Heaven Is Paved With Oreos

by Catherine Gilbert Murdock

  I have to go set the table because Z is coming! I cannot wait to show her this journal and tell her our plan. This summer could not get any better!

  Thursday, June 13—LATER

  OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. OMG. And I normally do not say those letters, even though when I say OMG, I mean “oh my gosh” and not “oh my the-other-one.”

  Remember how Z sent me this journal to write about my marvelous adventures and experiences-to-come? Well, now I know what she was talking about.

  OMG.

  Okay, I will slow down a little as Dad says sometimes when I am talking, and I will try to explain what happened.

  Z came to supper tonight. Z coming to supper is an adventure in and of itself because she calls everyone darling and brings crazy not-at-all-like-a-grandmother gifts like a dead branch she thinks is beautiful or a book of nude portraits (!) or earrings she made herself that she said she’d pierce my ears with in a special ceremony. Z is always on a special diet such as eating only one color food each day of the week. Or only eating food that is raw. She has been every kind of vegetarian, including the kind that doesn’t even eat honey. Sometimes she brings us organic potato chips or organic chocolate-covered peanuts. You’d think “organic” would mean “healthy,” but that’s not necessarily true in Z’s case.

  Lately Z does not eat anything made with wheat. She says the hardest part was giving up Oreos, but they are made with wheat flour, so even though they are absolutely delicious and perfect, they’re out. If I ever stopped eating wheat, I would make a rule that I could only be 99% wheatless. The last 1% I would leave for Oreos.

  Mom reads all the labels extra closely but she still usually gets something wrong. She has a glass of wine ready whenever Z comes, just in case. Wine for herself.

  “Hello, darlings!” Z said when she arrived tonight. She gave us hugs that she says fill the universe with good karma and told Dad again that he is saving the world. Dad is an engineer in a factory that cans beans and corn and potatoes. During summer harvest, he works every day, seven days a week, because that’s how fast the crops come in. Right now he’s making sure the machines work, because beans start soon and then all canning heck will break loose.

  Z picked up the wheat-free cookbook. “Oh, aren’t you wonderful! . . . Did I forget to tell you that I’m back with wheat?”

  There was a bit of a silence. Mom smiled brightly and reached for her wine.

  Now Z can eat Oreos again!

  At dinner, Z told her favorite story about dancing in St. Peter’s Square in Rome. I’ve heard the story one hundred times (almost literally), but I still love it.

  When Z was in college, she went to Italy on an art-studying trip, and while she was in Rome she visited a famous church called St. Peter’s that has an open space in front with huge rows of columns like two arms. They built the columns on purpose to make the church look like it was hugging the whole world. Z has a drawing of St. Peter’s Square hanging in her bedroom, and trust me, the hug feeling is extremely clear. It is called a square even though it is hug shaped.

  When Z saw St. Peter’s Square in real life, back when she was in college, she got so excited that she held out her arms to match the shape of the column hugs, and without warning an old Italian man came up and started dancing with her. Z’s friends were totally shocked. Z just laughed, though, and went along with the old man, twirling around the square. The only words she could understand him saying were bellissima and amore. Bellissima means “very beautiful” and amore means “love.” Then they finished and he bowed to her and that was it. The whole thing took less than a minute. That’s why Z bought the drawing of St. Peter’s Square—so she can always remember.

  When I was little, I’d imagine Z as one of the little figures in the drawing, even though the drawing is from hundreds of years ago. Z would tell me the story, and then she’d hold out her arms and have me dance with her. The only problem was that I was terrible at dancing. We’d always fall down laughing on her bed. Maybe that’s why I like the story so much, because it always reminds me of giggling with Z.

  Anyway, Z told the story again tonight and we all laughed, and then Z laid down her fork. “I . . . I need to do it again.”

  Mom and Dad shared a glance.

  “Dance with an old man?” Paul asked.

  “That trip to Rome . . . it was a pilgrimage, you know.”

  Mom made a little sound under her breath.

