Forever, Interrupted

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  I have no will to hold myself up, no desire to hide my pain. I wail in the waiting room. I sob and heave into her breasts. Any other moment of my life, I’d move my head away from that part of her body. I’d feel uncomfortable with my eyes and lips being that close to a sexual body part, but right now, sex feels trivial and stupid. It feels like something idiots do out of boredom. Those happy teenagers probably do it for sport.

  Her arms around me don’t comfort me. The water springs from my eyes as if I’m forcing it out but I’m not. It’s just falling on its own. I don’t even feel sad. This level of devastation is so far beyond tears, that mine feel paltry and silly.

  “Have you seen him, Elsie? I’m so sorry.”

  I don’t answer. We sit on the floor of the waiting room for what seems like hours. Sometimes I wail, sometimes I feel nothing. Most of the time, I lie in Ana’s arms, not because I need to but because I don’t want to look at her. Eventually, Ana gets up and rests me against the wall, and then she walks up to the nurses’ station and starts yelling.

  “How much longer until we can see Ben Ross?” she screams at the young Latina nurse sitting at her computer.

  “Ma’am,” the nurse says, standing up, but Ana moves away from her.

  “No. Don’t ma’am me. Tell me where he is. Let us through.” The man in the red tie makes his way over to her and tries to calm her down.

  He and Ana speak for a few minutes. I can see him try to touch Ana, to console her, and she jerks her shoulder out of his reach. He is just doing his job. Everyone here is just doing their job. What a bunch of assholes.

  I see an older woman fly through the front doors. She looks about sixty with long, reddish brown hair in waves around her face. She has mascara running down her cheeks, a brown purse over her shoulder, a blackish brown shawl across her chest. She has tissues in her hands. I wish my grief were composed enough to have tissues. I’ve been wiping snot on my sleeves and neckline. I’ve been letting tears fall into puddles on the floor.

  She runs up to the front desk and then resigns herself to sit. When she turns to face me briefly, I know exactly who she is. I stare at her. I can’t take my eyes off of her. She is my mother-in-law, a stranger by all accounts. I saw her picture a few times in a photo album, but she has never seen my face.

  I remove myself and head into the bathroom. I do not know how to introduce myself to her. I do not know how to tell her that we are both here for the same man. That we are both grieving over the same loss. I stand in front of the mirror and I look at myself. My face is red and blotchy. My eyes are bloodshot. I look at my face and I think that I had someone who loved this face. And now he’s gone. And now no one loves my face anymore.

  I step back out of the bathroom and she is gone. I turn to find Ana grabbing my arm. “You can go in,” she says and leads me to the man in the red tie, who leads me through the double doors.

  The man in the red tie stops outside a room and asks me if I want him to go in with me. Why would I want him to go in with me? I just met this man. This man means nothing to me. The man inside this room means everything to me. Nothing isn’t going to help losing everything. I open the door and there are other people in the room, but all I can see is Ben’s body.

  “Excuse me!” my mother-in-law says through her tears. It is meek but terrifying. I ignore it.

  I grab his face in my hands and it’s cold to the touch. His eyelids are shut. I’ll never see his eyes again. It occurs to me they might be gone. I can’t look. I don’t want to figure it out. His face is bruised and I don’t know what that means. Does that mean he was hurt before he died? Did he die there alone and lonely on the street? Oh my God, did he suffer? I feel faint. There’s a sheet over his chest and legs. I’m scared to move the sheet. I’m scared that there is too much of Ben exposed, too much of him to see. Or that there is too much of him that is gone.

  “Security!” she calls out into the air.

  As I hold on to Ben’s hand and a security guard shows up at the door, I look at my mother-in-law. She has no reason to know who I am. She has no reason to understand what I am doing here, but she has to know I love her son. That much has to be obvious by now.

  “Please,” I beg her. “Please, Susan, don’t do this.”

  Susan looks at me curiously, confused. By the sheer fact that I know her name, she knows she must be missing something. She very subtly nods and looks at the security guard. “I’m sorry. Give us a moment?” He leaves the room, and Susan looks at the nurse. “You too. Thank you.” The nurse leaves the room, shutting the door.

