The Five People You Meet in Heaven, Page 2

  “DOM! WILLIE!” Eddie yelled. Someone banged against his waist, knocking his walkie-talkie to the ground. Eddie bent to get it. Willie went to the controls. He put his finger on the green button. Eddie looked up.

  “NO, NO, NO, DON’T!”

  Eddie turned to the crowd. “GET BACK!”

  Something in Eddie’s voice must have caught the people’s attention; they stopped cheering and began to scatter. An opening cleared around the bottom of Freddy’s Free Fall.

  And Eddie saw the last face of his life.

  She was sprawled upon the ride’s metal base, as if someone had knocked her into it, her nose running, tears filling her eyes, the little girl with the pipe-cleaner animal. Amy? Annie?

  “Ma … Mom … Mom …” she heaved, almost rhythmically, her body frozen in the paralysis of crying children.

  “Ma … Mom … Ma … Mom …”

  Eddie’s eyes shot from her to the carts. Did he have time? Her to the carts—

  Whump. Too late. The carts were dropping. Jesus, he released the brake!–and for Eddie, everything slipped into watery motion. He dropped his cane and pushed off his bad leg and felt a shot of pain that almost knocked him down. A big step. Another step. Inside the shaft of Freddy’s Free Fall, the cable snapped its final thread and ripped across the hydraulic line. Cart No. 2 was in a dead drop now, nothing to stop it, a boulder off a cliff.

  In those final moments, Eddie seemed to hear the whole world: distant screaming, waves, music, a rush of wind, a low, loud, ugly sound that he realized was his own voice blasting through his chest. The little girl raised her arms. Eddie lunged. His bad leg buckled. He half flew, half stumbled toward her, landing on the metal platform, which ripped through his shirt and split open his skin, just beneath the patch that read EDDIE and MAINTENANCE. He felt two hands in his own, two small hands.

  A stunning impact.

  A blinding flash of light.

  And then, nothing.

  Today Is Eddie’s Birthday

  It is the 1920s, a crowded hospital in one of the poorest sections of the city. Eddie’s father smokes cigarettes in the waiting room, where the other fathers are also smoking cigarettes. The nurse enters with a clipboard. She calls his name. She mispronounces it. The other men blow smoke. Well?

  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.

  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

  Eddie 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 … ?

  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.

  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 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

  Eddie 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!

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

  And 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—“

  It was coming from the other side of a stage.

  “Only here, at the World’s Most Curious Citizens, can you draw this near…”

  Eddie pulled aside the curtain.

  “Feast your eyes upon the most unus—“

  The barker’s voice vanished. And Eddie stepped back in disbelief.

  There, sitting in a chair, alone on the stage, was a middle-aged man with narrow, stooped shoulders, naked from the waist up. His belly sagged over his belt. His hair was closely cropped. His lips were thin and his face was long and drawn. Eddie would have long since forgotten him, were it not for one distinctive feature.

  His skin was blue.

  “Hello, Edward,” he said. “I have been waiting for you.”

  The First Person Eddie Meets in Heaven

  “Don’t be afraid…” the Blue Man said, rising slowly from his chair. “Don’t be afraid…”

  His voice was soothing, but Eddie could only stare. He had barely known this man. Why was he seeing him now? He was like one of those faces that pops into your dreams and the next morning you say, “You’ll never guess who I dreamed about last night.”

  “Your body feels like a child’s, right?”

  Eddie nodded.

  “You were a child when you knew me, that’s why. You start with the same feelings you had.”

  Start what? Eddie thought.

  The Blue Man lifted his chin. His skin was a grotesque shade, a graying blueberry. His fingers were wrinkled. He walked outside. Eddie followed. The pier was empty. The beach was empty. Was the entire planet empty?

  “Tell me something,” the Blue Man said. He pointed to a two-humped wooden roller coaster in the distance. The Whipper. It was built in the 1920s, before under-friction wheels, meaning the cars couldn’t turn very quickly—unless you wanted them launching off the track. “The Whipper. Is it still the ‘fastest ride on earth’?”

  Eddie looked at the old clanking thing, which had been torn down years ago. He shook his head no.

  “Ah,” the Blue Man said. “I imagined as much. Things don’t change here. And there’s none of that peering down from the clouds, I’m afraid.”

  Here? Eddie thought.

  The Blue Man smiled as if he’d heard the question. He touched Eddie’s shoulder and Eddie felt a surge of warmth unlike anything he had ever felt before. His thoughts came spilling out like sentences.

  How did I die?

  “An accident,” the Blue Man said.

  How long have I been dead?

  “A minute. An h
our. A thousand years.”

  Where am I?

  The Blue Man pursed his lips, then repeated the question thoughtfully. “Where are you?” He turned and raised his arms. All at once, the rides at the old Ruby Pier cranked to life: The Ferris wheel spun, the Dodgem Cars smacked into each other, the Whipper clacked uphill, and the Parisian Carousel horses bobbed on their brass poles to the cheery music of the Wurlitzer organ. The ocean was in front of them. The sky was the color of lemons.

  “Where do you think?” the Blue Man asked. “Heaven.”

  No! Eddie shook his head violently. No! The Blue Man seemed amused.

  “No? It can’t be heaven?” he said. “Why? Because this is where you grew up?”

  Eddie mouthed the word Yes.

  “Ah.” The Blue Man nodded. “Well. People often belittle the place where they were born. But heaven can be found in the most unlikely corners. And heaven itself has many steps. This, for me, is the second. And for you, the first.”

  He led Eddie through the park, passing cigar shops and sausage stands and the “flat joints,” where suckers lost their nickels and dimes.

  Heaven? Eddie thought. Ridiculous. He had spent most of his adult life trying to get away from Ruby Pier. It was an amusement park, that’s all, a place to scream and get wet and trade your dollars for kewpie dolls. The thought that this was some kind of blessed resting place was beyond his imagination.

  He tried again to speak, and this time he heard a small grunt from his chest. The Blue Man turned.

  “Your voice will come. We all go through the same thing. You cannot talk when you first arrive.” He smiled. “It helps you listen.”

  There are five people you meet in heaven,” the Blue Man suddenly said. “Each of us was in your life for a reason. You may not have known the reason at the time, and that is what heaven is for. For understanding your life on earth.”