The First Phone Call From Heaven: A Novel

  Coldwater was changing. Strangers were flocking in. People were even praying on a woman’s lawn! Jack and Ray drove somewhere every day to address a new complaint, a parking problem, a disturbance of the peace. Everybody carried a cell phone. Every ring made people anxious. There was now a town meeting being scheduled to discuss the phenomenon. The least Jack could do was tell Doreen they were part of it.

  He walked to the porch, took a deep breath, and gripped the doorknob. It was open. He let himself in.

  “Hey, it’s me,” he announced.

  No response. He went to the kitchen. He walked down the hall.

  “Doreen?”

  He heard a sniffle. He stepped into the living room area.

  “Doreen?”

  She was sitting on the couch, holding a photo of Robbie. Tears fell down her cheeks. Jack swallowed. It was one of those times. He would have to wait.

  “You OK?” he asked softly.

  She blinked back tears. She pressed her lips together.

  “Jack,” she said, “I just spoke to our son.”

  “Mr. Harding to see Ron Jennings.”

  The receptionist picked up the phone and Sully quickly took a seat, hoping nobody noticed him.

  The Northern Michigan Gazette was a modest operation. An open floor plan revealed the inexorable geography of journalism, editorial to one side, business to the other. On the left, the desks were messy, papers were stacked in chaotic corners, a white-haired reporter had a phone to his ear. To the right the desktops were tidier, the neckties tighter, and one office was noticeably larger than all others. Now emerging from that office was the publisher, Ron Jennings, pear-shaped, balding, tinted eyeglasses. He waved at Sully, motioning him to come back. Sully rose and made his feet move one in front of the other, just as he had done upon emerging from prison.

  “Mark told me you were coming by,” Jennings said, offering his hand. “We went to college together.”

  “Yeah, thanks for seeing”—Sully’s voice suddenly choked dry, and he swallowed—“me.”

  Jennings looked hard at Sully, and Sully hated what he must have looked like; a man loathing the job he was about to ask for. What choice did he have? He needed work. There was nothing else out there. He forced a smile and stepped inside the office, feeling about as far from a fighter pilot as a man can get.

  Sales, he thought glumly. A newspaper.

  He wondered if they’d written about him.

  “So, as you can guess, we’re pretty busy around here,” Jennings said, grinning from behind his desk. “This heavenly-phone-calls story has us hopping.”

  He held up the latest edition and read the headline. “‘Ghosts from the Other Side?’ Who the heck knows, right? Good for the paper, though. We’ve had to reprint our last two editions.”

  “Wow,” Sully said politely.

  “See that guy?” Jennings nodded toward the white-haired man on the editorial side, shirt and tie, phone to his ear. “Elwood Jupes. Was the only reporter here for thirty-four years. Wrote about snowstorms, the Halloween parade, high school football. All of a sudden, he’s on the biggest story ever.

  “He just did an interview with some paranormal expert. The guy says people have been picking up dead people’s voices for years—over the radio! I never knew that, did you? Over the radio? Can you believe it?”

  Sully shook his head. He hated this conversation.

  “Anyhow . . .”

  Jennings opened a drawer. He took out a folder.

  “Mark says you’re interested in our account job?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m a little surprised.”

  Sully didn’t respond.

  “It’s not glamorous.”

  “I know.”

  “Just ad pickups. Commission.”

  “That’s what Mark said.”

  “We’re a small outfit. We publish once a week.”

  “I know.”

  “It’s not flying jets or anything.”

  “I’m not looking for—”

  “I know you don’t want to talk about that whole incident. I understand. I believe in second chances. I told Mark that.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I’m sorry about your wife.”

  “Yeah.”

  “It was such a freak thing.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Did they ever find those air traffic recordings?”

  I thought we weren’t going to talk about it. “No, they never found them.”

  Jennings nodded. He looked at the drawer.

  “Anyhow, this isn’t that big of a job—”

  “It’s fine.”

