Forever, Interrupted

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  “Oh,” I say, my eyes focused on the bookshelves above me. I don’t even remember what I’m looking for. I have to look at the book in my hand again. The details aren’t registering. The call number falls out of my head before my eyes make it back up to the shelf. “No, thanks,” I say.

  “I’ve got two ears, you know!” he says.

  My face contorts into impatient confusion. “I’m sorry?”

  “For listening, I mean. I’m good at listening.”

  “Oh.”

  “Anyway,” he continues. “You’d rather be alone. I get it. Just know the offer stands. I’m always here to listen.” He looks at me a minute, perhaps trying to break through my empty stare. “And I wouldn’t say that to just anybody,” he says, smiling as he pats my hand gently, and he leaves me to the cart.

  I wish I had it in me to tell him he’s a good man. I wish I had it in me to say thank you. I just don’t. I can’t smile at him. I don’t even say good-bye. I let him walk away and I turn to the bookshelves as if he was never there. I forget, once more, the number of the book I have in my hand, and instead of checking again, I drop it right there on the cart and I walk away.

  I step outside and take a breath. I tell myself to get it together. I tell myself that this situation I’m in is no one’s fault. I am by the bike rack, pacing, when I see a young couple with a baby. The man has the baby strapped to his chest, the woman is carrying a diaper bag. She is cooing to the child, the man is looking down. She kisses the man on the lips and laughs as she maneuvers awkwardly around the baby. They play with the baby’s hands and feet.

  Why me and not them? Why couldn’t that guy have died? Why am I not here right now with Ben looking at a sad woman pacing on the street, on the edge of a nervous breakdown? What right do they have to be happy? Why does everyone in the world have to be happy in front of me?

  I go back inside and tell Nancy I’ll be in the Native American section. I tell her I’m researching the Aztecs for next month’s display. I stand in the aisle, running my fingers over the spines, feeling the cellophane crackle as I touch it. I watch as the Dewey decimal numbers escalate higher and higher. I try to focus only on the numbers, only on the spines. It works for a moment, for a moment I don’t feel like I want to get a gun. But in that moment, I crash face-first into someone else.

  “Oh! I’m so sorry,” he says to me, picking up the book he’s dropped. He’s my age, maybe a bit older. He has black hair and what is probably a permanent five o’clock shadow. He is tall with a firm body and broad shoulders. He is dressed in a faded T-shirt and jeans. I notice his brightly colored Chuck Taylors as he picks up his book. I move to get out of his way, but he seems to want to stop and talk.

  “Brett,” he says and puts out his hand. I shake it, trying to move on.

  “Elsie,” I say.

  “Sorry to bump into you like that,” he says. “I’m not that familiar with this library, and the librarians here aren’t very helpful.”

  “I’m a librarian here,” I say. I don’t care if he feels awkward.

  “Oh.” He laughs shyly. “That is embarrassing. I’m so sorry. Again. Wow. This isn’t going well for me, huh?”

  “No, I guess not,” I say.

  “Listen, would you let me buy you a coffee, as an apology?” he asks.

  “No, that’s okay. It’s not a big deal.”

  “No, really. I’d like to. It would be my pleasure,” he says, and now he’s smiling like he thinks he’s cute or something.

  “Oh,” I say. “No, I really should be getting back to work.”

  “Some other time then,” he says. Maybe he thinks I’m being demure or shy. I don’t know.

  “I’m married,” I say, trying to end it. I don’t know if I’m saying that because I think it’s true or just to get him off my back, the way I used to say “I don’t think my boyfriend would like that” when I was single and hit on by homeless men outside convenience stores.

  “Oh,” he says. “I’m sorry, I didn’t . . . I wasn’t expecting that.”

  “Yeah, well,” I say as I lift up my hand and show him.

  “Well,” he says, laughing. “If it doesn’t work out with you and your husband . . . ”

  That’s when I punch him in the face.

  I’m surprised at how satisfying it is to make contact: the crack of fist to face, the sight of just the smallest trickle of blood out of a nose.

