Life After Life A Novel - By Jill McCorkle Page 0,72
curtain, cried incessantly. Her belongings included a large unopened tin of Poppycock popcorn, a Christmas bow still on the top of the can, and a crocheted throw made by a group at the local Unitarian Church. Her dentures were wrapped in tissue and in her drawer, along with an old family Bible. Her name is scrawled almost illegibly in the family tree at the beginning. Mary Grace Robertson. Daughter of William and Elizabeth. Born in Portland, Maine. And there was a wallet-sized school photo—in color but clearly of another time, perhaps the seventies, given the bushy cut of his red hair and the tinted aviator glasses. On the back someone had written: Pete age 15. No one working there knew who he was or anything about her, other than she was a charity case, someone abandoned to a clinic like a baby left at an orphanage, years ago, her mental state never any clearer or more reactive than it was at the time of her death. Her eyes opened only once during my last visit, first filling with what seemed recognition and then closing with a long sigh. After a day of trying to hold her hand, she finally clasped her fingers around mine and squeezed and then when the roommate fell asleep and the room was silent, she died. Think how many people die all alone, Luke had said when listing the many rules and guidelines he wanted me to follow. Never forget that single fact. Never forget how important it is to be there. Never forget those people. So what is there to remember? Charity gifts. Her full given name in that nearly illegible scrawl, cool gnarled fingers like roots holding on, the kind of night that can almost convince you spring will never come again. But it will. Once upon a time there was Mary Grace Robertson—daughter of William and Elizabeth—born into this world on November 19, 1912, in Portland, Maine.
[from Joanna’s notebook]
Mary Robertson
She is running and running, the field outside the window, running and running. He says, Shut up and put this in your mouth, hold these rags, idiot. Kerosene is shiny, poured like liquor out the bottle and into the ditch, where he pushes her down and says, Hold these rags, Hold these rags. She says it’s Christmas, but he says it’s not. She says she has a family but he says not anymore. He says hold these rags and then the field burns blue and gold, blue and gold. Somebody spoke to her once, a boy from the school came and spoke to her and left his picture. He said his momma used to know her way back, way way back when the field was just the field and her father was out in it, when the field was just a field and before all the blue and gold and nothing, just nothing when she closes her eyes and closes her ears and stops running; he reaches his hand out and she takes it. He’s a boy from the school and he says, It’s okay, it’s okay, because he is there to help her.
Toby
TOBY TYLER CAME TO Pine Haven because she didn’t have anywhere better to go. She tells people how she pinned up a map and then threw a dart to see where it landed and that is entirely true. What she doesn’t tell is that she followed four darts before she got to this one, each time almost signing a lease in some retirement village and then getting cold feet. The fifth dart brought her here and just when she was having doubts she met Sadie who told how she had sent children to the library to check out Toby Tyler for years and years. I love Toby Tyler, Sadie had said, and just hearing those magic words sealed the deal. Toby had hoped for a sign and what could possibly be better than that? Not to mention the cigarette prices out there along I-95 were the cheapest she’d seen in a while.
For the most part, her life in Columbia had been good, but it was time to leave. It was getting too hard to keep up the little yard she had loved and tended for so long. The yellow maple she had planted and watched mature over a stretch of thirty years was as beautiful as ever, but she had come to dread the raking and the bagging; she feared slipping and falling even though she is still in pretty good