They pat their pockets. Mickey fishes a pack from his jacket, dropping two loose cigarettes on the floor. Eddie's mother lights the candles. An elevator pings down the hall. A gurney emerges.

"Does anyone have a match?" she whispers.

In the dim and sterile hallway of the V. A. hospital, Eddie's mother opens the white bakery box and rearranges the candles on the cake, making them even, 12 on one side, 12 on the other. The rest of them -- Eddie's father, Joe, Marguerite, Mickey Shea -- stand around her, watching.

The small flames wiggle as they move together. The group enters Eddies room singing softly. "Happy birthday to you, happy birthday to --"

"Happy birthday dear Ed-die…" then quickly, "happybirth-day to you."

"All right then, lets go," she says.

The soldier in the next bed wakes up yelling, "WHAT THE HELL?" He realizes where he is and drops back down, embarrassed. The song, once interrupted, seems too heavy to lift again, and only Eddie's mother's voice, shaking in its solitude, is able to continue.

Joe clears his throat. "Well, hey, you look, pretty good," he says. The others quickly agree. Good. Yes. Very good.

Eddie props himself against a pillow. His burns are bandaged. His leg is in a long cast. There is a pair of crutches by the bed. He looks at these faces and he is consumed by a desire to run away.

"Your mom got a cake," Marguerite whispers.

Eddie's mother steps forward, as if it's her turn. She presents the cardboard box.

Eddie catches his eye. His father looks down and runs his hand over the windowsill. Eddie tightens every muscle in his body and attempts, by sheer will, to force the tears back into their ducts.

She looks around. "Now where should we put this?"

All parents damage their children. It cannot be helped. Youth, like pristine glass, absorbs the prints of its handlers. Some parents smudge, others crack, a few shatter childhoods completely into jagged little pieces, beyond repair.

Eddie mumbles, "Thanks, Ma."

Mickey grabs a chair. Joe clears a small tabletop. Marguerite moves Eddie's crutches. Only his father does not shuffle for the sake of shuffling. He stands against the back wall, a jacket over his arm, staring at Eddie s leg, encased in plaster from thigh to ankle.

The damage done by Eddie's father was, at the beginning, the damage of neglect. As an infant, Eddie was rarely held by the man, and as a child, he was mostly grabbed by the arm, less with love than with annoyance. Eddie's mother handed out the tenderness; his father was there for the discipline.

On Saturdays, Eddie's father took him to the pier. Eddie would leave the apartment with visions of carousels and globs of cotton candy, but after an hour or so, his father would find a familiar face and say, "Watch the kid for me, will ya?" Until his father returned, usually late in the afternoon, often drunk, Eddie stayed in the custody of an acrobat or an animal trainer.

Still, for countless hours of his boardwalk youth, Eddie waited for his father's attention, sitting on railings or squatting in his short pants atop tool chests in the repair shop. Often he'd say, "I can help, I can help!" but the only job entrusted him was crawling beneath the Ferris wheel in the morning, before the park opened, to collect the coins that had fallen from customers' pockets the night before.

At least four evenings a week, his father played cards. The table had money, bottles., cigarettes, and rules. Eddie's rule was simple: Do not disturb. Once he tried to stand next to his father and look at his cards, but the old man put down his cigar and erupted like thunder, smacking Eddie's face with the back of his hand. "Stop breathing on me," he said. Eddie burst into tears and his mother pulled him to her waist, glaring at her husband. Eddie never got that close again.

Other nights, when the cards went bad and the bottles had been emptied and his mother was already asleep, his father brought his thunder into Eddie and Joe's bedroom. He raked through the meager toys, hurling them against the wall. Then he made his sons lie facedown on the mattress while he pulled off his belt and lashed their rear ends, screaming that they were wasting his money on junk. Eddie used to pray for his mother to wake up, but even the times she did, his father warned her to "stay out of it." Seeing her in the hallway, clutching her robe, as helpless as he was, made it all even worse.

The hands on Eddie's childhood glass then were hard and calloused and red with anger, and he went through his younger years whacked, lashed, and beaten. This was the second damage done, the one after neglect. The damage of violence. It got so that Eddie could tell by the thump of the footsteps coming down the hall how hard he was going to get it.

