How to Talk to a Widower

by Jonathan Tropper

  So even if I was ready, which I’m not, I’ve still got to face the age-old problem of not being willing to belong to any of the clubs that would have me as a member.

  5

  THE SKY IS FUCKING WITH ME. IT’S ONE OF THOSE militantly perfect spring days, the kind that seems to be trying just a little too hard, the kind you want to smack in the face, and the sky is bluer than it has any right to be, really, an obnoxious, overbearing blue that implies that staying home is a crime against humanity. Like I’ve got anywhere to go. The neighborhood is alive with gardeners mowing lawns and trimming hedges, the mechanized hiss of twirling sprinklers and for those just joining us, it’s a beautiful day and Hailey is dead and I have nothing to do, nowhere to be.

  I’m picking the plastic shards of my cell phone out of the grass when a dark, battered Nissan with tinted windows pulls up to the curb. Angry, discordant hip-hop music and a thick cloud of stagnant cigarette smoke pour out through the open door as Russ climbs out. He’s tall and beefy like his father, dressed in baggy shorts, flip-flops, a faded Battlestar Galactica T-shirt, and an iPod strapped to his arm. Hand slaps are executed and cheerful obscenities shouted over the music. A half-filled Slurpee cup comes flying out an open back window, spilling across the sidewalk like blood spatter at a crime scene. Russ smiles and hits the roof as the car speeds off, tires screeching as it rounds the corner. I listen for the crash, but none comes. Russ has fallen in with a bad crowd these days: self-mutilators with veiled eyes under pierced eyebrows, long, messy hair and fake IDs, kids who drive around aimlessly at night, seeking out opportunities for random vandalism, hanging out in empty parking lots, getting drunk on cheap beer, blasting obscure punk rock, and talking about all the assholes in their high school. I know I should try to do something about it, especially in light of the incident with the police a few days ago, but grief and self-pity are a draining occupation, and multitasking has never been my thing.

  “Hey,” Russ says, walking up the lawn, pulling his headphones off his ears to rest around his neck. His long messy hair, the same honey color as Hailey’s, falls like a veil over his big dark eyes. It’s been almost a week since his fight in the parking lot, and the cuts on his face and neck have faded to faint pink lines.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Sorry about the other night,” he says. “I was a little fucked up.”

  “I thought you’d stick around the next morning.”

  “You were still sleeping at nine,” he says with a shrug. “Is that your cell phone?”

  “It was.”

  “Good shot. If you were aiming for the tree, I mean.”

  “I was aiming for a rabbit and hit the tree instead.”

  He nods sagely. “It happens.”

  I get up and head back to the porch, stuffing the guts of my demolished phone into my pocket. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”

  “So what, you’re like my father now?”

  “I’m just making conversation.”

  He looks at me and shakes his head. “And I’d love to answer you, I really would, but you gave up the right to ask those kinds of questions when you banished me to go live with Jim and Angie.”

  “I’m sorry about that, Russ, but Jim is your father. There wasn’t very much I could do about it.”

  “So you say,” he says. “He hates me. He’d be thrilled if you took me.”

  “You know that’s not true.”

  “You know it is.”

  From the start, I knew Russ preferred me to his father. I also knew that this was primarily a function of the fact that I had the good sense to not get caught on tape with my pants around my ankles screwing an old girlfriend, and then all but abandon Hailey and him in favor of a shiny new family the way Jim did. So while Russ was hardly thrilled when I moved in three years ago, if nothing else, I had the advantage of being the lesser of two assholes. And my parents thought I’d never amount to anything.

