Life After Life (26 page)

And now she is here: Fulton, North Carolina, and sitting beside his grave. He’s in the newer part and except for morning and late afternoon, his grave bakes in the summer sun, the grass around him and Rosemary all scorched and dry. When she arrived last fall, mere days after the unveiling of Art’s stone and the closing on their house, there was a plastic pot of yellow chrysanthemums that dried up and then sat there dead all through Christmas and spring. She finally moved the pot and hid it up under a big shrub, but she didn’t feel she could replace it with something pretty, not yet. One day soon, she will, though. She even has a fantasy of sooner or later running into one of his children and explaining that she is an old friend of his and would love to help tend his grave if that is okay with them.

It was hard to talk in the beginning because Rosemary was present, too, but then Rachel finally decided that if indeed Joe and Rosemary are out there watching and listening, they know that she is here with the best of intentions and with genuine love. Joe had told her that he’d like to be cremated and half of him—she remembers his very words—
put in the Saxon River down at Mulligan’s Beach where that old pavilion had been and the other half taken and thrown off the end of Johnnie Mercer’s Pier down at Wrightsville Beach where I once caught an enormous cobia, so big they took my photo and put it in the paper.
But he is here, under the hard-baked dirt, with a very modest headstone beside the wife
loving and devoted.
Rachel has noticed that people get lazy about death and the wishes of their loved ones. A standard routine run of the mill funeral instead of all the sorts of special requests like those Toby and Sadie talk and laugh about many evenings. Sadie wants everyone to sing “We Gather Together” because it reminds her of the last time she stood beside Horace and held his hand. They were standing in the same church where they got married and the only difference, Sadie said, is that the church had gone modern with big new furniture and some suspended microphones. “But Horace looked exactly the same,” she said. “He needed to trim some fuzz around his ears, but otherwise he looked exactly the same.”

Toby said she wants everyone to recite a line from a piece of literature they love and that fool Stanley said he would be quoting some erotica. “In fact,” he’d said, “why don’t I begin practicing by reading a little to some choice damsels this very night.”

“Whoa, now,” Toby had said. “You aren’t getting rid of me that fast! Hold your horses there, big fella. Besides, good chance I’ll be the one burying you.”

He said that in that case she could read erotica for him. It made Rachel laugh in spite of herself. She tries to ignore him, but it’s hard to do a lot of the time. Such a fool. Handsome and still quite fit but an absolute fool.

Now Rachel tells Rosemary she’s sorry if she ever hurt her. “I was like a trapped bird in those days,” she says. “I was beating my wings and the window was closing, you know? I didn’t realize how panicked I was until I met Joe that summer and everything changed. I had gotten used to living in the dark when suddenly the drapes swung back and I felt young again. I did think of you and I felt guilty, just not enough to sacrifice and give up what I was finally feeling. It’s a terrible admission, but there it is. I hope you had a secret, too, Rosemary. I like to think you did. I wish we could zoom from our lives and see the great big picture. It might make more sense.

“I was foolish in many ways though I thought I was so smart and sophisticated. I fancied myself a Katharine Graham type. That’s the kind of woman I aspired to, which my husband appreciated. He admired strong, intelligent women. And then, Joe, well, you know Joe. He was a wave of testosterone, something I had never encountered. In fact, I was ashamed that I found him so attractive.

