How to Talk to a Widower

by Jonathan Tropper

  “How are you doing?”

  Once again, your first impulse is a betrayal. Because your mouth wants to say “fine,” and they’re expecting you to say “fine,” hoping to God you’ll say “fine,” maybe with a sad, weary shrug, but “fine” nonetheless. They have expressed their rote concern, and “fine” is their receipt for tax purposes. But you’re not fine, you’re a fucking mess, often drunk before lunch and talking to yourself, weeping over photos, losing hours at a time staring into space, torturing yourself with an infinite array of if-only scenarios, feeling lost or devastated or angry or guilty or some potent cocktail blend of all of those at any given moment. You want to move on, but to do that you have to let her go, and you don’t want to let her go, so you don’t move on. Or maybe you do, just a little bit, and then you feel the grief of losing her all over again, and the guilt of trying to stop feeling that grief, and then you get pissed because you feel guilty when you shouldn’t, and then you feel guilty for being pissed about your dead wife. Does that sound like “fine” to you? And to say it is to somehow discredit everything you’re going through, and, in some way, it feels like a slight to your dead wife, the mark of an inferior love, for you to be fine. But no one wants to hear the ugly truth, and even if they did, you don’t really feel comfortable sharing your grief like that, so once again you just say “fine,” and breathe deeply until the impulse to commit a gory, ritualistic homicide has passed.

  “Is there anything I can do?”

  Yes, now that you mention it. Go back in time and stop my wife from getting on that goddamn plane. That would be a big help, actually. I’d be eternally grateful. Short of that, what could you have possibly thought you were going to offer that would solve my problems here? Cook me dinner? I lost my wife, not my microwave.

  And whatever you do, do not attempt to empathize. Don’t whip out your own tragedy like a secret fraternity handshake. This misery wants no company. I don’t want to hear about your father’s car crash, your mother’s heart attack, your sister’s slow death from leukemia. My sorrow trumps all others, and I don’t want to be mucking about in your grief any more than I want you mucking about in mine.

  I know you mean well, but that doesn’t make it any easier to listen to you. If you want to demonstrate your friendship and support, here’s what you do: Leave it alone. Don’t address it directly. I know you think praising my wife or sharing a warm remembrance will somehow ease my pain, but you’ll just have to take my word for it that it won’t. If you can’t look the other way, then a simple greeting is really all that I can stand right now. If you feel you absolutely must acknowledge my tragedy, then you can do one of those somber nods, with the pursed lips and the raised eyebrows, and I’ll let it slide. But beyond that, keep it light. Ask me the time, and I’ll check my watch. Invite me along to a movie. I’ll say no, but you’ll have offered and we’ll have shared a simple exchange that didn’t make me want to flay the skin off your face. And maybe, if I have enough of those simple exchanges, just basic human contact that asks nothing of me, maybe I’ll start being able to start maintaining eye contact once again, start engaging the world at my own pace.

  And then, who knows? Maybe one day you’ll catch me at just the right moment and I’ll actually agree to go to the movies with you, because it will get me out of the house and I’ll know that for two hours I won’t have to make conversation. Then, when it’s over, we can talk about the movie. You won’t have made anything better, you won’t have helped me come to terms with my loss, but the sooner you give up on that dream, the better off we’ll both be. Healing is a deeply private process and, honestly, you’re not welcome to be a part of it. But you will have given me a short furlough from the dark, sorry prison of my mind, and that gift, precious in its own right, is really the best you can hope to offer.

  And it should go without saying that if you bring me to a romantic comedy, I will shoot you dead before turning the gun on myself.

  * * *

  15

  From: Kyle.Evans@EvansLitAgents.com

  To: Doug.Parker@mmag.com

  Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2006

  Subject: It’s On

  Talked to Simon & Schuster, Doubleday, and Riverhead. They’re all interested. I can start entertaining offers as soon as you get me a formal proposal. We might even be talking auction! Come on, Doug, let’s do this! What the hell else have you got to do?

