Forever, Interrupted(67)

“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.”