by Fannie Flagg
Kate looked over at Sprague, her eyes wide. “Should I write this down?”
“Keep going,” he said, nodding, as Elner continued.
“Then I remember looking down and wondering who lost their shoe up on the roof.”
“Could you describe it?” asked Kate.
“Just an ordinary roof, with a ledge around it, and the flat part was gray, with what looked like some sort of gravel and some black tarlike stuff in a few places.”
“No, the shoe, Mrs. Shimfissle.”
“Oh, it was just a plain old brown leather shoe, lying over in the corner by one of those square chimneys.”
“Was it a man’s shoe or a woman’s shoe?” Kate asked.
“A man’s, unless some woman has mighty big feet. Will’s other niece, Mary Grace, wore a size nine narrow, they had to special order her shoes all the way from St. Louis. She could be standing in one room with her toes sticking out the other, that’s how long they were.”
“Anything else?” asked Kate.
“Humm, well, I didn’t pay all that much attention, I was too busy wondering what I was doing floating around up in the air, but I do remember the shoe had some kind of spiky things sticking out of the bottom of it. Little nail-like things.”
Miss Packer was now fascinated. “Like cleats? Like what you might find on a baseball shoe or a golf shoe?”
“Forget the shoe,” Sprague said. “What happened next?”
Miss Packer repeated the question. “What happened next?”
“Right after that, I was back in my room, and Norma and them were standing right beside me, and I thought, ‘Norma is going to be mad at me for getting up in that tree,’ and I was right, she was. She’s like her mother in that respect. She doesn’t let go of a thing. Not that I’m saying she isn’t right. I should have listened to her. Hey. I just thought of something you might want to write down, honey.”
Kate looked up. “Yes?”
“I had a cat that lived to be twenty-five years old.”
Later as they walked down the hall, Miss Packer, a rabid Star Trek fan, said, “Don’t you wonder if she entered another astral plane, and went into another dimension?”
Winston Sprague looked at her as though she were insane. “All I wonder is, was she nuts before she came to the hospital, or after?”
Oh Dear…
11:30 AM
As she left the office, Norma was a little confused. Mr. Pixton was very nice, of course, but she wondered why he had wanted to show her all those blueprints of the new buildings they were going to build in 2012. When she got back down to the room, Aunt Elner was sitting there with the remote in her hand, busy flipping back and forth from channel to channel on the television set up above her head. “Hey, Norma,” she said, “I don’t think they get cable here. I was hoping they got the Discovery Channel, but I can’t find it.”
Norma sat with Elner while she ate her lunch, and Elner was as happy as a lark. She had ordered three Jell-Os and two orders of ice cream, and for some unknown reason they had brought it. Nevertheless, Norma watched Elner carefully for signs of anything unusual, but she seemed perfectly normal, chatting away with every Tom, Dick, or Harry who came into the room. Norma was beginning to feel a little better, but just to be on the safe side, when they were alone, she asked, “Aunt Elner, now you’re sure you didn’t tell anybody else about your…little trip?”
Elner looked at her. “No, honey,” she said. “Just you.”
Norma was relieved for a moment, until Elner added, “And those people that just took my deposition.”
Norma said, “What? Oh my God. What people?”
“Just some redheaded lawyer and a girl.”
“When?”
“Just now, while you were gone,” she said, still flipping the channels. “But don’t worry, I didn’t tell them about seeing your mother or Neighbor Dorothy, I just told them about floating over the hospital roof and seeing the shoe.”
Norma cringed. “Oh my God.” Norma suddenly was afraid that something like this could hit the papers, and then the entire family could wind up as tabloid fodder. “Oh my God,” she thought, “they could be checking for family skeletons right now,” and she started to hyperventilate and ran over to the sink and threw cold water in her face.
Elner looked over at her. “Well, Norma, the girl made me swear to tell the truth, the entire truth, and nothing but the truth. You didn’t want me to outright lie, did you?”
