Forever, Interrupted

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  I laughed. “Jiving?”

  “I couldn’t think of a better word.”

  I was still laughing as he looked me, slightly embarrassed. “I can think of about ten,” I said and then immediately got back to the subject. “Okay. No moving forward. No freaking out about moving too fast. Just this. That sounds great. No supernova.”

  Ben smiled and we shook on it. “No supernova.”

  It was quiet for a moment, and I broke the silence.

  “We are wasting our five weeks by being quiet. I need to know more about you.”

  Ben took another piece of bread off of the table and spread butter on it. I was glad the intensity of the moment had worn off—that things were now casual enough for him to be spreading butter. He took a bite.

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Favorite color?”

  “That’s what you’re burning to ask me?”

  “No.”

  “So ask what you really wanna know.”

  “Anything?”

  He splayed his hands out to show himself. “Anything.”

  “How many women have you slept with?”

  He smiled out of the side of his mouth as if I’d pinned him down. “Sixteen,” he said, matter-of-factly. He wasn’t bragging or apologizing. It was higher than I was expecting, and for a second, I was jealous. Jealous that there were women out there that knew him in a way I didn’t yet. Women who were closer to him, in some ways, than I was.

  “You? Men?” he asked.

  “Five.”

  He nodded. “Next question.”

  “Do you think you’ve ever been in love?”

  He took another bite. “I believe I have before, yes. It wasn’t a great experience for me, truthfully. It wasn’t . . . It wasn’t fun,” he said as if he was just realizing what the problem truly was after all this time.

  “Fair enough.”

  “You?” he asked.

  “I see how this is going. I can’t ask any questions I don’t want to answer myself.”

  “Isn’t that at least fair?”

  “That’s fair. I have been in love once before, for most of college. His name was Bryson.”

  “Bryson?”

  “Yes, but don’t blame him for his name. He’s a nice guy.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “Chicago.”

  “Okay, good. Nice and far.”

  I laughed, and the waiter brought our meals. He placed them down in front of us, telling us not to touch them because the plates were hot. But I touched mine; it wasn’t that hot. Ben looked at mine and then looked at his. “Can I eat some of yours if I give you some of mine?” he asked.

  I angled my plate toward him. “Absolutely.”

  “There is one thing we need to sort out,” Ben said as he reached over to eat some of my fusilli.

  “Oh? What is that?”

  “Well, if we aren’t going to assess our relationship from this moment out until five weeks from now, we should probably sort out ahead of time when we are going to sleep together.”

  He caught me off guard because I had been hoping to sleep with him that night and then pretend that was never my intention. I was going to blame it on the heat of the moment. “What do you suggest?” I asked.

  Ben shrugged. “Well, I guess our only real options are tonight or at the end of the five weeks, right? Otherwise, we’d be amping things up in the middle . . . ” He was grinning as he said this. He knew exactly what he was doing. He knew I knew what he was doing.

  “Oh. Okay. Well, in the interest of keeping things simple,” I said, “why don’t we just say tonight?”

  Ben smiled out of the side of his mouth and pumped his fist. “Yeah!”

  I felt good to be so desirable that a man would fist-pump the thought of getting to sleep with me. Especially because I would have fist-pumped the idea myself if I’d thought of it.

  The rest of dinner felt a bit rushed. Or maybe it was just that I couldn’t focus on eating now that it was in the air; it had been decided. He kissed me against his car before we got in. He had his hand on my upper thigh as we sped home. The closer we got to my house, the further it got. I could feel every inch of his hand on every inch of my thigh. It burned underneath his fingers.

  We barely made it to the door before we were half-naked. He started kissing me in the driveway, and if I hadn’t been a lady and stopped it, it might have happened right there in his car.

  We ran up the stairs, and when I got my key into the door he was right behind me, his hand on my ass, squeezing it, whispering in my ear to hurry up. His breath was hot on my neck. The door flew open and I ran to my bedroom, holding his hand behind me.

