“Oh yeah, I’ll do it, I guess.”
“It’s a big job. She feeds them three times a day.”
“I know, but it’s the least I can do for her, she loved her birds.”
“She did. She loved her birds.”
Tot looked around the room with all the pictures of insects and flowers taped up on the wall. “I wonder if Norma will keep the house or sell it or what?”
“I imagine they’ll sell it.”
Suddenly Tot burst into tears. “It’s hard to believe she’s not coming right back. Isn’t life the strangest thing, one minute you’re picking figs and the next minute you’re dead. It’s enough to make you not want to get up in the morning.” She blotted her eyes with a tea towel. Growing up in a close-knit small town, she had been through this kind of thing many times before, but it was still sad to see it happen. When someone old dies, it is even sadder. First you notice that the paper doesn’t come anymore, then gradually the lights are turned out, the gas turned off, the house gets locked up, and the yard is no longer kept up, then it goes on the market and new people come in and change everything.
Elner’s phone rang, and they both looked at each other. “This could be Norma calling,” Ruby said, and walked over and answered it. “Hello.”
The voice on the other end said, “Elner?”
“No, this is Ruby, who’s this?”
“It’s Irene. What are you gals up to this morning?”
“Oh, Irene, hold on a minute, will you?” Ruby put her hand over the receiver and whispered to Tot, “It’s Irene Goodnight, do you want me to tell her or do you want to do it?” Tot was on the Elmwood Springs ladies bowling team with Irene, and said, “I’ll do it,” and took the phone from Ruby.
“Irene, it’s Tot.”
“Well, hey, what are you girls doing over there, having a party?”
“No, not really.”
“Well, I won’t bother you, but tell Elner to call me later, will you? I found some old National Geographic magazines she may want.”
“Irene, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but Elner’s dead.”
“What?”
“Elner is dead.”
“You’re kidding me, right?”
“No, honey, I’m as serious as a heart attack. She got hit by wasps, and fell out of her tree and killed herself.”
“What…When?”
“Not more than an hour and a half ago.”
Irene had been cleaning out her basement all morning and had not heard the siren go through town, or even been aware of Elner’s fall, so this news was like a bolt out of the blue. “Well,” she sputtered, “I’m just—I’m just…stunned.”
“Oh, honey, we all are,” said Tot. “After we finish straightening up the house, I’m going home and get in bed. I feel like I’ve been hit by a ten-ton truck.”
Irene sat down on her bed and looked out the window toward Elner’s house. “Well, I’m just stunned…Where is she?”
“In the hospital in Kansas City. Norma and Macky are over there with her.”
“Oh. Poor Norma, you know she is going to take this hard.”
“You know she is…I just hope they are giving her something for her nerves.”
Irene agreed, “I hope so too…. well…what’s going to happen now?”
“I don’t have any of the details yet, but I’ll keep you posted.”
After she hung up, Tot walked over and sat back down. “She’s all broken up, could hardly talk.”
Ruby said, “Well, I guess we should start making a list of all the people we need to call and let them know, save Norma the trouble.”
“You’re right, you know she’s going to be busy making all the arrangements, that will be one less thing she will have to worry about. I guess Dena and Gerry will come in from California, don’t you think?”
“Oh, I’m sure, it will be nice to see them again, although…I wish it could be under better circumstances,” said Ruby.
“Yes, I do too, I wonder when the funeral will be.”
“In the next couple of days, I would imagine.”
Tot looked at Ruby. “I’m so sick of going to funerals I don’t know what to do.”
Ruby, who was a little older than Tot, sighed. “When you get to be my age, all the different weddings, christenings, funerals, start to blend together. You get used to it after a while.”
“Not me,” said Tot. “I don’t ever want to get used to it.” She turned and looked out the kitchen window at the puffy white clouds in the blue sky, and spoke. “And it’s such a pretty day too.”
