Continued, Life A Love Story
Flo startles awake from where she has been resting on the sofa.
Her breathing has gone all raggedy, and there’s a sharp pain in her back.
This must be it. Is it it? She straightens her legs and arranges her hands over her chest but then that bothers her, how it’s like in a coffin, so she lets her arms rest plain at her sides.
There is her watch on her wrist, ticking away.
Here she is on the precipice, she thinks she’s on the precipice, ready for Judgment Day.
Outside, a horn honks. It’s like that Emily Dickinson poem she read in high school where the person is dying and she hears a fly buzz. Flo always thought that was a strange poem. But here she is, and she hears a horn honk, and it’s different now.
Judgment Day. Whenever Flo used to think of that, she always imagined God on a high stool at a high desk peering down over His bifocals.
How many people did He see? So many people dying all the time, seems like the line would be awful long.
Some people think God is very human, and if He is He would sure enough get a sore fanny sitting there that long.
And the poor human being trembling before Him, wondering, What will the verdict be?
If God really is human, wouldn’t He be able to see what makes a person do whatever they did and have mercy?
What does make one person good and another person bad?
Surely they’re not born that way. She thinks of a new life blinking in the light and some voice saying to that baby, still blue in its hands, “Now, you. You’ll be a murderer.
” No. Surely it doesn’t work that way. Some unfortunate souls get poor soil and poor water.
Course there’s the ones get poor soil and water and yet still they thrive, like those flowers grow up in the cracks in the sidewalk.
Wouldn’t God know everything? Wouldn’t He take everything into account?
And if He did, wouldn’t everyone go to heaven?
Flo expects there’s room. For heaven’s sake, there’s George Washington up there with his wooden teeth and all, all, all the ones before him. And pets, it would be nice if—
Suddenly, her breathing goes regular and slow. There is no pain. She opens her eyes and crosses her ankles, waits for a moment, then sits up. Smooths down her hair in the back. Here she still is. You are here. She has to stop wasting time and finish that letter.
She goes into the kitchen and sits down at the table.
That had been something, to think that she was going.
She had not been afraid. She had been something else.
Not comforted, but something close to that.
Eased. Lifted. She remembers hearing about that one famous actress who was dying and she got up in the night and her husband came out and put his arms around her and she began to weep, saying, “I want to go home.” And he said you are home. “No,” she said. “I want to go home.”
Flo believes she understands her now.
But she is still in this home, and after she works on her letter she is going to call Teresa and see can she come for lunch. “Pick up your favorite takeout,” she’ll tell her. “My treat.” Flo’s got fifty bucks in her purse, easy.