“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.