The First Phone Call From Heaven: A Novel

  “What about the protests?” she said.

  He looked at her as if the answer were insanely obvious.

  “Cover them,” he said.

  “Be ready at 10:00 a.m.,” Samantha had e-mailed. “I’ve got a surprise for you.”

  Tess put on makeup for the first time in weeks. She had endured enough surprises recently. But she was going stir-crazy in the house, and quite honestly, any change to the routine would be welcome.

  She walked through the kitchen and, as was her pattern now, glanced at the phone to ensure it was on the hook. Thanksgiving was two weeks away. She’d made no plans. She had an aversion to the holiday, anyhow. After the divorce, her mother would hold open-house Thanksgivings and invite half the neighborhood, anyone who didn’t have family or was recently widowed or old or alone. It was like that Woody Allen movie where he collects misfit entertainers—a stuttering ventriloquist, a woman who plays drinking glasses—and has a Thanksgiving meal of frozen turkey dinners and Tab. Ruth always made a fuss over who got to pull the turkey wishbone. “Make a wish! Make a wish!” Tess imagined every person in the house wishing one thing: that they wouldn’t have to come back next year.

  But now she realized what a kindness her mother had offered to people at a vulnerable time. And how it had given Ruth a way to fight her own loneliness. Tess used to wish her father would drive by, honk the horn, and whisk her away.

  “God, Tess,” she whispered now, angry with herself for being so naive.

  A ray of sun dropped through the kitchen skylight. She thought about those people on her lawn. Weren’t they freezing?

  She grabbed paper cups and the full pot from the coffee machine.

  When she opened her front door, a rumbling went through the crowd. Many of them rose. A few yelled “Good morning!” and “Bless you, Tess!” Then suddenly everyone was yelling something. There had to be two hundred people.

  Tess held up the cups and squinted into the morning sun.

  “Does anyone want coffee?” she yelled. She realized her pot would only serve a fraction of this crowd. She felt like a fool. Coffee? They want miracles, and you’re offering them coffee?

  “I can make more,” she mumbled.

  “Did your mother speak to you today, Tess?”

  Tess swallowed. She shook her head.

  “Has she told you why you were chosen?”

  “You were the first!”

  “Will you pray with us?”

  “Bless you, Tess!”

  The hubbub was suddenly interrupted by three quick blasts of a car horn. The yellow van from Bright Beginnings, her day care center, was pulling into the driveway. As the crowd backed away, Samantha got out and pulled open the side of the van. A dozen kids in their winter coats jumped to the ground and looked at the crowd.

  Tess put a hand to her mouth. Because she could not come to work, her friend had brought work to her.

  Tess had never been so happy to see those children in her life.

  Doreen carried two Cokes over to the table. She sat at one end, Jack at the other, their guests in between. She still felt uneasy around her ex-husband. The divorce. The papers. The house keys he’d left on the front hall counter. Every snapshot of their disassembled marriage came flipping back in his presence.

  Had it really been six years already? She was married to a different man. Had a different life. But here was Jack, sitting at their old table in their old house, the house she’d gotten in the breakup, the house Mel, her new husband, had objected to Jack even setting foot inside of, until Doreen told him, “Robbie’s friends want to talk to us.” Mel grumbled fine, whatever, he was going for a beer.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Sellers,” said the young man named Henry.

  “Thanks, Mrs. Sellers,” echoed the one named Zeke.

  “It’s Mrs. Franklin now,” Doreen said.

  They looked at each other.

  “It’s all right,” she added.

  They were handsome young men, fit, square-shouldered, childhood friends of Robbie’s from the old neighborhood. They used to ring the bell, and Robbie would come bounding down the steps clutching a football and brush past Doreen with a “See ya, Mom” and she’d say, “Zip up your jacket,” the words chasing after him like the breeze of a fan.

  All three boys had enlisted out of high school. They did basic training together and, thanks to somebody who knew somebody, were stationed together in Afghanistan. Neither Henry nor Zeke was with Robbie the day he was killed. Doreen was glad about that.

