The Twelfth Child (Serendipity #1)(42)
The very next day, Destiny called up the restaurant where she’d been waitressing and told them she needed to take a leave of absence. Six months to a year, she said. The old guy that owned the place complained and said she should have given him some notice, but in the end he told her it would be okay. I figure he went along with what she wanted because Destiny was a top notch worker and he didn’t want to lose her.
That first week after she moved in, we had ourselves a pretty good time. Mostly we did silly things – like opening three different bottles of wine so we could decide which went better with Frito Lays, or driving down to Macy’s to try on the most outrageous hats we could find. One day we went clear across town to the Le’ Grand Salon to get ourselves a manicure and pedicure. I was planning to have my nails painted Natural Blush, but when we walked out of there, Destiny and I both had fire engine red nails. I felt sorry I’d never gone swimming naked, but I didn’t have the least bit of regret about those scarlet colored fingernails.
The following week, I got real sick and that was the end of our running around.
A half-dozen times I started to tell Destiny about the bonds and what she was to do with them, but there never seemed to be a right time. It’s a sorrowful thing to talk about what to do with your stuff when you’re dead and gone – I didn’t feel much like discussing it and I suppose Destiny didn’t either. I could tell she was hurting; it was in her eyes, even though she didn’t say a word.
That week we played cards a few times and watched a show or two on television, but mostly I slept and she sat on the chair right beside my bed. If I so much as breathed heavy, she’d jump up and ask if I wanted a pain pill. “How about a drink of water?” she’d ask, “Or, maybe a foot rub?”
Less than three weeks after I came home from the hospital, I died. It wasn’t real dramatic; I just went to sleep and never again woke up.
People think dying is a painful thing, but it isn’t. Sometime during the middle of the night, I simply stepped out of my old used-up body and became light as a feather. I didn’t have an ache or a pain anywhere and even though I couldn’t see myself, I knew I looked just like I did when I was twenty years old.
Poor Destiny was the one who found it painful. She shed enough tears to fill an ocean. I felt real appreciative that I’d been blessed with a friend such as Destiny, but hated to see her torn apart that way. I was wishing I could put my arm around her and say, “Don’t cry, honey, I’m still here.” But of course, such a thing is not possible.
I wasn’t dead more than a few hours, when I remembered about those bonds and knew I should have taken care of business while I still had the chance.
It seems to me that God ought to give a person the chance to see ahead to the terrible happenings that are gonna occur after they’re dead; that way people would take greater care in settling their life properly. I certainly would have. Once you’re gone, all you can do is look back and think, Oh dear, if only I’d written that down on paper. Of course, it’s too late then.
After I died, Destiny was the one who took care of things. Thank Heaven I’d switched my bank accounts over to her name, otherwise I don’t know how she would have paid for the funeral. Destiny had the little bit she’d saved from her waitressing job at the restaurant and part of what I’d given her last Christmas, but the way money slid through her fingers, even that had dwindled down considerably. There are a million good things anyone could say about a person like Destiny, but being frugal sure isn’t one of them. Why, she could hold onto a greased pig longer than she could a dollar. When she was making arrangements for my funeral Destiny told long-faced Mister Panderelli that she wanted the very best of everything. She turned away from a perfectly sensible oak casket and ordered a steel coffin that Mister Panderelli claimed was vacuum sealed and guaranteed secure. Secure from what? Who in the world would want to pilfer an old woman’s dead bones? From my vantage point, I could tell Panderelli was capitalizing on the poor girl’s grief. Destiny spent twenty-three-thousand dollars on that coffin and then she ordered so many sprays of bright red roses you’d have thought they were laying out Tallulah Bankhead’s first cousin.
She could have taken that money and crammed it into her own pocket, but instead she spent it on me, without any inkling whatsoever that I was still watching over her. Now, that’s pure love, the kind most folks find hard to believe. If the Good Lord Himself had ordered me up a savior, he couldn’t have found a better one than Destiny.
That last year I was alive, I’d gotten pretty forgetful. I’d misplace my checkbook; forget to pay the electric bill, things like that. One time I went to the Bountiful Basket and got to the checkout with a cartload of groceries and not a nickel in my pocketbook. That very day I said, “Destiny, I need you to help take care of my finances and I’m willing to pay for your time.”
She laughed that big round laugh of hers – I often wondered how such a sizable laugh could come out of such a little person – “Pay me?” she said. “Why, I’d be glad to help, but you don’t need to pay me!”
“I insist!” Every time I went to give Destiny any cash money, we’d go ‘round and ‘round. “I’m no charity case!” I said, as if I was real insulted.
“I never claimed you were. But, I’m still not gonna take money for helping out.”