She crossed her hands over the end of her parasol.
“That was how he took ill, of course. He lay there on the beach for hours, soaking and exhausted, before he had the strength to struggle home. Your father was no longer a young man. He was already in his fifties.”
“Fifty-six,” Eddie said blankly.
“Fifty-six,” the old woman repeated. “His body had been weakened, the ocean had left him vulnerable, pneumonia took hold of him, and in time, he died.”
“Because of Mickey?” Eddie said.
“Because of loyalty,” she said.
“People don’t die because of loyalty.”
“They don’t?” She smiled. “Religion? Government? Are we not loyal to such things, sometimes to the death?”
Eddie shrugged.
“Better,” she said, “to be loyal to one another.”
AFTER THAT, THE two of them remained in the snowy mountain valley for a long time. At least to Eddie it felt long. He wasn’t sure how long things took anymore.
“What happened to Mickey Shea?” Eddie said.
“He died, alone, a few years later,” the old woman said. “Drank his way to the grave. He never forgave himself for what happened.”
“But my old man,” Eddie said, rubbing his forehead. “He never said anything.”
“He never spoke of that night again, not to your mother, not to anyone else. He was ashamed for her, for Mickey, for himself. In the hospital, he stopped speaking altogether. Silence was his escape, but silence is rarely a refuge. His thoughts still haunted him.
“One night his breathing slowed and his eyes closed and he could not be awakened. The doctors said he had fallen into a coma.”
Eddie remembered that night. Another phone call to Mr. Nathanson. Another knock on his door.
“After that, your mother stayed by his bedside. Days and nights. She would moan to herself, softly, as if she were praying: ‘I should have done something. I should have done something…’
“Finally, one night, at the doctors’ urging, she went home to sleep. Early the next morning, a nurse found your father slumped halfway out the window.”
“Wait,” Eddie said. His eyes narrowed. “The window?”
Ruby nodded. “Sometime during the night, your father awakened. He rose from his bed, staggered across the room, and found the strength to raise the window sash. He called your mother’s name with what little voice he had, and he called yours, too, and your brother, Joe. And he called for Mickey. At that moment, it seemed, his heart was spilling out, all the guilt and regret. Perhaps he felt the light of death approaching. Perhaps he only knew you were all out there somewhere, in the streets beneath his window. He bent over the ledge. The night was chilly. The wind and damp, in his state, were too much. He was dead before dawn.
“The nurses who found him dragged him back to his bed. They were frightened for their jobs, so they never breathed a word. The story was he died in his sleep.”
Eddie fell back, stunned. He thought about that final image. His father, the tough old war horse, trying to crawl out a window. Where was he going? What was he thinking? Which was worse when left unexplained: a life, or a death?
“HOW DO YOU know all this?” Eddie asked Ruby.
She sighed. “Your father lacked the money for a hospital room of his own. So did the man on the other side of the curtain.”
She paused.
“Emile. My husband.”
Eddie lifted his eyes. His head moved back as if he’d just solved a puzzle.
“Then you saw my father.”
“Yes.”
“And my mother.”
“I heard her moaning on those lonely nights. We never spoke. But after your father’s death, I inquired about your family. When I learned where he had worked, I felt a stinging pain, as if I had lost a loved one myself. The pier that bore my name. I felt its cursed shadow, and I wished again that it had never been built.
“That wish followed me to heaven, even as I waited for you.”
Eddie looked confused.
“The diner?” she said. She pointed to the speck of light in the mountains. “It’s there because I wanted to return to my younger years, a simple but secure life. And I wanted all those who had ever suffered at Ruby Pier—every accident, every fire, every fight, slip, and fall—to be safe and secure. I wanted them all like I wanted my Emile, warm, well fed, in the cradle of a welcoming place, far from the sea.”
Ruby stood, and Eddie stood, too. He could not stop thinking about his father’s death.
“I hated him,” he mumbled.
The old woman nodded.
