Forever, Interrupted

by Taylor Jenkins Reid

  Maybe I should have made him call her right then. Maybe I should have told him he was right, he was lying. But I couldn’t let him be sad. I couldn’t watch as he became disappointed in himself.

  “You’re not lying,” I said. “You’re doing this your way and now you can see that you really do need to tell her, and you’re gonna do it,” I said, as if it was the simplest thing in the world.

  “Yeah, no, you’re absolutely right.” He nodded with purpose. “I let this go a bit too far obviously, but it’s actually not a big deal. She’ll be happy for me. She’ll love you.” He looked at me with genuine affection. He truly could not understand a world in which people might not like me, or more realistically, a world where people might feel indifferent toward me.

  Ben quickly averted his gaze to avoid eye contact with the very thing he wanted to stare at. “Are you seeing this?” he asked me through his teeth. “Are you seeing what I’m seeing?”

  “The old guy in the yellow thong skateboarding with a dog?” I asked quietly.

  “I promise you, no one is doing that in Malibu,” he said, as he put his arm around my shoulders.

  I laughed and let him lead me further down the street. He watched the passersby as I disappeared into my own head. I was suddenly nervous about finally meeting his mom. I started to imagine how it would go.

  We’d all meet at a formal dinner. I would have to wear a nice outfit and go to a nice restaurant. I’d probably bring a sweater but forget it in the car. I’d be cold the whole time but never say anything. I’d want to go to the bathroom, but I’d be too nervous to even excuse myself. I’d smile so fake and huge that I’d start to feel a little dizzy from all the oxygen. Ben would sit in between the two of us at a round table. We’d face each other head-on. And then I figured out what was really nagging at me. What if the whole time I was sitting across from her, maintaining perfect posture, worrying if there was something in my teeth, she would be thinking, What does he see in her?

  OCTOBER

  Before I go to Susan’s, I discuss taking a leave of absence from my job. Lyle says that he’s not comfortable with me coming back right away, and I tell him I understand. But he says when I’m ready my job is here for me. I think Nancy had a lot to do with that, but I just say thank you.

  I meet Ana for breakfast and tell her I’m going to stay with Susan.

  “What?” she asks. “I just wanted her to talk some sense into you, not take you away.” She is clearly unnerved by this. She’s throwing food into her mouth quickly. She’s barely tasting it before getting more.

  “I know,” I say. “And thank you for calling her. I think I need to get out of here for a while. I need to find a way to move on. I don’t think I can do that here. At least, I can’t start it here.”

  “How long are you leaving for?” She looks like she might cry.

  “Not long. A few weeks, tops. I’ll be back soon, and you can drive down all the time.”

  “You really think this is going to help?” she asks me.

  “I know that I want it to help,” I say. “And I think that’s the point.”

  “Okay,” she says. “Do you want me to get your mail and check on the house?”

  “Sure,” I say.

  “Okay.” She doesn’t say it, but I get the feeling there is a small part of her that is happy to see me go. I have drained her. If I ever stop feeling sorry for myself, it will be time to start feeling sorry for what I’ve been putting Ana through. I’m not there yet, but I know it’s coming. “I like Kevin,” I say.

  “Okay,” she says, not believing me.

  “No, really. I was just thrown for a loop is all. I really like him.”

  “Well, thank you,” she says diplomatically. Eventually, I leave and get in my car full of clean clothes and toiletries. I put the address into my phone, pull out of my parking space, and head south.

  I ring the doorbell with my bag on my shoulder. I feel like I’m here for a sleepover. Somehow, the house looks so much more inviting this time. It looks less like it will eat me alive when I step into it.

  Susan comes to the door with her arms open wide for a hug. She looks genuinely thrilled to see me, which is nice, because I feel like for the past few weeks I simply have not been someone people would be thrilled to see.

  “Hi!” she says.

  “Hi,” I say, a bit more timidly.

  “I have a whole evening planned for us,” she says before I’ve even crossed the threshold. “Chinese food, in-home massages, Steel Magnolias.”

  I look at her when I hear “Steel Magnolias.”

