Devine Intervention

by Martha Brockenbrough

  “Heidi.”

  He took a step closer. She looked at the arrow and put a hand on her chest. It was gruesome, sticking out of his forehead like that. How could he stand it? How was it possible even to survive something like that? He opened his mouth to speak, and she knew with absolute certainty he was going to talk about what they’d seen back at the pond. She didn’t want to hear any of it.

  “Stop. Don’t say another word. I have to see my family. Maybe they can —”

  Jerome reached out and started to put a hand on her forearm but appeared to think better of it. He shoved his hands into his pockets and looked at his boots.

  “Heidi,” he said so quietly she could barely hear it. “Any second now, you’re gonna go to Heaven. You’ll get to hang out with the angels. You’ll love it.”

  She put her hands over her ears. “STOP! Don’t say that. It’s not true. I’m not —” But she couldn’t find the word in her mouth. If she’d been crazy before for hearing him, what was she now that she was seeing him?

  She fell to the snow and wrapped her arms around her head.

  “Come on, Heidi. I know how you’re feeling. Believe me. When I woke up in Gabe’s office —” He interrupted himself, shaking his head. “Look, I’m sorry, but we’ve gotta get going. It’s already past nine o’clock, which means I am late for group, and any second now, you’re going to get pulled into Heaven, and once the powers that be write your name in the registry, I’m going to get sent someplace else. My only chance to survive is if I sneak you in through the back so no one notices. You’ll be fine — I promise.”

  “Jerome.” Heidi’s voice was quiet, and she could only get out one word at a time. “Please.”

  A look passed across his face, and Heidi almost got up and went with him, he looked so desolate. Before she could speak, though, he shrugged and helped her stand. Then he turned and walked straight through the door as if there was nothing there at all.

  With one hand extended, Heidi took a step toward the door. Jiminy barked and she turned to him. She couldn’t leave him alone outside. He’d run into the street, get hit by a car. She froze for an awful moment, trapped between what she wanted to do and what she knew she had to do.

  Jerome stuck his head through the door. “You coming?”

  He caught sight of Jiminy. “Oh yeah,” he said, stepping outside again. “I’ll watch the mutt.”

  It felt strange to pass through a door, like a million soft fingers stroking her cheeks and shoulders. Heidi shuddered, but didn’t stop moving until she’d reached the family room, where her mother was reading a fitness magazine, her father was balancing his checkbook, and her brother, Rory, was playing his video game, as though this was any Saturday morning and not her last one.

  “Mom, Dad!” she said. “I’ve had an accident!” She couldn’t say the word dead. Even if it were true, maybe she could keep the reality of it at arm’s length and spend the rest of her existence near her family, as Jerome had with her.

  She tried saying their names again. “Mom? Dad?” Her voice wavered. If she let in the grief through any of the cracks, it would drown her all over again.

  Heidi’s mom adjusted her reading glasses and flipped a page in her magazine. “Rory, it’s cold in here. Did you leave your window open again?”

  “No,” Rory said, clicking buttons on his controller. “I don’t think so.”

  Her dad mumbled “carry the three” under his breath. He tucked a pen behind his ear and scratched his head. Why couldn’t they hear her?

  “MOM! DAD! I’VE HAD AN ACCIDENT. IT WAS BAD.”

  No reaction. She turned to her brother. The television screen carved a blue halo around his head, and the light shone through the tips of his hair. Even standing behind him, she could smell his cinnamon gum.

  “Die, bastard, die!” he said. He was playing some sort of war game.

  “Rory, your language,” Mom said.

  Heidi stepped in front of him and reached for his controller. Her hand went straight through. “Rory!”

  “Aw, crud,” he said. “My game crashed.”

  It was true. The image had frozen on the screen. An alien with a space helmet was caught in the moment of its death, its green exoskeleton split open, revealing a pomegranate splash of guts.

  “That sucks! I was about to get a bonus life.” He rebooted his game.

  “Rory,” her mom said. “Language!”

  Heidi understood why they couldn’t see her. But why couldn’t they hear her? She cursed and reflexively covered her mouth, expecting her mom to scold her as she had Rory. She would’ve welcomed it, or any kind of reaction, but she got nothing. She lowered herself onto the couch next to her mom, who shivered and reached for a quilt.

