News from Heaven (10 page)

“She's not here, Sandy.” A pause that seemed endless. “She's in the hospital.”

A flutter in his chest, his heart skipping. “Oh, Jesus. Is she okay?”

“She's fine. A little tired.” Another pause. “She had the baby. Rebecca Rose. We have a little girl.”

It took Sandy a moment to find his voice. “That's great, Ed. Congratulations. That's—” His throat ached. “When?”

“This morning.”

Again something stirred inside him, a feeble creature no bigger than a moth. His soul fluttered blindly toward the power that made it, the only power he believed in.

He did the math.

His niece had been born on his birthday. The odds against it were staggering, a split bet times ten. Three hundred sixty-four to one.

For the second time that night, he stepped out of the phone booth. Outside the glass doors, wheels were spinning. Cards passed like water through dealers' hands. He heard a brash shower of metal, a jubilant whoop: one of the old babes had won at the slots. For just an instant his body was filled with it, a roiling storm of sound.

It was a feeling he'd remember forever, a rare and blinding flash of clarity as he crossed the carpet desert. The longest walk of his life, a journey he'd never made before and would not make again.

In midstream, the juice still flowing, he cashed in his chips and walked out the door.

F
lashes don't last, of course, and that one didn't. After his Jesus year had come and gone, after Marnie went back to Canada and Myron Gold was looking for him and it wasn't safe for Vera to take his calls, he would remember his one moment of grace. The wallet swollen in his pocket, a feeling nearly sexual, as he crossed the street to Western Union and wired fourteen hundred dollars, the sum total of his earthly wealth, to Rebecca Rose Hauser, the mathematical miracle. The baby girl who shared his birthday.

Welcome to the world.

To the Stars

S
axon County has an airport. Joyce Hauser has lived here her whole life and never knew. Though
airport
is perhaps too grand a term;
airfield
is more like it. There is a single bare strip for a plane to land, lit at either end by colored lights: red, amber, blue.

In the parking lot she cuts the engine. A small plane buzzes in the flat blue sky. Watching it, she thinks: Is that you? As though the plane were her brother himself and not merely carrying what's left of him. She imagines the view from above, the fall foliage peaking, a wash of color over the hills. Except for some scattered sumac, there are no red leaves, none of the brash sugar maples she and Ed saw years ago in New England, where they'd driven on their honeymoon. In western Pennsylvania the fall is pure gold.

She rolls down the window and sits a long time, listening to the quiet. The car is a wood-paneled station wagon, five months old, still smelling like its vinyl seats. It's the first time Joyce has driven it alone. Her son and daughter are three and seven, and always one child or the other must be delivered somewhere. Ed makes do with their old car, a Chevy Nova with rattling windows, prone to overheating. He doesn't mind the ribbing he gets at work, the principal rolling up to Bakerton High School in a rickety jalopy. It is Joyce who drives their son to his doctor's appointments, some as far away as Pittsburgh. She needs a dependable car.

She is startled when the hearse pulls in beside her and rolls down its window. “Mrs. Hauser?”

It takes her a moment to recognize Randy Bernardi, in his twenties now. Like all the Bernardis, he is handsome: curly hair, square shoulders, dark eyes full of mischief. He was her pupil several years ago at the high school. Like many adults in Bakerton, he can't seem to call her by her first name.

Joyce steps out of her car, and for a few minutes they discuss the weather. Randy, once a shy boy, has learned to make small talk. In his profession, she imagines, it is a necessary skill. The Bernardis are the town undertakers—Randy's father and grandfather, his many uncles.

“It's quiet here,” says Joyce. “Is it always this quiet?”

The airport is used mainly by the National Guard, he explains. To get a commercial flight, you'd have to drive to Pittsburgh, three hours south and west. Occasionally a crop duster lands here, or a cargo plane.

“Cargo,” Joyce repeats, as if coaxing a reluctant pupil. She is conscious of prolonging their conversation. As long as she is standing in the parking lot with Randy, the next thing will not happen. She will not see the box brought all the way from California, her brother packed inside.

Cargo.

Randy shrugs. “Most everything is shipped by truck these days. Unless it's, you know, urgent.”

Joyce nods. She can think of many things Saxon County needs urgently: decent jobs, better roads. Coal operators responsible enough to backfill the land ruined by strip-mining, the sooty moonscapes left behind. None of this is likely to be delivered by cargo plane, from points far away.

“Thank you for doing this,” she says. “On a Sunday morning, yet.” It doesn't sound quite right, though she means it; she is grateful for his presence. Nothing in her life has prepared her for this day. Randy, though young, is a Bernardi and will know what to do.

“I haven't been out here in a couple years. For a while I was coming all the time. Soldiers,” he explains.

