look inside that person—if you look inside Helen—what you find is really complicated. Helen started as one single tiny cell, but now she is made up of trillions of cells that came out of that original Helen cell, and they all have different functions. And even though Helen is going to live to be a very old lady, every minute hundreds of millions of Helen cells die, and new ones are made—but she’s still Helen.”
“Where do those cells go?” Helen asked.
“They’re absorbed into the body, and their energy is used to create new cells. But they’re all Helen cells. If you look inside those cells, things get even more complex. You remember the electron microscope I showed you in my lab?”
“Uh-huh.”
“I can magnify a cell ten million times. Can you imagine? The deeper I explore, the more amazed I am. And yet, there will always be a door I can’t open. There’s a secret inside I’ll never unlock. If I could open that door, maybe I would find something like a soul.”
“What about heaven?”
“I don’t know. Nobody knows, honestly. I’ve heard of patients who have died on the operating table and been revived, and some of them have stories of seeing their dead friends and relatives. I take that as what we call a datum point, interesting but unprovable. I wish I could tell you there was a life after death, and that all the people you care about will be there, and we’ll be together for eternity. I can’t prove it one way or the other.”
Helen nodded. Henry worried that he had let her down. Then she said, “I believe in heaven. I think it’s in our dreams.”
“What do you mean?”
“It’s like we already have all these people and experiences in our lives, then in our dreams we rearrange everything, and have new experiences, and sometimes we meet new people, and we go on great adventures, and that’s like heaven, and sometimes bad things happen or nightmares, and that’s like hell. I mean, why do we have to think that heaven is a place we can go only when we die? What if we have half our life awake on earth and then half in heaven, and then eventually it’s all in heaven and that’s when we’re dead?”
“That’s a very elegant theory,” Henry said admiringly.
29
Grandma’s Biscuits
Jill went to see her mother again at the elder-care facility. This time Nora recognized Jill as soon as she came in. “Put on gloves” was the first thing Nora said. Jill took a pair of disposable gloves from a box on the windowsill, then put a pair on Nora. She held her mother’s hand. “I’m going to take you home,” Jill said.
“No, don’t.”
“When was the last time you ate?”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Look, I brought you something.” Jill reached into a plastic bag and produced a pint of vanilla ice cream. It had cost her twenty-four dollars, as much cash as she had been able to muster.
“You shouldn’t be here,” Nora said.
“Humor me, Mom, I’m in the mood to feed you.”
Nora smiled. It was the first time in months Jill had seen her do that. She spooned a small bite into her mother’s mouth. “Vanilla is your favorite, right?”
Nora nodded. After the first bite, she was ravenous.
“Your children…,” Nora said vaguely.
“Helen and Teddy. They’re fine. They’re bored. They can’t wait for you to come home with me.”
“I love them.”
“I know. And they know, too.”
“I can’t go now.”
“Mom, I can’t just leave you here.”
“I can’t go. I’m sick.”
Jill tried to be calm, but her heart fluttered. “Mom, I want to take care of you.”
“You shouldn’t be here, either,” Nora said. Her chin trembled as she spoke. “Somewhere I have the papers about the will and all that. You and your sister…” Nora looked furiously at the ceiling tiles.
“Maggie.”
“You and Maggie get everything.” She thought a moment. “Do I still have a car?”
“Mom, let’s not talk about that.”
“I don’t want a big funeral.”
“Okay.”
“At Oakland, next to your dad. We have the plot, you know.” She remembered the most surprising things, or maybe these were the only important things for her now. She wanted her pastor—Jill knew whom she meant, at the Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church—to give the eulogy. Jill didn’t tell her how impossible that would be, even if the church was still operating and the minister was alive.
“I love you, Mom,” she said, tearing up.
“I know you do.”
Jill spooned another bite of vanilla ice cream into her mother’s mouth.
Three days later, Jill buried Nora at