Forever, Interrupted

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  “I’m staying at the Beverly Hotel,” she says and she tells me where it is, as if I haven’t lived in Los Angeles for years.

  “Oh,” I say. “I didn’t realize you were staying in town.” She lives two hours away. She can’t at least stay in her own city? Leave this one to me?

  “There’s a lot to take care of, Elsie. We can meet at the bar downstairs.” Her voice is curt, uninterested, and cold. I tell her I will meet her there at three. It’s almost one. “Whatever is convenient for you,” she says and gets off the phone.

  None of this is convenient for me. What would be convenient for me is to fall asleep and never wake up. That’s what would be convenient for me. What would be convenient for me is to be at work right now because everything is fine and Ben will be home tonight for dinner around seven and we’re having tacos. That’s convenient for me. Talking to the mother-in-law I met yesterday about funeral arrangements for my dead husband isn’t convenient for me no matter what time it happens in the afternoon.

  I get back in bed, overwhelmed by everything I need to do before I meet with her. I’ll need to shower, to get dressed, to get in the car, to drive, to park. It’s too much. When Ana comes back, I’m in tears with gratitude because I know she will take care of everything.

  I arrive at the hotel a few minutes late. Ana goes to park the car and says she’ll be in the lobby. She says to text her if I need her. I walk into the bar area and scan for Susan. It’s cold in this bar despite being warm outside. I hate air-conditioning. I moved here to be warm. The room is brand-new but made to look old. There’s a chalkboard menu behind the bar that’s too clean to be from the era the decorator would like you to believe. The stools are reminiscent of a speakeasy, but they aren’t cracked and worn. They look pristine and unused. This is the age we live in; we are able to have nostalgia for things made yesterday. I would have loved this bar last week, when I liked things cool and clean. Now I hate it for being false and inauthentic.

  I finally spot Susan sitting at a high table in the back. She is reading the menu, head down, hand covering her face. She glances up and spots me. As we look at each other for a moment, I can see that her eyes are swollen and red but her face means business.

  “Hi,” I say as I sit down. She does not get up to greet me.

  “Hi,” she says as she adjusts herself in her seat. “I stopped by Ben’s apartment last night to try to—”

  “Ben’s apartment?”

  “Off Santa Monica Boulevard. I talked to his roommate and he told me that Ben moved out last month.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “He said Ben moved in with a girl named Elsie.”

  “That’s me,” I say, excited by the prospect of her believing me.

  “I gathered as much,” she says drily. Then she pulls a binder from the floor and puts it in front of me. “I received this from the funeral home. It’s a list of options for the service.”

  “Okay,” I say.

  “Decisions will need to be made regarding flowers, the ceremony, the obituary, et cetera.”

  “Sure.” I don’t entirely know what the “et cetera” is. I’ve never been in this situation before.

  “I think it’s best you tend to those duties.”

  “Me?” Yesterday she didn’t even believe I had a right to be at the hospital. Now she wants me to plan his funeral? “You don’t want to have any input?” I say, dubious.

  “No. I won’t be joining you. I think it’s best you take care of this yourself. You want to be his next of kin . . . ”

  She trails off, but I know how she was going to end it. She was going to say, “You want to be his next of kin, you got it.” I ignore her attitude and try to keep Ben—my Ben, her Ben, our Ben—in mind.

  “But . . . his family should be involved.”

  “I am the only family Ben has, Elsie. Had. I am all he had.”

  “I know. I just meant . . . you should be involved in this. We should do this together.”

  She is quiet as she gives me a tight and rueful smile. She looks down at the utensils on the table. She plays with the napkins and saltshaker. “Ben clearly did not want me involved in his life. I don’t see why I should be intimately involved in his death.”

  “Why would you say that?”

  “I just told you,” she says. “He clearly did not care enough to tell me he was getting married, or moving in with you, or whatever you two were to each other. And I . . . ” She wipes a tear away with a tissue, delicately and with purpose. She shakes her head to clear it. “Elsie. I don’t care to discuss this with you. You have a list of things to do. All I ask is that you inform me as to when the service will be and what will be done with his ashes.”

