The Astonishing Color of After

Leigh has visions of her parents as college students. In one vision Dory comes to Brian’s room in the middle of the night to announce that she has received the news of her sister Jingling’s death. Jingling died from an aneurysm. Dory immediately returns to Taiwan but stays in touch with Brian. Leigh’s grandparents overhear Dory’s telephone conversations and become anxious because they believe Dory should marry someone Chinese.

Leigh wonders about her grandparents disapproving of Dory’s white American boyfriend. She wonders if this was why her father could not remain in the apartment with his in-laws and why her parents thought “they could build a family around so many secrets” (313). She receives an email from Axel containing a watercolor of her mother and her cat.

The fall of Leigh’s sophomore year, Brian buys Dory a cat named Meimei to keep her company. Dory is struggling with depression again and has given up teaching piano. However, Meimei is “the one who reminded her that life was a real thing” (318). Axel tries to ask Leigh what is going on with her mother, and she struggles to find words to describe Dory’s depression.

Although it is the 46th day after Dory’s death, Leigh’s grandmother insists on taking the train north to Jiufen because there is someone Leigh needs to meet. Feng does not go with them.

When they arrive in Jiufen, a grumpy, middle-aged, English-speaking man called Fred tells them that Chen Jingling’s ashes are scattered North. The room Leigh shares with her grandmother is decorated with birds. Fred warns Leigh to not tell anyone about Jingling’s ashes and to make sure her grandmother behaves herself.

In a teahouse Leigh and her grandmother are brought a poem by Emily Dickinson. Leigh asks a waitress who sent them the poem. Fred appears a few minutes later and announces that they burned the poem at the wedding when he married the ghost of Jingling. Fred tells Leigh that the place is full of ghosts because it is Ghost Month, and “where there is a shape, there is a spirit” (331). He tells Leigh that they will drive home so her grandmother can rest and he will tell her a story.

Fred burns the Emily Dickinson poem, explaining that as it came from a ghost, they must burn it and send it back. Fred explains that he married Jigling’s ghost because her parents would feel better knowing she had a husband. He also felt that his birthmark marked him for the destiny of marrying a ghost. Leigh asks Fred whether he met her mother. He says no, and she does not tell him about her mother’s suicide. When Fred goes away, Leigh sights her bird-mother flying exuberantly.

On the 48th day, Leigh is with Feng. She tells Feng that she saw her mother and that her mother saw her but flew away all the same. Feng says her mother may not have needed to come down; perhaps what she needs is to remember and be remembered. Feng then asks Leigh if she has ever been in love, and Leigh answers that she does not know.

Back in her sophomore year, Leigh is nervous about the portfolio she is submitting to Kreis in Berlin. Dr. Nagori tells her that her work lacks emotion. That night at Axel’s, Leigh sketches him and finds plenty of emotion. Axel demands to see the work and pins her down to obtain the sketchpad. The memory of his touch fills her with lust and longing.

Leigh worries about time running out before she finds her mother. She burns the last short stick of incense and fingers her mother’s cicada necklace, knowing that it will turn to powder.

Leigh witnesses a series of flashbacks that show how her mother was “already hurting” (358) even before the depression diagnosis. The first flashback shows Leigh’s grandparents slamming the door in Brian’s face when he comes to meet them, and the subsequent scenes show Dory’s attempts to be happy in marriage and motherhood when she is estranged from her parents and sister. She emphatically insists that Leigh will not meet her grandparents. However, sad life events take their toll, and over time Dory begins to contemplate suicide.

When Leigh emerges from the memory, she is surprised that her cicada necklace has survived the experience without dissolving.

During winter break of Leigh’s sophomore year, Dory’s cicada necklace falls apart and is inadequately repaired. Leigh regards this as an omen of trouble to come. Still, Christmas seems to get off to a promising start when Brian is able to spend it with them. The family exchange gifts, and Leigh’s gift from her father is a self-help book called Figure Out What You’re Destined For. Leigh’s father met the author, who upon seeing a photograph of Leigh assumed that she had her mother’s Asian genes and so would automatically be “very driven” (365). Leigh is furious at her father’s ethnic stereotyping and his unwillingness to believe that she is destined to become an artist.

