Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [116]
Winston did not tell her about finding the shoe, the event that had changed him, but a few days later, after his yoga class, he drove across town to the trophy shop and walked in with a brown paper bag under his arm and said to the man behind the counter, “I’d like to have something bronzed, do you bronze shoes?”
“Yes,” the man said. “We do baby shoes.”
Winston opened the bag, pulled out the golf shoe, and put it on the counter. “Can you do this?”
The man looked at it. “This? You want this bronzed? Just one shoe?”
“That’s right, can you do it?”
“Well, I guess so, do you want a plaque on it or anything?”
Winston thought for a moment. “Yes. Just put ‘The Shoe on the Roof.’”
“The shoe on the roof?”
“Yes,” he said with a smile. “It’s sort of an inside joke.”
But Winston’s was not the only romance that resulted in marriage. On June 22 at the Unity Church in Elmwood Springs, Reverend Susie Hill pronounced Dr. Brian Lang and Linda Warren man and wife. And although Verbena Wheeler swore she would never set foot in one of those “new age do-it-yourself” churches, she did.
But best of all, Linda Warren’s corporate community project, Adopt a Cat Month, had been so successful that the idea had spread to other corporations, and thousands of cats all across the country were being taken home every day, and they didn’t even know it was all because Elner Shimfissle fell out of her fig tree one April morning.
Another Easter
8:28 AM
As for Norma, her attention to detail served her well, and soon Cortwright Realty became Cortwright-Warren Realty and she was very happy about that. But as far as the other part of her life, sadly she never did receive a sign, a wonder, or a miracle, and she had pretty much given up even looking for one, until another Easter four years later.
Norma was out at the cemetery leaving the lilies on her parents’ graves like she always did, trying not to let the plastic flowers that were now on almost every grave make her insane. But as she was leaving, she happened to walk by the old Smith plot on the south side of the cemetery where Neighbor Dorothy was buried, and for some unknown reason she stopped and read the two names on the large tombstone in the middle and was stunned when she saw what was written.
DOROTHY ANNE SMITH
Beloved Mother
1894–1976
ROBERT RAYMOND SMITH
Beloved Father
1892–1977
Norma’s mouth flew open. Raymond? She never knew Neighbor Dorothy’s husband was named Raymond! Suddenly that tiny little flicker of hope that had almost burned out started up again, and she smiled and stood there looking up at the blue sky. And it was such a pretty day too.
The following Sunday, also for some unknown reason, Macky got up and said to Norma, “I think I’ll go to church with you today and see what it’s all about.” Norma didn’t know what had brought this on, but she was so glad he picked that day to go, because the text of Susie’s sermon that Sunday was:
There Lives More Faith in Honest Doubt, Believe Me, Than Half the Creeds.
—ALFRED, LORD TENNYSON
And everyone said it was the best one she had ever given.
Gone Native!
Macky going to church was a surprise, but perhaps the most surprising event took place in May of the following spring.
Verbena picked up the phone and called Ruby.
“You will not believe what has happened to poor Tot.”
“Oh Lord, what now?” said Ruby, sitting down to hear the bad news.
“I just heard from her…hold on to your hat…Tot has gone native!”
“What?”
“Gone completely native overnight! She says she doesn’t know how or what happened to her, but the minute she hit Waikiki and got to her hotel room, she threw off her clothes, underwear and all, put on a muumuu, stuck a flower behind her ear, and says to tell everybody good-bye, that she’s never coming home.”
“What? She’s a white person, she can’t just go native!”
“She said that’s what she always thought, and