  You are not supposed to punch people in the face. You’re especially not supposed to punch people in the face while you are at work. When you work for the city. And when the person you punch in the face is kind of a baby about it and insists that the library call the cops.

  When the cops get here, I can’t do much to defend myself. He didn’t hit me. He didn’t threaten me. He didn’t use incendiary language. He did nothing to provoke me. I just assaulted him. So, as embarrassing and over the top as it is, I am being arrested. They don’t handcuff me. One cop even seems to think this is funny. But apparently, when the cops are called because you punched someone and they show up and you say, “Yes, Officer, I hit that person,” they have to at least bring you down to the “precinct.” One of the police officers escorts me to the backseat of the squad car, reminding me to duck as I get in. As he shuts the door and heads to the front seat, Mr. Callahan comes outside and catches my eye. I should be ashamed, I’m sure. But I just don’t care. I look at him through the backseat window, and I see him crack a smile at me. His smile slowly turns to laughter, a laughter that seems to be equal parts shock and newfound respect, perhaps even pride. The car starts to pull away, and Mr. Callahan gives me a sly thumbs-up. I find myself smiling, finally. I guess I do remember how to do it. You just turn the corners of your mouth up.

  When we get to the police station, the cops take my things and book me. They put me in a cell. They tell me to call one person. I call Ana.

  “You what?” she says.

  “I’m at the police station. I need you to come bail me out.”

  “You’re kidding, right?”

  “I’m entirely serious.”

  “What did you do?”

  “I punched someone in the library stacks, somewhere between 972.01 and 973.6.”

  “Okay, I’m coming,” she says.

  “Wait. Don’t you want to know why I punched him?” I ask.

  “Does it matter?” she asks, impatient.

  • • •

  It feels like hours until she’s here, but I think she actually gets here pretty quickly. I see her standing in front of my cell and . . . ha-ha-ha, how the fuck did I get here in a jail cell? She’s with the officer that arrested me. I am free to go, he says. We’ll wait to see if Brett presses charges.

  Ana and I exit the building and we are standing outside. Ana hands me my bag of things. I now think this is really funny. But Ana doesn’t agree with me.

  “In my defense, Mr. Callahan also thought it was funny,” I say.

  Ana turns to me. “The old guy?”

  He’s not just an old guy. “Forget it,” I say.

  “I called Susan,” she says. It’s almost a confession.

  “What?”

  “I called Susan.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I think I’m out of my league here. I don’t know what to do.”

  “So you told on me to my mom? Is that it?”

  “She’s not your mom,” Ana says, sternly.

  “I know that,” I say. “I just mean that’s kind of what you’ve done, right? You don’t want to deal with me so you’re trying to get me in trouble?”

  “I think you’ve gotten yourself in trouble.”

  “He was being an asshole, Ana.” She just looks at me. “He was! How did you even get her number anyway?”

  “It’s in your phone,” she says, like I am stupid.

  “Fine. Forget it. I’m sorry I called you.”

  “Susan will be at your place in about an hour.”

  “She’s coming over? I have to work until five,” I
say.

  “Something tells me they won’t want you back at work today,” Ana says.

  We get in her car and she drives me to mine. I get out and thank her again for bailing me out. I tell her I’m sorry to be difficult and that I will pay her back.

  “I’m just worried about you, Elsie.”

  “I know,” I say. “Thanks.”

  I drive myself home and wait for the knock at the door.

  Susan knocks, and I open the door. She doesn’t say anything. She just looks at me.

  “I’m sorry,” I say. I don’t know why I’m apologizing to her. I don’t owe it to her not to get arrested. I don’t owe it to anyone.

  “You don’t need to apologize to me,” she says. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I’m fine.”

  She comes in and kicks off her shoes. She lies down on my couch.

  “What happened?” she asks.

  I blow out a hard sigh and sit down.

  “This guy asked me out,” I say. “And I said no, but he kept at it and I told him I was married—”

  “Why did you tell him you were married?” Susan asks.

