A few hours after José received his birthday cake, he had a massive heart attack and died at home, in the middle of watching Dancing with the Stars. Despite their best efforts, paramedics were unable to bring the engineer, known outside Annie’s Meetings as Tim Norris, back to the land of the living. It was Tim’s habit to unwind in front of the television from 8:00 P.M. to 11:00 while his wife sat beside him, catching up on old New Yorkers.
Only after he passed did certain things begin to nag. In the last three months, she noticed a change. Some of it was just silly—like Tim’s newfound love of Frosted Flakes in the morning (he was always a no-breakfast guy), an anomaly that she wrote off as a quirk of middle age. And those songs he’d started to sing, in Spanish no less, in a funny, childish voice. He said that a Mexican coworker had been giving him lessons. But some of the changes had a darker feel, like when she called his name and he wouldn’t answer and she’d find him sitting in the basement rec room, brooding in the dark. And the “work-related” day trips he’d taken to Lansing, Flint and Battle Creek, in the ten days preceding his death—what was that about? He was employed by the City of Detroit and had told her that his bosses wanted him to do a little “fact finding” to see how other cities and townships conducted their business. Fair enough, she thought at the time.
Another strange thing was that Tim somehow got it into his head that he had a drinking problem, which was absolute nonsense. He never drank hard liquor and only had a half-glass of wine a few nights a week. But one day (and yes, she thought it was three months ago) he announced that he’d be attending AA meetings two or three times a week, not far from the house. She did her best to interrogate him about that, jokingly asking if he’d been stashing bottles of liquor like Jack Lemmon did in one of their favorite movies. He was closemouthed and adamant about his decision. She never liked interfering in his private life and thoughts—oh, they talked a lot about mutual interests and worries; it wasn’t like they hid things from each other—and in the end, she thought, Who am I to say? If Tim thinks he has a problem and if those meetings make him happy, I’m all for it. And they did make him happy; whenever he returned from AA, his mood seemed buoyant, lighter. She loved having dinner ready for him when he got home, with the kids already in bed. It felt romantic.
It crossed her mind that he was having an affair. They hadn’t been physical in months, but that was never high on their to-do list. They were spooners. And besides, her husband was cuddlier than ever. She knew in her heart that unfaithfulness wasn’t a possibility.
What she couldn’t have known was that Tim had actually died months ago and the reason he made those day trips was to find the person who had murdered the child he’d joined forces with. Battle Creek and Lansing were false starts—in private conversation, Annie assured him that things sometimes took a moment to “geographically come together”—and he finally found his man in Flint. The killer was about thirty-five, on parole for exposing himself to a child. As he strangled him, the boy José receded while the brute strength of Tim Norris, enhanced by what felt like superpowers, took over. (Tim looked into the man’s eyes the entire time.) As the life went out of him, José the child could finally remember what had happened.
Ten years ago, in Kissimmee, Florida, a man outside a convenience store waved him over. He was dressed like a policeman, sort of, but his car was a regular one with a dent in the door and duct tape holding a headlight in place. He told José that something happened to his dad and he was there to take him to the police station. He wasn’t an aggressive kid and when the man’s tone became forceful, José got in. They traveled on dirt roads for an hour before pulling over. The man took him to a barn and said, “We’re going to do some things that you’re probably not going to enjoy—but that’s life. Sometimes you have to do things you don’t enjoy.” At five in the morning, José died from internal hemorrhaging. He was buried in a swamp.
All of the details flashed before Tim’s and José’s eyes as they strangled him. Tim saw the faces of two other children the man had killed too—one in Louisiana, one in Kansas—and felt their release, prompting the engineer-landlord, not the child-tenant, to offer a simple prayer: May you rest in peace. When he loosened his hold on the murderer, he was flooded with emotions belonging to José; for the first time since melding with Tim Norris, the boy yearned for his Kissimmee home. How he missed his parents! Tim and José cried for the hour it took to get back to Detroit and sang the popular song, José’s papi’s favorite, that his family used to sing on weekend road trips:
Dale a tu cuerpo alegria Macarena
Hey, Macarena!
Drawing on Tim’s more developed sense of regret, José felt a pang of guilt. Why hadn’t he bothered to contact his mother and father, his sisters? To see what they looked like now, where they lived, and if they were in good health? It didn’t seem “natural,” it was so selfish, so mean, even though Annie had already addressed the topic. She reminded all of them how the Guide informed them that those who returned wouldn’t give the parents and siblings they’d left behind much thought, and while that seemed callous, it was “as it should be.” Spying on the family one lost would only be a distraction, an encumbrance to effecting the moment of balance.
That day, they drove directly to the Meeting from Flint so that José could take his birthday cake. The Porter knew at a glance that José had fulfilled his purpose.
When he saw Annie, he was distraught, blurting out how he wanted to see mi papi y mi mama and what should he do? In her experience, the urge to visit family was nothing new—she encountered it in 90 percent of her children after their moment of balance. She took his hands in hers, noticing that he’d lost his blueness, which was expected when a mission was complete.
“I’m afraid there isn’t time for that, José,” she said gently. He bowed his head in sadness. “But your family will always be with you and I think you know that. They’re with you now.” José nodded and she knew the landlord Tim was helping the child to make sense of her words. “When you take your cake, don’t forget to thank Tim. And Tim—when you get home, don’t forget to thank José as well! Make sure. Sit in the driveway before you go in and thank him. It’s so important to thank those who’ve helped us in this world. In any world.”
José grew stronger during the Meeting, no longer preoccupied by the family he had lost. He sat listening to everyone with a smile on his face, and all of them could see that he had been released. When he blew out the candles, he thanked the landlord-tenants for their fellowship, and then he thanked Tim, saving Annie for last. He spoke to her in Spanish. The others became emotional, even though they couldn’t understand his words.
The Meeting ended with a raucous “Macarena” and the song stuck in their heads for more than a few days.