I am ashamed. I feel like I stayed out past curfew when I knew we had church tomorrow morning. “No.”
“What is the matter with you?” she asks me, and her voice is clearly exasperated.
“I know. I need to get it.”
“Not just for you, Elsie. For me too. I want to see it. He never told me about it. He never confided in me why he was doing it. I just . . . I want to see the fucking thing, you know? Look it in the face and know it’s real.”
“Oh,” I say.
“Not that your marriage wasn’t real. I know you well enough to know that’s true. But I just . . . you have a kid and you daydream about him getting married. Getting married was the last big thing he did and I wasn’t there. Jesus, was I so terrible that he couldn’t tell me what he was doing? That I couldn’t have been there?”
I was surprised that this was coming up now because she seemed like it was all behind her, but now I understood that it had never been behind her. It had been right there on the surface the whole time, so large and imposing that it colored everything she saw.
“He wasn’t . . . ” I say. “You weren’t terrible. It wasn’t that. It had nothing to do with that.”
“Well, what then?” she asks me. “I’m sorry that I sound upset. I’m trying not to sound . . . I just . . . I thought I knew him.”
“You did know him!” I say, and this time I am grabbing her hand. “You did know him. And he knew you and cared about you. And maybe the way he did it was misguided, but he loved you. He thought if he told you . . . he thought you couldn’t handle it. He worried that you wouldn’t feel like you two were a family anymore.”
“But he should have told me before you two got married. He should have at least called,” she says to me.
And she’s right. He should have. He knew that. But I didn’t.
MAY
We were two hours outside of Las Vegas when the cold feet set in. Ben was driving. I was in the front seat calling wedding chapels. I also called hotels to see where we could stay the night. My body was thrilled and anxious. The car could barely contain me, but I could see that Ben was starting to tense.
He pulled over into a Burger King and said he wanted a burger. I wasn’t hungry, I couldn’t possibly eat, but I got one too and let it sit in front of me.
“I’m thinking we should go to the Best Little Chapel,” I told him. “They take care of everything there. And then we can stay at either Caesars Palace, which has a pretty good deal on a suite, or interestingly enough, the Hooters hotel has really cheap rooms right now.”
Ben was looking at his burger, and when I stopped talking he put it down abruptly. I mean, he basically dropped it.
“I need to tell my mom,” he said. “I can’t do this without telling my mom.”
“Oh,” I said. Honestly, I hadn’t even thought about his mom, or my own parents. I had briefly thought about inviting Ana to come and be a witness, but I quickly decided I didn’t want that either. I just wanted Ben and me, together. And whoever the officiant was.
“Don’t you want to invite Ana or something?” he asked. I did not like the turn the conversation had taken. The turn in the conversation was about to create a turn in the trip, which had the very real consequence of a turn in this marriage.
“Well, no,” I said. “I thought we just wanted it to be the two of us.”
“I did,” he said. “Well, no, you did.” He wasn’t being combative, but I was still feeling defensive. “I just think that I was being overzealous before. I think I should tell my mom. I think if she found out afterward that she would be heartbroken.”
“Why?” I asked.
“Because she wasn’t there. That her only child got married and she wasn’t there, I don’t know.”
This was what I had been afraid of. Suddenly, I felt my whole life slipping away from me. I’d only been engaged for four hours, but in those four hours I saw a life for myself that I wanted. Just in the time we had been in the car, I’d thought so much about what our night would be like, what our tomorrow would be like, that I was already attached to it. I had replayed it so many times in my mind that I felt like I’d already lived it. I didn’t want to lose what I thought I already had. If Ben called his mother, we weren’t going to get back in the car and drive straight to Nevada. We were going to get back in the car and drive straight to Orange County.
“I don’t know if that’s . . . ” I started, but I wasn’t sure how to finish. “This is about you and me. Are you saying you don’t want to do this?”
“No!” he said. “I’m just . . . maybe we shouldn’t be doing this right now.”
