Life After Life Read online

  Sometimes she and Bennie talk about the things that happened about a hundred years ago when he was in the third grade, but usually they just talk about how they both create illusions and how this can make a person who is feeling sad feel a little better. Sadie believes that this is the conversation that might lead him to open up his heart one of these days soon.

  This is her craft and it is the craft she started when everyone else was doing scrapbooks. The most famous scrapbook at Pine Haven is that of Mrs. Marge Walker who keeps a murder and crime scrapbook. Her husband was a judge for years and years and so it all comes natural to her she says, just like Lorice Boone believes she is the best haircutter because her father was a barber. Lorice had a booming business among those who are out of touch with reality until management confiscated her scissors. Rachel Silverman is the one who reported her after seeing her snip away the waist-length braids of someone on the nursing wing without asking. Sadie wanted to ask why Rachel was even way over there in that part of the building, but she hasn’t yet. Rachel is very secretive about her comings and goings and has to be treated with great care. There was always at least one child in class who needed this kind of extra attention. They appear so strong and tough and yet you know there is a tender place just aching to be healed—so tenderhearted you could tap with a knife and it would fall right off the bone.

  “You have to stop her,” Rachel said when reporting Lorice. “Otherwise this place is going to look like Auschwitz.”

  Stanley Stone said he’d never heard of Auschwitz and asked was that the new grocery store out on Highway 211, and Rachel Silverman raised her open hand like she might slap him and then said something about him being a g-d demented idiot, marched into her apartment, and slammed the door so hard that the plaque with her name on it fell off.

  “I did a good thing,” Lorice told management when they came to take her scissors. “She looks a sight better with a haircut.” Lorice pointed to the woman who was dozing in the solarium, not a hair on her head longer than a half an inch. If the woman had family that ever visited, Sadie suspects they’d be upset, but as far as she knows, no one has visited that woman in years. Lorice said the sisters, especially Vanessa, had never minded if she cut their hair, especially if she gave them cookies. Rachel Silverman had made Daisy, the other sister, cry one day, saying she did not want to crochet or buy or eat a g-d cookie, and then Sadie explained to her that the sisters are sweet as can be, would never hurt a flea, which is why they allow Lorice to do their hair in the first place, and so now Rachel is so good to them, always buying those crocheted Oreos and Fig Newtons and then slipping them back into Daisy’s bag when she’s not looking so she can sell them again.

  Rachel Silverman says she has no family either, which makes it easy to make all kinds of big decisions. Sadie is getting closer to her, no doubt about it, like luring a stray cat or dog into your home. Rachel is not very trusting and you can see it. People get old, but in the eyes they might as well be eight—always they are about eight—and so Sadie is well versed in eight-year-old fear. She knows the heart of eight-year-olds and believes when all is said and done and hard times come, that’s how old we are in the heart—forever eight years old. She used to love to set up the abacus at the front of the room and have children tell what they know of their lives one bead at a time. Holding to the little round wooden bead gave them confidence as they spoke the facts of their lives. I was born in Hamlet. I have a sister and a dog. I love grits. I hate mayonnaise. Things like that. They loved seeing the beads accumulate, transferring over to the ten spot. It was a lesson in math and English. It was a lesson in socializing.

  Marge Walker is the only person Sadie has difficulty socializing with. Marge is lately fixated on the way people are stealing copper wiring out of air-conditioning units, most recently a church in town, and she is quite certain the Mexicans have done it. Mexicans or coloreds. She says all this loud as the PA system at school and there sits any number of people of different races from different places.

  “How stupid is that?” Rachel asked in a loud voice, and Sadie was the only one who returned her gaze. She allowed eye contact, which said, I am listening to you. I am hearing what you say and I am in agreement. Sadie bets it won’t be anytime at all before Rachel shows up with a picture or two, and if it turns out she doesn’t have photos either, it’s no problem at all. For those who have no pictures—as sad as that is, it is sometimes true—well, Sadie has a Polaroid camera her oldest son sent her and so she takes the photo herself and then puts the person on a backdrop of a particular place. She put the woman who got all her hair cut off (before it all got cut off) out on the grandstrand on a beautiful sunny day pictured in Southern Living. She used her Sharpies to turn the wheelchair into a beautiful red beach chair and then added a little yellow sand pail as if the woman might get up and go hunt for shells any minute.

