How to Talk to a Widower

by Jonathan Tropper

  “I’m really sorry, Pooh. I ruined your dinner.”

  “I’m just glad you’re okay,” she says. “Anything to get out of coming to the wedding, right?”

  “The police are downstairs,” Mike says. “You need a lawyer?”

  “Tell them it was an accident. He was showing me the gun and it went off.”

  “You sure?”

  “Will that keep him out of trouble?”

  “As long as he has a license for the gun, he should be okay.”

  “I’ll be down in a minute,” Debbie tells him as he leaves.

  “You should have seen Dad,” I say softly. “He still knows what he’s doing.”

  “He was also pretty impressive saving your life back at the club,” Claire says.

  “I guess he’s having one of his better days.”

  “Legendary.”

  “It’s good to know he’s still in there,” Debbie says.

  “He’s there,” I say.

  “My stomach is killing me,” Claire says.

  “Is it the baby?” Debbie says, alarmed.

  She shakes her head. “Twin telepathy.”

  “Really?” Russ says. “You guys feel each other’s pain and all that?”

  “We don’t have twin telepathy,” I say.

  “Don’t listen to him,” Claire says. “He’s just being negative.”

  “It’s been that kind of day,” I say. I can feel my eyes starting to close. “What time is it?”

  “It’s just after one a.m.,” Debbie says. “Hey. I’m getting married today.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “We’d better go,” she says, leaning over to kiss my forehead.

  “Thanks, Pooh.”

  “I was thinking that tonight would be the perfect time for you to stop calling me that.”

  I consider her thoughtfully for a moment. “I don’t see the connection.”

  She shakes her head and smiles. “You get some rest.”

  “Pooh.”

  “Yeah.”

  “I love you.”

  “That’s just the morphine talking.”

  My father leans over and kisses my forehead. “Good night, Doug,” he says.

  “Thanks for everything, Dad. You were amazing.”

  He looks me in the eye while he runs his fingers gently across my face, and I can feel the hotness forming at the base of my throat. “You’ll be okay,” he says.

  “Don’t eat the food here,” my mother says. “The place is crawling with disease. We’ll bring you breakfast in the morning.”

  Claire kisses me and says, “You’re a mess.”

  “I know.”

  “But you’re my mess, so please, I think we’ve had enough action for a while.”

  “It hasn’t been dull.”

  “Dull is sounding pretty good right about now.”

  Russ closes the door behind all of them, and he’s just turning to face me when the door opens again and Debbie steps in, slightly out of breath. “Russ,” she says.

  “Yeah.”

  “Your toast was incredible.”

  Then she throws her arms around him and gives him a long, soft, openmouthed kiss on the lips. When she’s done, she gives him another, shorter one, and then a peck on his forehead. “I think you’re beautiful too,” she says. “Okay. Bye.”

  And he just stands there blushing after she leaves, looking utterly dumbfounded until, gradually, a wide smile spreads across his face.

  “You okay there?” I say after a bit.

  “Just give me a minute,” he says.

  Then he jumps up onto the chair and does a little dance, and then he runs across the room, opens the window, and lets out a long, triumphant scream. After he closes the window, he comes back across the room and climbs onto the bed next to me, panting from his exertions and still smiling. “Is today the best day ever, or what?” he says.

  I wake up in the middle of the night, empty and confused. Russ is sleeping beside me, still in his suit and tie, snoring lightly, and I’m glad he’s there, warming the bed for me. I am deeply exhausted, can feel the fatigue burning like embers in every muscle of my body. I am a man who was shot by a jealous husband. I am that guy. It will take some getting used to. My eyes roam the darkened hospital room, trying to identify the shapes of alien objects, but everywhere I look, I see the dark round barrel of Dave’s gun staring back at me, all knowing. I looked up at him last night and told him that I was ready, but now, lying here, with Russ’s low, steady breath in my ear, I realize that I was wrong. I am nowhere near ready to die. I’ve died enough. I still have some living to do. I’ve just got to start doing it a little more carefully.

  39

  I OPEN MY EYES TO FIND LANEY POTTER SITTING beside my bed, looking tired and frail, her eyes swollen from crying. “Hey,” she says softly.

  “Hey.”

  “Russ went to get you some breakfast.”

  “Oh. That’s good.”

  She nods, and opens her mouth to say something, but nothing comes out.

  “Laney,” I say.

  “I’m so sorry, Doug.” She starts to cry. “I never imagined he would do something like this.”

  “I know.”

  “You might have been killed.”

  “It’s okay.”