  It’s a tricky enough business forming a friendship with a pissed-off teenager under the best of circumstances. Now try it when you’re sleeping with his mother, when you are, quite literally, a motherfucker. Let me tell you, that requires a whole other skill set. When I first moved in, I knew I’d have to make an effort to bond with Russ so that Hailey could feel good about the whole arrangement. If she didn’t, it wasn’t like she was going to give her kid the boot. Last one hired, first one fired. And so I applied myself like a laid-back uncle, giving him lifts to school or the mall to meet his friends, taking him to the occasional weeknight movie, editing his term papers, and, more recently, taking him out for driving practice in my secondhand Saab. I was a lazy boy and I am a lazy man, and the beauty of the situation was that I wasn’t really expected to be a parent to Russ, which, based on the limited wisdom I have to offer, was a win-win situation for all involved. Once we both figured out that neither wanted anything more from the other than easy cohabitation with no strings attached, we got along just fine.

  But when Hailey died, what did he expect me to do, petition for custody? I know Jim is bad news, but I am too. I’m twenty-nine years old, for God’s sake, and I’m sad and pissed and lazy, I’m drinking too much and at some point I’m going to work up the nerve to sell the house and blow this town, and I can’t really do that if I’ve got Russ to worry about. He’s better off this way, believe me. The kid will have a few million dollars in trust from the airline settlement, so he just needs to stick it out with Jim until he turns eighteen and he’ll be home free.

  “You should hear what goes on over there at Casa Jimbo,” Russ says. “I knew he was a horny bastard, but, dude, it’s like living on a porn set. The minute they get that little step-bastard to sleep they just start going at it, for hours. My room is right under theirs, and it’s like they never stop. And Angie yells all this shit while they’re fucking, like ‘fuck me harder, fuck me harder,’ and I’m sitting down there watching the ceiling shake and thinking that if he fucks her any harder the two of them will come right through the ceiling and land in my bed, and believe me, I have been traumatized enough and I do not need that kind of shit.” He runs his fingers through his shaggy hair, pulling it off his face, and I see a splash of color on the side of his neck.

  “What’d you get, a tattoo?” I say, trying not to sound alarmed.

  “Yeah,” he says, looking away.

  “When did you do it?”

  “Last week.”

  “Let me see it.”

  He pulls back his hair to reveal a blue tadpole-shaped squiggle trailing around the bend of his neck, surrounded by orange comic-book flames. And I know it shouldn’t make me sad, I know that these days tattoos are just another accessory, like thumb rings and wrist cuffs. Oscar-winning actresses have Buddhist texts scribbled across their backs. Every girl in low-rise jeans has a floral design or a butterfly hovering over her ass crack. But still, the idea of something so permanent on this sad, angry sixteen-year-old brings a lump to my throat. That, and knowing how much it would have hurt Hailey to see it. Hailey, who was practically inconsolable the first time Russ shaved his peach-fuzz mustache. But still, it’s not like he can take it back, so there’s nothing to do but be supportive.

  “Nice,” I say weakly.

  “What is it?” Russ challenges me.

  “Flaming sperm?”

  “Fuck you.”

  “It’s a meteor.”

  “It’s a comet,” he says.

  “What’s the difference?”

  “How the fuck should I know?”

  “Okay, then. It’s a comet.”

  He rubs it protectively. “It’s Hailey’s comet.”

  The tears come to my eyes so fast, there’s just no way to stop them.

  “I know the real one is spelled differently,” Russ says, suddenly self-conscious. “But I just kind of liked the image, you know. Hailey’s comet. And she was always on my back about how bad my spelling is, so it’s kind of fitting, in a way.”

  And now I want to cry, and hug him, and go out and get
my own tattoo, all at the same time. But doing any of that would require more of me than I have in stock these days, so instead I just look away and say, “That’s cool, Russ. She would have liked it.”

  “She’d have yelled and cried and grounded me for a year.”

  “Maybe. But secretly, she would have loved it.”

  “No,” Russ says, shaking his head. “She wouldn’t have.”

  I think about it for a moment, and then nod slowly. “Yeah, I guess you’re right. But I still think it’s a nice tribute.”

  “I did it because I knew she would hate it.”

  I try to look wise, like the kind of guy who might actually know what he’s talking about. “Well, even though you can’t see it now, it’s still a tribute to her.”

  “Doug?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You are so full of shit.”

