Interconnectedness and Community in “I’ll Come to You” https://ift.tt/cgrXTuQ
A story that takes place in the mid-1990s is going to have a certain nostalgia about it. But I’ll Come to You by Rebecca Kauffman took me beyond the absence of text messages (replete with landline phone calls and even busy signals) to evoke a truly softer time.
Ellen, a newly single school bus driver and soon-to-be grandmother goes on an awkward blind date. Corinne has to leave the jelly factory, where both she and her husband work, early for a surprisingly tension-filled commercial shoot at a dental office. And retired church custodian Bruce doesn’t always feel like himself.
These are just the first characters we meet over the course of 1995, their lives woven together through mutual friends, marriage, and the anticipated arrival of a baby, as the novel rolls out month by month in shifting perspectives. I was especially touched by Bruce’s story, which takes place in what seems to be a smallish Midwestern town. He’s living with plenty of disappointments and mistakes from the past while also struggling with an aging body and mind, but like the other characters, he never comes off as self-pitying.
Each of them is portrayed with deep compassion – a word that comes up often when describing Rebecca Kauffman’s work. The description is particularly fitting for this novel, where the simplest yearnings tend to stir complex emotions.
We meet Rob, for instance, at Career Day, where he’s desperate to impress his twin boys and their friends at school. As he approaches the classroom, a dentist is finishing up her presentation, putting away props like a football-sized set of teeth, and handing out branded toothbrushes to kids squirming with questions. It’s only when Rob is about to begin speaking that we learn he’s completely unprepared. He’s a car salesman who says his job is “straightforward stuff,” that he’s really there just to answer questions. There are none. There are, however, plenty of bored children and cringe-worthy comments. No sooner is the debacle over than Rob is wondering about what he’ll tell his father about Career Day and then spiraling into why his dad’s approval still matters.
The novel, relatively short at just over 200 pages, bloomed with many nuanced, expressive voices, including Bruce’s telling thoughts jotted in a notebook for his future grandchild: “I wonder what sorts of experiences you’ll have in your life that will hook inside you. I mean, they’ll keep revisiting you (or you’ll keep revisiting them; I’m not sure which is more true of the way thoughts happen) until the day you die.”
The ending felt a bit rushed to me when one character’s large-looming opinion about his parents’ divorce seemed to flip behind the scenes. But that’s probably due in part to the fact that I wasn’t ready to let go of people that felt so real.
And maybe it speaks to the point we’re meant to take away. Instead of shame for what these characters’ lives might lack in world impact, there’s a narrow but muscular focus on how they impact each other’s.
FICTION I’ll Come to You
By Rebecca Kauffman
Counterpoint
Published January 7, 2025
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