Life After Life (34 page)

She circles again and now his wife is out on the porch in short shorts and holding a legal pad. And then Ben is there behind her for just a second before he steps back inside. She imagines he is waiting there behind the screen, watching her, taking note of
her
passing by
his
house just as he has passed by hers. Or maybe he doesn’t notice her at all.
Now you see her, now you don’t.

Notes about:
Judge Henry Morton Walker

Born:
October 4, 1922
Died:
July 10, 2008, approximately 1:30 a.m.

Fulton, North Carolina

Judge Walker was an elderly courtly man well known and respected in the community; he was smart, confident, handsome. He knew how to put everyone at ease, especially his wife, Marge, who stayed busy measuring his intake of fluids and excretion of urine and taking his temperature and telling everyone what to do. He called her
the little general.
He called her Bossy and Bully. But usually he called her
sweetheart,
and when he did, it was like the wind went out of her and for just a second she hung there like a limp spent balloon until she could refill herself, inflating with upset and agitation about how whoever made his bed didn’t do it very well:
And
what kind of nurse was that woman who was just there? It took her forever to find a vein in his hand.
And she appreciated the Sunday school class coming to sing him a song,
but haven’t they ever heard of something called the telephone, which a polite person should use prior to just showing up and ringing the doorbell?

“Come sit with me, honey,” he said. “Come rest for a minute and calm down.” But she could not stop cooking and cleaning and making corrections on everything that had been done. He told me that she had always been a busy little thing, but it had been worse during crises. He said that when their son was in Vietnam, she polished the silver weekly and berated every paper boy so badly that finally the editor who lived down the street hand delivered their copy every day. “She means well,” he told me. “And I could not have had a better wife.” Every now and then, when Marge thought they were all alone, she leaned in and kissed him in a way that surprised me. It went against everything you might have thought and maybe explained his great affection a little bit better. “You’re something, Marge,” I heard him say on more than one occasion. “You sure are something.” I never heard him complain or raise his voice. His one serious moment was when he told his son he wanted to give him a name to remember. This was a man he had sent to the chair twenty-five years before, and though all the evidence seemed conclusive, there was something that had always bothered him. “You may hear of the case,” he said. “He was found guilty for the deaths of his wife and baby.” And then on another day, he told me that he felt lucky to get to see the end coming, get things in order, be aware. He said he had seen so many tragedies and sudden deaths, those whose lives were stolen without any warning, that to get to be present and have time to say things and get your papers in order seemed like a real gift. He said he needed as much time with Marge as he could get—to say good-bye, to prepare her for all she would need to know. He said the pain in his spine was such that he could not roll over onto his left side to read as he had done nearly every night before sleeping since he was a teenager. He said there were so many things to miss, but there were also many things to be grateful for. “We appreciate all that you and your supervisors and the doctors have done,” he said to me. “Marge thanks you, too, even if she forgets to say it.” He told his children to leave and get some rest and he told me the same. He said he would see everyone bright and early in the morning and then he waited until Marge had fallen asleep in the chair beside his bed and he died.

Marge called as soon as she woke and found him there. She was furious that he did not wake her up before leaving and even angrier at the way the funeral home people made a mark on her living room wall with that stretcher. “I called and told them they could just come right back over and take care of it, too,” she said. “I could do it myself with a Mr. Clean sponge, but I didn’t put it there. How irresponsible can you be? Pick up the dead and ruin a freshly painted wall. Well, I have had it and they have not heard the last of me.” And then she went into her room and did not come out for several hours. Judge Henry Walker had once referred to his wife as Hurricane Marge—lovingly adding that she was a force, a beauty, something to behold and someone you’d better clear a path for. And he was the eye of that storm, a lesson in calm patience and control and dignity.

