Forever, Interrupted

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  I woke up the next morning to an empty bed.

  “Ben?” I called out. He answered from the living room. I walked out there and found that a whole section of boxes had been unloaded.

  “How are you feeling? Are you okay?”

  “I’m fine,” he said. “As long as I stay upright and don’t twist, I feel fine.”

  “I really think you should see a doctor. That doesn’t sound good.”

  “Quit nagging me, wife,” he said and smiled. “Can I remove some of your dumb books? I want a place to put all of these,” he said. He gestured awkwardly to stacks and stacks of paperback books.

  “Maybe we should just buy a new bookshelf,” I said.

  “Or maybe you should donate some of these lame classics to the library. Do we really need two copies of Anna Karenina?”

  “Hey! It’s two different translations!” I said. “You can’t just come in here and throw my stuff out because you need room, you jerk!”

  “I’m not saying we should throw it out,” he said. “Just . . . donate it.” He opened the book up and smelled it and then thrust his head away. “Owow!” he exclaimed and rubbed his back. “These books smell all old and gross, Elsie. Let’s at least get you some new books.”

  I grab Anna Karenina out of his hand and put it back on my shelf. “I doubt your books smell all that great,” I said. “Any book you have for a long time starts to smell of must. That’s how it works.”

  “Yeah, but I don’t buy my books at used bookstores and flea markets,” he said. “I get ’em hot off the presses so they stay fresh.”

  “Oh for heaven’s sake! Books aren’t bagels. They don’t go stale,” I said as I pulled one from the stack. It had a teenage girl standing in front of what appeared to be an oversize falcon. “Seriously?” I said.

  “Let’s do a little experiment,” Ben said. “What’s Anna Karenina about?”

  “It’s about a married aristocratic woman who falls in love with a count but she can’t—”

  “I am falling asleep just listening to you. Do you know what this book is about?” he asked me, grabbing the falcon-cover book from my hand. “This book is about a group of kids who are part human, part bird.” He said it plainly, as if the facts spoke for themselves. “This is a better book.”

  “You haven’t even tried to read Anna Karenina. It’s an incredibly moving story.”

  “I’m sure it is,” he said. “But I like my books to take place ‘in a world where . . .’ ”

  “In a world where what?”

  “Just in a world where . . . anything. In a world where love is classified as a disease. In a world where the government chooses your family for you. In a world where society has eliminated all pain and suffering. I love that kind of stuff.”

  “That last one was The Giver,” I said. “Right? You’re talking about The Giver?”

  “If you tell me you don’t like The Giver, this relationship is over,” he said to me. “I have a zero tolerance policy on not appreciating The Giver.”

  I smiled and grabbed his copy of The Giver. I opened it up and smelled the pages. “I don’t know . . . ” I teased. “Smells a little musty.”

  “Hey!” he yelled, trying to pull the book away from me. But the pain was too excruciating. He was wincing and crying out. I took my keys off the table.

  “Stand up,” I said. “We’re going to the goddamn doctor.”

  “Not until you admit you loved The Giver,” he muttered.

  I knelt down to help him up, and I told him softly, “I loved The Giver.”

  He smiled and groaned as he got up. “I knew it,” he said, unfazed. “You want to know a secret though?”

  I nodded.

  “I would have adjusted the policy for you.” Then he kissed me on the cheek and let me help him out to the car.

  SEPTEMBER

  We have packed up most of his things by the afternoon, saving the bedroom and closet for last. We grab the rest of the boxes and head in there.

  I throw the boxes onto the bed and look at the room. I can do this. I can do this. If I can’t, Susan will. So at least it will get done.

  “Come on!” she says. “Let’s go.” She opens a dresser and starts throwing clothes into boxes. I watch as striped shirts and dirty jeans are pulled out of their rightful home. I start taking clothes out of the closet with their hangers. You don’t realize how dead clothes look on their hangers until the person who owned them is . . . Anyway, I don’t even bother to take them off the hangers. I simply throw them in the box with the rest of his clothes. I have made my way through the closet and through his nightstand before Susan is done with the dresser. She has a look on her face like she’s fine, but I spot her smelling a shirt before she puts it in the box. She sees me catch her.