  “Huh?”

  “I tell people I’m still married all the time, and I do it for the wrong reason. I do it so I can feel married. So I don’t have to say out loud that I am not married. Is that what you’re doing?”

  “No. Well.” I stop and think. “I am married,” I say. “I didn’t divorce him. We didn’t end it.”

  “But it ended.”

  “Well, but, not . . . we didn’t end it.”

  “It ended,” she says.

  Why must everything be a life lesson? Why can’t I just act like I’m married and everyone leave me the hell alone?

  “Well, if I . . . ” I trail off. I’m not sure of my defense.

  “Go on,” she says. It seems like she knows what I’m going to say, but I don’t even know what I am going to say.

  “If we stopped being married when he died . . . ”

  She waits for me to finish my thought.

  “Then we were barely married.”

  Susan nods. “That’s what I thought you were going to say.”

  My lips turn down.

  “Who cares?” she says.

  “What?”

  “Who cares if you were barely married? It doesn’t mean you love him any less.”

  “Well, but . . . ”

  “Yes?”

  “We were only together for six months before we got married.”

  “So?”

  “So, I mean, being married is what separates him from just some guy. It’s what proves he’s . . . he’s the love of my life.”

  “No, it doesn’t,” she says. I just stare at her. “That doesn’t matter at all. It’s a piece of paper. A piece of paper you don’t even have, by the way. It means nothing.”

  “It means everything!” I say.

  “Listen to me; it means nothing. You think that some ten minutes you spent with Ben in a room defines what you meant to each other? It doesn’t. You define that. What you feel defines that. You loved him. He loved you. You believed in each other. That is what you lost. It doesn’t matter whether it’s labeled a husband or a boyfriend. You lost the person you love. You lost the future you thought you had.”

  “Right,” I say.

  “I was with Steven for thirty-five years before I lost him. Do you think I have more of a right to pain than you do?”

  The answer is yes. I do think that. I’ve been terrified of that. I’ve been walking about feeling like an amateur, like an impostor, because of it.

  “I don’t know,” I say.

  “Well, I don’t. Love is love is love. When you lose it, it feels like the shittiest disaster in the world. Just like dog shit.”

  “Right.”

  “When I lost Steven, I lost love, but I also lost someone I was attached to.”

  “Right.”

  “You didn’t have as much time as I did to be attached to the man you loved. But attachment and love are two different things. My heart was broken and I didn’t remember how to do things without him. I didn’t remember who I was. But you, you lived without Ben just last year. You can do it again. You can do it sooner than me. But the love, that’s the sharp pain that won’t stop. That’s the constant ache in your chest. That won’t go away easily.”

  “I just feel like I had him for so little time,” I say. It’s difficult to talk about. It’s difficult because I work so hard to keep the self-pity at bay, and talking like this, talking about all of this, it’s like opening the door to my self-pity closet and asking its contents to spill all over the floor. “I didn’t have enough time with him,” I say, my voice starting to break, my lips starting to quiver. “It wasn’t enough time. Six months! That’s all I had.” I lose my breath. “I only got to be his wife for nine days.” I now begin to sob. “Nine days isn’t enough. It’s not enough.”

  Susan comes closer to me, and she grabs my hand. She pushes my hair back off my forehead. She catches my eye.

  “Sweetheart, I’m telling you, you love someone like that, you love them the right way, and no time would be enough. Doesn’t matter if you had thirty years,” she tells me. “It wouldn’t be enough.”

  She’s right, of course. If I’d had ten more years with Ben, would I be sitting here saying, “It’s okay, I had him long enough?” No. It would never have been enough.

  “I’m scared,” I tell her. “I’m scared that I’ll have to move on and meet someone and spend my life with them and it will seem like”—my voice cracks again—“it will seem like Ben was . . . I don’t want him to be ‘my first husband.’ ”

  Susan nods. “You know, you’re in a much different position than I am, and I forget that sometimes. No one begrudges me giving up on my love life. They understand. They know I won’t date again. They know I’ve had my one love and I’m done. But you, you have to meet someone else in this life. I can’t imagine how much of a betrayal that would feel to me if I had to do it.”

