Life After Life A Novel - By Jill McCorkle Page 0,4
cup of black coffee, her red lipstick staining the fat lip of the heavy white mug. Sometimes they ate pie or got a hot dog and always they were flanked with a bag or two of things they had found to buy over at Belk or the Fashion Bar or Smart Shop. “I can’t wait to get home and see what all we got,” Lois would say many times, and Kathryn said that once home, her mother kept the excitement going for many more hours with a fashion show and then talk of all the places Kathryn would go to wear the new things and all the wonderful things that would happen as a result. “Her predictions were not often right,” Kathryn said. “But she was sincere.”
I hugged my orange alpaca sweater close as I waited there with Kathryn. I wanted to tell her how lucky she was to have had such a relationship with her mother, but it was clear that she knew this. She held firmly to her mother’s hand for as long as she was able, and then when the men came to take her mother away, she reached for my hand as we followed them out. I will miss them both very much.
[from Joanna’s notebook]
Lois Flowers
The best table is over by the window, a big glass window and you can see the whole city just like a bird soaring in the sky. White linen and candles and yes, just a little champagne. Knives and forks and ice in crystal and a crystal ash tray, too, the filter smudged with her latest color—Claret, a perfect color, one of her reds. All of the colors on the chart (every chip!) may be taken a little darker or a little lighter. You can match clothing, makeup, accessories, and interior decor to colors on your chart. Don’t ever remove the tags until you check your purchase in natural daylight as well as artificial light. Daylight. She can feel the daylight, and even this high up and behind all that glass she can hear the birds and some music. There is lovely music and a bathroom attendant, too, they shake hands and brush cheeks, what’ll I do when you, oh thank you ever so much, thank you for your assistance. A plaid should always have at least two of your colors. The second eye color catches the glints, streaks, and flecks in your eyes. Her daughter has green flecks like her father; she is an autumn. Beautiful rusts and greens and golds and new shoes and homework. Do you have homework, honey? Daylight and Chanel No. 5, cheek to cheek, so lovely, too, and there is music and there are lots of little goodies over there on a big silver tray, over there by the big window, all shapes and sizes of beautiful and delicious canapés and the light fixtures are exquisite and there’s music, always there is music, and colors and colors and beautiful colors. Just the right colors for a busy woman on the go, high heels click click click on that polished marble floor, and if she stands perfectly still, she can feel the building sway, the whole city below her is so bright and beautiful it leaves her light-headed and she feels the building sway, back and forth like a song, like a slow and easy swaying song.
C.J.
(Carolina Jessamine)
SPEAKING OF THINGS NEVER to tell your kids: How about where you were fucking at the time of conception? How about that? Or how about what everything costs? It costs this to feed you and that to clothe you. I wish I could send you to summer camp, but it costs too much and so does a bike and so does a house that looks worth a shit. Even the best intentions (the shitty day camp through the recreation department and the jeans that are the copy of what everybody else is wearing) still leaves you feeling like an undesirable—an unwanted thing to be put in the next room while all the Mr. Wrongs come and go, like anybody even believes there is a Mr. Right. Her mom once had a date with a Mr. Wright and what a joke that was. Yeah, whatever. Fuck your brains out. She didn’t say it but that’s what she was thinking.
Her name is Carolina Jessamine, named for a native vine—close kin to Confederate jasmine, both hardy thriving plants that will take over a structure in no time at all. You want to