  She smiles sheepishly. “I never had a girl to watch it with!”

  I laugh and put my things down. “That actually sounds great.”

  “I’ll show you to your room,” she says.

  “Geez, I feel like I’m at a hotel,” I say.

  “I decorate when I can’t face the day. Which seems to be most days now.” The heaviness of her admission startles me. It’s always been about me when we talk. I almost don’t know what to say to a woman that has lost both her husband and her son.

  “Well, I’m here now,” I say, brightly. “I can . . . ” What? What can I possibly do?

  She smiles at me but I can tell her smile can become a frown at any minute. Somehow, it doesn’t. She U-turns back to happier thoughts. “Let me show you the guest room!”

  “The guest room?” I ask.

  She turns to me. “You didn’t think I was going to let you sleep in Ben’s room, did you?”

  “Kind of, I did.”

  “I’ve spent far too much time in there, these past couple of weeks, and let me tell you: It only makes it sadder.” She doesn’t let the emotion deter the moment again. She’s dead set on moving through this. She leads me to a gorgeous white room with a white bedspread and white pillows. There are white calla lilies on the desk and Godiva chocolates on the nightstand. I’m not sure if the candles are new, but they haven’t been used before. It smells like cotton and soap in here. It smells so good. The whole thing is stunning, really.

  “Too much white? I’m sorry. I might be overeager to use the guest room finally.”

  I laugh. “This is gorgeous, thank you.” There is a robe on the bed. She sees me notice it.

  “For you, if you want it. I want you to feel pampered here. Comfortable.”

  “It’s great,” I say. She’s thought of everything. I look behind her to the bathroom and can see Ben’s soap message to her.

  She sees me looking at that as well. “I couldn’t bring myself to wash it away when he was here, I know I won’t ever wash it away now.”

  There it is, finally. I remember trying to find it the last time I was here. I remember why I gave up. And yet, it’s right in front of me now. It’s like it finally found a way to get me here. His handwriting is so imperfect. He had no idea what he was doing when he did that. He had no idea what it would mean to us.

  Susan breaks the silence. “Okay, get settled in, do whatever you wanna do. Masseuse comes in about two hours. I figure we can order Chinese food shortly after that. I’m going to go watch trashy crap television,” she says. “And my only rule is that you forget about the real world while you are here and just cry anytime you want to. Get it out, you know? That’s my only rule.”

  “Sounds good,” I say, and she takes off. I find myself slightly uncomfortable here, which takes me by surprise because I have been so comfortable around her recently. She has brought me such comfort. But I am now in her house, in her world. I am also in the house that Ben grew up in, and it feels fitting to cry. Yet, I’m not on the verge of tears. In fact, I feel okay. I can’t help but think that maybe because it’s okay to cry, I can’t.

  MAY

  Marry me,” he said.

  “Marry you?” I was in the driver’s seat of his car. I had just picked him up from the doctor’s office again. He had bent down to pet a dog that morning and his back had respasmed. Apparently, this can happen when you don’t take the pain medicati
on the doctor prescribes. Ben got a lecture on how he needed to take the pain medication so he would move normally again and work out the muscles. I had told him that earlier in the week, but he didn’t listen to me. So there I was, driving him home from the doctor once again. Only this time, I was being proposed to while he was drugged out on painkillers in the passenger seat.

  “Yes! Just marry me. You are perfect,” he said. “It’s hot in here.”

  “Okay, okay. I’m taking you home.”

  “But you will marry me?” he asked, smiling over at me, watching me drive.

  “I think that’s the painkillers talking,” I said.

  “Drunk words are sober thoughts,” he said, and then he fell asleep.

  OCTOBER

  I sit out by Susan’s pool, reading magazines and getting a tan. Susan and I play gin rummy and drink a lot of iced tea. The days come and go, and I have nothing to show for them. I walk through her herb garden, and sometimes I pick lemons from her fruit trees and then put them in my drinks. I’m finally gaining weight. I haven’t stepped on a scale, but I can see the roundness back in my cheeks.