  The telephone rang.

  “Answer it, Rory,” Dad said.

  “Just a minute.” The video game blipped.

  “Rory,” Mom said.

  The phone rang again.

  “I can’t pause my game right here! I have to get it to the next level before I can save my status.”

  The phone rang a third time. Once more, and the call would go to voice mail.

  Heidi’s mother stood. She placed her magazine down on the couch, marking her spot with a coaster from the coffee table. She pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and strode to the telephone.

  On the fourth ring, she picked it up.

  “Hello?” she said. “Hello?” Then she placed it back in the cradle, sighed, and said, “Let’s see if they left a message.”

  “The phone isn’t your boss,” her father said. “You don’t have to listen to the messages right away.”

  “I know, but it might be important.” She dialed and put the receiver to her ear. “The caller ID says it’s the hospital. Do we know anyone sick?”

  Heidi moved next to her mother and whispered in her ear, taking care to pronounce each word clearly. “It’s me, Mom. It’s me. I had an accident at the pond.”

  Her mother’s lips tightened, and the knuckles on the hand that held the phone turned white.

  “Sweet!” Rory said. “Die! Die!” Digital explosions scuffed the air.

  “Turn it down, Rory. I can’t hear the message.” Her mom stuck a finger in her ear. “Oh my God.” She scratched down a telephone number on a notepad.

  “The hospital,” she said. “They want us to call right away. They said it’s an emergency.” She hung up. For a long moment, she seemed to move in slow motion. “Where’s Heidi?”

  Heidi had never seen her mother’s face look that way.

  “She’s not in her room?” Her father set his pen on the coffee table.

  “Heidi? Heidi?” Her mother ran down the hall, and Heidi followed on silent feet. “Heidi, are you in here?” She spun around once in the center of the room.

  “Yes,” Heidi said. “YES!” Her mother heard nothing. The Vincent Lionheart vampire figurine she’d bought for Megan stood on the shelf, next to an unobtrusive Moleskine notebook full of cityscapes. Heidi had picked up Vincent on a shopping trip with her mom the weekend before. If she could knock him on the floor, it might send a message of sorts. But her hands swiped through him with nothing more than a tingle.

  “She’s not here, Warren.” Heidi’s mom ran back into the family room.

  Heidi took one last look at her notebook, wishing she could put it someplace safe, hating the idea of people flipping through it and thinking she was pathetic for drawing so many of them. There was nothing she could do about it, so she turned to follow her mom back into the family room, where she was already dialing the hospital. It took her mom two tries to press the right numbers, but she finally lifted the receiver to her ear. It rang once, twice, three times.

  “Come on, come on, answer,” she said.

  Someone finally picked up. Heidi’s mother explained why she was calling. A voice buzzed in response. Her mother’s knees buckled as she reached for the wooden chair behind her, putting her arm straight through Heidi’s belly. For the first time since
her accident, Heidi felt warmth.

  “Warren,” her mother whispered, dropping backward into the chair.

  He took a step toward her, his face taut and gray. He didn’t say a word.

  “It’s Heidi,” she said. She held the phone to her heart. “They found her. In the pond.”

  “No.” He blanched and covered his mouth with his hand.

  Rory’s game blipped; another alien exploded in a cloud of crimson mist.

  “Turn it off, Rory,” Mom said, her voice barely more than a whisper.

  “I’m trying!” The television screen went blank. Rory dropped the controller and stood, wiping his palms on his jeans. “How did she fall in? You’re not supposed to walk on the pond.”

  “We have to be with her,” her mother said. “We have to be with her right now.”

  Heidi tried to grab the sleeve of her mom’s sweater, but her hand slipped through and her mother moved entirely out of reach. “I’m right here! I AM RIGHT HERE!”

  She yelled until her throat ached, but no one looked her way. She pleaded with them as they grabbed their coats and shoes, but they walked through her as if she didn’t exist. Rory opened the door and Jiminy bounded in, dripping muddy water. He bounced up to Heidi and ran circles around her ankles, but nobody cared about that or the mess.

