The Next Person You Meet in Heaven

by Mitch Albom

  But when Jerry took his anger out on Annie, slapping her again and again after Annie opened the freezer against his wishes, Lorraine found a strength she hadn’t known. She threw him out. She changed the locks. She held Annie that night and cried into her curly hair, and Annie cried, too, although she didn’t know why.

  The divorce dragged on. Jerry claimed he wasn’t working. Money became a struggle. Lorraine took on typing jobs from home. Knowing Annie was confused about her father’s absence, Lorraine tried to create a happy world for her. She encouraged Annie to dance freely, to sing loudly; they ran through sprinklers together and played board games for hours. Lorraine let Annie try pink lipstick in front of the mirror and choose her favorite superhero as a Halloween costume. For many months, mother and daughter shared the same bed, and Lorraine put Annie to sleep at night with a lullaby.

  But as time passed, with the bills unpaid, Lorraine needed to take an outside job. She asked neighbors to watch Annie after school and was exhausted by the time she got home. Annie started sleeping in her own room. Eventually, Lorraine was asked out by men at her new office and she quickly accepted, especially when they paid for a babysitter. She had a string of short relationships, none of them successful. She continued trying, hoping to change her life.

  Then came the day at Ruby Pier, when she got her wish, but not the way she wanted.

  * * *

  In heaven, vision can be shared, and Annie, having tumbled into her mother’s eyes, now found herself inside one of Lorraine’s memories, sitting at a table in the backyard of their first home. The sky was white. A laundry pole had sheets and clothes hanging, as did other laundry poles in other yards. Lorraine was wearing high heels with a blue skirt and a white blouse, an outfit she’d worn to work. There was a manila folder on her lap and documents in her hands.

  “Do you know what these are, Annie?”

  Annie, still trying to understand how they got here, shook her head no.

  “They’re from a lawyer. Your father had them sent.”

  Annie blinked. “Why?”

  “He claimed I was an unfit mother. Because of your accident. He wanted custody.”

  “Of me?”

  “Full-time.”

  “But I hadn’t seen Dad—”

  “In years. I know. But he wanted to sue the amusement park, and he needed you to do that. He thought he could get big money. And when Jerry got a money idea, he didn’t give up.

  “I knew what your life would be like if he took you. I knew how violent he was. So I made a decision.”

  Annie glanced at the bedroom window. She saw her younger self looking out.

  “I remember this day . . . It was when those reporters came to the door.”

  “That’s right.”

  “We left the next morning.”

  “I never told you why.”

  Lorraine laid down the papers.

  “Now you know why.”

  She stood and flattened her skirt.

  “So that’s a start,” she said.

  “A start of what?” Annie asked.

  “Of ending our secrets. Come. There’s more to show you.”

  Annie felt herself floating beside her mother. They rose above the house. The afternoon sky melted to dawn, and Annie saw their car pulling away the next morning, its trunk held down by a bungee cord.

  “I hated leaving,” she said.

  “I know you did.”

  “Things were never the same.”

  “They couldn’t be.”

  “We walked away from everything.”

  “Well, not everything.”

  They dropped lower to see Lorraine behind the wheel, Annie asleep in the seat next to her.

  “Not each other,” Lorraine said.

  Annie Makes a Mistake

  She is fourteen. Paulo’s family is about to move to Italy.

  Annie has been dreading this day. She and Paulo eat lunch together now. They meet between classes. She has come to think of him as more than a friend, as someone to really like or, in her young way, to love. Not that she does anything about it. First loves often remain in the heart, like plants that cannot grow in sunlight.

  But she pictures Paulo every day. She imagines them holding hands, nudging against each other at the zoo or the mall. Only now he is leaving and Annie isn’t just losing her friend (and whatever else he has yet to become) but also her shield from the other girls in school.

  The morning of Paulo’s last day, Annie stands by her locker, retrieving her books. Megan, one of the popular girls who never talks to her, approaches and says, “Hey,” and Annie, taken aback, says, “Hey,” and Megan says, “I bet you’re going to miss Paulo,” and Annie blushes, but Megan says, “No, seriously. He’s cute. I would miss him if he noticed me like he notices you.”

