She Found Heaven
Beep!
Um . . . is anybody there? Um . . . .
Beep!
Is anybody there? Um, my name’s Paul, and um . . . do you still have the Heaven? It might belong to Mom, ‘cause she’s crying all the time now, and I’m pretty sure if she had it back she’d stop. She doesn’t know I’m calling you, so don’t tell her. She might get mad. Right now she’s at the store getting something to drink. She’ll probably be gone for a long time, so it’s okay if I talk for right now, but don’t tell her. I think my dad stole the Heaven, and he prob’ly just threw it out the window of his truck, ‘cause that’s what he does with all his trash. Ever since he left all Mom does is cry. She hardly even talks to me anymore, except when she’s mad, so I think if she could have it back everything would be okay again. It was hers anyway. Dad shouldn’t of taken it, but he does stuff like that sometimes. Um . . . if you could bring it over sometime today, that would be good. Um . . . bye.
Sally lay naked atop the sheets of her bed, staring at the ceiling. It was night, and it was hot.
There had been fourteen messages on her answering machine that day. She was sweating profusely, drifting in and out of consciousness.
Sometimes it seemed as though other people were in her room, but she could not tell who they were or how long they stayed; they remained a series of vague recollections that dissipated under scrutiny.
The most insistent of these memories was that of a young woman sitting at her bedside, reaching over occasionally to sprinkle water onto her forehead. She was dressed oddly, in long brown rags and white cloth, and she smelled vaguely of manure, but she had a kind, radiant face, and her smile was beautiful. As the woman leaned over her, Sally detected a silvery shine on her cheeks, but she did not know if it came from tears or the light of the moon reflecting from her face.
At some point in the night Sally arose from her bed and walked to a small window tucked away above her bureau, and looked out at the city sprawling below her. It blazed hotly in the darkness, but with a different kind of light than she expected: it possessed a frantic radiance that suggested fevers or great holes punched through the crust of the earth. As she looked more closely, pressing her forehead against the cool glass of the windowpane, she saw that these were not city lights at all, but a long, winding procession of torches, each held aloft by a stumbling bearer, tracing a crooked path through the ruin.
“Westlake Retirement Community.”
“Yes, I’d like to speak to Ruth Landis, if I may.”
“Oh, yes, hold on one moment. Is this Sally Baxter?”
“Yes.”
“Hold on.”
Then:
“Yes?”
“Mrs. Landis?”
“Yes?”
“I’m Sally Baxter, I had the ad about the Heaven.”
“Oh, yes! I called you!”
“I know, I . . .”
“Do you need directions? Would you like me to meet you somewhere? Or would you rather just mail it? No, I think I’d feel safer if I took it straight from your hands, that way I could thank you in person!”
“Mrs. Landis.”
“Call me Ruth.”
“Okay, Ruth, look, I’m not sure it belongs to you yet.”
“. . . oh.”
“I’m sorry, but I’ve been getting a lot of calls for it, and I need some more information before I can figure out who lost this particular piece. Do you understand?”
“Yes, I suppose so. You can’t go around giving it to just anybody.”
“No. So, could you, uh, could you describe it to me?”
So she did. She said it was small, about a foot long (she was only an old woman and didn’t need much space to move around in), and it had big green winds and smelled of lilacs. It made you feel warm to touch it, she said, and yes, it had probably suffered a little crumpling when it had fallen out of her husband’s body, along with his spirit.