  “When did you boys get back?” Jack asked.

  “September,” Zeke said.

  “Yeah, September,” Henry said.

  “Good to be done?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  “Yes, Sir.”

  Everyone nodded. Zeke sipped his Coke.

  “So, like, we were talking . . . ,” Henry said.

  “Yeah,” Zeke picked up, “We were asking each other . . .” He glanced at Henry. “You wanna go?”

  “No, it’s OK, you can—”

  “Nah.”

  “I mean . . .”

  They both stopped.

  “It’s all right,” Jack said. “You can talk to us.”

  “Yes,” Doreen said, squirming at the word us. “Of course, boys, talk about anything.”

  Finally, Zeke said, “We were just wondering, like . . . what does Robbie tell you? When he calls?”

  Jack leaned back. He felt a shiver.

  “He only calls his mother. Doreen?”

  She told them. Her conversations had been reassurances mostly, that Robbie was OK, that he was safe, that he was in a beautiful place.

  “He usually says something that I like,” she added. “He says . . . ‘The end is not the end.’”

  Zeke and Henry exchanged sheepish grins.

  “That’s funny,” Henry said.

  “What is?” Jack said.

  Henry fingered the Coke bottle.

  “No, it’s just . . . it’s this rock band. He was totally into them. House of Heroes.”

  “They have this CD,” Zeke said, “The End Is Not the End. He kept asking for someone to send it to him.”

  “Yeah, for, like, months. The End Is Not the End. Send me The End Is Not the End. It’s kinda punk music.”

  “Yeah, but, like, a Christian band, I think.”

  “Right.”

  “House of Heroes.”

  “His favorite CD.”

  “The End Is Not the End.”

  Jack looked at his ex-wife. A band?

  “So, like, besides that,” Henry continued, “does he ever talk about the guys in his squadron?”

  Jason Turk, the phone store clerk, rubbed his hands briskly as he slammed the door on the snowstorm. Again, he’d forgotten his gloves. Again, his girlfriend was right. Your brain works part-time, Jason.

  He opened the closet marked DIAL-TEK EMPLOYEES ONLY. His cheeks were wet and his nose dripping. He grabbed a box of Kleenex off the shelf and heard a rapping on the back door.

  “Aw, come on,” he mumbled. “It’s not even eight o’clock.” When he opened the door, there was Sully, bundled up in his suede jacket and ski cap.

  “Hey, it’s Iron Man,” Jason said, grinning.

  “How ya doing?”

  “Come on in.”

  “Thanks.”

  “I don’t have any money for you, bro.”

  “I know.”

  “You want a Coke?”

  “I’m good.”

  They entered the office.

  “So what’s up?”

  Sully exhaled. He pulled a yellow pad from his bag.

  “I need a favor.”

  An hour later Sully returned to his car, wondering what he’d stumbled into.

  Following a hunch, he’d shown Jason the names, numbers, and addresses of the seven Coldwater residents who claimed contact with heaven. He knew Katherine Yellin had purchased her phone at that store—the whole country seemed to know that—but Sully wondered if the others had
as well.

  Jason punched the information into his computer. What came back was curious. Four of the seven showed as customers—not unusual, given the paucity of phone stores around Coldwater—but six of the seven, all but Kelly Podesto, the teenage girl, had the same phone provider.

  And the same type of service.

  “What is it?” Sully asked Jason.

  “It’s this web-based storage thing, kind of like the cloud, you know? Keep your e-mail, your pictures, save it in one account.”

  Sully looked at his pad. He ran a finger down several categories he’d drawn up. One of them was “DOD”—date of death.

  “Can you pull up how long they each had that service?”

  “Probably. It might take a few minutes.” Jason started to type, then stopped and leaned back. “I can get in major crap for showing you this.”

  “I kinda figured,” Sully said.

  Jason drummed his fingers on his knees.

  “Ah, what the hell. Let’s do it.” He grinned. “I hate this job anyhow. My girlfriend says I should be a professional photographer.”

  “Maybe she’s right.”

