Wishes

L
ater, it was said that Berni was the best dressed corpse any of her set had seen in decades. Not that many of them admitted to having lived for much more than a couple of decades, and, what with the wonders of plastic surgery, none of them needed to admit to the exact number of years.

They filed by the expensive coffin and looked in admiration at Berni. There wasn’t a line in her face. Every pit, wrinkle, even some of the pores had been shot full of collagen. Her breasts, filled with silicone, even in death pointed skyward. Hair expensively colored, eyelashes permanently dyed, nails manicured, waist tucked into a youthful twenty-three inches, her body clad in a six-thousand-dollar suit—she looked as good in death as she had in life.

There were sighs of admiration from the people attending, and hope that they would look as good in death as she did. Only two people shed any tears at Berni’s demise, both of them men. One man was her hairdresser. He was going to miss Berni’s business, but he was also going to miss Berni’s wicked tongue and all the juicy gossip she passed his way. The other mourner was Berni’s fourth ex-husband, and his tears were tears of joy, because he was no longer going to have to support the army of workers it took to keep a fifty-year-old looking twenty-seven.

“Going to the cemetery?” one woman asked another.

“I would like to, but I can’t,” said the second woman. “I have an appointment. Emergency, you know.” Janine, her manicurist, could only give her a time slot today at two, and she
had
to have her broken nail repaired.

“Same here,” said the first woman, and she gave a quick, guarded, angry glance at Berni in her coffin. Last week she’d bought the same suit Berni was being buried in, now she would have to return it. It was just like Berni to show up in the latest, the newest, the most expensive at
every
gathering. At least that won’t happen anymore, she thought, and she managed to suppress her smile. “I do wish I could go. Berni and I were such good, close friends, you know.” She smoothed her silk Geoffrey Beene pantsuit. “I really must leave.”

Before long there were more murmurs of people having emergency appointments elsewhere, until, in the end, only Berni’s hairdresser rode in the limousine to the grave. There was a line of twenty limos behind the hearse—Berni had arranged and paid for her funeral years in advance—but they were empty of mourners.

At long last the words (planned by Berni) had been spoken, the music (also planned by Berni) had been played and sung, and the single mourner had gone home. The grave was filled in, new sod rolled into place, flowers artistically arranged around the tasteful gravestone, and the sun began to set over Berni’s grave.

Four hours after her coffin was covered, not one person gave a thought to the woman who had been so much a part of their lives. They had eaten her food, attended her parties, gossiped endlessly with her and about her, but no one missed her now that she was gone. No one at all.

Berni opened her eyes with a jolt, feeling as though she’d overslept. Her first thought was that she’d be late for her nail appointment with Janine, and the bitch was ruthless if a client was late. She’d tell Berni she was booked up for the next week and make Berni suffer with ragged-looking nails for days. I’ll get her, Berni thought. I’ll tell Diane that Janine’s been sleeping with her husband. With Diane’s temper Janine will be lucky to come out alive.

Smiling, Berni started to get out of bed and then realized she wasn’t in bed. It was then that she began to see that something was wrong. She wasn’t in bed but standing up. She wasn’t wearing her red silk Christian Dior nightgown but her new white Dupioni silk suit—the one Lois Simons had purchased on sale. Berni planned to wear the suit first, then Lois wouldn’t be able to wear hers; she’d try to return it and wouldn’t be allowed to, and she’d be stuck with a four-thousand-dollar suit she couldn’t wear. The idea made Berni smile.

But she lost her smile as she looked around. There was fog everywhere, and she couldn’t see anything except a gold-colored light far ahead. What now, she thought. She squinted a bit to see better, although she now had twenty-twenty vision thanks to eye surgery last year.

She took a few steps forward, and the fog cleared a path. She started to frown but caught herself (frowning gives one wrinkles). Perhaps this was some stupid idea of her latest lover. He was a twenty-year-old muscle-bound beachboy she’d picked up a few months ago, and she was growing tired of him. He kept talking about how he wanted to be a movie director, and he wanted Berni to finance him. Maybe all this fog was his doing to get her to open her checkbook.

She walked for several minutes before she saw anything. Under the golden light was a big desk, and behind it was sitting a handsome, gray-haired man.

When she saw the man Berni perked up and put her shoulders back so her high breasts pointed straight ahead.

“Hello,” she said in her throatiest, sexiest voice.

The man glanced up at her then down at the papers on his desk.

It always worried Berni when men didn’t immediately respond to her beauty. Maybe she’d better make another appointment with her surgeon next week. “Are you with Lance?” she asked, referring to her beachboy lover.

The man kept looking at his papers and didn’t answer her, so Berni looked at his desk. She tried not to look startled, but his big desk was twenty-four-carat gold. Many years ago Berni had developed an eye for jewelry that would have made any jeweler proud. She could quickly and easily tell twelve-carat from eighteen-carat from the genuine, pure twenty-four-carat.

She reached out her hand to touch the desk but drew it back when the man looked up.

“Bernadina,” he said.

Berni winced. She hadn’t heard the name in years. It sounded as old as she fought not to be. “Berni,” she said. “With an i.”

She watched the man use an old-fashioned fountain pen to make a note, then she began to grow annoyed. “Look, I’ve had just about enough of this. If this is some scheme you and Lance have cooked up, I—”

“You’re dead.”

“—am still going to throw him out. I’m not going to support him, and—”

“Died in your sleep last night. Heart attack.”

“—his harebrained schemes to—” She stopped and stared at the man. “I what?”

“Died in your sleep last night, and now you’re in the Kitchen.”

