And then Eddie’s eyes were drawn to a white boulder. A slender young girl stood upon it, apart from the others, facing his direction. She motioned with both her hands, waving him in. He hesitated. She smiled. She waved again and nodded, as if to say, Yes, you.
Eddie lowered his cane to navigate the downward slope. He slipped, his bad knee buckling, his legs giving way. But before he hit the earth, he felt a sudden blast of wind at his back and he was whipped forward and straightened on his feet, and there he was, standing before the little girl as if he’d been there all the time.
He is 51. A Saturday. It is his first birthday without Marguerite. He makes Sanka in a paper cup, and eats two pieces of toast with margarine. In the years after his wife’s accident, Eddie shooed away any birthday celebrations, saying, “Why do I gotta be reminded of that day for?” It was Marguerite who insisted. She made the cake. She invited friends. She always purchased one bag of taffy and tied it with a ribbon. “You can’t give away your birthday,” she would say.
Now that she’s gone, Eddie tries. At work, he straps himself on a roller coaster curve, high and alone, like a mountain climber. At night, he watches television in the apartment. He goes to bed early. No cake. No guests. It is never hard to act ordinary if you feel ordinary, and the paleness of surrender becomes the color of Eddies days.
He is 60, a Wednesday. He gets to the shop early. He opens a brown-bag lunch and rips a piece of bologna off a sandwich. He attaches it to a hook, then drops the twine down the fishing hole. He watches it float. Eventually, it disappears, swallowed by the sea.
He is 68, a Saturday. He spreads his pills on the counter. The telephone rings, Joe, his brother, is calling from Florida. Joe wishes him happy birthday. Joe talks about his grandson. Joe talks about a condominium. Eddie says “uh-huh “ at least 50 times.
He is 75, a Monday. He puts on his glasses and checks the maintenance reports. He notices someone missed a shift the night before and the Squiggly Wiggly Worm Adventure has not been brake-tested. He sighs and takes a placard from the wall—RIDE CLOSED TEMPORARILY FOR MAINTENANCE—then carries it across the boardwalk to the Wriggly Worm entrance, where he checks the brake panel himself.
He is 82, a Tuesday. A taxi arrives at the park entrance. He slides inside the front seat, pulling his cane in behind him.
“Most people like the back,” the driver says.
“You mind?” Eddie asks.
The driver shrugs. “Nah. I don’t mind.” Eddie looks straight ahead. He doesn’t say that it feels more like driving this way, and he hasn’t driven since they refused him a license two years ago.
The taxi takes him to the cemetery. He visits his mother’s grave and his brother’s grave and he stands by his father’s grave for only a few moments. As usual, he saves his wife’s for last. He leans on the cane and he looks at the headstone and he thinks about many things. Taffy. He thinks about taffy. He thinks it would take his teeth out now, but he would eat it anyhow, if it meant eating it with her.
The little girl appeared to be asian, maybe five or six years old, with a beautiful cinnamon complexion, hair the color of a dark plum, a small flat nose, full lips that spread joyfully over her gapped teeth, and the most arresting eyes, as black as a seal’s hide, with a pinhead of white serving as a pupil. She smiled and flapped her hands excitedly until Eddie edged one step closer, whereupon she presented herself.
“Tala,” she said, offering her name, her palms on her chest.
“Tala,” Eddie repeated.
She smiled as if a game had begun. She pointed to her embroidered blouse, loosely slung over her shoulders and wet with the river water.
“Baro,” she said.
“Baro.”
She touched the woven red fabric that wrapped around her torso and legs. “Saya.”
“Saya.”
Then came her cloglike shoes—“bakya”—then the iridescent seashells by her feet—“capiz”—then a woven bamboo mat—“banig”—that was laid out before her. She motioned for Eddie to sit on the mat and she sat, too, her legs curled underneath her.
None of the other children seemed to notice him. They splashed and rolled and collected stones from the river’s floor. Eddie watched one boy rub a stone over the body of another, down his back, under his arms.
“Washing,” the girl said. “Like our inas used to do.”
“Inas?” Eddie said.
She studied Eddie’s face.
“Mommies,” she said.
Eddie had heard many children in his life, but in this one’s voice, he detected none of the normal hesitation toward adults. He wondered if she and the other children had chosen this riverbank heaven, or if, given their short memories, such a serene landscape had been chosen for them.
She pointed to Eddie’s shirt pocket. He looked down. Pipe cleaners.
“These?” he said. He pulled them out and twisted them together, as he had done in his days at the pier. She rose to her knees to examine the process. His hands shook. ‘‘You see? It’s a …” he finished the last twist “… dog.”
She took it and smiled—a smile Eddie had seen a thousand times.
“You like that?” he said.
“You burn me,” she said.
Eddie felt his jaw tighten.
“What did you say?”
“You burn me. You make me fire.”
Her voice was flat, like a child reciting a lesson.
“My ina say to wait inside the nipa. My ina say to hide.”
Eddie lowered his voice, his words slow and deliberate.
“What … were you hiding from, little girl?”
She fingered the pipe-cleaner dog, then dipped it in the water.
“Sundalong” she said.
“Sundalong?”
She looked up.
“Soldier.”
Eddie felt the word like a knife in his tongue. Images flashed through his head. Soldiers. Explosions. Morton. Smitty. The Captain. The flamethrowers.
“Tala …” he whispered.
“Tala,” she said, smiling at her own name.
“Why are you here, in heaven?”
She lowered the animal.