  “It’s doesn’t pay a whol—”

  “It’s OK, really.”

  The two men looked at each other uncomfortably.

  “I need work,” Sully said. “I have a son, you know?”

  He tried to think of something else to say. Giselle’s face came to his mind.

  “I have a son,” he repeated.

  Jules had been born a few years into their marriage, and Sully picked his name after a singer named Jules Shear, who wrote one of Giselle’s favorite songs, “If She Knew What She Wants.”

  Once their son was born, he knew this was exactly what she wanted: a family. Giselle and the boy were like clay from the same soul. Sully could see her natural curiosity in the way Jules explored his toys, her gentle nature in how Jules hugged other children or patted a dog.

  “Happy?” Sully had asked Giselle one night, the three of them on the couch, little Jules asleep on her chest.

  “Oh, God, yes,” she said.

  They’d talked about having more kids. Instead, here he was, a single father of a single child, having just accepted a job he didn’t want. He left the Gazette, lit a cigarette, got in his car, and sped to the liquor store. Once, when Giselle was alive, he thought about the future. Now he only thought about the past.

  For as long as there has been religion, there have been amulets: pendants, rings, coins, crucifixes, each thought to be imbued with blessed power. And just as ancient believers held those amulets close, so did Katherine Yellin now hold on to the salmon-pink cell phone that once belonged to her sister.

  She gripped it during the day. She slept with it at night. When she went to work, she set it for the loudest ring and put it in her bag, which she secured over her shoulder and cradled like a football. She charged the phone constantly, purchasing a backup to the backup in case one charger went bad. She instructed everyone no longer to call that number but instead to use a second one that she’d acquired from a different provider. Her old phone—Diane’s old phone—was reserved for Diane only.

  Wherever Katherine went, that phone went too. And now, wherever Katherine went, Amy Penn from Nine Action News followed. Amy had taken Katherine for a nice dinner (Phil’s suggestion; he even paid for it) and listened to seemingly endless stories about her beloved sister, promising that she and everyone at the station wanted only to spread word of the miracle. Katherine agreed that such a blessed event should not be confined to the borders of tiny Coldwater, and that Amy’s TV camera, which she carried like luggage wherever she went, was actually, in this modern world, an instrument of God.

  Which is how they came to arrive together, on a Tuesday morning, at the Coldwater Collection real estate offices, next to the Coldwater Post Office, across the street from the Coldwater Market. When they came through the door, there were four people in the waiting area, and each had told the young receptionist, “We want to meet with Katherine Yellin.” When asked if someone else could help them, they said no.

  This did not sit well with the three other realtors in the office, Lew, Jerry, and Geraldine, who had no new customers and few new prospects. Before Katherine’s arrival that Tuesday, the three of them had been huddled around a desk, grumbling about the fuss over their colleague’s heavenly claims.

  “How do we even know it’s true?” Lew said.

  “She’s never gotten over Diane,” Geraldine said.
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  “People hallucinate,” said Jerry.

  “They’re praying on her lawn, for God’s sake!”

  “She’s bringing in more leads than ever.”

  “So what? If they’re all for her, what good is it?”

  The conversation continued this way, with added complaints: Lew needed to support his grandchildren, who were now living with him; Geraldine had never really cared for Katherine’s preachy attitude; Jerry wondered if it wasn’t too late for him, being only thirty-eight, to switch professions.

  Then Katherine entered, with Amy behind her. The conversation stopped and the false smiles came out.

  You might think a person who brings proof of heaven would be embraced. But even in the presence of a miracle, the human heart will say, Why not me?

  “Morning, Katherine,” Geraldine said.

  “Morning.”

  “Heard from your sister?”

  Katherine smiled. “Not today.”

  “When was the last call?”

  “Friday.”

  “Four days ago.”

  “Um-hmm.”

  “Interesting.”

