by Mitch Albom
“Sit down, please. It’s all right, Mrs. Pulte.”
She remained standing but spoke rapidly, the words spilling out. “All these calls from around the world—I can’t handle it anymore. They ask me things—I tell them I don’t know, but they keep going, some of them crying, some of them yelling, and I . . . I don’t know what to do. Some tell me about a loved one, they beg to speak with them again. And others are so angry! They say we’re spreading false gospel. In all my years, I never thought . . . Well. I go home every night and just collapse, Pastor. My blood pressure, the doctor checked it last week, it’s very high, and Norman is concerned. I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I don’t want to let you down. I just can’t . . .”
She cried so hard she could no longer speak. Warren offered a sympathetic smile.
“I understand, Mrs. Pulte.”
He went to her and put a hand on her shoulder. Outside the office he could hear the never-ending ringing of the phones.
“Will God forgive me?” she whispered.
Long before He forgives me, Warren thought.
Jack Sellers spun the flashing light atop the police cruiser and gave the siren a short blast. The worshippers on Tess’s lawn stirred and shifted. He stepped out of the car.
“Morning,” he said, stiffly.
“Morning,” a few of them responded.
“What are you all doing here?”
He kept eyeing the door. What he really wanted was the same thing they wanted—for Tess to come out.
“We’re praying,” a skinny woman answered.
“For what?”
“To hear from heaven. Do you want to pray with us?”
Jack pushed Robbie from his mind. “You can’t just congregate on someone’s lawn.”
“Are you a believer, officer?”
“What I believe isn’t important.”
“What you believe is most important.”
Jack kicked his shoe into the ground. First, those protesters at Katherine Yellin’s house. Now this. Of all the things he never expected to handle in tiny Coldwater. Crowd control.
“You’re gonna have to go,” he said.
A young man in a green parka stepped forward.
“Please. We’re not causing any trouble.”
“We only want to pray,” added a girl kneeling on the lawn.
“Wait, I’ve read about you,” the young man said. “The policeman. Your wife—she’s heard from your son. She’s a chosen one. How can you tell us to leave?”
Jack looked away.
“My ex-wife. And that’s none of your business.”
Tess appeared in the doorway, a red tartan blanket around her shoulders, frayed jeans and blue boots, her hair pulled back in a long ponytail. Jack tried not to stare.
“Do you need help?” he yelled.
Tess looked over the worshippers.
“No, I’m fine,” she yelled back.
Jack motioned with his hands, Is it OK if I come in? She nodded, and he eased through the crowd, which fell silent as he passed, something he was used to whenever he wore the uniform.
Jack looked like a cop—flat line of a mouth, strong chin, probing, deep-set eyes—but he had never been crazy about police work. His father was on the force, and his father’s father before him. After the army, Jack was expected to follow suit. He started in Grand Rapids. Did six years of patrol work. Then Robbie was born, and he and Doreen moved to Coldwater. A small-town life. That’s what they wanted. He put away his badge and opened a lawn and garden supply store.
“It’s better to work for yourself,” he told his father.
“A cop’s a cop, Jack,” his father said.
Three years later, the store went under. With no other skills, Jack returned to his bloodline. He joined the Coldwater police.
By his thirty-seventh birthday, he was the chief.
In the eight years since, he’d never had to fire his gun. He’d only pulled it six times; one of those turned out to be a fox (not a burglar) rooting around in a woman’s cellar.
“You didn’t speak up at the meeting,” Tess said, handing him a cup of coffee.
“No.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know. Fear? My job?”
She pursed her lips. “At least you’re honest.”
“My son says I should tell everyone. About heaven. When he calls.”
“My mother does too.”
“Am I letting him down?”
Tess shrugged. “I don’t know. At times I feel like nothing matters anymore. I think, this life is just a waiting room. My mother is up there—and I’ll see her again.
“But then I realize I always believed that. Or I said I did.”
Jack slid his cup back and forth on the counter. “Maybe you just wanted proof.”
“Is that what I have now?”
Jack thought about his discussions with Robbie’s army buddies. The end is not the end. Something bothered him about that.
“I don’t know what we have.”
Tess looked at him.
“Were you a good father?”
No one had ever asked him that. He thought about the time he encouraged Robbie to enlist. The trouble with Doreen.
“Not always.”
“Honest again.”
“Were you a good daughter?”
She smiled. “Not always.”
The truth was, Tess and Ruth also had their stormy years. When she went off to college, Tess’s beauty was quickly noticed. A string of boyfriends followed. Ruth never approved. The spirit of an absent father haunted their conversations.
“What would you know about keeping a man?” Tess once screamed.
“These aren’t men, they’re boys!”
“Stay out of it!”
“I’m trying to protect you!”
“I don’t need your protection!”
And on and on. After graduation, Tess lived with three different men. She stayed away from Coldwater. One day, when she was twenty-nine, she got a strange call from Ruth, who was looking for a phone number. A woman named Anna Kahn.
“What do you need Anna’s number for?”
“We have her wedding this weekend.”
“Mom, she got married when I was, like, fifteen.”
“What are you talking about?”
“She lives in New Jersey.”