Leigh goes down to the basement and finds that she is disappointed that no one appears to have visited the place in a year. She had hoped that either parent would catch her and begin a dialogue on her Taiwanese grandparents.

Leigh realizes that in the morning it will be the 48th day after her mother’s death. She asks her grandmother whether there is a beloved place of Dory’s that they have not yet visited. Her grandmother says there is not, and Leigh wonders whether to trust her, given her hostility to Leigh’s parents’ marriage. However, when Leigh sees no hint of “that old disapproval” (368) and only regret in her grandmother’s face, she decides to trust her. She then realizes that the missing piece is her father. Leigh hopes that when the bird sees the family together, she will reveal her message. Leigh summons her father with an email, telling him it is an emergency.

As Leigh is about to close her phone, a message from Axel comes through. He wants to know what happened at the winter formal. When Leigh reflects on the dramatic events of that time, and how Axel was so obtuse that he did not realize that his dating Leanne a second time was what upset her, she is so angry that she tears up the drawings she made for him. She enters a new memory.

Axel asks Leigh to winter formal, and she makes an effort to dress up. Axel, however, does not comment on her appearance. In the bathroom stall Leigh overhears Leanne in a hysterical fit of anger over Axel bringing Leigh to the dance. Axel insists that there is nothing between him and Leigh. Leigh feels terrible and moves away from the scene, bumping into a guy called Weston from her art class. Weston tells her she is beautiful and asks if she has ever been kissed. She tells him she has not, and Weston proceeds to kiss her. Axel sees them, and they drive home wordlessly. At home, Leigh realizes that she is upset because she hoped that Axel would be her first kiss.

Back in Taipei, Leigh experiences the joy of sleep. However, she hears her name being spoken and has the creepy sensation of “an artery letting go” (382).

Leigh rises on the 48th day to the smell of a strange scent. She follows it to the bathroom, where she sees the tub full of red feathers. Her grandmother does not appear to see this, and Leigh worries that she has gone mad. Leigh goes outside and makes her way to the park. On the way she catches a feather in her palm, and the sky begins raining feathers. Leigh frantically tries to collect them but is struck by the thought that she is acting against her mother’s wishes, because her mother drew a line through the dictate “I want you to remember” (386).

Leigh sits on a bench surrounded by red feathers. Feng comes to join her, saying that she has seen the bird. Leigh tells Feng that she does not know why her mother told her to come here and then always stayed out of reach. Feng implies that it was enough that Leigh came; now her most important task is letting the bird go. Feng leaves, and when Leigh opens her email, there is a message from Axel and the intimate watercolor he drew of her. Leigh misses him.

By the spring of Leigh’s sophomore year, Dory’s moods have worsened, and Leigh retreats into her art. Her relationship with Axel has been strained since winter formal. Caro reveals that Axel and Leanne have resumed dating. Caro sets Leigh and Axel up to talk it over, and they agree to continue being best friends and to meet for Two Point Fives Day, exactly two months between their birthdays.

When Leigh returns to her grandparents’ apartment, the place appears to be melting around them. Her father is there too, and she feels the stain of her mother’s dying soaking into her and the rest of the world. She urges her father and grandparents to run.

Leigh finds that she, her father, and grandparents are trapped in “a cyclone of heat and ash” (404). When the memories begin, there is a dining scene with her grandparents and Jingling. Jingling is telling her parents about Dory’s American boyfriend Brian. Her parents insist that Jingling tell Dory that she must break up with Brian.

The next scene shows Brian visiting Dory’s parents, who have been writing to Dory without response. He shows them Leigh’s sketches from around the time when she and Axel first became friends. Leigh’s grandparents admit that they should have never tried to forbid Dory from marrying him and that they only wished to prevent their daughter from leaving.

