wearing cutoffs and a t-shirt that was only the slightest bit too tight; at that age, she could wear shirts that were uncomfortably a little too tight because they hugged her then-slimmer body and she had no wrinkles or curves or bulges to be she was ashamed of showing off. Remembering this, Saoirse looked down at the sheet covering her body, now, and wondered why here, her body was the body she’d grown used to. She still liked the way

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she looked, even a little saggier and a little wider and a little softer than when she had been in her twenties – but she wondered why she didn’t have the t-shirt-wearing body she’d liked so much back when she was younger, when she could put on clothes that were just a tiny bit too tight, or too short, or too low-cut and show off her smooth neck and shoulders, why she was the last version of herself instead of some other part. Back then, she had told Ansel when he picked her up, that she didn’t know they were going someplace fancy, she remembered, as Stephanie called, outside the bedroom, in a too-loud voice that carried with it some not-so-subtle tones, “We’re going down the stairs now so if people want to make some noise they can,” and Saoirse sat up herself. She remembered Ansel saying they weren’t going anyplace that fancy, adding “I’m not fancy, at all. I’m just dressy enough for Red Lobster.” That was what he’d said then. Now, in this house in Florida in the After, he called “Hang on, I’m coming downstairs,” and looked back at her. “I’ll make sure they’re okay,” he said. “Are you going with?” she asked him. “Sure. I guess. Okay,” Ansel said. He smiled at her and then came back, leaving the door pulled open, and gave her a kiss, first on the forehead, then on the nose, then on the lips. As he touched her lips lightly, she pushed upwards at him and kissed him harder. The front door of the house banged and Ansel said “I’d better go watch them. I’ll grab Chuck.” He hurried out the bedroom door and she heard footsteps. She laid back down on the sheet for a moment. There were voices downstairs, rumbles and words she could not make out. Then Ansel’s voice “We’ve got Chuck! We’ll be back in a while.”

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She wondered why they were leaving here. She tried to remember the itinerary they’d planned. She laid in bed and heard the front door close, tapping shut, and thought back to that date. “What does that mean?” she’d asked Ansel, about the Red Lobster joke. They were walking to his car. He had held the door for her. “It’s something my dad said once. He liked seafood, and used to take us for seafood all the time. He said that he liked to eat seafood because it reminded him of being on vacation, that everyone who goes on vacation goes somewhere near the ocean and eats seafood so by eating seafood it was like he was taking a minivacation because the restaurant smelled like the ocean and the food tasted like vacation. “So one time,” Ansel continued as they drove off to the restaurant they were going to that night, for one of their first dates, “He was getting ready and my mom says to him Are you going to wear that? It’s not very fancy? And Dad looked in the mirror and said Well it’s what I’d wear on a vacation, so it’s dressy enough for Red Lobster. And I guess the phrase just stuck in my head. People all over say things like ‘casual Friday’ or ‘business casual,’ and me, I’ve always gone around thinking ‘dressy enough for Red Lobster.’ She looked, now, at the dressy-enough-for-Red Lobster shirts hanging a little out of the drawer, and wondered if that blue shirt with the pocket on the wrong side would be there if she went to look. She got up to go see if she could make it be there, had made it be there, and then paused as she looked out the window. Ansel and Stephanie and Chuck and Austin were on the beach, just off to the left out of her view. None of them were wearing swimsuits. They were heading for the rocks

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that she’d seen the day before. She watched them walk, slowly turning from people with details and colors into silhouettes against the ocean, which was blue and bright and wide in the morning sunlight. The day before? She wondered what day it was, looked on the dresser to see whether there was something to help her. Her cell phone was there. She picked it up, checked the date. This was the second-last day of vacation. She’d moved back in time, from the day before. Time here was crazy, it seemed – or malleable, and what had she expected? Why should time be the same when it has no meaning anymore? But it bothered her that she’d moved back a day and she wondered why as she watched her family near the rocks, watched Ansel pick up something and show it to Austin and Chuck while Stephanie walked slowly off to their right, near the edge of the breakers, letting the water hit her feet and ankles. Austin was climbing onto the rocks where waves still splashed up against them, the tide not having pulled back as far as it would later on. She watched as he climbed up, this quiet boy who so rarely attracted attention, with Ansel climbing up a little to help him, too, holding Austin by the ankle as he tried to get a grip and come up by him. The waves crashed up onto the rocks and Saoirse saw Austin hold his hands up against the spray. He was looking down and so was Ansel. Ansel pointed. Austin pointed, too. Ansel turned back to Chuck and motioned to him. Chuck paused and turned around and went to the rocks. From here, Saoirse could not hear what was said. Saoirse watched as Ansel moved his arms and hands, pantomiming, almost. She realized as he climbed back down the rocks that he was, had been, telling Austin to stay put and not move and she held her breath as he let Austin stay up on the rocks, nearly 8 or 9 feet up, not far from the waves

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that hit against the front and splashed him. Each time they did, Austin held up his right hand to shield his face and each time he did that, he teetered a little and each time he did that Saoirse sucked in her breath and she thought, as she watched I should go down there and help but she stood by the window and watched as Ansel lifted Chuck up and then climbed up after him, until all three of them were up on the rocks. Stephanie, at that point, took notice of them and walked slowly back, head still mostly down watching the waves curl over her bare feet. The beach was nearly empty. Saoirse thought those rocks look out of place. Then she thought they look familiar. Then she saw Stephanie climbing up and looking down where Ansel was pointing, too. She took just long enough to throw on shorts and a t-shirt, one of Ansel’s, and then she turned and ran out of the bedroom and down the stairs and out the front door and to the rocks as fast as she could. Running across the beach, on the sand, her feet hit the hot top of the sand, already crisped by the sun even this early in the morning, and dug into the cooler, damp sand below, slipping a little and making her fun in that peculiar, twisting way that is always so tiring on the beach. Even as she ran, she wondered at the detail, at the feeling, at how real it was, caught herself wondering whether it mattered if this was real and the difference between this real and life’s real, as she ran the several hundred yards to the rocks where Ansel and the children were climbing. Does it matter does it matter does it matter her breathing seemed to say in shallow gasps. She got to the rock and put her hand on it.

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“Honey,” Ansel said, the word not a question but an expression of concern. The kids stopped. Austin crouched down and looked at her. Chuck sat next to Ansel and held his leg, Ansel’s arm around him. Stephanie, further back, leaned forward as Saoirse caught her breath. “They’re okay, honey, I’m watching them.” “It’s not that,” Saoirse said, breathing hard. She looked back, across the beach. People were walking laying on the beach, not looking at her anymore; she could only tell which house was theirs by the tracks on the beach leading back, and the realization made her position seem too tenuous. “Help me up,” she said. She pulled and scrambled and Ansel held her hand and she was standing up on the rocks. From there, she felt much higher up than she actually was. The rock she was on was maybe 7 feet tall, easy to climb, but, as when she’d stood on the rooftop, her own head then stood another five feet above that, so her viewpoint was suddenly 12 feet off the ground. She looked around from this new vantage on top of this piece of the world. The ocean was turning greenand-blue as the sun rose, the gray-and-blue of the morning fading to something warmer and more alive. The sand was dark brown, almost gray, where the water touched it. To her left, there was more beach, more piles of rocks here and there, a long pier farther down. Two kids in the water that way, on boogie boards. Laughing. She knew she was stalling. She stalled more. She felt Ansel’s hand on her leg and focused on it rubbing her calf lightly, slightly up and down. “What’s up, honey?” Ansel asked her. Finally, she looked down. They were not on a rocky seacoast at all. They were on a sandy seacoast where breakers nevertheless splooshed against these rocks, throwing themselves against the stone in seeming futility, the breakers rushing forward as far as

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they could and then falling forward when their legs ran out from under them, tired, relaxing into the sand or beating against the rocks before retreating to the bulk of the ocean, ebbing and flowing, trying and trying and then … failing? No. Not failing. Just trying again to do what they did, over and over. It was all wrong, though, she felt. This was a sandy beach. The rocks she stood on should not be here - - they would not have been broken down over eons from a greater rocky shore, they would not have had to spend centuries or millennia fighting those waves. These rocks were not supposed to be here but they were here. She looked down. A small pool of water contained two starfish, one larger, one smaller. A sea urchin sat beside them, and a few plants, and a small fish swam there. She recognized a tidal pool. She thought maybe this was the same tidal pool she’d first seen when she came to the After. It was not the same coast and not the same circumstances but she’d only seen two of them, ever, and both had been here in the After, and they looked to be identical. She crouched down, feeling her shirt stick to her back where she’d started sweating during her run. The fish darted back and forth in its pool. It was less than two inches long. The tidal pool itself was only two feet wide. The starfish sat there, not moving. The sea urchin’s spines were moving but that was only apparent if you stared at it; she hadn’t realized at first that they were in motion. She wondered when these animals would be taken back. She wondered how the tidal pool had gotten up here, seven feet off the ocean. The water would never cover these rocks, would never envelope them at high tide and allow these creatures to settle here, only to pull back, seemingly without warning but actually with plenty of warning,

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and the tide’s pulling back that would seem as though it was without notice would be noticed only because the water was absent. That could not happen; the water would not rise 7 feet above the sand, ever, it’s perpetually unnoticed motions could not raise these creatures to this rock through any natural means. How had they gotten here?These animals had been left here by a tide that would not return, or placed here out of reach of the water entirely. She looked at the ocean. The tide would not cover this rock tonight, or any night. Did it matter? “Look, Mommy, starfish and urgents.” Austin came over and patted her arm. “Urchins,” Ansel said. Saoirse pulled Austin onto her lap, where he squirmed under her hug. “Urchins,” she said. “Like you,” and pressed her arms to him more tightly. “He likes this,” said Ansel. “So do I,” Saoirse said. It came out with more emotion than she felt it deserved, and knew that Ansel had heard it because he looked up at her. “You okay?” he asked. She nodded. He looked at her for a second longer, then looked to his right at the tracks of her running down here, then back at her. She nodded again. “No secret codes, you two,” said Stephanie. “I’m bored. I’m going to get breakfast.” She climbed down the rock and stood there looking back at them. “Is that okay?” “Yes,” Saoirse said. “That’s fine. I’ll be back in a while.” Stephanie walked up the beach away from them. Saoirse let Austin squirm out of her reach and look at the

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pool again. He was reaching into the water to feel the animals and Saoirse decided it wouldn’t hurt them to let him do it. She guided his hand to the starfish, watched him carefully poke one finger lightly on it and flinch back. The starfish didn’t react. He put his finger out again, without her help, and leaned a little further in. He touched the starfish again and held his finger there. Then he ran it lightly down the side of a leg. “Gently,” Saoirse reminded him. He nodded. The starfish, she realized, was moving slowly, very slowly, off to the edge. Away from Austin’s finger. She said that to him, pointed that out. “Can you see it moving?” she said. “Yeah,” he said, but she wasn’t sure he did. “Maybe don’t touch it for a while. I don’t think it likes that.” Ansel rubbed her shoulder. “How do you think it got up here?” he asked. “What?” she said, a little surprised. He waved at the ocean. “I don’t know much about it but didn’t you always say that these were caused by the high tide coming up over rocky parts of the coast and then receding?” “Yes,” Saoirse said. “That’s what I always used to say.” “I didn’t think the water got this high,” Ansel said. Saoirse leaned back against him. “It doesn’t,” she said. Ordinarily, she might have tried not to sound so bossy, so authoritative. She might have added, I think, or maybe to that sentence. But she felt as though there was no need to do that. This Ansel would not think she was being too know-it-all, would he? She looked at the breakers

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pushing against the rock, carrying a tiny bit of it away with each pass. There would be no high tide covering up this tall rock, pulling the starfish and urchin and fish back. Saoirse could have sat there all day, but Ansel suggested they go get some breakfast, too. They walked along the beach front path down the street to a small convenience store. Saoirse was surprised when she walked in at how cool and dry it was, having become acclimatized to the heat and humidity already. Her body had stopped noticing how pushy the air felt as it crowded her, until she walked inside and it was gone. She held Austin’s hand. Ansel carried Chuck. They wandered throughout the store, Saoirse getting bottles of juice and doughnuts in a bag and wondering what they had back at the house for food. She knew she could ask, if she wanted, and thought there would be a chance that if she bought something they already had, Ansel would just assume that she’d forgotten they had it. She didn’t want to risk upsetting the calm feeling that had descended on her. Walking back, the heat felt more solid than she’d thought, the brief respite from it causing it to be worse. She carried a bag and Austin ran ahead. Chuck still rode on Ansel’s left arm, just above a plastic bag looped around Ansel’s fingers. He’d paid for the food and while he did that Saoirse had wondered what would happen if she hadn’t paid for the food, if she’d just walked in and then left. Ansel had bought some scratchoff lottery tickets, too, at the counter, brightly colored squares of cardboard, five of them now sitting in the bag. Saoirse wondered for a moment if he would win. If all five of the tickets would be winners?