  I fell onto the bed and kicked off my shoes. I liked hearing the double clunk they made as they hit the floor. He threw his body down on top of me, his legs between mine, and he pushed my body up and further onto the bed as we kissed with my hands around his head. He kicked his shoes off. I slid under the covers with my dress still on, and he slid in next to me. Any restraint we’d shown the night before was gone, replaced with reckless abandon. I couldn’t think straight. I wasn’t in my own head enough to worry if I felt fat or where to move my arms. The lights were on. I never left the lights on. But I didn’t even notice. I just did. I just moved. I operated on instinct. I wanted all of him, more of him, I couldn’t get enough of him. His body made me feel so alive.

  JUNE

  I take a chance that Susan is still at her hotel. Ana brings me there and I call Susan from the lobby. I don’t want to give her an opportunity to turn me away, which turns out to be a smart strategy because her tone makes it clear that she would have avoided me if she could have. Ana heads over to the bar as I take the elevator to Room 913.

  As I approach her door, my palms start to sweat. I’m not sure how to convince Susan of this, how I plan on defending Ben’s wishes to his own mother. It occurs to me that I just want her to like me. Take away everything that has happened, this is the woman that raised my husband. She created him out of nothing, and for that, a part of me loves her. But I can’t take away everything that has happened; every moment of every day reeks of what has happened. What has happened is happening now.

  I knock lightly on her door, and she opens it immediately.

  “Hello, Elsie,” she says. She is wearing fitted dark jeans with a thick belt, a gray shirt under a brown cardigan. She looks younger than her sixty years, in shape, healthy, but nonetheless, in grave distress. She has been crying, that much is clear. Her hair doesn’t look brushed or blow-dried as usual. She’s not wearing makeup. She looks raw.

  “Hi, Susan,” I say as I walk in.

  “What can I do for you?” Her hotel room is more like a hotel apartment. She has a large balcony and a sitting room filled with cream-colored everything. The carpet looks soft under my shoes, too delicate to walk on, and yet, I’m not at home enough in her company to suggest I take them off. I get the impression she’d like me to walk on eggshells around her, apologize for my very existence, and the carpet practically forces me to do just that.

  “I . . . ” I start. I’m not sure if it’s appropriate to try for small talk in a situation like this or if it’s better to just go right into it. How can you go right into it when the “it” is the remains of your husband? The remains of her son?

  “I met with Mr. Pavlik this morning,” I say. It seems close enough to the point without directly hitting the mark.

  “Good,” she says, leaning back against her couch. She is not sitting down. She is not inviting me to take a seat. She does not want me to be here long, and yet, I don’t know how to make this a short conversation. I decide to just come out with it.

  “Ben wanted to be buried. I thought that we discussed this,” I say.

  She shifts her body slightly, casually, as if this conversation is not a big deal to her, as if it doesn’t terrify her the way it terrifies me. That’s how I know she has no intention of hearing me out. She’s not worried she’s not going to
get her way.

  “Get to the point, Elsie,” she says. She runs her hands through her long brown hair. It has streaks of gray near the top, barely noticeable unless you’re staring at her like I am.

  “Mr. Pavlik says that Ben’s body is still to be cremated.”

  “It is.” She nods, not offering any other explanation. Her candid voice, free from emotion, turmoil, and pain, is starting to piss me off. Her composure feels like spit in my face.

  “It’s not what he wanted, Susan. I’m telling you, that’s not what he wanted. Doesn’t that matter to you at all?” I say. I am trying to be respectful to the mother of the man that I love. “Don’t you care what Ben would have wanted?”

  Susan crosses her arms in front of her and shifts her weight. “Elsie, don’t tell me about my own son, okay? I raised him. I know what he wanted.”

  “You don’t, actually. You don’t know! I had this conversation with him two months ago.”

  “And I’ve had conversations with him about this his entire life. I am his mother. I didn’t just happen to meet him a few months before he died. Who the hell do you think you are to tell me about my own son?”

