The Next Person You Meet in Heaven(28)

Annie frowned. “I guess I didn’t live up to my billing, huh?”

Lorraine raised her eyebrows. “Oh, but you did.”

“Mom, please. I was the opposite of courage. I ran away. I lived in a basement. I got married for the wrong reason, had a child too soon, and couldn’t even do that right. I was useless for a long time.”

Her mother crossed her arms. “And then?”



And then, the truth was, Annie found her footing. Her marriage to Walt was annulled after Walt claimed he was coerced by the pregnancy. Papers were signed. Walt asked for his sweatpants back.

Annie moved in with her Uncle Dennis. She stayed indoors for the first few months, lying in bed during the daylight hours. She mourned her baby. She mourned her mother. She mourned her lack of imagination about the future. What purpose could make her leave this room? Every idea seemed small, inconsequential. She was broken open.

But broken open is still open.

Winter turned to spring and spring approached summer. Annie began to get up earlier. From the window of her bedroom, she saw her uncle leaving for the hospital. She remembered when he first moved to Arizona; Annie was in junior high. She asked him why he left the East, where he had grown up. He said, “Your mother is my family.” Annie had wanted to say, “You’re kidding, right? You moved here for her?” But now she was glad he had. Who else would she have turned to?

At night, she heard her uncle talking to patients on the phone. He’d answer their questions calmly. Often, at the end, he would say, “That’s what I’m here for.” That made Annie proud. He was a good and decent man, and her admiration for him grew. In time, a seed took root in her mind. That’s what I’m here for.

One evening, she came down to the kitchen, where Dennis was watching a football game on a small TV.

“Hey,” he said, clicking off the set.

“Can I ask you something?” Annie said.

“Sure.”

“How hard is it to be a nurse?”



In the blue river of the afterlife, Lorraine cupped her hands and lifted water up, watching it pour through her fingers.

“This is your heaven?” Annie asked.

“Isn’t it beautiful? I wanted serenity, after all the conflict of my life. Here I enjoy a calm I never knew on earth.”

“And you’ve been waiting for me all this time?”

“What’s time between a mother and her daughter? Never too much, never enough.”

“Mom?”

“Yes?”

“We fought a lot.”

“I know.” She took Annie’s left hand and guided it into the water. “But is that all you remember?”

Annie felt her fingers floating and her mind doing the same. In the water’s reflection she saw only loving scenes from her childhood, countless memories, her mother kissing her good night, unwrapping a new toy, plopping whipped cream onto pancakes, putting Annie on her first bicycle, stitching a ripped dress, sharing a tube of lipstick, pushing a button to Annie’s favorite radio station. It was as if someone unlocked a vault and all these fond recollections could be examined at once.

“Why didn’t I feel this before?” she whispered.

“Because we embrace our scars more than our healing,” Lorraine said. “We can recall the exact day we got hurt, but who remembers the day the wound was gone?

“From the moment you woke up in that hospital, I was different with you, and you were different with me. You were sullen. You were mad. You fought with me constantly. You hated my restrictions. But that wasn’t the real reason for your anger, was it?”

Lorraine reached down and clutched Annie’s fingers.

“Can you break that last secret? Can you say the real reason for your resentment since Ruby Pier?”

Annie choked up. Her voice was barely a whisper. “Because you weren’t there to save me.”

Lorraine closed her eyes. “That’s right. Can you forgive me for that?”

“Mom.”

“Yes?”

“You don’t need to hear me say it.”

“No, I don’t,” Lorraine said, softly. “But you do.”

Annie began to cry again, tears of release, blessed release, the expulsion of secrets bottled up for years. She realized the sacrifices Lorraine had made before and after that day at Ruby Pier, ending her marriage, giving up her home, forsaking her friends, her history, her desires, making Annie her only priority. She thought about her mother’s small funeral, and how much of Lorraine’s life had been surrendered to protect Annie’s.

“Yes, yes, I forgive you, Mom. Of course I forgive you. I didn’t know. I love you.”

Lorraine placed her hands together.

“Grace?”

“Grace.”

“That,” Lorraine said, smiling, “is what I was here to teach you.”



With that, Lorraine lifted off the ground and hovered above Annie, just for a moment. Then, with a final touch of her daughter’s chin, she swelled back into the sky, until her face commanded the firmament once more.

“It’s time to go, angel.”

“No! Mom!”

“You need to make your peace.”

“But we made our peace!”

“There’s someone else.”