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They came up the porch steps at the rental house and that was when Saoirse saw the note in the door, a scrap of cardboard sticking out sideways from the crack where the door met the jamb. She picked it out, looked at it, read I need to talk with you. Rory. “What’s that?” Ansel asked. Saoirse sighed. “Let’s go inside,” she said. “Who left a note?” “A guy I know,” Saoirse said. She wondered what tactic to take for this one. She looked around the beach and the walkway, but didn’t see Rory. Inside, they heard the shower going. Ansel set the bag on the table and rubbed his fingers. Saoirse held the note up. Austin grabbed a doughnut out of the box, and Ansel took the note. “Who’s Rory?” he asked. Saoirse sighed again. “He’s an ex-boyfriend of mine.” Austin just looked at her. “He’s from London. Or something. I don’t know.” “London?” Ansel was half-smiling. His eyes were the half that was not amused, though. They were curious, but curious without any specific point of reference. He didn’t seem upset, but even so Saoirse felt like she should begin by telling him to sit down. That was how all serious conversations began, with someone telling someone else to sit down, for whatever reasons; she wasn’t sure why everyone had to sit down but they always did. Instead, though, she said: “Rory is a guy I used to know a long time ago. I went out with him for a few days, maybe, and then for some reason I ended up with him and

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Chuck in London.” Deep breath. “Then we went for a walk in what I’m pretty sure is the Garden of Eden and ended up here. Where you were. I hadn’t seen you for I think weeks.” Ansel tried a few different expressions on. He tried to smile. Then he looked at the boys to see if they were listening. Austin was and had a look of confusion on his face. Chuck was dropping pieces of doughnut on the floor. Stephanie came walking into the room, wearing a new pair of shorts and a t-shirt. “God, it’s so hot,” she said, and took a piece of doughnut from Chuck and ate it. She picked up a juice and shook it. “What’s going on?” Ansel, meanwhile, had moved on to a serious expression that he aimed at Saoirse, ready to ask what she meant, whether she was kidding around, she had to be kidding around, but Stephanie’s entry made him re-think that. “Let’s go outside,” he said. “Where are you guys going? I thought we were going to that mall today,” Stephanie said. “We will . Get the boys ready, will you?” Ansel said. He tried to make it sound lighthearted but it didn’t, quite. “What’s wrong?” Stephanie said. “Nothing. I just want to talk with your mom for a minute.” “Are you two fighting?” “No.” Saoirse said that. Ansel hadn’t answered. Instead, he’d looked at Saoirse. “You are,” Stephanie said. “They are,” Austin said. “Mom said something.” “I did not,” Saoirse said. “We’re not fighting.”

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“When are you going to be back?” Stephanie asked. “We’re just going onto the porch,” Ansel told her. “We’re not going to take long.” “What’s this about? Why are you going onto the porch?” “Look, get the boys dressed for the mall and get their sandals on. Pack them a snack.” “This is going to take that long, that I have time to do all that?” “It’s not a big deal, Ansel,” Saoirse said. “I’m just trying to explain who this is.” She had the note again and waved it. “What’s that?” Saoirse said. “Mommy’s friend,” Austin said. Stephanie looked between Ansel and Saoirse. Her eyes, now, too, held the same curiosity that Ansel’s had. She picked up Chuck, who reached for the doughnut he’d been tearing up. “Come on, guys,” she said. “Nothing’s the matter,” Saoirse said, realizing why she’d backed down. “We’re not fighting.” Ansel stood at the door, hand on the doorknob. The house felt hot and still as Stephanie carried Chuck upstairs. Austin still sat at the table eating his doughnut. He had a fleck of jelly on his face. Saoirse looked from him to Ansel who stood at the entryway with sweat on his forehead and a speckle of damp dots on the chest of his shirt. He was barefoot. His hand tightened on the knob. She had a sudden flash thought: What if Rory is right outside that door now? He’d just turned up here anyway, so how could she know he wasn’t lurking around somewhere waiting to just knock on the door.

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And why is he here? The calm she’d felt at the tidal pool was gone. She felt sputtery, hard to start, not in gear. “It’s not a big deal,” she said to Ansel again. “Just, let’s, just come here.” She waited to hear the doorbell ring or footsteps on the porch or a knock on the door or to see Rory peering in one of the side windows that looked out on the beach, and realized that she was holding her breath. Austin looked at them both. She saw Ansel’s hand turn the knob and she turned away just a little, too look back at Austin, instead, focusing on the jelly that she thought she should wipe off as Ansel said “Let’s just talk a bit,” and she heard the door brush open. Austin’s eyes got wide. Saoirse turned back around and saw outside the front door not a beach at all, but William Howard Taft. William Howard Taft said “May I come in?” Behind him, a voice that she recognized as Rory’s said “Don’t let him come in, Saoirse.”

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Fourteen: Saoirse moved quickly to the door and put her hand on the handle. “What are you doing here?” she asked the large man standing on the porch. She could see sweat actually flowing down the slope of his scalp and dripping from his moustache. Why was he wearing that suit? Saoirse wondered if William Howard Taft had always worn that suit – from the moment he arrived here. “May I come in? It’s frightfully hot out here.” Rory edged up and tried to elbow William Howard Taft aside, but wasn’t able to budge him at all. He stepped back and to the side to look at Saoirse over the president’s elbow. “I don’t think you should let him in, Saoirse. Not at all.” William Howard Taft said “I’m very hot. And tired.” Saoirse looked at him. It seemed true. “The air conditioner isn’t working.” Taft looked at her. “Why not?” “Saoirse, don’t talk to him.” That was Rory. Ansel moved in and touched her arm now, recovering from the surprise and said to her: “Honey, who are these people?” Saoirse noticed that there was still an edge in his voice. He was still upset and his body had not let go of that yet. It was merely buried in him. She was, she realized, stalling for time. She also realized there were other voices, other murmurings, behind William Howard Taft. She tried to look at Rory past William Howard Taft, who filled most of the doorway.

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“I’m going to let him in,” she said. She wasn’t sure who to address that statement to, so she looked at Ansel, who backed up a little. William Howard Taft’s hands pulled the door open as she pushed it. “Don’t do that!” someone yelled. It wasn’t Rory. As she and Ansel backed up and the kids behind her watched, William Howard Taft came into the room, edging through the door somewhat diagonally. Rory pushed in behind him and Saoirse saw for the first time a crowd of people standing on the porch and the sidewalk. There might have been, she estimated at first glance, twenty or thirty, a lot of people to have suddenly on your porch when nobody had been there a few minutes ago. She noticed more details, now: Rory was barefoot and his shirt was soaked with sweat. William Howard Taft had sand on his pants, up almost to the knees, and had only one shoe. The others outside were talking more and she tried to hear individual comments but could not as the crowd noise blended together with words mostly indistinguishable until Saoirse said “Stop!” to them. A man in the front stepped forward. “Sorry,” he said. She looked at him. “Who are you?” “I’m Tim,” he said, simply. Rory came up to her. “I can explain, Saoirse.” Ansel said “I hope someone can.” “Don’t let them in here, please,” said William Howard Taft. “They chased me all the way up the beach.” He pointed to his legs. “I lost a shoe..” Saoirse looked at Ansel, and smiled a little in spite of everything. “I have to say,” she told him, “You are taking this remarkably well.” She saw that her joke fell flat. He

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was still angry. She didn’t think that he would be angry in a few moments when everything began to sink in, but wanted to try to change that. She didn’t want Ansel to be confused-instead-of-angry; she wanted him to be not-angry-because-things-were-fine. So she took his hand. “Ansel, I can explain everything,” she told him. “I’ve been trying to explain everything but I don’t think there’s any way you could believe it. And I don’t think that there’s any way I want you to believe it.” She said that because it had come to her as she watched this scene unfold that if she was right, if Ansel and her children were not dead, what would happen if she convinced them that she was? What would they be, then, the people they didn’t really exist here, outside of her versions of them. Would that affect them, these people she had made to populate this existence, knowing that they might stop existing at any moment or be changed? She was confusing herself. She turned back to the crowd outside. “Why are you chasing him?” she asked, to begin with, although she knew. She had already guessed that they were like her, aware of what was going on, where they were, how they were. And they must have had some contact with Taft. “To keep him from the Garden,” Tim confirmed. Saoirse looked at the crowd. “There’s no room for all of you here,” she said, but they were walking forward, pressing onto the porch and she stepped back as Tim opened the door – not impolitely, but firmly – and she was standing with her back against the door as she watched them walk in, crowding into the room and pushing the kids back into the breakfast nook where Stephanie held Austin. “Alligators,” said Austin. “I want to see alligators.”

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“Shhh,” Stephanie told him. “We’ll still see them.” “Promise?” said Austin. Why are they doing that?Saoirse wondered. Her After was very realistic in some ways. The whole group came in. William Howard Taft was standing over against the patio door, which remained closed although the house was sweltering. It must have been closed last night, before the air conditioner went out, Saoirse realized. Tim looked around. “Well,” he said. “I can talk,” Rory said. A woman, about Saoirse’s age, stood up. “She already knows.” “I do,” said Saoirse. Ansel edged over to her. “I don’t understand any of this,” he told her, in a voice loud enough for some to hear. Tim looked at Rory and a few people near them edged away from Ansel a bit. “We don’t know what will happen,” the woman said to Saorise, “If some find out.” “What?” Saoirse asked, more confused. “Sometimes, like with Rory, they’re okay with it. Although it’s disorienting. It’s always confusing. You know that. But people can adapt to it. They can reorient themselves and once they do it’s not so bad.” That’s true, Saoirse realized, except it’s not quite. “Other times,” the woman continued, in a businesslike manner, “They find out and it doesn’t go well. They… fade.”

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“They fade?” Saoirse remembered Pizza Lady. “We don’t know what happens to them, then.” “No, you don’t,” William Howard Taft said from across the small room, and his voice was surprising for its small calmness. His voice, which should have boomed and echoed and harrumphed, instead just dropped out and fell on the room which was silent as everyone in it contemplated the quality that it had in it. “So we have to be careful,” the lady said, then. She also smiled and said “I’m Terry.” She held out her hand. Saoirse shook it, slowly. “I was a lawyer,” Terry said, for no apparent reason. When Saoirse didn’t say anything, Terry said “I like to joke that I’m not supposed to be in paradise because of that.” A serious look crossed her face. “I was actually relieved when I arrived here. I didn’t think that I would, sometimes.” “How did you…” Saoirse began, but then stopped. Was it rude to ask someone how they died? “Nobody knows. I can’t remember. You probably can’t remember, either.” “I…” Should she tell them? She looked at Ansel. “What?” he said. “Ansel,” Saoirse said, but then had nothing else to say, nothing else to add. “What is it?” Terry asked. “What’re you doing?” Someone across the room said, and Saoirse, Terry and Ansel looked. William Howard Taft was backed against the window by the crowd of people, who were all looking at him, with his hands behind his back. The patio door slid open and he pressed through it, tearing the screen off its track and stumbling out onto the

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patio. He went to the rail and looked and stopped and turned to his left and saw Rory standing at the top of the stairs. “Look, just sit down and talk,” Rory said. “I don’t know how you got me out of the Garden,” William Howard Taft said, “But it has taken a phenomenally long time for me to get there and I very much resent being removed from it. I have to find my way back there. I have to. You do not understand and you should not try to stop me.” “You don’t know what’ll happen.” “I know exactly what will happen.” Saoirse watched through the now-broken screen door. She felt Ansel’s hand on her arm. “How do you know that?” Rory said. “Because I read the Bible. I know what will happen. We will be expelled.” William Howard Taft looked up at them. “That’s what this all is, you know. This is Eden. We’ve been allowed back into the Garden.” “Does any of this look as though it was in the Bible?” Tim said. Voices in the crowd muttered in agreement. Saoirse marveled that nobody seemed angry. “Why would you assume that the Bible would describe your experience? Why would you assume that the Bible describes any experience,” William Howard Taft said. “Only two people, ever have been in the Garden of Eden. Two. That’s it. Just two. And what could they have made of it? Adam and Eve’s only experience before being cast out was the Garden. Whatever it could have been shaped to was dependent on what they

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knew, dependent on what they had experienced. Which was nothing.” William Howard Taft sounded edgy, Saoirse, thought. She felt Ansel’s hand on her shoulder tighten a bit and wondered whether she should go over to him or not. “And I’ve seen it,” William Howard Taft told them. That quieted the crowd, which had begun to mumble, right back down. Everyone turned to look at him. “I’ve been to the Tree. He can verify it. That is where he found me.” Saoirse followed his thick finger and saw him pointing at Rory, who simply nodded. “It’s true,” he said. “I was in the Garden.” He looked confused. “Unless this… anyway… there was a Garden, an actual Garden. It’s beautiful and very nice and calm. She was there, too. She led me to it, I think,” and Rory looked over at her. “Isn’t that right, Saoirse?” Ansel’s hand dropped off her shoulder and she turned to him, ignoring the people turning to look at him. “Ansel,” she said, but he looked sad. “What’s he talking about?” Ansel asked again. “It’s a long story, Dad,” Stephanie said, moving up closer. She was holding Chuck. Saoirse looked around, momentarily panicked, for Austin. She saw him standing on a chair in the corner of the patio, finger in his mouth and looking at everyone. An older woman stood near him. She wondered why she’d worried. Then she realized what she’d just heard. “Stephanie?” Stephanie looked at her evenly. “You kind of knew, didn’t you, Mom?” “You’re…”

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Stephanie nodded. “But you knew that. You remember from the house.” “I thought I did.” She looked around. “So why are you here?” Stephanie shrugged. “I like the family. I missed them.” “Why are you still 17?” “I don’t know what else to be.” “He’s running again!” Someone, maybe Tim, yelled, and Saoirse looked away from Stephanie and saw the group looking at William Howard Taft, who must have gotten up over the fence (somehow!) and was not so much running as laboriously jogging across the front walk and onto the beach. All of the people surged, almost as one, towards the patio door they’d filtered out of and moved through, including Saoirse, who climbed over the fence. As she let herself carefully onto the sandy, beach-grassed patch of land between the two houses she saw a man come outside of the next house , wearing a pair of shorts and holding a cup of coffee. “What’s going on?” he asked. Saoirse didn’t stop to talk to him. “I’ve got to go catch William Howard Taft,” she called over her shoulder as she ran towards the beach. She could run faster than the large man. She was about twenty feet ahead of the others coming out of her house and off the patio, and she was gaining on William Howard Taft but not quickly enough. He made it to the breakers and waded in. She ran across the beach, feet slipping in the dry sand, listening to others yell behind her and wondering what Ansel was doing, and her feet hit the harder, wetter sand where a wave washed up on them.