  Annie is surprised by her words and tone. She is swept up in the possibility of a new friend. Megan smiles and Annie has an urge to please her.

  “Look,” Annie says, flipping open a notebook. It is a pencil drawing she made of Paulo during classes when she was bored. Annie is a good artist and the rendering is large, with Paulo’s eyes big and emphasized.

  “Oh, my God, that is so good,” Megan says. “I have to take a picture.” She pulls out a small phone, and before Annie can object, she presses a button. Annie has never seen a phone that is a camera.

  “It’s new,” Megan says, flipping it Annie’s way. “So cool, right?”

  She shows Annie other photos of her friends preening for the lens. Annie feels like she is inside a special circle.

  The bell rings.

  “Bye,” Megan says.

  Annie watches her rush off. Maybe Paulo’s leaving won’t be the end, she thinks. Maybe she can talk about him with Megan—and other things the popular girls talk about. It is a new feeling for Annie and she lets it wash over her, brightening her mood.

  At the end of the school day, she walks towards Paulo’s locker, where she usually meets him. She has a plan. They will talk like they normally do, maybe extra-long this time. She wants to give him the picture she drew. She wants to tell him to write from Italy and she will write back. Mostly she wants to kiss him. It wouldn’t seem too weird, she figures, since he is leaving. People kiss, right? A peck on the cheek? Or maybe on the lips? She has been thinking about it all day. Actually, for many days.

  She turns down the hallway.

  She freezes.

  A group of students is gathered around Paulo’s locker. Paulo is in the middle. They are all laughing, girls and boys, and some of the boys are slapping Paulo on the back. Megan is in the middle. She is showing everyone her phone.

  “Dude, it really looks like you!” a boy yells.

  “She’s your stalker!” yells another.

  “She wants to wear your skin as a birthday present!”

  Everyone laughs. Annie watches Paulo. He is not saying anything.

  Suddenly, one of them spots Annie and says, “Whoa!” and they tap each other and turn her way. It’s like being shot with arrows. She can barely swallow. She sees Megan tucking the phone behind her back.

  Normally, Annie would duck and disappear. But something about Paulo standing in their midst. It’s like they’ve taken the last thing she had. With her feet moving as if someone else were operating them, she edges forward, as the other kids peel back like reversed magnets. She is face-to-face with Megan.

  Annie swallows hard.

  “Can I see, too?” she asks.

  Megan rolls her eyes. She holds up the phone. Annie sees the photo of her drawing. Paulo. His big eyes.

  “Why would you show that to everybody?” Annie says, her voice shaking. “It’s not yours.”

  She turns to Paulo. “It was supposed to be yours.”

  Paulo’s mouth drops open. For a moment, all of them are frozen. Then, with Paulo inches away, something releases inside of Annie. It propels her forward. The next thing she knows, she is pressing her lips against his. It lasts a second. She feels tears leaving her
eyes.

  “Goodbye,” she whispers.

  She turns and walks away, fighting her impulse to run. She hears one of the girls say, “Yeah, go on, geek.” She hears someone else say, “Oh . . . my . . . God.” When she turns the corner, she no longer holds back. She runs and keeps running, out the back doors and down the street, tears burning her cheeks.

  She reaches a park and drops onto a bench, flanked by two blue garbage bins. She doesn’t come home until dark. When she enters, her mother is livid.

  “Why are you so late?” she yells.

  “Because I felt like it!” Annie yells back.

  Lorraine grounds her for a month.

  The next day, Paulo is gone.

  ALL CHILDREN KEEP SECRETS. All parents do the same. We mold the version we want others to believe, boosting the disguise and tucking away the truth. It is how we can be loved by our closest family members and still, at times, elude them.

  From their hasty cross-country journey to their new roots in rural Arizona, Lorraine held her secrets close. She took great pains to erase her past. She got rid of old photos. She stopped calling old friends. She never mentioned her ex-husband. She never spoke of Ruby Pier.

  She hoped a new state would mean a new life. But the things we have done are never far behind us. And like a shadow, they go where we do.

