Life After Life Read online

  “It’s okay,” she told her dad and ran an ice chip around his dry lips, his mouth turning toward the touch like a newborn seeking milk. “All my experience in the doghouse will help me run the family business.”

  “Family business,” he mumbled, and laughed. He was too weak to say much. It was the end and she whispered to him what she had learned to whisper with great confidence—It’s okay to let go—only with him she had the desire to keep him just a little bit longer. She had never given up the idea that he might say he loved her. Each time she had said the words, he only smiled. This time he said, You are my little girl. They were in the house where she had grown up, a small brick ranch on a corner lot, flat yard full of spindly pine trees and bee-filled azaleas. The hospital bed filled what had once been her bedroom, his choice. He wanted to die where his wife had died, and she—in her illness—had chosen that room in order to keep their room intact, so that he could go to bed in a normal way as she lay dying at the other end of the house. “It worked for a while,” he had told Joanna. “There were some mornings I woke and for just a second would not remember. I would just think she had gotten up early like she always did and was washing clothes or something.”

  Joanna held his hand and resisted asking the question she had asked so many times before: Why didn’t you call me? He always said she should have called them and then it all happened so fast. Her mother had back pain, that was all, and then they were told nothing could be done and she was dead in a month. “If she had asked me to call you, I would have,” he said. “But she didn’t and I didn’t want to cause her any more pain than she was already in.”

  Joanna allowed herself to imagine that her mother had wanted to see her, that if she had been able, she would have said something, sent a message. Luke had told her she had to let it go, let it go along with her realization that the night her mother died coincided with her own one-night stand with someone whose name she could not even remember, a journalist from somewhere in the Midwest who had a passion for Russian literature and talked about his ex-wife all night, just another lonely heart who stayed at a boring party too long. Why don’t I just go throw myself in front of a train? she said when she woke up in his strange hotel bed to hear him leaving sloppy messages on his wife’s answering machine. Let it go.

  She stared out the high narrow windows of what had once been her bedroom; as a child she had needed to stand on her bed or a chair to see out. Cars were passing the way they would on any normal Tuesday morning and the azaleas were blooming as they did every spring. A row of daffodils lining the concrete walk came up just as they had since she planted them at age five, her mother addressing the bulbs by their formal name—King Alfred—as she oversaw Joanna’s work, the depth of the hole, the teaspoon of bonemeal in each one. The years had left them spindly and bloomless, but there they were; in spite of everything, there they were. And that was when he died. She was thinking of those daffodils—King Alfred withered to a pauper—and the air in the room changed as it always does–sparked, clear, sudden—and with a last long sigh, he was gone.

  The longest and most expensive journey is the one to yourself. Luke liked to add that some people never even purchase a ticket, some only get halfway, some stand like Moses glimpsing the Promised Land, which he maintained was, for all practical purposes, about as good as getting there. Clear vision, he said, and then added, “like Visine or Vaseline or Clearasil,” so pumped with morphine by the end that his language was like some haystack of non sequiturs filled with golden needles, fragile bits of truth and wisdom she needed to collect. For a long time her mantra had been Fuck you from the bottom of my fucked-up heart, so clearly she had come some distance. California, New York, Chicago, New England. She did it all, but what she learned is that sooner or later you have to stop running, and when you do, the baggage comes slamming into you at freight train speed. She stopped running in New Hampshire four years ago, when she fell asleep assuming she’d be dead within the hour and then woke to the warm hand of a stranger and the distant wail of a siren. Only then was she able to slowly pull it all together. Only then did she buy the ticket.

  Now when Joanna thinks about dying, she thinks of the day she almost did, the careful planning, the way the light looked there in the late-afternoon sky. It was only four but already nearing dark. It was her favorite kind of day and she had come to New Hampshire seeking it, seeking some resolution to what felt like a really lousy story. There was wood smoke in the air, birds rustling in the leaves, her breath visible as she stared at the distant outline of the White Mountains. There was a Chinese dogwood—bright red stems against the backdrop of snow—and it occurred to her that if she were staying, she would cut some and put them in a vase.

  The hot tub on the deck was almost as big as the rented cottage and set inground like a pool. The rental person, a middle-aged soft-bodied guy who smelled like Febreze and chicken soup, told her the heater was busted and he hoped she wasn’t disappointed. “It’s got these powerful jets and holds up to ten men,” he said, clearly well versed in hot tubs and their potential, and she told him a big vat of poached men was the last thing she cared to think about at the moment, in fact it left her feeling nauseated. If he had meant to be flirting, and he may have been—she had always had such a hard time telling—that cooled it all. He handed her the key and a free DVD rental and she drove straight to the liquor store and then down the long wooded dirt drive to the small somewhat rundown cottage. Nothing worked quite right—burned-out porch light, two of the gas burners not working, the bed soft as pudding and stale-smelling—but what did it matter? She poured a glass of vodka and went outside. The giant ten-man hot tub with jets should have been covered, a light snow already falling, but it wasn’t her job. She was just a weekend renter, someone on a shitty vacation, a dog looking for a place to die. She took pills so it would all be an accident, just the right amount for a distracted insomniac to accidentally take. She had even practiced a couple of times. This is the right amount, sloppy notes told her, scrawled as she passed out. Fuck you from the bottom of your fucked-up heart.

