Cannot Wait to Get to Heaven - Fannie Flagg [56]
“I do.”
Elner said, “By the way, I was surprised to hear that Ernest came up in a Cadillac.”
“We like to make the trip as pleasant as possible. Your sister came up on the Queen Elizabeth, in a first-class cabin.”
“Of course,” said Elner, laughing. “I’ll bet Macky will come up in that motorboat he just loves to fish in.”
“Maybe so,” she said, pouring Elner more coffee. “Raymond and I say whatever you want, you get, and everybody is different, some people like sailboats, some prefer private jets. We had a couple come in last week on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle.”
“Why did I get to come up in that elevator that went every which a way?”
“We know you loved to ride the Loop de Loop at the fair.”
Elner laughed. “That’s true. I tell you, Dorothy, you and Raymond certainly go out of your way to make dying a real nice experience.”
“We try.”
“Shoot, if more people knew how pleasant it was up here, they would be dropping like flies.”
Dorothy laughed. “Well, we don’t want people to come up before they are ready, but it’s certainly nothing to be afraid of.”
“No. It certainly isn’t.”
Then Dorothy pointed over to where bright deep purple wisteria and snow white baby roses were cascading over the side fence. “Look. It’s so pretty this time of year, isn’t it?”
“It is, especially here, I feel like I’m sitting in a picture inside a magazine,” said Elner as she started on her second piece of cake. After she took the first bite, she looked over and remarked, “Dorothy, I swear I haven’t had good homemade cake like this since you died. I don’t know how you get it to turn out so light and fluffy, mine are never near this good.”
“Do you still have the recipe I gave out over the radio?”
“Yes, it’s in your cookbook, and I follow it to a T, but it never turns out like yours.”
“Next time, try preheating the oven to three seventy-five, it could be your oven is not as hot as it should be, that happens sometimes.”
“I will, and thanks for the tip.” Elner looked over at her. “And by the way, I just loved meeting Raymond, he seems like a really nice person.”
“Oh, he is,” said Dorothy, pouring herself another cup of coffee. “He is the sweetest thing and he cares so much.”
“That’s the impression I got.”
“It just breaks his heart when people don’t get along.”
“I can imagine it would.”
“Raymond thinks it’s all the radicals and fanatics that cause most of the trouble. He says they take themselves far too seriously, get themselves and everybody else all worked up in a frenzy.”
“He could be right, Dorothy. Come to think of it, your average fanatic doesn’t seem to have much of a sense of humor, does he?”
“No,” she said, “not a laugh in the bunch, I’m afraid. And you can’t be happy and in a rage at the same time.”
“No, you sure can’t.”
“But I am beginning to suspect that it could be something else as well.”
Dorothy glanced over at the front door to make sure Raymond wasn’t coming out, and whispered, “I wonder if Raymond made a slight mistake with the hormone mix; gave the men a little too much testosterone? Think about it, Elner…it’s the men who start most of the wars. Not us.”
“That’s a good point,” Elner said, taking another bite of her cake.
Dorothy sighed. “But bless his heart, he did the best he could, and thank heavens, he let me help, because everything he had done—the oceans, the trees, everything—was a muddy gray.”
“You don’t mean it?”
Dorothy nodded. “I do, he’s as color-blind as they come; to this day, I have to pick out his socks or else he winds up with one blue one and one brown one.”
“I’m glad you caught it in time,” said Elner. “It sure would have been a dull old