  Geraldine looked at Amy, as if to say, You might be here for nothing. Katherine glanced at her coworkers, exhaled, then unpacked a Bible from her bag.

  And, of course, her phone.

  “I should get started with the clients,” she said.

  The first was a middle-aged man who said he wanted to get a home near Katherine’s, a place where he might get “calls” too. Then came a retired couple from Flint, who spoke about their daughter, killed in a car crash six years earlier, and how they hoped to reconnect with her in Coldwater. The third client was a Greek woman in a dark blue shawl who didn’t even mention real estate. She simply asked Katherine if she could pray with her.

  “Of course,” Katherine answered, almost apologetically. Amy moved to the back to give them privacy, taking her large TV camera with her. It was ridiculously heavy; she always felt as if she were heaving a lead suitcase. One day, she promised herself, she would work for a station that would send an actual cameraman with her. One day, as in her next job.

  “Heavy load, huh?” Lew observed as Amy thudded it on the desk.

  “Yeah.”

  “You’d think they’d make them smaller by now.”

  “They do. But we don’t have those models.”

  “They save ’em for New York and LA, huh?”

  “Something like—”

  She stopped. Lew’s face had changed. His head turned. So did Geraldine’s and Jerry’s. When Amy realized why, a jolt of adrenaline shot through her veins.

  Katherine’s phone was ringing.

  Every story has a tipping point. What happened next in the Coldwater Collection real estate offices was quick, chaotic, and captured in its entirety by Amy’s sporadic and shaky camerawork. It took less than a minute, yet would soon be seen by millions across the planet.

  Katherine grabbed her ringing phone. Everyone turned. The Greek woman started praying in her native tongue, swaying back and forth, her hands over her nose and mouth.

  “Pater hêmôn ho en toes ouranoes—”

  Katherine inhaled and pushed back in her chair. Lew swallowed. Geraldine whispered, “Now what?” Amy, who had frantically grabbed her camera and flipped it on, was trying, at the same time, to balance it on her shoulder, look through the viewfinder, and move in closer when—whomp!—she banged into a desk, causing the camera to fall, the film still rolling, as Amy sprawled over a chair, smacking her chin.

  The phone rang again.

  “Hagiasthêtô to onoma sou,” mumbled the Greek woman.

  “Wait! Not yet!” Amy yelled. But Katherine pressed a button and whispered, “Hello? . . . Oh, God . . . Diane . . .”

  “Hagiasthêtô to onoma sou—”

  Katherine’s face was illuminated.

  “Is it her?” Lew asked.

  “Jesus,” Geraldine whispered.

  Amy scrambled to an upright position, her thigh pounding from the impact, her chin starting to bleed. She caught Katherine in the lens just as she said, “Yes, oh, yes, Diane, yes, I will . . .”

  “Genêthêtô to thelêma sou, hôs en ouranô—”

  “It’s really her?”

  “Kae epi tês gês. Ton arton hêmôn ton epiousion—”

  “Diane—when will you call me again . . . Diane? . . . Hello? . . .”

  Katherine lowered the phone, then dropped back slowly, as if pushed with an invisible pillow. Her eyes were glazed.

  “Dos hêmin sêmeron; kae aphes hêmin ta opheilêmata—”

  “What happened?” Amy asked, playing the reporter, camera on her shoulder. “What did she say to you, Katherine?”

  Katherine looked straight ahead, her hands on the desk. “She said, ‘The time has come. Don’t keep it a secret. Tell everyone. The good will be welcome in heaven.’”

  The Greek woman covered her face with her hands and wept. Amy zoomed in on her, then zoomed in on the phone, which Katherine had dropped on the desk.

  “Tell everyone,” Katherine repeated dreamily, not realizing that, thanks to the blinking red light on Amy’s camera, she was.

  The Eighth Week

  History suggests that Alexander Bell’s telephone was, quite literally, an overnight sensation.

  One that almost didn’t happen.

