I did only know Ben for six months. I didn’t even celebrate a birthday with him. I only spent January to June with him. How well can you really love someone if you haven’t seen him through an August or an autumn? This is what I was afraid of. I was afraid that because I hadn’t known Ben long, I hadn’t known him well. I think I needed someone to say it to me before I could really think about it. And after thinking about it, over the course of the week I avoid Ana, I decide that that theory is wrong. It doesn’t matter how long I knew him. I loved him. I still love him.
Then I think that maybe it is time to start putting his things away, because if I did love him, if our love was real, and it did matter, then what is the harm in putting some of his things in boxes? Right? I’ll be okay, right?
I don’t call Ana to help me. I’m not sure I could look her in the eye. Instead, I call Susan. When she answers the phone, she immediately asks about the marriage certificate, and I have to admit that I have not called the county yet. I tell her that I didn’t have enough time, but that is a lie. I did have the time. I just know that if they tell me they do not have a record of our marriage, I will not be able to move his things into storage. I know it will make me hold on tighter to his old clothes and toothbrush. I need to believe the government knows we were married. Otherwise, I’ll have to prove it to myself in arbitrary and pathetic ways. I am trying to move forward. I am trying to make arbitrary and pathetic things of the past.
MAY
Ben was sweaty. It was a hot spring day. I had all of the windows open in the apartment; the door had been open for the past few hours as we hauled things up the front stairs. There was no point in turning on the air conditioner. All the cold air would have just flown right out the front door. I threw Ben a bottle of water as he headed down the stairs for another round of boxes.
“Thanks,” he said to me as he hit the sidewalk.
“Almost done!” I said.
“Yeah, but then I have to unpack everything!”
“Well, sure, but we can do that slowly, you know? Over the course of a few days if you want.”
Ben made his way to the moving truck and started pushing boxes toward the back edge. I played with a few of them to see which one was lightest, and then I took that one. I knew that the proper way to face a challenge was head-on, and in that spirit, I should have taken the heavy ones first, but my arms had started to quiver and my legs were feeling unreliable. It had been a full day of unpacking and unloading, after a full night of packing and loading. I was starting to phone it in, and I was all right with that.
With the lightest box, a box that was still rather heavy, in my hands, I made my way up the stairs. As I got to the door, Ben called to me. “What did you do?” he asked. “Take the lightest box you could find?”
“It’s not all that light, you know! You should pack better next time!”
“I’m hoping there won’t be a next time,” he yelled up at me. I was inside, setting the lightest heavy box down on the floor. I was trying to bend from the knees or whatever, but I finally just plopped it down on top of the others using what muscles I had left in my back.
“I just mean if we move someplace together.” I was waiting at the door, holding the screen open for him. He walked up the stairs, straight past me, and put down his box. We started to walk out together. We were both out of breath, albeit me more so than him.
“This hasn’t taught you anything about the perils of moving?” he asked, as he rushed ahead.
“No, you’re right,” I said. “We should stay here forever. I don’t ever want to move another thing.”
The sun started to set as we brought in the last of it. This was the beginning of something. We could both feel it. It was us against the world.
“Do you think you’ll be able to handle my dirty dishes?” he asked with his arm around me, kissing my head.
“I think so,” I replied. “Do you think you can handle the fact that I always want it to be ninety degrees in the house?”
“No,” he said. “But I will learn.”
I kissed his neck because it was as far as I could reach. My calves didn’t have the power to get me any higher. Ben moaned. It made me feel powerful to elicit that type of reaction without even meaning to. It made me feel like one of those women that oozes sex appeal in even the simplest of tasks. I felt like the Cleopatra of my apartment.
I rubbed my nose further into his neck. “Stop it,” he said falsely, as if I was doing something tawdry. “I have to return the truck by seven.”
“I wasn’t trying anything!” I said.
“Yes, you were! I’m too tired!”
“I wasn’t trying anything, really. I’m tired too.”
“Okay! Fine!” he said, grabbing me and pulling me toward my bedroom. Our bedroom. It was now filled with his stuff on the floor and resting against the walls.
“No, really. I’m so tired.”
And just like that the tides shifted. “Fine! I’ll do all the work,” he said. He laid me on the bed and lowered himself on top of me. “I love you,” he said, kissing my cheeks and my neck. “I love you so much. I feel like the luckiest guy in the world.”
“I love you too,” I said back to him, but I don’t know if he heard me. He had started to focus on other things.
Thirty minutes later, I was naked and leaning over him, resting his head on a pillow and asking if he wanted me to take him to the hospital.
“No! No,” he said. “I think I just threw out my back.”
“Isn’t that what old men do?” I teased him.
“Look at how much crap I lifted today!” He winced in pain. “Can you get me my underwear?”
I got up and gave it to him. Then I put on my own. I wrapped my bra around me and threw on a T-shirt.
“What should we do?” I asked. “Do you want medicine? Should you see a doctor?” He was still trying to get his underwear on himself. He could barely move. Not wanting to see him struggle, I grabbed the waistband of his underwear. I shimmied the back up under his butt as subtly as I could. Then I pulled the front up to his waist. I pulled the blanket from the foot of the bed and I laid it on top of him.