“I cannot believe you.” I thought I was going to leave it at that, but the words kept coming out of my mouth. “I didn’t make you propose to me. I wasn’t the one who suggested we get married in the first place. This was all your doing! I have been telling you for months to tell your mother! So how the fuck do I end up two hours outside of Las Vegas jilted in a Burger King, huh? Explain that to me.”
“You don’t understand!” He was starting to get animated and upset.
“Why don’t I understand? What part of this don’t I understand? You asked me to marry you. I said yes. I suggested we elope. You said yes. We got in the car. We’re halfway to Nevada and you’re calling it off while you’re eating a fucking Whopper.”
Ben shook his head. “I can’t expect you to understand, Elsie.” Our voices were starting to attract attention, so Ben got up from the table and I followed him outside.
“What does that mean?” I yelled at him, pushing the door out of my way like it was the one doing this to me.
“It means you don’t have a family!” He turned to face me. “You don’t even try to get along with your parents. You don’t understand how I feel about my mom.”
“You’re kidding me, right?” I couldn’t believe he’d said that. I wished I could have time-traveled back to five seconds before so I could have stopped him from saying that and we could have continued on with our lives without him ever having said that to me.
“No! I’m not kidding. You don’t get it.”
“Oh, I get it, Ben. I get it. I get that you’re a coward who hasn’t had the balls to tell his mom he’s even dating someone and now, and now I’m getting screwed for it. That’s what I get.”
“It’s not like that,” he said, but his voice was resigned. It wasn’t passionate.
“What is it then?”
“Can we just get in the car?”
“I’m not getting in the car with you,” I said as I crossed my arms. It was colder outside than I would have liked and my jacket was lying on the front seat, but I didn’t want to go near that car, even if I had to suffer for it.
“Please? Don’t make a scene out here. I’m not saying we shouldn’t get married. I want to marry you. I just . . . want to tell my mom first. There’s no need for us to rush this.”
“You’ve had six months to tell your mom! And you always come up with a reason why not. How many times have I heard ‘Now I’m really going to tell my mom’? But you know what? She’s not a part of this relationship. This is about you and me. It’s about what you want and what I want. And what I want is to be with the kind of man that wants to marry me so bad, nothing will stop him. I want to be loved by someone who loves me so much he can’t think straight. I want you to love me in a way that makes you stupid and impractical. I want to rush into this. Rushing into it is romantic. It makes me feel alive. It makes me feel like I am jumping off a cliff and I know I’ll be fine because that is how much I trust you. And I deserve you jumping off a cliff for me because I am prepared to do it for you. You think I don’t know anything about family because I don’t get along with my parents? Ana is my family. I love her more than I could possibly love another person, other than you. And I thought about her and I thought, No, I don’t need her here for this. I just need Ben. So fuck you, I don’t know family. That’s not what’s happening here at all. What’s happening here is that I am ready
to risk everything for you. And you are not ready to do it for me.”
Ben was quiet for a long time. He had started to cry. I thought that it was a manly cry and couldn’t help wanting to hold him despite my furor.
“How do things get fucked up so quickly?” he said. His voice was quiet. It wasn’t a whisper. It was just sad. It lacked the confidence I was used to hearing in him.
“What?” I said. My tone was curt and pissed.
“I just don’t understand how things can go from great to shitty so quickly. I don’t know how I got us here. I love you so much, and I should have told my mom earlier, and I didn’t and . . . All of those things you just talked about, I want those. I want that with you. I want to give that to you. I love you the way you want to be loved. I’m telling you that. I am the man to do that for you. I just don’t know how I derailed so quickly from showing you that.”
He turned to me, his eyes drying up but still pleading. “I want to marry you,” he said.
“No, Ben,” I said and I started to turn away from him, but he grabbed my arm. He grabbed it hard. “I don’t want you to—”
“You are right,” he said. “You are right. I want that. I want you. I want what you said. I want to risk everything for you. I want to be stupid with you and reckless with you. I will figure out a way to tell my mom. We’ll tell her together and she’ll love you. And . . . I want you.”
