“I want to go to his grave,” she says. “Maybe it will be easier there.”
“Okay.” I nod. “It’s too late to go today but we can go up first thing tomorrow morning.”
“Okay,” she says. “That will give me time to think about what I want to say.”
“Okay, good.”
Susan pats me on the hand and gets up. “I’m going to go to bed early then. My mind needs a rest from this.” Maybe she really does need a rest, but I know she’s going in there to cry in peace.
“Okay,” I say. When she’s gone, I look around the room and walk aimlessly around the house. I go into Ben’s bedroom and I throw myself on his bed. I breathe in the air. I stare at the walls until I can no longer see them. I know that I am done here. I may not be ready for my life back, but it is time to stop avoiding it. I lie in Ben’s room for as long as I can stand it and then I get up and rush out.
I walk over to my room to start to gather my clothes. I want to do it quickly, before I lose my nerve. There is a part of me that wants to stay in this purgatory for as long as I can, that wants to lie out by the pool all day and watch TV all night and never live my days. But if Ben could hear me, if Ben could see me, that isn’t what Ben would want. Also, I don’t think I’d want that for myself.
I get up in the morning and collect the rest of my things. I walk out into the kitchen and Susan is there, dressed and ready to go, drinking a cup of coffee, sitting at the kitchen counter. She sees that my things are packed behind me and she puts down her coffee. She doesn’t say anything. She just smiles knowingly. It’s a sad smile, but a proud smile. A bittersweet and melancholy smile. I feel like I’m going away to college.
“We should take two cars,” she says. She says it as a realization to herself but also, I think, to spare me from having to say it. From having to spell out that after this, I’m going home.
Susan gets there a bit before I do, and as I drive up, I see her standing at the entrance to the cemetery. I thought perhaps that she would have started without me. That she might want time alone with him, but it looks like she needs a partner in this. I don’t blame her. I certainly wouldn’t be doing this alone. I park the car and catch up to her.
“Ready?” I say.
“Ready,” she says. We start the long walk to his gravestone. When we get there, the headstone looks so brand-new it’s almost tragic, like when you see grave markers so close together you know it was a child. Susan kneels on the ground in front of Ben’s grave and faces his headstone. I sit down next to her.
She breathes in deeply and seriously. It is not a casual breath. She pulls a piece of paper out of her back pocket and looks at me, shyly. I nod my head at her, urging her, and she starts to read. Her voice is without much emotion at first; she truly is reading the words on the page rather than speaking.