  I sigh. “Tell me something I don’t know.”

  He snorts derisively and produces a bent joint, seemingly out of thin air, and then rummages around in his pockets for a lighter.

  “Could you please not do that in front of me?” I say.

  “Why not?”

  “Because I’m your stepfather, and it’s irresponsible.”

  “I wonder,” he says. “Do you retain the title even though you didn’t defend it? I mean, Mom’s dead, and we’re in a kind of gray area here, legally speaking. Now, if you were my legal guardian—”

  “Fine,” I say. “Fire it up. Just spare me the lecture.”

  He lights up, sucking so hard that I can hear the crinkling whisper of the immolating paper, and we sit there quietly in our little Hallmark moment, my stoner stepson and me. “You know,” he says thoughtfully after a few minutes, “if you think about it, he’s only my father because he happens to have fucked my mother.”

  “Right. You know, that’s actually something I try really hard never to think about.”

  “All I’m saying is that by those standards, you’re equally qualified. More so, actually, since he demonstrated poor moral character.”

  “Yeah,” I say. “And I’m a paragon of virtue. That’s why you’re getting high right in front of me.”

  He shrugs. “So you’re progressive.”

  “I’m an asshole.”

  “Preaching to the choir,” he says emphatically, pointing to his head, and even though I know he’s just busting my balls, it hurts anyway. What can I say? I’ve got sensitive balls.

  He passes the joint in my direction, but I shake my head. “Pass.”

  “Bullshit,” he says. “I stole this from your stash.”

  “Russ,” I say softly, turning to stare right at him. “If you hate me so much, why do you come here so often? And why did you ask that cop to bring you here the other night?”

  He looks up to meet my gaze, but by then I’ve looked away. I have not been able to sustain eye contact with anyone, strangers and loved ones alike, ever since Hailey died. I’m not sure what that’s about, but there it is. Russ shakes his head at me, his face contorting angrily as he fights back the tears. “This was my home, man,” he says. “You just got here, and … ” His voice cracks and he says, “Shit,” and turns away.

  “Russ,” I say.

  “Forget it,” he says. “I just came by to apologize for the other night. It won’t happen again.”

  “I don’t want to forget it.” I reach out to him, but he hurls himself out of the porch swing, flicking the joint away in disgust. “What’s going on with you, Russ?”

  “Nothing. Life’s a fucking dream. I gotta go.”

  “I wish you wouldn’t.”

  “Yeah,” he says, stepping off the porch. “Well, when was the last time one of us got what we wished for anyway?” He heads down the driveway, pulling on his headphones to drown out the world with the angry soundtrack of his life, and all I can do is what I always seem to do, watch him go.

  I don’t believe in heaven or God or an afterlife. I don’t believe that Hailey’s gone to a better place, that she’s an angel watching over me from above. I believe her soul was obliterated in the same instant her body was, when her plane hit the mountain at three hundred miles per hour and crumpled like an empty soda can. But as I sit sprawled worthlessly on the porch, eyes closed, sucking the last few puffs out of Russ’s discarded joint, I can feel Hailey so strongly that it momentarily stops the breath in my smoke-filled throat and makes the hairs stand up on the back of my neck. Hey, babe, I say to her in my mind. Is that you I feel, or just the hole where you used to be?

  But then the moment is gone, and it’s just me again, sitting on my porch rocker, lazily getting stoned in the middle of this stupidly beautiful day. I watch my sad, angry stepson growing smaller and smaller as he heads down the street and think of Hailey’s comet, flaming against his skin, and wonder how badly it hurt to get it. I watch him until he disappears, and then I stare up unblinking into the ridiculously blue sky and I do too.