“He was hell on me as a kid. And he was worse when I got older.”
Ruby stepped toward him. “Edward,” she said softly. It was the first time she had called him by name. “Learn this from me. Holding anger is a poison. It eats you from inside. We think that hating is a weapon that attacks the person who harmed us. But hatred is a curved blade. And the harm we do, we do to ourselves.
“Forgive, Edward. Forgive. Do you remember the lightness you felt when you first arrived in heaven?”
Eddie did. Where is my pain?
“That’s because no one is born with anger. And when we die, the soul is freed of it. But now, here, in order to move on, you must understand why you felt what you did, and why you no longer need to feel it.”
She touched his hand.
“You need to forgive your father.”
EDDIE THOUGHT ABOUT the years that followed his father’s funeral. How he never achieved anything, how he never went anywhere. For all that time, Eddie had imagined a certain life—a “could have been” life—that would have been his if not for his father’s death and his mother’s subsequent collapse. Over the years, he glorified that imaginary life and held his father accountable for all of its losses: the loss of freedom, the loss of career, the loss of hope. He never rose above the dirty, tiresome work his father had left behind.
“When he died,” Eddie said, “he took part of me with him. I was stuck after that.”
Ruby shook her head. “Your father is not the reason you never left the pier.”
Eddie looked up. “Then what is?”
She patted her skirt. She adjusted her spectacles. She began to walk away. “There are still two people for you to meet,” she said.
Eddie tried to say “Wait,” but a cold wind nearly ripped the voice from his throat. Then everything went black.
RUBY WAS GONE. He was back atop the mountain, outside the diner, standing in the snow.
He stood there for a long time, alone in the silence, until he realized the old woman was not coming back. Then he turned to the door and slowly pulled it open. He heard clanking silverware and dishes being stacked. He smelled freshly cooked food—breads and meats and sauces. The spirits of those who had perished at the pier were all around, engaged with one another, eating and drinking and talking.
Eddie moved haltingly, knowing what he was there to do. He turned to his right, to the corner booth, to the ghost of his father, smoking a cigar. He felt a shiver. He thought about the old man hanging out that hospital window, dying alone in the middle of the night.
“Dad?” Eddie whispered.
His father could not hear him. Eddie drew closer. “Dad. I know what happened now.”
He felt a choke in his chest. He dropped to his knees alongside the booth. His father was so close that Eddie could see the whiskers on his face and the frayed end of his cigar. He saw the baggy lines beneath his tired eyes, the bent nose, the bony knuckles and squared shoulders of a workingman. He looked at his own arms and realized, in his earthly body, he was now older than his father. He had outlived him in every way.
“I was angry with you, Dad. I hated you.”
Eddie felt tears welling. He felt a shaking in his chest. Something was flushing out of him.
“You beat me. You shut me out. I didn’t understand. I still don’t understand. Why did you do it? Why?” He drew in long painfu
l breaths. “I didn’t know, OK? I didn’t know your life, what happened. I didn’t know you. But you’re my father. I’ll let it go now, all right? All right? Can we let it go?”
His voice wobbled until it was high and wailing, not his own anymore. “OK? YOU HEAR ME?” he screamed. Then softer: “You hear me? Dad?”
He leaned in close. He saw his father’s dirty hands. He spoke the last familiar words in a whisper.
“It’s fixed.”
Eddie pounded the table, then slumped to the floor. When he looked up, he saw Ruby standing across the way, young and beautiful. She dipped her head, opened the door, and lifted off into the jade sky.
THURSDAY, 11 A.M.
Who would pay for Eddie’s funeral? He had no relatives. He’d left no instructions. His body remained at the city morgue, as did his clothes and personal effects, his maintenance shirt, his socks and shoes, his linen cap, his wedding ring, his cigarettes and pipe cleaners, all awaiting claim.