  —K

  From: Doug.Parker@mmag.com

  To: Kyle.Evans@EvansLitAgents.com

  Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2006

  Subject: No Thanks

  Sorry, Kyle. I’m just not up for it.

  —D

  From: Kyle.Evans@EvansLitAgents.com

  To: Doug.Parker@mmag.com

  Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2006

  Subject: Play the Hand You’ve Been Dealt

  For fuck’s sake, Doug! An auction! Remember all those years of shopping around one proposal after another? You would have given your left nut for this kind of opportunity!

  —K

  From: Doug.Parker@mmag.com

  To: Kyle.Evans@EvansLitAgents.com

  Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2006

  Subject: That Was Then

  This is now. Please leave me alone.

  —D

  From: Kyle.Evans@EvansLitAgents.com

  To: Doug.Parker@mmag.com

  Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2006

  Subject: Strategy

  Okay, you’re playing hard to get. I like it. But just remember, you can only do it for so long. We need to make a deal soon.

  —K

  From: System Administrator

  To: Kyle.Evans@EvansLitAgents.com

  Date: Wednesday, September 27, 2006

  Subject: Undeliverable

  Your e-mail did not reach the intended recipient. Your e-mail address [Kyle.Evans@EvansLitAgents.com] has been listed as a blocked address by this recipient.

  16

  CLAIRE WAKES ME UP FROM A SWEET DREAM IN the later part of the morning. It was nothing too intricate, just Hailey and me driving somewhere, colored leaves rushing past us in an orange blur, listening to the radio. It’s always autumn in my dreams. She was talking to me, and even though I heard her in the dream, I can’t recall a single word or the tone of her voice. I lie in bed, feeling the emptiness take hold, the now familiar weight in my belly, the darkness hanging in the back of my mind. There’s always this moment, when I first wake up, these precious seconds where I feel like me, the me before this one, and then lucidity sets in and the desolation pours into me, dark and viscous, like crude oil. I close my eyes and try to will myself back to sleep, back to Hailey, but the consciousness is electric, spreading through my body at the speed of light, and there will be no turning it off.

  “Come on,” Claire says. “Open your eyes.”

  I roll over to find her sitting Indian style at the foot of my bed, just like old times. Her designer sweat suit is a bright emerald green that actually hurts my eyes. “What time is it?” I say.

  “Ten thirty-three. I made you some breakfast, but then I ate it. Sorry.”

  “It’s okay,” I say. “I’m not big on breakfast.”

  “It’s the most important meal of the day,” she says brightly.

  I close my eyes and groan. “Can you come back later?”

  “No. Wake up!” She pulls off my comforter.

  “That’s it,” I say. “I think we need to lay down some house rules.”

  “Right. Because rules actually mean something to me.”

  I sit up groggily against the headboard. “What do you want, Claire?”

  “Well, first off, I want you to put your soldier back into the fort.”

  “What? Oh. You’re the one who pulled off the blanket,” I say, straightening my boxers.

  “Good point,” she says, tossing it back to me. “Now, are you ready?”

  “For what?”

  She flashes a wide, talk show host smile. “For
the rest of your life!” She looks at me expectantly.

  “What are you babbling about?”

  “Okay, Doug. Here’s the way I see things,” she says, pointedly patting her stomach. “Over the next little while, I am going to be creating an entirely new human being in here. Not only that, but I am going to do it with almost no conscious effort, right? So if I can build a completely new life in nine months with my eyes closed, I figure that we can rebuild your life in the same amount of time by focusing on it.”

  I look up at her. “It’s as simple as that.”

  Her eyes are wide and unyielding. “As simple as you want it to be.”

  “I don’t know what I want.”