  “Ben wanted to be buried,” I say. “He told me he wanted to be buried in sweatpants and a T-shirt so he’d be comfortable.”

  At the time, when he told me, I thought this was sweet. It didn’t occur to me that I wouldn’t be senile by the time he passed away, that it would be within months of that very conversation.

  Her face scrunches itself around her eyes and mouth, and I can tell she’s mad. The lines around her mouth become pronounced, and for the first time I can see evidence that she is an older woman. Does my mom have these lines? It’s been so long since I’ve seen her, I don’t know.

  Maybe Susan doesn’t realize what she’s doing. Maybe she thinks she’s strong enough to cut off her nose to spite her face here, to give me this funeral arranging as a punishment, but she’s not. And she’s already bothered.

  “Everyone in our family has been cremated, Elsie. I never heard Ben say he wanted otherwise. Just tell me what is going to be done with the ashes.” She looks down at the table and sighs, blowing air out of her mouth and onto her lap. “I should be going.” She gets up from the table and leaves, not looking back at me, not acknowledging my existence.

  I grab the binder and head toward the lobby, where Ana is waiting patiently. She drives us home and I walk right up the front steps to my door. When I realize I’ve left my keys inside, I turn around and start crying. Ana soothes me as she pulls my spare key off her key ring and hands it to me. She hands it to me as if it will make everything okay, as if the only reason I’m crying is I can’t get into the apartment.

  JANUARY

  I woke up the morning after meeting Ben to a text message from him.

  “Rise and Shine, Elsie Porter. Can I take you to lunch?”

  I jumped out of bed, shrieked like an idiot, and hopped in place compulsively for at least ten seconds. There was so much energy in my body I had no other way of getting it out.

  “Sure. Where to?” I texted back. I stared at the phone until it lit up again.

  “I’ll come pick you up. Twelve thirty. What’s your address?”

  I sent him my address and then ran into the shower as if it was urgent. But it wasn’t urgent. I was ready to go by 11:45 and I felt entirely pathetic about that. I put my hair up in a high ponytail and shimmied into my favorite jeans and most flattering T-shirt. Sitting around my house for forty-five minutes dressed and ready to go made me feel silly, so I decided to get out of my house and go for a walk. And in all of my glee and excitement, I locked myself out.

  My heart started beating so fast I couldn’t think straight. I’d left everything inside, my phone, my wallet. Ana had my spare key, but that wasn’t going to do me much good without a phone to call her. I walked up and down the street looking for change so that I could ultimately call her on a pay phone, but it turns out, people don’t really leave quarters on the ground. You’d think they would because quarters are small and sort of meaningless most of the time, but when you really need one, you realize just how ubiquitous they aren’t. Then I decided to find a pay phone anyway since maybe I could rig it to call for free or there’d be a quarter stuck in the little change box. After scouring the neighborhood, I couldn’t find a single one. Which left me no viable option I could think of other than breaking into my own apartment.

  So that’s
what I tried to do.

  I was on the second story of a duplex, but you could kind of get to the patio from the front stairs; so I walked up the stairs, climbed onto the railing, and tried to grab on to the rail of my patio. If I could get my hand on it and swing a leg around, I was pretty confident I could get onto the patio without much chance of falling to my death. From there, it was just a matter of crawling through the little doggie door in the screen that had been put there by the tenants before me. I had hated that damn doggie door until that very moment, when I was convinced it was my salvation.

  As I continued my attempts to grab on to the patio rail, I realized that this might actually be an incredibly stupid plan, in which I was sure to be injured. If it was taking me this long to grab the rail in the first place, why on earth did I think I could easily swing my leg onto it once I reached it?

  I made one final and valiant attempt to grab on before I got the cockamamie idea that it was best to go leg first. I was leg first when Ben found me.