  “She’s a pain. You got a girlfriend?”

  “No.”

  “Married?”

  “I was.”

  “She dump you, or you dump her?”

  “She died.”

  “Whoa. Sorry, bro.”

  Sully sighed. “Me too.”

  Alexander Bell met the love of his life, Mabel, when she came to him as a deaf student. She was ten years his junior, but Bell fell for her hard, and over the years, her encouragement spurred him on in his work. Had her tears not drawn him onto that train car to Philadelphia, his greatest invention might never have blossomed. Yet the telephone remained something that Mabel, who’d lost her hearing from scarlet fever, would never be able to share with her husband.

  Sometimes, love brings you together even as life keeps you apart.

  In the ambulance after the plane crash, Sully demanded a cell phone (his own phone, like the rest of his possessions, was burning in the wreckage), and he called Giselle a dozen times. No answer. He called her parents. Nothing there, either. He tried the airfield again on his emergency radio. Nothing. Something was seriously wrong. Where was everybody?

  His head was pounding, and his lower back was now screaming with pain. At the hospital—a small regional facility in Lynton—they ran through standard tests, checked all of Sully’s vital signs, took blood, cleaned up several cuts, and did X-rays of his spinal column. They gave him pain medication that left him woozy. Someone told him the plane that he’d collided with, a small twin-engine Cessna, had landed safely. He didn’t ask why the two planes were on the same landing path. The entire time, he kept asking about his wife.

  “Give me her number,” a nurse said. “We’ll have someone keep calling it until we get her.”

  “Airfield, too,” Sully croaked.

  As he skimmed the surface between consciousness and sleep, he saw the nurse talking and giving instructions, saw someone come in and pull her outside, saw her come back in and talk to someone else, then saw them all disappear.

  His eyes closed. His mind quieted. These would be the last blissful minutes that he did not know what he could not know: That Giselle had seen the rising smoke and accelerated toward the airfield in her Chevy Blazer.

  That Elliot Gray, the air traffic controller, had fled the facility and jumped into a blue Toyota Camry.

  That Giselle had chanted a prayer—Please God, let him be safe—as her hands gripped the wheel so tightly they shook.

  That Elliot Gray’s Camry reached sixty-three miles per hour on the narrow access road.

  That Giselle’s Chevy came flying around a bend and, in a blinding instant, smashed full-speed into the Camry.

  That Elliot Gray was hurled twenty feet in the air.

  That Giselle, strapped in by a seat belt, did three rotations as the Chevy flipped over. That her vehicle landed in a ditch. That she was wearing a lavender sweater. That the Beatles’ “Hey, Jude” was playing on the radio.

  That she’d need to be cut loose from the twisted metal. That she’d be medevaced to a hospital in Columbus.

  That she’d be unconscious by the time she arrived.

  That she would never wake up.

  That Elliot Gray was dead.

  The Twelfth Week

  HERE NOW, NOT HEREAFTER! HERE NOW, NOT HEREAFTER! HERE NOW, NOT—”

  Katherine put her hands to her ears. “Good Lord, why don’t they stop?”

  “Maybe we should go downstairs,” Amy said. “It’s quieter.”

  “No!” Katherine snapped. “This is my home. I won’t hide in a basement.”

  Outside, the protesters continued.

  “HERE NOW, NOT HEREAFTER! HERE—”

  They had gathered in the street just before noon. There were at least fifty people, many with signs like HEAVEN CAN WAIT! and some harsher: BELIEF KILLS! or DEATH BY HOAX!

  The Ben Wilkes video had spread even faster than the original Phone Call from Heaven video, once news of Ben’s death became widespread. It was followed by reports of six other patients around the world with terminal illnesses who had reportedly seen the Coldwater videos and then died unexpectedly—as if deliberately letting themselves go.

  Although these people would have passed away eventually, the mystery of death is why it chooses a particular moment. With no earthly answer, coincidence can become conspiracy. And given the media’s insatiable appetite for Coldwater, stories that heaven might be killing people were irresistible.

