After Life (44 page)

I fixed a plate of crackers, put some tea on to boil, and finally sat down to look at her. Though it’s nearly impossible to see the future adult in a baby’s face, the baby never leaves the adult, and I thought of the first time I saw her, in her high chair, with her rounded forehead and pot-handle eyebrows. These were exactly the same. She hadn’t really changed much, though she looked prouder, more angry, and less lost. She also appeared to be wearing eyeliner.

“So,” I said. “What are you doing here?”

“I’ll leave if you want.”

“No, I don’t want.”

She turned her head and looked around at the kitchen, and the living room beyond. “This house looks different from how I remember.”

“I threw a lot of stuff out. And Ron helped me with the walls and floors.”

“It looks better.”

“Thank you.” I got up and poured the tea. “So…”

“I want to be a medium,” she blurted suddenly. Her face turned pink.

Oh, my. I stared down at my tea. “Does your mother know you’re here, Vivian?”

“Yes. No. She doesn’t care. She and my dad got divorced. I mostly live with him. My mother and I fight all the time. I mean, like cats and dogs.”

“So, then, does your father know?”

“He lets me have my independence.”

“I see.”

She was breaking a cracker into little pieces and eating the fragments one at a time, picking them up with the tip of a licked finger. “I’ve been a Wiccan for two years,” she said, “but what I really want is to be a medium. I have to be one. Can’t you teach me?

“You know, Vivian, I haven’t been a medium in a long time.”

Her mouth twitched. “Is that because you killed that guy?”

“Umm,” I said, startled. “Sort of. Not really. It was when my mother died. It was—I don’t know—complicated. I shouldn’t be telling you this.”

“Why not?”

“Oh, Vivian.” I sighed painfully. I had a memory of her as a little girl, a toddler, half-asleep on my lap, bumping her head beneath my chin. “I’m glad you came to visit. But I don’t know if I can help you.”

“You have to help me!” she cried.

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I’m tired right now. Can you let me think about it, and come back in a few days?”

“Can I come back tomorrow?”

“No,” I said. Then, “Come Friday.”

In the days after Vivian’s visit, I felt restless, maybe a little dissatisfied. I found myself experimenting with the vacuum cleaner one night in the medical complex: was it quicker to vacuum in criss-crossing diagonals or overlapping stripes? Or perhaps taking sweeping strokes was more efficient, since a certain amount of time was wasted in getting the vacuum cleaner into position…and then I thought, looking out the tinted window at the lights along Lake Wallamee,
Oh, who
cares.

I hadn’t missed mediumship before. And I still didn’t, really, but there was something about it I
did
miss. I began to think that I probably won’t be doing these jobs forever. I hadn’t thought I would. I just hadn’t thought about it at all.

After work on Friday she was waiting for me, dressed in more or less the same getup, only this time her dress was red. I noticed a three-speed bike leaning up against the fence.

“Did you bicycle all the way from Wallamee?” I couldn’t help but picture it—her cape flying out behind her.

“Yes,” she said.

“Well, come inside, then.”

I made Vivian wait while I changed out of my work clothes and brushed my hair, nervously tugging out the tangles, then I went downstairs and led her to my mother’s séance room. This was one room I hadn’t changed much; like her room in New Orleans, its walls were velvet, the curtains satin. There was a tiny table and two chairs. The air smelled like dust. Sometimes I just sat in here, thinking about my mother. But lately there was less to think about; I went over and over the same memories, and each time they became less immediate and real, and finally neither particularly pleasurable nor sad.

“Cool room,” said Vivian.

I handed her a grocery bag. In it were some of my mother’s things: her trumpet, her Ouija, a set of slates for spirit writing, some books. As she took it, I had sudden misgivings. Being a medium would not make her happy. Perhaps it would, in the end, make her unhappier than ever. But I had no way of knowing, I couldn’t see the future, so I let it go. “You can have all this, if you want it,” I said.

Vivian looked in the bag, her mouth agape. “I do want it,” she whispered. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

She set the bag on the floor, reached into the folds of her cape, and pulled out a notebook. “Sit down,” she said.

I sat.

“Now,” she said, pulling out a pencil. “Tell me everything you know.”

Readers’ Guide for
After Life

Discussion Questions

1. What’s the significance of the title? Why is it two words—After Life—rather than one—Afterlife? How would that change affect how you thought about the book?
   
2. Why do you think Ellis describes Train Line and its residents so meticulously? Could this story have taken place anywhere else?
   
3. How did you feel about Naomi? Is she an unreliable narrator of her own life? Do you think she felt remorse for what she did to Peter Morton? Is she a bad person? Or is she a good person who did a bad thing?
   
