“Adam!” I screamed out.
Gram stopped talking and immediately looked over at the house. Adam turned and looked back, still in his workout gear.
“Hey!” he called out, running over to the white picket fence that separated our lawns.
I picked up my red duchesse satin Vera Wang dress and proceeded to run in his direction, or tried to since Manolos, Vera Wang, and Cathy Waterman pearls are not made for running, even in heaven.
“You live right here?” I asked him.
“Yeah, isn’t this crazy? This is a house I used to see in the Hamptons when I was a kid.”
“This is Len Jacobs’s old house!” I said, pointing to my home.
“How crazy is this?” he declared. “Who is Len Jacobs?”
“Oh, he’s some kid I went to school with. It doesn’t matter,” I replied dismissively.
“Is this the greatest thing or what?”
“I see you dressed up for the occasion,” he said, remarking on my outfit.
How completely embarrassing.
“So, is this your family?” he asked as I turned around to find my grandparents and uncle standing right behind me, smiling in the way that only Jewish grandparents and uncles can smile when they see that their granddaughter/niece in her mid- (fine, late) twenties might have a boyfriend. (By the way, in case you’re wondering what Jewish grandparents are doing in heaven anyway, when all along the rabbis have never breathed so much as a word about heaven, all I can say is that when you’re standing face-to-face with your long-dead relatives, it’s kind of hard to argue about why you’re there. And we were never a very religious family anyway. I’m just going to point to what my grandmother said: “Remember, honey, it’s heaven. You get what you want.”)
“Yes,” I answered, a little humiliated as I introduced them.
“This is Adam,” I told them. “He was in line with me earlier.”
“Adorable,” my grandmother said, boldly stroking her fingers through his hair. “Look at this head of hair, just stunning.”
“Thank you,” he said, smiling obligingly to Grandmom, but I could tell he felt ridiculous.
“So listen,” he added, turning to me. “I have some grandparents and aunts and uncles coming over a little later. Maybe afterward you and I can check out the neighborhood.”
“I’d love it,” I answered, maybe a little too enthusiastically.
“Great,” he said, “I’ll drop by a little later.”
“A half a day she’s here and she already has a boyfriend,” my grandmother said. “Is this heaven or what?”
I didn’t want to say it out loud, but. . . . yes, this was heaven.
All This and Heaven Too
I am alone for the first time since I got to heaven. Tomorrow my grandparents are having a big family-reunion party for me, but for now they’ve left me to settle in. I’ll get to meet my great-grandparents and my great-great-grandparents and anyone else in the family who’s there. I think I’ll wear my Michael Kors white sailor pants and this fabulous Norma Kamali fitted, black, off-the-shoulder cotton blouse with my Christian Louboutin five-inch espadrilles. Peaches is out playing in the yard with all of her thousands of toys. I thought I spoiled her on earth, but in heaven Peaches has all the dog bones she could ever chew on. I went outside about an hour ago to see what she was up to, and she was playing fetch with these balls that automatically hurl themselves across my lawn the second she drops one out of her mouth, and a group of other dogs had joined her and they were also running after balls. Talk about dog heaven.
One funny thing, in heaven Peaches obeys all my commands, something she never did on earth. I tell her to sit, she sits. I tell her to roll over, she rolls. I tell her to play dead, though, and she stands there like she doesn’t know what it means. I know how she feels.
Having left Peaches to play, I’m lying in my bed with the ultracomfy Frette sheets, snacking on a tub of Baskin-Robbins chocolate mint ice cream (no calories!). Adam is coming over in about twenty minutes and I have nothing I need to do to get ready. Heaven.
Adam said he loved pot roast, and when I looked in my oven, a pot roast was baking. I’m not touching it, and I’m assuming it will be ready when I want it to be since I don’t know how it got there in the first place. I don’t need to work out. I don’t need to do anything to my hair. I can just lie here and think about how amazing death really is.