  “I’ve just been trying to see if anything still smells like him, you know? It’s hard to remember anymore, what he smelled like.”

  “Oh,” I say. “Sorry, I think I smelled all the smell off that stuff.”

  “Oh.” She laughs. “That explains it then.”

  I think about whether I have it in me to share what I have left of Ben. I know that I do. “Hold on,” I say.

  I grab his pillow in the trash bag. I untie the top of the bag and hand it to her.

  “Smell it,” I say, and she looks at me somewhat hesitantly, but then she lowers her face into it, her nose grazing the pillow itself. “That’s it,” she says. “Oh God. That’s him.” Her eyes close, and I can see the tears falling down her cheeks. For the first time since the hospital, I see what happens when she lets herself lose it.

  MAY

  We spent the day at the doctor’s office, sitting in cramped chairs with a room full of people with contagious diseases. Ben reminded me multiple times that we did not need to be there. But once we saw the doctor, he seemed very concerned that Ben take it easy. We left with a prescription for Vicodin.

  We got home and Ben called to order Chinese. He ordered us the usual, and I overheard him tell the man on the phone that he wanted both white rice and brown rice. I remembered how he told me on our first date that ordering both would be a sign that the romance was gone, but I couldn’t help but feel warmed by his doing it now. Ben and I were a team. We knew each other’s wants. We knew each other’s needs. We knew when to split up and compromise. We weren’t each putting our best foot forward. We weren’t waiting to see if this was right for us. We dove headfirst into this and here we were, one of those couples that doesn’t put up with the other person’s stupid shit. I liked brown, he liked white. We ordered both. Nothing fancy anymore. The novelty was gone for us and what we were left with was . . . awesome.

  We got into bed that night, and even though we had not unpacked the bedroom, Ben was dead set on finding one thing. Concerned that he not bend or twist, I insisted upon looking for it myself. He directed me through boxes, and eventually, I made my way to a box so light that it felt like it was packed with air. I brought it to him, and he opened the box with joy. It was a dirty pillow.

  “What is that?” I asked, horrified that that thing was entering my bed. It was covered in drool spots and orange puddles of . . . something.

  “It’s my favorite pillow!” he said, putting it down on top of one of my pillows, pillows that I thought were now “ours,” but in comparison to his ugly, dirty pillow felt decidedly “mine.”

  “Please get that thing off my bed,” I said.

  “Our bed, baby,” he said to me. “This is our bed. And our bed should have our pillows. And this is our pillow now.”

  “No,” I said with a laugh. “I don’t want that to be our pillow. I want that to be a pillow you used to have when you lived on your own.”

  “Well, it can’t be that. I can’t sleep without this pillow.”

  “You’ve been sleeping here for months without that pillow!”

  “Yeah, but this is my own house now! I pay rent here! I need this pillow in a place where I pay rent.”

  “Ugh,” I relented. “Just
put a damn pillowcase on it, would you?”

  “Sure.” He walked to the linen closet and came back proud as a peacock. He then rolled himself delicately into bed.

  “Did you take the Vicodin? It will take the edge off,” I said.

  “What do I look like? A man that can’t handle a little pain?” he asked as he moved toward me slowly and put his head on his pillow. “You wanna try it out? It’s really comfortable.”

  I shook my head. “No, thank you.”

  “Oh, come on. You can lie on it for five seconds. It’s a part of us now,” he said, teasing me.

  “Fine! Fine!” I moved my head to lie on it. “Oh my God, that thing smells awful.”

  “What? No, it doesn’t!”

  “I can’t believe you thought my books smelled bad. That pillow is terrible!” I laughed.

  “No! It smells fine.” He smelled it to make sure. “You just have to get used to it, is all.”