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William Howard Taft was struggling forward, knee deep in the surf. He’d taken off his shoes – she could see them in his hand, held by their shoestrings. Others from the group of people were standing next to her and she heard yells and people coming behind her. “Get back here,” the man, Tim, yelled next to her. “Where’s he going?” someone wondered. William Howard Taft continued to walk, foam splashing up around him as he did so. He was up to his waist now, lurching forward in between waves. He had the bulk to resist the power of the breakers but it was a close match as the ocean shoved at him and he shoved at it. He still, Saoirse realized, had his hat on. “What’s he trying to do?” “He’s probably going to try to swim off to the side. Keep an eye on him.” Saoirse wondered. William Howard Taft was up to his chest now. “Mom, I don’t think he’s going to try to come back to the beach,” she heard Stephanie say. Ansel and Stephanie were beside her. Chuck and Austin, too. She felt Chuck’s hand in hers. She looked down and smiled in spite of the situation: Chuck was sticking out his tongue and trying to touch his nose. “I really don’t understand any of this,” Ansel said. Saoirse said “But you will. Or you do. Or you can. Something. Ansel, I’m dead.” She pressed her hand against the side of his face. “I’m dead. Stephanie’s dead. Maybe Chuck and you and Austin, too. We died. I didn’t know how. You knew how.

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You said you knew how. You told me, when I first got here, that you knew how we died or I died. So maybe you’re dead and maybe you’re not. But you’re here with me and I wish I could explain more.” She looked out to the water again. William Howard Taft was up to his shoulders, bobbing up and down. She realized he was swimming and he was deeper in than she’d thought. She looked over at the rocks where they’d begun their day so peacefully and sighed.

“I wish I could explain more,” she told Ansel. “But

I can’t right now. So I love you and I’m pretty sure that I’ll see you again.” She pulled him in and kissed him then, kissed him hard and mashed her whole face up against his and felt wetness and pulled back wondering if it was the ocean or her or him. It was her and him. He was crying, with her, and said “Don’t go,” but she turned and ran after William Howard Taft into the surf. She was ankle deep when the first waves hit her, splashing harmlessly against her legs and making her feel like she was going to stumble. She didn’t. She ran on, lifting her legs as high as she could, feeling that sprinting into the water was the only way she’d catch William Howard Taft: run faster than he could swim. She continued to high-step as the second wave hit her at the kneecaps and did cause her to stumble. Her left leg came down to quickly but she caught herself and continued moving forward. When the third wave crashed into her she was ready and dove forward to try to hurdle it. There was spray and foam that branched up and out, creating multicolored prisms around her as sunlight filtered through the droplets thrown up by the impact, and then she was waist deep and couldn’t run. She dove forward, trying to mimic a dolphin and arch her body. Her hands surfed into the fourth wave with hardly a splash and she felt it lift her as she moved against it, body surfing against the current. As she came

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down into the trough she began to paddle, a strong fast crawl that she’d used as a lifeguard only once, on a false alarm. She pulled herself into the water, turning her head to the side to get some air, and felt her body lifted by the sixth wave. She angled her body down to fight that and paddled more and got past that wave, out already past the breakers now. The water dipped low and she turned her head forward slightly and saw the seventh wave rising up, about eight feet tall. She would be tossed back onto the beach, almost, and to avoid that dove underwater, hearing the sound of surf and calls on the beach (Ansel…) fade away to a heartbeat-pulsing sound of calm underwater. She struck forward underwater as fast as she could and came up in a calm spot beyond the biggest waves, the cycle ready to repeat. She saw William Howard Taft, about a hundred yards ahead. She swam after him. Eventually, the waves seemed to even out. She moved into an easy swim, doing the breast stroke. She felt her feet pump through the warm, green water, and felt herself occasionally rise up or slip forward, pushed by waves. She tried to remember how to do the breast stroke, but was not sure how it went. She remembered from lifeguarding that for long distances she should do the sidestroke, but didn’t want to go that slowly. The crawl would have been faster than this almost-breast-stroke, but she didn’t want to lose sight of William Howard Taft. He remained, for now, a good 200 feet ahead of her. She saw him swimming, his broad back still in a suit coat. When he kicked she saw bare feet. What could he be planning? She swam along, steadily, looking back occasionally. When she’d first looked back, Ansel had been knee deep in the water with Stephanie

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beside him. Stephanie had been holding Chuck, she thought. Austin was on the beach. They had already been very small. The next time she looked back, they were back on the beach in a crowd of people there-- larger than the bunch of people who had barged into the beach house. She thought maybe there was a policeman with them. The next time she looked back the beach was just a strip of sand and buildings sandwiched between the green water and the blue sky, no people distinguishable. She swam forward. William Howard Taft was not a fast swimmer and was slowed by his pausing to look back at her. She was gaining on him, but only minutely. The sun rose higher and higher and the ocean grew more and more quiet. Her body stayed warm in the water, which felt like bath water. She could taste the salt getting into her mouth. It made her thirsty, but not uncomfortably so. When she was only about a hundred feet behind William Howard Taft, she looked back again, but could barely see the shore. A sea gull flew by, drifting slowly on the wind and dipping low. It held near her, for a moment, seeming suspended in the air in that way that those birds could do, floating on some current of air she couldn’t feel at all. Water ran down her face as she continued pulling forward. After a moment, the gull flew away. She wondered only briefly if there could be something dangerous in the water, then shelved that. What could be dangerous? She didn’t know what would happen if she died here, but could it be any worse than if she’d died in real life? If… so her mind was still there. She ducked her head under the water and felt foolish. She realized that William Howard Taft thought something could be worse than

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this, though, and that was why she was swimming towards him. Because they both felt that – at least a little. “Stop swimming!” she yelled, hoisting her head up as far as she could to avoid getting water in her mouth. He didn’t answer. She kept after him. Another twenty minutes or so, and she was maybe only fifty feet away. He was looking back less frequently and continued forward with impressive stamina. Over her own shoulder, the way she’d come, all she could see was water. She hoped that Stephanie could explain to Ansel. She wondered if she’d see him again, now. She felt a momentary pang of regret for running away from him again. She’d done that twice now. What must he be thinking? Wouldn’t he be thinking whatever she wanted him to think? If he had been “real” Ansel, she might be more worried, and she tried to sort that out as she swam. Could she be so certain that if she saw him again, he wouldn’t remember this at all, would be “Ansel” again and not be upset with her or hurt that she’d twice left him? How can he be upset? I’ve got to do this, she thought. And I made him, here, didn’t I? “Stop swimming!” she yelled again, mistiming it a little and getting a bit of saltwater in her mouth. A strand of seaweed drifted near her and she tried to avoid entangling it in her hand, unsuccessfully. She altered her stroke to wriggle her left arm, and tacked slightly to that side. She continued forward. William Howard Taft gave no indication that he was stopping. She was only about thirty feet behind him. Do I have to do this? she wondered.

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All those other people had figured out William Howard Taft, too. They were all onto him. They knew what he planned to do and wanted to stop him. She wasn’t even so sure that she did want to stop him, as she swam. She was not so sure, now, all the way out here in the ocean, or the Gulf of Mexico, she couldn’t remember which and it didn’t really matter, did it?, not so sure that she was trying to stop him. That had been her thought when she’d run after him, certainly, but not her only thought. Her other thought, then and now: Maybe he was right. She yelled that over the waves: “Maybe you’re right!” He didn’t pause. She kept on. The water helped hold her up and the sun was nearly overhead now. A cluster of birds flew overhead; she couldn’t tell what kind. There were no boats, no noise, nothing but the rise and fall and fall and rise of the water, and the quiet splashing of William Howard Taft swimming. Her own breast stroke made almost no noise. Every now and then she dipped her head under water to cool it off, felt the ocean water dribble down her face. She was only ten feet behind him. “Come on, you know I’m going to catch you,” she said. William Howard Taft switched his stroke to the side stroke, then, rolling onto his side. His moustache drooped and hung to his right as he continued forward, more slowly, move-pause-move-pause, arms sweeping just under the surface of the water, which had changed to a blue-gray. “What do you think you’ll do?” he asked her. “I don’t know,” Saoirse admitted. She pulled up along side him. They stopped and treaded water. Her arms felt tired but pleasantly so. Her legs pedaled forwards, backwards, as her hands waved to and fro under the surface.

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“You can’t stop me,” William Howard Taft said. Saoirse didn’t answer, and he looked at her. “You don’t want to, do you?” She looked away. “Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know what I want.” “You did want to leave.” “What you’re trying to do feels wrong.” “Why?” Saoirse thought about that, as the sun dried her face off. “Because it’ll get everyone kicked out, won’t it?” “I don’t know.” “You’ll get everyone thrown out for no reason. If you’re right and if this is the Garden of Eden and you eat the fruit, then we’re all back out. People are all back out and you’re choosing to deny them paradise. What’ll that make you?” William Howard Taft didn’t answer. “Are you really that scared?” Saoirse asked him. “That you’d risk something worse, that you’d risk wrecking things for everyone just so you could get back to what you know?” Still no answer. “Because yeah, I wanted to go back, but just me. I didn’t want to make everyone else go back. I didn’t want to wreck it for everyone. If you know that’s what you’re doing, how can you do it?” She realized something. “You know, you’ll be destroying the world.” “What do you mean?”

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“This is the world now, for us and for everyone else—all those people chasing you, and all the people in their lives, the people who know or don’t know that they’re dead, the people like Ansel who may not even actually be dead. This is their world, and you’ll be destroying it for them. Killing them.” “It won’t be killing them.” “It’s the same thing, isn’t it? You’re sending them from the only world they have to something else they don’t. It may not even be back to life – it may be to something even worse. Something weirder.” They treaded water for a moment, both silent, pondering. “Or to nothing,” Saoirse said. “Think about that. What if there’s nothing after this?” “They’re nothing,” said William Howard Taft. “They are all figments, creations, wisps. They are wisps of imagination and memory, not real people.” “Not all of them,” Saoirse said. She felt a little guilty for not defending Ansel, or any of the others who might not be here… yet… “None of them are just wisps,” she said, belatedly. “They’re real. They’re here, in my world. This world.” William Howard Taft said, though: “I created this.” Saoirse stared at him. “What does that mean?” “You’re in my world.” She felt uncomfortable at that and wondered why. “No, I’m not,” she said, because she felt she had to. “I sent you here.” Saoirse didn’t answer.

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“To my world.” Still, she kept quiet, moving her feet in a bicycle-pedaling motion under the water. “You’re in my world,” William Howard Taft told her. He looked sternly at her. “And that bothers you, doesn’t it.” “You’re mean,” Saoirse decided. She thought it sounded stupid as she said it, but didn’t know what else to say. “You’re mean and you like it, don’t you?” “I’m not.” “Being afraid makes you mean. You shouldn’t be so mean.” William Howard Taft turned away slowly and began swimming. “Where are you going?” Saoirse said. “Away.” “Where do you think you’re going to go? Where do you think you can get to? Your After or my After, do you think you can just swim across the ocean? That’s dumb. You’re scared and mean and dumb.” He didn’t look back. He said over his shoulder “I don’t intend to swim across the ocean.” Saoirse thought about that. He was now about twenty feet away, moving slowly. She bobbed up and down on the waves and so did he, him going up, now, as she went down, so he was about two feet above her. Then they reversed places. “You can’t drown here.” She said. “I know that,” William Howard Taft told her. Saoirse watched him swimming. He was thirty feet away. What was he doing?

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Then she knew. He was hoping to almost-drown, or whatever it would be here. He thought that would send him… somewhere. Back to the Garden? He must think so. He must know so. He knew how to work things here, better than she did, apparently. She paddled after him, wondering about that. Did he know how to work things? He’d found her, he’d kept Chuck with him. He’d sent her here. Had he? Or was he simply taking credit? She had too many questions and so she focused instead on swimming after him, putting her back into it, and when she got near, she grabbed his ankle. “Stop,” she said, and got a little more water in her face. “Stop running,” and she pulled up. He turned to face her, his suit billowing around him in the water that appeared very blue now. “Tell me the truth,” she said. “Did you send me here?” William Howard Taft just looked at her. “How did you find me at that farm house?” Nothing. “How did you keep Chuck with you?” He didn’t answer. “You should tell me these things.” “Why should I? The more you know, the more you will try to stop me. And I don’t intend to be stopped. I intend to carry out my designs.” “To end this all?” “If I must.”