  “It was!” Z said. “It was not—I admit—a religious pilgrimage, but I was following in the footsteps of thousands of years of pilgrims. I intended to visit all seven pilgrimage churches, and I failed.”

  Z has told me this story too. Rome has seven churches that are particularly important, and when Z was my age she read a book about pilgrims visiting those seven churches, so when she was in Rome, she tried to do it too. But she ran out of time. She only made it to six of them. This isn’t like the dancing-in-St.-Peter’s-Square story. This story makes Z sad. She doesn’t tell it much.

  “I’m going to do it right this time,” Z said. “I’m turning sixty-four this summer. I would like to reconnect with God.”

  Mom cleared her throat. “You know, Z, I’m pretty sure God is everywhere. You could probably connect with God in our living room.”

  Dad chuckled, but Z waved this away. “God has been in Rome for two thousand years. We’ll have a better conversation there, God and me. I need to apologize.”

  “For the pilgrimage?” I asked. I’ve always felt bad about how Z never made it to that seventh church. It feels like a jigsaw puzzle with one piece missing. A corner piece.

  Z nodded, kind of.

  “Well,” Dad said at last. “It sounds like a great trip—”

  “There’s one other thing,” Z said. “I’d like to take Sarah with me.”

  BOOM. (That is the sound of all heck breaking loose. Although it broke quietly at first.)

  Everyone stared at Z.

  Then they stared at me.

  Then we stared at Mom and Dad.

  We even looked at Paul.

  Mom cleared her throat again. “Now just a second. Your trip—that’s fine. Do what you want. But this is a foreign country we’re talking about. Sarah’s only fourteen. I’m not sure you’re the best . . . chaperone . . .” Mom shot Dad a look.

  So Dad asked what Z was thinking timewise, and Z said we’d be leaving July 10 and returning July 17.

  “You’ve already bought the tickets?” Mom asked in a coolish voice.

  “The price was right. And—just so you know—they’re nonrefundable. Not that it matters . . .”

  BOOM.

  Mom stared at her plate. I don’t know what Dad and Z were doing because I was so busy watching Mom. I do know that Paul was gone, though. I hadn’t even noticed him leaving.

  Finally Dad said this sure was interesting and we all needed some time and he knew it’d work out in the end. Mom, on the other hand, said for me to go to my room.

  So here I am.

  Rome.

  ROME!

  Rome is such a famous and important city—it’s the capital of Italy and head of the Catholic Church of the world. I would get to see those seven churches and St. Peter’s Square (although I do not want anyone dancing with me!). I would get to be a pilgrim—not the Thanksgiving kind but the super-old-fashioned kind like the ones in Z’s drawing. I would be part of history.

  So those are pluses. But Mom is right too. Rome is in a foreign country on the other side of the globe. They don’t speak English, and who knows what we would eat. I know the Italians invented pizza, but that doesn’t mean that Italian pizza is any good; a lot of pizza isn’t. Z says Italian ice cream is deliciously wonderful, but I am suspicious. I do not like most American ice cream flavors. And what if the plane crashes? Rome is thousands and thousands of miles away. That’s a lot of miles to crash in. And what if someone tries to dance with me? I do not know how to say, I’m a terrible dancer in Italian. I do not know how to say, But you could dance with
my grandmother because she loves adventures. I’m not sure people even say that in Italian.

  I am extremely worried about everything I have just listed plus all the other terrible things I do not even know to list yet. But I’m most worried about Curtis. Because all the things I listed are things Curtis will worry about too. He will worry about them ten times more than me. He will worry 10x2 (= ten times squared).

  Friday, June 14

  Dad and Mom left for work before I got up, which I appreciate because I do not feel like talking about Rome. It is overwhelming even to think about. Instead I went to Curtis’s baseball game. That, I decided, would be my Sarah Zorn adventure for the 14th of June. Red Bend baseball is as far from Rome-thinking as you can get.

  Curtis is excellent at baseball. He is a utility player, which means he can play many different positions, including pitcher so long as there is not too much pressure. It is difficult to pitch under pressure, even for professionals, which is why pitchers are so well paid. He also plays third base and sometimes center field.

