Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [26]
“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.”
“Oh Lord,” thought Elner, “Here she goes again, dead twenty-two years and still putting on airs.” She had been at least seventy and died from leukemia, but Ida always had to have something one step up from everybody else. She had been that way her whole life. Their daddy had been nothing but a plain old farmer, but to hear her tell it he had been a baron with personal ties to the Hapsburgs and with ancestral lands deeded to the family. After Ida married Herbert Jenkins, she only got worse. From time to time Elner had been forced to remind her where she had come from, but Elner figured that there was no point to saying anything to her now, not at this late date. If she hadn’t changed by now, she was never going to change.
Ida rattled around in the drawer and finally found the key she was looking for.
“Here it is,” she said. She stood up and went over and began unlocking the big double doors behind her. Finally she got it unlocked, and turned to Elner. “Come on, let’s go.” Elner got up and went over, ready to follow her, but then stopped in her tracks. “Hold on a minute, this is the good place, isn’t it? I’m not headed to the bad place, am I?”
Ida said, “Of course not.”
Elner was relieved to hear it. But then on second thought, she figured if Ida had made it, then everybody must have a pretty good chance. But she still had one more question.
“What’s going to happen when I get inside?”
Ida turned and looked at her like Elner was crazy. “What do you think is going to happen, Elner? You’re going to meet your Maker. That’s where I’m taking you, silly, to meet your Maker.”
“Oh,” said Elner. “And wouldn’t you know it, here I am in this old robe with the pockets falling off and not a stitch of lipstick on.”
“Now you know how I felt,” Ida sniffed.
“Yes…I see what you mean.”
“Are you ready?”
“I guess I am, or I wouldn’t be here, would I?”
“No, you wouldn’t, and now that you’re here, do you have many regrets?”
“Regrets?”
“Things you wished you had done, before it was too late?”
Elner thought for a second, then said, “Well, I never got to Dollywood…. I would have liked to have done that, but I did get to Disney World, so I guess I can’t complain too much. What about yourself?”
Ida sighed. “I wish I had spent some time in London, visited the palace gardens, maybe had high tea with the royals, but alas, it was not to be.”
And with that Ida threw open the doors with a flourish, stepped back, and said, “TA DA!”
Verbena Wheeler Spreads the News
11:25 AM
Down at the Blue Ribbon cleaners, after the call from her husband, Merle, Verbena was so upset that she started calling everyone she could think of to tell them Elner was dead. Her first call was to Cathy Calvert over at the newspaper office, but her line was busy. She knew that Elner’s friend Luther Griggs would want to know as