Like on my seventh-grade class trip to Philadelphia, on a dare, I scooted quietly up some roped-off stairs in Benjamin Franklin’s house. I figured I would cement my place in history by taking a leak in old Ben’s toilet. I got caught and hustled from the building, and was sentenced to spend the rest of the afternoon on the bus. The driver was cool, though. He bought me McDonald’s and let me look through the extensive and well-preserved Playboy collection he kept in a cardboard box under his seat, forever linking in my mind the Liberty Bell and the puckered lips and conical, air-brushed breasts of April’s playmate of the month. Her name was Janelle and she liked rock climbing, water sports, and men who weren’t afraid to sweat. The point being, there are some things that should just stay roped off.
But as bad as the house is, I rarely leave it. Because the pain is my last link to her, so as much as it hurts, I wrap it around myself like a blanket, like a teenaged girl cutting jagged lines on her inner thigh with a razor blade, inflicting the hurt on myself just because I need to feel something. I’m not ready for time to heal this wound, but I also know I’m powerless to stop it. And knowing that makes me fight harder than ever to hold on to the pain and anchor myself in this tragedy while it’s still freshly tragic. So every so often I pull at my scabs like a dog, desperately trying to draw some fresh blood from my open wound, but even as I do it, I know the day will come when I pull off that scab and there’s no blood underneath it, just the soft pink expanse of virgin skin. And when that finally happens, when time has inevitably had its way with me, then I’ll know she’s gone for good.
And I know that at some point in the future there will be someone else. She’ll be smart and beautiful and damaged in her own way, and we’ll understand each other and we’ll fall in love, and I’ll feel guilty for being happy, so I’ll do little things to sabotage us whenever things start getting too good. And she’ll be patient with me, and then, when she’s taken as much abuse as she can stand, there will be loud venting fights and then, presumably, a tearful ultimatum and after that we’ll turn a corner. I’ll still feel guilty, but I’ll get over it in stages, and with each one of those stages, Hailey will fade further and further into the distant past, until she’s nothing more than a footnote in the story of my life. And one day, an older version of me will tell his children how he’d been married once, before he ever met their mother, but that his wife had died, and Hailey will be not a person to them but a small, intangible, biographical blip, a sad thing that happened to their father on the way to happily ever after. And worse, maybe that’s how I’ll see it too.
And I don’t need you to tell me that this will happen, that it’s inevitable. I’m not fooling myself. But just because something is true, it doesn’t mean I’m ready to face it today. Sometimes the only truth people can handle is the one they woke up with that morning. And this morning, like every morning, I woke up with my pain. So do me a favor and don’t fuck with it.
11
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: How to Talk to a Widower
You’re a star! According to the folks at M, your last column broke the record for reader mail, the very record previously set by your column last month. I’ve forwarded yet another sack-load of mail for you to not open. The magazine has been forwarding calls from newswires and talk shows who want to interview you. I’m in the process of negotiating both US and overseas syndication deals. Some people from NBC called, they want you for a segment on the “Today” show. If I get my way it will be Matt Lauer who does the interview. He just comes off as more serious, less of a talking head. And Oprah’s people have been sniffing around (!!!). More importantly, I’ve been talking to publishing people and there is significant interest at a few major houses. I smell a memoir! You just need to write up the proposal. This is what we’ve been waiting for! We need to talk. I tried you myself a number of times and left you something like thirty voice mails. What gives? E-mailing is so uncivilized.
—K
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: No Thanks
Sorry about the phone, Kyle. Technical difficulties. Not really interested in meeting Matt Lauer or Oprah. I’m glad the column worked out, but like I told you before, I’m not interested in becoming the poster boy for young widowers.
—D
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: Don’t Be an Idiot!!!
How many times have you bitched to me about having to write the same senseless, masturbatory tripe about narcissistic, vacuous movie stars? She was awkward and gangly in high school. He just wants to act and doesn’t buy into the whole celebrity thing. Nobody cares! You’re finally writing about something real, and it’s striking a chord around the country. You’ve tapped into something significant here, and you owe it to yourself to see it through. Also, the word has come down from Bernie over at M that the magazine will negotiate exclusive subsidiary rights for excerpts. They’ll pay you to promote your book! Come on, Doug, it’s the brass fucking ring! This is the best thing that ever happened to you!
—K
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: Fuck Off Kyle
I know you pride yourself on being an asshole, but you can’t seriously mean that the death of my wife is the best thing that ever happened to me? Even you, as horrible and self-absorbed as you are, can’t be that callous and obtuse.