  Susan looks tortured, terrified, and yet composed, as if she has only enough poise to get through the next five seconds and then she will fall apart.

  “His hand has a wedding ring on it,” she says to me. I stare at her and try to keep breathing. I meekly lift up my own left hand to match.

  “We were married a week and a half ago,” I say through tears. I can feel the corners of my lips pulling down. They feel so heavy.

  “What is your name?” she asks me, now shaking.

  “Elsie,” I say. I am terrified of her. She looks angry and vulnerable, like a teenage runaway.

  “Elsie what?” she chokes.

  “Elsie Ross.”

  That’s when she breaks. She breaks just like I have. Soon, she’s on the floor. There are no more tissues in sight to save the linoleum from her tears.

  Ana is sitting next to me holding my hand. I am sitting next to Ben’s side, sobbing. Susan excused herself some time ago. The man in the red tie comes in and says we need to clear some things up and Ben’s body needs to be moved. I just stare ahead, I don’t even focus on what’s happening, until the man in the red tie hands me a bag of Ben’s things. His cell phone is there, his wallet, his keys.

  “What is this?” I ask, even though I know what it is.

  Before the man in the red tie can answer me, Susan appears in the doorway. Her face is strained; her eyes are bloodshot. She looks older than she did when she left. She looks exhausted. Do I look like that? I bet I look like that.

  “What are you doing?” Susan asks the man.

  “I’m . . . We need to clear the room. Your son’s body is going to be transferred.”

  “Why are you giving that to her?” Susan says, more directly. She says it like I’m not even here.

  “I’m sorry?”

  Susan steps further into the room and takes the bag of Ben’s stuff from in front of me. “All decisions about Ben, all his belongings, should be directed to me,” she says.

  “Ma’am,” the man in the red tie says.

  “All of it,” she says.

  Ana stands up and grabs me to go with her. She intends to remove me from this situation, and while I don’t want to be here right now, I can’t just be removed. I pull my arm out of Ana’s hand and I look at Susan.

  “Should we discuss what the next steps are?” I say to her.

  “What is there to discuss?” Susan says. She is cold and controlled.

  “I just mean . . . ” I don’t actually know what I mean.

  “Mrs. Ross,” the man in the red tie says.

  “Yes?” Both Susan and I answer at the same time.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. “Which one did you mean?”

  “The elder,” he says, looking at Susan. I’m sure that he meant it as a sign of respect, but it’s torn right through her. Susan doesn’t want to be one of two Mrs. Rosses, that much is clear, but I bet she resents even more being the elder one.

  “I’m not going to give this any more credence,” she says to everyone in the room. “She has absolutely no proof that my son even knew her, let alone married her. I’ve never heard of her! My own son. I saw him last month. He never mentioned a damn thing. So no, I’m not having my son’s possessions sent home with a stranger. I won’t have it.”

  Ana reaches toward Susan. “Maybe it’s time for us all to take a step back,” she says.

  Susan turns her head, as if noticing Ana for the first time.
“Who are you?” she asks. She asks it like we are clowns coming out of a Volkswagen. She asks it as if she’s exhausted by all the people that keep appearing.

  “I’m a friend,” Ana says. “And I don’t think any of us are in a position to behave rationally, so maybe we can just breathe—”

  Susan turns toward the man in the red tie, her body language interrupting Ana midsentence. “You and I need to discuss this in private,” she barks at him.

  “Ma’am, please calm down.”

  “Calm down? You’re joking!”

  “Susan—” I start to say. I don’t know how I planned on finishing, but Susan doesn’t give a shit.

  “Stop,” she says, putting her hand up in my face. It’s aggressive and instinctual, as if she needs to protect her face from my words.

  “Ma’am, Elsie was escorted in by the police. She was at the scene. I have no reason to doubt that she and your son were as she says . . . ”

  “Married?” Susan is incredulous.

  “Yes,” the man in the red tie says.

  “Call the county! I want to see a record of it!”

