Ben was still asleep when I woke up. I just watched him sleep. I put my head on his chest and listened to his heartbeat. I read the news on my cell phone. Even the most ordinary things felt like Christmas morning to me. Everything had this tint of peace to it. I turned on the TV and watched it at a low volume while Ben slept next to me. I waited for him to wake up.
When it got to be 11:00 a.m., I turned to him and lightly shook him awake.
“Wake up, baby,” I said. “We have to get up soon.”
Ben barely woke from his stupor. He put his arm around me and buried his face in his pillow.
“Come on, Husband,” I said to him. “You gotta get up.”
He opened his eyes and smiled at me. He lifted his mouth off the pillow and said, “What’s the rush, honey? We have all the time in the world.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I owe a great deal of thanks to my agent, Carly Watters, and my editor, Greer Hendricks. You both saw what I was trying to do, you believed in this story, and you made it better, brighter, and more heartbreaking. Thank you. And thank you to Sarah Cantin at Atria for your faith in this book. You are the gatekeeper and it’s you who let me through.
I also want to thank the friends who cheered me on along the way: Erin Cox, Julia Furlan, Jesse Hill, Andy Bauch, Jess Reynoso, Colin and Ashley Rodger, Emily Giorgio, Bea Arthur, Caitlin Doyle, Tim Pavlik, Kate Sullivan, Phillip Jordan, Tamara Hunter, and Sara Arrington. Your collective faith in me made me stupid enough to think I could do this.
It’s crucial that I acknowledge the bosses and teachers who believed in me: Frank Calore, Andrew Crick, Edith Hill, Sarah Finn, and Randi Hiller. I am so grateful to have had you all as mentors in my life.
Thank you to the Beverly Hills Public Library for giving me a quiet place to write that sells delicious fudge and strong iced tea, and to the community at Polytechnic School for being so supportive.
I cannot let this opportunity go by without mentioning the man who lost the love of his life and posted about it on Craigslist. You, sir, are a far more beautiful writer than I and the tenderness with which you speak brings me to tears every time I read your post. And I’ve read it a lot.
To the Reid and Hanes families, thank you for embracing me with the warmth you have.
To Martha Steeves, you will always be in my heart.
I have endless gratitude for the Jenkins and Morris families. To my mother, Mindy, my brother, Jake, and my grandmother, Linda: Your belief that I can do anything I set my mind to is why I believe it. I can’t think of a greater gift to give a person.
And lastly, to Alex Reid, the man who taught me how a perfectly sane woman can fall madly in love and get married in a matter of months: Thank you for being the inspiration for every love story I find myself writing.
FOREVER, INTERRUPTED
Taylor Jenkins Reid
A Readers Club Guide
QUESTIONS AND TOPICS FOR DISCUSSION
1. The plot of Forever, Interrupted isn’t strictly linear and, instead, alternates between Ben and Elsie’s courtship and Elsie’s mourning. How did this affect your reading experience? Why do you think the author made this narrative choice?
2. At various points throughout the novel, Elsie and Ben voice the concern that perhaps their relationship is progressing too quickly. Before reading this, would you have thought that two people could be ready to marry after six months of dating? Did Forever, Interrupted affect your opinion one way or another?
3. Romantic love may seem like the driving force behind Forever, Interrupted, but in what ways does friendship also shape the novel? In particular, how does seeing Elsie in the role of a friend—and not just as Ben’s girlfriend and wife—add to our understanding of her? What do her interactions with Ana, as well as with Mr. Callahan, reveal about her as a character?
4. Elsie is furious with Ana when she tries to give her a copy of The Year of Magical Thinking, Joan Didion’s memoir about losing her husband, and laments, “My job is books, information. I based my career on the idea that words on pages bound and packaged help people. That they make people grow, they show people lives they’ve never seen. They teach people about themselves, and here I am, at my lowest point, rejecting help from the one place I always believed it would be”. Do you share Elsie’s perspective about the power of books? Why might this belief system be so painful for her to embrace immediately after Ben’s death?
5. Do you understand why Ben never told his mother about his relationship with Elsie? Why do you think Elsie didn’t push him harder on this?
6. Why is it important to Elsie that she and Ben were legally married? What do you think about Susan’s point of view, that, “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 . . . 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”?
7. Turn to the scene where Ben and Elsie are driving to Las Vegas and, as a group, read aloud the argument that they get into. Could you see each point of view, or did you side more with Elsie or Ben? Should one of them have handled the conversation differently?
8. When Elsie first arrives at Susan’s house, she realizes: “I can’t help but think that maybe because it’s okay to cry, I can’t”. Can you find some other concrete examples of the grieving process that are illustrated in the book? Were there particular moments of Elsie’s (or Susan’s) mourning that especially resonated with you?
9. Ana and Mr. Callahan each try to offer Elsie words of comfort and wisdom after Ben dies. At the time, she mostly rejects what they have to say. How has Elsie’s point of view changed by the end of the novel—and have Ana’s and Mr. Callahan’s perspectives shifted as well?