[from Joanna’s notebook]

Henry Morton Walker

Guilty or innocent. Guilty or innocent. Knox Godwin, lanky and lazy with a permanent smirk and a record as long as any in the county, but did he do what they said he did? Did they really prove it? Did he really stab his wife that many times and why so many? Why so many with her clearly dead—no human on this earth capable of surviving that infliction. Testimony said she was most certainly dead by the thirteenth stab and then to deliver eleven more? And then to do the same to the three-year-old watching. Knox Godwin, please rise, and he never looks up; even when ordered to look up he looks up and over as if staring at a spot on the wall as if his eyes won’t focus or maybe he is seeing what he said happened, that he came home from hunting and found the dog shaking in the yard, paws covered in blood and he ran in and cradled his wife and baby girl and screamed and screamed. Weren’t nothing I could do, he said, weren’t nothing I could do. But the jury finds you guilty—guilty as charged. I did not do it, he said. I love my wife. I love my baby. I did not do it. And there was a similar case several counties over and another several counties over from that, murders that seemed to happen randomly or did they and he didn’t push to know what if any connections there were. He didn’t want to think about it and the more time that passed, he really didn’t want to think about it. He wanted to trust the system. He was not God. He could not know. He upheld the system as best he knew how and he was there when they sat him in the chair and fastened him in and that’s when Knox Godwin looked at him and that’s when Knox Godwin said just wait until it’s your wife, your baby. Then you’ll see. Then you’ll know and that’s when he felt something ice cold and heavy weighing him so low all he could think was how he could not wait to get home, could not wait to see Marge there with everything watched over and organized; she would fuss about something so insignificant and he would hold her and comfort her and tell her not to worry, it would all be okay, it would all be just fine, their life at home a refuge far removed from the hatred and violence he witnessed day after day and Knox Godwin called his name: Judge Walker, hey, Henry Walker, and the lights flickered and dimmed as they always do—such current, such pulse, the burning smell leaving him feeling so cold and heavy and guilty, holding his breath, shielding his eyes and nose and mouth, sparks of light on his inner lids, bloodred lights.

Abby

A
BBY WANTED
S
ADIE TO
stay awake, but she said she couldn’t; she said she was so tired, she could not hold her eyes open and would Abby please come back later.
Everything will be better later
,
honey,
she said.
Everyone always feels better after lunch and recess and story time.

Everything will be better later. Now she repeats this again and again and has since leaving Sadie’s room and venturing back into the parking lot where she sat on the curb and watched the big black limousine parked there. She had waited until they wheeled out a stretcher—the person all covered and zipped into a bag. A woman in a navy suit stood there with her hand on the body until one of the men took her hand and led her off to the side. They closed the doors and off they went. She circles back by Esther Cohen’s on her way home, the dark trails of vines clinging as she pushes her way back through to the old section. There’s a cigarette butt rubbed out on the headstone and the other notes are gone. She stands, listening—squirrels in the leaves, birds singing, cars in the distance. This has never happened before and she reaches into her back pocket for the note she found earlier, but it’s not there, probably left at Sadie’s. She hears a dog barking but knows it’s not Dollbaby. She is about to leave when she sees the little folded scrap under the urn.
Time’s up. Fuck you.
She holds her breath waiting. It could be a trick, a trap; there could be people watching her, wanting to see her get all scared or cry and run toward home. She takes a deep breath and waits for her heart to stop racing. She hears rustling in the leaves behind her; she hears a distant car and then very slowly turns and begins walking, the note clutched in her fist.
Everything will be better. Everything will be better.

When she comes out of the other side of the cemetery, her mother is out on the front porch, bending and looking under the big wicker sofa. When her mother stands and calls out to her, Abby knows that it’s not good. It’s the voice her mother always uses when something is not good. Abby is shaking her head and crying before her mother even says all the words—how she got a phone call and how Dollbaby was way out in the country, hit by a car, a nice old farmer took the time to move her off the road and read her tag and then he buried her.

“Why did he bury her?” Abby screams. “She’s mine. She’s my dog and I want to bury her.”

“Honey,” her mom says. “He thought he was being helpful.”