A confused pause. “I don’t understand.”
“Mom? Are you all right?”
It was diagnosed as early-onset Alzheimer’s. It advanced rapidly. The doctors warned that Ruth should not be left alone, that women in her condition could sometimes wander off, cross busy streets, forget basic safety. They recommended home health aides, or assisted living. But Tess knew the one thing her mother cherished most was the one thing this affliction would inevitably take away—her independence.
So Tess came home. And they were independent together.
Sully and his mother had a different sort of relationship. She asked. He answered. She deduced. He denied.
“What are you doing?” she’d inquired the night before. Jules was eating and Sully was on the couch, studying his notes.
“Just checking some stuff.”
“For work?”
“Sort of.”
“Sales calls?”
“Kind of.”
“Why does this matter to you?”
He looked up. She was standing over him, her arms crossed.
“If people want to talk to ghosts, let them.”
“How do you know I’m—”
“Sully.”
One word was all it took.
“OK,” he said, his voice lowered. “I don’t like it. Jules carries a phone. He lives in a fantasy. Someone has to expose this.”
“So you’re a detective?”
“No.”
“You’ve got notes.”
“No.”
Deduce. Deny.
“You think they’re all lying?”
“I don’t know.”
; “You don’t think God works miracles?”
“Are you done?”
“Almost.”
“What else?”
She looked at Jules, who was watching TV. Her voice lowered.
“Are you doing this for him or for you?”
He thought about that now as he sipped his coffee and slouched inside the Buick, which was parked down the street from Davidson & Sons. Maybe some of this was for him, to make him feel like he was doing something with his life; maybe some of it was to make the rest of the world feel the pain that he was feeling, that dead is dead, that Giselle was never making contact again and neither were their mothers or sisters or sons.
He shifted in his seat. He had been here over an hour, waiting, watching. Finally, just after noon, he saw Horace come out, wearing a long overcoat. He got in his car and drove away. Sully hoped he was going for lunch. He needed to check on something.
He hurried to the door and let himself in.
Inside, as always, was quiet and warm. Sully went to the main office. No one there. He walked down the hall, poking his head into different rooms. Soft music played. Still nobody. He came around a corner and heard the tapping of computer keys. Inside a narrow, carpeted office sat a small woman, cherub-cheeked, with an upturned nose and a pageboy haircut, doughy arms, and a silver cross around her neck.
“I’m looking for Horace,” Sully said.
“Ooh, I’m so sorry, he just left for lunch.”
“I can wait.”
“You sure? He might be an hour or so.”
“That’s OK.”
“Would you like some coffee?”
“Coffee would be nice. Thank you.” He held out his hand. “My name’s Sully.”
“I’m Maria,” she said.
I know, he thought.
Maria Nicolini was indeed, as Horace had claimed, a people person. She chatted. And chatted. Any one of your sentences elicited three from her. She was endlessly interested, and on your mentioning a particular event or destination, she would lift her gaze and say, “Ooh, tell me about that.” It didn’t hurt that she was in the Rotary Club and on the Coldwater Historical Commission and that she worked weekends at Zeda’s bakery, from which half the town bought its bread. Maria either knew you or knew someone who did.
Thus, when grieving families met with her at the funeral home, they were not reluctant to talk about their departed loved ones—in fact, they were happy to share memories. It made them feel better. Small stories. Funny details. They trusted Maria to write the obituary. Her Gazette pieces were always long and complimentary.
“Account sales, tell me about that,” she asked Sully.
“It’s pretty simple. You go to businesses, ask if they want to advertise, sell them the space.”
“Is Ron Jennings a good boss?”
“He’s fine. By the way, your obituaries are really well done. I read a few.”
“Goodness, thank you.” She seemed touched. “I used to want to be a real writer—when I was younger. But this is a good way to help others. The families keep them, so it’s important to be accurate and thorough. I’m up to one hundred and forty-nine, you know.”
“One hundred and forty-nine obituaries?”
“Yes. I have them all here.”
She pulled open a file drawer, which fairly glowed with organization. Each obituary was arranged by year and by name. There were additional files marked by plastic tabs, the tabs lined up perfectly with the files behind them.
“What are all those?” Sully asked.
“My notes. I transcribe our conversations, just so that I don’t miss anything.” She lowered her voice. “Sometimes when people talk to me, they’re crying so badly, it’s hard to understand them the first time. So I use a little tape recorder.”
Sully was impressed. “You’re more thorough than any big-city reporter I ever met.”
“You know real reporters?” she asked. “Ooh, tell me about that.”
The first time Sully ever made a newspaper was for the worst thing that ever happened to him.
PILOT CRASHES PLANE AFTER MIDAIR COLLISION, read the top headline. And underneath, in smaller letters: WIFE AND CONTROLLER IN FATAL ACCIDENT.
Sully saw the paper in the cafeteria of the Ohio hospital where Giselle lay in a bed, hooked to tubes and intravenous drips, bruised to purplish, orangish colors that didn’t look human. He had been there two sleepless days already. Everything was a blur.
