Fletch asked that Heaven be a replica of his home on Earth...except...
Fletch had got out of bed the wrong side, having thrown the covers asunder, then stepped barefooted on a chip of dog bone, causing him to limp and curse his way to the bathroom.
Standing over the bowl, he remembered how urine once flowed like a waterfall, and now he could recite the Lord’s Prayer before the first trickle hit the pond of water. He washed his hands and turned on the shower…letting it heat up while he brushed his teeth.
He thought his eyes looked a little bloodshot as he ran his right hand over the stubble on his face. It can wait another day.
Fletch didn’t care much for the type of toothpaste. His daughter-in-law said it was the best, that the red stripe contained extra cleaning power. To be honest, Fletch was too tight to throw it away when there was so much of it left. His hair, once a chimney-brush of raven black, now stood up like strands of white sea anemone floating on his scalp. He had the idea that when his son and the family came tomorrow he would put this tube of toothpaste in that bathroom. He imagined after three days they would have used it up.
Having showered and dried the parts he could reach without hurting himself, he went back into the bedroom, carefully minding the shards of dog bone, and pulled up the bedclothes. Who cares whether his bed was made or not? Maybe tomorrow, when the family arrived. He threw on a pair of shorts, with a ‘t’ shirt, and went down the spiral stairs.
Shackleton, his companion sheep dog, was waiting to greet him, his tail no longer a brush of activity, just a gentle sweep of a greeting. “Damn you, Shack,” he said, rubbing the old lad’s neck. His foot still sore from standing on the piece of bone.
Breakfast was always pretty much a non-event. He put the kettle to the tap, filled just enough for one cup of tea and a little extra for warming the teapot, and placed it on the stove. He prepared his cup, the one left off the top shelf, which he had trouble reaching, and placed it on the saucer that accompanied it. The wire tea-strainer went across the cup. He turned the teapot right-side up on the draining board, near the stove, and placed the tea-caddy next to it. The kettle mustn’t just boil, it must whistle for a full minute. He poured a little hot water to warm the teapot, swirled it around and slipped the water into the sink before putting a caddy-spoon of tea into the pot. Then poured the boiling water over the tealeaves.
Fletch ate the same cereal from the same cereal bowl, with the same amount of milk and liked to use his favourite spoon.
There were so many things Fletch didn’t understand. Why did he have a favourite spoon? This was just another thing to wonder about. For some reason, he liked the fit of it in his mouth, not too dished, and not too flat.
Shackleton flopped his body under the kitchen table.
Fletch sat and stared out the window. Occasionally he’d catch a glimpse of something, a yacht, maybe even something not of our species. The ocean, from his seated position at the table, filled up the lower half of the window, and the sky the upper half.
When Fletch and Jenny bought the decommissioned lighthouse, almost fifty years ago, they thought they’d be broke the rest of their lives paying for it. The view had never changed. It was ocean.
Fletch had become a creature of habit. It was the only way he knew how to survive in this new place. This was the ritual Fletch performed every morning. His children and grandchildren didn’t understand him anymore. Only Shackleton understood his comings and goings on the beach.
Jenny had told him, “Fletch, let’s have it, this is a view to die for.” It is of course, as she described, the room with the view to die for. It would have been just a room without her. The first thing she bought for their home was his easy chair; filled with cushions and crumpled all day. Several hand-crafted rugs, a piano, art on the walls; nothing expensive, and for their first anniversary she drew sketches from the stories his father had told him when a child. She filled his study with Margaret Tarrant prints. Colourful, warm, and full of childhood fantasies. When friends came, which was quite rare, they always wanted to sit in that room.
After breakfast, Fletch made the same walk, taking the same amount of time, along the same stretch of shoreline. A mile up the shore and a mile back. Shackleton did not chase sticks anymore, but was content to amble at his owner’s pace.
See him from a distance and he looked like every other man. Perhaps a little too stocky, maybe shorter than some, with blue eyes and sharp creases put there by wind and cold. His beard turned white with salt and sun and age.
Back from the walk, Fletch washed his teacup, rinsed out the teapot, which he turned upside down on the draining board. At 8:00 am Fletch went into his study.
He sat at his desk, and closed his eyes…he was thinking about everything he’d written in his head during the walk when he felt two hands fall upon his shoulders. It was Jenny. Fletch stopped his fingers flitting over the keys of his Smith Corona typewriter. He raised his hand to rest on hers, tears brimming on his eyelids.
“How was your walk, darling?” She said.
“Perfect…almost, Jenny,” he said.
“Almost…?” Jenny quizzed.
“Perfect would have been us walking together,” he said, “side by side.”
Jenny came behind him, putting her hands on his shoulders. “I don’t know how you do it, Fletch. Every day, something beautiful. And when I see you despairing I know, I know, and I don’t know how to help you. What you do is amazing to me, darling. In your world nothing is bad,” she told him, massaging his shoulders.
“It isn’t me, Jenny. It’s you. When you came into my life, everything became golden. Stories slipped by like cotton clouds passing. I just had to reach up and bring one down. It’s harder today, that’s all.”
What could Fletch tell her about writing that hadn’t already been said?
“I know there’s nothing I can say or do, honey,” she said, “I know what is happening in your head is private and your own. I know how difficult it must be to be always thinking about something remarkable, or ordinary, but you can do it because you’ve always done it. It’s just, well, I can see when you’re despairing and sad.”