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Saoirse knew that discussion would get them nowhere. She paddled her hands back and forth and thought. She didn’t even know what she wanted, she realized. How can I tell him not to do this when I might want to do it, too? But she wasn’t sure whether it was a good idea anymore. And all those new people seemed to think it was a bad idea. “Don’t you think we should talk it out with those others?” “No.” “Why not?” “They have made up their minds.” “So have you.” “Exactly. There is no need for debate.” “Why’d you come looking for me?” “I did not come looking for you.” “You came to my house.” “But I didn’t come there looking for you. I wasn’t sure who I would find when I got there. I wasn’t sure, even, at first, why I was there. My After has been a sometimesbewildering experience.” “But… isn’t that what you want, then?” “If I want it, then I want it subconsciously and my waking mind does not want it. What should I do about that?” Saoirse mulled that, then changed the subject, a little. “How’d you get to my house?” “I woke up one morning and was standing on your porch. That happens to me from time to time. I assumed, as I have so often, that I was meant to be there for some

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reason. I try to divine here the reasons why things happen, the reasons why I am put one place or meet one person. It is difficult. It is like trying to divine the meanings of memory.” “Don’t you mean dreams?” “I do not.” He waited while one larger swell carried them up and down. “I mean memory. Have you ever stopped to look around you, to discern this world and its details and whether they are correct, or seem to be? Have you looked at the finer points to see how and why you remember things? Did you, during life, stop to think about the things you remembered and why and how you remembered them?” “Um. No.” “Exactly. People even in my time worry about the meaning of dreams and sleeping thoughts but give far less attention to the way their mind works while awake. Why can you remember some things and not others? Why does your mind choose to store certain information and not others? How are you editing things? Those have more of an impact on your life than dreams – dreams are merely random fragmentary notions drifting through the ether and when you arrive in your After, you see how true that is just as you get to know the world your mind chooses to shape by what it noticed, what it remembered. Memory is more important than the sleep world your mind relaxes into each night. So, no, I do not mean that divining the methods of the After is like divining the meaning of dreams. It is like divining the workings of your active mind, which you do not understand even in the slightest -- but which you give no thought to, anyway.” They floated there a long time while Saoirse thought about that. She tried not to feel insulted by his tirade.

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“So why do you think you came to my house?” she said, finally. “You couldn’t have remembered that. You died before me.” “I do not know,” William Howard Taft said. “Don’t you think you need to figure that out before you go on with this plan? Shouldn’t you know everything about your whole scheme here?” Saoirse bit her lip. “I mean, you’ve got eternity.” “I have my suspicions. I just do not know for sure.” “What are your suspicions?” “You gave me the final pieces to the puzzle. That is why I needed you.” “I did?” A wave carried them up and down, first him, then her. “Yes.” Saoirse tried to think how she’d done that, helped him, but couldn’t. “How?” she asked. “You must remember when we first met, here.” Saoirse did. “You mean, those places we went, right away? The tidal pool? The ocean?” “Yes.” “Will you just tell me? I’m not good at cross-examining.” William Howard Taft wiped a hand across his forehead, which was turning red in the sun. Saoirse tried to figure out how long they’d been out here. It couldn’t have been more than an hour, could it?

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“I had been to the Garden a few times before meeting you. Twice. The first time, I did not realize, immediately, where I was. The first time was shortly after I arrived here. It was the first time, too, that I realized that I had passed on, that I was dead. I had been living my life, almost, exactly living it again, it seemed, only without all the troubles and problems that had beset me the first time. I realize that now. I did not realize that then. I was working as a professor at Yale University, studying the law and maintaining my contacts in the Capital, and enjoying life, generally. It was…” Taft paused., a moment, looking at Saoirse, then said: “Always spring. Always. “I did not realize that at first, but one day, walking along, enjoying the blossoms on the bushes and the new leaves on the trees, it occurred to me: I could not remember when it had last snowed. I puzzled over that on the way to my office, and went through my lectures that day, and that evening, I asked a colleague, as we were leaving, whether he could remember how much snowfall we’d had that winter. He could not. He looked puzzled, and said why? Hoping to do something about it? And he laughed. “But I pressed on. I said Was it a lot, would you say? A little? And he looked at me and said You know, I just don’t remember. I guess I did not pay it too much mind. Then he waved and went away. And I went home to dinner with my wife and throughout the dinner, I thought about asking her whether she remembered how much snow there had been that winter. But I did not, and I believe you know why.” “You didn’t want her to be exposed as…” Saoirse looked for the right words. “… Not real.” “Exactly. I don’t know why my colleague did not simply tell me that there had been no winter, whether there was a winter for him and I did not remember it or if instead

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he was simply play-acting, but I knew something was wrong, something was very wrong. And I loved my wife very much and did not want to believe that she was also a play-actor and did not want to see her try to cover up if she was. I did not, at that time, know what was going on. “Then I began to wonder more—such as if she was my wife at all, and whether I loved her, my wife, or the person who might not be my wife. That disturbed me greatly. I did not know what was going on but I did not like it. I feared, I will tell you, for my sanity, and I grew more and more agitated as things progressed. My wife, if she was my wife, and I hoped she was for she was a good woman, saw that and inquired whether I would not enjoy a walk to settle me down. I said I would, and I went for a walk.” The sun was directly overhead. Saoirse tried to paddle in the water and shield her eyes. That meant it was noon, right? She’d been out here a long time. There was nothing but the waves and the water and her and William Howard Taft, and the sky and the sun, of course. She thought she should be tired. She was not. She thought she should be thirsty, or hungry. She was not. “As I walked along the streets, the buildings began to change. Before my eyes. I did not even realize it at first. But as I walked, a long route with a cigar to calm myself, the buildings became translucent, little by little fading in the evening light, and as I walked, the ground became softer, becoming dirt. Eventually the buildings were little more than ghosts of their selves, and the ground was soft brown dirt, spring dirt, almost mud but not. Then the shells of the buildings disappeared and I stood alone in the midst of a rolling terrain of brown soft sweet-smelling dirt.

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“I paused then, and watched, amazed and afraid. As I watched, the grass grew, around and under my feet and all around the dirt, slowly appearing and growing to a height of several inches before a ripple stopped it. Then the flowers came, bunches and bunches of them, fields of them swaying and bright and beautiful, then bushes sprung up, all too quickly, and flowered and grew berries and then hung there. And suddenly it was the beginning of summer, that time when spring passes into summer, when the weather changes such that there will be no more truly cold days but the truly hot days have not yet arrived. “I cried, not because it was beautiful, even though it was, but because I feared I had lost my sanity. I sat down on the grass and cried, then, and grew angry because I prized my mind and I prized my intellect and now I had neither of them, but was lost in a beautiful, peaceful world that I did not want..” William Howard Taft did not need to pause there, but he did, and he looked at Saoirse, who fully understood the significance of that sentence. “I was in that world for an indeterminate time. Maybe an hour, maybe two. I do not know. Eventually, it faded away, in reverse of how it had come. The bushes reversed first, the berries exploding into flowers and the flowers spreading their petals wide before folding up and pulling into the stems, the leaves curling up and disappearing and then the bushes pulling into the ground. The flowers folded up and left, the grass retracted, and the dirt was all that was left. For several minutes I stood in the dirt world again and then the buildings began to come back, all at once, slowly fading into view, first the outlines of them, then the walls, then the doors, then the streets, and then I was standing, tear-streaked face and wild-haired, in the evening streets of New Haven.”

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They floated, then, for a long time. William Howard Taft watched the waves and the sky and did not look at her. “How did I help you?” Saoirse finally prompted him. “I still worried that I was mad, that I was losing my sanity, and I did not trust anyone. I took to studying this, to reading up on psychology wherever I could, but I could no longer trust my senses, no longer trust my mind. I began keeping a journal, each day, writing down the date and writing down the weather and the significant events that day. I began it the very next day, which I recall was June 2. “I did not recall the months of April or May passing, though. I knew that the day before I had lectured my students, but June 1, which would have been the day before, was not a school day – we never had classes into June.” Saoirse looked at William Howard Taft’s eyes, which were narrowed and dark. She wondered if he was trying not to cry. “I was in church one morning, one Sunday morning, months later, when I pieced it together, as the pastor preached about being cast out of Eden, about leaving the garden, it occurred to me that I had recently been to a garden, had been shown the garden, and that I was living a life in which there were few, if any, troubles. The only trouble, in fact, was that I was aware that there were no troubles, that I was fearing my own sanity.” “Your journal…” Saoirse said. “Did it help? Were the dates moving?” “Yes and no. By then, it was August. But, you need to understand, it did not help just then. Because it was still summer, you see. It was still summer and I could not tell if we were having a particularly pleasant summer or not. There were no too-hot days. There were no terrible rainstorms, although there were pleasant rainshowers that never

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caught me unexpectedly. It was difficult to tell what was happening, and I simply continued to fear for my own mind and not tell anyone of my suspicions. So to that end, it did not help. “But on the way home from that sermon, that day, I realized that I never heard bad news. Ever. I realized that on the way home from that church sermon. I turned to my wife and said there has certainly been a lot of good news lately, and she said Yes, I suppose there has, and I walked her home and she went inside. I told her I was going to walk around a bit and enjoy the weather. She asked if I wanted her to go with me, and I said that I did not. I went and bought a newspaper from a boy selling them, a few blocks away. I took it to a bench and I read it, and I found not a single piece of bad news in it. “I folded up the paper, and I began walking. I walked away from that life, which was not my own.” He stopped talking, and they bobbed up and down, then, silent. Saoirse wanted to ask what else happened, what he saw, how he walked away from that life, how he ended up on her doorstep. But she didn’t. She floated in the ocean and tried to imagine what that would be like, how long he had been in the After before he realized. Had he turned the corner and found electric cars and televisions? Would she swim back to shore and see dinosaurs, or spaceships? The thought did not excite her. It scared her, and bore down on her with what she realized, in a while, was its seeming fakeness. Wouldn’t everything here be just a figment of her mind? So if she did see dinosaurs, if she did go to Mars, it wasn’t real, was it? Whatever eternity she created, it would simply be a fiction.

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“It was fate that I meet you,” William Howard Taft said, suddenly. They had both been quiet for some time, so long that Saoirse tried to figure out how long it had been. Her hair had not dipped into the water in so long that it was dry. She was carried up on a wave, slipped down the other side. “Why?” she asked. “I have met a lot of people. I seem drawn to them. I end up near them, and all of them are people like me. Like you. People who know we are dead. I have never met one who has just arrived here, though, until I met you.” “What happened when you walked away from your life?” William Howard Taft ignored the question. “When I found you, I did not expect to be finding you, or finding anyone. I had in fact despaired. I was actually thinking that perhaps I should just resign myself to staying here. I know that sounds odd, to resign oneself to staying in paradise, but I had never again found the Garden. Not since that first time that I saw it, since that first time that I realized the city I walked through was the Garden, or the Garden I walked through was the city I thought I lived in.” He paused and looked into the distance, then spoke again. “I had searched and talked to people, trying to figure out the nature of this world. I dare expect that I became, am, more well-versed in the intricacies of our existence than others, than any others. I learned a great deal, including…” He stopped and looked to his right, at Saoirse. He had drifted, slightly, so that he was facing obliquely away from her. “Including what?” Saoirse asked. She paddled her hands back and forth in a horizontal figure eight to keep afloat.

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“Never mind.” “What are you trying to hide from me? Look at us. There’s nobody else around. Tell me.” “Some people,” William Howard Taft said, “Appear to have a greater ability to manipulate this world than others. Most simply live in it, unaware entirely of the state of their existence, and their afterlives are mundane, mostly recreations, and poor ones, of the lives they lived. Others have more powerful minds, or more control, and they have vivid or unusual afterlives. And still others, like us, are completely aware of the After and what it is. “Among those of us who know the truth about this state of being, there are those who have learned to, in a greater or smaller degree, control it. That was what initially led me to hope. I noticed those who could control the After, those who were like me but who seemed to have a more conscious ability to shape this existence, and I tried to watch what they did. I was, though, never able to fully do that, never able to fully control this world. “There have always been through history those who claim to shape their dreams, to be able to consciously act in their dreams; I read newspaper and periodical articles about them in my life. And always I thought who could prove them wrong? If I were to claim to you that I was the manager of my sleeping dreams, that in them I could create worlds and people and interact as I chose to manipulate them instead of being, as most are, a watcher and helpless participant in the dream stories I create subsconsciously, how could you prove me wrong? “But in the After, there are those who appear to do that and they can prove it – they can do it to me, and to themselves. They control their world. They could decide

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they no longer would live in their house and it would be something else, a great city, or a tropical island. They would be tall, or short, or married, or not. And they were quite content, generally. I wanted to learn how. I thought if I could learn to do what they did, I would be more content here, too. But only as I started to try that, did I realize I would not be any happier.” “It’s not real,” Saoirse said, quietly. William Howard Taft did not look at her. He just nodded, in agreement and went on. “But I did learn to take a more active role … in others lives. I gathered, after some time, that most of us here in the After are in our own worlds, our own existences, that each of us creates an After of our own. Before today, I never came across more than one other person at a time who was aware, who knew. I would meet them, and nobody else in their world appeared to know the truth. My conclusion, and it is only a hypothesis, because how can I prove it right or wrong, is that each of us is alone in the After, each of us is alone… in paradise, living here with imaginings we create. Or we were, until me, that is. Once I walked away from my life, I met others like me and like you, people who were aware of this existence, aware of how it differed from the real that we had known. And over time I realized that nobody I met had ever met another like me. “That made me …” William Howard Taft paused again. “… Well, I did not like to think about that.” The sky was darkening. There were clouds moving in, quickly, not the peaceful calm drifting clouds that flow across the sky until they blanket away the sun, but the

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tremulous advance that starts white and becomes gray to eventually turn black and threatening. She heard a rumble. “I continued to search for the Garden,” William Howard Taft said, “But I also did not like the feeling that I would, ultimately, be alone. No matter how wonderful the world tried to be, I did not want to be alone.” The wind picked up and carried his voice away, making it thinner and harder to hear, as the increasing waves lifted them up and down, up and down, more often and more powerfully. There were more rumbles. Saoirse remembered the rain storm outside the Pizza Lady’s store and suggested that they head back. “No,” William Howard Taft said. “I will not.” “You can’t stay here,” she said. “I will.” She floated there, with him, as the clouds became thicker, the rumbling more frequent, the day darker still. The clouds stretched behind her now to the horizon almost and she could only see a thin crevasse of daylight between the water she’d swum through to get here and the clouds that pressed down from above. She pondered swimming for it herself. “I kept Chuck with me,” said William Howard Taft, suddenly. He said it so quietly, and the wind was now so powerful, that Saoirse barely heard it. “What?” she asked, the rumbling now constant and growing louder. There was no rain yet, no lightning. Just thunder, over and over and over, and the wind, frosthing the tips of the waves.