“No, it’s not . . . it shouldn’t be . . . ” I said, trying to find the words that meant “I don’t want to do this now because it’s all ruined.” I settled on “You don’t have to do this. I’ll calm down and we can wait until we tell your mom.” The minute I said it, I believed it. It softened me to see that I needed to be there for him as much as I needed him to be there for me.
Ben listened to me, but he was unmoved. “No! I was wrong! I got scared. But I want you. Please.” He got down on one knee. “Marry me.”
I was silent and unsure. Was this good for him? Was it what he wanted? He seemed so genuine now. His eyes were pleading with me to listen to him, to marry him. But I didn’t want to have forced his hand. I didn’t want this to be something he did because I made him do it. And yet, Ben looked so in love with me, truthfully. He looked like all he wanted in the world was me. It looked so real. It was real. Ben yelled from the base of his throat. “Marry me, Elsie Porter! Marry me!”
I pulled him up from the pavement and held him. “I don’t want you to do anything that—” I stopped myself and asked what I felt. “Are you sure?”
“I’m sure. I’m so sorry. I’m sure.”
A smile crept onto my face faster than I could stop it. “Okay!” I exclaimed.
“Really?” he asked as he spun me around. I nodded. “Oh my God,” he said. He buried his head in my shoulder. “I love you so much. I love you so much.”
“I love you too. I’m sorry,” I said. “I shouldn’t have said those things. I just . . . I didn’t realize how much I wanted to marry you until . . . It doesn’t matter,” I said. “I’m sorry. We can take all the time you need.”
“No,” he said. “I don’t need any time at all. Get in the car. We’re going to Vegas.”
He opened my car door and then got into his side. Before he started the engine, he grabbed my face and kissed me, hard.
“Okay,” he said, breathing in deeply. “Nevada, here we come.”
NOVEMBER
It was my fault,” I say to her. “He wanted to tell you before we got married. He was ready to call it off, actually, until he had time to tell you. But I convinced him not to.”
“Oh,” Susan says. She is quiet and thoughtful. “When was this?”
“We were on our way to Las Vegas. He wanted to turn around and drive home. He wanted to wait until you knew. Give you the chance to be there.”
“Oh,” she says. “I didn’t realize you were married in Las Vegas.” The tone in her voice isn’t judgmental necessarily, but it certainly brings out any insecurity I might have over having been married in the tackiest place on earth.
“But I didn’t want to. He said I didn’t understand family, and at the time I told him that was a terrible thing to say to me, but I think he might have had a point.”
“Hmm,” she says.
“Anyway, I’m sorry. He wanted to tell you. He didn’t feel comfortable doing something so big without you. He loved you. He cared about you a lot and I didn’t understand. I was being selfish and I just . . . I really, really wanted to marry him. I think on some level Ben made me feel like I wasn’t alone anymore and I thought . . . ” I start to cry. “I think I was afraid that you’d tell him how ridiculous we were being and he would listen to you. I knew that if he talked to you, he would listen to you. I was afraid I’d lose him.”
“But why would you break up because of that? You wouldn’t. At the very most, he’d just decide to wait longer to get married.”
“You’re right.” I shake my head, disappointed in myself. “You’re absolutely right. But it didn’t feel that way at the time. It felt so scary. We were standing at a rest stop and it was the difference between turning right out of the lot and turning left. It felt so real. It felt so . . . I wanted to belong to something, belong to someone, you know?”
“Mmm,” she says. I don’t even know what I’m about to say next until it comes out of my mouth.
“I think I wanted to meet you after we were married, because I thought . . . ” Ugggggh, the lump in my throat is so huge, the tears waiting to drop are so heavy. “My own parents don’t seem to think very much of me, and I thought, if you met me before . . . I thought you wouldn’t like me. You’d want someone better for your son. I was afraid to give you that chance.”
