The Ten Best Days of My Life Read Online Free Page B

seventy-five-degree breeze. At this point I decided to put on my Cathy Waterman pearls; it seemed only natural to wear pearls on a patio with a black-and-white striped awning and plush wicker benches and recliners.
    With a bottle of chilled 1990 Krug vintage champagne from France and a bowl of the most delectable strawberries (don’t know where they were grown, they just showed up in my refrigerator) , we sat outside under my awning, my grandfather listening to a Phillies game on his headphones, my uncle Morris quietly sipping his champagne between puffs of his Cohíba, my grandmother telling me about all of her friends who made it up here. “Henny Friedberg refuses to see Mort Friedberg and she dates a nice gentleman from eighteenth-century England.” As she gossiped, I could see someone moving into the house next door, a three-story Hamptons-style home. He was opening his back door. Was it . . . ?
    â€œAdam!” I screamed out.
    Gram stopped talking and immediately looked over at the house. Adam turned and looked back, still in his workout gear.
    â€œHey!” he called out, running over to the white picket fence that separated our lawns.
    I picked up my red duchesse satin Vera Wang dress and proceeded to run in his direction, or tried to since Manolos, Vera Wang, and Cathy Waterman pearls are not made for running, even in heaven.
    â€œYou live right here?” I asked him.
    â€œYeah, isn’t this crazy? This is a house I used to see in the Hamptons when I was a kid.”
    â€œThis is Len Jacobs’s old house!” I said, pointing to my home.
    â€œHow crazy is this?” he declared. “Who is Len Jacobs?”
    â€œOh, he’s some kid I went to school with. It doesn’t matter,” I replied dismissively.
    â€œIs this the greatest thing or what?”
    â€œI see you dressed up for the occasion,” he said, remarking on my outfit.
    How completely embarrassing.
    â€œSo, is this your family?” he asked as I turned around to find my grandparents and uncle standing right behind me, smiling in the way that only Jewish grandparents and uncles can smile when they see that their granddaughter/niece in her mid- (fine, late) twenties might have a boyfriend. (By the way, in case you’re wondering what Jewish grandparents are doing in heaven anyway, when all along the rabbis have never breathed so much as a word about heaven, all I can say is that when you’re standing face-to-face with your long-dead relatives, it’s kind of hard to argue about why you’re there. And we were never a very religious family anyway. I’m just going to point to what my grandmother said: “Remember, honey, it’s heaven. You get what you want.”)
    â€œYes,” I answered, a little humiliated as I introduced them.
    â€œThis is Adam,” I told them. “He was in line with me earlier.”
    â€œAdorable,” my grandmother said, boldly stroking her fingers through his hair. “Look at this head of hair, just stunning.”
    â€œThank you,” he said, smiling obligingly to Grandmom, but I could tell he felt ridiculous.
    â€œSo listen,” he added, turning to me. “I have some grandparents and aunts and uncles coming over a little later. Maybe afterward you and I can check out the neighborhood.”
    â€œI’d love it,” I answered, maybe a little too enthusiastically.
    â€œGreat,” he said, “I’ll drop by a little later.”
    â€œA half a day she’s here and she already has a boyfriend,” my grandmother said. “Is this heaven or what?”
    I didn’t want to say it out loud, but. . . . yes, this was heaven.

All This and Heaven Too
    I am alone for the first time since I got to heaven. Tomorrow my grandparents are having a big family-reunion party for me, but for now they’ve left me to settle in. I’ll get to meet my great-grandparents and my great-great-grandparents and anyone