Life After Life A Novel - By Jill McCorkle Page 0,51
a dream come true,” Sadie had said. “But I cannot make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear.”
“She’s a sow all right,” Toby had said, and gestured toward Marge, who was ushering in a whole flock of children from her Sunday school class. They had come, she said, for fun and fellowship with some senior citizens and to get credit at their schools. They had the lovely idea that everyone should name his or her apartment or room like you might a home at the sea or a bedroom in a bed and breakfast. “For instance,” Marge said, and held up her hand to get everyone’s attention. She was wearing a faux-denim pantsuit with lots of swirls and paisley designs appliquéd that reminded Rachel of the one and only time she ever went to Las Vegas. Art had a business conference and won several thousand dollars. She played the slot machines and sat by the pool and complained about how garish it all was the one time she reached Joe on his work line. It was snowing in Boston and Rosemary was up for a few days. They were having a friend of his in for dinner and she couldn’t help but wonder which friend. Someone she knew? It made her so jealous to hear and yet there she was in Vegas with her husband; there she was with a sack full of quarters and tickets for several shows and a heart as dry and empty as the desert. Why does she remember such things, bits of memories popping in like little commercials of another time? Why does she feel so strongly that split-screen life of gray wet snow and hot blinding desert?
“Listen now,” Marge said again, louder and clearly getting annoyed at that crazy old Stanley Stone who was asking those children to feel his thin white bicep. “You will all choose a name that means something special to you. For instance, my apartment will be called—”
“The Extralarge Marge Barge,” Stanley called out, and all the children laughed. “The Kingdom of Boredom.”
Her face flushed a deep pink and she heaved a big sigh. “I will pray for those lacking social graces and I will name my apartment Camelot, because I have always been told that I bear a striking resemblance to Jacqueline Kennedy.”
The polite people looked away when she said this, but Stanley and all the children and Toby started laughing and couldn’t stop. “She was Catholic, you know,” Toby said.
“But there were things to admire, too,” Marge said. “I am more open-minded than you think!”
“Yeah, right. But here’s some more real history for you,” Toby offered. “Speaking of presidential places. FDR first called Camp David ‘Shangri-La,’ like in one of my favorite novels, Lost Horizon by James Hilton.”
“Toby is one of the smartest people living here,” Sadie told Rachel, and before she could say that this was quite obvious, one resident had named her suite Shangri-La and another named hers Camp David. Then one pounced on Tara and another Twelve Oaks, leaving several other unimaginative ones disappointed. The one who got Tara now spends her time striking a pose and saying things like “I’ll never be hungry again!” only to have Stanley Stone reply with “That’s because you eat all the goddamn time. And not even good stuff. I see you eating old mess like Twinkies.” The young girl assigned to him suggested he name his place something that spoke to his legal profession, but he said his apartment is called Hell in a Cell, like what he saw on wrestling. He said he planned to invite people in for matches. He winked at Rachel when he said this and she ignored him. “My second choice is the Love Machine or A Taste of Honey after my favorite song.” He winked and again she ignored him. When he heard that her given name was Rachel Naomi Gold and that she then married a Silverman, he said that she was sliding downward in the elements. “Looking for Mr. Bronze, I suspect,” he said. “Third place. However, if you keep on sliding, then eventually you’ll find me—the Stone.”
“Thank you,” she said. “The Stone Age makes sense for you.”
The Barker sisters, who Sadie says never married and ran their family’s laundry service for over fifty years, didn’t understand the assignment and were thinking of names of candy—gumdrop, jelly bean, SweeTarts. Butterfinger, Milky Way, Snickers. Sweet and lost in their dementia, they are always sitting by the front door to greet