Life After Life A Novel - By Jill McCorkle Page 0,1

the checkout line, the man next to her going from way too warm to icy cold in minutes. She said if there were any doubt, a good scratch in the right place would really get rid of someone you weren’t interested in.

“If something ever happens to me,” she once told Joanna, “everything you need to know is in the journal in the giant Kotex box at the back of the linen closet and you can have everything I own, even Kurt—especially Kurt.” Joanna told her that if anything ever happened to her, she had a fake book, Darwin’s Descent of Man, that opens and holds important papers. She also has a fake can of Campbell’s tomato soup. The bottom screws off and someday when she makes lots of money, that’s where she plans to keep some for security. “You can have that and the Dog House,” Joanna told her.

Like Joanna, C.J. has done a lot of different things. She has cleaned houses and read palms and groomed dogs and now grooms the elderly—hair, hands, toes—at Pine Haven and leads them in a few activities and exercises. She rents the little apartment over the Dog House and in exchange for sometimes opening or closing, Joanna babysits her son, Kurt. Joanna’s only rule as a landlord is no candles since she herself has had a couple of house fires as a result of purification rituals. “That would do it,” C.J. said, and laughed when the rule was explained and adjusted her lip ring, which she always removes before going to work. “I’ll come up with another way to purify.”

Joanna wasn’t there for her mother, but she was there for her dad and seeing him through those last days allowed her to let go herself. Being there may prove to be the greatest gift of her life. And of course none of that would have happened without Luke and Tammy.

In her work, Joanna has learned the importance of making peace. She sees it all the time, the stubborn child who won’t come to the bedside and so the parent lasts far longer than should be asked of anyone. It is painful to watch, and for this reason she feels lucky to have journeyed her way back to this place. Her dad wanted her to promise to keep the the Dog House running and now she is doing her best, opening and closing and hiring responsible people to work the place, so she can devote herself to the volunteer hospice hours she gives over in Pine Haven’s nursing wing.

“Make their exits as gentle and loving as possible,” Luke had said. “Tell them how good it will be, even if you don’t believe it yourself. You’re southern, you know how to do that.” And now family members greet and embrace her like she is one of them. Lung. Brain. Breast. Uterus. Pancreas. Bone. The families discuss and explain the symptoms and diagnoses for her as if they have never been heard of before, have never happened to anyone else, and she listens. Mistakes are made in the telling and she does not correct them. It is important to remain separate, to allow them to claim the disease, claim their grief. It is important not to get too attached or personally involved. Sometimes, when family members are naming the tests and the symptoms and prognosis, she allows herself to imagine her mother, getting the news and then driving home. Actively deciding what to do next but not calling her. But Joanna can go only so far with that or she’ll undermine her purpose in the present. She is there, compassionate and listening, guiding the patients to talk and tell their stories if inclined but knowing when to step back into the shadows of the drapes or a closet door so family members get their time. She knows how to disappear.

Relatives show her all the old photos and letters; they tell her of accomplishments and regrets and then afterward, they drift away, her presence like something from an old dream, a reminder of their grief and loss. Sometimes they see her in the grocery or hardware store or when they drive up to the Dog House, and they can’t help themselves, their eyes well up and words get choked. Like Pavlov’s dogs, they react to her presence. It makes her think of poor Harley, the docile old orange cat at Pine Haven with enough poundage to warm even the coldest circulation-free feet, only now all of the