“Yes! Oh…no. Oh Lord.”
Norma excused herself and quickly ran up to Franklin Pixton’s office, while doing her deep breathing, and asked Miss Hampton if she could see him right away.
As she walked into the room, her knees were shaking. “Mr. Pixton, I’m so sorry to have to bother you, but…” She looked around the room and lowered her voice. “This is a little embarrassing, but I wanted to speak to you about that…deposition?”
Pixton pretended he did not know what she was talking about.
“Deposition?”
“Yes, my aunt said your lawyer just came in and took her deposition?”
“Oh, that,” he said. “Oh, yes, I forgot. It was just a quick little thing for our records, nothing to be alarmed about.”
“Yes, well, I just wanted to explain to you that my aunt…Well, she may be just a little bit confused, and anything she might have mentioned about, uh, floating around in the sky and seeing strange shoes or anything…I just hope it won’t be used against her or get out in public.”
Franklin was quick to reassure her. “Oh, of course not, Mrs. Warren. That deposition is strictly a confidential matter, and as far as anything she may have mentioned about floating, don’t think a thing of it. NDEs are a fairly common occurrence.”
Norma said, “I’m sorry?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. NDEs. ‘Near-death experiences.’ Reports of people experiencing a floating sensation, seeing white light, speaking with dead relatives, religious figures, and so on and so forth. Quite common.”
Norma was somewhat relieved. “So, it’s not unusual?”
“Not at all. It’s sort of a hallucinatory experience, caused by oxygen suddenly leaving the brain, certain endorphins being released. But as far as we are concerned, it’s completely unimportant.”
“I see, and so it won’t be on public record or get in the papers or anything?”
“Oh no, never, and frankly, Mrs. Warren, I see no reason why we shouldn’t just strike anything of that nature out of the deposition. I’ll call Winston and take care of it right away, so you have nothing to worry about.”
“Oh, thank you so much. I was a little concerned.”
“Rest assured it will be taken out.”
Norma thanked him profusely and left feeling much better.
Franklin didn’t know what was in the deposition, and he didn’t care. All he knew was that Winston Sprague thought the old woman was as nutty as a fruitcake, and he was beginning to wonder about the niece, as well.
A New Kitty
3:10 PM
Linda Warren had been able to get back to her office and at least work half a day. When she walked into her house, her daughter, Apple, was waiting and ran to greet her all excited and asked, “Where’s my kitty?” The au pair looked at Linda and said, “All she’s talked about since you’ve been gone is that cat.” Linda felt terrible. In the rush of the past forty-eight hours she had completely forgotten she had promised to bring Apple a cat. In the past Linda had always felt that she was far too busy with work and raising a child to have to take care of a cat, but she was stuck now, she had promised. She told a disappointed Apple that tomorrow they would go to the Humane Society and find a cat. After all, Aunt Elner always said that everybody should have a cat. Later, as she started dinner, Linda suddenly had a brainstorm. She was in charge of the AT&T corporate community outreach program and had been wondering what their next project should be. Not only would she and Apple get a cat, tomorrow she would declare April Adopt a Cat Month. With over eight hundr
ed fifty employees, a lot of people would be getting a cat. Aunt Elner would be pleased to think that her falling out of a tree would be the reason an awful lot of cats were about to find good homes!
Macky had arrived back at the hospital from the airport at around three-thirty that afternoon, and he and Norma had stayed with Elner until around six. As they drove home, Macky was happy, and said, “I think she’s doing just fine. Don’t you? She told me she never felt better in her life.”
Norma was unusually quiet, and did not reply.
He looked over. “Don’t you think she’s doing great? No broken bones, no brain damage.”
Norma sighed. “I’m not so sure.”
“What do you mean?”
“Well…”
“What do you mean ‘well’?”
“I didn’t want to say anything, Macky, but the truth is I’m just worried to death.”
“Why?”
“Macky, if I tell you something, will you swear to God not to repeat it?”