  “I am his wife, Susan. I don’t know how else to say it.”

  It doesn’t sit well.

  “I’ve never heard of you!” she says, as she throws her hands in the air. “Where is the marriage certificate? I don’t know you, and here you are, trying to tell me what to do with my only child’s remains? Give me a break, seriously. You are a small footnote in my son’s life. I am his mother!”

  “I get that you’re his mother—”

  She inches forward ever so slightly as she interrupts me, her finger pointed now toward my face. Her composure drains out of her body, the poise flees from her face. “Listen to me. I don’t know you and I don’t trust you. But my son’s body will be cremated, Elsie. Just like his father’s and like his grandparents’. And the next time you get the idea to try to tell me what to do about my own son, you might want to think twice.”

  “You gave this to me to do, Susan! You couldn’t deal with it yourself and you pushed it onto me! First you try to stop me from even getting his wallet and keys, keys that are to my own home, by the way, and then you suddenly turn and push all of this off on me. And then, when I try to do it, you try to control it from behind the scenes. You haven’t even left Los Angeles. You don’t need to stay in this hotel, Susan. You can drive back to Orange County and be there by dinner. Why are you even still here?” I don’t give her a chance to answer. “You want to torture yourself because Ben didn’t tell you he got married? Then do it! I don’t care! But don’t keep going back and forth like this. I can’t take it.”

  “I really don’t care what you can take, Elsie,” Susan says. “Believe it or not, I don’t much care.”

  I try to remind myself that this is a woman in pain. This is a woman that has lost the last family member she had.

  “Susan, you can try to deny it all you want. You can think I’m a crazy lunatic who is lying to you. You can cling to the idea that your son would never do anything without you, but that doesn’t stop the fact that I did marry him and he did not want to be cremated. Don’t have his body burned because you hate me.”

  “I don’t hate you, Elsie. I simply—”

  Now it’s my turn to cut her off. “Yes, you do, Susan. You hate me because I’m the only one left to hate. If you thought you were doing a good job of hiding that, you’re wrong.”

  She stares at me and I stare right back at her. I don’t know what has given me the courage to be honest. I’m not a person inclined to stare anyone else down. Nevertheless, I hold her gaze, my lips pursed and tight, my brows weighted down on my face. Maybe she thinks I’m going to turn and walk away. I don’t know. It takes so long for her to speak that the break in the silence is almost startling.

  “Even if everything is as you say it is,” she says. “Even if you two were married, and the marriage certificate is on its way, and you were the love of his life—”

  “I was,” I interrupt her.

  She barely listens. “Even so, how long were you married to him, Elsie? Two weeks?” I work hard to breathe in and then breathe out. I can feel the lump in my throat rising. I can feel the blood in my brain beating. She continues. “I hardly think two weeks proves anything,” she says.

  I think about turning around and just leaving her there. That’s what she wants. But I don’t do it. “You wanna know something else about your son? He would be livid, to see what you’re doing. Heartbroken and positively livid.”

  I leave her hotel room without saying good-bye. As I walk out the door, I look behind me to see a dirt stain the size of my shoe on her pristine white carpet.

  Two hours later, Mr. Pavlik calls to tell me Susan has taken over burial plans.

  “Burial plans?” I ask, not sure if he is mistaken.

  There is a pause, and then he confirms. “Burial plans.”

  I wish it felt like a victory but it doesn’t. “So what do I need to do?” I ask.

  He clears his throat and his voice becomes tight. “Uh,” he says. “I don’t believe anything else is required of you, Elsie. I have Mrs. Ross here and she has decided to take care of the rest.”

  I don’t know how I feel about this. Except tired. I feel tired.

  “Okay,” I say to him. “Thank you.” I hang up the phone and set it down on the dining room table.

  “Susan kicked me out of the funeral planning,” I tell Ana. “But she’s having him buried. Not cremated.”

  Ana looks at me, unsure of how to react. “Is that good or bad?”