  Paul said to slow down on the film, it’s getting hard to replace and thus very expensive. He says he will teach her how to “do digital and print,” which she has no idea about, but Abby does. Twelve years old and the child knows all about digital and print and all sorts of other things you might plug in that Sadie has never heard of. What will you do when the power goes out? Sadie has asked her, but nobody seems too worried about that. Sadie’s children all send her travel magazines and such and call so many times during the week she can’t keep up with it all. Paul wants her to move to where he is, but no, she keeps saying no; she says Horace is next door and this is her home. She did not tell them where to move and live and they owe her the same consideration. Paul is stubborn and keeps trying, but in the meantime he just reads every word of her monthly bill from Pine Haven, makes phone calls and asks lots of questions as she taught him to do and, of course, best of all, sends pictures of the children and all the brochures from conventions and retreats for ophthalmologists so she can send a customer anywhere in the world. There was even one trip advertised to go down the Amazon and she pulled it out to show Benjamin and Abby just the other day because he knows that The African Queen is one of her very favorite movies and he has promised to bring a copy for her to watch someday soon. Toby saw that photo and claimed it immediately because her whole room is decorated with her travels around the world, compliments of Exposure and Sadie’s skill as an illusionist, which is what Ben calls her. Just yesterday she took Stanley Stone’s photo and put him in the ring with a wrestler man he called the Undertaker, a horrible-looking big man with long stringy hair and ghoulish eyes. His picture was in a wrestling magazine Stanley’s son, Ned, had brought to him hidden in a bag. She doesn’t blame him a bit for hiding it.

  “Stanley, how is Ned doing?” she asked while cutting and gluing.

  “Okay, I guess. He’s teaching at your old school—weren’t you at Sandhills Elementary?”

  “I was indeed except that one year they sent me to junior high. Forty years at Sandhills,” she said, so relieved to feel like the old Stanley was back. He was relaxed in the chair, his eyes closed. “You know, isn’t it funny how in life our paths didn’t cross too much. I mean if you needed a hammer, you went to our store, and I suspect if we’d needed your kind of legal advice we would have gone to you.” She had to pause to carefully cut out the Undertaker, who was so ugly it was frightening. He was one who might be served well to run into Lorice with her scissors, that stringy old mess of hair and Stanley is starting to look a little unkempt himself, though she is not quite ready to tell him that. “But we went to different churches and between my teaching and doing all I did at home, I didn’t venture very far so I really never knew Martha at all except to say hello at the store. I didn’t get to teach Ned; he was in Renee Bingham’s class, but I recall all the children saying how he made everybody laugh.”

  “He was definitely the class clown. He had a hard time in those early years.” Stanley opened an eye and then it was like a switch flipped and something blew into him, and he sat up and started talking about the wrestling event he was going to have right there in the
common room. He shook his fist and all signs of nice Stanley were gone. “I’m gonna take somebody out,” he said, and she waved her hand, tried to see if she couldn’t lure him back to where he had been. It just breaks her heart to see him this way. Sadie grew up with Stanley’s older sister, but he was several years younger so they ran in different circles. Still he was a person people heard about. “I remember when people were talking about you getting married. First in your law school class and marrying a beautiful girl from northern Virginia. People said how lucky Martha was to meet such a smart and handsome fellow and they hoped she was good enough for you.” Sadie hates when people say such things, but they really did say that at the time and she thought he would like to hear such a fine compliment about himself. “You were the golden prize of this town, Stanley. They said you were Phi Beta Kappa and the best dancer in your fraternity house.”

  “I danced the hootchie kootchie nekked every chance I got,” he said. “And the girls sure did like that.” He stood and acted like he might unbuckle his pants, but Sadie held one hand up and shielded her eyes with the other. She used her best teacher voice and told him to sit down and behave that very instant or he would be sent home and not allowed to return. When she looked up he was seated again and staring down at his fists.