The only thing that’s really bothering me is how upset my parents must be, and even though I know there’s nothing I can do about it, I can’t help but worry for them. I wish I could share all this with them. I mean, I don’t want them to die, but I do wish I could tell them I’m in heaven and happy. I must ask my grandmother how she came into my dreams so I can do that for them.
I know Penelope must be upset, too. I bet she’ll start some kind of charity, she’s so like that. She’ll have a benefit for me, something like a “Save People from Getting Hit by MINI Coopers” benefit, and she’ll probably raise a million dollars. Penelope married and divorced Melvin (believe me, the name matched his looks) and didn’t sign a prenup, so she has millions. She does these benefits to feel better about herself and about having money she didn’t work for. That’s so Pen. Personally, I only went for the gift bags. I know Pen must be really upset by my death though. I’ll have to go into her dreams, too, just as soon as I find out how.
“Hello?” I hear from downstairs.
“Hi!” I shout out, startled as I jump from the bed and hide my tub of ice cream. “Up here!”
It’s Adam and I’m in my camel-colored halter top and Joe’s jeans and, damn, my ass looks fine.
“Hi,” he says, entering my bedroom. He’s in a gray T-shirt and jeans, and his hair is combed but nicely disheveled, and he’s wearing black Prada driving shoes. The man is stunning.
“This place is amazing!” he says, looking around my bedroom.
“I know. Believe me, it’s going to take me weeks to get used to the fact that it’s mine.”
“I know,” he agrees as we start to walk into the other rooms. “I have a movie theater in my house. I think of a movie and it starts to play, or if I say, ‘French, comedy, something I’d like that I’ve never seen before,’ it’s the best French comedy I’ve ever seen!”
“Incredible! Why didn’t I wish for that?”
“Because you seem to have liked clothes,” he says, dumb-struck by my closet.
“I didn’t ask for it, it was just here,” I tell him, a little self-conscious —though why should I be? He’s got a movie theater.
“It’s every girl’s dream come true.”
“I’m quite happy with it,” I tell him as he looks at my shoe closet.
Then he turns around.
“But meeting you and living right next door, I hope that’s a part of the plan.”
“Here’s hoping,” I tell him.
“I’m still pissed off that I died so young,” Adam confides as I serve him the pot roast on my Kate Spade Pebble Point dinnerware.
“I’m getting over it,” I tell him. “They make it really easy to accept,” I say, digging into the garlic potatoes (crisp on the outside and tender on the inside, just like I like ’em, of course).
“I keep thinking about all the things I’ll miss out on,” he continues. “I never got married. I never had kids. I was about to leave my investment firm and go out on my own. I was excited about that. I could have retired in five years. Why was I so crazy about making money? At least my niece and nephew will have college paid for. Still, was that all there was?”
“That’s all there was,” I tell him. “It was life and it was all we knew. Me? I’m going to make the best of this. I don’t know why, but I’m okay with the whole ‘getting hit by a MINI Cooper ’ thing. I feel content. I guess I’m a little irked that I died so young, and, yes, I had plans, but now I feel like that’s over, you know, ‘such is life.’ If I compared life to what I have now, this house, that closet, seeing my grandparents again instead of having
to work every day and slave and worry about my future, I’m okay with where I am now.”
“You have no regrets?” he asks.
“Sure I have regrets,” I tell him after thinking for a minute. “My father and I weren’t getting along for a few years. I wish that could have been straightened out. We were kind of on the way to fixing it when this happened. I don’t know. I feel like I never did anything to make him proud, and I wish that I had been able to do that, but what am I going to do now, sit and worry about it? There’s nothing I can do about it now,” I tell him as if I don’t care, but I really do.
“So you’ve reconciled with it?” he asks.
“Yes,” I lie, “I really have.”
“I feel like I had more I wanted to do,” he tells me as he takes a sip of wine, “so much more I wanted to accomplish.”