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“I learned how to do that,” William Howard Taft said. Saoirse tried to focus on what he was saying, trying to keep the water out of her mouth and to stay near him. She fought the urge to turn around, to swim back to shore, to find Ansel and dry off and spend the rest of the day, the rest of their vacation, the rest of eternity, lying in that bed with him in the house with no air conditioning. She did not want to be floating here in the ocean with William Howard Taft during a looming thunderstorm. But she listened. “When you walked away from your world, when you left that restaurant, I stood up and I took Chuck’s hand and I led him outside the restaurant, too, and began journeying through what has become my After, an amalgam of the worlds I have seen and the worlds I have imagined and the worlds that have been seen and imagined by those who have passed on. I kept him with me at all times,” William Howard Taft was almost shouting, now, as the rumbling became actual peals of thunder ringing on top of each other, beginning to come so rapidly that the booms and crashes tumbled over each other in their rush to pound the ocean. The waves hauled at the two of them, pulling them down and pushing them up and across. Saoirse was swimming in place and wanted desperately to turn towards the shore. “I kept him with me,” William Howard Taft said, “Because I knew you held the key! Because of the pool and the ocean, you see!” Water hit Saoirse in the face. The wind howled. “When I first met you, when your worlds began dissolving and reforming, we saw a tidal pool. We saw an ocean. The ocean with the stars, the calm ocean, the stars so close. And I knew, I knew what those meant. I understood what the symbols were telling me!” A wave careened over him and he went under. Saoirse blinked water out of

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her eyes, spit it out of her mouth, looked around. She could only hear thunder, could only see dark green foaming waves that appeared to be watery versions of the clouds that seemed to hold angrily just above her head now. She spun around, and looked for the man, for his black coat and sopping moustache and round puffy drooping red-sunburned face. Behind her, she heard sputtering and spun again. He was only a foot away as he surfaced, talking again. “I knew what the tidal pools and ocean meant,” he yelled. “I knew that we are in a tidal pool, that we could only stay there, stay there until either the ocean took us back or something lifted us from that pool into a new existence somewhere else. The tidal pool is an interim existence and nothing leaves it on its own. We would be taken back to the ocean or taken on to something else. And then…” he sputtered and went under again, and Saoirse had trouble staying afloat herself. Ansel, she thought, and pictured him, the children, on the shore, staring at the clouds. Would they wait for her? When would they get out of the storm? Then, she wondered Is the beach even still there? “We went to the ocean,” William Howard Taft said, closer to her. He was right next to her face, and she felt his hand brush her arm as they paddled to stay up, as they rode up waves and down them. “And the stars were so close to the ocean and the ocean was so calm, and I knew it was a sign, a sign that I was to seek the ocean, and that the ocean was life. I was to leave this tidal pool and go back to life.” More thunder cracked and a wave broke on top of them and he sputtered again and cleared his eyes and spit and Saoirse did the same. “That was why I had to keep Chuck with me,” William Howard Taft told her. Then he dove down and began paddling down under water.

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Saoirse dove after him, immediately, thinking, as she had on the beach, about her family, and about the things here felt so real—the sand had scribbled under her feet and been hot and the water was warm and coarse-feeling, with salt seeming to scrub her as she dove down. I’ve never even been in the ocean, she thought, and yet the water seemed actual. She realized the pursuit was futile almost immediately. The water was green and dark and no light filtered down. She could not see him and turned back, bobbing to the surface, gasping for air and clearing her eyes. The wind still slapped at the water in gusts creating waves that pushed her. She tried to hold her position but wasn’t sure what her position was. More thunder rumbled and the clouds raced through the sky, roiling, making her wonder if it was a hurricane. Could there be hurricanes here? Would she be watching news of tragedies in the After? She caught her breath and then wondered why she’d done that and as her mind hit on that – why did I worry about catching my breath? —she dove again this time not bothering to take a breath first. As she dove straight down the sounds from the surface faded away. There was the wind howling and waves splashing, then just her pulse and a soft pressure on her that seemed to block sound. Her eyes continued to be no good at picking out details: it was darker green below, and lighter green above, and speck-filled cloudy water in between. She dove as straight as she could, down…down…down… her arms following the peculiar beat of swimming, movement with too many pauses and too slow but movement anyway, arms pushing awkwardly, unaccustomed to being the propulsive force for her body. She kept at it.

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Her lungs did not hurt. Her eyes did not cloud over. The surface din grew distant. She moved downward and tried to stop wondering when she would black out, when her pulse would stop, when she would bob to the surface. She hadn’t been hurt jumping off the roof. Or the farm-island. None of the lightning had struck her. She reminded herself of those things as all light faded and the water wrapped around her like a sodden, heavy blanket, interfering inanimately with her movements. Time underwater stretched out in the same uneven manner that her movements did. She kept moving downward and thought that the green was greener. She thought she saw a speck and then was sure: it was a speck, a dark speck, and it was moving oddly, too. She tried to speed up, to swim harder, but found it difficult; she had only one speed. The figure ahead was William Howard Taft, diving, too, swimming downward and downward like her, pushing against the water and his own buoyancy. She was, again, gaining on him but she was slowed, distracted by the greening of the water around her. The light grew more green, more solid, and she could see better until suddenly it was a moot point, and she was lying on grass in the Garden, and so was William Howard Taft, and they were both soaking wet. He was panting, she was not. She rolled onto her side, looking at him. Salt water trickled down across her nose, tickling her. He lay on his stomach, eyes closed and back heaving with breaths he struggled to control. She noticed that his hat was still clutched in his hand. They were

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both barefoot. A shadow lay near his hand and she turned her eyes in that direction, seeing what she expected to see, the Tree. “How did you know?” she asked. He simply lay there, breathing, hard, and moved his hand weakly. She didn’t know what that meant,. She sat up. The Tree looked the same as it had in her dream: Wide trunk, immensely wide and smooth. It had the crenellations that all bark had, but they, too, were smooth, giving the trunk a strangely polished appearance, lacquered deep-set wrinkles, as if wisdom had been preserved in amber. The trunk went straight up only about 6 feet before spreading out into wide thick branches that sprung out horizontal to the ground, giving the tree a shadow with a diameter of many many dozens of feet. The two of them were not underneath the canopy provided by the Tree, but instead just outside of it. The tree spread out like an umbrella or half-globe and from this vantage she could see the branches dividing and redividing and covered with leaves. The leaves, she saw now, were a silvery-green and blurred a little, she thought – or not blurred, but always different, so that each leaf was a slightly different shape and color, a myriad of hues all falling into the general category of silver-green but all slightly different, the way a crowd of people at first seems the same but then erupts into dissimiliarities. The leaves were motionless, and yet were not; they felt like movement as she watched, an imagination of motion that existed, if it did, in spite of the fact that there was no breeze. She tried to focus on the leaves to decide if they really were moving, and as she did, she remembered doing exactly just that when Stephanie had been first born.

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Saoirse stared at the tree and remembered, wondering why the thought had sprung into her mind so vividly. It was the middle of the night when Stephanie was only three days old that Saoirse had watched to see if she was moving. The baby Stephanie still slept in a bassinet in her parent’s room, at the end of the bed. Ansel had gotten up to go to the bathroom and in doing so had woken Saoirse. Their bedroom at the time had been in an apartment, nearer the city, and the streetlights had been close outside and lit their bedroom up more than she cared for, more than she had ever gotten used to. She had sat up in the bed and listened to the bedroom door close and the bathroom door close. In the middle of the night, in the stillness, Saoirse had suddenly been hit with the fear that Stephanie was not okay. She sat and suddenly wondered if Stephanie was breathing, and had crawled to the end of the bed and peered at Stephanie, wrapped snugly in a blanket and laying next to a tiny little giraffe, and watched her to prove to herself that she was breathing. It felt like hours that she stared, time in which she saw nothing. So she’d put out her hand, but couldn’t feel breath from Stephanie’s tiny nose. Still seeking proof, she picked up Stephanie’s hand and put her thumb in the baby’s palm. Stephanie gripped the thumb, and Saoirse, who still hadn’t seen her baby breath, relaxed. She could not have grabbed my hand if she wasn’t alive, even if I didn’t see her move, she’d thought. For several nights, Saoirse had repeated that little ritual, alone in the bedroom while Ansel was downstairs, or when Ansel slept. Now, she sat near the Tree and watched and wondered if it was moving, if there was a breath or pulse or wind that affected the Tree that was too subtle for her to feel, and

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wondered if she should touch the Tree to find out, if she could reach out and put her hand on a leaf and find out that way. She decided she should not do that. She heard movement off to her right but stayed looking at the tree, because by then she had noticed the tiny little buds that grew scattered amongst the leaves. Hundreds, probably thousands of them, tiny, darker green, pebble-like in their appearance, except that a few of them at the tip had glimpses of something… of a color that she could not quite describe… beginning to appear in cracks at the tips. The Tree was flowering soon. Those buds were the beginning of flowers, which were the beginning of fruits, she knew. Hundreds, if not thousands, of fruits, would be appearing on the Tree probably in a matter of a week or so. She looked over at William Howard Taft, who was getting to his feet, still wet and breathing hard. “You’re a little early,” she said. William Howard Taft turned to her and said “It’s not so difficult, really. “What isn’t?” Saoirse asked, confused. “Finding others like me, like you. That is, it is very difficult to find others like you, others who hold the key to returning.” “I’m a little uncomfortable with that idea.” “But you do. It’s as I told you, and I just proved it to you, now. You even had the right idea, back at your house, for how to control the After, something you deduced quickly after arriving here, while it took me a much longer time.” He looked at the Tree, reached out a hand and held it just a tiny bit away from the leaves, almost but not quite

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touching one. “And, you realized more quickly than anyone I’ve ever run into what had happened to you. How did you do that?” He turned towards her, now. Saoirse looked down at her toes. “It was too perfect,” she said. “Ah.” They stood there while William Howard Taft reached out again and again pulled his hand back again. He waved it under the leaves. “Is it still?” he asked. “No,” she said. “Is it?” he asked again. Saoirse thought about that. “Maybe,” she said. Then: “How did you find people? How did you keep Chuck with you?” “The second part is simple. I never let go of his hand.” “What?” “I never let go of his hand, I said. It’s possible to keep someone in your After, I’ve found, or in my After, by simply keeping them there. Force of will, is my deduction. And that is easier to do if physically the presence is kept there.” Saoirse thought about that. As she did, she kept thinking how many times since she arrived here she had walked away from her family, run away from them, swam away from them. “And you,” William Howard Taft “Needed to be kept near me. I suspected that from the moment we first talked and you took me to those places. Now I have proven my theory right because again you have led me to the Garden and this time, directly to this Tree.”

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“You were here before,” Saoirse said. “I didn’t lead you here.” It seemed to her important to not receive credit for his being here. “When I got rid of you, I got rid of me, too. I woke up the next morning, as gone as you were.” William Howard Taft moved towards the Tree now, peering at the buds on the branches as he spoke. “I woke up, oddly enough, in that house where your friend lived with you. He was quite irate to find me there, and even more irate to find you and your son, Chuck, not there.” Saoirse wanted to say serves you right but really, she should have said it before he finished, should have interjected it when he said that he was gone out of the garden. If she said it now, it would sound like she was saying that Rory was the part that served him right. Instead, she said “Don’t touch the tree.” William Howard Taft looked at her, then. “I’m not going to, yet.” “I mean it. Don’t.” She was surprised at how serious she was about the warning. When Taft laughed, a little, and turned around to walk towards the trunk Saoirse followed him. “I mean it. Listen to me. You can’t do this.” He ignored her and walked up almost to the trunk, held his hand, palm towards the trunk, inches away, and looked at her. “Feel it.” He said. When she didn’t move, he grabbed her wrist and held it so that her hand was, like his, facing the trunk of the tree but not touching it. “Do you feel that?” “No…” she began, but paused. She did feel something. She felt… warmth. And power. The two feelings were a strange mix that somehow worked. It felt to her like the feeling she used to get when one of her children would crawl into bed, scared, to lie between her and Austin. Stephanie, especially, had liked to do that. When she was 3 she

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had frequently come into their room late at night, nervous about the dark. Always a light sleeper, Stephanie. Saoirse hadn’t minded, but felt as a parent she was supposed to do something, so during lunch one day Saoirse addressed it: “What scares you at night?” she’d asked. Stephanie had said “The dark.” Saoirse had told her “We got you a nightlight, you know.” Stephanie replied: “It still leaves the dark in my room.” That night they had started leaving her light on in her room, trying to make it that no part of her room was dark. It hadn’t worked; Stephanie had come crawling into their bed again. The next day, at breakfast, Saoirse asked what was wrong now. “We left your light on,” she said to Stephanie. Stephanie had said “It’s still dark outside.” After that, even with her light on, they let her crawl into bed with them whenever she wanted, waiting until Stephanie grew enough to not mind the dark outside – the dark that even her parents could not get rid of. And on those nights when Stephanie had climbed into bed with them, she’d done the same thing each time. She would start at the foot of the bed, climbing up over the headboard. She would walk between them until she reached the pillows, and then would slide her legs down under the covers between Saoirse and Ansel, inch by inch, trying not to disturb the blankets, until she was lying in between her parents. She would lay there, motionless, for a few seconds, before turning towards Saoirse and putting her arm around her mother’s shoulders and snuggling in to her.