Irene Goodnight
11:20 AM
After Irene put the phone down, she felt sick. She looked over at the small bunch of yellow daffodils in a jelly jar Elner had brought over a few days ago. She felt a huge wave of sadness hit her as she realized that Easter was only a few weeks away and Elner would not be here this year, or ever again. Every Easter, for as long as she could remember, she had taken her kids, then later her grandkids, over to Elner’s yard to hunt Easter eggs. Every year without fail, Elner had dyed over two hundred eggs and had hidden them all over her yard. She always held the Easter egg hunt for all the neighborhood children. Irene’s own five-year-old twin granddaughters, little Bessie and Ada Goodnight, had found the golden egg one year. What were the parents and the children going to do this year with Elner gone? What was going to happen to the Sunset Club? What was she going to do without Elner? She had known her since she was a little girl, and remembered when Elner used to keep chickens in her backyard. Irene’s mother used to send her over to Elner’s house for some eggs, and she had always left with a sack of figs as well. One time Elner had said, “Tell your mother my hens have been laying double yolks lately, so be on the lookout,” and sure enough there had been five in a dozen with double yolks. When Irene had been younger, she had only thought of Elner as the egg and fig lady, then as she grew older and spent more time with her, she came to know her as plain Miss Elner. And Miss Elner always had some funny story to tell, mostly about herself. She remembered the story that Miss Elner used to tell about what had happened in the snowstorm the first Christmas she had moved into town from the country. She had been waiting for Norma’s husband to come pick her up and take her over to their house for Christmas dinner, and when a green car slowed down, she thought it was Macky and ran out and jumped in the front seat. She said a complete stranger had been driving around looking for Third Street, when all of a sudden a big fat woman jerked the door open and hopped in beside him. She said she scared that man so badly he almost wrecked the car. Irene and Elner had laughed so hard over that, tears had run down both their cheeks. Little silly stories, like the time when her husband, Will, had swallowed a mother-of-pearl button she had left on the bedside table, thinking it was an aspirin. She said she never did tell him. No matter how blue Irene had been, Elner could always make her laugh. It was going to be sad to go by the old house on First Avenue North and not see her out on her porch waving, and knowing she would never be there again. But Irene had discovered over the years that unfortunately that was the way life was, something was there for years, and in an instant, it was gone. One day Elner’s out on the porch, the next day, it’s just an empty swing, another empty chair, another empty house, waiting for the next people to come and start all over again. She wondered if the houses ever missed people when they left, or if furniture knew anything at all. Would the chair know it was a different person sitting there? Would the bed? She sighed. “Death—what was it all about?” She wished she knew.
The Elevator Ride
Elner was wondering when that elevator was ever going to stop and let her out. This was the craziest elevator she had ever been on in her life! Not only did it go up, the thing zigzagged, spun around, and went sideways. When it finally did stop, and the doors opened, she didn’t recognize the place at all. Nothing looked familiar. “Lord, the crazy thing must have taken me clear over to some other building.” This was certainly not the hospital wher
e she had been, and it was a nice enough building, but she had no idea where she was. For all she knew, she could be clear across town, all the way over to the courthouse. “Well, I’m for sure lost now,” she said to herself as she headed on down the hall, looking for someone to help her get back to the hospital. “Yoo hoo!” she called out. “Anybody here?” She had walked for quite a while when she suddenly saw a pretty blue-eyed blond lady rushing down the hall toward her, carrying a pair of black tap shoes and a white feather boa.
“Hey,” said Elner. The lady smiled at her and said, “Hello, how are you?” but she went by her so fast, Elner didn’t have a chance to ask where she was. A few seconds after the lady passed, Elner thought to herself that if she hadn’t known better, she would have sworn the woman was Ginger Rogers! She knew exactly what Ginger Rogers looked like because she had always been Elner’s favorite movie star, and Dixie Cahill, who had run the Dixie Cahill School of Tap and Twirl in Elmwood Springs, where Linda had taken dancing, had a big picture of the dancer up in her dance studio. But the more she thought about it, she realized that even though the woman was the spitting image of Ginger Rogers, it couldn’t have been her. What in the world would Ginger Rogers be doing in Kansas City, Missouri? It didn’t make any sense, but then she suddenly remembered, Ginger Rogers was originally from Missouri, so even if it wasn’t her, it was for sure one of her relatives.
