“No. Don’t ma’am me. Tell me where he is. Let us through.” The man in the red tie makes his way over to her and tries to calm her down.
He and Ana speak for a few minutes. I can see him try to touch Ana, to console her, and she jerks her shoulder out of his reach. He is just doing his job. Everyone here is just doing their job. What a bunch of assholes.
I see an older woman fly through the front doors. She looks about sixty with long, reddish brown hair in waves around her face. She has mascara running down her cheeks, a brown purse over her shoulder, a blackish brown shawl across her chest. She has tissues in her hands. I wish my grief were composed enough to have tissues. I’ve been wiping snot on my sleeves and neckline. I’ve been letting tears fall into puddles on the floor.
She runs up to the front desk and then resigns herself to sit. When she turns to face me briefly, I know exactly who she is. I stare at her. I can’t take my eyes off of her. She is my mother-in-law, a stranger by all accounts. I saw her picture a few times in a photo album, but she has never seen my face.
I remove myself and head into the bathroom. I do not know how to introduce myself to her. I do not know how to tell her that we are both here for the same man. That we are both grieving over the same loss. I stand in front of the mirror and I look at myself. My face is red and blotchy. My eyes are bloodshot. I look at my face and I think that I had someone who loved this face. And now he’s gone. And now no one loves my face anymore.
I step back out of the bathroom and she is gone. I turn to find Ana grabbing my arm. “You can go in,” she says and leads me to the man in the red tie, who leads me through the double doors.
The man in the red tie stops outside a room and asks me if I want him to go in with me. Why would I want him to go in with me? I just met this man. This man means nothing to me. The man inside this room means everything to me. Nothing isn’t going to help losing everything. I open the door and there are other people in the room, but all I can see is Ben’s body.
“Excuse me!” my mother-in-law says through her tears. It is meek but terrifying. I ignore it.
I grab his face in my hands and it’s cold to the touch. His eyelids are shut. I’ll never see his eyes again. It occurs to me they might be gone. I can’t look. I don’t want to figure it out. His face is bruised and I don’t know what that means. Does that mean he was hurt before he died? Did he die there alone and lonely on the street? Oh my God, did he suffer? I feel faint. There’s a sheet over his chest and legs. I’m scared to move the sheet. I’m scared that there is too much of Ben exposed, too much of him to see. Or that there is too much of him that is gone.
“Security!” she calls out into the air.
As I hold on to Ben’s hand and a security guard shows up at the door, I look at my mother-in-law. She has no reason to know who I am. She has no reason to understand what I am doing here, but she has to know I love her son. That much has to be obvious by now.
“Please,” I beg her. “Please, Susan, don’t do this.”
Susan looks at me curiously, confused. By the sheer fact that I know her name, she knows she must be missing something. She very subtly nods and looks at the security guard. “I’m sorry. Give us a moment?” He leaves the room, and Susan looks at the nurse. “You too. Thank you.” The nurse leaves the room, shutting the door.
Susan looks tortured, terrified, and yet composed, as if she has only enough poise to get through the next five seconds and then she will fall apart.
“His hand has a wedding ring on it,” she says to me. I stare at her and try to keep breathing. I meekly lift up my own left hand to match.
“We were married a week and a half ago,” I say through tears. I can feel the corners of my lips pulling down. They feel so heavy.
“What is your name?” she asks me, now shaking.
“Elsie,” I say. I am terrified of her. She looks angry and vulnerable, like a teenage runaway.
“Elsie what?” she chokes.