  The door slammed. She burst through it and nearly tripped over Jerome, who sat on the porch, holding his head in his hands.

  “Jerome!” she cried. “They couldn’t hear me! Should I get in the car and follow them?”

  She didn’t want to go where they were going — the morgue, most likely. The thought of seeing her dead body again filled her with terror and revulsion. But she couldn’t bear the thought of never seeing her family again, and if she didn’t go with them and was taken away to Heaven like Jerome said …

  “What should I do? Jerome, tell me!”

  Car doors slammed and the engine started up. She reached for Jerome’s shoulder and he turned his face toward hers. She gasped. The arrow had started bleeding a bit, and his pupils were so dilated she couldn’t tell what color his eyes were. The skin below them had ripened into soft plums. Something terrible had happened.

  “Come with me,” he said. “Just … please.”

  “But I didn’t get to say good-bye to them.” She gestured toward the car, which was backing out of the driveway.

  “Heidi.”

  Inside, Jiminy barked like crazy, reminding Heidi she’d never see him again either. She felt as if she could fall apart right there, disintegrate on the welcome mat of her home. In front of her, her family was disappearing in a cloud of bitter exhaust, on their way to make arrangements for her body. Beside her was Jerome, who held her hand and was begging her to break into Heaven with him. In one direction was her body, in the other was her soul, and she felt trapped between the two.

  She took one more look at Jerome and had an epiphany. He was as real as she was. He wasn’t something she’d imagined, which meant she hadn’t been as crazy as she thought, or even crazy at all. Besides Jiminy, he was the only one who could see her, talk to her. Maybe he could finally show her who he really was and why he’d been inside her head her whole life.

  “Heidi,” he said one more time. “Please.”

  “Okay,” she said. And she meant it.

  He stood and took hold of both of her hands. The color had started to return to his face. He looked into her eyes and said, “Let’s hope this works.”

  She opened her mouth to say, “Let’s hope what works?” but before she got a single word out, the world melted into light and streaks of color, and the only thing that remained solid was the connection between their pairs of hands. Heidi thought she might very well throw up.

  Chapter 1, Subsection ii:

  The Ten Commandments for the Dead

  I. THOU SHALT NOT COMPLAIN ABOUT BEING DEAD.

  II. THOU SHALT NOT ENGAGE IN DISCOURSE WITH THE LIVING.

  III. THOU SHALT GIVE UP EARTHLY ATTACHMENTS.

  IV. THOU SHALT HONOR THINE HEAVENLY ADVISORS.

  GABE CALLED my skull phone when Heidi was inside saying good-bye to her family. He used his loud voice, which had a way of splitting my head in two.

  “WHY WERE YOU NOT IN GROUP THIS MORNING?”

  “Uh.”

  “YOU WILL REPORT TO MY CHAMBERS IMMEDIATELY.”

  “I, uh, can’t right now on account of I —”

  “THERE IS NO OTHER DEFINITION OF IMMEDIATELY. THE WORD MEANS NOW!”

  So, yeah. Good thing Heidi agreed to come with. I didn’t want to be the guy who stood between a girl and her last good-byes with her family and stuff, but I really needed to see if there was anything I could do to fix the situation, or at the least, slip her in the back door of Heaven while I was on my way to get my apple handed to me in a paper sack. Once she was all settled, I could maybe talk Gabe and Xavier into giving me a do-over. I’d do a better job if I got a second chance. That was a promise.

  After a pretty smooth shoop, considering it was Heidi’s first time, we landed at the service entrance, which isn’t as fancy as the main gate. But I’m not allowed in the front, and anyway, trumpets and hand bells would only make my headache go all the way down my neck.

  “Here we are,” I said.

  She was all, “Here? But we’re at the mall. In the back entrance. Behind the employee parking lot.”

  “Chevy,” I said.

  “A Chevy? Are we going for a ride?”

  “You don’t see it? The glowing doors? Right under the stone angel thing? Covered with a sign that says HAVE HOPE, ALL YE WHO ENTER HERE? With the doormat that says PLEASE WIPE YOUR SOULS?”

