Can't Wait to Get to Heaven

Eating Cake

A little while later, when Dorothy and Elner were outside on the front porch having their coffee and cake, Elner sat looking out, amazed at the sight before her. While she had been inside talking to Ernest, the sky had turned an exquisite shade of aqua, a color Elner had never seen before in her life, and the entire front yard was filled with flocks of beautiful pink flamingos. Large blue swans with bright yellow eyes swam around in a pond that wound all around the house, while hundreds of tiny multicolored birds flew overhead. Elner said, “Don’t you just love birds?”

“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 place if we hadn’t had any color.”

“Thank you, but you know, Elner,” she said thoughtfully, “speaking of color, I wonder if I didn’t make a mistake.”

“How so, honey?”

“With people? I wonder if I shouldn’t have made them all one color? I had no idea it would cause so much trouble, and I just feel terrible about it.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t worry too much about that, Dorothy, things are changing in that department. My niece Linda just adopted a Chinese baby and she’s a real pretty color, everybody says so.”

“Well, I’d like to think it’s getting better, and I must say, even with all the problems, Raymond is very optimistic about the future.”

“I know he is, and after talking to him, I feel a whole lot better,” said Elner. “And I felt pretty good before.”

Just then Raymond came out onto the porch and pointed to his watch. “Ladies, I hate to break this up, but Elner has to get on back.”

Dorothy looked at her watch. “Oh, dear. I was having such a good time, I’ve kept you far too long.”

Elner was totally surprised. “Am I not staying?”

“No,” said Raymond, “as much as we would love to keep you, unfortunately, we have to send you back home.”

“You mean, I’m not going to get to see Will?”

“No, honey, not this time,” said Dorothy.

Elner slowly put her coffee cup down on the table. “Well…I’m very disappointed, of course. I sure wanted to see Will. But mine is not to question, I guess. Anyhow, it was sure nice being with you again, Dorothy, and visiting with you, Raymond.”

“Wonderful to see you too, dear,” he said.

Dorothy wrapped a piece of cake in a napkin. “Here, honey, take this with you.”

Elner said, “Are you sure you don’t want it for later?”

“No, you take it, I have half a cake left in the kitchen that we’ll probably never finish.”

“All right, then,” she said, standing up and putting the cake into her pocket. “You know I’ll enjoy it.” She looked at both of them. “Is there anything I can do for you? Any messages you want me to take back?”

Raymond thought for a second, then said, “You could tell them that things are not really as bad as they seem, more people are getting educated every day, more women are voting, new technology is coming, new medical discoveries—”

“Wait a minute, hold it, Raymond,” said Elner, looking around for a pencil. “Shouldn’t I be writing all this down?”

“No, that’s all right,” he said. “Just tell them we love them, we’re pulling for them, and to hang in there, because good things are just around the corner. Anything else, Dorothy?”

Dorothy said, “You might want to remind them that life is what they make it, to smile, and the world is sunny, and it’s up to them.”

“All right,” said Elner, trying to remember it all. “Good things are coming, and life is what you make it, anything else?”

Dorothy looked over at Raymond, and he shook his head. “No, I think that’s basically it.” Suddenly Elner felt her robe filling up with warm air and expanding all around her; then she slowly began to rise up off the floor and gently float off the porch, on out into the yard like a big hot air balloon. As she rose higher in the air, she looked down to see Raymond and Dorothy standing in the yard surrounded by pink flamingos, and blue swans, who were all smiling and waving good-bye to her. “Good-bye, Elner!” they said. “Well, bye-bye…thanks for the cake,” she called back, as she floated higher and higher right over the top of the Elmwood Springs water tank and on over toward Kansas City.