Through it all, despite it all, Eddie privately adored his old man, because sons will adore their fathers through even the worst behavior. It is how they learn devotion. Before he can devote himself to God or a woman, a boy will devote himself to his father, even foolishly, even beyond explanation.

And on Occasion, as if to feed the weakest embers of a fire, Eddie's father let a wrinkle of pride crack the veneer of his disinterest. At the baseball field by the 14th Avenue schoolyard, his father stood behind the fence, watching Eddie play. If Eddie smacked the ball to the outfield, his father nodded, and when he did, Eddie leaped around the bases. Other times, when Eddie came home from an alley fight, his father would notice his scraped knuckles or split lip. He would ask, "What happened to the other guy?" and Eddie would say he got him good. This, too, met with his father's approval. When Eddie attacked the kids who were bothering his brother --"the hoodlums," his mother called them -- Joe was ashamed and hid in his room, but Eddie's father said, "Never mind him. You're the strong one. Be your brother's keeper. Don't let nobody touch him."

When Eddie started junior high, he mimicked his father's summer schedule, rising before the sun, working at the park until nightfall. At first, he ran the simpler rides, maneuvering the brake levers, bringing train cars to a gentle stop. In later years, he worked in the repair shop. Eddie's father would test him with maintenance problems. He'd hand him a broken steering wheel and say, "Fix it." He'd point out a tangled chain and say, "Fix it." He'd carry over a rusty fender and some sandpaper and say, "Fix it." And every time, upon completion of the task, Eddie would walk the item back to his father and say, "It's fixed."

At night they would gather at the dinner table, his mother plump and sweating, cooking by the stove, his brother, Joe, talking away, his hair and skin smelling from seawater. Joe had become a good swimmer, and his summer work was at the Ruby Pier pool. Joe talked about all the people he saw there, their swimsuits, their money. Eddie's father was not impressed. Once Eddie overheard him talking to his mother about Joe. "That one," he said, "ain't tough enough for anything but water."

Still, Eddie envied the way his brother looked in the evenings, so tanned and clean. Eddie's fingernails, like his father's, were stained with grease, and at the dinner table Eddie would flick them with his thumbnail, trying to get the dirt out. He caught his father watching him once and the old man grinned.

"Shows you did a hard day's work," he said, and he held up his own dirty fingernails, before wrapping them around a glass of beer.

By this point -- already a strapping teenager -- Eddie only nodded back. Unbeknownst to him, he had begun the ritual of semaphore with his father, forsaking words or physical affection. It was all to be done internally. "You were just supposed to know it, that's all. Denial of affection. The damage done.

And then, one night, the speaking stopped altogether. This was after the war, when Eddie had been released from the hospital and the cast had been removed from his leg and he had moved back into the family apartment on Beachwood Avenue. His father had been drinking at the nearby pub and he came home late to find Eddie asleep on the couch. The darkness of combat had left Eddie changed. He stayed indoors. He rarely spoke, even to Marguerite. He spent hours staring out the kitchen window, watching the carousel ride, rubbing his bad knee. His mother whispered that he "just needed time," but his father grew more agitated each day. He didn't understand depression. To him it was weakness.

Eddie stirred. His father yelled again.

"Get up," he yelled now, his words slurring, "and get a job."

Eddie rose to his elbows.

"Get up… and get a job!"

The old man was wobbling, but he came toward Eddie and pushed him. "Get up and get a job! Get up and get a job! Get up… and… GET A JOB!"

The old man glanced at Eddie's leg. His voice lowered to a growl. "See? You… ain't… so… hurt."

"ENOUGH!" Eddie yelled, surging to his feet, ignoring the burst of pain in his knee. He glared at his father, his face just inches away. He could smell the bad breath of alcohol and cigarettes.

"Get up and get a job! Get up and --"

He reeled back to throw a punch, but Eddie moved on instinct and grabbed his father's arm mid-swing. The old man's eyes widened. This was the first time Eddie had ever defended himself, the first time he had ever done anything besides receive a beating as if he deserved it. His father looked at his own clenched fist, short of its mark, and his nostrils flared and his teeth gritted and he staggered backward and yanked his arm free. He stared at Eddie with the eyes of a man watching a train pull away.

