She dropped her head so quickly I heard her neck creak a little. “Of course, Mrs. Sinclair. My apologies for overstepping again.”
“No, no. It’s good that you brought it up; it’s something that everyone in Hell needs to know. It’s gotta be understood that anyone on the committee is acting with my total permission.” My fervid, thankful, grateful permission. “I’ll bring it up tomorrow at the next meeting. I guess that’s gonna mean more flyers.”
She’d been standing with her face at an angle. Now she faced me straight on and the feeling that she looked familiar got stronger. Something about the hair . . . and the dour smile . . . “Your pardon, ma’am?”
I had a vision of her picturing literal flyers: souls soaring about Hell bellowing out the news of the day. Fun, but ultimately impractical. “Nothing. Have you been here awhile? In Hell?”
“Oh yes. Since 1789.”
“Yeah?” I gestured to her outfit. “But you’re letting yourself look different?” That explained the modern materials, but the old-fashioned look. And the shawl. “Good for you.”
“I died in my . . .” She glanced around, then leaned in and whispered, “Night attire. I was delighted when I realized I could wear whatever I wished. It only took me seventy years to master.”
Hmm. Was it like any skill, then? Some people just had a knack for driving, for picking up foreign languages, for gardening. Did some people have a knack for the whole “my flesh was only a vessel, my spirit roams as I will it” thing, while for others it took longer? Should we be teaching classes in this stuff? Something else for tomorrow’s (groan) meeting.
“You’ve been here awhile . . .” Minnesota politeness had me ready to add I know it’s none of my business, but . . . so I squashed it. Anything anyone did here was now officially my business. I didn’t have to apologize for asking questions. “What’d you do?”
“I blasphemed. And . . .” She took a breath, let it out. “I was not as good a mother as I could have been to my George.”
“What, you beat him?” Ugh, she didn’t kill him, did she? She looked harmless but willful, like a church organist who ran everything behind the scenes, and she smelled like old cookies and powder. Which didn’t mean shit; if I’d learned anything since dying the first time, I’d learned that looking harmless was no guarantee of being harmless.
“Of course I beat him! It was my duty, for does it not say, ‘He that spareth his rod hateth his son: but he that loveth him chasteneth him betimes’?”
What am I, a game show contestant? “Probably.”
“In point of fact I fear I didn’t beat him enough. ’Twas only me, you know; my husband passed on when I was thirty-five, and left me with five children to raise and a plantation to run. I wasn’t—there wasn’t—there wasn’t as much time for frivolity and tenderness. I had to be mother and father to him. I was . . .” She paused, visibly struggling for the words to explain to the newer, dimmer Satan. “. . . determined to have my way. In all things.”
“Okay. Well. Single motherhood is a bitch. My mom was one. But if all single mothers are doomed to Hell, I’d think it’d be a lot more crowded here.”
“No, no . . . I’m here because I blasphemed. And when my George was led astray by evil companions, I blamed God the Father and not my own weakness. It cost me my son.”
“Did he die?”
“Well, yes.” She regarded me with a puzzled smile. “It’s been centuries.”
“Right, right. I mean, did he die because of anything you did?”
“He died because I didn’t do enough. I must have told him a hundred times a hundred times—”
“So, a thousand times?” Why not just say that?
“—not to go straight to dinner after chores. He was out in dreadful weather for hours inspecting the grounds, got miserably soaked, and then had dinner in his wet clothes! Death was inevitable! And it was my fault! And his.”
“So, while you’re sorry you weren’t nicer to him in general, you’re also sorry you didn’t nag him more?”
“Exactly. He was only sixty-seven. He had years left!”
“Uh . . .” This was awful, but it reminded me of the uproar when Joan Rivers died. Okay, the clinic was definitely negligent, but she was eighty-one. So while it was sad to hear she died, all the “gone too soon!” and “she had years left!” and “she could have been saved and gone on for years!” stuff didn’t exactly ring true. Because: eighty-one.