“Hmm?”
“I want to speak at his funeral.”
“Oh, certainly. I’ll speak to Mrs. Ross about it.”
“No,” I say sternly. “I am speaking at the funeral.”
I can hear him whispering and then I hear hold music. When he comes back on he says, “Okay, Elsie. You’re welcome to speak if you’d like to.” He adds, “It will be Saturday morning in Orange County. I’ll send you further details shortly,” and then he wishes me well.
I get off the phone, and as much as I want to congratulate myself for standing up to her, I know that, if Susan had said no, I wouldn’t have been able to do much about it. I’m not exactly sure how I gave her all the power, but I gave it to her. For the first time, it doesn’t feel like Ben was just alive and well a second ago. It feels like he’s been gone forever.
Ana heads back to her place to walk her dog. I should offer for her to bring the dog here, but I get the impression Ana needs a few hours every day to get away from me, to get away from this. It’s the same thing. I am this. When she gets back, I’m in the same place I was when she left. She asks if I’ve eaten. She doesn’t like the look on my face.
“This is absurd, Elsie. You have to eat something. I’m not messing around anymore.” She opens the refrigerator. “You can have pancakes. Eggs? It looks like you have some bacon.” She opens the pack of bacon and smells it. It’s clearly putrid judging from the look on her face. “Never mind, no bacon. Unless . . . I can go get some bacon! Would you eat bacon?”
“No,” I say. “No, please do not leave me to get bacon.”
The doorbell rings, and it’s so loud and jarring that I almost jump out of my skin. I turn and stare at the door. Ana finally goes to answer it herself.
It’s a goddamn flower deliveryman.
“Elsie Porter?” he says through my screen door.
“You can tell him there’s no one here by that name,” I say to Ana. She ignores me and opens the screen to let him in.
“Thank you,” she says to him. He gives her a large white bouquet and leaves. She shuts the door and places it on the table.
“These are gorgeous,” she says. “Do you want to know who they’re from?” She grabs the card before I answer.
“Are they for the wedding or the funeral?” I ask.
Ana is quiet as she looks at the card. “The funeral.” She swallows hard. It wasn’t nice of me to make her say that.
“They are from Lauren and Simon,” Ana says. “Do you want to thank them or should I?”
Ben and I used to double-date with Lauren and Simon. How am I supposed to face them myself? “Will you do it?” I ask her.
“I’ll do it if you’ll eat something. How about pancakes?”
“Will you just run point on everyone?” I ask. “Will you tell everyone the news? I don’t want to tell them myself.”
“If you make me a list,” she says. She pushes further. “And you eat some pancakes.”
I agree to eat the damn pancakes. If you don’t put maple syrup on them, they taste like nothing. I think I can choke down some nothing. As for the list, it’s a silly task. She knows everyone I know. They are her friends too.
She starts to grab bowls and ingredients, pans and sprays. Everything seems so easy for her. Each movement doesn’t feel like it might be her last, the way mine feel. She just picks up the pancake mix like it’s nothing, like it’s not the heaviest box in the world.
She sprays cooking spray on a pan and lights the burner. “So, we have two things we have to go over this morning and neither of them are pretty.”
“Okay.”
When she’s got the first pancake under control she turns to me, the spatula wet with batter and dangling in her hand on her hip. I stare at it while she talks, wondering if it will drip onto the kitchen floor.