by Mitch Albom
“What were you doing in that mess?” Doreen asked.
“I was trying to break it up. There was a kid, he reminded me of . . .”
“What?”
“Doesn’t matter.”
“Robbie?”
“Doesn’t matter. I was trying to help him. It was dumb. But I’m fine. My pride is hurt more than my head.”
Doreen noticed a framed photo on his desk—the three of them, Robbie, Jack, and Doreen, wearing orange vests on a jet-boat trip when Robbie was a teenager.
“I took the phones out, Jack.”
“What?”
“Of the house. I got rid of them. I can’t do it anymore.”
“You stopped talking to him?”
She nodded.
“I don’t get it.”
She exhaled deeply.
“It wasn’t making me happy. To be honest, it just made me miss him more.”
She looked again at the photo. Despite the tears forming, she gasped a laugh.
“What is it?” Jack said.
“That picture. Look at what we’re wearing.”
“What are we wearing?”
“Life preservers.”
Unbeknownst to Doreen, Jack had spoken to Robbie the previous Friday.
“Dad , are you OK?”
Jack assumed he meant the injury. He told Robbie about the protests.
“I know, Dad. . . . You were awesome.”
“People don’t know what to do with this, Robbie.”
“It’s cool. Everything’s cool.”
Jack winced. It was how Robbie had spoken in life, but Jack somehow expected a different vocabulary now.
“Robbie—”
“When people don’t believe in something, they’re lost.”
“Yeah. I guess.”
A pause. “Everything’s cool.”
“Listen, son, what do you mean when you say, ‘The end is not the end’?”
Another pause. Longer than usual.
“The end is not the end.”
“Are you saying that about life? Because your friends came by—Zeke and Henry. They said something about a band. Is it a song by a band?”
“I love you, Dad.”
“I love you, too.”
“Dad?”
“Robbie?”
“Doubt . . . is how you find him.”
“What do you mean?”
But the connection was gone.
Jack had been troubled by that exchange all weekend. He thought about it now with Doreen sitting across from him, explaining why she no longer wanted conversations with their dead son. She wiped her eyes with a tissue.
“I just thought I should tell you,” she said. “Because I don’t mean to take away something you want.”
Jack studied her face, wrinkled now around the eyes and dotted with a few age spots. So many years had passed since they’d met and married and settled in Coldwater. He almost couldn’t remember the feeling between them anymore. When love dries in a marriage, the children become mortar for the bricks. When the children leave, the bricks just sit atop each other.
When the children die, the bricks tumble.
“It’s all right,” Jack said. “He was calling you, not me.”
Sully marked his yellow pad with the heading DETAILS? He reviewed the names on his list: Tess Rafferty, Katherine Yellin, Doreen (Sellers) Franklin, Anesh Barua, Eddie Doukens, Jay James, Elias Rowe. He had drawn a red line through Kelly Podesto.
He tapped his pen rhythmically.
“How’s it going, CSI?”
Liz was looking over from her desk, where Jules sat on a stool, coloring a cartoon elephant.
“Ahhhh.” Sully exhaled, leaning back. “I’m trying to figure it out.”
“Figure what out?”
“How someone could get so many details on these people.”
“The dead people?”
Jules looked up.
“Discretion, please?” Sully said.
“Sorry.”
“I know what dead means,” Jules announced. “It’s what happened to my mommy.”
He put down a blue crayon and picked up a red.
“Listen, Jules—” Liz said.
“Mommy can still talk. She’s gonna call me.”
Liz sighed and walked to Sully, who felt a wince as he watched her awkward leg and hip movements. He wondered if there would ever be a cure for her. She was young enough. They could discover something.
“I am sorry,” she said, sitting down next to him.
“Don’t sweat it.”
“The details you want. What about the obituaries?”
“What about them?”
“Whoever wrote the obituaries must know a lot about the subjects, right?”
“Way ahead of you. There’s a woman—”
“Maria Nicolini.”
“You know her?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“She writes the obituaries. She has massive files.”
“Right. And?”
“And what?” Sully gave a mocking smile. “Maria? If that woman is behind these voices, I’ll eat my shoes.”
Liz shook her head. “No. Maria would never do anything to anybody. Except talk their ear off.”
“Like I said.”
“But if she has all those files, who else sees them?”
“Nobody. They stay with her.”
“You sure?”
“What are you getting at?”
Liz glanced at Jules, lost in his coloring.
“All I know is when I was in college, I took a couple of journalism courses. They said you always needed backup records if you ran a story, in case you ever got questioned. ‘Save all your notes and research,’ they said.”
“Wait.” Sully glanced at her sharply. “The newspaper? You’re saying someone’s got these files and could be running this whole thing—from the newspaper?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Where you work.”
Had Jeff Jacoby known the mayor’s job would be so demanding, he’d never have run for it. He had only done so because authority came naturally to him; he had it as president of the bank, he had it as president of his trade association, he had it at the country club over in Pinion Lake, where he was the senior board member. Why not here in Coldwater? Heck, how hard could it be, being mayor? The job didn’t even pay anything.