He leads her across the parking lot to the terminal. He seems to sense her resistance; his hand hovers at her lower back. The building is quiet inside, a single large room, sun-filled. The plate glass windows are streaked in the morning glare.

“Wait here, Mrs. Hauser.” Randy lopes across the floor to confer with a stooped man behind a counter. A moment later he returns. “They landed early. This way.” Again he presses her lower back. His presence is reassuring, calm and practiced. She wonders how many women he has guided through this airport—mothers of fallen soldiers, boys his own age back from Vietnam.

She follows him through a swinging door, through an empty back room smelling of diesel. Through an open hatch, they walk out onto the tarmac. A small plane sits with its engine idling, propellers quivering. A uniformed pilot stands smoking with a man in coveralls, who spots them first. He shades his eyes. “Randy, man, is that you?”

“Yeah. I'm parked out front.”

“Well, come on around. You can help me unload him.”

Joyce hugs her arms around her. The mornings are cold now. Fooled by the bright sunshine, she left her coat in the car.

The man in coveralls turns to her. “What about the passenger?”

Joyce stares at him dumbly.

“You're the family, right?”

She nods.

“There's a lady on board. I'll go get her.”

He climbs the stairs into the plane and comes back carrying a Pullman suitcase. Behind him is a woman in dark glasses and a long pink coat. Her red hair blows in the breeze.

“You must be Joyce.” She offers a clawlike hand, bony, heavy with jewelry. “We spoke on the phone. I'm Vera Gold.”

S
andy Novak died on the second of October, the day before his fortieth birthday. This is the fact of the matter, the only one the family knows for certain. He left them so long ago, went so far away. For years he told them little about his life, and not everything he said was true. After high school he worked on an assembly line in Cleveland; later he sold cars and cleaning products and sets of encyclopedias. He was a fry cook, a bartender, a blackjack dealer, a limousine driver. He spoke of meeting famous people: the governor of Nevada, a boxing champion, the actress Annette Funicello. Once he drove the daughter of Frank Sinatra. On several occasions he was chauffeur to the stars.

For twenty years he followed a jagged path westward: Cleveland, Chicago, Las Vegas, Los Angeles. He occupies a full page in Joyce's address book, the entries crossed out every few months and replaced with new ones. That his journey ended in California—a place that had fascinated him since childhood—seems somehow correct, as though he planned it that way all along.

His final address was a basement apartment in a low stucco building in North Hollywood. Joyce has never seen it herself. Her older brother, George, in Los Angeles on business, once visited him there. When George rang the bell at noon, Sandy was still asleep. He answered the door groggy, in undershorts. George hadn't called ahead, couldn't have if he'd wanted to. Sandy rarely had a working phone.

It wasn't much of a place, George told Joyce later: a single room with an electric hot plate, a mini refrigerator, a Murphy bed. Sandy shared a bathroom with the tenant next door.

“Is he eating properly?” Joyce asked. “Where does he do his laundry?”

She could tell by George's face that he hadn't considered such questions.

“Never mind,” she said. “How did he look?”

“Like Sandy,” George said. “Like a million bucks.”

T
he men slide the box into the rear of the hearse. Joyce and Vera Gold watch in silence. The box resembles a shipping crate, long and narrow. Stamped at one end are the words
Stern Brothers Mortuary, North Hollywood, California.
He's in there, Joyce thinks, but it seems implausible. At Bernardi's his body will be transferred to a different box, the handsome coffin she chose from a catalog.

Randy leads the women to the terminal, carrying Vera's suitcase. “I guess that's it,” he says, pressing Joyce's hand. “We'll see you tomorrow, Mrs. Hauser.” The autopsy, the flight from California, have left no time for a wake. The funeral Mass will be held Monday morning, Sandy's body rushed into the ground.

“I'm parked out front,” Joyce tells Vera, and for the first time she thinks of the ride ahead, an hour in the car with this strange woman, delivered to them along with Sandy's remains.

At first they ride in silence. Vera stares out the passenger window, her hand over her mouth. Her long red hair is dyed. She fills the car with a spicy perfume. She is older than Joyce. How much older is hard to say.

Do you know a person named Sandy Novak?
she asked when Joyce answered the phone yesterday morning.
I found this number in his wallet.

Joyce, stunned, could barely formulate the questions.

Friday, they think. He was lying there awhile.

Sleeping pills. They found an empty bottle.

Yes, honey. I'm sure.

Only now does Joyce wonder: How did you know my brother? For God's sake, why did you come?

As if sensing these questions, Vera turns to her. “Sandy told me so much about you.”

Joyce thinks, He told us nothing about you.

“We were great friends.” Vera smiles wanly. “When he first came to L.A., he worked for my husband. We owned a diner. I'm a widow.”

Joyce takes a moment to ponder this. She dimly recalls Sandy working in a restaurant several jobs ago.