  She closed her eyes and imagined the ocean, the rhythmic sound of her childhood, the rocking motion of waves against sand like the lava-wave lamp Ben had in his dorm room all those years ago—back and forth, back and forth, steady as a pendulum. He had not been expecting her visit and it was awkward in a way she would never have thought possible. They were partners, after all, best friends bound by the secret oath, she reminded him, and so he canceled his plans—clearly a date—and they ended up having a night together that pretty much finished the friendship if, in fact, anything had been left. He treated her no differently than he would’ve the girl who got stood up or probably any other average ordinary girl. He treated her like nothing. Now you see her, now you don’t.

  She imagined a plug pulled from the ocean, sucking and swirling and spiraling downward, until all that was left visible there on the sandy floor was shell and rock and glass and bone. She felt the ice cold water—puzzling the irony of it being a hot tub—and she felt how heavy her boots were, full and heavy; she was thinking how people have drowned in little bowls of water and she was thinking of her childhood, the magic shows, the way Ben had her tie his hands and then his legs together before he jumped from the small bridge over the river where they used to all gather to swim. She had learned slipknots and they had practiced often; still, she held her breath as she watched him below the murky brown water, twisting and writhing like a snake. Those standing there would begin to count, and then there was nervous laughter, one boy already stripped of his shirt and ready to dive in and then poof! Ben broke the surface, grinning and twirling the ropes over his head.

  He had been Houdini and she was his loyal assistant.

  Ladies and gentlemen. Now I will make this normal ordinary girl disappear.

  To disappear was her wish that night in New Hampshire. The night in Ben’s dorm room had meant nothing to him; it vanished into thin air and yet it haunted and weighed her down l
ike a concrete sack of shit slung around her neck. She lay awake so many nights revisiting his hands on her body, his mouth grazing her skin, the words he half mumbled as he came and then collapsed, the warm wet weight of his body on hers. The haunting continued even as he ran ahead and never looked back.

  So she got married. It was just that easy to set off in the wrong direction. It was like finding a seat on the train—leg room and a place for your baggage—the comfort of knowing a stranger wouldn’t plop down beside you. Done. Finis. One door slammed. And the china and flowers are all a great distraction, the best sleight of hand.

  “Escape by matrimony,” Luke had said. “A very common vehicle in our society.” But the same can be accomplished with a job or a religion or a hobby, he added, and those things are easier to leave and change. People marry to change class, geography, luck, but when they stretch out at the end of the day, it’s still the same heavy hearts thudding along at their centers.

  She was such a liar—a bad liar—and a bad friend, not to mention a horrible wife, and when that felt too wrong to think about anymore she left their home near Stanford where he was a graduate student. She had never fit in in California and she had never been good at breaking up with people. She couldn’t even change her hairstylist or mechanic for fear of hurting their feelings. So she just left, the kind of abandonment that makes those left relieved to be done with her, and once the pattern was established it was easy to continue: a sociopathic actor who burned himself out before he even got started, like a dud firework smoldering in its base, temp jobs and temp relationships, whatever blew her way. She got a divorce by proxy and told him to keep all the things since it was such bad luck that he had married her in the first place. Enjoy the fondue pot and wok; hock the silver. Then she got the call that her mother died and everything really spiraled out of control. Someone she worked with talked her into attending a grief circle and that’s when, like magic, she met a real person—a really great guy—widowed with a two-year-old daughter and a newborn. She wasn’t in love with him, either, but by then she believed she was someone who would never be in love—what did that even mean?—and should just hope for the best; she trusted him and he was certainly the kind of person you should love—easy to love, in fact—and wouldn’t she grow to fall in love with him, and if not, wasn’t just plain old love enough? It worked for a while, too, long enough that she had begun to relax with it all, long enough that she called her dad and said she couldn’t wait to see him. “Grandkids,” she told him. “Poof! You have grandkids!” He listened, and it seemed the sealed tomb was starting to open only for her to then have to slam it closed again. She made a mistake that had hurt someone and now someone else’s mistake would hurt her. It was logical enough, but it didn’t feel very logical that afternoon in late October when he sat, head in hands and crying the same way he had done in those earliest meetings when he talked about his wife. Joanna knew what was coming even before she heard the words. She could smell the end. He said that she had been so wonderful, such a good friend and lifesaver to them all. He said he knew that she couldn’t possibly understand and yet she did. She stood there in the center of that kitchen they had just redone and pressed her palms against the cool granite island top. She had always wanted a kitchen like this, new appliances and yellow walls and a big window over the sink where she hung a finger painting from preschool. She had imagined family vacations to Disney and trips into the city to go to shows; she had even imagined the kids all grown when she would tell them the long and winding road that had brought her to them. They called her Mama and she had tuned her mind to the Parent Channel and was well versed in Mr. Rogers and the Muppets and Raffi. She bought healthy food and drove the nicest, safest car she had ever driven, a used Volvo he insisted she keep; she had gotten her hair shaped and highlighted in a high-end salon, and for the first time since leaving she had been looking forward to returning home, proud of who she had become.

