The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(24)

But just because you have silenced a memory does not mean you are free of it.



The change in schools made Annie more determined to escape Lorraine’s restrictions. By senior year, she found a way to circumvent them altogether.

A boyfriend with a car.

His name was Walt, a year older than Annie, with a lanky frame, a sharp nose, and triangular sideburns. Annie spent most of her evenings and weekends with him. He smoked hand-rolled cigarettes and liked grunge music. He found Annie curious (“You’re weird, but in a good way,” he said), which pleased her because it meant attention, including physical attention, the first she’d had from a boy.

Annie, by this point, had bloomed into her tall, shapely frame, with a wayward mop of long, curling hair and, as everyone seemed to point out, nice, straight teeth. She dressed in modest clothes, favoring leggings and beat-up sneakers. She finished high school with a grade point average of four and a friend count of two: Judy, who wore horn-rimmed glasses and vintage 1950s clothing, and Brian, a math whiz with a thin mustache that he was constantly fingering.

Annie didn’t see either one of them after the graduation ceremony. She stayed only long enough to get her diploma and a handshake from the school’s principal, who whispered, “Good luck, Annie. You can go places.”

Annie did. She walked off the stage and went straight to the parking lot, where Walt was waiting by his green Nissan coupe.

“Yay, you’re done,” he deadpanned.

“Thank God,” Annie said.

“Where do you want to go?”

“Anywhere.”

“You need to call your mom?”

“I told her not to come. She probably came anyhow.”

“She’s still in the audience?”

“I guess.”

Walt looked over her shoulder. “Guess again.”

Annie turned to see her mother, in a turquoise skirt and blazer, a cloche hat on her head, wobbling across the school’s front lawn, her high heels catching in the grass. She waved her arms and yelled, “Annie! What are you doing?” The wind was blowing and she grabbed her hat to hold it down.

“Let’s go,” Annie mumbled.

“You don’t want to wait?”

“I said, let’s go.”

She got in the car and slammed the door shut. Walt started the engine. They drove off, leaving Lorraine, hand on her hat, watching them zoom past a sign that read CONGRATULATIONS, GRADUATES!

Annie didn’t speak to her for a year.



During that time, Annie moved in with Walt, sharing the basement of his father’s house, a small Craftsman bungalow an hour from the trailer park. Annie knew, being so far away, there was no chance of running into her mother, and she enjoyed the freedom that feeling provided. She chopped her hair in the front and dyed it purple. Walt gave her a T-shirt that read I OWE YOU NOTHING. She wore it often.

Walt’s father worked nights at a creamery. Walt fixed cars at a nearby auto shop. Annie’s grades got her a scholarship at a local community college, and she took English literature and photography classes, fancying herself one day taking pictures for a travel magazine. Maybe she would go to Italy and find where Paulo lived, show up with a camera and say, “Oh, hey, what a coincidence.”

As the months passed, she thought about calling her mother, especially when Walt would act like a child, pouting over food, not wanting to shower before they went out. But, like many her age, Annie’s thirst for independence overruled her need for guidance. Besides, who was her mother to talk about men? Annie couldn’t bear what she knew she would hear: “Is this really how you want to spend your life, Annie? In your boyfriend’s basement?” The thought of that made her put down the phone.

Then, the following summer, she stopped by the hospital to surprise her Uncle Dennis, who had moved his practice to Arizona a few years earlier. It was after five o’clock and no one was at the reception desk, so she walked back to his office and tapped on the door. She heard a muffled “Yes?” and turned the knob.

“Annie?” Dennis said, his eyes widening.

“Hi, I was in the—”

She stopped. Her throat tightened. Sitting in a chair, just inches away, was her mother. Her face was gaunt; her eyes were hollow. Beneath a blue sweater and tan slacks, her limbs were thinner than Annie had ever seen them, sickly thin, as if she’d been melted.

“Hello, sweetheart,” Lorraine said weakly. She glanced at her brother. “So you don’t have to tell her after all.”



The cancer had attacked Lorraine quickly, and by six months it had spread past all known cures. Treatment, at this point, was more about comfort than healing.

Annie, stunned by the sudden turn, didn’t know how to react. She felt guilty for being absent when it had happened, and obliged to give her mother whatever time she now could. A trip to the pharmacy. A coffee shop after work. Just like that, they were back in each other’s orbits. But their conversations were less about what was said than what was not.

“How’s your tea?” Annie would ask.

“It’s fine,” Lorraine would answer.

“How’s school?” Lorraine would ask.

“It’s fine,” Annie would answer.

Neither had the strength to confront the emotions they shielded. They were polite. They pecked each other’s cheeks. Annie held the car door open and braced her mother’s arm as she walked. Perhaps if there had been more time, the wall between them would have crumbled.