by Fannie Flagg
Can’t wait to get to Heaven
Oh I’ll be so happy there
When I walk down that ivory hall
And run up those crystal stairs.
Oh I’ll know Him when I see Him
I’d know Him anywhere.
Then all my struggles will be lifted
When I reach that kingdom in the air.
Can’t wait to shout hallelujah!
No more earthly burdens will I bear
’Cause when I see the Heavenly throne,
I know…Yes I know
He’ll be waiting for me there!
When she finished, Neva thought, “Nice lyrics, and very fitting.” She guessed if anybody had a shot at getting to heaven, it would have to be Elner Shimfissle. The woman had been such a source of inspiration for the whole town, always had a smile on her face. Neva felt her eyes misting up, and reached for a Kleenex. You’d think that with all the years of experience in the funeral business, she would have become immune to feeling bereft, but she hadn’t. Some passings were easier than others, of course, but as their ad stated, she cared deeply about all her customers, the living and the deceased.
Macky Goes to See Elner
11:15 AM
When they went through the double doors, the doctor turned Macky over to a young nurse to take him the rest of the way. As Macky walked through the hospital hall down to the room where they had Aunt Elner, he felt as if someone had kicked him in the stomach. Although he had tried to keep it together for Norma, when he had first heard the news from the doctor, he had been devastated. For the past forty years, rain or shine, he had gone over and had coffee with her before he went to work. And even when they had moved to Florida, she had come with them. The truth was, she was his best friend and had helped him through many a crisis, some things that Norma knew nothing about and, hopefully, would never know about.
One thing in particular had only been between the two of them. He had not meant for it to happen. Lois Tatum, a nice-looking girl with brown hair that she wore in a ponytail, had been a waitress at the Tip-Top café downtown, across the street from the hardware store. At the time, Linda had just gotten married, and Norma had been suffering terribly from empty nest syndrome. She had volunteered for a hundred different projects just to keep herself from, as she put it, “going stark raving mad.” Norma had thrown herself into community service and had kept herself so busy with one committee meeting after another that he hardly ever saw her. So when Lois had always seemed happy to see him come in at lunchtime, and had always laughed at his jokes, Macky had been secretly flattered.
She was about fifteen years younger than he was, divorced with a little girl, and when she needed something fixed in the small duplex she rented, he had been happy to do it. He had helped out a lot of people in town; as far as he had been concerned they were just good friends. Then one afternoon she had come over to the hardware store and tearfully confessed, “Macky, I’m so in love with you, I don’t know what to do.” He had been caught completely off guard. In all the years he had been married he had never looked at another woman, never even entertained the idea. Maybe it had been the timing. After Linda had left home, although he had not talked about it, he too had felt lost, and with Norma being so busy, maybe he had been vulnerable. He didn’t know the reason, but after Lois left, and he thought about it, he realized that he was attracted to her as well. Not that he ever did anything other than think about it. But he did think about it night and day until it had become an obsession, and the more he thought about it, the fantasy of being young again, running away somewhere with Lois, starting all over, began to appeal to him, until he could not get the idea out of his mind.
He didn’t know if he was really in love with Lois, or just flattered, or whether he should take a chance or not. Elner had noticed that something was wrong and had asked. Elner had always been a good sounding board, and had talked him through a lot of problems before, but this was different. Norma was her niece, and he felt very conflicted about discussing something like this with her, but Aunt Elner knew him like a book, and there was no way he could hide it from her, and so finally he broke down and told her what was bothering him, admitted that he had been seriously considering asking Norma for a divorce. After he finished telling her everything, she had thought for a moment and then said, “Macky, this is very hard for me, you know I love both you and Norma like my own children and it would break my heart, but I want you both to be happy. I can’t tell you what to do, honey, all I can do is hope before you make any decisions, that you will really take the time to think on down the line, because once you leave, if for some reason it shouldn’t work out with this girl, you can never go back to what you had before. I’m not saying Norma wouldn’t take you back, she might, but once you’ve done something like this, you chip away a good part of the trust, and when that’s gone, you can never get it back.”
She had not said not to go, or asked him to stay, but Macky went home that night, and had thought about it some more. Something she had said made him realize that as much as he was tempted, as much as he wondered what it would be like to start over, he was not willing to throw away all the years he and Norma had had together, upset Linda, and maybe risk ruining all of their lives. Lois’s as well. When he told Elner of his decision, she had smiled and said, “I’m awful glad, Macky, I don’t know what I would do without my buddy coming to see me every day,” and they had never spoken of it again.
Norma had not known it at the time, but that was the reason he had sold the hardware store and had moved them all to Florida, to get away from Lois, not that he had stopped thinking about her, he hadn’t. Even after she married someone else and had moved to another state, he still wondered about her, had a sad deep pain when he remembered her face, or a woman passed by wearing the same perfume, but as the song says, “Time Heals Everything.” And time and distance had faded her memory to a point that when he did think of her, the old longings were not as painful and he hardly ever thought of her anymore.
