C.J. once said that if she can find a person who would never—even at the height of anger—or the lowest low take the pulpiest part of your heart and use it against you, then she could see being in a relationship. That is the person I want, she said. Otherwise, fuck ’em. Accept no subs. I want someone as true blue and faithful as the moon. That’s who I will love. That’s who I will let get close to Kurt.
“Who did you want to be when you were a kid?” C.J. had asked, another game they had played. C.J. had already said that she wanted to be the Little Mermaid, but then, when she realized she was never going to have a father or red hair or a good singing voice, switched over to Judge Judy. She liked the way Judge Judy took charge and told everybody what to do. It didn’t matter who you were, if Judge Judy thought you were wrong and full of shit, she said so.
Joanna had wanted to be the Scottish woman in that movie The Three Lives of Thomasina—a beautiful woman who lived alone in the woods and who took in stray hurt animals and was thought to be a witch. Joanna owned a copy and they watched it one night, C.J. fluctuating between saying it was beyond cheesy to how much she loved the cat’s voice narrating and the way the cat came back, eventually pulling all of its lives together. “So be her,” C.J. said. “Start taking in some creatures. My friend Sam has tons of dogs and cats nobody wants. Get some warm bodies around here.” Joanna was sitting in a rocking chair with Kurt hugged against her chest while she watched C.J. eat the last of the pizza and thought, I have.
C.J. had said when she worked as a psychic at the county fair she learned how to look in people’s eyes, noting breath and pulse. It wasn’t hard to read people, wasn’t hard to give the gift of hope. Sometimes when the two of them were sitting there on Joanna’s porch, mini lights and candles and jazz playing, anything was possible. Kurt loved it at Joanna’s house and she loved the nights C.J. left him there to sleep over.
Joanna told C.J. that if she ever marries again (she seriously doubts this but if) instead of getting gifts, she wants people to take things. She will throw a big barbecue and say that everyone must take something on the way out—a vase or bowl or glass, a trivet or mug or bookend—candlestick, clock, linens, a book, a plant. In fact, when C.J. comes over later, Joanna will remind her. She will say that since she will likely never remarry, C.J. should just take something now. Part of unpacking the heart is getting rid of things you no longer need. And some things are hard to let go of. For Joanna it was knowing she would never nurse a baby, never greet a partner with the exciting news that she was pregnant. She once dreamed she nursed a baby goat, grateful amber eyes seeking her own as her milk let down and she woke with a feeling of exhilaration, the tingling sensation still in her breasts.
“Gross,” C.J. had said. “What does that mean? Like aren’t goats the bad guys in the Bible? Like lambs are good and goats are bad? Or maybe it’s because your last name is Lamb.”
“Maybe it’s just a dream,” Joanna had said, a little sorry she brought it up because C.J. continued to interpret for days after. “Pay attention if anyone says a word like bleat or cloven to you,” she said. “Maybe you’re going to meet a guy named Billy.” And she went from Billy to Old Goat to the abbreviated O.G., which she still uses when there’s someone she thinks Joanna should meet. Now Joanna starts gathering a few things she thinks C.J. might like: a cut-crystal vase and a silver ice bucket and some bronze bookends, A and Z.
Lois Flowers gave a lot of things away. Her daughter said that her mother was famous for slipping a bracelet from her wrist or a sweater from her back to give to someone who had complimented her. “People learned to be sincere,” Kathryn said. “Otherwise you just might end up with a mallard green mohair hat and my mother eager to see you wearing it!” How hard to even sum up Lois Flowers in her notebook. She brought forward more stories than anyone has since she spent those last weeks with Luke. She had helped Kathryn work on the obituary. A whole life reduced to adjectives and a list of accomplishments. They placed a book in the chapel for residents to write their thoughts. The adjectives that spring to her own mind are vibrant and generous and fun loving.
Joanna could only imagine what her obituary might say if she departed right now and perhaps that is what haunts Ned Stone. He believes who he is based on all that is said about him. Joanna should have told him that she is considered the Patron Saint of Divorce. People talk about her. They have ever since she returned. You look exactly the same, they say, or almost the same. Your hair is the same—like it might still be 1975—and not too much gray at all. People talk and she doesn’t care. If she had cared she never would have been able to come back and she wanted to come back, she needed to come back. Luke helped her get to a place where she could come back. People say she is the ship that keeps sinking, the tire that keeps going flat, the wine that turns straight to vinegar. She is a matrimonial nightmare, but all of those titles are so much easier to handle than having them know the truth, how long it has taken to get herself back, how her marriage to Luke, as unconventional as it was, was the greatest expression of love she has ever known. Why they are so interested is the real curiosity and so now she has decided to answer back in all honesty and then some. She can give them more than their money’s worth. In a nutshell, she first married a really nice and conscientious person her parents were crazy about only to realize she shouldn’t have. Her parents were thrilled and even told people how he was the best thing to ever happen to their family. Then her mother never forgave her. It was embarrassing. Who gets married and leaves in a year? She had wanted to answer that by saying it’s the person who knew even as she said I do that she didn’t, that’s who. But at the time it seemed easier to get married than to have to face the town and return everything, all those gifts and the china and the shit nobody ever uses. Then she was off and running in all the wrong directions for all the wrong reasons. Running is rarely the best choice and running without thinking most likely a disaster.
