Joanna
SHE KNOWS AS SOON as she gets to C.J.’s apartment, even before she resorts to using her spare key and cautiously stepping inside. The air is so still. She leaves Kurt in his carrier and turns it so that he is facing outward in the square of sunlight in the open door and then she moves to the bedroom and finds her there, half dressed, a needle in her arm. Her skin is cold, eyes closed. Joanna sinks to her knees beside the chair. Her impulse is to pull the needle from her arm, to dress and cover her, but she knows better and instead just reaches, smoothes back her hair, and lets her hand rest there, the skin of C.J.’s pale neck so cold. “Why?” she keeps asking. “How could this happen?” On the bed there is an uncapped pen that has bled into the rumpled sheet and a long handwritten page about her mother’s death and another page with the heading: “If Anything Happens to Me.” The flier about Abby’s lost dog is on the floor beside her chair. I was just minutes away, Joanna says. This never should have happened. Her mind races, trying to reconstruct everything they said last night. C.J. was upset; she was worried. But she wouldn’t have done this. Joanna goes once more and kneels beside her, closes her eyes as she tries to trace back through everything. She said she had a date to drive Rachel Silverman around town this morning. She said, I do trust you, I do want to tell you. She said, she always has something up her sleeve, but not this. She couldn’t have meant this. Minutes pass and Joanna just stays there, waiting, breathing, until she hears Kurt stirring and then she gets up and calls 911. She goes to the bathroom to retrieve the journal C.J. had told her about but there’s very little there, loose pages and a silver coil that once had held many more pages. Burned matches are in the toilet and traces of paper ripped from the notebook litter the floor like confetti. Joanna crams what’s there into her purse and then steps into the main room to wait. The white blouse is carefully hung on the back of a chair and the dog she had just given Kurt is placed in the center of his playpen in the corner. She reaches for the dog and when she does finds another scrap of paper: Go home. Dinner is waiting. She studies the square neat print, slips it into her purse with the other scraps and goes back once more and kisses the top of her head. “None of this makes sense,” she tells her. “You said you’d never do this.” As soon as she hears the siren, she picks up Kurt and goes downstairs to wait. He’s awake now and babbling, laughing when one of the many stray cats that hang around the Dog House sidles up begging.
IT MAKES NO SENSE. Joanna has played through it all again and again, studied the fragments of notes left behind, but there’s nothing there beyond the knowledge that Abby’s dog might in fact be alive and that Ben once hit on C.J., and yet Joanna is absolutely certain that C.J. did not choose this. The note telling her or someone to go home is what she keeps coming back to. Dinner is waiting. But there was no trace of food having been cooked or eaten. And there was no job at Macy’s. They had held no recent interviews and there was no application with C.J.’s name on it. When she called the number C.J. had written in the corner of the missing dog flyer, she got the voice mail for Sam Lowe and asked that he call her back as soon as possible. He was in a class that night and then home with his parents; C.J. was supposed to call him the next day. Joanna checked it all out, determined in her thinking that she will never stop trying to figure it all out. Suicide is what they’re choosing to call it even as Joanna works hard to squelch that. “It was an accident,” she hears herself saying again and again. “She would never have left Kurt. She never even did drugs.” And she imagines all the ways she will try to spin it as he gets older, all the ways she will try to convince him, and the ways she will keep his mother alive in his memory.
C.J.’s death is one of those that comes and goes quietly—a murmur of oh dear, so sad and then on to other events. She gets lost in the funeral of Sadie Randolph, a woman loved and treasured by the whole town. People said there had not been a funeral that big since Judge Walker died. Ben was asked to be a pallbearer and stood there with Sadie’s children who Joanna recognized from all the photographs and stories told. She spoke to Ben quickly afterward, Abby there with him as they all walked away from the grave and before Kendra could make her way up to the front. Everyone knew that Abby was in the room with Sadie and had fallen asleep on the couch; when Ben went to find her, he found Sadie, saying that he knew immediately that she was gone. He was the one who called 911 and he was the one who stood beside her bed and waited. Joanna wanted to say how they had both had the same experience within twelve hours of each other—one discovering the natural ending of a long and beautiful life and the other the tragic loss of someone barely getting started, but by then Kendra was back with them, looping her arm through his and giving Joanna a dismissive nod.
