“When Ben was little, he used to get in bed with Steven and I and watch Jeopardy! every night. He didn’t understand any of the questions, but I think he liked hearing the blooping noises. Anyway, I remember one night I was lying there, Ben between us, and I thought, This is my family. This is my life. And I was so happy in that moment. I had my two guys. And they loved me and I belonged to them. And now, I lie in that same bed and they are both gone. I don’t think I have even begun to scratch the surface of what that has done to me.”
She doesn’t break down. She’s calm but sincere. She’s lost. I don’t think I could see it before because I was so lost. I’m still lost. But I can see that Susan needs . . . something. She needs something to hold on to. For me, she was that something. She was the rock in the middle of the storm. I’m still in the middle of the storm but . . . I need to be a rock too. I realize it’s time I was supportive as well as supported. I think the time for “This Is All About Me” actually ended quite some time ago.
“What do you need?” I ask. Susan seems to always know what I need, or at least thinks she does with enough confidence that she convinces me too.
“I don’t know,” she says, wistfully, as if there is an answer out there somewhere and she just doesn’t know where to start looking. “I don’t know. I think I need to come to terms with a lot of things. I need to look them in the eye.” She is quiet for a minute. “I don’t believe in heaven, Elsie.” This is where she cracks. Her eyes tighten into little stars, her mouth turns down, and her breathing becomes desperate. “I want to believe so bad,” she says. Her face is now wet. Her nose is running. I know what it feels like to cry like that. I know that she’s probably feeling light-headed, that soon her eyes will feel dry as if they have nothing left to give. “I want to think of him happy, in a better place. People say to me that he’s in a better place, but . . . I don’t believe in a better place.” She heaves again and rests her head in her hands. I rub her back. “I feel like such a terrible mother that I don’t believe in a better place for him.”
“Neither do I,” I say to her. “But sometimes I pretend I do,” I say. “To make it hurt just a little less. I think it’s okay to pretend you do.” She rests her weight on me and I can feel that I am holding her up. It’s empowering to be the one holding someone else up. It makes you feel strong, maybe even stronger than you are. “We could talk to him if you want,” I say. “What does it hurt, right? It doesn’t hurt anything to try, and who knows? Maybe it will feel good. Maybe it will . . . maybe he will hear us.”
Susan nods and tries to gain her composure again. She sighs and breathes deep. She wipes her face and opens her eyes. “Okay,” she says. “Yeah.”
MAY
We’re in Nevada!” Ben screamed as we drove over the state line. He was emphatic and exhilarated.
“Wooo!” I yelled after him. I put both fists up into the air. I rolled down my window and I could feel the desert air rushing in. The air was warm but the wind had a chill. It was nighttime, and I could see the city lights in the distance. They were cheesy and ugly, overwrought and overdone. I knew I was looking at a city of casinos and whores, a city where people were losing money and getting drunk; but none of that mattered. The city lights looked like they were made just for us.
“Which exit did you say?” Ben asked me, a rare moment of logistics in an otherwise very emotional car ride.
“Thirty-eight,” I said and grabbed his hand.
It felt like the whole world belonged to us. It felt like everything was just beginning.
NOVEMBER
It’s evening by the time we muster the strength to try to talk to him. It’s a warm November night even by Southern California standards. We have the sliding glass doors open around the house. I try to direct my voice to the wind. Speaking into the wind seems just metaphorical enough that it might work.
“Ben?” I call out. I had planned to follow it up with some sort of statement, but my mind is a blank. I haven’t spoken to Ben since he said he’d be right back. The first thing I say should be important. It should be beautiful.
“If you can hear us, Ben, we just want you to know that we miss you,” Susan says, directing her voice toward the ceiling. She points her head upward as if that’s where he is, which tells me there has to be some small part of her that believes in heaven after all. “I miss you so much, baby. I don’t know what to do without you. I don’t know how to . . . I know how to live my life thinking that you’re there in L.A., but I don’t know how to live my life knowing that you aren’t on this earth,” she says, and then turns to me abruptly. “I feel stupid.”
“Me too,” I say. I am now thinking it matters significantly whether you actually believe the dead can hear you. You can’t just talk to the wall and convince yourself you aren’t talking to a wall unless you believe.
“I want to go to his grave,” she says. “Maybe it will be easier there.”
“Okay.” I nod. “It’s too late to go today but we can go up first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Okay,” she says. “That will give me time to think about what I want to say.”
“Okay, good.”
Susan pats me on the hand and gets up. “I’m going to go to bed early then. My mind needs a rest from this.” Maybe she really does need a rest, but I know she’s going in there to cry in peace.
“Okay,” I say. When she’s gone, I look around the room and walk aimlessly around the house. I go into Ben’s bedroom and I throw myself on his bed. I breathe in the air. I stare at the walls until I can no longer see them. I know that I am done here. I may not be ready for my life back, but it is time to stop avoiding it. I lie in Ben’s room for as long as I can stand it and then I get up and rush out.
