The Five People You Meet in Heaven (3 page)

He raises his hand.

"
Congratulations
,"
the nurse says
.

He follows her down the hallway to the newborns' nursery. His
shoes clap on the floor.

"Wait here," she says.

13

Through the glass, he sees her check the numbers of the wooden
cribs. She moves past one, not his, another, not his, another, not his,
another, not his.

She stops. There. Beneath the blanket. A tiny head covered in a blue
cap. She checks her clipboard again, then points.

The father breathes heavily, nods his head. For a moment, his face
seems to crumble, like a bridge collapsing into a river. Then he smiles.

His.

The Journey

E
DDIE SAW NOTHING OF HIS FINAL MOMENT on earth, nothing of the pier or the crowd or the shattered fiberglass cart.

In the stories about life after death, the soul often floats above the good-bye moment, hovering over police cars at highway accidents, or clinging like a spider to hospital-room ceilings. These are people who receive a second chance, who somehow, for some reason, resume their place in the world.

Eddie, it appeared, was not getting a second chance.

WHERE . . . ?
Where . . . ? Where . . . ?
The sky was a misty pumpkin shade, then a deep turquoise, then a bright lime. Eddie was floating, and his arms were still extended.

Where . . . ?

The tower cart was falling. He remembered that. The little girl—Amy?

Annie?—she was crying. He remembered that. He remembered lunging.

He remembered hitting the platform. He felt her two small hands in his.

Then what?

Did I save her?

Eddie could only picture it at a distance, as if it happened years ago.

Stranger still, he could not
feel
any emotions that went with it. He could only feel calm, like a child in the cradle of its mother's arms.

Where . . . ?

14

The sky around him changed again, to grapefruit yellow, then a forest green, then a pink that Eddie momentarily associated with, of all things, cotton candy.

Did I save her?

Did she live?

Where . . .

. . . is my worry?

Where is my pain?

That was what was missing. Every hurt he'd ever suffered, every ache he'd ever endured—it was all as gone as an expired breath. He could not feel agony. He could not feel sadness. His consciousness felt smoky, wisplike, incapable of anything but calm. Below him now, the colors changed again. Something was swirling. Water. An ocean. He was floating over a vast yellow sea. Now it turned melon. Now it was sapphire. Now he began to drop, hurtling toward the surface. It was faster than anything he'd ever imagined, yet there wasn't as much as a breeze on his face, and he felt no fear. He saw the sands of a golden shore.

Then he was under water.

Then everything was silent.

Where is my worry?

Where is my pain?

Today Is Eddie's Birthday

He is five years old. It is a Sunday afternoon at Ruby Pier. Picnic
tables are set along the boardwalk, which overlooks the long white
beach. There is a vanilla cake with blue wax candles. There is a bowl of
orange juice. The pier workers are milling about, the barkers, the
sideshow acts, the animal trainers, some men from the fishery. Eddie's
father, as usual, is in a card game. Eddie plays at his feet. His older
brother, Joe, is doing push-ups in front of a group of elderly women,
who feign interest and clap politely.

15

Eddie is wearing his birthday gift, a red cowboy hat and a toy
holster. He gets up and runs from one group to the next, pulling out the
toy gun and going, "Bang, bang!"

"C'mere boy," Mickey Shea beckons from a bench.

"Bang, bang," goesEddie.

Mickey Shea works with Eddie's dad, fixing the rides. He is fat and
wears suspenders and is always singing Irish songs. To Eddie, he
smells funny, like cough medicine.

"
C'mere. Lemme do your birthday bumps," he says. "Like we do in
Ireland
."

Suddenly, Mickey's large hands are under Eddie's he is hoisted up,
then flipped over and dangled by the feet. Eddie's hat falls off.

"Careful, Mickey!" Eddie's mother yells. Eddie s father looks up,
smirks, then returns to his card game.

"
Ho, ho. I got 'im," Mickey says. "Now. One birthday bump for every
year
."

Mickey lowers Eddie gently, until his head brushes the floor.

"One!"

Mickey lifts Eddie back up. The others join in, laughing. They yell,

"Two! . . . Three!"

Upside down, Eddie is not sure who is who. His head is getting
heavy.

"Four! . . ." they shout. "Five!"

Eddie is flipped right-side up and put down. Everybody claps. Eddie
reaches for his hat, then stumbles over. He gets up, wobbles to Mickey
Shea, and punches him in the arm.

"Ho-ho! What was that for, little man?" Mickey says. Everyone
laughs. Eddie turns and runs away, three steps, before being swept
into his mothers arms.

"Are you all right, my darling birthday boy?" She is only inches
from his face. He sees her deep red lipstick and her plump, soft cheeks
and the wave of her auburn hair.

"
I was upside down
,"
he tells her
.

"I saw," she says.

She puts his hat back on his head. Later, she will walk him along the
pier, perhaps take him on an elephant ride, or watch the fishermen pull
in their evening nets, the fish flipping like shiny, wet coins. She will

16

hold his hand and tell him God is proud of him for being a good boy on
his birthday, and that will make the world feel right-side up again.

The Arrival

E
DDIE AWOKE IN A TEACUP.

