Journey From Heaven

by Joe Derkacht

  #

  “I’m off to my quilting group,” Zell said from the bedroom doorway. She was dressed in a warm Scandinavian sweater and dark wool slacks, a perfect combination for Driftwood Bay’s usual morning fog. The sweater was navy blue with white snowflakes across the shoulders, matching her shock of wavy, white hair. I must have given her announcement a blank look.

  “I’ve told you time and time again. Seems like you should remember something I tell you.”

  I waited, and her words poured out in a swift torrent of explanation.

  “It’s for Lutheran Women’s World Relief. We get together every Tuesday morning and sew quilts for people overseas. We finish off four a week, which means we send out over 200 quilts every year. I’ve been in the group for more than thirty years, in case you want to know, which makes—” She halted in mid-sentence, her eyes momentarily distant, as she did the calculation. “Since you can’t do it, I’ll do the math for you. Our little group of women has sent out more than 6,000 quilts, all told. I like to think lots of people have found them to be quite a comfort in their time of need.”

  In sudden disgust, she said, “Except for the year a thieving wretch stole our quilts on the night before they were to be sent out. Can you imagine that? I’ve always wondered what he did with them. Did he sit down and cut out every one of the Lutheran Women’s World Relief labels we’d sewn into them? Or when he saw the labels, did he maybe just ditch all of those beautiful quilts at the dump?

  “Or—oh wait a minute. Maybe that was the year they had us quit sewing in our labels. I never have understood that. Makes me wonder if they’re afraid someone will become a Christian if they start thinking about who we Lutheran women might be?”

  She adjusted her eyeglasses and glanced at her wristwatch. “I know, I know. If I don’t start right now, I’ll be late. You’ll be fine, won’t you, John? You’ll be sure not to wander around the house in my absence? I would hate for you to fall.”

  Quilting group. Lutheran women. Late. No wandering. I got the picture. I nodded, and she was out the door. A minute later, I heard a car engine grind to life in the carport. Shortly, the fading crunch of tires over gravel told me she had gone.

  The world seemed to spin around my head as I sat up. It continued spinning, as I slowly swung my legs over the side of the bed nearest the window. Maybe getting up really wasn’t a good idea. Maybe she was right about not wandering around the house? I felt like gravity’s giant hand was pushing at me, wanting me to fall backward onto the bed. Still, something called, urging me on. Was I to stay in bed for the rest of my life? Here I was next door to my own house, yet I wasn’t even able to see it. What might have happened to it during my several weeks of absence?

  Gradually, the spinning slowed enough to ease my mind about toppling over. I reached out and pulled at the roll-up window shade—and kept pulling for a minute or two. To no avail. The spring must have been every bit as tired and worn out as myself. Finally, I simply pulled the shade back over my head for a look, revealing the double-hung window.

  Wan sunlight filtered in through the carport’s yellow fiberglass roof panels. The rafters and support beams were painted white. Latticework once white like the rafters and beams was overgrown with several kinds of densely flowering vines, and served for both the end wall and the side wall, effectively screening out any view of my house and property. Regrettably, though the flowers were familiar, their names were somehow just out of reach. One or two kinds of roses, certainly.

  The driveway was not gravel, as I had imagined. It was crushed oyster shell, both naturally white and bleached white by the sun. Leaning my head against the window and twisting to the right, I saw an identical driveway of oyster shells kitty corner from where I sat. Surely I should have remembered...?

  Beyond the end of the carport, I was able to make out what looked like a bit of fence; in fact, fence woven from driftwood. Who would go to all the trouble of that in my absence? Unless my eyes were playing tricks on me?

  My legs proved too weak to let me rise under my own power. Fortunately, the mattress had enough spring in it to help bounce me to my feet. Leaning against the wall, holding desperately onto the window frame, I finally managed to remain standing. This was going to be more difficult than I’d imagined.

  I had to find out about that fence!

  You’re not going to make it, a voice whispered.

  No, you are. It won’t be easy but you can do it.

  Two voices that were really one—my own. I was both talking and arguing with myself. I’d have to keep from doing that in front of other people. No sense in confirming their suspicions.

  I began walking, slowly negotiating my way around the bed by supporting or pushing myself off whatever I could with my left hand—first the window frame, then the wall, and finally the shelves littered with doll parts. My right hand wasn’t good for much of anything. Flexing it in the least caught painfully at the stitches in my arm.

  I was sweating before I reached the door, which was no more than four feet from the bed. My heart pounded in my ears. Perspiration poured from me, soaking my t-shirt.

  “Control your breathing. Take deep breaths and breathe out slowly. Take a step and rest, before taking another step.”

  I was talking to myself again, my stammer poignantly reminding me of why I was in the condition I was in. I clamped my mouth shut, and kept it clamped. The hallway to the living room was short, abbreviated like most everything in Zell’s house, a cottage in the Cape Cod style. Framed photographs lined the walls. Though they were of faces that must be long gone, I vaguely remembered them and echoes of the tragedies attached to them. Something about Germany, it seemed. A man in an Army Lieutenant’s uniform smiled wistfully from one. In another, a group of women in Army fatigues was assembled beside a hospital tent. Beneath them, I dragged my left hand for the sake of balance and hoped I wasn’t soiling the wallpaper with perspiration.

  The combined living room and kitchen area was gloomy, with thin cracks of light gleaming in past the curtains. She had shut them before leaving. To make sure no one could peer in to find me? I tottered past a wooden rocker, two overstuffed striped armchairs, and a couch, before finally dropping into a padded kitchen chair.

  I think I must have dozed awhile sitting up. I found myself lurching forward in my seat, my progress impeded by the kitchen table, as its surface intercepted my nose. I stayed in that position for long minutes, smarting from the impact, tears running down onto Zell’s flowery tablecloth.

  What was I doing? Why was I here? Why was I alive at all? I might as well slit my throat while I had the chance.

  Life is useless. Pathetic. You’re pathetic. You. You. You. You don’t even know why you’re here! You’re here because you’re a joke. You know that, don’t you? Life is one big cosmic joke and you’re the punch line. Go ahead, kill yourself. No one would care—you’d be forgotten in a day or two, if that long. Miserable, worthless piece of nothing—

  I sat up, wondering where the voices in my head were coming from and why they seemed eager to make themselves heard. Forcibly ignoring them, I reached for the kitchen curtain.

  That’s right, twist it around your neck and hang yourself.

  Hang myself with this? The curtain rod would fall on my head! I saw it clearly, even to Doc Schiffman sewing stitches in my scalp.

  “That’s stupid, stupid as they come,” I said, laughing. At my laughter, the voices died as if I’d slapped a chorus of idiots in the face. As instantly as at the flip of a light switch, I felt alone once more, the surrounding gloom empty of its evil, clamorous inhabitants, and the air clean and breathable again.

  Reaching out with my left hand, I pulled back the curtain and saw a fence woven of weathered driftwood enclosing a small front yard and a single, tall Scotch pine. Flowerbeds resembling those in Zell’s yard were spread both inside and outside the fence line. As gray as the sky and as
gray as the driftwood fence surrounding it, the modestly-sized house that went with the property resembled an English cottage. The trouble was I’d never seen it before that very moment. My house was a yellow duplex, its concrete porch painted red. As for its white picket fence, it was nothing like this.

  Don’t say anything, don’t tell her or anyone else, I said to myself.

  Fool!

  I shrugged in agreement. How could I argue?