I have some more things I’d like to say to Adam at this point, but I don’t feel like starting some life-and-death debate. Yeah, sure, I had plans too, but when you’re faced with all the good stuff that heaven brings, between you and me, truthfully, and I’m being totally honest here, my sincere feeling is, get over it, life was really freaking hard. Here, you think “pot roast” and one is cooking in your oven. I don’t see what the problem is.
“The strangest thing about it is that I have this really calm feeling,” he says, “like none of that matters anymore, but I still keep trying to worry about my family and how sad they must feel.”
“Me too!” I exclaim. “How much of a gyp is that?”
“I know!” he says. “I feel like I should try to help them, but how do I do that?”
“I’ve been thinking the same thing. I’m going to ask my grandmother about that tomorrow.”
“You’ll let me know,” he says, adding, “still, I really can’t complain. I’ve got a whole game room in my house, but the only game I want to play is Pac-Man.”
“I was the greatest Pac-Man player of all time,” I tell him. I really was.
“No, I don’t think so. I was the number one high scorer at Frank’s Pizza in Greenwich for six months straight.”
“Uh, hello. You might not have seen the Pac-Man machine at Lenny’s Hot Dogs in Margate, New Jersey, in the summer of 1982. I believe the initials of the five high scorers were the same. Yep, AJD, that was me.”
“Oh, get ready for a challenge,” he dares me.
“You’re on,” I tell him as we jump up from the table at the same time and run out the door toward Adam’s home.
After four games and three bonus rounds, it was a tie: 200,008 to 200,008.
“Must have something to do with this place,” Adam says as we both agree, laughing.
“You know, I don’t know how this is going to sound, but I’m just going to say it,” he says, putting his arms around my waist. “I’m kind of glad you died when I did.”
“And somehow, I take that as the supreme compliment,” I say, looking into his eyes.
“Silver lining,” he whispers, leaning into me.
I spent my first night in heaven at a hot investment banker’s Hamptons-style house.
In the morning, as I started to try to sneak out, I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror. No makeup smudges and my hair still looked perfect.
I got back into bed.
Adam turned over and put his arms around me. His breath was clean.
The Jig Is Up
I knew it! I just knew it!
This whole thing was too good to be true. I just knew it! Nothing comes for free in this world (or this world).
So I come back to my Len Jacobs’s farmhouse after the best sex I’ve ever had in my entire life and death, and this frigging angel is sitting at my kitchen table.
“Oh, hi,” I said, real nonchalant. “Are you here to clean up? I didn’t sleep at home last night, but there are some dirty dishes on the dining room table and I believe I left a tub of ice cream upstairs in the main bedroom.” What did I know? Why would some angel be sitting in my home?
“No, Alex,” this angel, a woman, about sixty, with a bad dye job and feathered wings, said, smirking as she got up and put a coffee cup in my Len Jacobs’s sink. “I’m Deborah, your guardian angel. You might remember me. Do I look a little familiar to you?”
I started to think. Now that she mentioned it, she was starting to look a little familiar.
“Were you at the Radnor Rolls roller rink when I was in the sixth grade and fell and broke my wrist?”
“Yes!” she exclaimed. “I played the part of the director of the roller rink. You might have broken your arm altogether if I hadn’t caught you.”
“Wait, was that you the other night? The night I died, I got really wasted at Jones and a cab pulled up? Weren’t you the woman driving the cab?”
“Me again.”
“You were a brunette.”
“Sometimes I’m a brunette, sometimes a redhead. I change it depending on how I feel that day.”
“I know what you mean,” I said, pouring myself a cup of coffee. “Well, thanks for watching over me. You saved me from driving myself home from Jones the other night, but I guess you were a little slow a couple of hours later with that MINI Cooper, huh?” I laughed, but she didn’t. “I was actually just about to make some midmorning waffles. I’m loving this no-gaining-weight thing. You interested in joining me?”