  She nods. “And that’s the beauty of having a twin who knows you better than you know yourself. I can know for you. If you needed a kidney or a liver transplant, I’d be your best bet, because inside we’re the same. I’m just applying the same principle. I’m going to give you some of my heart to use until yours starts beating again.”

  “So what is it that you’re proposing, exactly?”

  “That you trust me completely, and agree to do whatever I say.”

  “Naturally.”

  “I’m serious, Doug. You’re so busy mourning Hailey, you don’t have time to think about anything else. But rationally, you know you have to start living again. So do the smart thing: delegate someone you trust to get the job done.”

  “What are you going to do, start setting me up on blind dates?”

  She leans forward on her knees so she can get in my face. “I’m going to make you do anything that I think the old you would want to do.”

  “But I’m not him anymore.”

  “You’re not anybody anymore.”

  We stare at each other for a long moment. She wins, as usual. “What would I have to do?” I say.

  “Two things,” she says. “And the first one is the hardest.”

  “What’s that?”

  She pulls herself forward to sit on my legs, effectively pinning me to the bed, and places her hands on my shoulders, her face just inches from mine. “You need to tell me that you want this.”

  “That I want what?”

  “That you want to start living again, that you’re willing to start being sad less often, that you’re ready to move on, and you just need some help getting started. That you’re willing to at least allow for the possibility of happiness.”

  “Of course I want that.”

  “So say it.”

  “Why?”

  “Because you need to hear it.”

  “Claire.” I start to look away and she grabs my chin and forces me to look right at her.

  “Just shut up and do it.”

  “Okay,” I say. “I want to start living again. I want to be happy again, at least sometimes. I don’t honestly know if I’m ready to move on, but I know I want to be. And—” My voice catches in my throat, but I force my way through it. “And I don’t know how to do it.”

  She brushes her pinky gently across my face to capture a solo tear I wasn’t even aware of, and then kisses the tip of her dampened finger. “Okay,” she says with a playful grin. “Good enough.”

  “What’s the second thing?”

  “Sorry?”

  “You said there were two things I had to do.”

  “Oh right,” she says. “That. That’s actually pretty easy.”

  “Well?”

  “Just say yes.”

  “To what?”

  “To everything.”

  “To everything.”

  “That’s right,” she says, pulling herself off the bed. “Everything. You’ve spent the last year saying no to everyone and everything that came your way, and what do you have to show for it?”

  “I didn’t say no to Laney Potter.”

  “And it got you laid. Imagine if you said yes more often.”

  “I don’t know if I could handle all the excitement.”

  “Well, we’re going to find out. New rule: Just say yes.”

  “I thought rules didn’t mean anything to you.”

  “They do when they’re my rules. Now stop equivocating and just agree with me.”

  “Should I really trust my life to someone who is in the process of fucking up her own so spectacularly?”

  “Make no mistake!” she says hotly. “I am unfucking my life. And while, to the untrained eye, the processes might look somewhat similar, I assure you the endgame is entirely different.”

  “Somehow, I don’t think Stephen is going to see it that way.”

  She shrugs. “What can I tell you? You want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. Now stop changing the subject, we can talk about me later. Are you in or not?”

  I think about my father at dinner last night, smiling and lucid, so happy to be surrounded by his miserable, fucked-up children. I think of Debbie, weeping on his shoulder, and my mother’s eyes following him as he danced. And then I think of Hailey, kissing me slowly on the Ferris wheel as dusk settled like a warm blanket around us. “I’m in,” I say.

  “Okay,” Claire says with a wicked smile. “It’s on.”

  “So what happens now?”

  “Now you get dressed and get your scrawny ass over to Radford Township High.”

  “What the hell for?”

  “They called about an hour ago. Russ got into a fight. He’s been suspended.”

  “Oh shit. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”

  “It was on my agenda. I prioritized.”

  “Well, why don’t they just call Jim?”

  “Okay,” Claire says, annoyed. “We’re going to try this again. The school called you because Russ has been suspended. They would like you to come and get him. Are you going?” She fixes me with a stern look.