“Well, he’s not. He’s not being helpful.” Abby runs upstairs and into her prissy white room and rips the covers from the bed; she pulls the sheets off and bundles them all in the center of the room. Then she opens all of her drawers and dumps them out. She kicks and throws and tangles until her heart is pounding and she is all sobbed out, her eyes swollen and face splotchy. She cries until she dozes off that way, imagining Dollbaby is there, trying not to imagine how she looked there by the side of the road. She does not move when her parents come into her room, first her mother and then later her dad. He puts his hand on her back and holds it there, says he is so sorry. He wishes he had built a better fence. He promises a new dog when she’s ready and then she hears him go back downstairs and onto the porch where he is working on the chamber—the final touches, he had said and held out shiny brass handles that she saw through barely opened eyes. She keeps the covers pulled over her head to block the afternoon sun and imagines that Dollbaby is coming home. She hears her nails on the hardwood stairs, the kerplunk when she flops down right beside Abby’s bed. The next time she opens her eyes, the room is darker, past when Sadie usually eats dinner, and she begins putting everything back where it belongs, slowly folding and remaking and smoothing. The last thing she wants is a stupid birthday party. She is thinking of all the ways she might be able to get out of it when she hears her parents, the angry sounding whispers that will keep getting louder.

“They’re all so stupid,” Richie had told her. “They’re all so full of shit.”

She writes that on a piece of paper she plans to leave where they will see it.
You are full of shit and I hate you.
She stuffs a couple of T-shirts and her cheap MP3 player into her backpack. She’s supposed to get a real iPod for her birthday and she’s supposed to get a phone, but who cares? She’s not going to that stupid party. She’s going back to Sadie’s and ask if she can sleep over.

“It’s your fault,” her mother says. “You should have built a better fence.”

“Oh great, nice,” he says. “Be sure you tell everybody I killed the dog. Be sure you spin it so I’m the bad guy again. Be sure to call Andy and Liz so they’ll feel so sorry for you and want to take you to dinner or something since of course it’s all about
you.
”

Abby stands out in the front hall, but they don’t see her there.

“Maybe I will call them. Always nice to speak to an adult.”

“Price tag on your ass.” He points to a round white sticker on her mother’s pants. “I hear the price is up, though the value is down.”

“Fuck you.”

“Obviously not your job these days, but I do know you’re working somewhere.”

“You don’t know anything.”

“Don’t be a fool,” he says. “I know all I need to know.”

They aren’t even interested in Dollbaby. They’ve already forgotten all about her and they’ve forgotten about Abby, too. Nobody said,
Let’s drive and get her.
Nobody said,
What can I do for you, sweetheart,
the way that Sadie will do when she gets back over there. Sadie will know what to do because she cares. Her parents don’t care. They are just like Richie said. So fuck them. When they look for her there will be no one home.
Time’s up. Fuck you.
She moves quietly through the hall and out the front door, then pauses at the opening of the cemetery. She almost takes the long way, on the sidewalk and around the big block, but she doesn’t want anyone to see her. The streetlights aren’t on yet, but they will be soon. She steps in and waits, listens until she hears the door slam. Her dad gets in his car and drives away and then she watches as the kitchen light comes on and then the one on the stairs. She is going to count to ten and then she is going to run as fast as she can. She will not stop anywhere near Esther Cohen’s grave but will run straight through to the other side and she will first go to Sadie’s room to see if she’s still awake, and if she is, she will ask if she can come in and talk. And if Sadie is sleeping, then she will just sit right there near her bed and wait. The shadows are long, the passage dark up ahead. Sometimes she counts the bats that fly out of the eaves of the long abandoned caretaker’s cottage over near Esther Cohen’s grave, but not now. Not today. Now she quickens her steps, her feet moving to the rhythm of Dollbaby, Dollbaby, Dollbaby. She tries not to think about what she looked like there by the side of the road
. Dollbaby, Dollbaby, Dollbaby.
She hears rustling beyond the shrubs as she passes and tries not to think. Don’t think, don’t think.
Dollbaby, Dollbaby, Dollbaby.
She walks as quickly as she can, eyes on the ground so she won’t trip and fall.
Dollbaby, Dollbaby, almost there, almost there.