Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [100]
Louise Franks laughed and said, “Elner, you say that every year.”
Elner said, “Well, then it must be true.”
Susie, the Weight Watchers leader, helped herself to a second helping of the sweet potatoes with the marshmallows on top, and added, “Everything here is delicious.”
Elner looked at the assortment of pies and cakes at the end of the table and said, “I can’t wait to hit the coconut cake and that lemon icebox pie, can you?”
“No,” confessed Susie, “me either.”
The next morning when Linda came to pick up Apple, who had spent Easter night with Elner, Sonny the cat was hiding under the couch, and couldn’t wait until she left. He was tired of being picked up and almost squeezed to death by the little girl. It wasn’t until they were on the plane flying home that Linda noticed something on her daughter’s hand. “What is that on your thumb?”
Apple proudly held it up. “Aunt Elner took my fingerprint. Did you know that nobody in the whole world has one just like it?”
Falling in Love Again
5:48 PM
Aunt Elner’s near-death experience had a profound and unexpected effect on Macky. Almost losing one person you love shines a bright spotlight on life, and suddenly strips you of everything but your real feelings. And after the close call with Aunt Elner, for the first time, Macky saw the true facts as clearly as if a fog had suddenly been lifted. He realized that what he had felt for Lois had never been real love. Not the deep-down-in-your-bones-and-marrow love he had for Norma. Lois had been an infatuation, an ego boost, a last grab at youth fantasy. Over the years Norma had become so much a part of him that he had almost forgotten that she was his whole life. What the hell had he been thinking, for one second to even seriously entertain the idea of going off with a stranger? He had come so dangerously close to wrecking his life. Some great act of fortune or luck or something had saved him. That afternoon Norma walked in the door, exactly as she had a thousand times, but this time he really saw her and she was as beautiful to him as she had been at eighteen.
“What are you looking at, Macky?” she said as she put the mail down on the hall table. “Are you sick?”
“No,” he said. “Have I told you lately that I adore you?”
She put her purse down. “What?”
“Did you know that you are more beautiful than you ever were?”
“Me?”
“Yes, you.”
Norma looked at herself in the mirror. “Me? How could you think that, with my gray roots and wrinkles and old tired saggy body, and now these red things on my nose? I’ve just fallen into a heap.”
“Maybe so, but you’re my heap, and you don’t look old to me.”
Norma said, “Well, don’t ever get your glasses changed, because you are obviously losing your eyesight, because I look just like the wreck of the hespers.”
He laughed. “What are hespers?”
“I don’t know, but that’s what I look like.”
“Well, you look like a million bucks to me, and I just want you to know that you are and always will be the only girl for me.”
She walked over and put her hand to his forehead. “Macky, you’re not sick are you? Is something wrong and you’re not telling me?”
“No.”
“Have you been to Dr. Halling behind my back?”
“No, I’ve never felt better in my life. How about we pretend it’s Sunday?”
“Sunday? Why…” Then it dawned on her what he meant. “Oh, for heaven’s sake, Macky, it’s only Tuesday.” And she looked