Who knew his term would coincide with the biggest news story to ever hit the county? But now that Coldwater had been given an international spotlight, Jeff was not about to lose it—not because little Kelly Podesto couldn’t resist drawing attention to herself.
We could use some proof. That’s what Lance, the TV producer, had said. And so, on Wednesday afternoon, Jeff organized a lunch meeting at Frieda’s, inviting Lance, Clint, the police chief Jack Sellers (what Jeff had in mind would require security), and—the key to it all—Katherine Yellin, who, when Jeff asked her to attend, said she had to check with “her friend,” the TV reporter Amy Penn, who said she had to check with her boss, the news director Phil Boyd, who said he had to check with his superiors at the network, which, Jeff happily discovered, was the same network that aired the national TV show that had brought Lance and Clint to Coldwater in the first place.
Jeff was quickly learning that the media had two sides; the side that wanted to get the news, and the side that wanted to make sure nobody else got it.
He could play to those desires. He was known in the banking community as the Rainmaker. By getting Katherine, Jack, Amy, Phil, Lance, and Clint all at one table, he was proving it. He noticed they all had their cell phones out. He glanced at Katherine’s pink flip model. The one that started it all.
“So,” he began, once Frieda had brought everyone ice water, “thanks to everyone for getting together today—”
“Can I ask something?” Katherine interrupted. “Why do we have to meet here? It’s so crowded.”
Frieda’s was indeed packed, and despite sitting in the back, the group was the ob
ject of constant attention. Customers stared. Reporters snapped photos. Which was just what Jeff wanted.
“I just thought we’d patronize a local business.”
“Frieda’s doing OK without us,” Jack snapped.
Jeff glanced at the police chief, whose left temple was bandaged. “Fair enough, Jack,” he said. “But we’re here, so, let’s talk about why we’re here, OK?”
At which point his plan was revealed.
One. Katherine had been planning to share a phone call with the world.
Two. The TV show needed to make sure this phenomenon was real.
Three. The other “chosen ones” were concerned that Kelly’s lie would reflect badly on them.
Four. Channel 9 had been keeping Katherine “exclusive.”
Five. Christmas was coming.
Jeff had plotted all these points together and had come up with what he called “a win-win idea.” If Katherine could receive her call in front of the town and share the voice of her deceased sister with everyone, while being filmed for the national TV show, it would remove all doubt as to the true nature of the Coldwater miracles. The others would be vindicated. Kelly Podesto would be forgotten. It would be a great Christmas story. And since the TV show was on the same network as Nine Action News in Alpena (and here was where Jeff imagined himself a TV executive), wouldn’t it behoove Phil and Amy to join in? Don’t they call that cross-promotion?
“Could we keep it exclusive in our market?” Phil asked.
“Doesn’t bother us,” Lance said.
“Amy could do the buildup pieces?”
“Fine,” Clint said.
“Where would we do this?”
“How about the cider mill?” Jeff said.
“Outdoors?”
“Why not?”
“Weather issues.”
“How about the bank?”
“You want this in a bank?”
“There’s the churches.”
“Could work.”
“Which one?”
“St. Vincent’s?”
“Harvest of Hope?”
“What about the high school?”
“The gym is an option—”
“We did it before when—”
“STOP! STOP! YOU CAN’T DO THIS! IT’S WRONG!”
The scream brought Frieda’s to momentary silence. Lance and Clint glared. Jeff’s mouth fell open. One might have suspected Katherine, who was being asked to broadcast her dead sister’s voice to the world, or Jack, being told of a huge public event with his head still bandaged from the last one.
But in fact, the voice that bellowed “STOP!” belonged to the woman who, in some ways, had started the whole thing.
Amy Penn.
“What are you doing?” Phil growled, under his breath.
Amy stared as if in a trance.
She didn’t even realize the words had come from her mouth.
Elias Rowe watched the small waves hit the shore. He liked to stand at the edge of the Great Lakes. He could spend hours entranced by the water’s movement. A friend who lived in Miami joked, “A lake is not an ocean, no matter how long you stare at it.” But to Elias, who spent his childhood summers boating and swimming in these waters, a shoreline visit was like a pilgrimage.
It was Friday morning. He was on his way up north. He’d stopped for a few minutes to enjoy the solitude. He noticed icy patches near the water’s edge, winter slowly taking control.
He dug his hands into the pockets of his vest.
He felt his phone vibrating.
It was the phone he had reluctantly purchased at that store in Coldwater. He and Sully were five days into their “experiment.” He’d given no one the number. He looked at the display.
It read UNKNOWN.
Elias breathed out loudly, three straight times, like a man preparing to submerge for a dive.
Then he pressed a button and said, “Who is this?”
Three minutes later, his hands actually shaking, he dialed a number he had written on a folded piece of paper.
“You were right,” he whispered when Sully answered. “He just called me.”