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After that was done, Saoirse would lay there awake, feeling warm from the contact and powerful, because she might not be able to banish the dark but she could provide a place of safety and comfort that made the dark irrelevant. Warmth and power: that came from the tree, but the sensation was more complicated even, almost beyond Saoirse’s ability to categorize it. Those feelings flowed from the Tree so powerfully that Saoirse could not imagine pulling her hand back, even after William Howard Taft let go her wrist. It was all she could do, in fact, to not push it more forward to actually touch the Tree. But she, like Taft, did not press forward or dare to touch the Tree. They both stood there, hands held up, for a long time. “You still can’t do it,” Saoirse said, eventually, and softly. But she did not move away or even look away from the Tree as she said it.

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Fifteen: The breeze came often, but rarely did more than wisp hair around and ruffle the leaves of the Tree. But those leaves seemed to flicker and wave even when there was no wind detectable. The ground was, as Saoirse had remembered, soft and almost spongy to sit on, but firm enough to walk on. It did not get too cold, and never too warm, either. And she was not hungry. No food appeared this time as she sat in the Garden, but she did not mind. One day, though, she thought about water. She had not drunk any water in several days of sitting here with William Howard Taft, but she was not thirsty. While not thirsty, she thought about a glass of ice water and wondered why she did not miss having one, and also why she did not have one, sitting here. The two spent their time away from each other, days spent each sitting not quite halfway around the Tree from the other, each eyeing the other from time to time, each not talking. Occasionally one or the other of them would get up, would walk a little ways away from the trunk of the Tree, but never far and never for long. It was, Saoirse, realized, almost impossible to walk away from the Tree. She sat on the ground now, mid-morning, and looked at the Tree and looked at the formations of fruit growing on the branches. “I still can’t let him do it,” she said to herself, softly. It was the first sound in several days that was not the soft whisper of grass and leaves and air, and those tiny sounds made it seem more quiet in the Garden – the result being that her soft murmur seemed loud.

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The quiet had its own essence, its own viability. The quiet had been here before she and William Howard Taft had arrived, and would be here after they left (if they left, if the Garden and the Tree were here after we leave if we leave, she thought) and the quiet of the Garden blanketed everything, needed to be pushed aside to think or speak or move, needed to be shoved away like a heavy curtain, or, more apt, a thick blanket piled atop her. How long until the fruit is here? she wondered. “I still can’t let him do it,” she mumbled again, feeling the words push gently into the quiet. As she said it, she thought William Howard Taft, a hundred feet away and just under the canopy of the Tree, looked at her. She wanted to touch the Tree. She had to admit that to herself. Once or twice each of the past few days since arriving here, she had wandered up to the trunk, held her hand out, but she had not touched the bark. She’d just stood there, feeling the … emotions, the sense of things flowing from the Tree. At those times she wanted desperately to feel that directly on her hand, but she was afraid to touch the Tree’s timeless edges, worried about what would happen. To break the feeling, she had often in the past few days stood underneath the no-color shimmery silvery green leaves, and she had wanted to touch them, too, to see if they were as shiny and slippery and soft as they looked to be. She kept her hands folded under her arms, or in her pockets, most of the time. She looked at William Howard Taft looking back at her. They had not spoken since that first exchange, and while she did not know how long had passed now, or even if she had slept, if it was several hours or days or weeks that had gone by, the lack of

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conversation was not oppressive or awkward. What drove her to want to talk to him was that she felt as though she should be trying to stop him, trying to talk him out of his plan, making a speech or something, coming up with a phrase or belief or quote that would stop him in his tracks. But she couldn’t think of anything to say. He was no longer looking at her. His eyes were off to his left. He stood just a few feet in, under the branches that spread almost perfectly horizontally just over his head, his head only inches from a cluster of flowers-becoming-fruit, but he was looking into the distance behind her. She looked over her shoulder, first, a moment, but couldn’t see anything and couldn’t turn far enough without getting up, which she did, sighing and turning around. It took more effort than she’d expected to turn her back on the Tree. Ansel was walking towards them. She knew him instantly, even though he was far off. He had one hand in a pocket, his right hand, as he always did when he walked, a nervous habit or tic that he had. She’d noticed that the very first time she’d ever met him. She remembered wondering if he had his keys or his money or something in that pocket, something valuable that made him want to make sure it had not fallen out of his pants pocket when he wasn’t paying attention. He hadn’t; he almost never had anything in his right pants pocket, but when he walked he put his hand in there. Ansel walked slowly up to them, not hurrying, looking straight ahead at the Tree… or at her. She couldn’t tell, from this distance which held her attention, but he was looking exactly in her direction and she hoped, for a moment, that he was looking at her and not at the Tree. Whatever he was looking at, she was amazed that he was here.

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“I did that,” she muttered. “I brought you here.” She could feel the warmth of the Tree, its power, its allure, could feel herself wanting to turn her back on Ansel and look at the Tree, and that made her more proud that she’d managed to bring him here, had managed to in her mind have Ansel created here, despite the overwhelming allure of the Tree. It took a few minutes for Ansel to walk all the way to her, and when he got to the Tree she saw she was right: he was looking at her. He walked straight up to her without hardly a glance at the Tree and hugged her, pulling his hand out of his pocket and wrapping his arms around her and burying his face into her neck. His arms pulled tight against her back and it was nearly a second before she began hugging back, pushing her own head down into his shoulder while she pulled him to her. Their clasp was tenacious. While he hugged her, she almost forgot about the Tree, but even then she could feel it, pulling her, tugging at her. She was not the first to break the hug, though, and she was proud of that, too. “Hi,” she said, as he pulled back. She felt almost shy. “I missed you,” he said. They stood there for a second, and he never looked away from her face. “I missed you, too,” she said. She wondered where he had come from, where he missed her from. The beach house? Their own house? The garden? How long had he been walking in the garden? How far back could his memories go? “I didn’t think I’d find you here,” he said. She looked at him, a little curious. “What are you doing?” he asked her.

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She motioned up to the Tree. “Waiting,” she said. “Trying to stop him,” she said, pointing at William Howard Taft. Ansel squinted over at the giant man who still stood, a hundred feet away, underneath the shelter of the overhanging limbs, arms now folded across his chest, still wearing an outdated suit. “Who’s he?” Saoirse looked again at him. “He’s William Howard Taft,” she said. Ansel nodded. “Oh,” he said. Saoirse took his chin in her hand and turned his head to hers. “Do you remember anything?” she asked. “About…” he said, his voice trailing off in the way he had, sometimes, of asking a question but making it sound like a statement. “The beach? Florida? The crowd…” Ansel looked confused for a second and then looked blank and then looked at her again. “Do you?” he asked. Saoirse felt her own confusion, then, sure that it showed on her face, but was prevented from asking what he meant by William Howard Taft walking over towards them. She could barely hear him walking below the Tree, but here any sound, really, could be heard against the background quiet that encased them. It was his shoes, squeaking slightly, that gave him away. She looked away from Ansel for just a moment, saw him coming over. She answered Ansel, though: “I do. I remember,” she said, as she turned away from William Howard Taft’s approach and back to Ansel, who had kept his hand holding hers, and who had put his other hand, his right hand, up to her face so that

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when she turned back it was there, waiting, and it touched her cheek, lightly, caressing it ever so slightly. “Do you?” Ansel asked. He pressed his hand against her cheek and then pulled it away as William Howard Taft arrived at their little meeting. “How did you get here?” he asked Ansel. He looked red-faced, a little, worried, a little, Saoirse thought. “I was looking for my wife,” Ansel said. “You were?” William Howard Taft said. Saoirse was momentarily distracted by a flicker around them. Ansel pulled her attention back. “Yes. I’ve been looking for her for a long time,” he said. He had kept his hand against her cheek while he spoke and now he leaned in and hugged her again. Hugged her tightly and pulled her to him even in the midst of the hug. “Don’t walk away from me again,” he whispered into her ear. She tried to turn to look at him but couldn’t move her head from its place by the side of his head. She felt dampness on her neck. Was he crying? “Are the others coming?” William Howard Taft said, and Saoirse wondered about that, too. She looked over Ansel’s shoulder, distracted now by more and more things happening: Ansel’s tears, William Howard Taft’s question, the faint flickering she could see around her, her own confusion over Ansel’s comment. Don’t walk away from me again. What did he mean? He didn’t explain. Ansel just kept pulling her tightly to him. Watching, William Howard Taft cleared his throat but then did not say anything and instead moved off to a

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different location under the canopy of branches. Ansel’s grip finally loosened and she pulled back just a little from him, needing to put a little space between herself and the pulse of emotions he seemed to be made of at that point. His face was glistening with tears, his eyes big and heavy the way they got when he cried, which was rare. “How did you find me?” she asked him, voice quiet. “I looked for you. I didn’t know what else to do. I just kept looking for you. I walked and walked and walked and finally I found you.” “Walked…” “I just walked in the direction you walked.” “The ocean?” He looked confused. The garden around them seemed to shimmer, or perhaps waver the way hot air over the road wavered, the way fog sometimes seemed to still be in the air after sunlight burned it off. “The ocean? No. The restaurant.” “What restaurant… Oh.” She remembered, and saw it in her mind, them all sitting around the table. “Oh,” she said again. Then: “Oh!” He nodded. “So you’ve been doing… walking… since… how long?” “You took it all with you,” he said. “What does that mean?”

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There was a brief shimmer behind him and she looked and thought she saw a horse and cart, the horse neighing and tossing its head near her. She flinched back and looked at it as the horse turned to look over its shoulder. But, then: Gone. It was gone and never had been. The grass there rippled in the breeze that sometimes could be felt and sometimes could not. She heard the Tree whisper behind her. “What was that?” she wondered aloud. Ansel kept his hands on her lower back, kept his arms around her. “When you left,” he said, then began again, because his voice had caught and he’d choked on the words, “When you left, you took everything with you. Everything. All the kids, all the people. Then he left, too, and walked away, and I was alone there in an empty restaurant. Completely alone. There were tables with food on them, drinks, a radio on in the kitchen, cars in the parking lot. But nobody was there.” Saoirse turned to look back at him. His eyes were glassy with tears again. “There was nobody around. Nobody.” He paused and swallowed. Saoirse hugged him then and said “I’m sorry.” It seemed, in light of the sadness and relief she could feel in him, inadequate. “There’s been nobody since then. Until today.” “How…” “I just started walking. I got up and walked out of the restaurant the way that he did,” pointing to William Howard Taft, who, she saw, was standing under the Tree with his arms folded tightly across his chest, staring off into space. He was staring so intently that they both looked in the direction that the man was looking but saw nothing there.

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Or so Saoirse ahd thought – but she changed her mind, because as she looked she realized that the grass was flattened and not moving in some areas, large rectangularseeming areas held inexplicably down. Inexplicably until she saw, briefly, a wide, flat dirt path appear, stretching alongside William Howard Taft and away from him off to her right and left in either direction. A road. Then it, too, was gone. “Something’s going on,” she said. Ansel nodded. But he did not let go of her. “How long were you alone?” she asked him. “A long time. I don’t know. I just kept walking and walking and walking. Without ever seeing anybody. I didn’t even know what direction I was walking in. I walked past cars and buildings and parks and streets and suburbs and I never saw a single other person. It was like being on an empty movie set. It wasn’t scary, or weird, not anything like I imagined it would be. The feeling I got was that everyone had just stepped away, for a bit. But they never came back. “I walked through Chicago. I recognized it as Chicago when I got close, saw the skyline. I guess that means I was walking south. That took me a while, to get there. I didn’t stop to eat or drink or anything. I was never hungry or thirsty. I just wanted to walk, to find you, and I didn’t know where you were or how to find you or what to do, so I just kept walking in the direction I’d last seen you headed. When I finally reached Chicago I walked through that, right through the whole city. There were no cars on the

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expressway or busses or anything. That was the other thing: Cars weren’t left in the middle of the road or anything like that. It wasn’t like there’d been a disaster or something. It was like, instead, like everybody had gone home and then just stayed inside their homes, maybe. The freeway, I walked right down the middle of it, towards the city. I was nervous at first, and then I thought why am I nervous? What could happen? So I walked into the city and the shops were all there, and restaurants, and everything. They were open, too. I tried the door to a Dunkin’ Doughnuts, and it was open. I walked inside and I smelled fresh coffee and doughnuts and muffins, and behind the counter were all these great doughnuts and things, fresh and nice-looking. But nobody was there. So I left and kept walking, right past the Sears Tower and down past the lakefront and kept heading more or less south, because that was the last direction…” he stopped and squinted at William Howard Taft. “What’s he doing now?” Ansel asked. Saoirse had been watching Ansel’s face while he talked, watching the play of emotions on it, the stray tear or two that slipped out periodically, but at his question, without letting go of him, she turned her head. William Howard Taft was walking out from below the Tree, slowly, warily. He had hunched over, just slightly, and was peering up. Saoirse tried to figure that movement out, and realized, suddenly, that he was trying to look at something beyond the rim of the tree – he had bent to see something that was up in the air beside the tree, and she looked in the same direction but saw nothing there. She looked back to William Howard Taft, saw him walking to the edge of the Tree where he put his hand out, rested it (it seemed) on something, and looked up. He stood there at the edge of the Tree, hand

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outstretched into thin air and gazing upwards. Into nothing. He rubbed his finger along his moustache. “I wonder what he sees,” Ansel asked. Saoirse said “I saw a street. And a horse.” She said it softly, not wanting to disturb the moment. “A horse?” Ansel asked. “And a street. A dirt road, actually.” “Where?” Ansel asked. “Over there,” Saoirse pointed. “Alongside the Tree.” “Tree?” Ansel asked. He sounded confused. Saoirse turned towards him. “You don’t see the Tree?” “No,” Ansel said. “I don’t see a Tree. What are you talking about?” Saoirse suddenly worried and hugged him more tightly again as she looked up at his face. “What do you see?” she asked. “You,” he said, “the house, the backyard. The neighborhood.” Saoirse shut her eyes tightly, suddenly, afraid and not afraid at the same time. “What?” Ansel asked her. “Why are you closing your eyes?” Saoirse held her breath. If I open my eyes, she thought will the Tree still be there? Or will it be gone and I’ll be back home? William Howard Taft, she thought, had just begun having the same problem -- the horse, that dirt road, the way he’d been looking around. Was the Tree fading? She kept her shut and clung to Ansel. Her bare feet felt around, trying to discern whether the grass was like the grass of the Garden or like the grass of her yard. She was sure there would be a difference.

