Life After Life (38 page)

“Honey,” Joanna says, for a minute sounding so much like C.J.’s real fucking mother she can’t stand it. “What is it? Do you need money? Are you in trouble?”

She paws the air and then fans her face so her mascara won’t run. “No! Nothing like that. I’m just PMS or maybe I’m just all fucked up. Maybe I’m nervous about having a date. Who wants to date someone with a six-month-old?”

“Lots of people would,” Joanna says. “Look at you. He’s lucky and he better treat you that way.”

“How’d you learn to say all those mom things?”

“I don’t know. Maybe I know all the things I wish someone had said to me long before I
did
try to vacate the planet Earth.” Joanna pats her shoulder and pushes her toward the door. “No reason for you to have to wait to learn all those things, right? So go and have fun and when you come back first thing in the morning, we’ll start all over again with you selecting a fine piece of kitchen or glassware to claim as your very own.”

“It’s a deal,” she says, and leans to the side once more so she can see Kurt sleeping, his head leaned to the right, pacifier still in his mouth. “You sure you want him to sleep over?”

“Instead of you waking me up at one or two? Um, yeah, I think so.” Joanna paused. “And if you decide to go home early, just call and swing by.”

“Okay. If you’re sure,” C.J. says, and takes a good deep breath—a cleansing breath, Toby would say. She is feeling better. She is feeling hopeful. “It’ll be early because I promised Rachel Silverman I’d ride her around tomorrow and give her a tour of the town. She’s pretty cool. You’d like talking to her some time when you’re over with the living ones.”

“I’ll keep that in mind. Now go, have fun. Kurt’s fine and I’m fine and you’re fine,” Joanna stands in the doorway and waves. “And take good notes so that someday when you actually decide to let me in on what is happening in your life, you won’t forget a thing.”

“I do trust you. I do want to tell you.”

“Whenever you’re ready.”

“You know me,” she says, and sticks out her tongue. “Always something up my sleeve.” C.J. waves and takes another deep breath. She starts the car and notices Kurt’s new stuffed dog there on the seat beside her, but she decides not to go back in; she’s afraid she would tell everything if she did and for now it’s best to keep the secret. She will hope for the best and even if the best doesn’t happen, she still has plenty of good stuff going on. She has Kurt and she has a job and a place to live and who knows what could happen with Sam Lowe and actually that big white vase isn’t so bad at all. In fact, she can imagine filling it with something like peacock feathers or sunflowers and tacking little lights up along the ceiling of every room. She’s already thought how she wants to paint Kurt’s room so it looks like he lives in a castle; she wants him to always feel like he has a good home. A family and a home. The parking lot at Pine Haven is empty and she’s twenty minutes early so she lets herself in the side door and goes to the beauty parlor to check her hair and makeup and make sure she doesn’t have mascara or baby spit on that new blouse. This place is like a tomb after about seven, faint buzzings of televisions behind apartment doors and of course that goddamned music Mr. Stone can’t get enough of. If it was this quiet during the daytime hours, she would have to beg him to listen to something else because it would drive her crazy but in the daytime, she has her own music going and lots of hair dryers and nail dryers and a bunch of people who can’t hear anyway and have to scream at each other. She takes out her lip and nose rings and brushes the spikiness from her hair, wipes the smudge of burgundy lipstick from her mouth. It surprises her lately how much she looks like her mother. Some nights before bed—her face stripped clean of all makeup and studs—she can’t even bear to look.

Abby

T
HE SIDE DOOR OF
Pine Haven is still open and so Abby is able to slip inside without setting off an alarm or having to ring a doorbell. Usually things are all locked up by now so she is relieved. They feed people at five thirty or six and then a lot of them go on to bed or to their own rooms to watch television. Rachel Silverman says she does not like that
made-for-preschool children
schedule one damn bit, but Sadie says she doesn’t mind because she likes to watch
Jeopardy
in her pajamas. She sees C.J. all dressed up in front of the big mirror in the beauty parlor. Normally she would love nothing better than to find C.J. there alone; she would ask her to read her palm or do those fortune cards, but Abby is not up for anything tonight. Nothing sounds good. There is not a person at the desk so Abby runs past without having to check in. She knocks lightly and then opens Sadie’s door and moves into the room. It’s almost completely dark, just the faint light from her bathroom window and the nightlights by her bed that come on when it gets dark. Harley jumps when she comes in but then comes when she calls him. Sadie is still sleeping, the piece of paper Abby had forgotten earlier in the day in her hand.

Sadie, Sadie? She shakes but Sadie doesn’t stir so she decides she’ll just curl up and wait. She turns the television on and the volume way down. Sadie has slept right through
Jeopardy
because the television is on the Weather Channel where she keeps it the rest of the day, so Abby leaves it there and closes her eyes. The thought of Dollbaby getting hit and then left in the middle of the road makes her cry all over again. She hates whoever hit her and the farmer who buried her. She hates her dad because he built a shitty fence and her mom for never being nice to Dollbaby in the first place. She’s sick of them, sick of everybody. I’m so sick of it I could die. That’s what her dad said that time about her mom.
I’m so goddamned sick of it I could die.

“Sadie?” she whispers. “Sadie?” She will let her sleep a while longer and then she’ll wake her and tell her the bad news about Dollbaby and about how her parents didn’t even try to do anything about it.
You might have to teach your mother some things,
Sadie had said, but what did that mean? She wishes it were last night when she was still hoping Dollbaby was okay, when her dad pulled a big ostrich feather from his sleeve and gave it to her, promising more where that came from at her party, and when she asked him if he thought there was a chance Dollbaby was still alive he said, of course he did. “There’s always a chance,” he said even though most of his stories were about no chances at all, like the one the other night—a train wreck in this very county in 1943 where over seventy people died, most of them soldiers trying to get home for Christmas. Sadie said she remembered it well; she was Abby’s age when it happened and the whole county was
devastated by the disaster.
She said she has never seen a train since that she didn’t think of it. “Some mistakes were made,” her dad said like he always did. “They should have seen it coming.”