  “Yes,” I say.

  She leans down and kisses my cheek. “Right answer,” she says, heading for the door. “Now, was that so hard?”

  17

  RUSS GINGERLY PULLS OFF THE WET, BLOODSTAINED paper towel wrapped around his right hand to reveal his torn and bleeding knuckles. His left eye is half shut and a penumbra of prune-colored swelling is spreading from the corner of his eye socket down into his cheekbone. A smattering of minor nicks and lacerations covers the left side of his face.

  “Impressive,” I say. “What did the other guy look like?”

  “Like a big guy with his knees on my chest pounding the shit out of me.”

  I nod. “You want to tell me about it?”

  “It was just a stupid fight, Doug. No need to get all Dr. Phil on me.”

  We’re sitting on two of four attached chairs that line the hall outside the guidance counselor’s office. “So, what, I’m supposed to go in and talk to your guidance counselor now?”

  He nods indifferently. “She’s waiting for you.”

  “I’m kind of relieved, actually. I thought I’d have to talk to the principal.”

  “Dead mother gets you an express ticket to the school shrink.”

  “I see.” A group of three cute girls sashays past us in short, short, hip-hugging skirts and tight, midriff-baring T-shirts, talking and laughing a mile a minute. We turn as one to watch them head down the hall. “I did not have girls like that when I went to high school,” I say.

  “Neither do I,” Russ says glumly, staring at the floor. I look at him, bruised and battered, still wordlessly grieving, but, unlike me, forced out into the world every day, to long for unattainable girls and do battle in the unforgiving halls of high school, with no one to come home to when the day is done, and I suddenly feel like a selfish, self-pitying prick.

  “We don’t talk very much, do we?” I say.

  He looks up at me. “No. We don’t.”

  “That’s probably my fault.”

  “Probably.” He shrugs, and holds his bloody hand up to the light, studying his shredded skin closely. “Jimbo and Angie are moving to Florida.”

  “What?”

  He nods miserably. “They dropped the b
omb last night. It’s the Sunshine State, you know.”

  “Shit, Russ. That sucks. When?”

  “After Christmas.”

  I don’t know how to process this news. “What the hell is in Florida?”

  “I don’t know, some job or something. I kind of stopped hearing everything after the word ‘Florida.’”

  “Are you going to go?”

  “What choice do I have?” he says, glaring at me. “It’s not like I have anywhere else to live, right?”

  I sigh, and put my head in my hands. “It’s just not that simple, Russ.”

  “It is from where I’m sitting.”

  “Listen,” I say, feeling completely out of my depth. “He’s your father, and your sole legal guardian. I’m in no position to tell him what to do.”

  “Well, then. That makes two of us.”

  There’s an important conversation to be had here, questions to be asked, assurances to be made, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out how to do it. “Let me just go in and pay your bail or whatever, and then we’ll go get some lunch and talk this through, okay?”

  “There’s nothing else to say.”

  “Then we’ll eat in silence,” I say, getting to my feet. “Don’t worry, I’m used to it.”

  “Doug,” he says as I’m opening the office door.

  “Yeah.”

  “Could you please just talk to him?” His uninjured eye is wide, red, and earnest, and right at that moment I feel an overwhelming surge of affection for this sad, fucked-up kid, and the sudden tremor in my chest tells me that there are parts of my heart still able to be broken.

  “Okay,” I say, thinking resignedly, as I always do with regard to talking to Jim, that no good will ever come of it.

  Russ’s guidance counselor, Ms. Hayes, is younger than I expected, with straight black hair and milk-bath skin. “Mr. Parker,” she says, shaking my hand. “Thanks for coming. I’m Brooke Hayes.” Her hair bounces as she sits back down, and I can see whole constellations of earrings, hoops and studs and bands, hiding under it, definitely not standard issue for high school guidance faculty.