The final memory reveals Brian holding three tickets to Taipei. Dory insists that they will not go and that Leigh will not meet her grandparents. Dory thinks her parents blame her flight to America for Jingling’s death.

Leigh lands on a patch of moon. Her bird-mother is there and says goodbye. A wind tosses Leigh off the edge of the moon, and she finds herself falling into the abyss.

Leigh recalls Two Point Fives Day, when she and Axel kissed on his couch. Her memory of exhilaration is poisoned by images of her mother’s preparations for suicide.

Leigh is falling through the blackest black and then wakes up in her bedroom in Taipei, with her father at her bedside. The two bond over fond memories of Dory.

Brian tells Leigh that she has awoken from a three-day fever. Leigh panics that she missed the 49th day. Leigh confronts her father about why he left her alone with her grandparents, and he replies that he had an argument with her grandmother when she said that if they had visited earlier, the ending might have been happier.

Brian shares that Dory blamed herself for Jingling’s death, feeling that she should have noticed that her sister was sick. After Leigh’s grandparents shut the door in Brian’s face, he proposed to Dory as a way of holding onto her, and she accepted as a means of leaving home and severing a tie with her past.

Leigh then accuses Brian of neglect during his long journeys abroad, stating that she and Dory needed him. Brian admits that prioritizing his career was a means of escaping the heaviness at home. However, he has kept the sketch Leigh drew of the family at Christmas in his back pocket, a fact that makes Leigh feel closer to her father.

Leigh directly addresses the reader, urging them to hold their finger to the sky and appreciate the variegated “colors of right now” (428).

At dinner, it occurs to Leigh that Feng is missing. However, according to Leigh’s grandparents, there is no Feng and never was. She asks her father to translate the inscription on her incense box, which contains the name Feng, meaning “wind” in Chinese. He does so, and the inscription reads, “it’s an incredible blessing to be able to see your loved ones during the most difficult times” (432).

Leigh still remembers and cherishes her experiences with the bird and Feng. Now that the 49 days have passed, her relationship with her father is growing close again.

Leigh commutes to Feng’s address, where Fred answers the door. He gives Leigh a lock of Jingling’s hair and a photograph of Jingling and Dory. In this moment Leigh realizes that Jingling was actually the girl Leigh knew as Feng. Leigh finds that she misses Feng and says goodbye to her.

The next day, at Danshui, Leigh, her father, and her grandparents scatter Dory and Jingling’s ashes. When the ashes go, they are left with “the colors of after” (436).

Leigh and Brian spend another week in Taipei, and Leigh reinforces her connection with her grandparents and her mother’s culture. Although “there’s still a mother-shaped hole” inside her, Leigh is beginning to see that it can be “a vessel” to hold “memories and colors” rather than an abyss (438).

Leigh is advancing in Mandarin, and her father has promised that she can enroll in a class if she goes to therapy. Leigh requests that Brian also go to therapy, and he agrees. Leigh realizes that she cannot cut Axel off because he is the only one who truly knows her.

When Leigh and Brian return to their house in the United States, Axel is there waiting for them. He has been feeding Meimei, Dory’s cat. When Leigh and Axel talk, it’s revealed that the emails he sent during her stay in Taiwan were drafts that he wrote but never intended to send. After the supernatural activity in Taiwan, Leigh is no longer surprised by such phenomena. Axel wants to show her something upstairs in her bedroom.

Axel has painted Leigh’s bedroom in a symphony of colors. Axel and Leigh finally admit their feelings for each other and decide that it is only right and natural that their relationship should take a romantic turn.

Leigh receives a letter saying she made the final cut of young artists featured in the Kreis international art show. Both Brian and Axel will accompany her to Berlin. Leigh is scared about not being good enough, but Axel encourages her.

On the plane to Berlin, Leigh sits beside Axel. As the plane tilts in the sky, its shadow makes the shape of a bird.

The final chapter includes the list of works in Leigh’s “The Remember Series” and an artist’s statement on the nature of memory and the inspiration of her family history. Leigh concludes that “the purpose of memory […] is to remind us how to live” (462).