I walk over to my room to start to gather my clothes. I want to do it quickly, before I lose my nerve. There is a part of me that wants to stay in this purgatory for as long as I can, that wants to lie out by the pool all day and watch TV all night and never live my days. But if Ben could hear me, if Ben could see me, that isn’t what Ben would want. Also, I don’t think I’d want that for myself.
I get up in the morning and collect the rest of my things. I walk out into the kitchen and Susan is there, dressed and ready to go, drinking a cup of coffee, sitting at the kitchen counter. She sees that my things are packed behind me and she puts down her coffee. She doesn’t say anything. She just smiles knowingly. It’s a sad smile, but a proud smile. A bittersweet and melancholy smile. I feel like I’m going away to college.
“We should take two cars,” she says. She says it as a realization to herself but also, I think, to spare me from having to say it. From having to spell out that after this, I’m going home.
Susan gets there a bit before I do, and as I drive up, I see her standing at the entrance to the cemetery. I thought perhaps that she would have started without me. That she might want time alone with him, but it looks like she needs a partner in this. I don’t blame her. I certainly wouldn’t be doing this alone. I park the car and catch up to her.
“Ready?” I say.
“Ready,” she says. We start the long walk to his gravestone. When we get there, the headstone looks so brand-new it’s almost tragic, like when you see grave markers so close together you know it was a child. Susan kneels on the ground in front of Ben’s grave and faces his headstone. I sit down next to her.
She breathes in deeply and seriously. It is not a casual breath. She pulls a piece of paper out of her back pocket and looks at me, shyly. I nod my head at her, urging her, and she starts to read. Her voice is without much emotion at first; she truly is reading the words on the page rather than speaking.
“I just want to know you’re okay. I want to know that you didn’t suffer. I want to believe that you are in a better place, that you are happy and have all the things in life that you loved, with you. I want to believe that you and your father are together. Maybe at a barbecue in heaven, eating hot dogs. I know that’s not the case. I know that you are gone. But I do
n’t know how to live with that knowledge. A mother is not supposed to outlive her son. It’s just not supposed to happen.”
Now she starts to lose her public speaking voice, and her eyes drift from the page onto the grass beneath her. “I know that you believed it was your job to protect me and take care of me. If I had one last thing to say to you, Ben, I think I would want to tell you this: I will be okay. You don’t need to worry. I will find a way to be okay. I always do. Don’t worry about me. Thank you for being such a wonderful son. For being the son that you were. I couldn’t have asked for anything more from you other than just more time. I want more time. Thank you for loving Elsie. Through her, I can see that you grew into exactly the type of man I hoped you would. And the two of us . . . will be okay. We will make it through. So go and have fun where you are and forget about us. We will be okay.”
That is what true love is. True love is saying to someone “Forget about us. We will be okay,” when it might not even be true, when the last thing you want is to be forgotten.
When Susan is done, she folds the piece of paper back up and wipes her eyes, and then she looks at me. It’s my turn and I have no idea what I’m even doing here, but I close my eyes to breathe in deeply, and for a second, I can see his face as clear as if he were right in front of me. I open my eyes and . . . here goes.
“There’s a huge hole in my heart where you used to be. When you were alive, I used to sometimes lie awake at night and listen to you snore and I couldn’t believe how lucky I was to have found you. I haven’t wanted to be whole again without you. I thought that if I were okay, it meant that I had truly lost you but . . . I think if you heard that logic you’d think I was an idiot. I really do think you’d want me to be happy again someday. You’d probably even be a little mad at me for all the wallowing I’ve done. Maybe not mad. Frustrated. You’d be frustrated. Anyway, I’m going to do better. I could never forget you, Ben. Whether we were married right before I lost you or not, in the short time I knew you, you worked your way right into the soul of me. I am who I am because of you. If I ever feel one tenth as alive as I felt with you . . . ” I wipe a tear from my eye and try to gain control of my wavering voice. “You made my life worth living. I promise you I am going to do something with it.”
Susan puts her arm around me and rubs my shoulder. We both sit there for a moment and stare at the grave, at the gravestone. As I let my eyes lose their focus on what’s right in front of me, I realize that I am in a sea of gravestones. I am surrounded by other people’s loss. It has never been so clear to me that I am not alone in this. People die every day and other people move on. If everyone that loved all of these people has picked themselves up and moved on, I can do it too. I will one day wake up and see the sun shining and think, What a nice day.
“Ready?” Susan asks, and I nod my head. We pull ourselves up off the ground. The grass has made our knees wet. We walk in silence.
“Have you ever heard of supernovas?” Susan asks me as we head toward the front gate.
“What?” I almost stop in my tracks.
“Ben was really into space as a kid and he had all of these space books. I used to read them to him when he couldn’t sleep, and I always loved the little chapter in this one book he had on supernovas. They shine brighter than anything else in the sky and then fade out really quickly. A supernova is a short burst of extraordinary energy.”
“Yeah,” I say.
“I like to think that you and Ben were like that,” she says to me. “That you ended abruptly, but in that short time, you had more passion than some people have in a lifetime.”
I don’t say anything. I just take it in.