  I like riding my bike to the park and sitting on the bleachers with the parents and the other baseball fans. The problem is that I do not like going to his games for other reasons. For one thing, it is often hot—so hot that some of the grownups use umbrellas, which I cannot do because Emily makes fun of me enough as it is. Instead I wear an old fishing hat from one of Z’s ex-boyfriends, which I know looks silly, but if I wear a baseball cap, my ears burn and I end up with hat head. Emily never seems to get hat head.

  Emily is the other reason I don’t like baseball. Emily attends all the games, with big posters that read GO RED BEND! GO CURTIS! She also cheers, which I do not do, because unlike some people, I am not naturally loud.

  Sure enough, Emily was there with her friends, who were all cheering loudly. She came right over, even though I specifically sat on another bleacher, and asked if I had made a poster. Which I clearly had not because a poster is exceedingly visible, and also exceedingly difficult to carry on a bike. She asked why I never make posters. “If I was Curtis’s girlfriend, I’d make a new poster for every game,” Emily said. “I’d cheer for him a lot. And I’d be very loud so he could hear me.”

  I cannot imagine Emily cheering any louder than she already does.

  “You know,” Emily said, “I’ve had boyfriends. I know how to be a girlfriend, if you want some tips.” Then she gave me her I’m onto you look and went back to her friends . . .

  Okay. This is my personal private journal, so I will tell the truth. The truth about Curtis and me and our Brilliant Outflanking Strategy.

  It started back in seventh grade with the hydrogen display that Curtis and I did for science class. The project itself was amazingly fun, but the other kids were awful. They kept teasing us and saying we were working on the project because we were boyfriend and girlfriend, which was especially bad because it was not true! We were only friends. We were good science friends, which is the best kind of friends to be.

  We were teased so much that we would not even look at each other or do homework together after school. Last summer I did not see him at all.

  Then, at the end of the summer, we both went to his sister’s first football game and we talked a little. Then we both went to the Jorgensens’ Labor Day picnic because our families go every year. Curtis told me about a possum skull he had just cleaned (Curtis collects skulls), and it felt exactly like old hydrogen times. Several little kids kept hanging around us because little kids love Curtis, and one girl (a future Emily, I think) kept asking if we were going out. I kept saying no, but she kept asking in a pestering way.

  Finally I was so fed up that I said, “Yep, we are.”

  “I knew it,” she said. And, zip, she ran off.

  “Why did you say that?” Curtis looked horrified. He looked as horrified as I felt. We watched the little girl run up to a group of kids and elbow her way into the middle like she had something to say—to say about us. But instead she pointed to her T-shirt. She didn’t even look back at Curtis and me. She was only talking about her clothes. She acted like she had already forgotten us.

  Curtis frowned. “Why would she keep asking us that question if she doesn’t care?”

  “She did care,” I said, thinking hard. “Until we said yes. Then she stopped thinking about it.” That was when I had my eureka moment. Eureka is what you say when you have a massive scientific discovery. “That’s it! Curtis, no one cares if we’re really going out. They just like thinking we are. They don’t like it when we say they’re wrong. So let’s let them think it!”

  Curtis looked at me like I was crazy, but in the end he agreed to try because neither of us could think of any better way to keep talking to each other without people teasing us.

  The next day—the first day of eighth grade—we got to school and immediately started talking in the hall. Within one minute Brett Ortlieb said, “Oooh, you two are going out.”

  Normally I would say, No! But this time (Please, Sarah, be right about this!) I said, “Yep.”

  Brett Ortlieb looked confused. “Wait. You two are really going out?”

  I nodded. Curtis stared at the floor, but that is not unusual for him.

  Brett said, “Oh . . . ,” and walked away. That was it.

  That day, Curtis and I ate lunch together and walked home together and even worked on science together. No one said a single teasing thing. They just let us be.