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“Are you okay?” Ansel asked. Saoirse kept her eyes shut and kept him close against her and felt the ground with her feet. She focused on the image of the Tree. Would it be so bad if it disappeared? she thought. Then it would, she thought, and it wouldn’t. Maybe it wouldn’t be so bad if the Tree were to go away, if it got William Howard Taft away from it, she pondered. She could feel, almost, in her hands, the electrically smooth feeling that came from standing near the trunk of the Tree. She could see, almost, in her closed eyes, the smooth burnished look of the bark, the silvery glitter of the leaves. She could smell, almost, the spring-aura that surrounded the Tree. I don’t want to leave the Tree, she thought. She said that to Ansel: “I don’t want to leave the Tree,” and she felt him hug her. “I don’t see it,” he said. “What’s he doing?” Saoirse asked. Her eyes still closed. “He’s looking around. He’s standing in our backyard and looking around him. Now he’s looking up.” “What’s around him?” “Austin’s swingset.” That was what they called it. Ansel had put the swingset in for Stephanie, actually, but she’d never liked it. When Austin was old enough to go on it, he had loved it, had practically lived on the swingset during the summer. Once, even, in winter, when Saoirse had made Stephanie take him outside to get some quiet for a few minutes, she’d looked out the kitchen window to see Austin, in his snowsuit and boots

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and hat with the fluffy pom-pom on top, swinging on the swingset. She saw that he and Stephanie had cleared out the snow underneath and she watched as Austin swung back and forth, pumping his legs, Stephanie pushing him with her mittened hands. She deliberately pushed that thought out of her head. She did not want to leave the Tree. “Is he moving?” she asked. “No,” Ansel said. “Just looking.” Saoirse tried to focus on the feeling of the Tree, on the power running from it, on the shade beneath it, on the way the leaves rippling could sometimes look like a school of fish and sometimes like a field of wheat but mostly just like leaves when they rippled, tried to turn her mind solely to the feeling that there were more colors visible in the bark than one would imagine, colors visible only up close and only glancingly, tried to remember and feel the soft spongy quality of the dirt underneath the eaves of the Tree. She ran those things through her mind on a loop and she kept her eyes closed and she grabbed for Ansel’s hand. “Come with me,” she said. “Where?” “Come,” she said, simply. She was leading him, eyes closed. She turned around, holding his left hand in her right hand, and walked by memory back to where she’d come from when she saw him. Mentally, she pictured where she was walking in the Garden, underneath the first boughs of the Tree, the tiny pegs of branches at the ends of the great rolling arms that began at the trunk and carried outwards, perfectly level, perfectly horizontal, in some cases, and stretching upward, creating the half-circle of the top of the

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Tree. As she walked with Ansel behind her, she fought the idea that she was leading him to the backyard, and instead kept picturing walking beneath the Tree towards the trunk. Now, she felt, she would be beneath one of the almost-fruits that she’d sat so near, its flower pulling in and hardening and rounding into something green and smooth, ready to ripen and plump up, almost. Each day, when she awoke, she’d looked at that blossom and each day had seen, in stop motion almost, the progress the petals were making in their slow metamorphosis. They didn’t talk as she walked him, eyes closed. She was underneath, she was sure, a great branch, almost as thick as her waist where the branch came out from the trunk but even with that great girth and strength the wood still was softer-seeming than it should be. The branches had a look that suggested, if touched, they would give slightly before stiffening up. She paused. Ansel said “What’s going on?” She reached out her hand. She focused on what it should feel like. She held her hand, palm up, willing the Tree to be there, willing her to not be back at the beginning of all of this, willing herself to bring Ansel to the Tree. “What’s he doing?” Ansel said. Saoirse kept her eyes closed. She could feel it. She could feel the pulsating hum of the power of the Tree.

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She leaned forward. She pulled Ansel’s left hand with her and held it towards the Tree, held it next to her own left hand, switching his hand so it was palm-out, so that he could feel it, too. Ansel stopped talking. She heard him suck in his breath. “What is that?” he asked. Saoirse opened her eyes and saw them, both, standing underneath the Tree, hands outstretched. Ansel’s eyes were wide with wonder, and he was staring straight ahead, but his eyes were unfocused. She kept her own left hand out, too, feeling the comforting and awe-inspiring power of the Tree flowing into her. She looked up and nearly cried as she saw the leaves waving in a breeze she could not feel, saw sunlight and blue sky in tiny bursts through gaps in the leaves that opened and closed too quickly to really be seen. “Do you see it now?” she asked Ansel. “No,” he said. “But I feel it,” he added, after a second. “I feel it.” He paused again. “I do.” They stood there, quietly. “What is it?” Ansel asked. “It’s The Tree,” Saoirse said. “The one in the Garden. The Tree of the Fruit of Knowledge of Good And Evil.” Ansel breathed in again. Saoirse said “I know.” Then, because there seemed to be nothing else to say “I know,” she said again. She meant I know what you’re thinking, she meant I know what you’re feeling, because she had felt it all, too, the rush of excitement, the fear, the implications, the desire, overall, to touch it, to hug the Tree, to grasp it near and never

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leave it. She could understand, and felt that Ansel could understand, why she never wanted to leave it. That feeling, that power and comfort and electricity and pull… the pull of the Tree. She understood that desire, and now he did, too. “I know,” she said again, as he looked at her. He looked back at the Tree. He looked around. “Leaves,” he said. After a pause, he said “Branches.” “You see it?” she asked again. “Yes. I can… I can almost see it. It stretches back, right? It stretches back over here… over there. It’s big. It’s very big.” His words were accompanied by his turning his body, halfway, keeping it pointed towards the tree but rotating his torso around, moving his arms, gesturing. “It’s big,” he said again. Saoirse held her hands towards the Tree and held Ansel’s hands there, too, though they didn’t need it. “I don’t know what to do,” she said. Ansel said, “I do.”

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Sixteen: Saoirse was drifting. She thought she knew where she was but everything was disorienting to her. Each direction she looked showed her shapes she could not recognize. She thought that she knew what direction up was but then all of a sudden up wouldn’t be there, it would be off to her side or behind her. Was she moving? She could not tell. There was no wind, no pressure, no gravitational pull to let her know she was heading in one direction or another. The shapes around her, the shapes that she could not identify, beyond knowing they were shapes, did not frighten her but also did not tell her if she was moving. With no frame of reference, she could not tell if she was nearing them or if they were changing size, altering their appearance. She was not, though, concerned or alarmed. Why should she be? It was strange, though: when she looked at things they suddenly seemed to not be those things, even though they might still be. When she looked at her feet, now, she instantly began wondering if they truly looked like feet or if they looked like something else and she only thought they were feet because she knew that she was supposed to have feet on the end of her legs. What do feet look like? She wondered. Then: what’s a circle? “Ansel,” she tried saying, but wasn’t sure she’d spoken. She drifted. More. She wondered if she was drifting. Am I? She looked at her hands. Did they look like hands? A shape was near. What was it? She tried to remember shapes. Dreaming, she thought. I’m dreaming, she thought.

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She looked around. Everything was very clear suddenly. Exceedingly clear. She was not afraid. She was not drifting. She was dreaming. And then she knew what the shapes were. The shapes around her were, she thought, memories. When she thought that, when she thought memories, the shapes seemed to pulsate and glow and sharpen and rise and fall, each shape doing something, and each shape doing something different than the others did. She tried to focus on them, tried to focus on colors, on shapes, tried to remember what red is, what a square was, what a shape itself was. She saw her hands again and thought that’s what hands look like, I’m pretty sure. “Ansel,” she said again. Ansel was not here, was he? She looked for a shape of Ansel. But she couldn’t recognize the shapes, then, again – until she remembered they were memories. Plane crash, she thought. “Ansel!” she said, louder. No urgency, no fear, no anxiety. But she wanted to talk with him. Tree, she thought. Shapes and colors, if they were shapes and colors, drifted around her.

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I do, she thought, and when she thought it she heard Ansel’s voice. “I do,” he said. I do I do I do I do and she drifted there wondering when Ansel had said I do. Tree, she thought again. Where is this? She thought. Wedding, she thought. She was standing, then, and things were not clear and there were still shapes and colors and things around her. She had feet, and she could tell she had them but could not see them. They were down, her feet were, down there at the end of her legs. She looked down but saw only white, blurry, haze. She felt dizzy. She felt short-of-breath. She saw her hands, felt her hands, trembling. She breathed in and breathed out, shallow gasps. Her eyes felt wet and her face felt wet. Am I crying? She looked down and then back up again, hearing sounds around her. She could not make out the sounds, really. Not clearly. She knew what they were but they were far away and unrecognizable, even though she knew she should recognize them. Her head spun and she thought she would float again. “I do,” she heard. She recognized that. She sniffled and realized she was smiling. Her head still felt dizzy and light and trembling. Her body felt weak, weak in the shoulders and in the knees and the stomach and legs. She couldn’t move. She remembered how to move, but in the past, moving had come easily: in the past she’d wanted to turn this way or look that way or go left, and she’d just done it. Now, she was here, trying to make sense of the shapes and the sounds and the colors and she wanted to turn her head, but it wouldn’t turn. She thought to herself Turn your head, look around. But it wouldn’t turn.

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Mostly what she could see was white and mist and haze and what she could feel was a fluttery excitement and wetness on her cheeks and in her eyes. And she was holding something. There were sounds and she tried to think of those and think of the thing she was holding, tried to concentrate on anything, but she couldn’t. What am I holding?she thought and was amazed at the clarity with which the thought struck her. Plane crash, she thought then, and images raced through her mind. Tree. A woman laying in a field of blue, holding her hand. A plane seat in front of her lurching and tearing away. A shallow sea with stars above it. A rumpled bed sheet lying next to her face. Horses. Tree. She breathed in and breathed out, deeply. Her head was spinning but her vision was clearer now and she blinked, once, twice, three times, and felt her cheeks cold with water but her eyes were clear and she could see, in front of her, some sort of mesh. Not mesh… lace. Everything was silent. She realized that the entire world had gone quiet. She was holding… plants? She looked down and felt things go weak on her again. She could not lift up her head. “Saoirse?” she heard her name.

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“Ansel,” she said. Then it was all quiet again and she focused on her breathing. Her head went empty and she could not think of anything. Empty. She tried to focus, to grasp, to find anything in her mind. She saw in her mind her children: Stephanie. Austin. Chuck. As she saw each of their faces she wondered first who are they? And then second how could anyone love them more than I do and then third who are they? again. “Saoirse?” she heard again. She felt herself wobble. She was finally able to turn her head and see… Ansel. But not Ansel. Not the Ansel that… … where had she seen him, last? Tree? Plane crash? What’s wrong with me? She wondered. The world spun more and she said: “I do.” Then she crumpled, a little, and dropped to her knees. Her hands let go of the plants they were holding and she saw shapes and stems spill out in front of her as her hands, thinking so that’s what hands look like, her hands splayed in front of her. She saw lace and then no lace and she felt something drop off her head. Her vision was clear for an instant, and she saw a lace curtain of some sort fall, she saw flowers and was relieved to know they were flowers. She saw her hands on red carpeting and then before she could think where red carpeting was her eyes fluttered shut. She felt herself slip to one

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side, to the left and was relieved to know what left was. Her eyes opened again and she saw Ansel and not Ansel but they were the same person and then her eyes closed and she was drifting again, in the place where shapes were not shapes and colors were not colors and nothing was up and nothing was not up. “I do,” she said again and opened her eyes again. This time she saw shoes, feet, around her, and hands and she looked a little to her right and she saw Ansel. Ansel! She drew in her breath. “The Tree,” she said. “Take it easy,” he said. “Just breathe a moment.” “Where is it? Where is the Tree?” she asked him again and tried to sit up, but she felt a hand gently holding her down on the floor. She tried to brush it away. She was dizzy and felt a little nauseated, but also excited, her heart beating rapidly and she was flushed. She wondered if she was sick. Can I get sick, here? “Just lie down, Ms. Thomas,” she heard a voice say. Thomas? Ms. Thomas? She looked over her shoulder, saw a priest that she recognized – Father Miller, leaning down. He smiled at her, in a sympathetic way that also seemed familiar with this situation. “What?” “You fainted,” someone else said. She looked at that person who’d spoken, and saw Deanna. Deanna? How…

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Deanna had been her roommate throughout college. She, Saoirse, had been Deanna’s maid of honor at and Deanna had been her maid of honor, in return. Saoirse looked down at herself, saw a white, lacy, rumpled dress. “My wedding,” she said. She looked up at Ansel. “Why did you do this?” Ansel said “I didn’t do anything.” “Where is the Tree? He’s at the Tree. We have to get there.” “Saoirse, settle down,” she heard Deanna say. She hadn’t seen Deanna in over 10 years, now, and the last time the two had met, it had been running into each other at a mall while Saoirse was Christmas shopping. Deanna had been “just shopping” she’d said, not there to get presents. She’d had the twins with her, 13-year-old girls. The two of them had promised to get together “after the holidays” and that had been it. Until now. “It’ll be okay,” Deanna said now. “You’re just nervous.” Deanna knelt down, too, in her green dress that complemented her red hair. Saoirse stared at the pattern on the dress, the silky swirlings that she could remember Deanna saying had looked like leaves. “I don’t know,” she’d said when she’d tried it on the day they’d gone bridesmaid-dress shopping. “You don’t think it makes me look like a tree?” she’d asked. Saoirse looked up at her, now, then closed her eyes and stared at the shapes and colors and waves that passed through and around and she felt the drifting calm she’d been floating in just moments before all this. She felt her heartbeat, felt her pulse in her ears, felt her body slowly relax and sway. :I don’t think it makes you look like a tree at all,” Saoirse had told Deanna. “Not at all.”