  “Yeah, okay,” I said. I turned out the light. He fell asleep within minutes, and I lay there feeling like the luckiest girl in the world that this weirdo next to me was mine; that he lived here; that he had the right to demand his stinky pillow stay in my bed. I smelled it once more as I fell asleep, and I couldn’t imagine ever getting used to it, but before long, that was exactly what I had done.

  SEPTEMBER

  The boxes are mostly packed. Ben’s things are almost entirely out of sight. I can see only brown cardboard for miles. I kept his USC sweatshirt and a few of his T-shirts. I left his favorite cup in the cupboard. Susan put some books and photos in her car to take with her. She added a random notebook he’d written in and a few other things that are meaningless to anyone else but mean everything to a mom.

  Now that it’s all in boxes, there isn’t much reason for Susan to stay here.

  “Well,” she says with a sigh. “I guess that’s the last of it.”

  “I guess so,” I say. I feel surprisingly stable.

  “All right,” she says, nodding. It’s the kind of nod that says she doesn’t know what to say next; she doesn’t know what she’s thinking. She gasps for air.

  “I guess I’ll . . . head home,” she says. “It’s, uh, this is hard. I don’t want to leave but I . . . I mean, it’s not like I’m leaving him, you know? I think it’s more just . . . I had this to look forward to, if that makes any sense? I’m not making any sense. I’m going to go.”

  I hug her. “It makes all the sense in the world to me.”

  “Okay,” she says. She breathes out. She breathes with focus. She gathers herself. “Okay, I’ll give you a call next weekend.”

  “Sounds great.”

  She opens the door and walks out. I turn to see my apartment.

  His things are in boxes, but I do not feel that I have lost him. It’s a subtle feeling, but it’s real. I am now just a little bit ready to realize the beauty of progress, of moving on. I decide to seize the moment. I grab three boxes of clothes and load them in the car. When I’m done with those, I grab two more. I don’t go back in for more because I’m afraid I’ll lose my nerve. I tell myself this is for the best. This is good!

  I pull up in front of Goodwill and park my car. I take the boxes out and walk inside. A large man comes to greet me.

  “What do we have here?”

  “Some men’s clothes,” I say. I can’t look at him. I’m staring at the boxes. “All good condition.”

  “Wonderful!” he says, as he takes the boxes from me. “Would you like a receipt?”

  “No,” I say. “No, thank you.”

  He opens the boxes and dumps their contents into a bigger pile of clothes, and even though I know that it’s time for me to walk away, I can’t help but stare. They are no longer Ben’s clothes. They are just clothes in a pile of clothes mixed with other clothes.

  What have I done?

  Like that, they are gone. The man has taken the large pile and shoved it into the back room. I want those clothes back. Why did I give someone else Ben’s clothes? What will he wear? I want to jump over the counter and sort through what they have back there. I need to get his clothes back. Instead, I am frozen and in shock over what I have done. How did I do that? Why did I do that? Can Ben see, from where he is, what I have done?

  “Ma’am?” the man calls out to me. “Are you okay?”

  “Yes,” I say. “I’m sorry.”

  I turn around and get in my car. I can’t turn the key in the ignition. I can’t shift the car in drive. I just bang my head against the steering wheel. I let the tears fall down on the beige interior. My cheek is blaring the horn and I don’t care.

  I leave the keys on the front seat of my car and I get out. I just run. I run and run even though it’s cold outside, even though my body is starting to heat up faster than it should. Even though I feel like I’m giving myself a fever. And then I stop, instantly and abruptly, because I realize that I cannot outrun myself. I go across the street and walk along the sidewalk until I see a bar. I don’t have my wallet, I don’t have my keys, but I walk in anyway. It’s early enough in the day that they let me right in and then I sit at the bar and I drink beers. I drink beer after beer until I can’t feel my nose. When I’m done, I pretend I’m going to the bathroom and then I sneak out the back, not paying, not tipping, not even saying thank you. By the time I get home, knowing full well I’ve locked myself out, I’m just plain sick.

