I look her in the eye and tell her the truth. “You can’t do anything. Nothing you could possibly do would make this any easier.”
“I know that,” she says. “But there must be something I can do just to . . . ” Her eyes are watering. I shake my head. I don’t know what to say. I don’t want anyone to make me feel better. I can’t even think past this very moment in time. I can’t think forward to this evening. I don’t know how I’ll make it through the next few minutes, let alone the next few hours. And yet, I don’t know anything anyone can do to make those minutes easier. No matter how Ana acts, how hard she scrubs my house clean, how gentle she is with me, no matter if I take a shower, if I run down the street naked, if I drink every ounce of alcohol in the house, Ben is still not with me. Ben will never be with me again. I suddenly feel like I might not make it through the day, and if Ana isn’t here to watch me, I don’t know what I’ll do.
I sit beside her. “You can stay here. Stay near me. It won’t make it easier, but it will make me believe in myself more, I think. Just stay here.” I’m too emotional to cry. My face and body are so consumed with dread, there’s no room left to produce anything.
“You got it. I’m here. I’m here and I won’t leave.” She grabs me, her arm around my shoulders, squeezing me. “Maybe you should eat,” she says.
“No, I’m not hungry,” I say. I don’t anticipate ever being hungry again. What does hunger even feel like? Who can remember?
“I know you’re not hungry, but you still have to eat,” she says. “If you could have anything in the whole world, what could you manage to get down? Don’t worry about health or expense. Just if you could have anything.”
Normally, if someone asked me that, I’d say I wanted a Big Mac. I always just want a Big Mac, the largest container of fries McDonald’s has, and then a pile of Reese’s peanut butter cups. My palate has never been trained to appreciate fine foods. I never crave sushi or a nice chardonnay. I crave fries and Coca-Cola. But not now. To me right now, a Big Mac might as well be a staple gun. That is how likely I am to eat it.
“No, nothing. I don’t think I could keep anything down.”
“Soup?”
“No, nothing.”
“You have to eat at some point today. Promise me you’ll eat at some point today?”
“Sure,” I say. But I know I won’t. I’m lying. I have no intention of carrying through on that promise. What’s the point of a promise anyway? How can we expect people to stick to their word about anything when the world around us is so arbitrary, unreliable, and senseless?
“You need to go to the funeral home today,” she says. “Want me to call them now?”
I hear her and I nod. That’s all I can do. So it’s what I do.
Ana picks up her phone and calls the funeral home. Apparently, I was supposed to call yesterday. I can hear the receptionist say something about “being behind.” Ana doesn’t dare pass this information along to me, but I can tell by her tone on the phone that they are giving her a hard time. Let them come at me. Just let them. I’d be happy to scream at a group of people profiting from tragedy.