  “Elsie, do you have a copy of your marriage certificate that you can show Mrs. Ross?”

  I can feel myself shrinking in front of them. I don’t want to shrink. I want to stand tall. I want to be proud, confident. But this is all too much and I don’t have anything to show for myself.

  “No, but, Susan—” I say as tears fall down my face. I feel so ugly right now, so small and stupid.

  “Stop calling me that!” she screams. “You don’t even know me. Stop calling me by my name!”

  “Fine,” I say. My eyes are staring forward, focused on the body in the room. My husband’s body. “Keep all of it,” I say. “I don’t care. We can sit here and scream all day but it doesn’t change anything. So I really don’t give a shit where his wallet goes.”

  I put one foot in front of the other and I walk out. I leave my husband’s body there with her. And the minute my feet hit the hallway, the minute Ana has shut the door behind us, I regret walking out. I should have stayed with him until the nurse kicked me out.

  Ana pushes me forward.

  She puts me in the car. She buckles my seat belt. She drives slowly through town. She parks in my driveway. I don’t remember any of it happening. Suddenly, I am at my front door.

  Stepping into my apartment, I have no idea what time of day it is. I have no idea how long it has been since I sat on the couch like a cavalier bitch whining about cereal in my pajamas. This apartment, the one I have loved since I moved in, the one I considered “ours” when Ben moved in, now betrays me. It hasn’t moved an inch since Ben died. It’s like it doesn’t care.

  It didn’t put away his shoes sitting in the middle of the floor. It didn’t fold up the blanket he was using. It didn’t even have the decency to hide his toothbrush from plain view. This apartment is acting like nothing has changed. Everything has changed. I tell the walls he’s gone. “He’s dead. He’s not coming home.” Ana rubs my back and says, “I know, baby. I know.”

  She doesn’t know. She could never know. I walk carelessly into my bedroom, hit my shoulder on the door hinge and feel nothing. I get into my side of the bed and I can smell him still. He’s still here in the sheets. I grab his pillow from his side of the bed and I smell it, choking on my own tears. I walk into the kitchen as Ana is getting me a glass of water. I walk right past her with the pillow in my hand and I grab a trash bag, shoving the pillow into it. I tie it tight, knotting the plastic over and over until it breaks off in my hand and falls onto the kitchen floor.

  “What are you doing?” she asks me.

  “It smells like Ben,” I answer. “I don’t want the smell to evaporate. I want to save it.”

  “I don’t know if that’s going to work,” she says delicately.

  “Fuck you,” I say and go back to the bed.

  I start crying the minute I hit my pillow. I hate what this has made me. I’ve never told anyone to fuck off before, least of all Ana.

  Ana has been my best friend since I was seventeen years old. We met the first day of college in line at the dining hall. I didn’t have anyone to sit with and she was already trying to avoid a boy. It was a telling moment for each of us. When she decided to move to Los Angeles to be an actress, I came with her. Not because I had any affinity for Los Angeles, I had never been here, but because I had such a strong affinity for her. Ana had said to me, “C’mon, you can be a librarian anywhere.” And she was absolutely right.

  Here we were, nine years after meeting, her watching me like I’m going to slit my wrists. If I had a better grip on my senses, I’d say this is the real meat of friendship, but I don’t care about that right now. I don’t care about anything.

  Ana comes in with two pills and a glass of water. “I found these in your medicine cabinet,” she says. I look in her hand and I recognize them. It’s Vicodin from when Ben had a back spasm last month. He barely took any of them. I think he thought taking them made him a wimp.

  I take them out of her hand without questioning and I swallow them. “Thank you,” I say. She tucks the duvet around me and goes to sleep on the couch. I’m glad she doesn’t try to sleep in bed with me. I don’t want her to take away his smell. My eyes are parched from crying, my limbs weak, but my brain needs the Vicodin to pass out. I shuffle over to Ben’s side of the bed as I get groggy and fall asleep. “I love you,” I say, and for the first time, there’s no one to hear it.

