“Well, the seventh plane is reserved for people that we feel did an exemplary job on earth. Some are those who went through great hardships or through poverty or those who pulled themselves up from devastating occurrences in their lives.”
“Sure,” I said. “I get it.”
“Most, though, are on the seventh plane simply because they lived normal lives. They faced their obstacles and tackled them with pride. Take your grandparents for example. Your grandfather came from nothing and built his accounting firm. He provided for your grandmother and mother. You grandmother stood firm over your mother, teaching her to be a strong woman. Your uncle Morris forwent a family of his own so that he could take care of his sisters. These are exemplary lives, lives that were lived in teaching and taking care of those around them.”
“Yes, of course, they were great,” I said, still trying to understand what she was getting at. “I would have done things like that myself, but, as you know, I died very young.”
“And that's why we're giving you a break,” she told me, which made me breathe a huge sigh of relief.
“Whew,” I said digging into my waffles, “I thought you were going to send me to hell or something. Hey, could you pass the bacon?”
“Noooo,” she said, passing the crisp bacon. “Of course you wouldn't be sent to hell, but there are some things we just don't understand. Some of your actions in life concern us.”
“What did I do?” I asked, getting a bit offended. I mean, could you blame me?
“Well, it's not what you did, it's what you didn't do. As I said, I watched over you your whole life, and it was a good one, but the one thing we, as your guardian angels, can't do is figure out why you lived your life the way you did, and that's why sometimes we like to give some people an entrance exam.”
“An entrance exam? There's a test?” I said, dropping my fork.
“Nothing to be too concerned about,” she said, taking my hand again, “and the worst that can happen is that you go down a plane or two.”
“A plane or two?”
“Well, the fourth plane of heaven is what we're thinking.”
“You just said âa plane or two,' now you're jumping three planes! How bad was I?”
“Alex, fourth heaven is still heaven, it's just not
this
heaven.”
For the first time since I got to
this
heaven, I wasn't hungry anymore.
“But I still get to see everyone?”
“Sure, you get to see your family, your grandparents, but I'm afraid Adam is out of the picture. You'll still date, but I've been told it's a bit harder to find a soul mate.”
“What if Adam and I fall in love? Isn't there some sort of a thing like green-card status that would let me stay in seventh heaven where he is?”
“That's funny,” she laughed, then paused and looked at me seriously, shaking her head, “but, no, I'm afraid not.”
“But I get to keep the house?”
“Well, you'll have a home. It's not this house, though. You'll be in an apartment and it will have a doorman. There's a gym but no pool. There is a community pool, however, that I hear is quite lovely.”
“A community pool? That's disgusting. What about the clothes?”
“Of course you'll still be clothed. You won't have a bedroom that's a closet; you'll have a regular closet, not a walk-in. Unfortunately, however, the best clothes are for those in seventh heaven. The clothes won't be this year's styles, they'll be last year's, but they'll still fit and be reasonably well tailored.”
“What about the shoes?”
“Again, they're last year's styles. Oh, and they may pinch.”
“Okay, but I'll still be able to eat whatever I want.”
“Well,” she paused. “Sure, you can eat whatever you want, but you'll have to make it yourself. In fourth heaven the good news is that you can still eat whatever you want and you'll never have high cholesterol or high blood pressure. Unfortunately, you will have to watch what you eat if you want to retain your figure.”
“WHO CARES ABOUT HIGH CHOLESTEROL? Can't we have a choice?”
That's when the anxiety started in.
“My plasma screens?”
“Analog tube.”
“Dish?”
“Basic cable.”
“Peaches?”
“She stays on the seventh plane. All dogs go to seventh heaven.”
“I knew it!” I said, starting to cry. “I knew it was all too good to be true.”
“Look, I'm not saying that it's all bad,” she said, putting her arm around me as I sat looking over my three-thousand-calorie brunch. “It's not over. All you have to do is pass the entrance exam and you can stay. They just want to make sure you were leading a life that was satisfying and would eventually lead to self-fulfillment.”
I put my head in my hands.
“Take today to think about it,” she said. “Remember, it's not over. Think back on your life. Think about the steps you took in your life. Think about where you were going. You are a smart woman. You will figure out how to get through this exam.”
“Well, what's the exam? Are there athletics involved? I can't climb a rope. Is there math? I suck at math! Is it like the SATs?” I'm gulping for air at this point, just barely holding back the panic attack.
“It's a simple essay, that's all you have to do.”
“Oh,” I said, taking a deep breath. “An essay, well, that shouldn't be too hard. What's the topic?”
“The topic is, What were the ten best days of your life?”
“But how can that be judged?” I asked after thinking about it for a moment. “I mean, isn't that subjective?”
“It's judged by what those days tell us about where your life would have eventually taken you.”
“I don't know!” I screamed out. “Look, this is some kind of mistake. Isn't there someone I could speak to about this? Where's God or Mary or someone else higher up? There must be a supervisor that I could speak to about this!”
“Look, I've got a new being I've got to look over, but I promise you it won't be as bad as you think, and if you don't pass, even the third or fourth plane of heaven is not so bad.”
“The third plane? Now you're talking third plane? This is getting worse by the second! What do you get there, a trash bag full of trendy styles from three years ago?”
“It's a tote bag, not a trash bag,” she answered, sounding offended.
“I'm going to throw up,” I said, gagging and heading toward the sink.
“Alex, calm down. You'll be fine. Look, take today; look back on your life. You'll be ready. I looked after you for a long time and I have all the confidence in you.”
“But I want to stay here,” I shouted again, stomping my foot.