  In 1876, America was celebrating its hundredth birthday. A centennial exhibition was held in Philadelphia. New inventions were being displayed, things that would mark greatness in the next hundred years, including a forty-foot-high steam engine and a primitive typewriter. At the last minute, Bell’s crude communication device was granted a small table in a narrow spot between a stairway and a wall, in a hall called the Department of Education. It sat for weeks with no real attention.

  Bell was living in Boston. He had no plans—or money—to attend the exhibition. But on a Friday afternoon he went to the train station to see off his fiancée, Mabel, who was heading there to visit her father. She cried at the idea of leaving him. She insisted he come too. As the train pulled away, Bell, to comfort her, jumped aboard—without a ticket.

  By acting on that impulse, Bell found himself at the exhibition two days later, on a hot Sunday afternoon, when a tired and sweaty delegation of judges walked by. Most of them just wanted to go home. But one, the esteemed emperor of Brazil, Dom Pedro de Alcantara, recognized the dark-haired inventor from his work with deaf students.

  “Professor Bell!” Dom Pedro said, greeting him with open arms. “What are you doing here?”

  After Bell explained, Dom Pedro agreed to witness his invention. The weary judges resigned themselves to staying a few more minutes.

  A wire had been strung across the room. Bell went to the transmitter end while the emperor went to the receiver. Just as he had done with Thomas Watson months earlier (Come here. I want to see you), Bell spoke into his device as the emperor lifted the receiver to his ear. His expression suddenly brightened.

  With the crowd looking on, the emperor declared in astonishment, “My God! It talks!”

  The next day, the invention was moved to a featured position. Thousands mobbed to view it. It won first prize and a gold medal, and the world ignited with a previously unimaginable idea: speaking to someone you could not see.

  Had it not been for a man’s love for a woman, making him jump aboard a train, Bell’s phone might never have found an audience. Once it did, life on earth was altered forever.

  Eggs. There were not enough eggs. Frieda Padapalous shoved a fifty-dollar bill into her nephew’s hands and said, “Get all they have at the market. Hurry.”

  Frieda had never been one for miracles, but she wasn’t going to turn down this sudden boost in business. Monday had been busy. Tuesday had been busier. Today her diner was so noisy, people were yelling to be heard. The parking area was jammed. The booths were filled with strange faces. And for the first time ever on a Wednesday morning, there was a line outside her door. It wasn’t even e
ight o’clock!

  “More coffee, Jack?” Frieda said. She poured before he could answer, then sped off to someone else.

  Jack sipped from his cup and lowered his head like a man with a secret. He deliberately hadn’t worn his uniform today. He wanted to observe the growing pilgrimage—now that an Internet video had turned the whole town upside down. He spotted three people with TV cameras and at least four others whom he pegged for reporters—in addition to the flock of strange new faces, old and young, that kept asking where they could find Katherine Yellin, or the church, or the real estate office. He saw two Indian couples, and a table full of young people in religious clothing that he couldn’t identify.

  “Excuse me, hi, are you from here?” a fellow in a blue ski parka asked, sliding alongside Jack’s stool.

  “Why?”

  “I’m with Channel Four from Detroit. We’re talking to people about the miracles. You know. The phone calls? Could we get you on camera for a quick minute? It won’t take long.”

  Jack glanced at the door. More people were streaming in. Morning coffee at Frieda’s had been his daily routine for so long, he could walk from home to the counter and never open his eyes. But this was uncomfortable. He still hadn’t told Doreen about his calls from Robbie—not after she told him. For some reason, he felt he needed to listen first. To gather information. Doreen said Robbie told her he was in heaven, he was safe, and that “the end was not the end.” When she asked Jack what he thought, he said, “Doreen, does it make you happy?” and she started crying and said, “I don’t know, yes, oh my God, I don’t understand any of this.”

  He didn’t want these reporters knowing about his ex-wife. He didn’t want them knowing about him. He thought about Tess. He didn’t want them knowing about her, either.