Everyone at Pine Haven has talked constantly about Sadie’s death and how much they miss her. Several have mentioned the hair and foot girl and how awful that was as well. They miss the way she fixed their hair and the way she gave long foot massages when doing their feet. They say what a terrible shame that she chose to do that. They say things like: Her legacy. Fulfilled prophecy. Downright selfish but pitiful, too. They talk about how fond poor Harley was of both of them and how somebody needs to get rid of him. Joanna is thinking she should give him a good home before something happens.
“Could you have seen that one coming?” Abby asked Ben after Joanna mentioned C.J.’s death. He had trouble placing who C.J. was, which bothered Joanna even more, but then Kendra was there and so Joanna remained silent. “You didn’t see Sadie’s death coming,” Abby said, and twisted away from Ben. “You didn’t see Dollbaby’s coming. You wouldn’t see a train wreck either. You don’t see anything. Nothing.” Ben nodded at Joanna and she turned to leave, the volume and pitch of Abby’s voice unbearable to hear and even more unbearable was Kendra’s attempt at shushing her, which made it even worse. Joanna heard Ben tell Abby that things would get better. He talked about her birthday party, which had been postponed a week. “Saturday is going to a great day,” he said, “a brand-new start, you’ll see,”and that got Kendra going about who all would be there and what they were going to do. Sadie would like that, Ben said. Sadie would want that. Really, honey, she would. Joanna turned and looked back and he was watching her; he held his gaze a little too long, which meant he would probably show up at her door as he had done again two nights ago.
JOANNA HAS A quiet gathering for C.J. there in the little chapel of Pine Haven and still hasn’t decided what to do with her ashes. C.J. was afraid of the cemetery and said she didn’t like it out there and now it bothers Joanna that she doesn’t even know where she did want to be. They talked about so many things but never that. “I still find it so hard to believe,” Rachel Silverman says after the service. She says that C.J. was supposed to drive her all over town, that they had made a financial agreement and that Rachel had looked forward to the time with her. “I liked that girl,” she says, “I really did. Now Stanley is taking me.” She holds on to Mr. Stone’s arm and he nods and pats her hand. His sudden improvement and desire to shave and dress nicely has shocked everyone in the Pine Haven community as has the newfound friendship between Toby Tyler and Marge Walker; Toby has promised Marge yoga classes and health advice so she can live as long as possible and in exchange Marge will let Toby read and study all the true crime she has collected in her scrapbook especially that one horrible case and conviction her husband was famous for.
“We’re all trying to do what Sadie would like,” Toby says, and laughs. “Who the hell knows how long it’ll last.”
It is a small group, but Sam Lowe shows up and afterward when Joanna hands him the rumpled flyer of Dollbaby she had found on C.J.’s bed, he nods yes. “That’s her all right,” he said.
And now it is Saturday and Joanna has her own field trip. She takes Kurt to day care and then drives to the Ferris Beach shelter. Sam Lowe is out front and has Dollbaby all bathed and brushed with a pink bandanna around her neck. “What do I owe you?” Joanna asks, but he shakes his head, shrugs, and looks away. She hands him an envelope with the pages C.J. had written about him, how she hoped she could be the kind of person he might deserve. “Her death was a big mistake,” she tells him, and takes the leash. “She never would have chosen to leave.” He nods and they promise to keep in touch, but Joanna knows better. He will be like all the others who come in and out of her life, their association so tied up in loss and grieving that it will be best to move on.
It is later that afternoon when she drives and parks at the far end of the Pine Haven parking lot. She knows from her conversation with Ben that the birthday party will be over soon so she walks Dollbaby through the cemetery to where they can see Abby’s house and then she sits there, the very place where she and Ben had played as children. There is the statue of Lydia and there is where the little girl’s playhouse had been. She stays back in the shade of the hedge of myrtle and canopy of oaks and waits, Dollbaby already straining to get loose, whining and pulling, and as soon as Joanna sees Ben’s car turn into the drive, she unclips the leash and lets her go. She doesn’t wait but heads back down the path; she hears Abby screaming—I wished for this, I wished for this—and she can only imagine the shock of Abby’s parents, especially her mother, to witness this miracle, this resurrection, this reason to believe.