“Of course. What?”
“Aunt Elner thinks she took a trip to heaven.”
“What?”
“Yes…. She told me that yesterday, while we were downstairs in the waiting room, she got up and went down the hall looking for somebody, then got on an elevator that zigzagged her over to another building.”
“Another building?”
“Wait, Macky, it gets worse. She said she went down this long white hall and Ginger Rogers walked by, wearing a feather boa and carrying a pair of tap shoes.”
“Ginger Rogers? You’re kidding.”
“Yes, then she said she saw Mother sitting behind a big desk at the end of the hall.”
Macky was suddenly finding this extremely interesting. “And then what?”
“Mother took her up some glass stairs to heaven, but it was really Elmwood Springs fifty years ago; and then she went over and had a visit with Neighbor Dorothy, and some man named Raymond.”
Macky laughed.
Norma looked at him. “Don’t laugh, Macky, she said mother knew all about Tot doing her hair and makeup. How would she know that?”
“Oh, Norma, for God’s sakes…it was just a dream. And if your mother was in it, it was a nightmare.”
“I told her it was just a dream, but she said no it wasn’t, it really happened. She swears she talked to Ernest Koonitz and met Thomas Edison and that this Raymond person told her that the egg comes before the chicken, and something about a flea, and gave her all kinds of messages to bring back.”
“Messages? Like what?”
“Oh, stupid cliché stuff. You know. Be happy. Smile…silly stuff. I couldn’t make any sense out of it, everything was all jumbled around, but she’s convinced it really happened, she said she even ate a piece of cake while she was there.”
“Don’t worry about it, Norma, it was just a dream.”
“Are you sure?”
He looked at her. “Of course I’m sure, Norma. The woman was knocked out cold. Who knows what medication she was on, people do that all the time. Remember when Linda had her tonsils out and dreamed there was a pony in her room?”
“Do you think that’s all it was?”
He nodded. “Of course. She’ll probably forget all about it in a day or so, you wait and see.”
“I hope you’re right, but I’m still afraid she’ll tell everyone she meets that she’s been to heaven. You know how she likes to talk…. Let’s just pray she doesn’t tell anybody she saw Ginger Rogers or we’ll never get her out of that hospital.”
After they drove awhile, Macky asked, “What kind of cake?”
“She didn’t say.”
Then he laughed again. “Raymond? Where does she come up with this stuff?”
“I don’t know, but, Macky, you don’t think there’s any way Mother knows that Tot did her hair, do you? I couldn’t hurt Tot’s feelings, I don’t know what else I could have done under the circumstances….”
Macky looked over at his wife, who was busy twisting a Kleenex to death. “Norma, you need a good night’s sleep.”
Nurse Boots
7:19 PM
Before she went off duty that night, Ruby Robinson’s nurse friend, Boots Carroll, stopped by Elner’s room to check on her. “Is there anything you need before I go?” she asked.
Elner said, “Not a thing, honey, everybody is taking real good care of me.”
“Well, you try and get a good night’s sleep, and I’ll stop by in the morning.”
