Forever, Interrupted(84)

Dave chuckled to himself and started to walk away. “I’ll let you kids calm down,” he said and, before he made it through the door, “You know, I marry a lot of people, but I have a feeling about you two.”

Ben and I looked at each other and smiled. “Do you think he says that to everyone?” Ben asked.

“Probably,” I said, and I threw myself onto his body. “Are you ready to go to eat wings?”

“In a minute,” he said, running his hands through my hair and then pulling me closer. “I want to spend a few seconds looking at my wife.”





NOVEMBER


I pick up the check and I get in the car. I go to Citibank and cash it. I have a purpose and an energy I’ve lacked for some time, but I know what I want to do and I know I can do it.

The bank teller cashes the check somewhat hesitantly. She has no reason not to cash it, but I imagine she doesn’t often have a twenty-six-year-old woman come in and cash a fourteen-thousand-dollar check. I ask for it in hundreds.

It won’t fit in my wallet, so I have to take it in a few money envelopes. I get in my car and I drive to the biggest bookstore I can find. I walk into the store feeling like my purse is on fire, and my mind is reeling. I am wandering in circles before an employee asks if she can help. I ask her how to find the young adult section, and the young woman leads me to it. She splays her hand out to show me the shelves—stacks and stacks of books, brightly colored with titles in large display print.

“I’ll take it,” I say.

“What?” she says back to me.

“Can you help me get it to the register?”

“The whole section?” she asks me, shocked.

It’s too many books to fit in my car, too many books to take anywhere by myself, so the store agrees to have them delivered. I take three stacks myself and put them in my car, and then I drive myself to the Fairfax Library.

I see Lyle the minute I walk in, and he comes over to me.

“Hey, Elsie. Are you okay?”

“I’m good,” I say. “Can you help me get some stuff out of my car?”

“Sure.”

Lyle asks me how I’ve been and if I feel like coming back to work. He seems eager not to talk about my “episode,” and I am thankful for that. I tell him I will be back at work soon and then we make our way to my car.

I open the trunk.

“What’s this?” he says.

“This is the beginning of the Ben Ross Young Adult Section,” I say.

“What?”

“I’m having another truckload delivered tomorrow and donated to the library in Ben’s name.”

“Wow,” he says. “That’s very generous of you.”

“There’s only one stipulation,” I say.

“Okay?”

“When the books start to smell musty, we gotta get rid of them. Donate them to another library.”

Lyle laughs. “What?”

I grab a book from the trunk and fan its pages in front of Lyle’s face. I smell them myself. “Smell how clean and new that smells?” I say.

“Sure,” Lyle says.

“Once they start smelling like library books, we’re gonna donate them to another library and replace them with this.” I hand Lyle the rest of the cash. It’s wrapped in an envelope, and I’m sure it looks like we’re dealing drugs.

“What the . . . ” Lyle says to me. “Put that away!”

I laugh, finally seeing this from his perspective. “I should probably just write a check . . . ”

Lyle laughs. “Probably. But you don’t have to do this.”

“I want to,” I say. “Can we have a plaque made?” I ask.

“Sure,” he says. “Absolutely.”

“Awesome.” I put some books in his arms and grab some myself, and we head into the library.

“You’re sure you’re okay, Elsie?” he asks me as we head into the building.

“Positive.”

Ana comes over for dinner. We eat, just the two of us, on my couch and we drink wine until it’s time to stop. I laugh with her and I smile. And when she goes home that night, I still have Ben in my heart and in my mind. I don’t lose him just by having a good time without him. I don’t lose him by being myself with her.





DECEMBER


I give myself time to adjust, and then one morning when I feel up to it, I go back to work. The air in Los Angeles has officially cooled down and hovers around forty-five degrees. I put on a jacket I haven’t worn since last winter and I get in my car. While a part of me feels shaky about this next part, the part where I start my job again for real and I put the past behind me, I walk through the doors. I walk up to the admin offices and I sit down at my desk. There aren’t a lot of people in the office yet this morning, but the few that are clap for me as I walk in. I see there’s a major donor pin on my desk. They aren’t clapping for me because I’m a widow back at work. They are clapping for me because I did something good for the library. I am something to them other than a woman who lost her husband. There is more to me than that.

The day goes by as days at work do. I find myself enjoying the camaraderie of my job for the first time in months. I like being needed here. I like talking to people about books. I like it when kids ask where to find something and I can squeeze in a mini-lesson on the Dewey decimal system.