They take the back road through Kinport, through Fallentree. The sun is nearly blinding. A gentle breeze blows; the golden leaves shimmer in the clear morning light. When they make the turn onto Deer Run, Vera removes her sunglasses. Her eyelids are red and swollen, smeared with makeup. “What's that?” she asks, pointing.

“A coal mine. It's closed now. There was an accident years ago.”

Vera studies it, shading her eyes with her hand. “Sandy told me about the mines. His father worked there.”

“Yes.”

Vera roots through her purse for a handkerchief and dabs carefully at her eyes. “It's beautiful here,” she says softly. “I didn't picture it this way at all.”

F
inally they arrive at the house. Joyce feels an overpowering urge to warn Vera—
my sister's housekeeping isn't what it used to be
—but resists the impulse. If she'd known a visitor was coming, she'd have persuaded Dorothy to redd up.

“Here we are,” Joyce says. Like all others on this street, it is a company house: three rooms upstairs, three rooms down. The family bought it years ago from Baker Brothers. Dorothy, who never married, lives here alone.

Vera stares in wonderment, as though the mean little house were a historic monument. “Polish Hill. I've always wanted to see it.” Her lips tremble with emotion.

Why, she loved him, Joyce thinks.

She parks and engages the brake. A moment later Dorothy appears on the front porch. Her sister's face is as familiar as her own, but now Joyce sees her as a stranger might: the pilling cardigan, the ankle socks and stained housedress, her graying hair pulled back into a messy ponytail. The sweater, once white, is grimy at the cuffs. Oh, Dorothy, Joyce thinks, hot with shame.

“I thought you were Georgie,” Dorothy calls. “He should be here any minute.”

When Vera steps out of the car, Dorothy's eyes widen. She has never been comfortable with strangers.

Joyce climbs the porch steps, which are a little rickety. The shabbiness of the house is suddenly overwhelming, its flaws exposed. “This is Vera Gold,” she says. And then, for lack of a better explanation: “Sandy's friend.”

At that moment a car climbs the hill, a newish Cadillac scattering gravel.

“There's Georgie,” Dorothy says with audible relief.

“Our older brother,” Joyce explains.

Dorothy squints into the distance. “He's alone. I can't believe it. I thought for sure she'd come.” George has been divorced for two years, but Dorothy, ever romantic, holds out hope. In Joyce's view, it's a subject best avoided. To most of Bakerton, divorce is still a rarity. To Joyce, herself: her brother is, in point of fact, the first divorced person she has ever known.

He parks and steps out of the car, a handsome man of fifty with a full head of gray hair. To Joyce, he looks well groomed and prosperous in his stylish trench coat.

Dorothy clatters down the porch steps to embrace him. “Georgie! You made it.” It seems excessive, a hero's welcome, as though driving across Pennsylvania were some epic feat. But this brother is hers, her idol since childhood. He belongs to Dorothy the way Sandy had belonged to Joyce.

Arm in arm, they climb the stairs. “Whoa, careful,” says George. “These boards are a little loose.”

Joyce accepts his kiss on her cheek, struck, as always, by his resemblance to their father. She makes what is now the standard introduction: Vera Gold. Sandy's friend.

Inside, the radio is playing. The local AM station broadcasts a weekly Mass for Shut-ins. Dorothy, who is not a shut-in, listens anyway, though she's already been to Mass at St. Casimir's. Joyce ducks into the parlor and unplugs the radio. The dials are long missing, and this is the only way to turn it off.

Dorothy follows her. “Where is she going to sleep?” she whispers.

“Don't look at me. You're the one with all the empty bedrooms. She can have my old room, I guess. Or Sandy's.” Joyce wonders, but does not ask, the last time Dorothy dusted or changed the sheets.

The kitchen is sunny and very warm, the refrigerator packed already with covered dishes. After Sandy's obituary appeared in the paper, an army of neighbor women showed up with casseroles. Joyce puts on a pot of coffee, wiping the counter as she goes. It isn't easy to do, with all the clutter. Near the sink are rows of clean empty jars—mustard, jelly, pickles—Dorothy has set out to dry. Eventually they will join the hundred others in boxes in the basement—for what purpose, Joyce couldn't possibly say.

George and Vera sit at the big Formica table. “We're still in shock,” he tells her. “You can imagine.”

“Of course.” Vera's voice is low and gravelly, a smoker's voice.

“He came back three years ago for my son's wedding. Before that it was ten years, at least.”

Cups are passed, the sugar bowl, the can of evaporated milk. George and Dorothy drink their coffee light and sweet. Joyce and Vera take it black. Brown, really: the family brew is Maxwell House boiled in a percolator, so weak Joyce can see the flowered pattern at the bottom of the cup.