Page 27 of The Next Person You Meet in Heaven
“This is your heaven, Annie, and where it intersects with mine. Others are not included.”
That made Annie hesitate. She braced herself.
“Did I do something to you?”
“Well, yes.”
“Am I here to make amends?”
“Amends?”
“For my mistake. Whatever it was.”
“Why do you assume it was a mistake?”
Annie didn’t say what she was thinking: that her whole life, she’d been making mistakes.
“Tell me about Cleo,” the old woman said.
***
The truth was, for nearly a year, Cleo, part beagle, part Boston terrier, was Annie’s primary companion. Lorraine could only find part-time work, morning shifts at an auto-parts factory; she was gone by the time Annie woke up and didn’t return until the afternoon. Annie hated having to call her mother every morning and tell her that she’d eatenbreakfast. She especially hated hanging up and being alone. With Cleo, there was finally another presence in the trailer—a furry, foot-tall presence, with floppy brown ears and a mouth that curled like a smile beneath her muzzle.
That first day after the shelter visit, Annie poured a bowl of cereal for herself and a bowl of pellets for her new dog. She watched Cleo try to eat with the awkward collar. The surgery wound near her shoulder was still red. How did that happen? Annie wondered. Did she run into something sharp? Did another dog attack her?
Cleo whined as the collar blocked her access. Annie was not supposed to take it off; her mother had told her six times. But the dog looked at Annie as if begging for help, and Annie felt so bad that she leaned over and, with her good hand, undid the clasp. Cleo surged to the bowl.
When all the pellets were eaten, Annie tapped her thighs, and Cleo scrambled her way. She crawled into Annie’s lap and sniffed her splinted fingers. Even when redirected, the dog returned to Annie’s injury, licking and poking it with her muzzle.
“You want to see?” Annie said. She took her arm out of the sling. Cleo licked the skin around her wrist and whimpered. Something stirred inside Annie, as if the dog understood more than a dog should.
“It still hurts,” Annie whispered. “And I don’t even know what I did.”
She realized she was crying. Perhaps because she had said the words out loud.I don’t even know what I did.The more Annie cried, the more the dog whined with her, lifting its snout to lick the tears away.
“Did you know,” the old woman said now, standing beside the grown-up Annie, “that a dog will go to a crying human before a smiling one? Dogs get sad when people around them get sad. They’re created that way. It’s called empathy.
“Humans have it, too. But it gets blocked by other things—ego, self-pity, thinking your own pain must be tended to first. Dogs don’t have those issues.”
Annie watched her younger self rub her cheek against Cleo’s snout.
“I was so lonely,” Annie whispered.
“I could tell.”
“I lost everything I knew.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Did you ever feel that way?”
The woman nodded. “Once.”
“When?” Annie asked.
The woman pointed to the trailer window.
***