“Wow,” she says. “Okay.” She pats my hand and gets up from the table. “I just need a little while to gather my thoughts. There is a lot of stuff going through my mind right now and I know that not all of it is rational.”
“Okay,” I say. “I just wanted you to—”
“Stop talking,” she snaps at me. She breathes in deeply and breathes out sharply. “God dammit, Elsie.”
I stare at her, she stares back, trying to bite her tongue.
“You don’t make it easy,” she says. “I try so hard! I try so hard.”
“I know you do, I just—”
She shakes her head. “It’s not your fault. It’s not your fault.” She isn’t speaking to me, I don’t think. “It just . . . ah. You couldn’t have waited? You couldn’t have given me a chance? You didn’t even give me a chance.”
“I know, Susan, I just . . . I was scared!”
“With everything that I’ve gone through? You couldn’t have just said all of this from the beginning?”
“I didn’t know how to say it . . . ” I tell her. If I’m being honest with myself, I have to admit I’m not sure I knew it was relevant until I put the pieces together, until I really thought about it.
“I have been thinking for months that my son never even wanted me at his wedding, and now you’re telling me he did and you stopped him.”
I am quiet. What can I say?
“Elsie!” she yells. She is shrill and teary. I don’t want the old Susan back. I want her to stay new Susan.
“I’m sorry!” I say. My eyes start to blur, my lips quivering. “I just . . . Susan, I want you and me to be okay. Are we okay?”
“I’m going to go. I’m going to leave this room. I . . . ” She turns and puts her head in her hands and then she breathes in.
She leaves the room, and it suddenly feels so big and hollow.
It is the next morning before Susan feels composed enough to talk to me. I can only imagine what thoughts ran through her mind all night. I have a feeling she spent a great deal of the previous evening hating me and calling me names in her head.
“Thank you for telling me that last night,” she says, as she sits down next to me in the living room. I had been fast-forwarding through the contents of her TiVo and eating one of her Danishes from the kitchen. I’ll
tell you, it feels weird to be a guest in someone’s house when they are rip-shit pissed at you.
I nod to her.
“I can’t imagine that was easy to tell me, but truthfully, it is good news to me. It makes me feel better to know that Ben had the inclination to tell me. Even if he didn’t actually do it.”
I nod again. It’s her time to talk. I’m just keeping quiet.
“Anyway, it’s in the past. I didn’t know you then, you didn’t know me then. It does neither of us any good to hold grudges. Ben made his own decisions, regardless of how we may have tried to influence them. He is responsible for what he did. You are not. I am not. He loved you enough to marry you the way he did. What mother doesn’t want that for her son? You know, you have a boy and you raise him right and you hope that you’ve raised the kind of son that knows how to love and does it well. Especially as a mother, you hope that your son is sensitive and passionate; you hope that he knows how to treat women well. I did my job. He was all of those things. And he loved. He spent his short time on this earth loving. He loved you.”
“Thank you,” I say. “I’m still sorry I didn’t tell you that earlier.”
“Put it out of your head.” She waves her hand at me. “The other thing that I want to tell you is . . . I would have liked you,” she says. “I don’t pretend to understand your relationship with your parents. That is between you and them. But I would have liked you. I would have wanted you to marry my son.”
Hearing her say that, I get the feeling that I have done all of these things out of order. I should have met her, then married him; if I did, maybe this wouldn’t have happened. Maybe Ben would be here next to me, eating peanuts and throwing the shells in an ashtray.
“Thank you,” I say to her.
“I’ve thought a lot about you and I recently. I think I haven’t truly begun to cope with Ben’s death. I think that I am still mourning for my husband, and the loss of my son is . . . it’s too huge to bear. It’s too large to even begin to deal with. I think having you as a part of my life, helping you to deal with this, I think it’s helping me to avoid dealing with it. I think I thought that if I could help you to get to a place where you could live again, that I would be able to live again. But I don’t think that’s the case.
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