  Annie, meanwhile, had given up on old hopes. By sixteen, she had accepted her role as a high school outcast. She had few friends and spent much of her time at home, reading, with her dog, Cleo, curled against her. Her figure had developed, and she sometimes caught boys staring if she wore tight clothing. Their attention confused her. Being noticed was all right, but she wanted to be known. They never even spoke to her.

  One day, in history class, Annie’s teacher was asking about family roots.

  “What about you, Annie?”

  Annie slid low in her seat. She hated being called upon. She glanced sideways and saw one of those boys with the juvenile stare.

  “I don’t know much,” she said.

  Another student sang those words, “Don’t know much,” from a popular song, and the class laughed. Annie reddened.

  “Well, you weren’t born in Arizona, were you?”

  “No,” Annie admitted, breaking one of her mother’s rules.

  “Where did you begin?”

  Trying to get this over with, Annie spat out a few details, the town, how many years, where she thought her grandparents came from.

  “And why did you move here?” the teacher said.

  Annie froze. She couldn’t think of a lie. She heard someone snickering, “It’s not a trick question.”

  “I had an accident,” Annie mumbled.

  An awkward silence.

  “All right, who else?” the teacher said.

  Annie exhaled.

  Before the class ended, the teacher assigned the students to research world events on the day they were born. They could use the school library or, if they had access, computer search engines, which were new.

  Annie didn’t own a computer. She used the library microfilm. She learned that on her birthday, a crisis in South Africa ended and a famous hockey player broke a league record. She wrote it down.

  At the end of the week, the students were asked to report their findings. Annie rose and recited her meager facts, then quickly sat, glad that it was over. She gazed out the window, drifting, until she heard Megan, the girl who had ruined everything with Paulo, ending her report by saying, “Also, I used a computer, and I found out that Annie’s ‘accident’ was in an amusement park and that someone died because of her.”

  Students gasped. One yelled, “What?” Annie flushed with chills. She began to cough. She couldn’t find her breath. Her mind was racing between the faces staring at her and that day at Ruby Pier, replaying fragments, the train ride, her mother taking off with Bob. She felt woozy. Her arm slid off the desk.

  “Annie, are you all right?” the teacher said. “Come here, come here, let’s go . . .”

  She rushed Annie out the classroom door.

  * * *

  When Annie came home that day, she marched into the trailer, slammed her books on a table, and started screaming about what Megan said in class. Lorraine, hovering over a pile of bills, froze for a moment, a pen in her hand. Then she resumed scribbling, looking down through her reading glasses.

  “You knew it was an amusement park,” she said.

  “What about the rest, Mom?”

  “What?”

  “Did I kill someone?”

  “Of course not!” Lorraine capped the pen. “That’s an evil lie by an evil girl.”

  “Are you sure?”

  “How could you even think that?”

  “Did someone die?”

  “It was a big accident, Annie. There were workers. Operators. Riders. Lots of people were affected. You were a victim, remember? We could have sued. Maybe I should have. All these bills.”

  “Did someone die?”

  “An employee, I think. No one that you knew.”

  “What else happened?”

  Lorraine pulled off her glasses. “Do you really need more details? Now, all of a sudden? Haven’t we been through enough?”

  “We?” Annie screamed. “Really, Mom? WE?”

  “Yes!” Lorraine screamed back. “Really, Annie. WE!”

  “I have no friends, Mom! I want to have friends!”

  “I’d like some, too, Annie!”

  “I’m never going back to that class!”

  “You’re never going back to that school!”

  “Fine!”

  “Fine!”

  Both of them were red-faced and breathing hard. Lorraine rose to the kitchen. She smacked the faucet and rubbed her hands vigorously under the water. “Honestly, what kind of learning is that? Looking up your birthdays? You’d be better off homeschooled.”

  “I’m not doing THAT!” Annie yelled.

  “We’ll find someplace.”

  “Oh, God, Mom! GOD!”

  Annie dropped on the couch. She pulled a pillow over her face.

  Later that week, she transferred, and when she didn’t like that school, she transferred to another. The matter of the accident was not spoken about again.

  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 th
e 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.