  “Elsie?”

  “Ah!” I almost lost my footing, but I managed to get my leg back onto the steps, only slightly falling over in the process. I caught myself. “Hi, Ben!” I ran down the steps and hugged him. He was laughing.

  “Whatcha doin’ there?”

  I was embarrassed, but somehow not in any threatening way.

  “I was trying to break into my own apartment. I locked myself out without a phone or a wallet or anything.”

  “You don’t have a spare key?”

  I shook my head. “No. I did, at one point, but then it seemed smarter somehow for me to give it to my friend Ana, so she had it in case of emergency.”

  He laughed again. It didn’t feel like he was laughing at me. Although, I think technically he was.

  “Got it. Well, what do you want to do? You can call Ana from my phone now if you want. Or we can go get lunch and then you can call her when we get back?”

  I started to answer, but he cut me off.

  “Or, I’m also happy to break into your house for you. If you haven’t given up on that idea yet.”

  “Do you think you can swing your leg over this rail onto that one?” I said. I was joking, but he wasn’t.

  “Absolutely, I can.”

  “No, stop. I was kidding. We should go get lunch.”

  Ben started taking off his jacket. “No, I insist you let me do this. It will look brave of me. I’ll be considered a hero.”

  He walked closer to the rail and judged the distance. “That’s actually quite far. You were going to try to do that?”

  I nodded. “But I have little regard for my own safety,” I said. “And a very bad sense of distance.”

  Ben nodded. “Okay. I’m going to jump this thing, but you have to make me a promise.”

  “Okay. You got it.”

  “If I fall and hurt myself, you won’t let them call my emergency contact.”

  I laughed. “Why is that?”

  “Because that’s my mother and I blew her off for lunch today so I could see you.”

  “You blew off your mom for me?”

  “See? It doesn’t make you look very good either, letting me do it. So do we have an agreement?”

  I nodded firmly. “You got it.” I put out my hand to shake. He looked me in the eye and dramatically shook it, as a smile crept back onto his face.

  “Here we go!” he said, and he just jumped it, like it was nothing, pulled his legs up and out, grabbed on to the patio rail, and swung his leg over.

  “Okay! Now what?” he asked.

  I was mortified to admit the next part of my plan. I hadn’t considered how he would fare against the doggie door.

  “Oh. Well. Hmm. I was just gonna . . . I was going to crawl in through the doggie door there,” I said.

  He looked behind him and down. Seeing it through his eyes, I realized it was even smaller than I’d thought.

  “This doggie door?”

  I nodded. “Yeah. I’m sorry! I should have mentioned that part first maybe.”

  “I cannot fit through that door, I don’t think.”

  “Well, you could try to help me get over there,” I said.

  “Right. Or I could jump back over and we could call your friend Ana.”

  “Oh! That too.” I had already forgotten that option.

  “Okay, well. I might as well try once now that I’m here. Hold on.”

  He bent down and peeked in. His head fit in fine and he kept trying to push through. His shirt got caught in the door and was pulled up around his chest. I could see his stomach and the waistband of his underwear. I realized how physically attracted I was to him, how masculine he was. His abs looked solid and sturdy. His back was tanned and defined. His arms, flexed as he lifted himself through, looked strong and . . . capable. I had never before been attracted to the idea of being protected by someone, but Ben’s body looked like it could protect me and I was surprised at the reaction it elicited in me. I wondered how I got here exactly. I barely knew this man and I was objectifying him as he broke into my apartment. He finally got both shoulders through and I could hear muffled tones of “I think, actually, I can do it!” and “Ow!” His butt disappeared and his legs slid inside. I walked around to my front door as he opened it, beaming, arms wide. I felt traditional and conventional, a damsel in distress saved by the strapping man. I thought that women who were attracted to that were stupid, but I also did, just for a moment, feel like Ben was my hero.

  “Come on in!” he said. It was such a surreal reversal of how I imagined our lunch would start that I couldn’t help but feel a bit exhilarated. I couldn’t possibly predict what would happen next.