  6

  LANEY POTTER SHOWS UP AROUND NOON TO DROP off a meatloaf for my dinner. Hailey’s friends set up a rotation in the weeks after the crash, and while I’ve long since convinced most of them that it’s no longer necessary, Laney, who had Tuesdays, has yet to relinquish them. As soon as she arrives, she puts her meatloaf in the fridge and hugs me, kissing my cheek on her way in. She holds me tightly against the full length of her body, not at all the way a married woman should hug a single man, and she touches me a lot when she talks, asks me if I’m doing okay, and she would love it if I would just fall apart in front of her, so that she could hold me and comfort me. Laney is a rowdy redhead, big boned and curvy, with the bee-stung lips of a porn star, and a husband named Dave, a lawyer about fifteen years older than me. At thirty-four, she was the only other spouse in our circle from my generation, and she’d always been somewhat flirty with me, in a harmless, joking way, like we were in this together, but lately she’s turned things up a few notches. Nothing that couldn’t be explained away if it backfired, but there’s a pointed invitation in these comprehensive hugs of hers.

  “You don’t look too good,” she says, pulling back from her embrace, but not yet releasing me, her lower body still incidentally pressed up against mine.

  “I’ve been looking at pictures and crying.” It’s not what I mean to say, but it’s what comes out anyway. It’s such a strange condition I have; I can’t look anyone in the eye for more than a second or two, but ask me a simple question and I’ll pour my heart out uncensored. When Laney rang the doorbell, I’d been lying on the living room floor going through a shoebox of pictures of Hailey and me—we hadn’t gotten around to albums yet—waiting for the last bits of afternoon sunlight to stop pouring through the windows to illuminate the galaxy of floating spores, so that I could legally break out the Jack Daniel’s.

  “Poor Doug,” Laney says, pulling me back into her embrace, and I can feel her hardened nipples, like two sand-smoothed pebbles against my chest, can smell her skin in the hollow of her neck, that earthy scent unique to redheads, and I actually find myself thinking about opening my mouth against her neck, running my tongue against her skin, and seeing what will happen. It’s been a shitty, shitty day, and the idea of undressing the voluptuous and seemingly game Laney Potter, of losing myself in the folds of her soft dimpled flesh, is suddenly very appealing. I can tell that she’ll be an energetic lover, that she’ll be loud and wild and without boundaries of any kind, and when was the last time I had that kind of sex? I haven’t gotten laid in a year, and maybe a little slap and tickle with Laney Potter would be just the thing to cheer me up.

  But even as I feel myself growing hard against her, even as I feel her heartbeat accelerating in her chest and her breath against my ear becoming more pronounced, I know it would be a mistake. She’ll start coming over every week, maybe even more than once a week, and before I know it we’ll be in some twisted relationship, and then she’ll start complaining to me about Dave and how she’s thinking of leaving him, and so I’ll have to start avoiding her, which w
on’t be easy since I never leave the house, and all of this because in a moment of weakness I mistook my own immense loneliness for garden-variety horniness.

  “I’m sorry,” I say, stepping out of her embrace. “I’m a little out of it today.”

  “Can I do anything?” she says, her face ever so slightly flushed, her eyes flitting anxiously around the kitchen.

  “I think I’ll just have some dinner and go to bed.”

  “I hate to think of you all alone here when you’re not feeling well. You want me to stay for a while?”

  She’s talking and I’m talking, but there are other conversations going on, between our carefully averted eyes, our nervously animated hands, and our throbbing groins, and that’s just too many conversations for me to follow. It’s like blasting the radio while you’re watching television, vacuuming, and talking on the phone.

  “No, I’m fine,” I say, walking ahead of her toward the door. “Really. I just need to get some sleep.”

  “I can tuck you in,” she says, and I can feel her eyes on my back.

  “It’s okay. Thanks.”

  At the door, she hugs me again, and this time I kiss her cheek, ridiculously proud of myself for having resisted the temptation. I’ve never slept with a married woman, less out of principle than because it simply never came up, but something tells me that now would be a bad time to try it. Dave Potter, Laney’s husband, is a lawyer in private practice and partners with Mike Sandleman, the man who will be marrying my sister Debbie in a few weeks. Did you follow that? The interconnectedness of everything? Your wife dies dramatically and your life becomes a goddamn soap opera.