Life After Life A Novel - By Jill McCorkle Page 0,3

the Chihuahua because whoever heard of putting hot salsa on a plain old hot dog? Lois Flowers loved music and she loved fashion. She had a subscription to Vogue that had never lapsed in over forty years. “You could never get away with outfits like that here in Fulton,” she said. “But it is important to know what folks are wearing elsewhere.” She loved turquoise and the way people complimented her when she wore it. “I’m a winter,” she liked to say, and referred often to a folder labeled “Personal Color Harmony” and all the little color samples within. She never went shopping for clothes or lipstick without it. Her favorite holiday was Halloween because she loved to see children having so much fun, but mainly because she liked a good excuse to wear orange even though her chart said that winters do not wear orange well. She decided that even if she looked horrid, so what? It was Halloween, but, she said, I looked quite striking in an orange alpaca sweater and black gabardine slacks. It’s the one time the chart got it wrong. She still had the orange sweater and insisted that I take it and promise to wear it every October 31. She gave her daughter, Kathryn, the newer Halloween sweater, a honey-colored cashmere with black cat and witch hat buttons. Kathryn is a true autumn and that sweater is perfect for her, she said. You can see why I want everything perfect for her. She suggested I rethink the way I wear my hair and then put a hand to her mouth and apologized for such a rude remark. “This is all new,” she told me. “This way I say things I don’t mean to say,” and I was able to assure her that I completely understood and that I am reconsidering what to do with my hair. She smiled and blew me a kiss. She said, how about some golden highlights and something layered to give body?

She had matchbooks from every nice restaurant she had ever gone to. Her favorites were Tavern on the Green and Windows on the World. She said she loved eating in New York City. She said her husband teased her that all it took for her to love a restaurant was for it to be in New York City and have lots of windows and a preposition in the name. She told Kathryn she needed to get back there, that they should take a trip and see a show. When told that both restaurants were gone, she held a firm position that she still needed to go there. “And so do you!” she said, always pulling me into the conversation. “And if there’s not a young man in your life” (she asked me often if I had met anyone interesting), she said that I should just go alone. “Women do that now,” she said. “A woman can go wherever she wants right by herself.”

Once, while her husband and Kathryn were out at the County Fair, Lois Flowers burned her Maidenform bra in a hibachi in their backyard. When her husband asked what’s that smell? she said she had no earthly idea. She said it made her feel connected to something big and important, that she stood there in the backyard and pretended she was at a rally in New York City. She never told him what she had done, even when she saw him studying the ashes and what looked like a scrap of nylon. She had never even told anyone about it until that day; she said, I have always felt liberated.

Her last words were to Kathryn, spoken two days before she died. “Honey, do you have homework?” She had asked that question hundreds of times over the years and if Kathryn did not have homework, the two of them went shopping. Lois Flowers loved her daughter and she loved to shop. Kathryn said that all of their important conversations took place during those little shopping trips. What to expect when you start your period. Why you got that bad grade. Why a sassy mouth is not a good thing. How your reputation is your most prized possession. Why you should always do your best. Why good hygiene is a must. What boys do and do not have good sense about or control over. These topics were often whispered over the lunch counter at Wood’s Dimestore where Kathryn got a cherry Coke or a milkshake and Lois got a