Life After Life A Novel - By Jill McCorkle Page 0,110

married the man whose wife had died young, leaving two sweet babies she helped raise for over a year until he fell in love with someone else. And then, finally, hopeless and fed up with herself, she drove to New Hampshire, overmedicated, and fell in the busted hot tub and got rescued by Tammy and married Luke and then Luke died and she came home just in time to patch things up with her dad and here she is.

“That’s some trip,” C.J. said. “Damn. You could have a reality show. People in town say you broke up two homes. Married a lawyer. Married a queer. Married somebody dying just to get his money.”

“Oh yeah,” Joanna said, and reminded how just the other day at Pine Haven she had told someone. “And don’t forget the one in prison or the dentist in Pasadena. Don’t forget the one who eats fire in the carnival and the orthopedist in Denver.”

“An orthopedist?” one woman who normally was hard of hearing screamed. “And you left him?”

“I bet if you took better care of your hair and clothes you wouldn’t have lost so many husbands,” Marge Walker said.

“Or if you stayed trim,” another woman—very overweight and out of breath—added.

“Or if you learned to tell busybodies to shut up,” Rachel Silverman said.

“Amen,” Stanley Stone said. “I second the attractive Yankee-accented broad with the slight stoop in her posture.”

“Trust me,” Joanna liked to say. “I was married to a doctor. And a lawyer and an Indian chief. A butcher and baker and a candlestick maker.”

“And a queer, too,” Stanley said.

“Yes, and a gigolo,” Joanna added, and then said, “I have always been loved by children, the elderly, dogs, and the mentally handicapped.”

“Probably not the best announcement to make if you want to get a date,” C.J. said.

When Joanna first came back to town, she said this sort of sarcastic thing often when someone began to quiz her. It provided an imaginary shield and now, she realizes, is not unlike C.J.’s piercings and tattoos and the harsh makeup she wears. “I’ve lived on communes and on ranches and worked as a maid in a topless resort,” she once said in the checkout line at Food Lion. What she wanted to say was that returning to this place was likely the most masochistic thing she could possibly do but she had made a promise to her last husband that she would return and build a good life for herself and she is true to her word.

“Why do you do that to them?” her dad asked, one of those last days when his mind was clear and he wanted to explain to her the importance of keeping the Dog House a simple enterprise—no burgers or sandwiches of any kind—just hot dogs. The dog and bun are a given; the creativity and choice is all in the condiments.

“I’m just tired of their questions. Tired of their looks. One human makes one mistake—”

“One?” He held up one finger and cocked his head to the side, eyes tired but kind.

“More, many! But that’s what I mean, one mistake that is never forgiven or forgotten leads straight to the next and the next and the next. What I learned is how to forgive myself and what I learned is I don’t give a damn if anyone else ever forgives me or cares about me. That kind of caring is what ruined me.”

“Your mother felt blamed.”

“Because I blamed her. I did. But now I have let it all go. Please let it all go. I loved her, Dad, and I love you.”

All of my husbands have been very nice people. That’s another line she likes to use when being quizzed. First of all, people don’t like when you say they were all nice because they are hoping for some dirt and second they want to ask how many but then decide not to; you can hear the gears of their brains clicking, smell the wood burning, and then someone won’t be able to stand it any longer.

“Damn! How many times have you been married?” old Mr. Stone has asked numerous times.

“In which decade?” she asked. He thought this was hilarious and opened his magazine to a centerfold poster of one of those awful-looking wrestlers. He told her this was good husband material—a real man with the real goods. How about that package? he asked. It was hard to believe this was the same man she had had to coax to his dying wife’s bedside, and no