“Do we have any ibuprofen?” he asked me.
There it was. “We.” The best kind of “we.” Do “we” have ibuprofen?
“I don’t myself, I don’t think,” I said. “Any in the boxes?”
“Yeah, in a box marked ‘Bathroom.’ I think I saw it in the living room on the floor.”
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll be right back.” I kissed his forehead and went into the living room.
I scanned the boxes across the room and finally saw one labeled “Bathroom.” It was under plenty of other heavy boxes. I was sure it was one of the first ones we’d unloaded. I moved box after box until I got to it, and then I opened it to find another labyrinth inside. After way too long, I found some ibuprofen and brought it to him with a glass of water.
He lifted his head slightly, eyes scrunched from the pain. He thanked me.
“You’re welcome,” I said.
“Elsie?” he moaned.
“Yeah?”
“You’re gonna have to return the moving truck.”
“Totally fine,” I said, even though having to drive that huge truck through Los Angeles traffic was not my idea of a good time.
“You actually, uh . . . ” he started. “You have to leave now. It’s due back in twenty minutes. I’m sorry! I didn’t think about how long it would take you to find the ibuprofen.”
I jumped up and threw on a pair of pants.
“Where are the keys?” I asked.
“On the front seat.”
“Where am I going?”
“Lankershim and Riverside.”
“It’s in the valley?”
“That was the cheapest one I could find! I picked it up on my way home from work.”
“Okay, okay. I’m out of here.” I kissed his cheek. “Are you going to be okay here alone?”
“I’ll be f
ine. Can you bring me my cell phone just in case?”
I put his phone by the bed and started to take off. “Hey,” he called. “Will you pick up dinner too?”
“Of course I will,” I called out. “You pain in the ass.”
SEPTEMBER
Susan shows up at my door bright and early on Saturday morning. She has in her hands a bag of bagels and cream cheese, and a carton of orange juice. Under her arm is a package of flattened boxes.
“I thought we could use refreshments,” she says as she steps in.
“Awesome,” I say and put them in the kitchen. “Do you want one now?” I call out to her.
“Sure.” She appears in my kitchen. Her voice is next to me and quiet, instead of far away and shouting like I expected.
I put two bagels into the toaster oven, and Susan and I step into the living room. She scans the space. I can tell she is assessing what is Ben’s. My guess is she is doing this both because these objects indicate the job in store for us and because they belong to her dead son.
The toaster dings. I pull the bagels out, and when I do, they burn the pads of my fingers. I put the bagels on plates and shake my hands wildly, hoping to mitigate the pain. I’ve never been sure what the logic is in this gesture, but it’s an instinct, so maybe it works. Susan looks at me and asks if I’m all right, and for a moment I think that this is my shot to get out of this. I can say they really hurt. I can say I’m in no position to be using my hands. They do still hurt. Maybe I should see a doctor. But then I realize when I get home from the doctor, Ben’s stuff will still be right here in front of me.
“Nothing I can’t handle,” I say. We pour large glasses of orange juice and sit down at the table. Susan asks where we are going to begin, and I say, “The living room. I need to work my way up to the bedroom.” She tries to make small talk as we eat, asking about my job and my friends, but all either of us can think about is the task ahead. It’s almost a relief when our bagels are gone. Now, we have to start.
Susan plops herself down in the living room and starts folding boxes. I still have all of the boxes from when he moved in. It wasn’t even five months ago. I grab what I have and meet her in there. I take a deep breath, put a box in front of me, and unplug his PlayStation, putting it in the box.
“Annnd done!” I joke, but Susan insists on taking it as a cry for help. She stops folding and speaks to me in a gentle voice.
“Take your time. We are on no one’s timetable but yours, you know.” I know, I know. She keeps telling me.
“Have you thought about whether you’re going to keep all this stuff or try to sell some of it? Give any of it away?”
It hadn’t occurred to me to do anything other than store it, honestly. I just figured I’d put it in boxes and shove it in the closet. The thought of giving the things away, of not owning them anymore, it’s too much for me.
“Oh,” I say. Maybe I should aim toward that. I should hope that one day I can give it away or sell it. One day I will. “Maybe we should divide things into categories as we pack,” I say. “Some boxes for keeping, some for giving away, and maybe another for trash. Not trash, I mean. Just like . . . things that are of no use to anyone. It’s not trash. If it was Ben’s it’s not trash.”
“Hey,” Susan says. “Don’t be so hard on yourself. Ben can’t hear you call his stuff trash, and even if he could, it wouldn’t matter.”
I don’t know why it is so jarring to hear, because I don’t believe that Ben can hear me. I just thought Susan believed Ben is here; Ben is with us.
“You don’t believe that Ben is . . . ”
“All around us?” she says in a half-mocking way. She shakes her head. “No, I don’t. I wish I did. It would make things a lot easier for me. But no, either he’s gone-gone, his soul having disappeared into the ether, or if he’s been transported somewhere else, if his heart and mind are reincarnated or just somewhere else, I don’t think he’d still be here on earth as himself. I don’t see . . . it just seems like something people tell victims’ families, you know? ‘Hey, it’s okay. Ben is always with you.’ ”
“You don’t think Ben is with you?”