  When the days start to cool down and the Santa Ana winds take over the nights, I sometimes sit by the outdoor chimney. I think I’m the first one to light it. But after the first couple of times, it starts to smell like a warm, toasty campfire, and if I close my eyes long enough, I can convince myself I’m on a traditional vacation.

  Otherwise, Susan is usually with me, guiding me through her own little version of Widow Rehab. She starts to cry sometimes but always seems to stop herself. I’m pretty sure at night in bed alone is the only time she can really let herself go. Every once in a while when I am trying to fall asleep myself, I can hear her sob from the other side of the house. I never go to her room. I never mention it the next day. She likes to be alone with her pain. She doesn’t like to share it. During the day, she wants to be there for me, show me how this is done, and I’m happy to oblige. However imperfect, her system is working for her. She’s functional and composed when she needs to be, and she is in tune with her feelings in her own way. I guess I am learning from the best because I do feel a little bit better.

  When Susan isn’t around, sometimes I sneak into Ben’s old bedroom. I imagined it would be here waiting for him, frozen in time from when he left it. I thought maybe I’d find old high school trophies and pictures of prom, maybe one of those felt flags I’ve seen people pin on their walls. I want to learn more about my husband. I want to consume more information about him. Spend more time with him. But instead, I find a small room that had been cleared out long before Ben died. There’s a bed with a blue striped comforter, and in one corner, a half-torn sticker from some skateboard company. Sometimes, I sit on the bed and hear how quiet this house is with just one person in it. It must be so quiet for Susan when I am not here.

  I think of a world where I am a mother of three, married to a handsome man. We own an oversize SUV, and he coaches girls’ soccer. He is faceless, nameless. To tell the truth, in the scenario, he doesn’t matter. I keep trying to think of a way to work Ben into this new life I could have. I could name my son Ben, but that feels too obvious and, quite frankly, too small a gesture. I am beginning to understand why people start funds and charities in other people’s names. It would feel good to work at the Benjamin S. Ross Foundation for Not Eating Fruity Pebbles. But I know there isn’t actually anything to rally against for him.

  To tell the truth, I lack passion for much of anything. Sometimes I wish I had passion for something—which, if you think about it, is a kind of passion in itself. Albeit, somewhat weak.

  Susan always plans things for me to do to keep me busy, even if it is just a structured day of lounging and watching television. Sometimes the “camp counselor” shtick she has going on can be a bit grating, but it’s not my place to tell her to back off. She wants to help me and she is helping. I’m just that little bit more functional each day.

  “My friend Rebecca is in town tonight,” she says to me one afternoon. “I was thinking we could all go out to this new Mediterranean place I found.”

  This is the first time that Susan is inviting me out with any of her friends. It seems odd, somehow, to participate in something together that involves other people. I’m not sure why, though. It feels like this alliance is a private one, one not to be shared. As if she’s my mistress mother. But I think I’m really just scared of what to call her. How will she introduce me? “This is my son’s widow?” I don’t want that.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I say. I’m fiddling with the pages of a magazine I read days ago. The pages are transparent and curled at the edges from when I left it by the edge of the pool and attempted a cannonball.

  “Please?” she says.

  “I mean—” I start. She abruptly sits down and puts her hands out, as if she’s about to make a great proposition.

  “Look, Rebecca isn’t the best. She’s kind of . . . snobby. Well, she’s really snobby. And I could just never stand her snobby little attitude about our kids. When her oldest got into Stanford, it was Stanford this and Stanford that and whoopity-do, isn’t Patrick the smartest kid in the world? She always acted like Ben was such a disappointment.”

  “Wow, okay, now I really don’t want to go. And I don’t understand why you want to go,” I say.

  “Well, get this!” Susan says excitedly. “She always, always wanted a daughter. Always. She’s got two boys. Neither married yet.” Susan catches herself and blushes. “I’m a terrible person, right? I am. I’m trying to use my daughter-in-law to make my friend jealous.”

  I don’t know whether it’s that I already hate Rebecca or that I like the idea of indulging Susan, but I agree. “Should we wear matching dresses?” I say. “Maybe tell her we just got back from pottery making together?”