10. Elsie has a very distant relationship with her parents. How do you think their absence from her life affects first her courtship with Ben—and then later, her experience of mourning? Do Elsie’s views on family change over the course of the narrative? Do you think the novel distinguishes between what constitutes friendship and what constitutes family?
11. Ben and Elsie’s relationship is twice likened to a “supernova.” Discuss the two different contexts that this comparison appears in. Ultimately, do you think it is an applicable analogy for their love?
ENHANCE YOUR BOOK CLUB
1. Pretend you are casting the film version of Forever, Interrupted. Who would play Elsie and Ben? Susan and Ana? What about Mr. Callahan?
2. Revisit Susan’s quote in question #6. Do you think this argument could be applied to the institution of marriage more generally? That is to say, if it doesn’t matter whether Elsie and Ben were married for nine days or zero, does marriage matter at all?
3. In The Year of Magical Thinking (the book Ana buys for Elsie), Joan Didion writes: “Marriage is memory, marriage is time. Marriage is not only time: it is also, paradoxically, the denial of time.” What do you think she means by this?
4. The evening of their first date, Ben and Elsie prepare to order Chinese food and quickly discover that they do not agree on their rice preferences. When Elsie suggests that they get two different orders of rice, Ben responds, “Maybe when the romance is gone we can do that, but not tonight”. Can you think of something that has in the past (or would in the future) signify to you that you’re past the early stage of a relationship? How does a concept like “romance” in a relationship change or manifest differently over time?
5. If Ben hadn’t gone out for Fruity Pebbles that night—if he had lived—what do you think would have been in store for Elsie and Ben’s marriage? And do you think Elsie would be as close to Susan?
Read on for a first look at Taylor Jenkins Reid’s compelling new novel
After I Do
part one
WHERE DOES THE GOOD GO?
We are in the parking lot of Dodger Stadium, and once again, Ryan has forgotten where we left
the car. I keep telling him that it’s in Lot C, but he doesn’t believe me.
“No,” he says, for the tenth time. “I specifically remember turning right when we got here, not left.”
It’s incredibly dark, the path in front of us lit only by lampposts featuring oversized baseballs. I looked at the sign when we parked.
“You remember wrong,” I say, my tone clipped and pissed-off. We’ve already been here too long, and I hate the chaos of Dodger Stadium. It’s a warm summer night, so I have that to be thankful for, but it’s ten P.M., and the rest of the fans are pouring out of the stands, the two of us fighting through a sea of blue and white jerseys. We’ve been at this for about twenty minutes.
“I don’t remember wrong,” he says, walking ahead and not even bothering to look back at me as he speaks. “You’re the one with the bad memory.”
“Oh, I see,” I say, mocking him. “Just because I lost my keys this morning, suddenly, I’m an idiot?”
He turns and looks at me; I use the moment to try to catch up to him. The parking lot is hilly and steep. I’m slow.
“Yeah, Lauren, that’s exactly what I said. I said you were an idiot.”
“I mean, you basically did. You said that you know what you’re talking about, like I don’t.”
“Just help me find the goddamn car so we can go home.”
I don’t respond. I simply follow him as he moves farther and farther away from Lot C. Why he wants to go home is a mystery to me. None of this will be any better at home. It hasn’t been for months.
He walks around in a long, wide circle, going up and down the hills of the Dodger Stadium parking lot. I follow close behind, waiting with him at the crosswalks, crossing at his pace. We don’t say anything. I think of how much I want to scream at him. I think of how I wanted to scream at him last night, too. I think of how much I’ll probably want to scream at him tomorrow. I can only imagine he’s thinking much of the same. And yet the air between us is perfectly still, uninterrupted by any of our thoughts. So often lately, our nights and weekends are full of tension, a tension that is only relieved by saying good-bye or good night.
After the initial rush of people leaving the parking lot, it becomes a lot easier to see where we are and where we parked.
“There it is,” Ryan says, not bothering to point for further edification. I turn my head to follow his gaze. There it is. Our small black Honda.
Right in Lot C.
I smile at him. It’s not a kind smile.
He smiles back. His isn’t kind, either.
ELEVEN AND A HALF YEARS AGO
It was the middle of my sophomore year of college. My freshman year had been a lonely one. UCLA was not as inviting as I’d thought it might be when I applied. It was hard for me to meet people. I went home a lot on weekends to see my family. Well, really, I went home to see my younger sister, Rachel. My mom and my little brother, Charlie, were secondary. Rachel was the person I told everything to. Rachel was the one I missed when I ate alone in the dining hall, and I ate alone in the dining hall more than I cared to admit.
At the age of nineteen, I was much shier than I’d been at seventeen, graduating from high school toward the top of my class, my hand cramping from signing so many yearbooks. My mom kept asking me all through my freshman year of college if I wanted to transfer. She kept saying that it was OK to look someplace else, but I didn’t want to. I liked my classes. “I just haven’t found my stride yet,” I said to her every time she asked. “But I will. I’ll find it.”