He never spoke to his son again.

All parents damage their children. This was their life together. Neglect. Violence. Silence. And now, someplace beyond death, Eddie slumped against a stainless steel wall and dropped into a snowbank, stung again by the denial of a man whose love, almost inexplicably, he still coveted, a man ignoring him, even in heaven. His father. The damage done.

Eddie jerked his head up. An old woman stood before him in the snow. Her face was gaunt, with sagging cheeks, rose-colored lipstick, and tightly pulled-back white hair, thin enough in parts to reveal the pink scalp beneath it. She wore wire-rimmed spectacles over narrow blue eyes.

This was the final handprint on Eddie's glass. Silence. It haunted their remaining years. His father was silent when Eddie moved into his own apartment, silent when Eddie took a cab-driving job, silent at Eddie's wedding, silent when Eddie came to visit his mother. She begged and wept and beseeched her husband to change his mind, to let it go, but Eddie's father would only say to her, through a clenched jaw, what he said to others who made the same request: "That boy raised a hand to me." And that was the end of the conversation.

"Don't be angry," a woman's voice said. "He can't hear you."

"Why does my father have to be safe for you?"

Eddie could not recall her. Her clothes were before his time, a dress made of silk and chiffon, with a bib-like bodice stitched with white beads and topped with a velvet bow just below her neck. Her skirt had a rhinestone buckle and there were snaps and hooks up the side. She stood with elegant posture, holding a parasol with both hands. Eddie guessed she'd been rich.

"Not always rich," she said, grinning as if she'd heard him. "I was raised much like you were, in the back end of the city, forced to leave school when I was fourteen. I was a working girl. So were my sisters. We gave every nickel back to the family --"

Eddie interrupted. He didn't want another story. "Why can't my father hear me?" he demanded.

She smiled. "Because his spirit -- safe and sound -- is part of my eternity. But he is not really here. You are."

She paused.

"Come," she said.

Suddenly they were at the bottom of the mountain. The light from the diner was now just a speck, like a star that had fallen into a crevice.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" the old woman said. Eddie followed her eyes. There was something about her, as if he'd seen her photograph somewhere.

"Are you… my third person?"

"I am at that," she said.

Eddie rubbed his head. Who was this woman? At least with the Blue Man, at least with the Captain, he had some recollection of their place in his life. Why a stranger? Why now? Eddie had once hoped death would mean a reunion with those who went before him. He had attended so many funerals, polishing his black dress shoes, finding his hat, standing in a cemetery with the same despairing question: Why are they gone and I'm still here? His mother. His brother. His aunts and uncles. His buddy Noel. Marguerite. "One day," the priest would say, "we will all be together in the Kingdom of Heaven."

"Can I see Earth?" he whispered.

She shook her head no.

Where were they, then, if this was heaven? Eddie studied this strange older woman. He felt more alone than ever.

"You can always do that."

"Can I talk to God?"

He hesitated before asking the next question.

"Can I go back?"

She squinted. "Back?"

"Yeah, back," Eddie said. "To my life. To that last day. Is there something I can do? Can I promise to be good? Can I promise to go to church all the time? Something?"

"Why?" She seemed amused.

He shrugged.

"Why?" Eddie repeated. He swiped at the snow that had no cold, with the bare hand that felt no moisture. "Why? Because this place don't make no sense to me. Because I don't feel like no angel, if that's what I'm supposed to feel like. Because I don't feel like I got it all figured out. I can't even remember my own death. I can't remember the accident. All I remember are these two little hands -- this little girl I was trying to save, see? I was pulling her out of the way and I must've grabbed her hands and that's when I…"

"Died?" the old woman said, smiling. "Passed away? Moved on? Met your Maker?"

"You have peace," the old woman said, "when you make it with yourself."

"Died," he said, exhaling. "And that's all I remember. Then you, the others, all this. Ain't you supposed to have peace when you die?"