“Uh, sure, I’m never one to turn down waffles,” she paused, “but to tell you the truth, I’m here to discuss some things with you.”
I wasn’t really listening to her as I grabbed bacon out of the Sub-Z.
“It’s so nice of you to come and see me,” I said, pulling out the waffle maker, which, as it goes here, was already full of perfectly light and fluffy waffles cooked to golden brown perfection.
I served two plates of waffles with blueberries and maple syrup on my MacKenzie-Childs blue-flowered, gold tipped Honeymoon plates.
“Oh, mimosas!” I suddenly remembered, jumping up.
“Alex,” she said, “why don’t you take a seat for a second.”
So I did. I honestly thought she was just going to welcome me to heaven and tell me some more things I hadn’t figured out yet. Maybe she was going to teach me how to get into my parents’ dreams so I could tell them that I’m all right and that I even met a hot financial advisor. They’d be so happy for me.
“Alex,” she started, “first of all, I want to congratulate you on a wonderful life. We here in heaven do take into account that you only lived a brief time, but we do have some concerns.”
That’s when I knew the jig was up.
“Of course, you never stole—except for that Bonne Bell Lip Smacker in the fifth grade. We excuse those petty things. Look . . . ,” she said, taking my hand, “you never murdered or committed any sins that were punishable by law. You never hurt another human being deliberately. You were a good person in those respects.”
“Thank you. I was. I might have bounced a few checks, but who doesn’t?” I said, getting nervous. What was she getting at?
“Alex,” she continued, still holding my hand, “where you are right now is in the highest plane in heaven. You know the term seventh heaven, right?”
Duh.
“Of course,” I said, still unable to understand what she was getting at.
“Well, the seventh plane is reserved for people that we feel did an exemplary job on earth. Some are those who went through great hardships or through poverty or those who pulled themselves up from devastating occurrences in their lives.”
“Sure,” I said. “I get it.”
“Most, though, are on the seventh plane simply because they lived normal lives. They faced their obstacles and tackled them with pride. Take your grandparents for example. Your grandfather came from nothing and built his accounting firm. He provided for your grandmother and mother. You grandmother stood firm over your mother, teaching her to be a strong woman. Your uncle Morris forwent a family of his own so that he could take care of his sisters. These are exemplary lives, lives
that were lived in teaching and taking care of those around them.”
“Yes, of course, they were great,” I said, still trying to understand what she was getting at. “I would have done things like that myself, but, as you know, I died very young.”
“And that’s why we’re giving you a break,” she told me, which made me breathe a huge sigh of relief.
“Whew,” I said digging into my waffles, “I thought you were going to send me to hell or something. Hey, could you pass the bacon?”
“Noooo,” she said, passing the crisp bacon. “Of course you wouldn’t be sent to hell, but there are some things we just don’t understand. Some of your actions in life concern us.”
“What did I do?” I asked, getting a bit offended. I mean, could you blame me?
“Well, it’s not what you did, it’s what you didn’t do. As I said, I watched over you your whole life, and it was a good one, but the one thing we, as your guardian angels, can’t do is figure out why you lived your life the way you did, and that’s why sometimes we like to give some people an entrance exam.”
“An entrance exam? There’s a test?” I said, dropping my fork.
“Nothing to be too concerned about,” she said, taking my hand again, “and the worst that can happen is that you go down a plane or two.”
“A plane or two?”
“Well, the fourth plane of heaven is what we’re thinking.”
“You just said ‘a plane or two,’ now you’re jumping three planes! How bad was I?”
“Alex, fourth heaven is still heaven, it’s just not this heaven.”
For the first time since I got to this heaven, I wasn’t hungry anymore.
“But I still get to see everyone?”
“Sure, you get to see your family, your grandparents, but I’m afraid Adam is out of the picture. You’ll still date, but I’ve been told it’s a bit harder to find a soul mate.”
The Ten Best Days of My Life Page 3