Boots was the oldest working nurse at Caraway, and the only reason she was still on duty was because of the terrible shortage of nurses. It was not like it used to be when she and Ruby had entered the profession. They had both been influenced by the movie Women in White, and when they were young girls, nursing was thought of as almost a noble profession, a true calling to serve humanity, one step below a nun, as her Catholic friends had said at the time…but things had changed. A lot of the new crop of nurses were just in it for the money. They now had the unions and were always going on strike, or threatening to. Never mind about the poor patients. All the nurses who had walked out on strike hated her because she had crossed the picket line, but with Boots her patients were her first priority. Nursing was no longer just a career for young girls. The profession was now full of men, and she resented it. In her day it had been the male attitudes that had kept most women from becoming doctors, and now they were horning in on her profession. Some were serious and did a good job, but there were also a lot of sissy boys who had taken up nursing. She couldn’t care less about their so-called sexual orientations, but there was one in particular who had lied about her to the head of the hospital; told him she had made mistakes when she hadn’t. He had caused her to be demoted. She also did not like the way he talked. He thought it was funny to refer to all his female patients as “that bitch in room 304” or “that fat bitch” or that “skinny bitch.” He clearly did not like females, and it irritated her. A good nurse does not notice gender. She had never referred to any of her patients as bastards or bitches, and throughout the years she’d had her share of both. Plus, he was always standing around in the hall, talking about his sex life, spreading rumors about movie stars he had never met, and to hear him tell it, he had been propositioned by every man he ever said hello to. But the real reason she had no use for him was that he was a mean-spirited vicious little gossip who should not be in nursing. Boots had lost part of her right leg to cancer in 1987 and wore a false leg, and so when she overheard him calling her “The Goody One-Shoe old bitch” behind her back, it was not so funny to her. He had no idea how much she hurt each night from walking those halls all day, or how long and painful it had been to learn to walk again. He may not know it, but she had feelings. “I may be a nurse,” she thought, “but I’m a woman too!”
Welcome Home
8:48 PM
When Norma and Macky drove up to their house, they saw that Norma’s car was parked in the driveway, with a note on the windshield. Merle and Verbena had driven it over from Elner’s house for them. And when they went to the front door, there were six or seven notes that friends had taped to the door. All saying how happy they were Elner was alive. As she went in, Norma was exhausted, but there were so many messages asking about Elner on the answering machine, it had run out of tape. Norma was not surprised by any of this. Aunt Elner knew everybody and was the only person Norma knew who didn’t hide from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. After Norma had called everybody back and cleared the machine, she came into the den and sat down by Macky. “Linda called, she got home all right and said they were going to get a cat tomorrow.”
He nodded. “That’s good.”
After a while she looked over and said, “Did I mention that she said she walked through a button?”
“No. What kind of button?” he asked.
“A big mother-of-pearl button with a door in it.”
Macky roared with laughter.
“Well, you can laugh all you want, Macky, but thank heave
ns I got to Mr. Pixton in time about the deposition. They could have carted her off and we would never have seen her again!”
“Norma, if anybody gets carted off, it will be you for believing such a thing.”
Norma looked at him with alarm. “I’m not saying I believe it, Macky, I said she believes it, and you’re right, I’m so tired I don’t know what I’m thinking…. I swear, if one more thing happens—”
There was a knock on the door. “Who in the world is that?” she said. When Norma opened the door, Ruby Robinson stood there with a gun in her hand and announced, “I tried to call, but your line was busy. I found this in the bottom of Elner’s dirty-clothes basket and I didn’t know if you’d want me to put it back or not.”
Norma thought about fainting again but was just too tired.
“Oh, come on in, Ruby,” she said. “Macky will have to deal with this. I’ve got to go lie down before I fall down.”
When Macky came into the bedroom a little while later, Norma was lying flat on the bed with a cold rag on her head.
“What fresh hell now?” she moaned.
“Oh, it’s nothing, Norma. Ruby found it in Elner’s dirty-clothes basket and got all freaked out, that’s all.”
“Just tell me that was not a real gun. If it is, don’t even tell me. I can’t handle it.”
“No, it’s not a real gun,” said Macky, unbuttoning his shirt. “It’s just a little starter pistol, like they use at the stock car races. It probably belongs to Luther Griggs. I’m sure she was just keeping it for him. Just go on to sleep.”
“I don’t care if it’s fake or not, it obviously scared poor Ruby to death! Tell Luther to quit leaving stuff like that at her house; first that truck, and now a gun. She could have hurt herself with that thing.”
“No, she couldn’t. It only shoots blanks.”
“I don’t care what it shoots, it has no business being in her dirty-clothes basket. I swear, if it’s not one thing it’s another, you have to watch her twenty-four hours a day.”