Elner kept walking and was admiring how clean and white the marble walls and the floors were. “Norma should see this,” she thought. “This would be a building after her own heart.” So clean you could eat off the floor, that’s what Norma liked, but why anyone would want to eat off the floor was a mystery to Elner. A few minutes later, she began to see a little speck of something way down at the end of the hall, and as she got closer, she was relieved to see it was a person, sitting at a desk in front of a door. “Hey,” she called.
“Hey, yourself,” the person called back.
When Elner finally reached the end of the hall and got up close enough to actually see who the person behind the desk was, she could hardly believe her eyes. It was none other than her youngest sister: Norma’s mother, Ida! There she sat as big as life, all dressed up, wearing her fox furs and her good strand of pearls, and earrings.
“Ida?” she said. “Is that really you?”
“It is indeed,” said Ida, eyeing Elner’s old brown plaid robe with disdain.
Elner was flabbergasted. “Well, heavens to Pete…What in the world are you doing here in Kansas City? We all thought you were dead. Good Lord, honey, we had a funeral for you and everything.”
“I know,” said Ida.
“But if you’re here, who was that woman we buried?”
Ida instantly got that certain little look she got when she was displeased, which was most of the time. “Oh, it was me all right,” Ida said. “And if you recall, the last thing I said to Norma was ‘Norma, when I’m dead, for God’s sake, do not let Tot Whooten do my hair.’ I even gave her the number of my hairdresser to call, paid the woman for the appointment in advance, and what did Norma do? The first thing she did when I died was to let Tot Whooten do my hair!”
“Oh dear,” thought Elner. At the time, she and Norma had figured Ida would never know about it, but they were clearly wrong.
“Well, Ida,” Elner said, hoping to smooth things over a bit, “I thought it looked very nice.”
“Elner, you know I never parted my hair on the left. And there I was, on view to the world, with my hair parted on the wrong side, not to mention all that rouge she put on me. I looked like a clown in the Shriners’ parade!”
If Elner had entertained any doubts for a second that the woman before her was her sister, she didn’t anymore. It was Ida all right.
“Now, Ida,” she said, “try not to get yourself in a snit. Norma had no choice. Tot is a good friend. How can you tell somebody something like that and not hurt her feelings? She showed up at the funeral home with her supplies and everything. She thought she was doing you a favor. Norma didn’t have the heart to tell her she couldn’t do you.”
Ida was not sympathetic. “I should think a dying wish trumps hurt feelings, any time of the day.”
Elner sighed. “Well, I guess so, but you have to admit, you had a really nice turnout. You had over a hundred people, all your garden club friends came.”
“All the more reason to want to look my best. I should have just gone over to the funeral parlor and handed Neva all my details in person, that’s what I should have done.”
“Well, anyhow, honey, I’m awfully glad to see you again,” said Elner, trying to change the subject.
Ida managed a tight little smile, even though she was still upset over Tot ruining her hairdo. “I’m glad to see you too, Elner.” Then she added, “I notice you’ve put on a few pounds since I saw you last.”
“A few…but that comes with age, I guess.”
“I suppose so. Gerta put on weight when she got older.”
Elner looked around at the white marble hall and said, “Ida, I’m not clear about what’s going on. If you’re not dead, why didn’t you just come on back home?”
“Oh, I am dead. This is my home now,” she said, fingering her pearls.
“Where is this anyway?” asked Elner, looking around again. “And what am I doing here? I’m supposed to be in the hospital, you’ve got me all confused.”
Ida looked at her, with that maddening little know-it-all look of hers. “Well, Elner, if I’m dead, and you can see me, what do you suppose that must mean?”