  “What I was saying is how I was thinking that we’re neighbors all over again but this time we seem to speak and talk more than we ever did in our other lives.”

  “Yes.” He was calm again and so Sadie waited a long time as he sat and seemed to relax. Her ceiling fan clicked and clacked and sometimes what she hears it say is I think I can, I think I can just like the Little Engine That Could. Now that is a powerful message for children to hear and learn. Where do people think the president got it in the first place? Yes we can is just another way to say what the little engine said a long long time ago. Most everything worth saying has already been said so the trick is to make it sound new, something a child will find interesting or funny.

  “I miss my other life,” she told Stanley, and worked to arrange the Undertaker’s hands so it looks like he’s choking Stanley, which is what Stanley requested. “I miss my kitchen and my black-and-white linoleum floor. My children liked to play hopscotch there. Roger would get a beach towel and throw it over a chair to make himself a little Indian tepee and he would always sit cross-legged and run his Matchbox cars round and round it while making cute little sounds and talking to himself. Do you remember your little Ned at that age? The way a child will make all sorts of sounds with their teeth and their tongues, sounds that nobody else is following.”

  “I do.”

  “I move room to room through my old house. I see the brightness of a late afternoon. I hear the rumble of the air-conditioning there in the window in the den, what these days they call a family room, which sounds nice, too. I see the hollyhocks at my window, tall and staked upright with their big powder-puff blooms and then just as suddenly I might smell the fire in the fireplace and hear Horace chopping wood. Do it, Stanley. Close your eyes and start wandering.” She waited until he closed his eyes and then she continued; she couldn’t wait to get back. “You will be amazed at what all you can see, how the seasons change, the light and temperature and then people come into the room and you hear the sweet voices of your young children or I smell the cologne I wore for almost twenty years—a gift from Horace every Christmas—Shalimar—just the word made me feel important. One day when a little girl—Susie Otis there in bright-colored dungarees—told me I smelled so good, I had the whole room say Shalimar. Shalimar, and they waved their hands like they held magic wands. I can smell the grilled cheese sandwiches my kids loved for me to make. I cut them in the shape of stars and hearts and I let Goldie wolf down the scraps.

  “Sometimes it snows. It gets so quiet and beautiful in the snow. Horace is always there when it snows.

  “And sometimes I hear Horace clear his throat. I see him pat his chest for heartburn. He said it was just a little heartburn. Oh, why didn’t I know? So many people get the heartburn and especially at Thanksgiving with all that food. Oh, why didn’t I know it? I have to get past that, I have to tiptoe past him, I have to get back to a good place and oh my goodness, there is that silly, silly Paul wearing a costume I made him one Halloween. He’s a sea monkey. All he wanted to be was a sea monkey and I made him a funny merman looking suit complete with a scepter and a crown, and there I am right there in front of Horace’s mother’s old upright piano. I am holding his little hand and telling him that he is the best little sea monkey there ever was. Yes you are, oh yes you are, sweetheart. Lord, would you look at what shoes I’m wearing! I haven’t thought of those in years. Bandolinos. Everybody thought it was something to have an Italian shoe being sold right here in Fulton and they had little different-colored straps trimming them out, otherwise it would have just been another plain old Mary Jane. They were soft. Mine were black with red straps and I always wore them when I had cafeteria duty because they were so comfortable and I could slip up on somebody doing something he ought not to be, like dotting his milk straw into his beets so he could shoot out little purple cubes at the girl beside him. Oh, Lordy, what a mess. I need to get back home and there I am back in the den and our little breakfast nook. A lot of people don’t like pine paneling, but I do. I love it. My children saw all kinds of things there in the knotholes—so creative. There was a deer and a little elf. I’m not sure why, but our daughter, Lynnette, always called that elf Doo-Doo and she was scared of him and would say at almost every meal for about a year, “Doo-Doo is watching me.” Sadie paused, remembering where she really is—Pine Haven, wheelchair, Stanley Stone across from her. This has started to happen more and more. It takes a minute to know where she is. She opened her eyes, expecting him to roar out some nasty expletive as he often does in the dining room if anyone mentions anything to do with body functions. But instead his eyes were filled with tears, his mouth opened in a silent cry. “Oh, Stanley, I’m so sorry.” She has always known how to comfort others, but she didn’t know what to do with somebody like Stanley—an intelligent, prosperous, and independent man who probably never cried in front of others in his whole life.