She moves quickly now, over the gnarled surfaced roots and past darkened stones, the names of those she once knew. Pooles and Burnses and Carlyles and Bishops. Kurt will need a lot of things in this life. He will need an education and nice clothes and a good dog, but most of all he will need his mother and Joanna plans to give him all that she can. Your mother loved you more than anything on earth, she will say when the time is right. Your mother was smart and good and kind and funny. And she will save all the music C.J. was listening to—Neutral Milk Hotel and Nirvana and, weirdly enough, The Jackson 5 and Supremes. There is so much Joanna wants to know and understand and she is not ever going to stop looking and questioning. She wants to be able to tell Kurt that his mother did not kill herself. His mother never would have chosen to leave him. She has the books that were on C.J.’s shelf—mostly children’s books that she had saved from her own childhood, Carolina Jessamine scrawled in crayon in the front. And then there are books about reflexology, palm reading, tarot and Switzerland, how-to books about making quilts and curtains and homemade jams, a strange assortment that Joanna has incorporated into her daily reading habits—flip one open and see what is there. In one of the books was a list of C.J.’s ideas for tattoos she might get. I am listening to hear where you are, she had written and so now Joanna is listening. She is always looking and listening. Carolina Jessamine Loomis. Luke Wishart and Martha Stone and Curtis Lamb and Suzanne Sullivan. Lois Flowers and Sadie Randolph.
Keep us alive. Keep us with you.
Do you believe in ghosts? Do you believe in the power of magic? Do you believe that a normal ordinary girl can disappear right before your eyes? There is an inner box and there is an outer box and they turn and turn and turn. Now you see her, now you don’t. It’s an easy trick, all about making the right turns, standing in the right place at the right time. If you look closely enough you can see the opening; you can see what’s coming, but there’s the real trick—because you don’t look; for whatever reason, you don’t look, you look up or off to the side, your mind is elsewhere—a flap of red silk, the sudden flight of a dove, bouquets of flowers pulled from a sleeve. Now you see her, now you don’t. Then poof—abracadabra! She’s right before your eyes.
Acknowledgments
I have many people to thank, as the writing of this novel has spanned quite a few years with life changes and a major move at the center of the interrupted process. At both ends are places I love and think of as home, both filled with wonderful friends and colleagues who have made significiant impacts on my life. My love and appreciation run back and forth between Massachusetts and North Carolina with side trips to Bennington, Vermont, and Sewanee, Tennessee. Thank you one and all. A grateful thanks in memory of Jean Seiden and Liam Rector, two close and deeply missed friends who invited me into treasured communities; without them, I would not know so many of the people I hold dear. A big thanks to my earliest and long-trusted readers: Cathy Stanley, Betsy Cox, and Lee Smith. To the one and only Louis D. Rubin Jr.—friend, teacher, and publisher—who provided me a literary home and placed me in the amazing editorial hands of Shannon Ravenel twenty-seven years ago. I will always be grateful for that placement as well as the one of thirty years with my agent, Liz Darhansoff. Thanks to Brunson Hoole and Jude Grant for their careful and precise reading of the manuscript and to all at Algonquin who see a manuscript to the end of its journey. Thanks to my sister, Jan Gane, and to all the memories that only a sibling can share, and to my mom, Melba McCorkle, whose love and wit and incredible stamina will always inspire me. My greatest love and thanks to my husband, Tom Rankin, for all the wonderful joys to come from joining our lives. I remain amazed. A big thanks to Julian and Alexander whom I am proud to call family. And to Claudia and Rob who will always top the list of my most important contributions to the world. Thanks to you both for your love and patience as well as suggestions for various characters and their music choices. Thanks to Claudia for invaluable insight and advice about the inner workings of a twelve-year-old girl and to Rob for the birth of the character Stanley.