“Write a good essay,” she said, taking a last bite of her waffle. “I left two notebooks upstairs in your bedroom. I'll be back in two weeks to pick them up.”
And with that, Deborah the bad-dye-job guardian angel left my Len Jacobs's house. I didn't bother to show her out.
They Shoot People in Fourth Heaven, Don't They?
"For the last time, it's nothing!” my grandmother said, trying to feed me her famous chopped liver. "It's just a stupid test. What do you need that big house for anyway?” she said as I looked around her colonial oceanfront estate with its Kentucky bluegrass fields and horses in their stables.
“But I don't get Adam. I don't get the clothes. I'll have cellulite again!”
“Jesus, Alexandra, if those are the things that were important to you in life, maybe you should be on a different plane.”
“Grandma?” I said, starting to cry. “How could you even say a thing like that? What if you couldn't have your old lemon yellow Cadillac? What if your hair was flat?”
“So it's flat. I still have you and Grandpa and uncle Morris and my parents and my friends.”
She had a point there, and I felt like a spoiled brat, but, still, what was the difference from being on earth? What's the point of heaven if there's no incentive?
“Why are you yelling at her? She's upset,” my grandfather broke in. “She wants the heaven that she deserves.”
“Because she's acting like that's all she wants, like heaven is some kind of free-for-all,” my grandmother fought back.
“Alex,” my uncle Morris said, “all they want to know is if you feel you lived your life in a way that was fulfilling for you. They don't understand why you never settled down or something. They want to know where you were going with your life.”
And that's when I knew I was doomed. Where was I going with my life before the MINI Cooper struck me? I had no idea what I was doing with my life. All that time worrying about what I was doing with my life. All the complaining to my girlfriends about the way my life was headed. All those times my parents sat me down and told me they were worried about where my life was heading. All those times I looked at myself and knew that I was lost, caught up in my own world of circles that led nowhere. It was all coming back to haunt me now.
“You're not stupid,” my grandmother said. “You are a smart young woman and the choices you made might not have been the best, but they want to know why you made them. If your motives were pure, you'll be fine. You knew what you were doing. You knew what you wanted out of life. Write the essay and tell them what they want and be done with it already!”
So I decided to go for it.
I took the day and thought about it, and here's what I wrote.
1
I'm going to start my first "best day” at conception. This is not to say I believe that life begins at conception. I honestly don't know the answer to that question, and, as you might know, there's a lot of talk about it down on earth. (Incidentally, I would really like to know the official answer, if you wouldn't mind telling me sometime.)
I'm starting out at conception because for me it was a lucky day, the first “best day,” if you will. Also, I think it's going to give you a better picture of my life, what I did and why I did it and what was eventually going to lead to a fulfilled existence on earth (or would have if I hadn't died so very young).
See, I was a mistake, and a really good mistake if I do say so myself.
My parents were told that they would never be able to conceive. Which one of my parents had the problem, I don't know; no one would ever say. But if I were a betting woman, I'd go with my dad, and here's why:
In the late 1960s they didn't have things like in vitro or test-tube this and surrogate-womb that. If you couldn't have kids, you had two choices: adopt or don't. By the time I came along, my parents had been married for about ten years, and in all that time it was the “barren couple” life for them.
My dad, Bill Dorenfield, is a strong man. He's a self-made man who started life without a dime. My grandfather, his father, was a door-to-door salesman who sold everything from pots and pans to children's clothing. My dad used to say of my grandfather, “If he ever made a dime, somehow it would only amount to a nickel.” My grandfather wasn't a drinker or a druggie or a gambler. Evidently, my grandfather was just really bad at making money (and if that's hereditary, I definitely got the gene).
My dad says that he can't remember a time in his life when he didn't work. My dad loves to work (guess that skips a generation) . He would tell me stories of how, as a young kid growing up in West Philadelphia in the 1930s, he'd get up before dawn with my grandfather and they'd drive deep into the farmlands of Pennsylvania or the opposite way through New Jersey to the shore and the farmlands and then work their way back to West Philly. Along the way, they stopped at homes and sold whatever my grandfather had to sell that day. This was coming out of the Depression and into World War II, and, as my dad tells it, bringing a young child along on the sales calls ensured “a couple of suckers” who felt bad for them. Sometimes my dad would play the part of the motherless child. Sometimes he would cough on cue, as the sickly kid who could get some medicine if the poor sucker would just buy the pot and pan set or the frilly little girl's dress, even if they didn't have a little girl. This was also the time that my grandfather gave my dad, as he put it, “the best piece of advice anyone could give.”
“It's never going to be any of this crap we're selling that's going to make us rich,” he'd tell my dad. “When you get old enough, start buying land.”
I know, so
Grapes of Wrath
. I think it's safe to say, though, that neither my grandfather nor my dad ever picked up that book for pleasure. Therefore, even if my grandfather couldn't sell anything and never read a book, he was still a smart man.
Now, on the other hand, my dad said he learned early on that my grandfather's way of sellingâ“Oh, you're not interested? Well, have a nice day”âwas not the way to sell. My dad figured out that the longer he pestered the people, the higher his success rate. Finally, the people would get exasperated and buy something. My grandfather called my dad his lucky charm, though to hear my dad tell the story luck had nothing to do with it. It was sheer perseverance. The selling with my grandfather went on for years, and in all that time my dad still got straight As in school. He didn't really have any friends, at least none that I ever heard about; they came later with the money he made. He was never one to participate in sports. He was a strong-headed young man who refused to let anything get in his way when it came to making a buck.