  “I see parked cars. I see a girl in an Orange Julius uniform trying to light a cigarette. I see a regular door with a sign that says NO ENTRANCE FOR UNAUTHORIZED PERSONS. There’s graffiti on it that looks like a bald guy with stars for eyes.”

  “Chevy,” I said.

  “Jerome, don’t take this the wrong way, but did that arrow give you, uh, brain damage? Because I’ve heard that people with head injuries sometimes repeat words at inappropriate times, and I just wanted you to know I’m not going to judge —”

  “Shush. Gotta think.”

  Something was pretty flasked up if she couldn’t see Heaven’s service entrance, which is behind the mall because it has a really convenient layout and plenty of parking if anyone needs to wheel in something big, like an enlightened circus elephant. If Heidi couldn’t even see the door, there was no way I was going to get her in it, and Gabe was waiting. I substitute-cursed myself out for losing the guardian angel handbook, while I rubbernecked a bit to see if any of the other guys from group were hanging around. That would’ve stunk, especially if one of them was Howard.

  Luckily, we were alone. Even so, I wanted to be quick about stuff. I didn’t want Heidi to get the idea that anything was messed up about the situation. Or more messed up. It’s bad enough finding out you’re dead without knowing there’s some problem with where to put your soul.

  I talked fast so I could get to Gabe before my head got its wish and exploded.

  “Okay, here’s what we’re gonna do. I’m gonna go in and talk to my guy, and you’re gonna walk around inside. Check out some stores. Sit on a bench and do some people watching, but be careful when you do it. Benches and chairs are just like doors, and you can fall through if you aren’t paying attention. Wait, no. What you want to do is this: deep sniffing at the Mrs. Fields — seriously. It’s awesome. You won’t mind not being able to eat human food once you fill yourself up with high-grade cookie vapors. But you gotta do me a favor. Don’t talk to anyone, especially not anyone who’s dead. And if this guy named Howard comes up to you wearing an ugly-apple plaid shirt and asks you if you’re into planets and/or cats, do NOT talk to him.”

  “Why not?”

  “He’s a psycho, that’s why.”

  “How long are you going to be?” She bit the corner of her lower lip.

  “Probably not too long,�
� I said, trying to keep it casual. “You got somewhere else to go?”

  “Jerome,” she said, “I don’t want to be alone.” Her eyes started to get shiny, so I looked at a really dented-up car and thought about how easy it would be to pound it out with a mallet.

  “I have to do this thing and it won’t take hardly any time, so go sniff some cookies, okay?” I had to be tough, even though part of me wanted to go straight to Mrs. Fields with her.

  She wiped her eyes. I made a fist and chucked her under the chin to show some appreciation. Then she went “Ow!” because I think she maybe bit her tongue.

  For a second I wanted to be one of those guys from France or wherever so I could’ve kissed her on her cheek instead of chin-chucking her, because it seemed more Rico Suave than “See ya later.” But only for a second.

  She grabbed my sleeve.

  “Jerome,” she said, and I knew I had about two seconds to get out of there before I changed my mind. I peeled her off me and punched my code into the security pad and went through the service entrance, past the janitorial and diaper supply closet, and into my lobby. I tried not to think about her chin or her cheek or any part of her, even though I would’ve loved to have brought her along, on account of she would’ve understood what I’m really about better than I could’ve explained even if I used all the words I knew.

  Your rehab lobby is your own personal space, meant to help you imagine Heaven and do what you need to do to get in. My lobby is twice the size of my old bedroom. It has a lot of vending machines lining the walls, along with vintage album covers and guitars from Kurt Cobain and Jimi Hendrix, and Jim Morrison’s actual leather pants, which I got mostly because by the time he died he was too fat to keep wearing them. I don’t know how this is supposed to help me get into Heaven, though. It’s just stuff I love. Anyway, all of those guys made it in. If you do something with your whole heart, you are forgiven a whole lot of stuff that normal people go to Hell for. If I had known this, I would have definitely kept up with my plan to become the Frogger champion of the world.

  Howard says his lobby and service entrance don’t look like mine, but I stopped listening when he was going on about a microwave, twenty cases of pizza rolls, computer parts, and lots of little stuffed animals with their heads switched.