The Woman Who Married a Cloud: The Collected Short Stories (8 page)

However, when I arrived at my own front door again many hours later, my understanding of the world, of life, of death, of God ... was a quintillion miles away from what I had thought before. For this loud, sweet, dying woman had proved without question that what she had told me was true. As she said, I was a hard case and wanted proof even beyond Annette. Proof that transcended the transcendent. I cannot tell you what she did, but I can say she took me where I wanted to go, and showed me the impossible.

I wanted to see Melville and Hawthorne alive and in the flesh, wanted to hear their voices and the kind of words they used outside their books. I wanted to see Albert Pinkham Ryder at Christmas time, brewing up his own private brand of perfume and giving it away in little jars to children. I wanted to visit Montaigne in his tower, circa 1591, and look over his shoulder while he wrote, “Though we may mount on stilts, we must still walk on our own legs, and on the highest throne in the world we are still sitting only on our own bottom.” These were my heroes, the people I’d thought about my entire adult life. If Beenie was God, and time belongs to God, then she could clap once and give me these people for a moment. She did. She took me wherever I wanted to go, and affably said stay as long as you like. Funny thing was, I didn’t need or want to stay long. Only a few minutes to breathe their air, see how they held their pen or formed words with their lips. That was all I needed, and she gave it to me.

After that, when I was sure, I asked questions, but her answers were often unsatisfying.

“Why me?”

“Scott, I’d tell you if I knew. But I don’t, honest. It just happens. They tell you that—one day you’ll see your replacement, and you’ll
know.
I guess it’s sort of like love at first sight.”

“Beenie, you’re
God
! God knows everything. There’s nothing He doesn’t know.”

“Maybe when we’re all joined together, all thirty-six of us. But that never happens, so individually we got to struggle along with what we
do
know. You’re it, mister. You’re the one who’s gonna take my place.”

“Where do we go when we die?”

“Wherever you want. Some people stick around here; others take off.”

“Take off
where
?”

“I told you: wherever they want.”

“You’re not helping!”

“They’re vague questions. Remember in your class? ‘Be more
specific,
Silver!’ By the way, you know where you got that name? Your family’s real name is ‘Flink’, but when your greatgrandfather came here from Saarland, he didn’t think it sounded American, so he changed it to ‘Silver’. Jack Silver instead of Udo Flink.”

“Udo Flink? That’s the stupidest name I ever heard.”

“I guess your grandpa thought so, too. Do you want egg salad or corned beef?” From her left and right pockets, she took out sandwiches wrapped in plastic. “Roberta told me you liked my egg salad.”

“I do. Thank you. That would be nice.” She handed it to me, and I held it up. “An egg-salad sandwich from God.”

“At least that way you can be sure it’s fresh, eh?”

“Beenie, what am I supposed to do now? It’s an incredible compliment that you’ve chosen me, but ... what do you
do
when you’re ...?”

“Well, you’re not there yet, bug, so don’t start worrying about that. First you gotta pass the tests. I mean, you’re already over the first hurdle, which is getting
picked.
But now come the tests. Those’re the rules, and you’ve just gotta follow them.”

“What kind of tests? What kind of rules?”

“You want to know now? Don’t you want to finish your sandwich first?”

“Now.”

“OK.” She wiped her mouth with a paper napkin that had “Dairy Queen” printed across it. “First thing you gotta do—the first test, if you want to call it that—is work out your problem with Annette. A dead person can’t be angry. There’s a lot they’ve got to do on the other side, but so long as they’re still mad at something in life, it keeps them sidetracked. Know what I mean?”

“Why can’t
you
do something to take her anger away?”

“First of all, I wouldn’t know how; remember, I’m only a fraction of the whole, and my powers aren’t as great as you think. Second, you two’ve got to work it out yourselves. If I waved some kind of magic wand over her and did what you said, it wouldn’t solve her problems. It’d only be like a stopgap. A kid’s got to learn to tie its own shoes sooner or later.”

“What should I do to help her?”

“That’s part of your test. You have to figure her out and how to start patching things up. I can tell you, though, she’s not going to be much help. You’ve got yourself a hostile witness there, counsellor. She hates your guts.”

“So I gathered. Does she know about me? Obviously she knows about you, since you were the one who brought her back.”

