The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(31)

She saw an infant Eddie born into poverty in the early 1920s. She saw a sparkle in his mother’s eyes, and frequent beatings from his drunken father.

She saw a school-aged Eddie playing catch with the sideshow workers at Ruby Pier. She saw a teenaged Eddie fixing rides beside his old man. She saw Eddie bored and dreaming of a different life. She saw his father say, “Whatsa matter? Ain’t this good enough for ya?”

She saw the night Eddie met his one true love—a girl in a yellow dress whose name was Marguerite—and how they danced to a big band at the Stardust Band Shell. She saw their romance interrupted by war, and Eddie sent to combat in the Philippines.

She saw his platoon captured and tortured in a prison camp. She saw a daring revolt, and the killing of their tormentors. She saw Eddie burning down the huts where they’d been imprisoned. She saw him shot in the leg during their escape. She saw his return to peacetime hobbled by wounds and dark memories.

She saw Eddie and Marguerite married and settled, deeply in love, but childless. And, upon his father’s death, she saw Eddie forced to take over the maintenance job at Ruby Pier. She saw him sitting down in his life, depressed that after years of trying to break away, he was no different than his old man, “a nobody who never done nothing,” he would say.

She saw Marguerite, in her late forties, die from a brain tumor, and Eddie go hollow with grief. She saw him hide inside his work, crying where no one could see him, inside darkened fun houses or underneath a water slide.

She saw Eddie visit the cemetery dutifully, through his sixties, his seventies, into his eighties, leaving flowers at Marguerite’s grave, riding home in the front of the taxi to feel less lonely.

And she saw the final day of Eddie’s life, his eighty-third birthday, when he checked a fishing line and inspected a roller coaster and sat in a beach chair and fashioned a rabbit made of yellow pipe cleaners. Which he handed to a little girl.

A little girl named Annie.

“Thaaaank you, Eddie Maint’nance,” she squealed, dancing off.

The image froze.

“That,” Eddie said now, holding Annie’s grip, “was the last thing you said to me on earth.”

“What happened next?” she asked.

He let go of her hand. The image disappeared.

“Let’s walk,” he said.



The ocean pulled back, as if clearing a path, and they moved along the shore. The lone star in the blue firmament lit their way. Eddie told Annie about his own journey to heaven. He told her he, too, met five people, including a sideshow worker whose skin was blue, his old army captain, and the original Ruby of Ruby Pier. By the time he was finished, nearly everything he thought about his life had changed.

Then Eddie asked about Annie’s existence, saying he’d often wondered what she’d done with the years. Feeling safe in his company, Annie spoke of many things. She spoke of her early childhood, which she remembered one way, fun and carefree, and her life after the accident, which was different.

“What changed?”

“Everything.” She held up her hand. “Starting with this.”

Eddie took her wrist in his meaty palm. He studied the scars as if discovering a lost map.

“After that,” Annie said, “everything I tried went wrong. I couldn’t make friends. I was at war with my mother. I had an awful first marriage. I lost …”

Eddie glanced up.

“I lost a child. I suffered depression. I gave up on ever being happy until I saw Paulo again. I thought he was my chance. I knew him. I trusted him. I loved him.”

She paused. “Love him.”

Eddie let go of her wrist. He seemed to be thinking of something.

“Would you change it back? Your hand? If you could?”

Annie stared at him. “That’s so strange. Paulo asked me the same thing when we were kids.”

“What did you say?”

“What I’d say now. Of course. Who would want to go through this if they didn’t have to?”

Eddie nodded slowly, but Annie wasn’t sure he agreed with her.

“Is your wife here?” Annie asked.

“She’s not part of your journey.”

“But you get to be with her? In your heaven?”

Eddie smiled. “It wouldn’t be my heaven without her.”

Annie tried to smile back, but hearing this made her feel worse. Her biggest desire was that Paulo had survived, that his life had been spared by the transplant. But that meant being alone now in the afterlife. Would Paulo move on without her on earth? Find someone else? By the time he died, would he choose a different heaven, one that didn’t include Annie?

“What is it?” Eddie said. “You don’t look so hot.”

“It’s just … I ruin everything,” Annie said. “Even the good things. Even my wedding night. It was my idea to help a man on the highway. My pushing to go for a balloon ride.”

She looked down. “I make so many mistakes.”

Eddie glanced to the single star gleaming above them.

“I used to think the same thing,” he said.

Suddenly, day changed to night. The air grew hot and sticky. The landscape turned barren. On naked hills around them, small fires erupted. Annie felt the ground thicken by their feet.

“What’s happening?” she asked.