4. How do you think the spiritual elements tie in to the rest of the book?
   
5. What do you think this novel is about? Is it a mystery? A novel about relationships? Or about mothers and daughters? Is it about our society’s fear of death and dying?
   

Suggestions for Further Reading

If you liked the whydunit aspect of Ellis’s novel, try:

What Came Before He Shot Her
by Elizabeth George. It’s the second half of her mystery novel
With No One As Witness
; George explores the events leading up to the seemingly random murder of a young upper-class woman by a twelve-year-old boy
.

If you liked the relationships aspect of
After Life
, try:

Gail Godwin’s
A Mother and Two Daughters,
which focuses on the experiences of three richly described women—a mother and her grown daughters—as they try to navigate their lives and their relationships to one another after a traumatic event.

Amy and Isabelle
is Elizabeth Strout’s first novel, in which she brilliantly describes an often difficult relationship between Isabelle and her sixteen-year-old daughter, which is complicated by the guilt and shame Isabelle feels over her own dicey past.

Ann Patchett’s
The Magician’s Assistant
, in which she introduces us to Sabine, a woman who discovers after the death of her husband, Parsifal, a terribly talented magician, that he was also excellent at keeping secrets about his past well hidden.

Searching for Caleb
by Anne Tyler. It’s probably my favorite of all Tyler’s novels, mainly because I adore the main character, Justine Peck, a fortune-teller who is much more successful unearthing the past and predicting the future for her clients than for herself.

If you liked the magic realist aspect of
After Life
, try:

Alice Hoffman’s
Fortune’s Daughter
, in which two women, both suffering from related but not identical losses, meet one another in Southern California during earthquake season, a time when reality can become more than a little bit elastic and anything might happen.

If you liked the psychological suspense aspect of
After Life
, try:

Paul Auster’s
Invisible
, a beautifully written novel about the complex relationship between three characters (two men and a woman), in which the author examines the intricacies of memory and desire.

A Dark-Adapted Eye
by Barbara Vine, the first of Vine’s extremely unsettling psychological thrillers. Here she explores the darkness at the heart of the Hillyard family, a darkness that culminated with one of its members being hanged for murder. It won the 1986 Edgar Award for best mystery.

Rhian Ellis told me in an e-mail that anyone who enjoyed
After Life
will definitely also love Shirley Jackson’s deliciously creepy novels. I completely agree. Here are the two with which I’d begin my reading of Jackson:

Jackson’s third novel,
The Bird’s Nest
, is likely to send a frisson of unease down the spine of any reader as she explores the life of Elizabeth Richmond, a young woman whose mind has broken into four very different personalities.

We Have Always Lived in the Castle
, Jackson’s final novel, describes the surreal and isolated existence of Merricat and her older sister Constance (who have always lived in the castle) and how their lives are shaken first by a series of murders in their family and then—more seriously—by the arrival of a fortune-hunting relative.

If you’d like to read about the real Train Line, try:

Lily Dale: The True Story of the Town That Talks to the Dead.
Christine Wicker, who writes about religion for the
Dallas Morning News
, visited the town of Lily Dale, New York, to meet and talk with the people who made their home there and the tourists who visited it. Not only did Wicker get a sense of the town itself, but she also explored deeper issues such as the meaning of faith and the human need for comfort in the face of grief.

About the Author

Rhian Ellis grew up in Western New York State. She went to Oberlin College and the University of Montana, and she now lives in Ithaca, New York, with her husband, the writer J. Robert Lennon, their two sons, and many chickens.

About Nancy Pearl

Nancy Pearl is a librarian and lifelong reader. She regularly comments on books on National Public Radio’s
Morning Edition.
Her books include 2003’s
Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment and Reason
; 2005’s
More Book Lust: 1,000 New Reading Recommendations for Every Mood, Moment and Reason; Book Crush: For Kids and Teens: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Interest,
published in 2007; and 2010’s
Book Lust To Go: Recommended Reading for Travelers, Vagabonds, and Dreamers.

Among her many awards and honors are the 2011 Librarian of the Year Award from
Library Journal;
the 2011 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association; the 2010 Margaret E. Monroe Award from the Reference and Users Services Association of the American Library Association; and the 2004 Women’s National Book Association Award, given to “a living American woman who …has done meritorious work in the world of books beyond the duties or responsibilities of her profession or occupation.”

About Book Lust Rediscoveries

Book Lust Rediscoveries is a series devoted to reprinting some of the best (and now out of print) novels originally published between 1960-2000. Each book is personally selected by Nancy Pearl and includes an introduction by her, as well as discussion questions for book groups and a list of recommended further reading.