  “These religious nuts should stay away from sick patients,” one angry man told a TV camera.

  “They’re no better than those terrorists who promise a reward if you blow yourself up,” added a young woman.

  “I knew Ben Wilkes years ago,” an older factory worker claimed. “He was a fighter. He wouldn’t have let go if these people hadn’t hypnotized him—or whatever they do.”

  Before long, a group called Hang Up On Heaven had formed, and protests were organized—like the one outside Katherine’s house right now.

  “HERE NOW, NOT HEREAFTER! HERE NOW—”

  Inside, Amy boiled water and made peppermint tea. She brought the cup over, but Katherine was so lost in thought, she didn’t even see it.

  “Have some,” Amy coaxed.

  “Oh.” Katherine blinked. “Thank you.”

  Amy felt torn. She knew Phil wanted a story on these protesters—but how could she talk to them and not lose Katherine’s trust, the one thing that kept her a notch ahead of the other reporters?

  “You’re a friend,” Katherine said.

  “Of course,” Amy mumbled.

  “This all started once those other people got involved, didn’t it? Tess Rafferty? Honestly. She stopped going to church years ago. She admitted it!”

  Katherine waved her hands, as if trying to convince an invisible witness. She squeezed her pink phone. She rolled it over in her palm. She stared at it for several seconds. Then her tone changed.

  “Amy?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Do you believe me?”

  “I do.”

  The truth was, Amy believed that Katherine believed. That was close enough, wasn’t it?

  “I called my kids,” Katherine said. “They’re down in Detroit. You know what they told me?”

  “What?”

  “They said I spend too much time on religion.” She almost laughed. “I was hoping they might come up. Stay with me. But John says he’s buried at work. And Charlie says . . .”

  She gulped back a word.

  “What?”

  “I . . . embarrass him. That’s what Diane’s daughters told me, too. That’s why they haven’t come to see me.”

  She started to cry. Amy looked away. How could you not feel sympathy for this woman—deluded as she might be?

  The chanting of the protesters grew louder. Amy glanced through the bay window and saw a squad car p
arked by the curb. Jack Sellers, the police chief, was holding up his hands as he spoke. A TV crew held boom microphones overhead. The news would be everywhere. Phil would be furious.

  “I didn’t kill anyone,” Katherine whispered.

  “Of course not,” Amy said.

  Katherine buried her face in her hands.

  “How can they say such things? My sister is in heaven. God is watching all of us. Why would I kill anyone?”

  Amy looked at her camera, sitting on the kitchen table.

  “You know what?” she said. “Let’s tell them that.”

  Pastor Warren read from Scripture every afternoon, sitting in his office on the brown leather couch. Today he focused on the book of Isaiah. He came upon a verse in chapter 60:

  Look and see, for everyone is coming home. Your sons are coming from distant lands; your little daughters will be carried on the hip. Your eyes will shine and your hearts will thrill with joy.

  He loved those words. In another time, he might have marked the passage, saved it for his Sunday sermon. But now he wondered if it wouldn’t be used as validation for these phone calls from the dead. Look and see, for everyone is coming home. He hated having to filter his messages this way. He felt like a piece of paper being constantly ripped in half, getting smaller and smaller. Serve God. Serve the people. God. The people.

  Colleagues told him he should be happy. All the churches in Coldwater were filled, and Sunday services were standing room only. St. Vincent’s, Father’s Carroll’s congregation, had grown the most, quadrupling since Tess Rafferty and her visit from the bishop.

  Brrrnnnng!

  “Yes?”

  “It’s me, Pastor.”

  “Come in, Mrs. Pulte.”

  She entered without her message pad. He could tell by her expression that something was wrong.

  “Pastor, I have to tell you something. It’s hard for me to say.”

  “Feel free to tell me anything.”

  “I need to leave.”

  “Leave early?”

  “Leave the job. It’s too . . .” She began to tear up. “I’ve been here seven years.”

  “You’ve been wonderful—”

  “I wanted to help the church . . .”

  Her breathing accelerated.