Continued, Life A Love Story
Flo wakes in deepest darkness. No moon. And she feels afraid.
She sits up and turns on the bedside light, pushes a pillow behind her, and begins rocking quickly back and forth, back and forth, something she hasn’t done for the longest time.
Arms crossed and holding on to each other, her eyes squeezed shut.
She can feel her heart racing and it occurs to her to call her doctor.
But that wouldn’t be fair. It’s the middle of the night and he wouldn’t be able to do anything; it was only a bad dream.
A terrible, terrible dream about the devil.
She had gone to hell and here came the devil striding up to her, and he was red, with horns and cloven hoofs and a tail just like in the pictures, and he was walking all bow-legged up to her.
He had a thin-lipped grin on his face that was terrifying, and behind him were high fires burning and black smoke rising and the poor souls crying out.
“Florence Greene?” he said, in a mocking voice that chilled her bones, and her throat wouldn’t work to answer. She tried, but she felt paralyzed, and here he came closer and closer.
Now she is awake, breathing fast, and her frilly nightside lamp isn’t doing much to help.
She starts to sing her favorite hymn, “Do Not Be Afraid,” but stops.
It’s no good, her trembly old voice against the shadows in the corners of the room.
She thinks of Terrence and how he never did believe in hell or heaven.
He always said that it was plain conceited for people to think they went on after they died.
Flo would bristle every time, because she wanted there to be a heaven.
“What would we even do there?” Terrence asked her once.
And Flo said, “What do you mean? We would be in heaven!” “Yes,” he said, “but what would we do?” Flo said she guessed that for one thing they would visit with everyone up there, all the people they’d been missing so hard—there they would be.
And maybe they would look down on Earth, too.
They could watch what was happening there.
Anywhere they wanted to watch, they could.
She did not add that she imagined them sitting on the edge of a turquoise and pink cloud, holding hands and swinging their legs.
“Would we eat in heaven?” Terrence asked.
“Well, I spect so,” Flo said.
“What would we eat?” he asked, and Flo knew he was kind of funning with her, but she went right along and said they would eat whatever they wanted. “Hm,” said Terrence. “So we snap our fingers and here comes some fried chicken with buttermilk biscuits floating right over to us?”
Flo got impatient with him then and said, “You can make fun of me all you want, Terrence, but I got to believe in heaven.”
“Why?” he asked. And Flo said, “Because it’s our reward. Don’t we suffer in this world? Don’t some of us suffer so bad? It’s our reward! And I also have to believe because if I lose you, why, in heaven I’ll see you again.”
He’d had a toothpick in his mouth that day, Flo remembers; they were sitting out on the porch on a lovely summer evening after a real good dinner of barbecued ribs, and he had a toothpick in his mouth, and he took it out to say serious to her, “All right, Flo, if you believe in heaven, that’s okay with me.
I won’t make fun of it ever again. Do you believe in hell, too? ”
She told him, “Yes I surely do and I hope I don’t go there. You never know. You might think you’re a good person and then on Judgment Day you find out something different. I’m sore afraid of the devil. I am afraid of even thinking of him.”
“Put him in diapers,” Terrence said.
Flo said, “What?”
Terrence said, “Whenever you think of the devil, imagine him in diapers.”
Flo did that right on the spot; she conjured an image of the devil, and wasn’t he wearing an old cotton diaper with great big safety pins on either side, and if you thought about it, those safety pins would be right hot.
But Satan looked ridiculous, all his fury and hatred reduced by a saggy diaper.
And so that’s what Flo does now: she thinks of the devil in his diaper, and she starts to laugh and she isn’t afraid anymore and she whispers, “Terrence,” and reaches out to his side and caresses his pillow. And all inside her it goes calm and quiet.
Then she remembers something. She turns on the bedside lamp and gets up and goes downstairs to find her little sewing basket that she keeps under the side table—Ruthie used to like to play with that basket; she lined up spools of thread and called them her soldiers.
Flo finds the big safety pin in there so that if ever she fears the devil again, it will remind her of what to do.
When she starts to come back upstairs, something peculiar happens.
She can’t move her legs to climb. But finally she makes her way up and is glad no one sees her practically crawling up the stairs.
Why, she is embarrassed in front of her own self.
But the safety pin is now in her nightstand drawer. She’ll have to tell Ruthie about it, what it means, how it changes terror into laughter, and if that isn’t a good magic trick, Flo doesn’t know what is.
She turns off the light and lies down again.
She thinks about how she loved Terrence on the day she met him, and she knew right away she would love him all her life.
Right away! She never would have predicted that he would be taking care of her long after he was gone.
Yet he is. And she doesn’t want to believe in the devil, but she sure does want to believe in heaven, and that she’ll see Terrence again there.
When it comes to Terrence, a lifetime was not enough. Forever won’t be, either.