—D
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: Chill the Fuck Out!
First of all, this is America, and I can be as callous and obtuse as I want to. Secondly, I wasn’t referring to Hailey’s death, but to your writing about it. When you started submitting the Widower column, no one at M was thrilled about the change, but I beat the shit out of Bernie to run with it, mostly because I figured the sooner you worked through your grief, the sooner you could go back to jerking off young starlets. Turns out, it made you a better writer and now your stuff is resonating with their readers. That’s 300,000 or so potential book buyers already lined up, and that makes you a publisher’s wet dream. Now everyone knows who you are. You want to cling to some misguided notion that you’re somehow profiting from Hailey’s death, you go ahead and do that, but let’s call it what it really is: Fear of Success. And, my friend, you had that long before you lost your wife.
—K
P.S. No charge for the free therapy.
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: Maybe So, But …
Right or not, the point is moot anyway. For those of us keeping score, I just passed the one-year mark. How long can one legally write about this stuff anyway? At some point you have to move on, at least outwardly, right? And that means no more dwelling on my grief, which, in my case, means no more writing about it. So bring on the movie stars …
—D
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: Funny You Should Say That …
Actually, that’s perfect, because I was thinking that we expand it a bit, and you start writing about getting back out there, you know? I mean, there’s some beautiful, heartbreaking material there. All the stuff you’re going to be going through after so many years. Your first date, your first lay, your first girlfriend … It’s like being born again. You’ll write it with the same wit and pathos, and I will land you a nice two-book deal with a major publisher. Come on
, Doug, you know this could be brilliant!
—K
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: You Are a Sad, Sorry Excuse for a Human Being
Sorry, Kyle. Next month my last Widower column runs and then I’m back to Hollywood.
—D
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: You’ve Got Another Thing Coming
Apparently, you haven’t been reading the magazine. In your absence, they’ve given the Hollywood beat to Krause. So if you’re going to keep a column, you’re going to have to come up with something else to write about. You’ve been out of it for a year, what did you think they would do?
—K
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: Krause Is an Idiot
He is.
—D
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: It’s an Idiot’s Job
Now, are we going to do this or not? We need to strike while the iron is hot.
—K
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: Not
—D
From: [email protected]
To: [email protected]
Date: Wednesday, September 13, 2006
Subject: You’re Killing Me!
Fine. I’ll give you a few weeks to think about it.
—K
12
DRIVING NORTH THROUGH NEW RADFORD, YOU CAN actually feel the real estate values rising like floodwaters around you. The quarter-acre plots become half acres and then acres, with increasingly larger houses set farther and farther back from the street, the minivans and Japanese sedans give way to upscale SUVs and German luxury cars, and the streets become wider, and lined with taller trees. And then you pass through a white-bricked gateway into the village of Forest Heights, and everything jumps another few income levels, and it’s between these bulging tax brackets that you’ll find the massive red-bricked center-hall Colonial of Stan and Eva Parker. I had been fiercely determined not to come to this dinner, but in the two days that Claire has been living with me, the old behavior patterns have already reasserted themselves and she has effortlessly assumed command.
Claire turns into the driveway like it’s just another street, maintaining her speed until the last possible instant, braking just inches from the rear fender of my mother’s Audi. In the backseat, Russ, who has come along because anything is better than spending another evening at home with Jim and Angie, lets out a strangled breath and says “Fuck.” Russ is an accomplished linguist when it comes to swearing, and he can make the word mean anything he wants. In this case it’s a fuck of relief that Claire hasn’t killed us and the harrowing drive is over.
“You have a problem with my driving, you can take the bus home,” Claire teases him, reaching back to muss his hair.
“Like buses even come to this neighborhood,” Russ says, batting away her hand, his tone a complex adolescent amalgam of envy and contempt.
“How do you think the help gets here?” Claire says.
“Look,” Russ says, pointing out his window. “Isn’t that your dad?”
My father is out in the front yard, backlit like an apparition by the late afternoon sun, wearing nothing except sky blue boxer shorts and white Nikes with black socks, throwing a baseball against the side of the house and catching it in an old, weathered mitt of mine. He performs the exaggerated windup of a major league pitcher, his flab shimmying around him like Jell-O as he follows through on the release, his silver hair plastered against his forehead with sweat. Rudy, his nurse, is hovering in the foreground with a bathrobe in his hands, desperately trying to get him to come inside and get dressed.
“Please, Dr. Parker,” he whines. “This is so not funny.”
“Hey, Dad.”