“This is why I’m so proud of you for being a single mom,” she told C.J. “Don’t ever get married unless you are madly in love and know it is the best thing for your life.”
“You assume I had a choice there,” C.J. said, and then batted away all the questions that immediately sprang to mind. “Another day,” she said. “A lot more wine and another day and maybe I’ll tell the whole story.”
“I hope so,” Joanna had said, the weight of Kurt sleeping on her own chest feeling so good. C.J. had revealed nothing about who the father was or even if he knew about the child. But she did say she wrote everything down in case Kurt might need to know things someday. She said she writes and writes and deposits it in the special safe in her bathroom.
“So finish the marriage story,” C.J. said. “How many and how many men in between? I’m still counting.”
And she told all, one thread at a time, unraveling and unraveling the people who moved in and out of her life like waves until she married the man whose wife had died young, leaving two sweet babies she helped raise for over a year until he fell in love with someone else. And then, finally, hopeless and fed up with herself, she drove to New Hampshire, overmedicated, and fell in the busted hot tub and got rescued by Tammy and married Luke and then Luke died and she came home just in time to patch things up with her dad and here she is.
“That’s some trip,” C.J. said. “Damn. You could have a reality show. People in town say you broke up two homes. Married a lawyer. Married a queer. Married somebody dying just to get his money.”
“Oh yeah,” Joanna said, and reminded how just the other day at Pine Haven she had told someone. “And don’t forget the one in prison or the dentist in Pasadena. Don’t forget the one who eats fire in the carnival and the orthopedist in Denver.”
“An orthopedist?” one woman who normally was hard of hearing screamed. “And you left him?”
“I bet if you took better care of your hair and clothes you wouldn’t have lost so many husbands,” Marge Walker said.
“Or if you stayed trim,” another woman�
��very overweight and out of breath—added.
“Or if you learned to tell busybodies to shut up,” Rachel Silverman said.
“Amen,” Stanley Stone said. “I second the attractive Yankee-accented broad with the slight stoop in her posture.”
“Trust me,” Joanna liked to say. “I was married to a doctor. And a lawyer and an Indian chief. A butcher and baker and a candlestick maker.”
“And a queer, too,” Stanley said.
“Yes, and a gigolo,” Joanna added, and then said, “I have always been loved by children, the elderly, dogs, and the mentally handicapped.”
“Probably not the best announcement to make if you want to get a date,” C.J. said.
When Joanna first came back to town, she said this sort of sarcastic thing often when someone began to quiz her. It provided an imaginary shield and now, she realizes, is not unlike C.J.’s piercings and tattoos and the harsh makeup she wears. “I’ve lived on communes and on ranches and worked as a maid in a topless resort,” she once said in the checkout line at Food Lion. What she wanted to say was that returning to this place was likely the most masochistic thing she could possibly do but she had made a promise to her last husband that she would return and build a good life for herself and she is true to her word.
“Why do you do that to them?” her dad asked, one of those last days when his mind was clear and he wanted to explain to her the importance of keeping the Dog House a simple enterprise—no burgers or sandwiches of any kind—just hot dogs. The dog and bun are a given; the creativity and choice is all in the condiments.
“I’m just tired of their questions. Tired of their looks. One human makes one mistake—”
“One?” He held up one finger and cocked his head to the side, eyes tired but kind.
“More, many! But that’s what I mean, one mistake that is never forgiven or forgotten leads straight to the next and the next and the next. What I learned is how to forgive myself and what I learned is I don’t give a damn if anyone else ever forgives me or cares about me. That kind of caring is what ruined me.”
“Your mother felt blamed.”
“Because I blamed her. I did. But now I have let it all go. Please let it all go. I loved her, Dad, and I love you.”
All of my husbands have been very nice people. That’s another line she likes to use when being quizzed. First of all, people don’t like when you say they were all nice because they are hoping for some dirt and second they want to ask how many but then decide not to; you can hear the gears of their brains clicking, smell the wood burning, and then someone won’t be able to stand it any longer.