“Who?”
“Nick.”
That night Pastor Warren stood before a packed sanctuary at Harvest of Hope. It was Bible study, an event that just a few months ago might have drawn seven people. Now there were at least five hundred.
“I’d like to talk tonight about manna,” he began. “Are you all familiar with what manna is?”
“Food from heaven,” someone yelled out.
“Food from God,” Pastor Warren corrected. “But yes, it came from the sky. Every morning. While the children of Israel were wandering in the desert.”
“Pastor?”
A man had his hand raised. Warren sighed. He felt a bit light-headed, and he’d hoped to get through this lesson quickly.
“Yes, young man?”
“Does the soul need nourishment in heaven?”
Warren blinked. “I . . . I don’t know.”
“I’ve spoken with Tess. She said her mother never mentions it.”
“Katherine never speaks about it either,” someone else said.
“I’m friends with Anesh Barua,” a middle-aged woman said, standing up. “I could ask him to ask his daughter.”
“How did she die?”
“Leukemia. She was twenty-eight.”
“When did you talk to him?”
“Everyone, please!” Warren yelled.
The congregation silenced. Warren was perspiring. His throat felt sore. Was he coming down with something? He had been letting his young deacon, Joshua, handle the Bible studies recently, but he’d felt compelled to make the effort tonight.
Earlier in the day he had heard about the mayor’s plan: a televised broadcast of Katherine Yellin speaking with her dead sister. The whole world would be watching.
Every fiber inside Warren told him this was wrong, even blasphemous, that something terrible might happen to all of them. He’d tried to make an appointment with Jeff Jacoby, but was told his schedule was too full. He’d tried to call Katherine, but she didn’t answer. Scripture reminded him to be humble, but a heat burned inside him; he felt as if he’d been slapped in the face. He’d been in this pulpit for fifty-four years. Did he not deserve the courtesy of being heard? What was happening to the people he knew? Katherine, who used to be his loyal congregant? Jeff, who used to welcome his input? Father Carroll? The other clergymen? They seemed to be leaving him behind, drawn to a light that Warren sensed was not godly in nature. He had even lost dear Mrs. Pulte to this madness, and volunteers had been making a mess of things in her absence. The tidy life he had known felt spilled and scattered. Even a simple Bible study was getting away from him. Focus. Lord, give me focus.
“Now then . . . manna,” he said. “If you will read with me . . .” He squinted through his glasses. He wiped sweat from his brow. “Here . . . Exodus, chapter sixteen, verse twenty-six . . .”
Concentrate.
“God is speaking through Moses. ‘Six days you are to gather it’—the manna—‘but on the seventh day, the Sabbath, there will not be any.’”
He looked up. “Do you know what happened?”
A small older woman raised her hand.
“They went out to get the manna anyway?”
“Precisely. In verse twenty-seven we read, ‘And it came to pass, that some of the people went out on the seventh day to gather, and they found none.’”
He wiped his brow with a handkerchief. “Now, here you had a people who were being given the most amazing thing. Food from the sky. It tasted good. It satisfied them. It was the perfect nutrition. Who knows? It may not have even been fattening.”
A few people chuckled. Warren felt woozy. His heart was racing ahead of his breath. Keep going. Keep going.
“But what happened? Some people still didn’t trust God’s word. They went out on the Sabbath—even though he told them not to. Remember, manna was a miracle. A real mir
acle!”
Breathe in and out, he told himself. Finish the lesson.
“Even with this gift from God, they wanted more.”
In. Out.
“And what did they get?”
“Nothing?” someone said.
“Even worse. God grew angry.”
He lifted his chin. The lights seemed particularly harsh.
“God grew angry! We cannot demand miracles. We cannot expect them! What is happening here in Coldwater, dear friends, it is wrong.”
The congregation mumbled.
“It is wrong!” he repeated.
The mumbling grew louder.
“Brother and sisters, do you know what the word manna means?”
People looked around.
“Does anyone know what it means?”
No answer. He exhaled.
“It means . . . ‘What is this?’”
He repeated the words. The room began to spin. His voice went flat as a dial tone.
“What is this?”
And he collapsed.
The Sixteenth Week
Alexander Graham Bell created the telephone, but Thomas Edison created “Hello.” Bell thought “Ahoy!” should serve as a standard greeting. But in 1878 Edison, his rival, suggested a little-used but phonetically clear word. Since Edison oversaw the first telephone exchanges, “Hello” quickly became the norm.
Edison also greatly improved the quality of the signal by introducing a compressed carbon disc to the transmitter.
Still, nothing Edison did with the telephone came close to inciting the original hysteria Bell inspired—until, perhaps, 1920, when Edison told a magazine that he was working on a “spirit phone,” a device that might let people one day speak to the dead.
“I believe that life, like matter, is indestructible,” he said. “If there are personalities in another existence . . . who wish to get in touch with us in this existence . . . this apparatus would at least give them a better opportunity.”