Forever, Interrupted(68)

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.”