“Why do you fill her head up with all that awful stuff?” her mother said, one of those times she didn’t know Abby was listening. “You’re going to make her so weird.”

But now she’s glad it’s all in her head—the brakes and screams and all those loud sounds that can keep her from thinking.
Why do you fill her head up with all that awful stuff? You’re making her weird. Mistakes were made. They should have seen it coming.

“Sadie?” she whispers. “Sadie? Are you awake? Please wake up.”

Kendra

T
HE HOUSE IS QUIET
and now, finally, she can call Andy. No answer. No answer. No goddamned answer. It’s been like this all day long. She kicks at a loose bolt Ben has dropped there in the front hall—bolts and screws everywhere and for what? A stupid disappearing chamber when
he
is who she wishes would disappear. Let him disappear and all this shit he leaves around for that stupid theater like anybody in town even gives a shit. Who would notice if he stopped it all other than a handful of ancients from next door and whatever kids he can coax in to watch things like Jerry Lewis movies and stupid westerns. She will go take a nice long hot shower, relieved that Ben left and went wherever it is he goes with his loser self. She has just turned the water on when her cell phone starts ringing and she races to pick it up. It was him so she hits dial back. It’s his house phone, but she is feeling brave; if something screws up and Liz answers, she will act like she was calling
her.

Liz’s voice is cool, suspicious. She knows something. Then without any waiting or beating around the bush she says it: she knows he’s been having an affair.

Is it a trick? Kendra doesn’t know what to say so she opts for nothing. She says,
Oh,
and then nothing, but Liz keeps talking. She says it’s all over and they are going away to figure it all out. Going away
. A day, a week, forever?

“Do you hear me?” Liz asks.

“Yes.” Kendra stands there in a towel, aware of the water running in the shower and of how dark it is outside the window, no moon and the streetlight on their corner burned out.

“And?” Liz asks.

“I don’t know what to say.”

“Neither do I.” Liz hangs up and Kendra is left in silence with no idea what to do. She almost dials his cell phone but then stops. It is so rare for her not to know what to do, but she has no idea and something in the stillness of the house completely unnerves her. The little white sticker she had put under the table on Ben’s side of the bed is visible and she rushes over to remove it. She’s not used to the silence. She’s not used to being alone. It’s not supposed to happen this way. She’s not supposed to be alone. She’s afraid to be alone.

Joanna

A
T FIRST IT SOUNDS
like a shutter has blown loose again and is whining against the wind, a creaking strain, open and closed, but then it is too rhythmic for the wind, too measured. It’s the hammock. Someone is on her porch. She looks out the kitchen window to see Ben’s car parked in her driveway. It
has
been his car these recent nights, circling, stopping. She goes and cracks open the front door.

“Hello?”

“Hey.”

“Who’s there?”

“Guess.”

“What are you doing here?” She still stands behind the screen door, latch in place.

“I come here a lot. Sometimes I fish, sometimes I sit.” He tilts a bottle up to his mouth, then offers it out. “C’mon, join me.” He sits, legs hanging off the side and pushing against the floorboards. “It’s like old times.”

“You come here? To my house?”

“Yeah, amazed you haven’t noticed before. Come on.” She goes and brings Kurt’s carrier closer. He’ll be waking soon and she likes to reach him as close to that first cry as she can make it. “Are you there?”

“Yes. I’m here.” She shushes him, tells him she’s babysitting and to keep his voice down, and then he immediately starts talking about his kid. “You’ve met her,” he says, and Joanna nods yes, says she sees her often over at Pine Haven. “Well, it would suck to be her right about now,” he says. He reaches for Joanna’s arm and pulls her there beside him then drops his arm around her shoulders and squeezes. “Been a long time since we sat this close, hasn’t it?” he asks, and she nods, aware of his thumb circling her bare arm, the smell of him exactly the same though she never could have described it in a million years except it was his smell; it was his childhood home, any jacket or shirt or magic show prop he had ever tossed her way.

“I know Abby’s dog is missing,” she says, and takes a deep breath, uncertain of where any of this might go and afraid to even wonder.

“Not just missing.
Dead.
” He says the word in a low whisper, dragging out its hard ugly sound. “And a dead dog is just the beginning.”

She turns, waiting for him to continue and there in the dark of the porch, he looks very much the way he always did, the night erasing just enough years that he could be that boy; it could be that time.

“I mean it all sucks. Marriage is like a job and some people love what they do and some people hate it. Some stay because they feel like they have to and some just say fuck it. I mean we all have people in our lives we have to tolerate, right? They’re selfish or hateful or narcissistic, but goddamn, it really sucks to marry one of those.” He laughs and hugs her close again. “Now you never lingered, did you? You’re the one who can just say
fuck it
and walk right off.”

“No, that’s not true,” she says. She takes the bottle from him and drinks, some kind of whiskey that nearly turns her inside out, and then she quizzes him, what had made him want such a girl in the first place—was it all about
appearances?
Did he need drama? Want drama? What would possess someone to go there unless he thought he was rescuing her—poor little thing, but was he so blind? Was he so stupid? “Once upon a time you had a pretty good brain,” she says, and twists out from under his arm. “In fact, there was a time when I thought you were really smart.” She pauses. “And nice. I used to think you were nice.”

“You’re one to talk. You’re the charity bride, right?” He drains the bottle and throws it off the porch into the shrubs. “Married a million times. Married a gay dude. That’s pretty desperate, isn’t it? Bet that was a fun honeymoon.”