  I puke on my own front lawn. It’s barely 8:00 p.m. Neighbors see me and I ignore them. I sit down on the grass when I’m done and I pass out. I wake up around 11:00, and I’m too discombobulated and inebriated to remember where my keys are. I do the only thing that I can do to get back into my house. I call Ana.

  “At least you called me,” she says as she walks up to the sidewalk to meet me. “That’s all I care about.”

  I don’t say anything. She walks up my steps and unlocks my front door. She holds it open for me.

  “Are you drunk?” she says, rather shocked. If it were any other time in my life, she’d probably think this was funny, but I can tell she doesn’t, even though I kind of do. “That’s not like you.”

  “It’s been a rough couple of days,” I say and plop myself down on my own sofa.

  “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “Well, my husband died, so that was hard.” I don’t want to talk to her about any of this. I don’t want to talk to anyone.

  “I know,” she says, taking my sarcastic remark as something genuine. She can’t possibly think that was really my answer. Instead, she is treating me sincerely so that I have no choice but to be sincere. It’s crafty, I’ll give her that.

  “I moved his stuff out,” I say, resigning myself to the therapy session that is going to come my way. I don’t want to talk to her about our last conversation, about our fight, although I’m sure she’s going to force that on me as well. She moves toward me on the sofa and puts her arm around me. “I gave away some of his stuff to Goodwill,” I tell her.

  Goodwill! That’s where my keys are.

  “I’m sorry, Elsie,” she says. “But I’m proud of you. I’m really, really proud of you for doing it.” She rubs my arm. “I don’t know if I’d be able to do it if I were you.”

  “What?” I say. “You were insisting that I needed to start moving on! You said I should do it!”

  She nods. “Yeah, because you should. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t know it was hard.”

  “Then why did you say it like it was easy?”

  “Because you needed to do it and I knew that you could. No one wants to do it.”

  “Yeah, well, no one else has to.”

  I want her to leave and I think she knows that.

  “I’m sorry about the other night. I was out of line. I’m truly sorry,” she says.

  “It’s fine,” I say, and I mean it. It is fine. I should be apologizing too, but I just don’t want to talk to anyone right now.

  “All right, well, I’m going to go,” she says. She gathers herself and leaves.


  “I love you,” she says.

  “Me too,” I say back, hoping it passes for an “I love you too.” I do love her, but I don’t want to say it. I don’t want to feel anything. I see her drive away out of my front window, and I think that she is probably going to meet up with Kevin somewhere and she’ll tell him all about this little episode of mine and he’ll grab her hand and he’ll say, “You poor baby, that sounds difficult,” as if the world has conspired against her, as if she doesn’t deserve this. I hate them both for being able to sigh, make a couple of serious faces about how hard this must be on me, and then go to the movies and laugh at dick jokes.

  I walk to the Goodwill the next morning and get my car. My keys are sitting on the front seat where I left them, and yet, no one has stolen anything. It pisses me off, to be honest. It pisses me off that of all times, the world conspires to help me now.

  At work on Monday, I am scowling at strangers. When they ask me to help them, I do it with a frown on my face, and when I’m done, I curse them under my breath.

  When Mr. Callahan makes his way toward me, I have little energy left.

  “Hello, my dear,” he says as he moves to touch my arm. I instinctively pull away. He doesn’t seem to take it personally. “Bad day?” he asks.

  “You could say that.” I grab the handle on a cart of books to reshelve. It’s not technically my job to put them back, but it seems like a good way to graciously end the conversation. Mr. Callahan doesn’t get the hint. He walks with me.

  “I had a bad day once,” he says, grinning. It’s a classic cheer-up routine, and it’s wasted on me. I don’t want to cheer up. I’m honestly not sure I even remember how to smile naturally. What do you do? You pull the corners of your mouth up?

  “Bad joke,” he says, waving his hand in an attempt to both dismiss the joke and let me off the hook for not laughing at it. “Anything I can do for you?”