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Saoirse reopened her eyes when Deanna put her hand on her cheek, staring at her old friend, who was more slender than she would be when Saoirse would see her for the last time, years from now. She wanted to say to Deanna You’re going to put on weight. Her head spun again. “Here. Sip this,” Deanna said, taking a glass of water from someone and holding it to Saoirse’s lips. Saoirse took it, propped herself up on her elbow and sipped from the water glass. It was clear and had etched in it star-shapes, large spiky drawings that almost appeared to be snowflakes. Ansel knelt down. “You okay?” he asked. He was wearing a tuxedo. She felt sweat beaded on her forehead and at the sight of him all dressed up so formally she felt inexpressibly sad, a despair twisting and wrenching in the chambers of her heart and she couldn’t talk because she knew if she did she’d start crying. In her mind she could see the Tree, but more than that, she could not just see but feel and smell and taste the power emanating from the Tree. She could see William Howard Taft near it, and the buds that were almost fruit, and Ansel standing there, holding her and saying I do just loudly enough to carry over the puzzling pulse of the Tree that ran through them like a current when she stood there. As tears welled up she shook her head. “No,” she said. “No.” There was silence all around her. Someone, somewhere off a little ways away, coughed, and Saoirse heard it echo, heard the sound reverberate off wood and more wood and cheap thin carpeting. “I think he ate it,” she said. She kept her eyes closed and tried to picture the Tree, tried to feel in her hands, which were balled up into fists, the vibrating power of the Tree, the allure, the calm

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compulsion that emanated from the bark that she had never touched. A little part of her ached that she had never touched the Tree, never been the one to taste its fruit. She did not feel any gratification at all, then, to not be the one responsible for eating the fruit and sending her, sending everyone, back. Then another thought hit her and she did feel responsible. “He ate it because I created him,” Saoirse said to herself, but it carried in this place, this echoey place. She closed her eyes again, trying to capture her memories of the Tree, the few days sitting there by the Tree, the calm and peace she’d felt, in her mind. Tears flowed out from her eyes, ran down her cheek. They were cold. The floor beneath her was cold. “Saoirse, honey,” Ansel’s voice came. “I made him. How perfect is that? Everything you want is there and what I wanted was a way to go home, to come back, and I must have known, my brain knew, that I could not go back, at all, that I myself would never have the guts to do it.” She spoke to the inside of her eyelids until she opened them again and through the blur of tears saw Ansel’s face, near hers. “Listen,” Ansel said. “So instead I made him and he ate the fruit and I’m back.” She tried to sit up but was still too sad, too dizzy. When she laid back down she intended to stay there. I’ve been sent back. Expelled from Eden, she thought. To my own wedding. She knew she should stop crying. She knew she should stop this, should stand up, should explain that she was just nervous or tired or something but she didn’t do any o that.

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She could hear fidgeting. There was a murmur here, a shoe scuff there. Whispering around her. She could imagine what they were asking: what should we do? Should we call someone? She felt Ansel’s hand on her shoulder and tried to be comforted by that, by his warm soft touch, by the way he squeezed her arm a little trying to reassure her. In her mind, though, she kept seeing William Howard Taft, kept hearing him, kept watching him flail around, kept seeing the glimmers of streets and cars and other remnants of his world, of her world, thinking of course he was made up. He was no more real, no more alive, than any of the others. I made it all and I made him and he was made to send me back. Then, she thought: I beat the system. I couldn’t find a way back but I made a person who could. At that, the tears started again, and now more people were murmuring and restlessing, a rising buzz of sound that pushed at her. “Honey, let me help you up,” Ansel whispered in her ear and she let him. Ansel’s hands on each shoulder, holding her up as she looked at him. She could feel the dried tear tracks on her face, knew that her makeup would be runny, knew that she would have red eyes. She looked down at her hands wearing the white gloves she’d worn at her wedding, gloves she remembered perfectly even before seeing them because she’d never gotten rid of them. They had sat in her dresser drawer and sometimes, for fun, she’d put them on, or let Stephanie wear them. She had once let Austin put them on and play superhero in them. “Superheroes have gloves,” he’d said, and her initial reluctance to loan them out had been overcome by that argument, she’d decided that they would be perfect superhero gloves, much better than Ansel’s leather work gloves, and had given in

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and watched Austin run around the house with the gloves on and making swooshing sounds and laser sounds (Fshoom fshoom) and jumping off the edge of the couch. The gloves she wore now were not those old keepsakes but were brand new. It would be years before Austin would don them again. If he does that, she thought, and ducked her head again. Would it all be the same? She put a gloved hand to her face again as the crying came back. What good was it to come back if it was all the same? What good if they all just went through their entire life until she got on that plane again and if she did, would she die this time, too? Would the After still be there? What good was it? And then, as she thought that, another idea popped into her head, alongside the first: What if she didn’t live it all again? What if Stephanie, and Austin, and Chuck, didn’t come around? What if it was all different? Her head spun and Ansel said “Whoa. Hold on. Come on.” She felt a glass pressed to her lips and sipped a little water and opened her eyes again. Helped by Ansel, she tried to prop herself up. “I’m sorry,” she said. “For what?” he smiled at her, a small pensive move that he tried to make a full smile. He looked strange and she stared at him. He didn’t look… right. She tried to figure out what was wrong with him. The murmuring and shuffling had grown more insistent now, and she finally looked to her right and saw the church full of people looking at her, or looking away from her out of embarrassment. Her eyes were still blurry from the sudden crying. In her mind she could not help seeing the view of the Tree, the way the grass stopped just inside the canopy of the leaves, the way the leaves themselves would shimmer, but she could control it a little now, and it just made her sigh,

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the long, rattling sigh of someone who is trying not to feel heartache but who can’t help it. She looked back at Ansel. “It’s gone,” she said again, because she didn’t know what else to say. She blinked several times and rubbed her eyes with her gloved hands. “I don’t know what happens now,” she told him. He leaned close, closer than he was already, and said very quietly: “It’s not gone.” She looked at him, pulling back just a little to focus on his eyes. His eyes, which were as blue as ever, as wide as ever, still topped with those ridiculous eyebrows of his that were too tall but not long enough to arch over his eyes complete, Ansel’s eyebrows that she’d once realized made him look like that man in the old-time magnetic ironshavings game her father had once brought for the kids when they were very little, a memory that she was a little embarrassed about and which she’d never told him -- his eyes under those eyebrows smiled at her and she noticed, as he did that, that there were crows’ feet wrinkles that were a little too deep around his eyes, that were shadowed in the light of the church. He looked older. Older than he should have looked. Older than he had at their wedding. “The Tree’s not gone,” he said, very quietly. She drew in a long and unsteady breath and stared straight at his eyes, holding them in place with her own. “It’s not?” she asked. He shook his head. “We didn’t go back?” she asked. “No,” he said.

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“Where did it go?” she asked him. “I don’t know,” he told her back. His voice echoed just slightly and Saoirse suddenly knew that their voices would be heard by the priest, by Deanna, by the people here. But she didn’t mind that. She talked in a regular voice, then: “You didn’t bring us here?” “I don’t know. I don’t know how, if I did.” “You said you knew what to do.” “I do.” “What do we have to do?” “Stand up,” he told her. “If you can.” His head pulled back a little and she looked at him. He stood up, took her hand and her arm and helped up, too, at which point everyone began clapping, for some reason. She looked at the gathered people and tried to smile at them. Why are you clapping? She wondered, and then realized that this hadn’t happened on her original wedding day, she was sure. So either things weren’t exactly the same this time around, or, just maybe she thought Ansel was right about what he’d just said. Saoirse was surprised at how relieved she felt as she contemplated not being dead, not being returned back to her life. Was it The Tree that had changed her mind? Had she changed her mind? She was forced to stop thinking about that when Ansel spoke: “Everybody,” Ansel said, “We’re dead.” That stopped the rumble and buzz of talking and shuffling of feet and general movement. Saoirse looked out at the crowd, trying to pick out individual faces. She focused on the front row and saw her mother there, in the lime-green dress she’d worn.

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“Mom,” she said. But softly, and it wasn’t heard over Ansel’s voice as he started talking again: “We’re dead,” he said again, more loudly. “And some of you might be, too. Not all of you, I suppose. But I am, and Saoirse is, and some of you are.” He paused. Saoirse watched him and wondered what he was thinking. Then he looked down at his feet and looked up again. “We died in a plane crash. It doesn’t seem so long ago, but who knows? It might have been ages and ages ago. I suppose there’s no real way to tell.” Another pause. “Or no point in telling. Not now.” Saoirse wanted to go and hold her mom’s hand. When had she died? Five years earlier? Why did she look so old, here? Then she realized: this may not be her After. It might not really be her mother. But she still wanted to go over to her and tell her, one more time, how pretty she looked in that dress; she remembered her mom picking it out in the weeks before the wedding. “You don’t think it’s too garish?” she’d asked. “You’re the mother of the bride. You wear what you want. And you look gorgeous in it.” Her mom had shushed her and waved a hand, but had smiled and had bought the dress. Everyone had loved it. Ansel was continuing and Saoirse felt a breeze spring up as he spoke. “We were going to go on vacation. We were going to Florida, for a little trip. I’d won tickets to Disney World from a contest on a radio station. We couldn’t really afford it, I suppose, but we didn’t want them to go to waste and we thought the kids would like Florida.” He rubbed his nose. “Saoirse had a bad feeling about it.”

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Saoirse looked further into the crowd, seeing aunts and uncles and two of the cousins that had come to the wedding. Ansel’s family had been larger and she hadn’t known many of them that day. She still didn’t: there were many unfamiliar faces in the crowd. “But we wanted to go, and we all know Saoirse, right?” Ansel said, and there was some uncomfortable laughter at that. Saoirse was amazed that nobody had stopped Ansel yet, that nobody had interrupted him when he began, that the priest or Deanna didn’t speak up, that nobody asked him if he was well or took him away or otherwise protested that this was crazy. But she remembered when William Howard Taft – was he real? Had she created him?—had told her. She’d believed him, instantly. Somehow, people knew, here. They knew. The breeze, a stirring of air, got stiffer, and she heard a high-pitched whining sound. Saoirse looked around and saw that it wasn’t just her, but the people sitting there in the church, too, who heard it. The priest off to her right, was looking confused. The confusion didn’t come from Ansel’s speech, which he stopped now. They were confused by the breeze, which whipped up a little faster now and stirred hymnals and sheet music from the piano. The flowers all around the church bristled and moved and curtains and tapestries ruffled and flowed. The breeze felt cold. Ansel started again: “… I had Austin next to me and Chuck on my lap. Chuck had fallen asleep, leaning against my shoulder, kneeling on my lap, almost. Saoirse hadn’t fallen asleep at all, and neither had Stephanie. Stephanie was reading, reading a

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magazine maybe, I can’t remember what she was reading. You know, I never knew a lot about what she did, like that. I never asked much about what she read or what she watched on TV. She was 17, is 17, maybe? I think she survived, but I’m not sure.” There was definitely a breeze, now, as Ansel spoke. And Saoirse couldn’t figure out where it was coming from. The walls looked quavery or runny or flickering. More and more people were looking around. There was a murmur, again, of noise as people began whispering to each other or nudging the person next to them. The priest came up and stood by Ansel. He leaned in and Ansel broke off telling how on the flight he’d handed Chuck to Saoirse in order to go use the bathroom. “Yes, Father?” Ansel asked. “Something is happening,” the priest said. Saoirse wondered if the priest was dead, too, who in this church was actually dead and who was not, who was real and who was not. “Something is,” Ansel realized aloud. Saoirse looked again at her mother and then walked down off the raised portion of the front of the church and went up to her. Her mother looked back at her. “Mom,” Saoirse said, again softly, so softly she barely heard it. “Honey,” her mother said. She held up her hand but Saoirse knelt down instead and hugged her, pulling her mother towards her and wrapping her arms around her. She hugged her mother warmly and strongly, holding her as long as she could and trying, in

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that hug, to say how she felt. She had to try to say it that way because she could not talk through her emotions. “I know, S,” her mom said, using the nickname that Saoirse had adopted as a twelve year old. “Call me S” she’d said one day and had, for a year, signed her papers in school and had signed birthday cards using just S until the novelty had worn off and the initial-nickname had faded away. Only her mother had ever used it again, sparingly but always at the right time. People were standing up and someone said “There’s no walls?” A question, directed to nobody in particular. Saoirse looked up, still hugging her mother. The person who’d spoken: who was he? She tried to think back. Someone Ansel worked with, maybe? Someone she’d gone to school with? She couldn’t place him. The question in the man’s voice was at the curiosity of the walls of a church disappearing, of a groom announcing to wedding guests that he and his bride and maybe some of them were dead, the question of realizing that he may be dead, that he may be merely a roleplayer in someone else’s life and may not exist at all. And the walls were gone.

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