Aunt Elner had not only saved his marriage, strangely enough, she had also been the one responsible for him and Norma getting married in the first place. They had only been eighteen and terribly in love, but Norma’s mother, Ida, a holy terror, had declared that if Norma married Macky, it would have to be over her dead body. She had much higher aspirations for her only daughter than to marry a mere hardware store owner’s son. Norma had been a week away from being sent off to college, when after a phone call from her older sister Elner, Ida had suddenly relented and consented to their marriage. They never did find out what Elner had said to Ida to get her to change her mind, but whatever it was, he couldn’t begin to imagine what his life would have been without Norma or Linda and now his granddaughter, Apple. He also knew how hard life was going to be without Aunt Elner. He already missed her and knew his world was never going to be quite the same without her.
The young nurse the doctor had turned him over to led him down to the room at the end of the hall and quietly opened the door. When she turned on the light, he looked over and saw Aunt Elner lying there, still wearing the old brown robe Norma hated so. He walked over, sat in the chair beside her, and reached over and took her hand. Someone had smoothed her white hair back off her face, and she looked so peaceful, as if she had just fallen asleep.
The nurse said softly, “Stay as long as you like, Mr. Warren, I’ll be right down the hall if you need me.”
After she left, and he heard the door close, he put his head down on the side of the bed, still holding her hand, and sobbed like a baby. He looked over at her and wondered where she had gone. Where had that sweet woman gone?
Where She Had Gone
As soon as her sister Ida threw open the doors at the end of the hall, what Elner saw was so stunning, so dazzling, it almost took her breath away. Standing before her was a set of sparkling crystal stairs leading straight up into the sky, all the way up to the big round moon at the very top.
Elner turned to Ida with
tears in her eyes. “Oh, Ida, it’s prettier than I could have ever imagined.”
“I thought you’d be impressed,” said Ida.
It wasn’t until after they had started their journey up the stairs that Elner noticed Ida was carrying a purse. She thought, “Only Ida would bring her purse with her to heaven,” and she laughed out loud.
Ida asked, “What’s so funny?”
Elner said, “Nothing, I was just thinking about something, that’s all.”
Norma had been the one who had put Ida’s purse into the coffin with her, because she said her mother had said a woman was never fully dressed without her purse. She started to tell Ida that it had been Norma’s idea but changed her mind; any mention of the coffin and Ida might bring up Tot Whooten again.
After they had been climbing up the stairs for a while, the sky suddenly began to grow a darker and darker, almost midnight blue; soon hundreds of tiny little stars started appearing and began twinkling all around them everywhere, above their heads, even under the stairs. It couldn’t have pleased Elner more. She had always wondered what it would be like to walk around in the sky among the stars, and now she knew. A lot of fun.
As they went farther up the stairs, the big moon at the top seemed to grow larger and started turning a creamy yellow and gold color, and began glowing in the dark like a billion lightning bugs. It was a long climb but Elner was surprised at how easy it was, and remarked to Ida, “You’d think climbing all these stairs would wear me out, but I don’t feel one bit winded.” As they got closer to the moon it changed colors again and started turning from gold into a bright glossy white, and then just when they reached the top step, suddenly right before their eyes, the moon turned into a big, round shiny mother-of-pearl button.
“Ohh, interesting,” said Elner. At that moment, as they stepped on the last step, an archway in the middle of the button opened up. When Ida and Elner stepped inside, the sun was bright and shining, and it was daytime again. Elner stood there for a moment and looked at what she figured must be heaven. It was not all white clouds and angels flying around as she had expected, but lovely. As a matter of fact, Elner thought it looked a lot like the big botanic garden in Kansas City, where Ida had taken her many times. The grass was deep green and lush, with highly colored flowers blooming everywhere.
Ida said, “Well?”
“Very nice,” she said, and when she looked up she noticed that the sky was not one solid color, like it was at home. Here it was more iridescent. She held out her hand and the colors of the sky sparkled on her skin in pinks and blues and soft greens.
“This is just like walking inside a rainbow, isn’t it, Ida? Hey, remember when that woman wrote in to the Neighbor Dorothy radio show and said how she and her family stood in a rainbow…Now I know just how she felt.”
As they walked along, Elner thought of something else. “Hey, Ida, now am I going to get to know all of life’s mysteries? Don’t they say that when you are dead, that all will be revealed?”
“I really can’t say, Elner, I’m just an escort. The rest you will have to find out on a need-to-know basis.”
“I sure hope I find out life’s mysteries. I’ve been just itching to know what they are. Can’t you give me a little hint?”
“I’m sorry,” said Ida, “but no.”
“Well, if you can’t tell me any mysteries or revelations, you can at least tell me what God looks like, can’t you?”
Ida said nothing and kept walking.
Elner scurried to keep up with her. “Let me ask you this then—does he look like his picture? I’m not going to be scared, am I?”
Ida said nothing again but did shake her head no, to let Elner know she had nothing to be afraid of.