  “It is a betrayal. All of it feels like betrayal. I had this amazing man—I can’t just find another one and forget about him.”

  “I understand that, Elsie. But you have to find a way to remember him and forget him. You have to find a way to keep him in your heart and in your memories but do something else with your life. Your life cannot be about my son. It can’t.”

  I shake my head. “If my life isn’t about him, I don’t know what it’s about.”

  “It’s about you. Your life has always been about you. That’s what makes it your life,” she says and smiles at me. “I know nine days is short. I know six months is short. But, trust me when I tell you, if you go on and you marry someone else, and you have kids with them and you love your family and you feel like you would die without them, you won’t have lost Ben. Those nine days, those six months, they are a part of your life now, a part of you. They may not have been enough for you but they were enough to change you. I lost my son after loving him for twenty-seven years. It’s brutal, unending, gutting pain. Do you think I don’t deserve to grieve as much as someone who lost their son after forty years? Twenty-seven years is a short time to have a son. Just because it was short, it doesn’t mean it didn’t happen. It was just short. That’s all. Forgive yourself for that, Elsie. It’s not your fault your marriage lasted nine days. And it doesn’t say a goddamn thing about how much you loved him.”

  I don’t have anything to say back. I want so badly to take all of her words and fit them like the pieces of a puzzle into the hole in my heart. I want to write those words down on little pieces of paper and swallow them, consume them, make them a part of me. Maybe then I could believe them.

  I’m quiet for too long; the mood shifts somehow in the silence. I relax and the tears start to dry. Susan moves on, gently. “Did they fire you?”

  “No,” I say. “But I think they are going to ask me to take some time off.”

  She looks happy to hear this news,
as if it all falls into her master plan.

  “Stay with me in Newport then,” she says.

  “What?”

  “Let’s get you out of this apartment. Out of Los Angeles. You need a change of scenery for a few weeks.”

  “Uh . . . ”

  “I’ve been thinking about this for a few days, and this is a sign that I’m right. You need time to sit and feel sorry for yourself and get it all out so you can start over. I can help you. Let me help you.”

  I try to think of a good reason to say no, but . . . I simply don’t have one.

  MAY

  I don’t like going home as much as I used to,” Ben said to me. We were walking along the streets of Venice Beach. I had wanted to go for a walk in the sand, and Ben always liked to people-watch in Venice. I preferred the quiet, romantic beaches of Malibu, but Ben loved to watch the weirdos along the boardwalk.

  “Why?” I asked him. “I thought you said your mom’s house was really nice now.”

  “It is,” he said. “But it’s too big. It’s too empty. It’s too . . . ”

  “What?”

  “I don’t know. I always feel like I’m going to break something. When my dad was alive, it was not an impressive house. He never cared about that stuff and he hated spending money on, like, crystal vases.”

  “Your mom has a lot of crystal vases?”

  “She could never have them when he was around, so I think she’s trying to make the most of the situation.”

  “Right. She’s doing everything she wanted to do when he was around but couldn’t.”

  “Yeah,” he said. “But, not really. It’s more like she’s buying everything she wanted but she’s not doing anything.”

  “Well, maybe buying is doing. Maybe for her, that’s what’s working. Also”—I hesitated to say it and then decided to push it out of my mouth—“maybe it comes from the same place as what you’re going through, you know? About how you aren’t telling her about us?”

  Ben looked at me. “Well, that’s because . . . ” he started and couldn’t seem to find the words to finish. “Maybe,” he said, resigned. “I’m just going to tell her soon. Because it’s never going to be the right time, and now, I’m just outright lying. Before it was a gray area, but I live with you now. We live together.” His mood took a dive, and I could see the moment when it crashed. He let out a heavy sigh. “I’ve been lying to her.”