The Five People You Meet in Heaven Read online

  “You wash me,” she said again, holding out the stone.

  Eddie dragged himself into the river. He took the stone. His fingers trembled.

  “I don’t know how…” he mumbled, barely audible. “I never had children…”

  She raised her charred hand and Eddie gripped it gently and slowly rubbed the stone along her forearm, until the scars began to loosen. He rubbed harder; they peeled away. He quickened his efforts until the singed flesh fell and the healthy flesh was visible. Then he turned the stone over and rubbed her bony back and tiny shoulders and the nape of her neck and finally her cheeks and her forehead and the skin behind her ears.

  She leaned backward into him, resting her head on his collarbone, shutting her eyes as if falling into a nap. He traced gently around the lids. He did the same with her drooped lips, and the scabbed patches on her head, until the plum-colored hair emerged from the roots and the face that he had seen at first was before him again.

  When she opened her eyes, their whites flashed out like beacons. “I am five,” she whispered.

  Eddie lowered the stone and shuddered in short, gasping breaths. “Five … uh-huh … Five years old? …”

  She shook her head no. She held up five fingers. Then she pushed them against Eddie’s chest, as if to say your five. Your fifth person.

  A warm breeze blew. A tear rolled down Eddie’s face. Tala studied it the way a child studies a bug in the grass. Then she spoke to the space between them.

  “Why sad?” she said.

  “Why am I sad?” he whispered. “Here?”

  She pointed down. “There.”

  Eddie sobbed, a final vacant sob, as if his chest were empty. He had surrendered all barriers; there was no grownup-to-child talk anymore. He said what he always said, to Marguerite, to Ruby, to the Captain, to the Blue Man, and, more than anyone, to himself.

  “I was sad because I didn’t do anything with my life. I was nothing. I accomplished nothing. I was lost. I felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there.”

  Tala plucked the pipe-cleaner dog from the water.

  “Supposed to be there,” she said.

  “Where? At Ruby Pier?”

  She nodded.

  “Fixing rides? That was my existence?” He blew a deep breath. “Why?”

  She tilted her head, as if it were obvious.

  “Children,” she said. “You keep them safe. You make good for me.”

  She wiggled the dog against his shirt.

  “Is where you were supposed to be,” she said, and then she touched his shirt patch with a small laugh and added two words, “Eddie Main-ten-ance.”

  Eddie slumped in the rushing water. The stones of his stories were all around him now, beneath the surface, one touching another. He could feel his form melting, dissolving, and he sensed that he did not have long, that whatever came after the five people you meet in heaven, it was upon him now.

  “Tala?” he whispered.

  She looked up.

  “The little girl at the pier? Do you know about her?”

  Tala stared at her fingertips. She nodded yes.

  “Did I save her? Did I pull her out of the way?”

  Tala shook her head. “No pull.”

  Eddie shivered. His head dropped. So there it was. The end of his story.

  “Push,” Tala said.

  He looked up. “Push?”

  “Push her legs. No pull. You push. Big thing fall. You keep her safe.”

  Eddie shut his eyes in denial. “But I felt her hands,” he said. “It’s the only thing I remember. I couldn’t have pushed her. I felt her hands.”

  Tala smiled and scooped up river water, then placed her small wet fingers in Eddie’s adult grip. He knew right away they had been there before.

  “Not her hands,” she said. “My hands. I bring you to heaven. Keep you safe.”

  With that, the river rose quickly, engulfing Eddie’s waist and chest and shoulders. Before he could take another breath, the noise of the children disappeared above him, and he was submerged in a strong but silent current. His grip was still entwined with Tala’s, but he felt his body being washed from his soul, meat from the bone, and with it went all the pain and weariness he ever held inside him, every scar, every wound, every bad memory.

  He was nothing now, a leaf in the water, and she pulled him gently, through shadow and light, through shades of blue and ivory and lemon and black, and he realized all these colors, all along, were the emotions of his life. She drew him up through the breaking waves of a great gray ocean and he emerged in brilliant light above an almost unimaginable scene:

  There was a pier filled with thousands of people, men and women, fathers and mothers and children—so many children—children from the past and the present, children who had not yet been born, side by side, hand in hand, in caps, in short pants, filling the boardwalk and the rides and the wooden platforms, sitting on each other’s shoulders, sitting in each other’s laps. They were there, or would be there, because of the simple, mundane things Eddie had done in his life, the accidents he had prevented, the rides he had kept safe, the unnoticed turns he had affected every day. And while their lips did not move, Eddie heard their voices, more voices than he could have imagined, and a peace came upon him that he had never known before. He was free of Tala’s grasp now, and he floated up above the sand and above the boardwalk, above the tent tops and spires of the midway toward the peak of the big, white Ferris wheel, where a cart, gently swaying, held a woman in a yellow dress—his wife, Marguerite, waiting with her arms extended. He reached for her and he saw her smile and the voices melded into a single word from God:

  Home.

  Epilogue

  The park at Ruby Pier reopened three days after the accident. The story of Eddie’s death was in the newspapers for a week, and then other stories about other deaths took its place.

  The ride called Freddy’s Free Fall was closed for the season, but the next year it reopened with a new name, Daredevil Drop. Teenagers saw it as a badge of courage, and it drew many customers, and the owners were pleased.

  Eddie’s apartment, the one he had grown up in, was rented to someone new, who put leaded glass in the kitchen window, obscuring the view of the old carousel. Dominguez, who had agreed to take over Eddie’s job, put Eddie’s few possessions in a trunk at the maintenance shop, alongside memorabilia from Ruby Pier, Including photos of the original entrance.

  Nicky, the young man whose key had cut the cable, made a new key when he got home, then sold his car four months later. He returned often to Ruby Pier, where he bragged to his friends that his great-grandmother was the woman for whom it was named.

  Seasons came and seasons went. And when school let out and the days grew long, the crowds returned to the amusement park by the great gray ocean—not as large as those at the theme parks, but large enough. Come summer, the spirit turns, and the seashore beckons with a song of the waves, and people gather for carousels and Ferris wheels and sweet iced drinks and cotton candy.

  Lines formed at Ruby Pier—just as a line formed someplace else: five people waiting, in five chosen memories, for a little girl named Amy or Annie to grow and to love and to age and to die, and to finally have her question answered—why she lived and what she lived for. And in that line now was a whiskered old man, with a linen cap and a crooked nose, who waited in a place called the Stardust Band Shell to share his part of the secret of heaven: that each affects the other and the other affects the next, and the world is full of stories, but the stories are all one.

  * * *

  The author wishes to thank Vinnie Curci, of Amusements of America, and Dana Wyatt, director of operations for Pacific Park on the Santa Monica Pier. Their assistance in researching this book was invaluable, and their pride in protecting fun park customers is laudable. Also, thanks to Dr. David Collon, of Henry Ford Hospital, for the information on war wounds. And Kerri Alexander, who handles, well, everything. My deepest appreciation to Bob Miller, Ellen Archer, Wil
l Schwalbe, Leslie Wells, Jane Comins, Katie Long, Michael Burkin, and Phil Rose for their inspiring belief in me; to David Black, for what agent-author relationships should be; to Janine, who patiently heard this book read aloud, many times; to Rhoda, Ira, Cara, and Peter, with whom I shared my first Ferris wheel; and to my uncle, the real Eddie, who told me his stories long before I told my own.

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