The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(20)

Lorraine hesitates. “Hello, Paulo.”

“Now that we’re in this new school, I can walk home with Annie so you don’t have to drive her every day. I don’t live too far from you.”

Annie’s heart races. Paulo wants to walk home together?

“Thank you, Paulo,” Lorraine says. “But we’re fine. Come on, Annie, we’ve got errands to run.”

Annie doesn’t want to go. She doesn’t want to open the door. Paulo does it for her. She slowly ducks inside and reluctantly lets him close it.

“If you change your mind …” Paulo says.

They drive off.

“Bye!” he yells.

Annie feels her skin get hot. She had wanted nothing more than what Paulo just proposed, and her mother shot it down without a thought.

“Why did you have to be so mean to him?” Annie snaps.

“What are you talking about? I wasn’t mean.”

“Yes, you were!”

“Annie—”

“You were!”

“He’s just a boy—”

“God, Mom! Why do you have to be here all the time? I’m so sick of you! You treat me like an infant! You’re the reason I have no friends!”

Her mother squeezes her lips, as if biting back something she wants to yell. She shifts her hands on the steering wheel.

“Do your exercises,” she says.





The Third Person Annie Meets in Heaven




“Mom?” Annie whispered.

Her mother’s face laid claim to the sky. It was everywhere Annie looked. Annie realized how natural it felt saying that word, Mom, yet how long it had been since she’d felt it pass her lips.

“Hello, angel,” her mother replied, a phrase she had used when Annie was small. Her voice seemed to be pressed to Annie’s ears.

“Is it really you?”

“Yes, Annie.”

“We’re in heaven?”

“Yes, Annie.”

“Did you go through this, too? Meeting five—”

“Annie?”

“Yes?”

“Where is the rest of you?”

Annie looked at her hollow middle, visible now through the winter jacket. Her voice quivered.

“I made a mistake, Mom. There was an accident. A crash. Paulo. I was trying to save Paulo. Remember Paulo? From school? We got married. We had one night together. Then a balloon ride. It was my fault—”

Annie stopped and dropped her head, as if the weight of the story were draped on top of it.

“Look up, sweetheart,” Lorraine said.

Annie did. Her mother’s skin was flawless. Her lips were full, her thick auburn hair dark at the roots. Annie had nearly forgotten how beautiful her mother once was.

“Why are you so big?” Annie whispered.

“That’s how you saw me on earth. But it’s time you see me as I saw myself.”

Her giant hand lifted, then tilted down towards her face. Annie stumbled forward, into her mother’s eyes, which opened like a deep well, swallowing her whole.



Children begin by needing their parents. Over time, they reject them. Eventually, they become them.

Annie would go through all those stages with Lorraine. But, like many children, she never knew the backstory of her mother’s sacrifice.

Lorraine was only nineteen when she met Jerry, who was twenty-six. She worked in a bakery; he drove a bread truck. Lorraine had never traveled more than thirty miles from her small town, and she dreamed of escaping its boredom and the stiff, high-cut uniform she wore every day. One evening, Jerry showed up in a suede jacket and engineer boots and suggested they go for a ride. They drove through the night, and didn’t stop until they reached the East Coast. They drank. They laughed. They splashed barefoot in ocean waves. They used Jerry’s jacket as a blanket on the sand.

Three weeks later, they were wed, in a civil ceremony in a downtown courthouse. Lorraine wore a paisley dress. Jerry wore a maroon sports jacket. They toasted each other with champagne and spent the weekend in a beachside motel, going for swims and drinking wine in bed. Their passion was strong, but like most passions, it burned fast. It was already waning when, a year later, Annie was born.

Jerry was not present for the birth. He was out of town on an overnight truck run that somehow turned into five days of absence. Lorraine’s brother, Dennis, drove her home from the hospital.

“I can’t believe he’s not here,” Dennis grumbled.

“He’ll come,” Lorraine said.

But as the days passed, he did not. Lorraine was getting calls, friends wanting to visit, asking the baby’s name. Lorraine knew the name she wanted. It was inspired by a woman her grandmother used to talk about, Annie Edson Taylor, who, in 1901, when she was sixty-three, climbed into a barrel and became the first person to go over Niagara Falls and survive.

“Now that old gal had courage,” her grandmother marveled. She said “courage” like it was something rare and precious. Lorraine wanted that for her child. She wished she had more of it herself.

When Jerry finally did come home, it was a Tuesday night and he reeked of alcohol. Lorraine cradled the baby. She forced a smile.

“This is our new daughter, Jerry. Isn’t she beautiful?”