Now Elner was starting to get upset. “How should I know, Ida? I just fell off a ladder, I’m so addlebrained at this point, I thought I just saw Ginger Rogers go by…and now you’re telling me that you’re dead, when I can see you plain as day. I must have knocked my brain out of whack because none of this is making any sense to me.”
“Think, Elner,” Ida said. “Me? Ginger Rogers?”
Elner thought for a second; then it dawned on her. Ginger Rogers had been dead for years, so had Ida; not only that, she suddenly realized that she could hear every word Ida was saying without her hearing aid! There was definitely something odd and peculiar going on. Then it hit her.
“Wait a minute, Ida,” Elner said. “Don’t tell me I’m dead too?”
“Bingo!”
“I’m dead?”
“You certainly are, my dear, just as dead as you can be.”
“Oh no!…Am I dead and buried?”
“No, not yet, you just died a few minutes ago.”
“Well, for heaven’s sake. You don’t mean it?”
“I do. In fact, you just missed seeing Ernest Koonitz, he just came in yesterday.”
“Ernest Koonitz? The one who used to play the tuba on the Neighbor Dorothy Show?”
“Yes.”
Elner felt a little light-headed. “I need to sit down a minute and think this over.” She went and sat in the red leather chair by the door.
Ida looked concerned all of a sudden and asked, “Are you terribly upset, dear?”
Elner looked at her and shook her head. “No, I don’t think so, I would say surprised more than anything.”
“That’s to be expected, we are all surprised. You know it’s going to happen but somehow you just don’t believe it’s going to happen to you.”
“Oh, I never doubted it would happen,” Elner said. “I just wish that I’d had a little more warning. I just hope I turned off my stove and coffeepot.”
“Yes…well, we all have our regrets, don’t we?” Ida said pointedly.
In a moment, after gaining her composure and coming to terms with what must be true, Elner looked at her sister. “Oh, poor Norma, first you and now me.”
Ida nodded. “Into each life a little rain must fall, as they say.”
“Yes, I guess so, but I hope it won’t hit her too hard, and I am pretty old, so I guess it could not have been too unexpected, could it?”
“No…not like it was when I died, I was jus
t fifty-nine. Now that was entirely unexpected, I was still in very good shape, if I do say so myself.”
Elner sighed. “Now that I’m dead and gone, I just hope Sonny will be all right, Macky said he would take care of him if anything ever happened to me but I don’t think cats miss you much anyway, as long as they get fed.” Elner looked down at her hands and said, “You know, Ida, it’s a funny thing, but I just don’t feel a bit dead, do you?”
“No, not like I thought I would feel. One minute you’re alive, the next you’re dead, not much difference. It’s a lot less painful than childbirth, I can tell you that.”
“No, no pain at all. As a matter of fact I feel better than I have for years, my right knee had been giving me some trouble but I didn’t tell Norma, or else she would have jerked me in for a knee replacement, but it feels just fine now,” she said, lifting it up and down. “So what’s going to happen next? Am I going to see everybody else?”
“I don’t know all the details, I was just given the word to meet you and take you inside.”
“That was mighty nice of you, Ida. Seeing a familiar face right off makes it easier, doesn’t it?”
“It does,” Ida agreed. “You’ll never guess who met me when I died.”
“Who?”
“Mrs. Herbert Chalkley.”
“Who’s that?”
“Just the past president of the Women’s Club of America, that’s all.”
“Ahh…well that must have been nice for you.”
Ida stood up and opened the top drawer of the desk and began looking for something as she spoke. “By the way, they called me so fast, what was it, a heart attack?”
Elner thought about it, then said, “I’m not sure, I might have gotten stung to death by a bunch of wasps, or maybe just the fall killed me, who knows, and I was hoping to die in my own bed, but you can’t have everything, I guess.”
Ida said, “I’ll bet it was a heart attack. That’s what killed Gerta and Daddy. Of course, my heart was just fine, but then, I was younger than you and your death was sudden…mine wasn’t. The doctor said I had a rare blood disorder, although it had been quite common with the royal families of Germany.”