“Damn! How many times have you been married?” old Mr. Stone has asked numerous times.
“In which decade?” she asked. He thought this was hilarious and opened his magazine to a centerfold poster of one of those awful-looking wrestlers. He told her this was good husband material—a real man with the real goods. How about that package? he asked. It was hard to believe this was the same man she had had to coax to his dying wife’s bedside, and no wonder his son was such an angry asshole.
“Do you have kids from all those husbands?” Toby asked, her fanny pack stuffed with candy and tobacco products. Mr. Stone stopped to listen and unfortunately so did his son who had just arrived. She said she had a stepdaughter named Tammy in New Hampshire and two stepchildren in Chicago. She said she loved the children very much, but it was not a good match, which would almost always be true if your husband falls in love with someone else. Mr. Stone guffawed again and slapped his son on the back. Ned’s face flushed with embarrassment, but they were both rescued by the continuation of Mr. Stone’s actions as he snapped his fingers and then extended his open palm to Toby who unzipped her pack and put what looked like a piece of Nicorette into his hand.
“You’re right!” he said chewing away. “I’m a lawyer and I know these things. Why would you expect an institution to remain constant? Jobs don’t, laws don’t. What’s right for you in 1972 might not be right for you in 1974 and so on.” He paused and held his hand to Toby again and this time she gave him a stick of Dentyne, which he sneered at but still put in his mouth. “What year is this? How do you and your ex-husband get along?”
“Which one?” she asked, and he bent over laughing, Toby and several others joining in.
WHAT SHE HAD longed for that night in New Hampshire was to just disappear—Beam me up, Scotty—she wanted to be erased, an unnoticed mark like that one Twilight Zone episode where the astronauts disappeared. When their pictures dissolved from the newspaper, all memory of their existence dissolved, too. That night she wanted the impossible, to have never existed at all. Do you believe in ghosts? Do you believe in the power of magic? Do you believe that a normal ordinary girl can disappear?
She did. But now each morning brings her the knowledge and relief that—thanks to Tammy—she failed. A cup of coffee, a walk, the weather. There is always something on the horizon. The people like Lois Flowers keep her feeling aware and alive just as Luke said they would.
She would have married David, too, if necessary, but it all worked out just fine. His recent letters are all about his smokehouse and his mother who still sends women to his door on a regular basis and someone he met who was working there for the summer and plays in a bluegrass band. He writes about his morning walks with Tammy who swims every day regardless of the weather. He said he plans to get a puppy in preparation for Tammy’s old age and Joanna sent him a copy of her menu and circled the Puppy—plain with ketchup or mustard.
“So four times you’ve been married or three?” C.J. asked.
“Three. But keep my secret. Some people, like Marge Walker who was my Sunday school teacher a hundred years ago, have it up to seven.”
“I hate her,” C.J. says. “it’s bad karma to hate I know, but it’s hard. She has the worst feet. It’s like her soul is represented there, you know?”
She and C.J. agree on just about everything—except of course on pedicures and wax jobs. Joanna does not understand a French pedicure. Why, she asked C.J. would you want to look like you were growing out your toenails like Howard Hughes. C.J. said she didn’t know who he was and Joanna told her a rich eccentric who wound up at the end of his life eating ice cream and growing out his hair and nails.
“Sounds like most of the people at Pine Haven,” C.J. said, “except of course the rich part.” Now C.J. will routinely say she has a date with Howard Hughes when on her way to soak feet and clip toenails and it makes them both laugh every time.
“But,” Joanna told her, “what I really don’t understand is the Brazilian wax job. Why would you want to look prepubescent? And worse, what kind of guy finds this attractive?”
“Yuck,” C.J. said. “I never really thought of it that way and now I’m really sorry I did.” C.J. said she really needed to meditate on this and would have to get back to her.
The box on Ben’s front porch is a far cry from what they had used—old pasteboard television or air-conditioner boxes they got down at Western Auto and then spray painted or covered in pictures from magazines. Joanna was in charge of decorating their props and she spent hours working on everything, always so hopeful he would notice every sequin and feather. And now ladies and gentlemen, Ben announced, I will make this normal ordinary girl disappear. Joanna crawled into the damp pasteboard box too many times to count and then she waited, humid breath trapped and held within. Her heart raced when she heard his voice: Ladies and gentlemen . . . In the photo, he stood behind the screen. In the photo, he exists but there is no way to read him, no way to predict what is about to come.
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 Hen
ry 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.
Life After Life Page 24