“Well, to tell you the truth, Ida, I’m a little worried. I’ve done a couple of things he might not be too happy about. One thing for sure, I should never have given little Luther Griggs that Ex-Lax and told him it was chocolate candy. I must have been out of my mind at the time. Can you plead temporary insanity? What do you think?”
“I think you are in for the surprise of your life.”
“Ahhh,” she said. “Am I going to be surprised a little, or a lot? Will it be a good surprise or a bad surprise?”
“All I can say, Elner, and then I will say no more, is I suspect that you are going to be very pleasantly surprised.”
Elner was somewhat relieved. “Well, good,” she said, and thought, “If he doesn’t bring anything up, I’m certainly not going to say anything.” But after they had walked a few more feet, she had still another inquiry.
“Can I ask him questions or am I just supposed to stand at attention and listen?”
No answer.
“Should I curtsy, kneel down, or what?” Elner wanted to do the right thing, but Ida was still not forthcoming and no help whatsoever.
“Well, at least tell me one thing. Do you think he’s going to be mad at me?”
Ida, true to her word, would say no more, and it irritated Elner no end. “She knows,” she thought, “she’s just not telling me. Typical.”
As they strolled along the path, Elner suddenly thought of something. “Hey, Ida, whatever happened to the Knott family Bible? The last time I saw it, Gerta had it, but then after you died nobody could find it.”
“I buried it.”
“Where?”
“I don’t remember.”
“Why did you bury it?”
“I thought it was for the best.”
“Why?”
“Because, Elner, there is personal family information in there that doesn’t need to get out in public, that’s why. You don’t want just anybody knowing your business, do you? And why do you care?”
“Because I would like to know how old I am, or was. I must be close to ninety right now, don’t you think?”
“Oh, Elner,” she scoffed. “I don’t pay any attention to those things, and what difference does age make anyway. You’re as old as you feel, I always said.”
Elner knew Ida was holding back information. Ida knew exactly where she had buried that Bible and how old they both were. “Plus,” thought Elner, “Ida was no more fifty-nine when she died than the man in the moon, and any person who would still lie about her age even after she’s dead is pretty vain, if you ask me.”
As they continued on, Ida thought back on the day their other sister, Gerta, had died. It had been a cold gray freezing day and she was wearing a big fur coat and had been able to stick the rather large Bible under her arm and get out the door with it. She knew, of course, she could not burn a Holy Bible, or throw it in the river or rip out the offending pages or anything blasphemous like that, so she hid it until spring, then wrapped it in cotton, put it in a large airtight Tupperware container, and buried it in her rose garden. She had no regrets or guilt about it. She had always lied about her age, and she saw no reason to stop now. Besides, shaving a few years off here and there was not really lying, it was a matter of survival.
Had the Jenkins family known that the girl their son Herbert wanted to marry was at least eight years older than he, they might have frowned upon the marriage. She had barely managed to snag a good husband as it was. Herbert’s father had owned several banks around the state and was quite prominent. Herbert had not been much, but he had been her last chance to move up in the world, and she had made the most out of it. In fact, she had squeezed every last drop out of every advantage that she had, being the wife of the president of a bank. Even though it was only a small branch bank in the small town of Elmwood Springs, she had been as puffed up as a powder pigeon over it. However, keeping up appearances, plus hiding her true age, had been exhausting. She had almost been caught once, when some mean jealous person had shown Herbert her high school annual. She had lied, of course, and said it was not her: it was another Ida Mae Shimfissle, a distant cousin that had moved away years ago. And Herbert, a trusting man, had believed it.
And then after all that, Norma had married the Warren boy, who had no prom
ising future at all, except to work in his father’s hardware store. It had broken her heart. Even when Norma told her how happy she was with Macky, she never understood her own daughter. “Happy? Cows are happy, Norma, and look what happens to them.”
Verbena Tells Cathy
Verbena must have called the newspaper office a hundred times, but the line continued to be busy. By this time she was so frustrated not being able to reach Cathy and tell her the news, she was red in the face. She could not stand it a moment longer, so she put the BE BACK IN FIVE MINUTES sign on the door of the cleaners and walked across the street. When she opened the door to the Elmwood Springs Courier office, she heard Cathy still talking to someone on the phone. She went into the back office and Cathy looked up, put her hand over the receiver, and said, “I’ll be off in just a minute,” and gestured for Verbena to have a seat. She was just finishing up her weekly interview with the school board president, gathering the latest updates concerning the ongoing fight about whether or not to include the theory of Intelligent Design along with Darwin’s theory of evolution. When she saw Verbena, Cathy figured she was here to talk about that and knew she was in for an hour of Verbena arguing to include creationism. But Verbena surprised her when she reached across her desk and wrote on a piece of paper in big black letters “Elner’s dead!” and put it in front of Cathy and banged on it with her finger. Cathy glanced down and said, “What? Are you serious?” Verbena nodded. “Pete,” Cathy said, “Elner Shimfissle just died, let me call you back,” and hung up. “What happened?”