  “I had an ugly brown car Ned called Doo-Doo,” he said, and they both laughed, Sadie relieved that the word hadn’t taken him off in the wrong direction and that she wouldn’t need to find a way to give him a hug or a comforting pat. “And remember that guy they called Doo-Doo Pendergraft? Ran the Gulf station?” She did indeed. Doo-Doo was in her class in school and so was Boobs Walters and Goat Baumgarten. She laughed to say all those names, to imagine what somebody from out of town, like Rachel, would think.

  “I miss my toolshed,” Stanley said. “That’s where I went when you started talking and asked me to imagine. Ned once painted the walls without asking, he painted his name and he painted an airplane.” He sat forward and put his face in his hands. “He loved when we played airplane. I’d lie on my back and he’d hold my hands and press his stomach against my feet, and then up, up, I’d lift and he’d hold out his arms and make engine sounds.”

  “Children love to paint,” Sadie said. “And they all love to fly.”

  “I made him scrub the walls of my shed and then paint it all white,” he says. “I’m pretty sure I took a belt to him for not asking.”

  “But he turned out really fine, Stanley. A fine boy.” She watched him slump forward again, his face hidden and shoulders shaking. “He hit a rough patch, but most of us do.” She was rolling toward him, her hand outstretched, but then he sat up so fast with an awful glare on his face that it made her drop her glue stick.

  “But not as fine as the goddamned Undertaker,” he said. “This ain’t the Sistine Chapel, woman, get the lead out.”

  “I take my art seriously,” Sadie said, her hand to her chest, still catching her breath. “I don’t do cheap and sloppy work and I never have, so if you are feeling impatient, perhaps you should take a recess and let me get back to you.” She pointed to her glue stick
where it had rolled under a table. “And pick that up before you excuse yourself.”

  “Hell, you got a whole line of people in the hall waiting for some idiot picture.”

  “And I will see them all and I will do so with polite kindness.”

  “Don’t you get tired of this shit? Don’t you want something for yourself?”

  “Of course I do. I have a whole scrapbook of me.” She reached her hand for him to hand her the glue stick and then carefully went back to work, applying a thin line and then gently blending it. She blew to help dry the glue and then handed him his picture much sooner than she normally would. “Hold the edges or you’ll ruin it. I could show you sometime—my pictures.”

  “Yeah, all right, whatever.”

  “The first one I ever did was to put myself with my mother. She died when I was four. I only have a few pictures of her so she looks just the same every single time, but I keep getting older and bigger until now, there I am with my beautiful mother and I look like her grandmother. Isn’t that funny? I always try to fix it so we’re holding hands.” She looks up, but he is gone and the clock on the wall says it is ten o’clock, which is milk break at school. It costs three cents a carton and she keeps a jar on her desk to pay for those who forget their money. The note on the wall says not to forget to go to lunch. Do not forget. Do not forget. But Stanley left and then there was Toby wearing those cute puffy boots she loves to wear. She is traveling the world and already has pictures of herself in Rome and London and Paris and Tel Aviv and of course the Amazon and the Taj Mahal and she has even been on the moon with Neil Armstrong. This one is tricky, though. Toby warns Sadie that her new request is likely to be hard. She is taking a break from traveling and wants to do all kinds of different sports. Today she wants to be a jockey. She has brought beautiful pictures of horses, but the real trick will be taking the Polaroid with her legs all pulled up close and her arms holding the reins. She might need to get up on the footstool or daybed to get the right angle. “How many others do I have in line?” Sadie asks, thinking she might need to make Toby last even though Toby is her very best customer.