  I stepped inside, and he looked around my apartment.

  “This is a really nice apartment,” he said. “What do you do?”

  “Those two sentences in a row mean ‘How much money do you make?’ ” I said. I wasn’t being bitchy; at least I didn’t feel like I was. I was teasing him, and he was teasing me back when he said, “Well, it’s just hard for me to imagine that a woman could afford such a nice place on her own.”

  I gave him a look of mock indignation, and he gave me one right back.

  “I’m a librarian.”

  “Got it,” he said. “So you’re doing well. This is good. I’ve been looking for a baby mama.”

  “A baby mama?”

  “Sorry. Not a baby mama. What’s it called when a woman pays for all the stuff for the man?”

  “A sugar mama?”

  He looked mildly embarrassed, and it was so charming to see. He had seemed so in control up until that moment, but seeing him even the slightest bit vulnerable was . . . intoxicating.

  “Sugar mama. That’s what I meant. What’s a baby mama?”

  “That’s when you aren’t married to the woman who is the mother of your child.”

  “Oh. No, I’m not looking for one of those.”

  “I don’t know if anyone looks for one.”

  “Right. It just works out that way for them, I guess. People do look for sugar mamas, though, so watch out.”

  “I’ll be on guard.”

  “Shall we go?” he said.

  “Sure. Let me just grab my—”

  “Keys.”

  “I was going to say wallet! But yes! Keys too. Can you imagine if I’d forgotten those again?” I grabbed them off the counter, and he took them delicately out of my hand.

  “I’m going to be in charge of the keys,” he said.

  I nodded. “If you think that’s best.”

  JUNE

  I wake up to the ugly, disgusting world over and over again, each time closing my eyes tightly when I remember who I am. I finally get up around noon, not because I feel ready to face the day but because I can no longer face the night.

  I walk into the living room. “Good morning,” Ana says as she sees me. She’s sitting on the couch and she grabs my hand. “What can I do?”

  I look her in the eye and tell her the truth. “You can’t do any
thing. Nothing you could possibly do would make this any easier.”

  “I know that,” she says. “But there must be something I can do just to . . . ” Her eyes are watering. I shake my head. I don’t know what to say. I don’t want anyone to make me feel better. I can’t even think past this very moment in time. I can’t think forward to this evening. I don’t know how I’ll make it through the next few minutes, let alone the next few hours. And yet, I don’t know anything anyone can do to make those minutes easier. No matter how Ana acts, how hard she scrubs my house clean, how gentle she is with me, no matter if I take a shower, if I run down the street naked, if I drink every ounce of alcohol in the house, Ben is still not with me. Ben will never be with me again. I suddenly feel like I might not make it through the day, and if Ana isn’t here to watch me, I don’t know what I’ll do.

  I sit beside her. “You can stay here. Stay near me. It won’t make it easier, but it will make me believe in myself more, I think. Just stay here.” I’m too emotional to cry. My face and body are so consumed with dread, there’s no room left to produce anything.

  “You got it. I’m here. I’m here and I won’t leave.” She grabs me, her arm around my shoulders, squeezing me. “Maybe you should eat,” she says.

  “No, I’m not hungry,” I say. I don’t anticipate ever being hungry again. What does hunger even feel like? Who can remember?

  “I know you’re not hungry, but you still have to eat,” she says. “If you could have anything in the whole world, what could you manage to get down? Don’t worry about health or expense. Just if you could have anything.”

  Normally, if someone asked me that, I’d say I wanted a Big Mac. I always just want a Big Mac, the largest container of fries McDonald’s has, and then a pile of Reese’s peanut butter cups. My palate has never been trained to appreciate fine foods. I never crave sushi or a nice chardonnay. I crave fries and Coca-Cola. But not now. To me right now, a Big Mac might as well be a staple gun. That is how likely I am to eat it.

  “No, nothing. I don’t think I could keep anything down.”