Life After Life A Novel - By Jill McCorkle Page 0,111

wonder his son was such an angry asshole.

“Do you have kids from all those husbands?” Toby asked, her fanny pack stuffed with candy and tobacco products. Mr. Stone stopped to listen and unfortunately so did his son who had just arrived. She said she had a stepdaughter named Tammy in New Hampshire and two stepchildren in Chicago. She said she loved the children very much, but it was not a good match, which would almost always be true if your husband falls in love with someone else. Mr. Stone guffawed again and slapped his son on the back. Ned’s face flushed with embarrassment, but they were both rescued by the continuation of Mr. Stone’s actions as he snapped his fingers and then extended his open palm to Toby who unzipped her pack and put what looked like a piece of Nicorette into his hand.

“You’re right!” he said chewing away. “I’m a lawyer and I know these things. Why would you expect an institution to remain constant? Jobs don’t, laws don’t. What’s right for you in 1972 might not be right for you in 1974 and so on.” He paused and held his hand to Toby again and this time she gave him a stick of Dentyne, which he sneered at but still put in his mouth. “What year is this? How do you and your ex-husband get along?”

“Which one?” she asked, and he bent over laughing, Toby and several others joining in.

WHAT SHE HAD longed for that night in New Hampshire was to just disappear—Beam me up, Scotty—she wanted to be erased, an unnoticed mark like that one Twilight Zone episode where the astronauts disappeared. When their pictures dissolved from the newspaper, all memory of their existence dissolved, too. That night she wanted the impossible, to have never existed at all. Do you believe in ghosts? Do you believe in the power of magic? Do you believe that a normal ordinary girl can disappear?

She did. But now each morning brings her the knowledge and relief that—thanks to Tammy—she failed. A cup of coffee, a walk, the weather. There is always something on the horizon. The people like Lois Flowers keep her feeling aware and alive just as Luke said they would.

She would have married David, too, if necessary, but it all worked out just fine. His recent letters are all about his smokehouse and his mother who still sends women to his door on a regular basis and someone he met who was working there for the summer and plays in a bluegrass band. He writes about his morning walks with Tammy who swims every day regardless of the weather. He said he plans to get a puppy in preparation for Tammy’s old age and Joanna sent him a copy of her menu and circled the Puppy—plain with ketchup or mustard.

“So four times you’ve been married or three?” C.J. asked.

“Three. But keep my secret. Some people, like Marge Walker who was my Sunday school teacher a hundred years ago, have it up to seven.”

“I hate her,” C.J. says. “it’s bad karma to hate I know, but it’s hard. She has the worst feet. It’s like her soul is represented there, you know?”

She and C.J. agree on just about everything—except of course on pedicures and wax jobs. Joanna does not understand a French pedicure. Why, she asked C.J. would you want to look like you were growing out your toenails like Howard Hughes. C.J. said she didn’t know who he was and Joanna told her a rich eccentric who wound up at the end of his life eating ice cream and growing out his hair and nails.

“Sounds like most of the people at Pine Haven,” C.J. said, “except of course the rich part.” Now C.J. will routinely say she has a date with Howard Hughes when on her way to soak feet and clip toenails and it makes them both laugh every time.

“But,” Joanna told her, “what I really don’t understand is the Brazilian wax job. Why would you want to look prepubescent? And worse, what kind of guy finds this attractive?”

“Yuck,” C.J. said. “I never really thought of it that way and now I’m really sorry I did.” C.J. said she really needed to meditate on this and would have to get back to her.

The box on Ben’s front porch is a far cry from what they had used—old pasteboard television or air-conditioner boxes they got down at Western Auto and then spray painted or covered in pictures from magazines.