“Anyway,” she says. “You headed home?”
I nod. “I think I’m ready for it.”
“All right,” she says. “Well . . . I guess this—”
“Do you want to get dinner on Friday?” I ask her. “At the Mexican place?”
She looks surprised but pleased. “I would love that.”
“I know you’re not my mother. I know that. But I really enjoy your company. Even if the circumstances are a bit strange, I like you.”
Susan puts her arm around me and kisses me on the head. “You’re one hell of a woman,” she says to me. “I’m lucky to know you.”
I laugh shyly. I think I am blushing. “Me too,” I say, nodding, hoping it’s clear just how much I mean it.
She shakes her head to avoid crying. “All right!” she says, slapping me lightly on the back. “Get in the car! Go home. If you need me, call me. But you can do this. You got this.”
“Thanks,” I say. Our hands lightly touch. I squeeze hers and then I walk away. I’m only a few steps from her when I turn around. “Hey, Susan?” I say. She turns around to see me. “Same goes for me. If you need me, just call.”
She smiles and nods. “You got it.”
I take the coastal highway instead of the interstate. I look out the window more often than I should. I try to appreciate each moment that I have. At one point, a song comes on the radio that I haven’t heard in years, and for four minutes, I let myself forget who I am and what I’m doing. I’m just me, dancing in a car heading north on Pacific Coast Highway and it’s not so bad. It’s not so bad at all.
When I pull into my driveway, my apartment looks bigger and higher up than I remember. I get the mail and search through it for the marriage certificate. It’s not there. However, in the mail is a check from Citibank addressed to me. I go up the steps and I let myself in the house.
It smells familiar. It’s a scent I didn’t even know I missed until I smell it. Everything is where I left it. It was frozen in time while I was in Orange County. I breathe in deeply and I don’t smell Ben here. I just smell myself.
I sit down on my couch and organize the rest of the mail. I clean up some old dishes. I make my bed. I clean out the refrigerator and then take out the trash. As I come back in, I stop and look at the envelope from Citibank. It feels petty to be thinking about how much money I’ve just inherited, but I have to open the envelope at some point. So here we go.
Fourteen thousand, two hundred sixteen dollars and forty-eight cents, paid to the order of Elsie Porter. Huh. I don’t know when I stopped considering myself Elsie Porter Ross, but it seems to have been some time ago.
Here I am, six months after I got married: husbandless and fourteen thousand dollars richer.
MAY
The gazebo ceremony takes place outside in the . . . well, gazebo,” she said to me from behind the counter. She was about fifty and appeared to be putting on a fake southern accent. That or she was just from the deep, deep South. Ben was in the bathroom and had left the planning up to me.
“Oh, it’s a bit cold, right?” I said. “I think just the simplest thing you have is fine.”
“You only get married once, honey. Don’t you want to make it special?” How did she not understand that this was special? Pomp and circumstance meant nothing to me as long as I got to be with this man. She must not have understood how lucky I was to have him. She must have thought I was marrying just anybody and I needed a gazebo to make it spectacular.
“I think we are good,” I said. “What’s this one? The simplicity package? We’ll take that one.”
“Okay,” she said. “How about rings? Do you have an engagement ring that we should match it to?”
“Nope!” I said proudly. “No engagement ring.” Honestly, the thought hadn’t even occurred to me.
“We’ll be getting her one though,” Ben said, and he came toward us.
“Oh, stop it,” I said.
“Well, do you two want silver or gold?” she asked.
“Gold,” I said, but Ben said, “silver,” at the same time.
We both quickly swapped our answers to match and missed again.
“Baby, I just want what you want,” he said to me.
“But I want what you want!” I said.
“Let’s do what you want for this because I want to eat at Hooters af
ter this and I need compromise points.”
“You want to eat at Hooters for our first meal as a married couple?”
“If it makes you feel any better, it’s because of the wings, not the boobs.”
The woman ignored us. “Okay so . . . gold?”
“Gold.” She pulled out a tray of gold bands, and Ben and I tried some on until we found ones we liked and ones that fit. Ben paid the bill, and I told him I’d pay for half of it.
“Are you joking? We’re not going Dutch on our wedding,” he said to me.
“All right, lovebirds. Do you want to order any copies of the certificate?”
Ben turned toward me, his face asking me to answer.
“Yes,” I said. “One copy should be fine, I would think.”
“Okay, I’ll add that to the final charge,” the woman said as she put her hand out expectantly. “Do you have the license?”
“Oh, not yet,” Ben said. “We need to fill that out, I guess.”
The woman put her hands down on the counter, as if to halt everything. “You need to walk down to the Marriage License Bureau. It’s about three blocks down. I can’t do anything else until you get that filled out.”
“How long will it take?” I asked.
“Half hour if there’s no line,” she said. “But there’s often a line.”
There was no line. We were seated and filling out paperwork within minutes of walking in the door.
“Oh, I didn’t bring my social security card,” he said when he got to the question about his social security number.
“Oh, I don’t think you need it,” I said. “It just asks for the number.”
Forever, Interrupted Page 24