The nurse in Lynton, where he’d been brought after the crash, had told him the news. He remembered hearing accident and wife and Columbus, and then he was in a cab, screaming at the driver to go faster, his brain wafting in and out of focus, and then somehow he was running crooked through an emergency room, yelling at doctors, Where is she? Where is she? and then breaking down at her bedside when he saw her—Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God—feeling arms on him, medical staff, then security, then his in-laws, then his own hands, holding himself as his body shook.
Two days. Two nights. His back was in awful pain, he couldn’t sleep, he was dizzy and disheveled. Just to make his body move, he’d gone to get a coffee from the first-floor cafeteria. There, on a side table, was a discarded newspaper. He glanced at it once, then glanced again. He recognized his younger face in an old navy photo. Alongside it were photos of the damaged Cessna, which had landed safely, and Sully’s wrecked F/A-18, scraps of the fuselage scattered across a field, a tip of the wing, a burned-out engine. He stared as if studying a painting. He wondered how newspapers decided headlines. Why was PILOT CRASHES PLANE above WIFE AND CONTROLLER IN FATAL ACCIDENT? To him, “wife” was infinitely more important. Giselle, poor, innocent, beautiful Giselle, who did nothing wrong but drive to get her husband—her husband, who did nothing wrong but listen to an air traffic controller, an air traffic controller who made a grievous mistake and was too gutless to face it and who ran like a coward, killing himself and nearly killing the best person Sully would ever know. That was the headline. They had it all wrong.
He crumpled up the newspaper. He threw it in the trash. There are two stories for every life; the one you live, and the one others tell.
A week before Thanksgiving, there was not a hotel room available within ten miles of Coldwater. The gathering of pilgrims at Lankers Field was now estimated at five thousand people, and the protesters outside Katherine Yellin’s house were at least three hundred strong—half in support, half against. Jack’s Coldwater police force, totally overwhelmed, had borrowed officers from Moss Hill and other neighboring towns, but it still wasn’t enough. They could spend all day just writing parking tickets. The Coldwater Market had delivery trucks several times a day now, as opposed to once a week. The gas station had to close periodically when it ran out of fuel. Frieda’s hired extra staff and became the first twenty-four-hour business in Coldwater’s history. The local hardware store ran low on plywood and paint, in part due to people making signs that sprang up on lawns everywhere: PARKING $5, then PARKING $10, then PARKING $20.
There seemed to be no end to the hysteria. Everyone in town carried a phone, sometimes two or three. Jeff Jacoby, the mayor, received dozens of license requests for new businesses, from T-shirt companies to religious merchandisers, all willing to quickly move into the boarded-up shops on Lake Street.
Meanwhile, a national daytime talk show, the most popular in the country, was sending a crew from Los Angeles—including the famous host!—to do a special broadcast. Many residents complained about the intrusion, but Jeff had no shortage of locations quietly asking to be a part of the program.
The seven phone call recipients had become familiar names to everyone in town—as had their story lines. In addition to Katherine, Tess, and Doreen, there were Eddie Doukens and his deceased ex-wife, Jay James and his former business partner, Anesh Barua and his departed daughter, and Kelly Podesto and her teenage best friend, killed last year by a drunk driver.
All but Katherine had agreed to participate in the talk show.
She was pla
nning something of her own.
Two Days Later
NEWS REPORT
Channel 9, Alpena
(Close-up of Katherine.)
KATHERINE: I didn’t kill anyone. I would never kill anyone. I spread the words given to me from heaven.
(Amy in front of protesters.)
AMY: It’s a message Katherine Yellin wants these protesters to understand. What happened with Ben Wilkes, the terminally ill former autoworker, was what he wanted.
(Footage of Ben at hospital.)
BEN: I so want to believe it’s true.
(Amy in front of protesters.)
AMY: Ben Wilkes died of a terminal cancer. Yet these angry protesters claim Katherine Yellin was in some way responsible. The burden of being a so-called chosen one has been difficult for Yellin, as she shared in an exclusive conversation with Nine Action News.
(Close-up of Katherine, crying.)
KATHERINE: I didn’t ask for this blessing. God sent my sister back for a reason.
AMY: What’s been the hardest part?
KATHERINE: That people don’t believe me.
AMY: Like the people protesting out there?
KATHERINE: Yes, exactly. They scream all day. They say horrible things. Some of their signs . . .
(She breaks down.)
AMY: It’s all right.
KATHERINE: I’m sorry.
AMY: It’s all right.
KATHERINE: You see, they’re the ones missing out. They’re the ones not hearing God’s message—that heaven is real, and that none of us should be afraid anymore.
(Footage of protesters.)
PROTESTERS: HERE NOW, NOT HEREAFTER!
(Amy in front of house.)
AMY: Katherine Yellin said she is so certain of the messages, she is willing to do something no one else has.
(Close-up of Katherine.)
KATHERINE: I will share a call with everyone out there.
AMY: With these protesters?
KATHERINE: With anyone. I am not afraid. I will ask my sister to speak to these people, to tell them the truth. When they hear her words, they’ll know.
(Amy on the street.)
AMY: The details of this shocking new development are still to come, but soon the whole town may get a chance to hear what heaven sounds like. We at Nine Action News will keep you posted—first and always.