  She assured him that she did understand. She told him that people do a lot of things in the name of grief. And then he asked the very hardest thing of her, that perhaps after a little weaning time, she let the kids go, she let this woman he was in love with be their mother. “I think it will be so much easier on them,” he said. “They’re so young. They’ll forget.” And she nodded mutely, the world thankfully fogged from her view of kids in the next room screaming and laughing. Mommy, Mommy. He promised to send her pictures of them. He promised to send her money. And she promised herself that she would get in the car and drive whatever way the wind blew. She didn’t want his money. There was no one expecting her. Why not just disappear?

  MOMMY, MOMMY, SHE thought there in the cold icy water. I don’t want to go to Europe. Shut up and keep swimming. Mommy, Mommy, I don’t want to see Daddy. Shut up and keep digging. She had never liked those jokes. And yet there they were.

  THE LAST GUY, always good for his word, had sent her a letter with photos just last year after she wrote to tell him where she was living and what she was doing, that if he ever headed southeast and wanted a really good hot dog to give her a call. It was the least she could do—unhook any regret he might feel. He, after all, had done her a favor; he had given her a glimpse of what a good life could look like. But she threw away the photos without looking, too hard, though she did like to think there might be a day in the future when some slight memory might come to the little daughter, materializing out of a smell or a fabric, perhaps something like her pink cashmere scarf the child loved to finger and rub against her cheek as she dozed off. She was wearing the scarf that night in New Hampshire, fingering the wet weight around her throat, and all she could think about is how worthless she felt and how she wondered what it would feel like to know you had lost two mothers. She had one photo in her wallet, one of those awful department store photos with the baby boy propped up like a sack of potatoes, his sister’s arms around him. She also had a photo she had carried in her wallet since junior high. It looks like a screen door—old-timey with crisscrossed panels—a broom propped in the corner near the latch. Ben is behind the door. She was waiting for him to practice their show and he paused before coming back out into daylight and she snapped it; all you can see is the shadow of someone, darkness beyond the door, but she knew he was there all the same.

  “AND NOW I will make this normal ordinary girl disappear,” he said, and gestured to where she sat in the school auditorium. She came up on the stage wearing the clothes he had told her to wear, a navy scooter skirt and white Hang Ten T-shirt and plain Keds; her hair was in braided pigtails. Nothing loose that might snag, he had said. She was aware of all the students watching and waiting as she walked over to the chamber—a box in a box, one side cut away but carefully hidden. He turned it just right. He always knew how to turn it just right. He winked at her and she felt the great power of their friendship, the secrecy of their act. Abracadabra. Now you see her, now you don’t.

  The water was cold and her clothes heavy, boots filling; there was a crack along the bottom of the hot tub like a broken highway to nowhere. Ben’s best trick had always been to make her disappear and that’s what she had done. He even tried to get in touch with her a few times, saying he wanted her to meet his wife, he had a baby daughter, he was so sorry her mother died, but she had already long disappeared. She was old news, bits of gossip her parents and then her dad had attempted to sweep from the stoop. She was reaching her hand out to trace that crack, no ropes, no cuffs, letting the key to the cottage drop from her hand, when something grabbed her hard; there was a sharp pain in her shoulder, deep and throbbing, and her mouth filled with water and that was all she remembered.

  Later she would get a tattoo to remind her. A big purple blob of a tattoo—horseshoe-shaped—to replicate the bite of a huge dog. She later kept thinking of that old hymn, “Love Lifted Me,” love in the monstrous form of Tammy, 150 pounds of fur and jowls and drool. She would later learn that Tammy didn’t like for anyone to be in the water, always assuming they needed to be saved. Luke
had taken her in when the young family she belonged to couldn’t break her of pulling their kids from the lake every time they tried to learn how to swim. The kids, bruised and tormented, got agitated when they saw her coming, and she read their agitation as trouble and fear and got to work, her big webbed paws propelling her to their rescue. Those kids had named her Nana after the dog in Peter Pan, but Luke decided to rename her in case she had any problems connected to all the times her name had been shrieked in anger. They were in the emergency room, and he told Joanna he had named her after a song he loved as a kid, “Tammy,” by Debbie Reynolds. He said that he played his old 45 every night and sang along in a way he hoped would soothe her.

  “You have a turntable?” she asked, clearly impressed, or so he told her later.

  “Tammy has a real missionary complex,” Luke said. “She wants to save everyone.” He was bone thin with a shaved head and big dark eyes, either a manic runner or a cancer patient. She didn’t mean to say that aloud, but she did because he told her he was both—not cancer per se, but he was dying and he had been a runner since the late seventies when he discovered that a good hard run could just about always make you feel better. She nodded. She knew this as well. She said run run fast as you can. He stood by her gurney and extended an equally bony hand—no ring, no watch. “Tammy and I have a lot of the same problems,” he said. “Fortunately she’s not dying and I don’t shit in the front yard.”