  I wake up feeling hungover. I reach over to grab Ben’s hand as I do every morning, and his side of the bed is empty. For a minute I think he must be in the bathroom or making breakfast and then I remember. My devastation returns, this time duller but thicker, coating my body like a blanket, sinking my heart like a stone.

  I pull my hands to my face and try to wipe away the tears, but they are flowing out of me too fast to catch up. It’s like a Whac-A-Mole of misery.

  Ana comes in with a dish towel in her hands, drying them.

  “You’re up,” she says, surprised.

  “How observant.” Why am I being so mean? I’m not a mean person. This isn’t who I am.

  “Susan called.” She is ignoring my outbursts, and for that, I am thankful.

  “What did she say?” I sit up and grab the glass of water on my bedside table from last night. “What could she possibly want from me?”

  “She didn’t say anything. Just to call her.”

  “Great.”

  “I left the number on the refrigerator. In case you did want to call her.”

  “Thanks.” I sip the water and stand up.

  “I have to go walk Bugsy and then I’ll be right back,” Ana says. Bugsy is her English bulldog. He drools all over everything and I want to tell her that Bugsy doesn’t need to be let out because Bugsy is a lazy sack of shit, but I don’t say any of this because I really, really want to stop being so unkind.

  “Okay.”

  “Do you want anything while I’m out?” she asks, and it reminds me that I asked Ben to get me Fruity Pebbles. I get right back into bed.

  “No, nothing for me. Thank you.”

  “Okay, I’ll be back shortly.” She thinks for a minute. “Actually, do you want me to stick around in case you decide to call her now?”

  “No, thanks. I can handle it.”

  “Okay, if you change your mind . . . ”

  “Thanks.”

  Ana leaves, and as I hear the door shut, it hits me how alone I am. I am alone in this room, I am alone in this apartment, but more to the point, I am alone in this life. I can’t even wrap my brain around it. I just get up and pick up the phone. I get the number from the front of the refrigerator and I see a magnet for Georgie’s Pizza. I fall to the floor, my cheek against the cold tile. I can’t seem to make myself get up.

  DECEMBER

  It was New Year’s Eve and Ana and I had this great plan. We were going to go to this party to see this guy she had been flirting with at the gym, and then we
were going to leave at 11:30 p.m. We wanted to drive to the beach, open a bottle of champagne together, and ring in the new year tipsy and drenched in sea spray.

  Instead, Ana got too drunk at the party, started making out with the guy from the gym, and disappeared for a few hours. This was fairly typical of Ana and something that I had come to love about her, namely that nothing ever went as planned. Something always happened. She was a nice reprieve from my own personality. A personality for whom everything went as planned and nothing ever happened. So when I was stranded at the party waiting for Ana to pop out of wherever she’d been hiding, I wasn’t angry or surprised. I had assumed things might take this turn. I was only slightly annoyed as I rang in the new year with a group of strangers. I stood there awkwardly, as friends kissed each other, and I just stared into my champagne glass. I didn’t let it ruin my evening. I talked to some cool people that night. I made the best of it.

  I met a guy named Fabian, who was just finishing med school but said his real passion was “fine wine, fine food, and fine women.” He winked at me as he said this, and as I gracefully removed myself from the conversation shortly thereafter, Fabian asked for my number. I gave it to him, and although he was cute, I knew that if he did call, I wouldn’t answer. Fabian seemed like the kind of guy who would take me to an expensive bar on our first date; the kind of guy who would check out other girls while I was in the bathroom. That was the kind of guy who found victory in sleeping with you. It was a game to him and I . . . just never knew how to play it well.

  Ana, on the other hand, knew how to have fun. She met people. She flirted with them. She had whatever that thing is that makes men fawn over women and lose their own self-respect in the process. Ana had all the power in her romances, and while I could see the point in living like that, from an outside view it never seemed very full of passion. It was calculated. I was waiting for someone that would sweep me off my feet and would be swept up by me in equal parts. I wanted someone who wouldn’t want to play games because doing so meant less time being together. I wasn’t sure if this person existed, but I was too young to give up on the idea.