  This is why we call it the Brilliant Outflanking Strategy, because that is how brilliant it turned out to be. My parents think Curtis and I are going out—they give me lectures about it, which is how I can tell—and Paul does, and our friends and Curtis’s parents and his sister, D.J., who has a boyfriend and gets a kick out of the fact that her little brother and I are boyfriend and girlfriend too, just like Brian and her. Although Curtis is not a quarterback like Brian is. Or eighteen years old. Or going to college.

  Emily is the only person who is suspicious. No one else expects us to kiss in public or hug all the time, because they know we are not like that. But not Emily. Whenever Curtis and I are together, she watches us as though she is preparing her own science-fair project. I do not like it at all.

  Emily is probably suspicious because around boys she is the exact opposite of me. She is always laughing at boys’ dumb stories and giggling when they touch her gluteus maximus, and she makes out in the halls. Even though I tell myself I am not like Emily at all, I worry sometimes that sitting in the bleachers watching Curtis play baseball makes me look like her. I do not want anyone thinking that ever.

  I have not talked about this with Curtis. We are not good at talking about anything related to Emily, and also I do not think he would understand, because he is (duh) a boy. Sometimes I get so worried about whether I look like Emily that I leave his games early. But I tell Curtis I have to be somewhere else, or that Mom or Paul is calling me.

  Anyway, that was an extremely long description of Curtis and me and the Brilliant Outflanking Strategy. Now we can return to today’s baseball game and the fact that I was doing my best not to think about Rome.

  I stayed until the end of the game. Curtis’s team won—hurray. He was supposed to leave right away for a weekend tournament in Sheboygan, but his mom said he had time to get ice cream. That’s something the two of us do. It’s nice because it’s what boy/girlfriends do, but it’s what friend-friends do too.

  “Hey,” I said when he came up. “Nice game.” We Palm Saluted and smiled. Every time we Palm Salute, I smile.

  “Thanks. Boris says hello, by the way.”

  “Will he be okay while you’re gone?” I was not completely joking. I do not want anything happening to Boris. Being dead is bad enough.

  Curtis said he’d double-checked and that Boris would be fine. We walked toward Jorgensens’ Ice Cream. I asked Curtis what he thought about Emily’s poster.

  Curtis shrugged. “She sure cheers a lot.”

  That was not what I wanted to hear. I wanted him to say posters
are stupid and he doesn’t like Emily coming to his games and he doesn’t like her, period. What did he mean, she cheers a lot? “Doesn’t she cheer too much?”

  “Nah . . . It’s kind of crazy, you know, how she does it . . .”

  I wanted to ask if Curtis wanted me to cheer, but it’s the kind of thing Emily would ask, so I couldn’t. I wouldn’t ask that even if Curtis and I actually were going out.

  We did not say much more after this, and we got our chocolate (Curtis) and vanilla (me) and sat under a tree and ate our cones. Sometimes we discuss trying other flavors, but that didn’t seem like a good thing to talk about today. Nothing did.

  I wanted to tell Curtis about Rome, but I did not know how to bring it up. It is interesting that Curtis and Z are my two favorite people in the world and yet they are total opposites. Z never thinks about what could go wrong, and Curtis only thinks about what could. Once he told me that he wished he could drive my school bus because then he’d know I’d be safe.

  But I would have to tell him eventually, right? “Z wants to take a trip to Rome to be a pilgrim again, and she invited me to go with her.”

  Curtis frowned. “Rome, Italy?”

  I nodded.

  “Would you fly there?”

  “Well, yeah. If I go.”

  “What if the plane crashes?”

  See? He always worries. Why couldn’t he say, That sounds like fun? I am also worried about crashing, but that is not reason enough not to go. “Flying isn’t that dangerous.”

  “Rome is really far away,” Curtis said.

  “I know. But my grandmother would say that that’s why you go.”

  Curtis ripped up a handful of grass. “That seems like a really bad reason to go somewhere.”

  “Well, I don’t even know if I’m going yet.” I was the one who should be nervous about traveling, not Curtis. Curtis goes everywhere. He goes to Sheboygan.