It was a part of some old amusement park ride—a large teacup, made of dark, polished wood, with a cushioned seat and a steel-hinged door.

Eddie's arms and legs dangled over the edges. The sky continued to change colors, from a shoe-leather brown to a deep scarlet.

His instinct was to reach for his cane. He had kept it by his bed the last few years, because there were mornings when he no longer had the strength to get up without it. This embarrassed Eddie, who used to punch men in the shoulders when he greeted them.

But now there was no cane, so Eddie exhaled and tried to pull himself up. Surprisingly, his back did not hurt. His leg did not throb. He yanked harder and hoisted himself easily over the edge of the teacup, landing awkwardly on the ground, where he was struck by three quick thoughts.

First, he felt wonderful.

Second, he was all alone.

Third, he was still on Ruby Pier.

But it was a different Ruby Pier now. There were canvas tents and vacant grassy sections and so few obstructions you could see the mossy breakwater out in the ocean. The colors of the attractions were firehouse reds and creamy whites—no teals or maroons—and each ride had its own wooden ticket booth. The teacup he had awoken in was part of a primitive attraction called Spin-O-Rama. Its sign was plywood, as were the other low-slung signs, hinged on storefronts that lined the promenade:

El Tiempo Cigars! Now, That's a Smoke!

Chowder, 10 cents!

17

Ride the Whipper—The Sensation of the Age!

Eddie blinked hard. This was the Ruby Pier of his childhood, some
75

years ago, only everything was new, freshly scrubbed. Over there was the Loop-the-Loop ride—which had been torn down decades ago—and over there the bathhouses and the saltwater swimming pools that had been razed in the 1950s. Over there, jutting into the sky, was the original Ferris wheel—in its pristine white paint—and beyond that, the streets of his old neighborhood and the rooftops of the crowded brick tenements,with laundry lines hanging from the windows. Eddie tried to yell, but his voice was raspy air. He mouthed a "Hey!" but nothing came from his throat.

He grabbed at his arms and legs. Aside from his lack of voice, he felt incredible. He walked in a circle. He jumped. No pain. In the last ten years, he had forgotten what it was like to walk without wincing or to sit without struggling to find comfort for his lower back. On the outside, he looked the same as he had that morning: a squat barrel-chested old man in a cap and shorts and a brown maintenance jersey. But he was limber.

So limber, in fact, he could touch behind his ankles, and raise a leg to his belly. He explored his body like an infant, fascinated by the new mechanics, a rubber man doing a rubber man stretch.

Then he ran.

Ha-ha! Running! Eddie had not truly run in more than 60 years, not since the war, but he was running now, starting with a few gingerly steps, then accelerating into a full gait, faster, faster, like the running boy of his youth. He ran along the boardwalk, past a bait-and-tackle stand for fishermen (five cents) and a bathing suit rental stand for swimmers (three cents). He ran past a chute ride called The Dipsy Doodle. He ran along the Ruby Pier Promenade, beneath magnificent buildings of moorish design with spires and minarets and onion-shaped domes. He ran past the Parisian Carousel, with its carved wooden horses, glass mirrors, and Wurlitzer organ, all shiny and new. Only an hour ago, it seemed, he had been scraping rust from its pieces in the shop.

He ran down the heart of the old midway, where the weight guessers, fortune-tellers, and dancing gypsies had once worked. He lowered his chin and held his arms out like a glider, and every few steps he would jump, the way children do, hoping running will turn to flying. It might have seemed ridiculous to anyone watching, this white-haired 18

maintenaance worker, all alone, making like an airplane. But the running boy is inside every man, no matter how old he gets.

A
ND THEN EDDIE stopped running. He heard something. A voice, tinny, as if coming through a megaphone.

How about him, ladies and gentlemen? Have you ever seen such a
horrible sight? . . ."

Eddie was standing by an empty ticket kiosk in front of a large theater. The sign above read

The World's most Curious Citizens.

Ruby pier's Sideshow!

Holy Smoke! They're Fat! They're Skinny!

See the Wild Man!

The sideshow. The freak house. The ballyhoo hall. Eddie recalled them shutting this down at least 50 years ago, about the time television became popular and people didn't need sideshows to tickle their imagination.

"Look well upon this savage, born into a most peculiar handicap . . ."

Eddie peered into the entrance. He had encountered some odd people here. There was Jolly Jane, who weighed over 500 pounds and needed two men to push her up the stairs. There were conjoined twin sisters, who shared a spine and played musical instruments. There were men who swallowed swords, women with beards, and a pair of Indian brothers whose skin went rubbery from being stretched and soaked in oils, until it hung in bunches from their limbs.

Eddie, as a child, had felt sorry for the sideshow cast. They were forced to sit in booths or on stages, sometimes behind bars, as patrons walked past them, leering and pointing. A barker would ballyhoo the oddity, and it was a barker's voice that Eddie heard now.

"Only a terrible twist of fate could leave a man in such a pitiful
condition! From the farthest corner of the world, we have brought him
for your examination—"

Eddie entered the darkened hall. The voice grew louder.

"This tragic soul has endured a perversion of nature—"

19

It was coming from the other side of a stage.

"Only here, at the World's Most Curious Citizens, can you draw this
near. . . ."