Berni stood there blinking at him, and then she began to laugh. She forgot about wrinkles and how unattractive a woman looked when she was laughing as opposed to smiling coyly and really laughed. “Great one, buster,” she said, “but it won’t work. I know this is a trick to get me to give Lance money, so you can turn off your fog machines and—”

She stopped because the man wasn’t listening to her. He picked up a big stamp from the desk, smacked the paper with it, then motioned to his right. From out of the fog came a woman of about Berni’s age—her
real
age, not how old she looked—wearing a long dress with lace at the elbows, looking as though she’d just stepped out of a play about Martha and George Washington.

Berni’s only thought was that her beachboy had better be gone by the time she got back.

“Come with me,” the woman said, and Berni followed her.

The fog still surrounded them, but it parted as they walked. After a while the woman stopped before what looked to be an arched doorway, again made of twenty-four-carat gold. Above the arch was a sign that said “Disbelief.”

“I believe you need this,” the woman said, stepping back.

Reluctantly, Berni entered the fog on the other side of the arch.

It was some time later that she left the room. Her eyes were no longer angry but were now filled with wonder and some fear. She had seen images of her death, her funeral, had even watched the undertakers embalming her body.

Outside the Disbelief room the woman was waiting for her.

“Better now?” the woman asked.

“Who are you?” Berni whispered. “Is this heaven or hell?”

The woman smiled. “I’m Pauline, and this is neither heaven nor hell. It’s the Kitchen.”

“The Kitchen? I just died, and I get sent to the
Kitchen?”
Her voice was rising in hysteria.

Pauline didn’t seem in the least perturbed by her manner. “The Kitchen is a…I believe in your time you would call it a halfway house. It’s between heaven and hell. It’s for women only—not for bad women, not for good women—it’s for women who don’t quite deserve heaven or hell.”

Berni just stood there gaping, her mouth open.

“It’s a place for women who…” Pauline thought a moment. “For example, it’s for all those religious women who spout Bible verses and consider themselves better than everyone else. They haven’t been really bad, so to speak, so they can’t be sent to hell, yet they’ve been so judgmental they can’t really be sent directly to heaven.”

“So they’re sent here? To the Kitchen?” Berni whispered.

“Exactly.”

Pauline didn’t seem inclined to say any more, and Berni was still trying to recover from the news of her own death. “Nice dress,” she managed to say at last. “Halston?”

Pauline smiled, either not understanding or ignoring Berni’s bitchiness. “The women here are from all different time periods. You’ll see every century from earth here. There are
lots
of Puritans here.”

Berni felt her head reeling with all she’d learned. “Is there someplace to get a drink around here?”

“Oh, yes. What do you drink now? Bathtub gin, isn’t it?”

“That was before my time,” Berni said as they began walking, the fog clearing ahead of them.

“Whatever you drink, whatever you want, you’ll find it here.”

A moment later Pauline stopped in front of a tiny table, and on it was a tall, frosty margarita. Gratefully, Berni sat down and took a long drink as Pauline sat opposite her.

When Berni looked up, she said, “Why’s this place called the Kitchen?”

“It’s just a nickname. I’m sure it has another name, but nobody remembers it. It’s called the Kitchen because it’s like women’s life on earth. When you die you think you’re going to heaven, just as you think, when you get married, that you’re going to have heaven on earth. Instead, in both cases, you get sent to the Kitchen.”

Berni nearly choked on her drink. She would have laughed, but instead her eyes widened in horror. “You don’t mean I’m going to have to spend eternity cooking and…and cleaning out the refrigerator, do you?” Can a dead person commit suicide, she wondered.

“Oh, no, nothing like that. This place is very nice.
Very
nice. In fact, it’s so nice many women never want to leave. They never do their assignments correctly, and they’ve been here for centuries.”

“What assignments?” Berni asked suspiciously, still reeling with horror at the idea of years of cleaning floors and sinks and ovens and cooking a damned turkey every Thanksgiving.

“Every woman in the Kitchen is given, from time to time, a task to perform. She’s to help someone on earth. The tasks are always different. Sometimes a woman is to help someone who’s grieving, sometimes she’s to help someone to make a decision. There are lots of different assignments. If you fail, you stay here.”

“And if you succeed in helping the person, what do you get?”

“Eventually, heaven.”

“Is heaven full of this fog?”

Pauline shrugged. “I have no idea. I’ve never been there, but I imagine it’s better than this.”

“All right,” Berni said, standing, “lead me to my first task. I don’t want to stay in a place even
named
the Kitchen.”

Pauline stood, and the table, chairs, and empty glass disappeared. She started walking, Berni behind her.

Berni was thinking hard about what Pauline had told her. “Help someone on earth?” she muttered, then she stopped.

Pauline halted and looked back.

“Are we,” Berni said, “are we fairy godmothers?”

“More or less,” Pauline answered, smiling and starting to walk again.

Berni caught up with her. “You mean
I
am supposed to be someone’s
fairy godmother?
Magic wands? Wishes and Cinderella and all that?”

“You’re quite free to solve your assignment in any way that you see fit.”

If Berni’s collagen-padded face could have wrinkled into a frown, it would have done so. “I don’t like this,” she said. “I have my own life to lead. I don’t want to be some fat, gray-haired lady running around saying ‘Bibbidi Bobbidi Boo’ and changing pumpkins into coaches.”

Pauline blinked, not understanding Berni’s allusion at all. “Leading your own life is what I imagine got you here instead of into heaven.”

“What does that mean? I never hurt anyone in my life.”

“Nor did you help anyone. You lived completely for yourself. Not even as a child did you ever consider anyone else’s wishes. You married four men for their money, and when they complained you divorced them and took half of everything they owned.”

“But that’s how everyone lives in the twentieth century.”