“He’s with me because I love him and I loved him and he lives in my memories. His memory is with me. But no, I don’t see how Ben is here. After Steven died, I thought maybe he was lying in bed next to me at night, watching me. Or maybe he was some omnipotent force looking over Ben and I, but it did no good. Because I just didn’t believe it. You know? Do you believe it? Or maybe what I should say is Can you believe it? I wish I could.”
I shake my head. “No, I don’t think he can hear me. I don’t think he’s watching me. It’s a nice idea. When my brain wanders, I sometimes think about what if he’s hearing everything I’m saying, what if he’s seeing everything I’m doing. But, it doesn’t really make me feel any better. Whenever I start to think about where he is now, I ultimately just focus on what his last moments were. Did he know they were his last moments? What if he’d never left the house? What if I’d never asked him to . . . ”
“To what?”
“He was doing me a favor when he died,” I tell her. “He was buying me Fruity Pebbles.” It feels like I’ve finally put down a barbell. Susan is quiet.
“Was that a confession?” she says.
“Hmm?”
“That doesn’t matter. You know that, right?”
No, I don’t know that. But I’m not sure how to say that, so I don’t say anything.
“You will do yourself a world of good the minute you realize that does not matter. You can play the scenario out a million times, whether he goes to get the cereal or he doesn’t,” she says. “I’m telling you, he’d still end up dying. It’s just the way the world works.”
I look at her, trying to figure out if she truly believes that. She can see my skepticism.
“I don’t know if that’s true,” she says. “But that is one thing we have to believe. Do you hear me? Learn how to believe that one.” She doesn’t let me speak. “Get the box,” she says. “We’re gonna start in the bathroom.”
We pack away his toothbrush and his hair gel. We pack his deodorant and his shampoo. It’s a small box of things that were only his. We shared so many of the things in here. Susan smells the shampoo and deodorant and then throws them in with the other things.
“When you are ready, this is a throwaway box, right?” Susan asks. “I mean, this is trash.”
I laugh. “Yeah, that will be trash.”
We move on to the kitchen and desk area, where most of Ben’s stuff is also trash. We fill boxes and boxes of crap. I wonder if some of these things are being put right back into the boxes they came here in. We make our way back into the living room, and Susan starts packing his books. She sees a collector’s set on one of the shelves.
“May I have this?” she says. “It took me months to convince him to read these books,” she said. “He wouldn’t believe me that young adult books can be great.”
I want them, but I want her to have them more. “Sure,” I say. “You should take anything you want. He’d want you to have his things,” I say. “He loved those books, by the way. He recommended them to anyone that would listen to him.”
She smiles and puts them by the door as she finishes packing the rest of his young adult collection into boxes. “Is this a sell or a keep box, by the way?”
“I’m not sure yet,” I answer. She nods. She continues putting books into boxes until she is too exasperated. “Jesus Christ, how many young adult books can one person read?” she says.
I laugh. “He read them a lot. I mean, like one a week sometimes. And he refused to get them from the library. Which was annoying because I work at the library, but he insisted upon going to the bookstore and buying them. I’d bring them home and he’d just let them sit and collect dust until I returned them.”
She laughs. “That’s my fault,” she says. “When he was a kid, my one luxury was buying books. I never wanted to go to the library.”
She laughs again, embarrassed. “You’re gonna be mad.”
“I am?”
“I hate the way they smell, library books.”
“You are killing me, Susan. Killing me.” I grab my chest and feign a heart attack. The way library books smell is the best smell in the world, other than the smell of the pillow I have trapped in a plastic bag.
“I know! I know! When Ben was a kid, he’d want to go to the library because they had board games and those chairs with the . . . what are they called? The chairs where they are like this big, soft ball . . . Oh, damn it, what is the word?”
“Beanbag chairs?”
“Yes! He used to love sitting in beanbag chairs, and I would make him go to the bookstore with me instead so I could buy books that didn’t smell musty. Totally my fault. I’m sorry.”
“You are forgiven,” I say, although I’m still hung up on the fact that she doesn’t like the smell of library books.
MAY
I got home and Ben was still in bed. He’d been staring at the ceiling for the past hour and a half. It took me forever to get to the rental place in that huge truck, and then I picked up his car that he left there and headed home, only to remember he wanted dinner. I picked up McDonald’s and made my way home.
“You okay?” I called out to him as I got into the apartment.
“Yeah, but I still can’t move that well,” he said.
“Well, you’ll be happy to know I almost crashed about four times in the damn truck going up Laurel Canyon. Why do they let normal people drive those things?”
“I wouldn’t exactly say you’re normal,” he said. “But I understand your point.”
I put the bag of McDonald’s on the bed and helped him to get to a sitting position.
“I really think I should call the doctor,” I said.
“I will be fine,” he told me and started to eat. I followed suit, and when I was done, my fingers covered in salt, my mouth coated in grease, I took a big sip of my large soda. I lay back, finally resting after the long day. Ben turned on the television and said he wanted to watch something. Then it all got fuzzy and I fell asleep.
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