“Yeah, she knows about me, but not about you. She thinks I brought her here so you could make peace. She doesn’t know it’s part of your test.”

“How do you hush the dead?”

She slapped my shoulder. “That’s a good question. You know what one of my tests was?”

“Beenie, these are the ultimate mysteries! They’re not recondite—they’re
impossible
to understand. How am I supposed to go about—”

“What does ‘recondite’ mean?”

“Difficult to understand.”

“Stop whining, man. Of course they’re hard to understand! You’re the scholar, the thinker. I’m just a stupid little woman from Kansas with kids who don’t like me. But I passed my tests. Sure, they were different from yours, but they weren’t any easier.”

“How can God have trouble with His children?”

“Hey, friend, did you ever read the Bible? A lot of
His
kids gave Him lip. From what I heard, Moses sat up on the mountain and argued forty days! Christ? ‘Why have You forsaken me?’ Some gratitude, huh? And
Job.
He wanted personal proof! He wanted us to drop everything, come down and show him, like we were demonstrating a vacuum cleaner!”

“I thought you said all thirty-six of you never got together.”

“Not any more. In the old days, but not now. It hasn’t been
necessary
until now. Don’t you see, Scott? That’s why man keeps wanting to be immortal. Not so he can live a million years, but because, deep in his blood, he knows God must be kept alive for every generation. God, who’s a part of every man because He’s made
up
of men. Thirty-six of them. From all cultures, all kinds of personalities and professions, men, women, kids ... The faces of God are always changing, because the separate pieces change. But at the end, there’s just Him, and He’s immortal so long as man wants to be. The fact that I have trouble with my daughter, or that I’m dying of cancer, doesn’t matter. It’s important to me, sure, but not to the big picture. Those’re some of my tests—making peace with my children, and learning how to die. Christ had to learn how to die, too.”

I made fists and shook them at the sky. “It’s too earthly! It’s supposed to be more majestic.”

Beenie said nothing while I raged, and after, when my futile hands opened and dropped slowly to my lap.

“Finish your lunch, Scott. I recondite it very highly.”

The snow had started again as we approached her house. I would much rather have stayed outside and watched it fall than go in and talk to Annette.

“What am I supposed to say?”

“Play it by ear. See how she acts.”

Beenie opened the front door and waved me in. It smelled nice inside. An aroma of woodsmoke and soap. Brushing the top of her head vigorously to get the snow off, she called, “Annette?”

No answer.

“Annette, come on out here, will you?”

When nothing happened, she scratched her nose and went looking. No Annette.

“Nowhere! That little skunk. Where’d she go?”

“Maybe she doesn’t want to see me.” I hoped my relief wasn’t too obvious.

“I guess not. Well, that isn’t your problem. I’ll find her and get you two together. You want a hot toddy or something? Another sandwich?”

“No, thank you. I need to go and sit alone awhile. There’s too much to think about.”

“I’ll say!” She opened the door and walked me out to the car. “Say, what’s that inside there? Is it Annette?”

“I don’t know.”

There was something propped in the passenger’s seat. At first, I, too, thought it was the girl, because it was so large. Getting closer, I could almost—“Nisco?! Great God in Heaven, it
is
! It’s Nisco!”

“What?” Beenie came up next to me and bent over to look through the windshield. “What’s Nisco? It’s a stuffed animal. Look how big it is! Must have cost you a fortune. Did you buy it for one of your grandchildren? Hey, what’s the matter?”

“It’s the
Nisco.
I can’t believe it! I haven’t thought of that—” I couldn’t finish the sentence. My jaw worked up and down a couple of times, but didn’t have the
oomph
to do anything else.

“Hey, what’s up? What is that thing?”

I turned to Beenie and looked at her with, I’m sure, very stunned eyes. “It’s the Nisco.”

“You keep saying that. Looks like a stuffed animal to me.”

“It is. When I was a boy, the only bad dreams I ever had were of that wolf. See the X’s where the eyes should be? I once went to the movies and saw a cartoon with him in it. He was the bad guy. The tilted hat, big mouth, fangs. He was chasing the Three Little Pigs. That night and for months afterwards, I dreamed he was chasing me. Holding a knife and fork and always drooling, he was going to carve me up. I was so scared. I used to wake up screaming. My parents’d run in, thinking someone was murdering me—”

“Why’d you call him Nisco?”