His face lights up when he sees me, and he comes lumbering over with a big grin while Rudy, who looks poised to have a breakdown, chases after him, plaintively holding out the bathrobe in front of him. “Dr. Parker, please! Just put on the robe!” Rudy’s about my age, skinny, bald, perennially agitated, and no match for my bullish father, who outweighs him by a good seventy pounds and nudges him out of the way like an elephant swatting flies with his tail.
My father drops the mitt in the grass and pulls me into a tight hug, exactly like he never did before the stroke. He smells of grass and sweat, and his back is rough and hairy against my hands. “Doug,” he says, squeezing the breath out of me. “What are you doing here?” This has become his standard greeting, a genuine query brilliantly disguised as a salutation, because he so often has no idea what’s going on, or even what year it is. Sometimes he appears to be on target, and other times he thinks I’m a kid again, coming home from school. Two years ago, my mother discovered him on the shower floor in a wet crumpled heap. He was in a coma for three days, from which he emerged vibrant and healthy but with his mind somehow folded in on itself and the impulse control of an eight-year-old boy. The doctors called it a CVA, which turned out to be an acronym for cerebrovascular accident, which turned out to be a fancy way of saying that there was nothing they could do about it. There are days when he’s lucid and days when he’s lost, but even on the good days, he’s never quite sure about the details. He’s a man constantly in search of context.
On the plus side, he hugs me all the time now. I guess it took having his brain fried for him to start loving me. In my more twisted moments, I actually consider it a fair trade, but then again, I’m not the one parading grandly around his front lawn in his boxers with the fly open.
He steps back, keeping his hands on my shoulders. I wonder how old he thinks I am today. “Where’s Hailey?” he says.
That narrows it down a bit. I turn away so he won’t see the searing pain that momentarily melts my features. In the world he woke up in today, he loves me and Hailey’s still alive, and it’s like I’m standing outside in the rain, peering through the window and wishing I could come in from the cold and warm my chilled bones at the fire of his dementia. “She’ll be along soon,” I say.
“Hi, Daddy,” Claire quickly interrupts, stepping in to give him a hug.
“Hey, sugar, what are you doing here?”
“Just coming to see Debbie,” Claire says. “She’s getting married, you know.”
His expression falters and he frowns, his forehead becoming deeply furrowed as he tries to chase down a specific memory, but it loses him in the chaotic thought riot going on in his brain. “Mazel tov,” he says mournfully, staring down at his feet.
“He really needs to come inside and get cleaned up,” Rudy says.
My father shakes it off. “Who’s this?” he says, sizing up Russ, who’s been standing off to the side awkwardly.
“It’s Russ,” I say. “You remember Russ, Hailey’s son?”
“Of course I do,” he says, stepping forward to give Russ a hug. You can see the fight-or-flight debate played out in Russ’s stricken expression as he stands stiffly in my father’s sweaty embrace, but he keeps his cool and even pats my dad’s back with his fist, ghetto style.
“Hey, Dr. Parker.”
My father steps back and sizes him up. “You’re all grown-up now. You play ball, Russ?”
“Sometimes.”
He tosses him the ball. “You’ll be the pitcher.”
Russ grins and picks the mitt up off the ground. “Batter up,” he says.
“I think that’s a really, really bad idea,” Rudy says.
“Duly noted, Rudy,” my father says jovially, jogging over to p
ick up the baseball bat leaning against the wall.
“Dr. Parker. We have to get ready for dinner. You haven’t even showered yet.”
“Buzz off, Rudy,” my dad says, twirling the bat and squatting down into a batter’s stance.
“Yeah, Rudy,” Claire says, grinning. “Buzz off.”
My dad looks at her. “Can you call balls and strikes?”
Claire steps up to him and kisses his shoulder. “I was born for it,” she says.
My mother is at her post in the kitchen, perched on a high stool at the center island, halfway through what I can only hope is her first bottle of red wine, arguing over wedding details with Debbie and barking the occasional order at Portia, the maid, who is fussing over a London broil. The counter is laid out like a photo shoot for Bon Appétit, with picture-perfect salads, side dishes, a glazed Cornish hen, breaded veal, and the London broil, which Portia is wrestling into a silver serving platter. My parents may behave like they were abandoned in Greenwich and raised by WASPs, but when it comes to preparing meals, we are once again the chosen people.
“Douglas,” my mother says, setting her wineglass down on the marble top of the island. “Darling.” She leans forward to kiss the air somewhere in the vicinity of my face, taking care not to disturb the multiple coats of lipstick that cover her lips like paint sealant.
How to Talk to a Widower Page 7