  Susan laughs heartily. “Thank you for understanding that I am sometimes a total bitch.”

  We take naps and then get ready for dinner. I can hear Susan changing her clothes over and over. It’s odd to see her so insecure. When we get to the restaurant, we are told that Rebecca has already been seated. We walk through the dining area, Susan just the littlest bit in front of me, and I see her make eye contact. Rebecca stands up to greet us. “Only two minutes late!” Rebecca says, and I see Susan start to roll her eyes. Rebecca turns to me. “So this is the daughter-in-law you won’t stop talking about.”

  And I realize that, more than anything, what made me want to come to dinner was that for the first time, I feel like I am Susan’s daughter-in-law, plain and simple. The bizarre circumstances don’t matter. I am someone’s new, shiny daughter-in-law.

  NOVEMBER

  Ana is coming down to visit tonight. Susan invited her to stay for the weekend and she accepted. She should be here any minute, and I am excited to show her how nice it can be to just sit by a pool and feel the sun beating down on you. I went to the store this afternoon to get us snacks and wine coolers. I got the wine coolers because I thought they were funny, but then I drank one this afternoon, and you know what? They are actually pretty tasty.

  Ana shows up around six, and Susan has a whole dinner planned. I get the impression Susan is deathly bored. I think my being here makes it easier to fill her days, but before Ben died, before she and I became close, she was supremely, soul-suckingly bored. She’s in a lot of book clubs, but as far as I can tell, that’s about it. So when Ana comes for dinner, it gives Susan an excuse for a seven-course meal.

  I walk into the kitchen and find an extra apron. I put it on and splay my hands out. “What can I do?” I ask.

  Susan is chopping vegetables so fast I’m sure she’s about to lose a digit, but she doesn’t. Her cutting board is full of various chopped stuff that she slides easily into a big bowl.

  “Can you hand me that jar?” she asks. I do. She sprinkles whatever the hell is in it, possibly Parmesan cheese, onto the salad and puts the salad on the table.

  “Salad’s ready. The roast beef is cooking. Mashed pot
atoes are mashed. Yorkshire pudding is in the oven. I think I’m pretty much done,” she tells me. “I hope Ana isn’t on a diet. I cooked all the food in Orange County.”

  The doorbell rings, and I answer. Ana is wearing a white dress and a black cardigan; she’s holding a bottle of wine in one hand and her purse with the other. I’ve spoken to Ana on the phone many times since I got here, but it swells my heart to see her face. She is the life I want back.

  She hugs me, and I can smell her perfume. It reminds me of our early twenties, when we went to bars and I stood in the corner nursing a fruity drink while she was in the center of the room. It reminds me of Sunday morning brunches and hangovers. A single life. A single life I loved before I knew anything better.

  It’s been so long since I’ve smelled Ben that I have forgotten the scent. I could recognize it in an instant, but I can’t describe it, I can’t feel it. I knew this would happen. I feared this would happen. Now that it has, it’s not so bad. It is. But it isn’t.

  “You look great!” she says. It brightens my mood immediately.

  “Thank you! So do you!” I don’t like that our conversation has a somewhat formal quality to it. We are best friends, and best friends don’t talk like this.

  We walk into the kitchen, and Ana hugs Susan. “What can I do?” Ana asks, and Susan waves her off.

  “You girls are so polite,” she says. “I’m almost done. Have a seat. Do you want a drink?”

  “At least let me get those,” Ana says and starts looking for glasses.

  “Top cupboard above the dishwasher,” Susan says without looking. Ana grabs three glasses and pours us some wine.

  It’s about five minutes before we sound like ourselves again, and I think how odd it is that I’ve only been away from Ana for a few weeks, and yet, I already feel estranged. Then it occurs to me that I haven’t been away from Ana for a few weeks. I’ve been away from her since Ben died. I let myself die when he did. I wonder if it was longer than that. I wonder if when I met Ben, part of me lost Ana. If so, I want her back. I want what we had back.