In the end, Mr. Bullock, the park owner, footed the bill, using the money he saved from Eddie’s no-longer-cashable paycheck. The casket was a wooden box. The church was chosen by location—the one nearest the pier—as most attendees had to get back to work.
A few minutes before the service, the pastor asked Dominguez, wearing a navy blue sport coat and his good black jeans, to step inside his office.
“Could you share some of the deceased’s unique qualities?” the pastor asked. “I understand you worked with him.”
Dominguez swallowed. He was none too comfortable with clergymen. He hooked his fingers together earnestly, as if giving the matter some thought, and spoke as softly as he thought one should speak in such a situation.
“Eddie,” he finally said, “really loved his wife.”
He unhooked his fingers, then quickly added, “Of course, I never met her.”
The Fourth Person Eddie Meets in Heaven
EDDIE BLINKED, AND FOUND HIMSELF IN A small, round room. The mountains were gone and so was the jade sky. A low plaster ceiling just missed his head. The room was brown—as plain as shipping wrap—and empty, save for a wooden stool and an oval mirror on the wall.
Eddie stepped in front of the mirror. He cast no reflection. He saw only the reverse of the room, which expanded suddenly to include a row of doors. Eddie turned around.
Then he coughed.
The sound startled him, as if it came from someone else. He coughed again, a hard, rumbling cough, as if things needed to be resettled in his chest.
When did this start? Eddie thought. He touched his skin, which had aged since his time with Ruby. It felt thinner now, and drier. His midsection, which during his time with the Captain had felt tight as pulled rubber, was loose with flab, the droop of age.
There are still two people for you to meet, Ruby had said. And then what? His lower back had a dull ache. His bad leg was growing stiffer. He realized what was happening, it happened with each new stage of heaven. He was rotting away.
HE APPROACHED ONE of the doors and pushed it open. Suddenly, he was outside, in the yard of a home he had never seen, in a land that he did not recognize, in the midst of what appeared to be a wedding reception. Guests holding silver plates filled the grassy lawn. At one end stood an archway covered in red flowers and birch branches, and at the other end, next to Eddie, stood the door that he had walked through. The bride, young and pretty, was in the center of the group, removing a pin from her butter-colored hair. The groom was lanky. He wore a black wedding coat and held up a sword, and at the hilt of the sword was a ring. He lowered it toward the bride and guests cheered as she took it. Eddie heard their voices, but the language was foreign. German? Swedish?
He coughed again. The group looked up. Every person seemed to smile, and the smiling frightened Eddie. He backed quickly through the door from which he’d entered, figuring to return to the round room. Instead, he was in the middle of another wedding, indoors this time, in a large hall, where the people looked Spanish and the bride wore orange blossoms in her hair. She was dancing from one partner to the next, and each guest handed her a small sack of coins.
Eddie coughed again—he couldn’t help it—and when several of the guests looked up, he backed through the door and again entered a different wedding scene, something African, Eddie guessed, where families poured wine onto the ground and the couple held hands and jumped over a broom. Then another pass through the door to a Chinese reception, where firecrackers were lit before cheering attendees, then another doorway to something else—maybe French?—where the couple drank together from a two-handled cup.
How long does this go on? Eddie thought. In each reception, there were no signs of how the people had gotten there, no cars or buses, no wagons, no horses. Departure did not appear to be an issue. The guests milled about, and Eddie was absorbed as one of them, smiled at but never spoken to, much like the handful of weddings he had gone to on earth. He preferred it that way. Weddings were, in Eddie’s mind, too full of embarrassing moments, like when couples were asked to join in a dance, or to help lift the bride in a chair. His bad leg seemed to glow at those moments, and he felt as if people could see it from across the room.