She hugged the back of his head, closing her fingers on his shoulders, reassuringly.
He smiled without turning to look up at her. The tears that had welled fell away down his cheek. He was a man who’d fought all his life with blank paper.
The two had renovated the old lighthouse some fifty years ago, making it their home on the west coast of Scotland, and it was here Fletch strove at his work, high up over the waves.
Words formed lines which he read hungrily before his swishing pencil tore them and took them out. The air was filled with whispered profanities. By nightfall he written ten-thousand words down; hard bitten words that came not from inspiration but from hard work, and the belief that he’s a writer and that word alone implies professionalism. Being a writer did not afford him the luxury of sitting around waiting for inspiration to write the books for him; it never had, it never would.
The lighthouse had sent no light out for sixty years. Fletch got up from his desk and came over to his chair, where Jenny had sat on the floor. She had first lit a candle. A soft flickering light. “How are you, darling?” She asked.
Fletch sighed heavily. Then looked at Jenny and said, “I’m difficult, aren’t I? The way I live my life, the way I have my life with you…and for what, because I need to know; I just need to know, and, Jenny, I’m not sure what it is I want to know anymore. I’m just glad with all my heart that I live the life I do, for my quiet life, and for being a writer. Some things have happened to me that I have no hope of explaining…I cannot explain my head to anyone; or why I do things the way I do. I’m just happy with myself, clumsy most of the time but well intentioned. I never found it easy to write, Jenny, truly. Yet I loved each new story as if it were a new born child. The feeling that an idea might never happen for me is the most fearful thing I can imagine, for there is nothing to fight, nothing to experience, nothing to me,” he said.
Jenny heard his voice faltering, and she knew why.“I’m here, Fletch,” Jenny said, “for you, just for you. You’ve got to finish these stories; you’ve got to get them published and begin others. You’ve got to write about all those characters people love and laughed with, do you understand, darling. You’ve got to pick yourself up, you’ve just got to finish all those stories because the whole of the world is waiting. Now, listen, you got to make that brain work, dance those fingers on those keys. You've got to write, Fletch, do you understand? You’ve got to write every day of your life,” she said. “It’s up to you, darling, everything I am, everything I want to be is now in your hands. Write, Fletch, write for me, write about a ghost who came to meet with you. Do it, darling, do it for me, for us, for our family. And for God’s sake, promise me you’ll use the toothpaste in the bathroom," she said, smiling. "They love you, darling. They love you.”
The next morning, Fletch went through his routine in exactly the same way, except for shaving, which he managed to do with only a couple of nicks. When he was alive, living back on Earth, shaving was the bane of his life. Heaven had released him from that chore, no-one cared in Heaven. He could do whatever he wanted, so he asked to live the way he lived when being alive and treading on the shoreline. Fletch was granted this because he’d lived a good life, and that made it possible.
Everything could be the same, only not with the loved one who stayed behind.
He looked around his study. It was magnificent, just the way Jenny had made it for him, safe, warm, a place to be creative, to be comfortable, a place she would come to sit beside him while he was working.
It was from here Fletch could look over the edge of the world, see the lighthouse where she was living out her life, alone, with frequent visits from the family. He hadn’t been lonely in Heaven, if only because everything was the same.
Shackleton had joined him a year after he left.
Fletch asked that his Heaven be a replica of his life on Earth, and so it was. From the top of the lighthouse, Fletch could look upon the shore where he and Jenny had made their lives, see Jenny sat in his study, in his chair, looking out to the horizon. He could feel himself putting his arms around her, pushing her hair just so, and talk into her ear about the children and the grandchildren. He hadn’t wanted to leave her at all. Not for anything. But there were some things even a writer had no control over.
His voice crackled and shone and blazed ahead of him through empty dark…words coming from Heaven…words that cut and bent round planets between him and the woman he loved back on Earth…”Darling, it’s been so long…it’s been the best…Heaven is remarkable…it’s deep and blue and velvet and full of splendour and creation… can you hear me, darling…” But, of course, she couldn’t hear because she was a still eleven years away from joining him… and so his words caught fire as they sped past the ‘F’ ring of Saturn and out into the solar system. The visible side of the rings was directly illuminated by the sun. “I miss you and I’m coming home…I’m coming back to you, darling, to write the very best work I’ve ever done…to finally be home…I’ve worked it out…I’ve worked out the whole mystery of the Universe…it’s so magical…and I know now why the Earth is the most beautiful planet…it is so simple once you’ve been out here…it’s because of human tears…mankind’s tears…that’s why…soaking into the earth and making it unbelievably beautiful…can you hear me…can you understand what I’m telling you…I’m coming home…will you be there…will you?”
And those words flew and sparked and spread out across the dark of space…echoing past Neptune and bouncing off Mars searching for the woman back on earth and all the while resisting meteors and magnet fields…scorching their way home…and across space a light could be seen…a white flare…words catching hold of Haley’s Comet and holding on…words that said ‘I love you’ and they scorched ahead of him…and back on earth a woman worked at her work…being so beautiful…and all the time she knew her man was coming home and those words were travelling toward her at light speed…to enter into her heart…to touch her on the inside…to tell her that out there a man is coming…but he’s lost and the splendor of Heaven holds him…and only his words flashing brightly prove he exists…and is coming home. A man made up of fragmented words, caught up in God’s throat and spit back into the Heavens to complete his work.
Fletch looked out the window, the planets were gone, only cotton candy clouds passing overhead.
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