“A big change I notice in myself now is that I have no fear and it feels good. It is comforting. It is as close to religion as I likely have ever been. This readiness, this satisfaction, this love. Dear God, sweetheart, look at me, sitting in the cemetery talking like we were back in our dark corner in the Clover Den. I doubt if Rosemary ever went there—she was in Boston for such a short time, but I suspect you would have liked it, Rosemary. I suspect I would have liked you and you, me. Isn’t that odd to imagine? And you both would have liked Art. He was a fine man. I think what makes me so unafraid is that most everyone I have cared about is gone. My parents died long ago and my brother has been gone for over a decade. So many of my colleagues are gone. In many ways, I am more with the dead than I am with the living. It’s why I need to hold their hands and seek their eyes. And yes, it smells awful and the equipment noise is a cacophony that sticks in your head and makes you want to scream. But I am so drawn to them, drawn to the descriptions I used to hear young doctors joke about—their bodies reverting back to fetus position, mouths permanently fixed in an
O,
their feces-stained hands curled into fists as they call out names of those lost to them. Art and I had several young doctor friends who talked about those
circling the drain.
I laughed along with the others. But I don’t laugh now. Now I try to uncurl their stained fists and rest my hands there; I try to make contact, and the times I do, I am filled with a sense of love and purpose. I am a sister, a mother, a child. I am someone who cares.

“You know more than anyone, Joe, that I have never been religious. The closest I came to religion was my brother’s bar mitzvah—they didn’t do that for girls like they do now. He practiced and practiced, and by way of that, I memorized his parts, too. Remember, Joe? I did it for you one night when we drove down to Gloucester? I had to teach you how to say it—
Glosstah.
I could do my brother’s whole
haftorah,
though I’m not sure I could do it these days. There is a lot lost in my head that I can’t locate, but it was from the scripture about Miriam getting leprosy as a punishment for asking questions and I remember being disgusted by the way the men always got the good parts like taking dictation from God and parting the Red Sea while the woman gets leprosy for being curious and seeking justice. Still, my brother did a good job and my parents were very proud and we feasted afterward. I had a new dress for the services, navy voile with a white lace collar.”

She stretches her legs out and leans against a neighboring headstone so dark with mildew it’s hard to read the name. She tells him how she can’t wait to see his childhood home, how like an archaeologist she is hoping to find a trace of him. She is telling how glad she is to have moved near him when she looks up and sees the pedicure girl, C.J., standing there watching her.

“Hey.” The girl blows a stream of smoke off to the side.

“Hey yourself.”

“Were you talking to those people?” she asks, and Rachel shrugs. C.J. steps closer, tosses her cigarette and grinds it out with the toe of her big clunky boot. Eighty degrees and she’s wearing what look like combat boots. “You know, Shark, you’re different from all the others here.”

“Is that so?”

“Yeah. You’re not so polite.” She pauses and then laughs. “I mean that as a big compliment—I think that polite and hypocritical often go together.”

“Well, then compliment taken.”

“It’s a southern thing.” She pulls another cigarette out from the pocket of her baggy jeans. “‘Why, thank you,
sugah pie,
’ you might say, even if what you really mean is ‘go to hell.’”

“It
is
southern,” Rachel says, finally recovering from the surprise, aware that there’s a part of her still believing Joe and Rosemary might join the conversation. “But it’s also a human thing. Just more noticeable here because everybody talks too
goddamned
much and wants to be sweet.” She lets her voice get loud so as to reclaim her dignity.

“Ha, be sweet,” C.J. says. “My mom always said that.” She nods her head in the direction of deep shade, a hedge of wax myrtle shading another, older section of graves.

“Where is your mom?”

“Right over there in the low-rent district,” she points. “You know a long time ago they used to always throw the suicides in a far corner. Suicides, slaves, Jewish people like yourself.”

“
Is
that what happened?” Rachel asks. “Your mother, I mean.”

“Yep—the ultimate fuck you. No offense,” she says, and then while still looking over to the shade, mumbles, “Thanks, Mom.”

“I’m so sorry—was she sick?”

“Isn’t anyone who does that?”

“A lot of answers to that question I suppose and all very complicated.”

“I still come see her.” She shrugs. “When my son is older, I’ll bring him over here.”

“Where is your son?”

“Day care. My friend, Joanna, who works as a volunteer here made that happen. She’s like my fairy godmother—jobs when I need them, a garage apartment. Free babysitting.”

“Your dad?”

“Now there’s a long story.”