  “Good?” I say. “It’s good.” It is good. His body is safe. I did my job. Why am I so sad? I didn’t want to pick out a casket. I didn’t want to choose flowers. And yet, I have lost something. I have lost a part of him.

  I call Mr. Pavlik right back.

  “It’s Elsie,” I say when he answers. “I want to speak.”

  “Hmm?”

  “I want to speak at his funeral.”

  “Oh, certainly. I’ll speak to Mrs. Ross about it.”

  “No,” I say sternly. “I am speaking at the funeral.”

  I can hear him whispering and then I hear hold music. When he comes back on he says, “Okay, Elsie. You’re welcome to speak if you’d like to.” He adds, “It will be Saturday morning in Orange County. I’ll send you further details shortly,” and then he wishes me well.

  I get off the phone, and as much as I want to congratulate myself for standing up to her, I know that, if Susan had said no, I wouldn’t have been able to do much about it. I’m not exactly sure how I gave her all the power, but I gave it to her. For the first time, it doesn’t feel like Ben was just alive and well a second ago. It feels like he’s been gone forever.

  Ana heads back to her place to walk her dog. I should offer for her to bring the dog here, but I get the impression Ana needs a few hours every day to get away from me, to get away from this. It’s the same thing. I am this. When she gets back, I’m in the same place I was when she left. She asks if I’ve eaten. She doesn’t like the look on my face.

  “This is absurd, Elsie. You have to eat something. I’m not messing around anymore.” She opens the refrigerator. “You can have pancakes. Eggs? It looks like you have some bacon.” She opens the pack of bacon and smells it. It’s clearly putrid judging from the look on her face. “Never mind, no bacon. Unless . . . I can go get some bacon! Would you eat bacon?”

  “No,” I say. “No, please do not leave me to get bacon.”

  The doorbell rings, and it’s so loud and jarring that I almost jump out of my skin. I turn and stare at the door. Ana finally goes to answer it herself.

  It’s a goddamn flower deliveryman.

  “Elsie Porter?” he says through my screen door.

  “You can tell him there’s no one here by that name,” I say to Ana. She ignores me and opens the screen to let him in.

  “Thank you,” she says to him. He gives her
a large white bouquet and leaves. She shuts the door and places it on the table.

  “These are gorgeous,” she says. “Do you want to know who they’re from?” She grabs the card before I answer.

  “Are they for the wedding or the funeral?” I ask.

  Ana is quiet as she looks at the card. “The funeral.” She swallows hard. It wasn’t nice of me to make her say that.

  “They are from Lauren and Simon,” Ana says. “Do you want to thank them or should I?”

  Ben and I used to double-date with Lauren and Simon. How am I supposed to face them myself? “Will you do it?” I ask her.

  “I’ll do it if you’ll eat something. How about pancakes?”

  “Will you just run point on everyone?” I ask. “Will you tell everyone the news? I don’t want to tell them myself.”

  “If you make me a list,” she says. She pushes further. “And you eat some pancakes.”

  I agree to eat the damn pancakes. If you don’t put maple syrup on them, they taste like nothing. I think I can choke down some nothing. As for the list, it’s a silly task. She knows everyone I know. They are her friends too.

  She starts to grab bowls and ingredients, pans and sprays. Everything seems so easy for her. Each movement doesn’t feel like it might be her last, the way mine feel. She just picks up the pancake mix like it’s nothing, like it’s not the heaviest box in the world.

  She sprays cooking spray on a pan and lights the burner. “So, we have two things we have to go over this morning and neither of them are pretty.”

  “Okay.”

  When she’s got the first pancake under control she turns to me, the spatula wet with batter and dangling in her hand on her hip. I stare at it while she talks, wondering if it will drip onto the kitchen floor.

  “The first one is work. What do you want to do? I called them on Monday, told them the situation and bought you a few days but . . . how do you want to handle it?”

  Honestly, I don’t even remember why I am a librarian. Books? Seriously? That’s my passion?