"Nah," Eddie said, shaking his head. "Nah, you don't." He thought about telling her the agitation he'd felt every day since the war, the bad dreams, the inability to get excited about much of anything, the times he went to the docks alone and watched the fish pulled in by the wide rope nets, embarrassed because he saw himself in those helpless, flopping creatures, snared and beyond escape.

"Oh yeah? How's that?"

He didn't tell her that. Instead he said, "No offense, lady, but I don't even know you."

"But I know you," she said.

"Well," she said, "if you have a moment." She sat down then, although there was nothing to sit on. She simply rested on the air and crossed her legs, ladylike, keeping her spine straight. The long skirt folded neatly around her. A breeze blew, and Eddie caught the faint scent of perfume.

Eddie sighed.

"As I mentioned, I was once a working girl. My job was serving food in a place called the Seahorse Grille. It was near the ocean where you grew up. Perhaps you remember it?"

She nodded toward the diner, and it all came back to Eddie. Of course. That place. He used to eat breakfast there. A greasy spoon, they called it. They'd torn it down years ago.

"Our courtship was exhilarating, for Emile was a man of means. He took me places I had never been, bought me clothes I had never imagined, paid for meals I had never experienced in my poor, sheltered life. Emile had earned his wealth quickly, from investments in lumber and steel. He was a spender, a risk taker -- he went over the boards when he got an idea. I suppose that is why he was drawn to a poor girl like me. He abhorred those who were born into wealth, and rather enjoyed doing things the 'sophisticated people' would never do.

"You?" Eddie said, almost laughing. "You were a waitress at the Seahorse?"

"Then one morning, the finest-looking gentleman I had ever seen walked through the door. He wore a chalk-stripe suit and a derby hat. His dark hair was neatly cut and his mustache covered a constant smile. He nodded when I served him and I tried not to stare. But when he spoke with his colleague, I could hear his heavy, confident laughter. Twice I caught him looking in my direction. When he paid his bill, he said his name was Emile and he asked if he might call on me. And I knew, right then, my sisters would no longer have to hound me for a decision.

"Indeed," she said, proudly. "I served dockworkers their coffee and longshoremen their crab cakes and bacon. I was an attractive girl in those years, I might add. I turned away many a proposal. My sisters would scold me. 'Who are you to be so choosy?' they would say. 'Find a man before it's too late.'"

The old woman smiled. "Emile kept his promise. A few years later, he made a deal with the railroad company, which was looking for a way to increase its riders on the weekend. That's how most amusement parks were built, you know."

"I was overjoyed. I told him yes and we heard the sounds of children playing in the ocean. Emile went over the boards again and swore that soon he would build a resort park just for me, to capture the happiness of this moment -- to stay eternally young."

"One of those things was visiting seaside resorts. He loved the attractions, the salty food, the gypsies and fortune-tellers and weight guessers and diving girls. And we both loved the sea. One day, as we sat in the sand, the tide rolling gently to our feet, he asked for my hand in marriage.

Eddie nodded. He knew. Most people didn't. They thought amusement parks were constructed by elves, built with candy canes. In fact, they were simply business opportunities for railroad companies, who erected them at the final stops of routes, so commuters would have a reason to ride on weekends, You know where I work? Eddie used to say. The end of the line. That's where I work.

"Emile hired hundreds of workers, municipal workers and carnival workers and foreign workers. He brought in animals and acrobats and clowns. The entrance was the last thing finished, and it was truly grand. Everyone said so. When it was complete, he took me there with a cloth blindfold over my eyes. When he removed the blindfold, I saw it."

"Emile," the old woman continued, "built the most wonderful place, a massive pier using timber and steel he already owned. Then came the magical attractions -- races and rides and boat trips and tiny railways. There was a carousel imported from France and a Ferris wheel from one of the international exhibitions in Germany. There were towers and spires and thousands of incandescent lights, so bright that at night, you could see the park from a ship's deck on the ocean.

The old woman took a step back from Eddie. She looked at him curiously, as if she were disappointed.

"The entrance?" she said. "Don't you remember? Didn't you ever wonder about the name? Where you worked? Where your father worked?"

She touched her chest softly with her white-gloved fingers. Then she dipped, as if formally introducing herself.

"I," she said, "am Ruby."