“All I’ve got is time,” Rachel says. She watches C.J. staring off at a sound in the undergrowth—a bird or squirrel. She’s a pretty girl under all that dark makeup, especially pretty when she smiles. “Are you still up for taking me for a ride around town? Tomorrow, maybe?” Rachel asks. “I’ll pay the big bucks.”

“Sure. I can do that if you don’t mind a baby in a car seat and a rotten muffler.” She steps so close Rachel can smell the patchouli as she leans in to read. “So who are these people, Joe and Rosemary Carlyle?”

“He was a friend years ago. “ She pauses. “A friend of my husband’s really. I never knew the wife.”

“But you talk to them.”

“Sometimes.”

“That’s cool. No different from writing in a journal really or talking in the mirror like this one woman over in nursing does all day long. I mean I write letters to my mom sometimes and I tell my baby all kinds of things, you know? It’s probably why a lot of people have pets.”

“Maybe so.”

“Well, that’s my break. I’ll find you before I get off to figure out a time for tomorrow.” She turns to go and then pauses. “Listen, I don’t want you to get the wrong idea about me. I might look like a druggie or that I’m irresponsible or something, but I’m not. I smoke cigarettes, but otherwise I’m pretty damn virginal. I work hard and I take good care of my son.”

“Is his name Jesus?”

“What?” She stops, laughs. “Oh, I get it. Ha. I’m not
that
virginal. No, his name is Kurt after a really cool guy who
also
offed himself. I really like talking to you. See ya.” The girl doesn’t even wait for Rachel to reply, just turns and moves away as quietly as she appeared. Rachel sits and waits, takes a deep breath. She wishes she could start talking again, but something is different; something leaves her turned inward and speaking to the Joe there.
Good-bye sweetheart,
she says,
I’ll be back later,
and to Rosemary she says,
I am sorry. I truly am sorry.
There is a warm breeze, tendrils of ivy and vines swinging like a curtain over the passage back into the open daylight and parking lot and there is a mockingbird doing a car alarm—over and over and over again, just another sound trapped and repeated with no sense of time or meaning.

Kendra

K
ENDRA HAS FINISHED PLACING
stickers on everything worth having and now is trying to decide what she will wear to Abby’s party tomorrow. It has to be something that really showcases her figure in the sexiest way possible. She is determined to leave Ben Palmer on his knees and begging just because he deserves it after all the ways he has misled and disappointed her. She will probably wear that short Boho miniskirt that leaves people amazed that she is over forty and has a child, and her hot pink Juicy halter top. She loves shopping in the teen department when Abby needs something. There aren’t too many women her age who could do this. Flat stomach and abs. She was so glad when Ben stopped begging for a second child and left her alone. She didn’t
want
another one; he wasn’t the one who had to go through absolute torture and feeling like an elephant. And he wasn’t the one who had to get up in the middle of the night to feed her that first month she actually tried to nurse. To this day when she tells people what a difficult time she had, how she just was not someone able to nurse, he has an expression that suggests otherwise, that she didn’t want to nurse and therefore was not a good mother like all those people he held up to her as good examples. Some people just can’t nurse. It isn’t meant to be, and if this weren’t a truth, there never would have been such a thing as a wet nurse.

Truth be told, she had not been ready to have a baby—it was a total accident—but of course she would never say that to Abby or how she spent a lot of time crying and saying she didn’t want a baby at all since she was practically a baby herself and had never gotten to spend a whole summer in Europe the way she had told him she wanted to. And now of course she does want Abby and wouldn’t trade her for anything under the sun, but at the time what she had really wanted was a career and a body that made people stop and look. She had been hired to do the local traffic report over at WSPR and it was just the beginning. She knows that had she not left when she did, replaced by someone who could not even hold a candle to her, she would likely have made it right into an anchor chair and God knows where she’d be. Oprah started that way. They all did. But, no, thanks to dear unambitious Ben, she was knocked up too soon and the rest is history. Of course people do still stop and look.