“I don’t know. He was always that. Not Big Bad Wolf, just Nisco. The only thing that really frightened me when I was young.

“Annette put it there, didn’t she? No one else in the world knew about him.”

“Yes, she probably did. That’s why she’s not around. Left her calling card, but I don’t know
what
she’s trying to tell you. What’re you going to do with it?”

I thought of that petrified little boy jerking awake in the middle of many nights, heart banging, panting—escaping, but only just. The sound of
him
behind me running, running so fast, rubbing his knife and fork together, ssslick-ssslick-ssslick, inches away, screaming, “I’m going to EAT you!” Laughing that terrifying, stupid cartoon laugh. No Devil from Hell can scare us more than childhood demons, cartoon wolves or not. Our soft spots are so much larger then. We have no armour.

“Huh! You want to keep it?”

“No! Can I throw it out here?”

“It’s not necessary.” She put her hand on the windshield over the passenger’s side. The Nisco faded and slowly began to disappear. Then, at the last moment, when it was mostly shimmer and dark blur, there was a loud BLAP!, and the inside of the windshield splattered with blood.

I didn’t hear from either of them for three days. I tried to go about my life in as normal a fashion as possible, but that was absurd. God and Death and Sanity had all walked into my house and sat down at the table. They wanted to talk; they had plans for me. Was I supposed to pretend it wasn’t them, and listen as if theirs were only another business proposition?

How would I handle Annette? What other tests would I have to face if I were able to resolve the conflict with her? What happened to you after you “passed”? Did angels come down and take you on a tour of the heavens?
Were
there angels? I had to remember to ask Beenie: do angels exist?

Can you imagine having someone in your life who could answer that question conclusively?

I remained nervous and alert. I taught well, really singing out the questions and answers in my classes, keeping the students up on their toes. One girl stopped me in the hall and asked why I was in such a good mood. I laughed like a hyena. Good mood? Oh my dear, if only you knew.

Norah called one night to say she had broken up with the cartoonist and was going out with an airline pilot now. My daughter’s fickleness and vague promiscuity had been a real thorn in my side for years, and we’d had more than one squabble about it and about her whole lifestyle. But this time, we talked seriously and illuminatingly about why she’d decided to make the change. At the end of the conversation, there was a comfortable silence, then she said, “Thank you, Dad.”

“For what?”

“Taking me seriously.”

“Darling, I’ve taken you seriously since you were a girl.”

“No, you’ve often treated me like I was a student you thought was going to be great, but ended up disappointing you.”

“Norah!”

“It’s true, Dad, but listen to me.
Hear
what I’m saying. This conversation was special; it was really different. It’s the first time in I-can’t-remember-when that I felt you were listening and were actually interested. You don’t have to approve of me, Dad. I’m not asking for that any more. I want only for you to love me and hear about my life.”

When we’d hung up, I went to find Roberta, who had been listening in on another extension. “Was what she said true? Have I been such a lousy father all these years?”

“Not lousy, Scott, but tough and often removed. You were very hard on the girls for years. We’ve talked about this before. Gerald was born when Norah was twelve, remember. I’m sure that’s what she was referring to.”

Our three children—Norah, Freya, and Gerald. Norah illustrates medical textbooks and lives in Los Angeles. Freya is married with two children and lives in Chicago. Gerald is severely retarded and is institutionalized. We tried for years to keep him home with us, but if you know about care for the severely retarded, you know it is virtually impossible to live any kind of normal life around someone with this handicap. They are black holes of need for help and love. No matter what you give them, it is never enough or correct. You can ask for nothing in return, because they have nothing. Sure, you pray for them to show some sign of recognition or normal behaviour. Just once. Just a flash of what in your greatest hopes might happen some magical day: they smile when you kiss them rather than scream as if they’ve been wounded. Or pick up a spoon and dip it in the soup instead of hitting themselves in the face with it or gouging at their eyes. Unknowingly, they take everything you have. When you are exhausted and resentful, guilt taps you on the shoulder and knocks you down another way. It is a terrible lesson and burden. I would not wish it on my worst enemy.