I started to find it when I took a job in the mailroom. Most nights, it was one or two other people and me, a dynamic in which I thrived. I was good in small groups. I could shine when I didn’t have to struggle to be heard. And after a few months of shifts in the mailroom, I was getting to know a lot of people. Some of them I really liked. And some of those people really liked me, too. By the time we broke for Christmas that year, I was excited to go back in January. I missed my friends.
When classes began again, I found myself with a new schedule that put me in a few buildings I’d never been in before. I was starting to take psychology classes since I’d fulfilled most of my gen eds. And with this new schedule, I started running into the same guy everywhere I went. The fitness center, the bookstore, the elevators of Franz Hall.
He was tall and broad-shouldered. He had strong arms, round around the biceps, barely fitting into the sleeves of his shirts. His hair was light brown, his face often marked with stubble. He was always smiling, always talking to someone. Even when I saw him walking alone, he seemed to have the confidence of a person with a mission.
I was in line to enter the dining hall when we finally spoke. I was wearing the same gray shirt I’d worn the day before, and it occurred to me as I spotted him a bit farther up in the line that he might notice.
After he swiped his ID to get in, he hung back behind his friends and carried on a conversation with the guy running the card machine. When I got up to the front of the line, he stopped his conversation and looked at me.
“Are you following me or what?” he said, looking right into my eyes and smiling.
I was immediately embarrassed, and I thought he could see it.
“Sorry, stupid joke,” he said. “I’ve just been seeing you everywhere lately.” I took my card back. “Can I walk with you?”
“Yeah,” I said. I was meeting my mailroom friends, but I didn’t see them there yet anyway. And he was cute. That was a lot of what swayed me. He was cute.
“Where are we going?” he asked me. “What line?”
“We are going to the grill,” I said. “That is, if you’re standing in line with me.”
“That’s actually perfect. I have been dying for a patty melt.”
“The grill it is, then.”
It was quiet as we stood in line together, but he was trying hard to keep the conversation going.
“Ryan Lawrence Cooper,” he said, putting his hand out. I laughed and shook it. His grip was tight. I got the distinct feeling that if he did not want this handshake to end, there was nothing I could do about it. That’s how strong his hand felt.
“Lauren Maureen Spencer,” I said. He let go.
I had pictured him as smooth and confident, poised and charming, and he was those things to a certain degree. But as we talked, he seemed to be stumbling a bit, not sure of the right thing to say. This cute guy who had seemed so much surer of himself than I could ever be turned out to be . . . entirely human. He was just a person who was good-looking and probably funny and just comfortable enough with himself to seem as if he understood the world better than the rest of us. But he didn’t, really. He was just like me. And suddenly, that made me like him a whole lot more than I realized. And that made me nervous. My stomach started to flutter. My palms started to sweat.
“So, it’s OK, you can admit it,” I said, trying to be funny. “It’s you who have actually been stalking me.”
“I admit it,” he said, and then quickly reversed his story. “No! Of course not. But you have noticed it, right? It’s like suddenly you’re everywhere.”
“You’re everywhere,” I said, stepping up in line as it moved. “I’m just in my normal places.”
“You mean you’re in my normal places.”
“Maybe we’re just cosmically linked,” I joked. “Or we have similar schedules. The first time I saw you was on the quad, I think. And I’ve been killing time there between Intro to Psych and Statistics. So you must have picked up a class around that time on South Campus, right?”
“You’ve unintentionally revealed two things to me, Lauren,” Ryan said, smiling.
“I have?” I said.
“Yep.” He nodded. “Less important is that I now know you’re a psych major and two of the classes you take. If I was a stalker, that would be a gold mine.”
“OK.” I nodded. “Although
if you were any decent stalker, you would have known that already.”
“Regardless, a stalker is a stalker.”
We were finally at the front of the line, but Ryan seemed more focused on me than on the fact that it was time to order. I looked away from him only long enough to order my dinner. “Can I get a grilled cheese, please?” I asked the cook.
“And you?” the cook asked Ryan.
“Patty melt, extra cheese,” Ryan said, leaning forward and accidentally grazing my forearm with his sleeve. I felt just the smallest jolt of electricity.
“And the second thing?” I said.
“Hm?” Ryan said, looking back at me, already losing his train of thought.
“You said I revealed two things.”
“Oh!” Ryan smiled and moved his tray closer to mine on the counter. “You said you noticed me in the quad.”
“Right.”
“But I didn’t see you then.”
“OK,” I said, not clear what he meant.
“So technically speaking, you noticed me first.”
I smiled at him. “Touché,” I said. The cook handed me my grilled cheese. He handed Ryan his patty melt. We took our trays and headed to the soda machine.
“So,” Ryan said, “since you’re the pursuer here, I guess I’ll just have to wait for you to ask me out.”
“What?” I asked, halfway between shocked and mortified.
“Look,” he said, “I can be very patient. I know you have to work up the courage, you have to find a way to talk to me, you have to make it seem casual.”
“Uh-huh,” I said. I reached for a glass and thrust it under the ice machine. The ice machine roared and then produced three measly ice cubes. Ryan stood beside me and thwacked the side of it. An avalanche of ice fell into my glass. I thanked him.
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