Because of that, Eddie avoided most receptions, and when he did go, he often stood in the parking lot, smoking a cigarette, waiting for time to pass. For a long stretch, there were no weddings to attend, anyhow. Only in the late years of his life, when some of his teenaged pier workers had grown up and taken spouses, did he find himself getting the faded suit out of the closet and putting on the collared shirt that pinched his thick neck. By this point, his once-fractured leg bones were spurred and deformed. Arthritis had invaded his knee. He limped badly and was thus excused from all participatory moments, such as dances or candle lightings. He was considered an “old man,” alone, unattached, and no one expected him to do much besides smile when the photographer came to the table.
Here, now, in his maintenance clothes, he moved from one wedding to the next, one reception to another, one language, one cake, and one type of music to another language, another cake, and another type of music. The uniformity did not surprise Eddie. He always figured a wedding here was not much different from a wedding there. What he didn’t get was what this had to do with him.
He pushed through the threshold one more time and found himself in what appeared to be an Italian village. There were vineyards on the hillsides and farmhouses of travertine stone. Many of the men had thick, black hair, combed back and wet, and the women had dark eyes and sharp features. Eddie found a place against a wall and watched the bride and groom cut a log in half with a two-handed rip saw. Music played—flutists, violinists, guitarists—and guests began the tarantella, dancing in a wild, twirling rhythm. Eddie took a few steps back. His eyes wandered to the edge of the crowd.
A bridesmaid in a long lavender dress and a stitched straw hat moved through the guests, with a basket of candycovered almonds. From afar, she looked to be in her 20s.
“Per l’amaro e il dolce?” she said, offering her sweets. “Per l’amaro e il dolce?…Per l’amaro e il dolce?…”
At the sound of her voice, Eddie’s whole body shook. He began to sweat. Something told him to run, but something else froze his feet to the ground. She came his way. Her eyes found him from beneath the hat brim, which was topped with parchment flowers.
“Per l’amaro e il dolce?” she said, smiling, holding out the almonds. “For the bitter and the sweet?”
Her dark hair fell over one eye and Eddie’s heart nearly burst. His lips took a moment to part, and the sound from the back of his throat took a moment to rise, but they came together in the first letter of the only name that ever made him feel this way. He dropped to his knees.
“Marguerite…” he whispered.
“For the bitter and the sweet,” she said.
Today Is Eddie’s Birthday
Eddie and his brother are sitting in the maintenance shop.
“This,” Joe says proudly, holding up a drill, “is
the newest model.”
Joe is wearing a checkered sport coat and black-and-white saddle shoes. Eddie thinks his brother looks too fancy—and fancy means phony—but Joe is a salesman for a hardware company now and Eddie has been wearing the same outfit for years, so what does he know?
“Yes, sir,” Joe says, “and get this. It runs on that battery.”
Eddie holds the battery between his fingers, a small thing called nickel cadmium. Hard to believe.
“Start it up,” Joe says, handing the drill over.
Eddie squeezes the trigger. It explodes in noise.
“Nice, huh?” Joe yells.
That morning, Joe had told Eddie his new salary. It was three times what Eddie made. Then Joe had congratulated Eddie on his promotion: head of maintenance for Ruby Pier, his father’s old position. Eddie had wanted to answer, “If it’s so great, why don’t you take it, and I’ll take your job?” But he didn’t. Eddie never said anything he felt that deeply.
“Helloo? Anybody in here?”
Marguerite is at the door, holding a reel of orange tickets. Eddie’s eyes go, as always, to her face, her olive skin, her dark coffee eyes. She has taken a job in the ticket booths this summer and she wears the official Ruby Pier uniform: a white shirt, a red vest, black stirrup pants, a red beret, and her name on a pin below her collarbone. The sight of it makes Eddie angry—especially in front of his hotshot brother.
“Show her the drill,” Joe says. He turns to Marguerite. “It’s battery operated.”
Eddie squeezes. Marguerite grabs her ears.
“It’s louder than your snoring,” she says.
“Whoa-ho!” Joe yells, laughing. “Whoa-ho! She got you!”
Eddie looks down sheepishly, then sees his wife smiling.
“Can you come outside?” she says.
Eddie waves the drill. “I’m working here.”