“Elsie, do you have a copy of your marriage certificate that you can show Mrs. Ross?”
I can feel myself shrinking in front of them. I don’t want to shrink. I want to stand tall. I want to be proud, confident. But this is all too much and I don’t have anything to show for myself.
“No, but, Susan—” I say as tears fall down my face. I feel so ugly right now, so small and stupid.
“Stop calling me that!” she screams. “You don’t even know me. Stop calling me by my name!”
“Fine,” I say. My eyes are staring forward, focused on the body in the room. My husband’s body. “Keep all of it,” I say. “I don’t care. We can sit here and scream all day but it doesn’t change anything. So I really don’t give a shit where his wallet goes.”
I put one foot in front of the other and I walk out. I leave my husband’s body there with her. And the minute my feet hit the hallway, the minute Ana has shut the door behind us, I regret walking out. I should have stayed with him until the nurse kicked me out.
Ana pushes me forward.
She puts me in the car. She buckles my seat belt. She drives slowly through town. She parks in my driveway. I don’t remember any of it happening. Suddenly, I am at my front door.
Stepping into my apartment, I have no idea what time of day it is. I have no idea how long it has been since I sat on the couch like a cavalier bitch whining about cereal in my pajamas. This apartment, the one I have loved since I moved in, the one I considered “ours” when Ben moved in, now betrays me. It hasn’t moved an inch since Ben died. It’s like it doesn’t care.
It didn’t put away his shoes sitting in the middle of the floor. It didn’t fold up the blanket he was using. It didn’t even have the decency to hide his toothbrush from plain view. This apartment is acting like nothing has changed. Everything has changed. I tell the walls he’s gone. “He’s dead. He’s not coming home.” Ana rubs my back and says, “I know, baby. I know.”
She doesn’t know. She could never know. I walk carelessly into my bedroom, hit my shoulder on the door hinge and feel nothing. I get into my side of the bed and I can smell him still. He’s still here in the sheets. I grab his pillow from his side of the bed and I smell it, choking on my own tears. I walk into the kitchen as Ana is getting me a glass of water. I walk right past her with the pillow in my hand and I grab a trash bag, shoving the pillow into it. I tie it tight, knotting the plastic over and over until it breaks off in my hand and falls onto the kitchen floor.
“What are you doing?” she asks me.
“It smells like Ben,” I answer. “I don’t want the smell to evaporate. I want to save it.”
“I don’t know if that’s going to work,” she says delicately.
“Fuck you,” I say and go back to the bed.
I start crying the minute I hit my pillow. I hate what this has made me. I’ve never told anyone to fuck off before, least of all Ana.
Ana has been my best friend since I was seventeen years old. We met the first day of college in line at the dining hall. I didn’t have anyone to sit with and she was already trying to avoid a boy. It was a telling moment for each of us. When she decided to move to Los Angeles to be an actress, I came with her. Not because I had any affinity for Los Angeles, I had never been here, but because I had such a strong affinity for her. Ana had said to me, “C’mon, you can be a librarian anywhere.” And she was absolutely right.
Here we were, nine years after meeting, her watching me like I’m going to slit my wrists. If I had a better grip on my senses, I’d say this is the real meat of friendship, but I don’t care about that right now. I don’t care about anything.