  She leans forward in her chair. “It’s my fault, all of it. You were grieving and I took advantage of that. I was supposed to be your friend. And then, when you tried to move on, I couldn’t handle it. If something had happened to you … ”

  Something did happen to me, I think, as she sobs into her hands for a few moments, and then roots through her bag for a tissue.

  “Listen,” I say. “It was my fault as much as yours. I guess for the last year I’ve been treating Hailey’s death like a free pass. It was selfish and stupid, and I’ve decided not to do it anymore.”

  She nods and sits back in her chair. “Mike came by last night to get our story straight for the police. Thank you for that.”

  “It really was an accident, Laney.”

  She looks at me for a while, nodding unconsciously. “How did we get here, Doug?”

  I don’t have an answer for that, so I just shake my head and close my eyes, and when I open them, Russ is sitting where Laney had been, chewing on a bagel. “And he’s back!” Russ says.

  There’s been a multiple-vehicle accident in White Plains, and the CAT scan will be tied up all morning, so my discharge will be delayed. My mother comes for a quick visit and to drop off muffins before she has to disappear into the whirlwind of wedding preparations. “Where’s Dad?” I say.

  “He’s having one of his bad mornings,” my mother says, looking down at her hands.

  “What do you mean?”

  “What do you mean, what do I mean?” she says. “He woke up angry, won’t say a word to me, and when I left the house he was throwing things at Rudy.”

  “Jesus,” I say. “I guess I thought, you know, after last night … ”

  “You thought he’d snapped out of it.”

  “Yes.”

  She shakes her head, smiling sadly. “He’s always going to be like this, Doug.”

  “How do you deal with it?” I say, instantly and deeply depressed.

  She shrugs sadly. “It’s like anything else,” she says. “I just hope for more good days than bad.”

  “I’m sorry, Mom.”

  “Also,” she says, “I self-medicate.”

  The CAT scan is still tied up at noon, and I’m starting to get a little antsy. Russ has set up a wastebasket on the windowsill and we’re tossing crumpled magazine pages at it and keeping score. He’s winning because I’m injured, and also because I suck. When we run out of paper, he goes and collects all of our crumpled balls and stockpiles them on the bed for a second round.

  “Let’s play Horse,” he says.

  “I can’t leave the bed.”

  “So you’ll lose.”

  “Okay, you go first.”

  He shoots
lying down on the floor behind the bed. He shoots from the bathroom. He shoots standing with his back against the far wall. “Nothing but net,” he says. He opens the door to shoot from the hallway, and Brooke is standing there, about to knock.

  “Ms. Hayes,” Russ says.

  “Hi, Russ,” she says, looking past him at me. “Is now a bad time?”

  “No, it’s a great time,” I say. “Join the party.”

  She steps tentatively into the room, looking morning fresh in jeans and a long-sleeved black jersey under a gray T-shirt.

  “I was just going on a soda run,” Russ says. “You want anything?”

  “No, thanks.”

  After he leaves, she sits down stiffly. “Are you okay?” she says.

  “Yeah. Actually, I think I might be better than I’ve been in a long time. I guess it took something like this to help me figure a few things out.”

  “Are you going to make it to the wedding?”

  “Nah,” I say. “I’m sorry about that. I was looking forward to bringing you.”

  “I think it’s probably for the best,” she says, and her voice is laced with something: Regret? Sadness? Anger? I can’t quite tell, but I know instinctively that it doesn’t bode well for me.

  “What’s going on, Brooke?”

  She meets my gaze for a moment and then she looks away. “Doug,” she says quietly.

  “That bad?”

  “I think so, yeah.”

  I nod, absorbing the news. Somehow, in view of everything that’s happened in the last twenty-four hours, this isn’t a terribly surprising development. I remind myself that we’ve only been on a few dates, that this is not the end of something major, but underneath the dull blanket of the morphine, I can feel something shifting, like a pulled muscle that’s going to hurt later. “I understand,” I say.

  “No, I don’t think you do,” she says. “When you wouldn’t sleep with me, I just figured you weren’t ready for sex, but it turns out you’d been having plenty of sex. You just weren’t ready for me.”

  “Because you mattered,” I say. “I swear, that’s the truth.”

  “I know,” she says, with a sad smile. “I believe you. I’m not hurt. I mean, I am, but I’ll get over it. The point is, you couldn’t be intimate with me because I mattered, but you could give yourself to a married woman who didn’t matter without any problem. And I’m not judging you, Doug. Please don’t think that I am. You were grieving and alone, she was a compassionate friend. Things happen. But the fact is, it’s just not the behavior of someone who is ready for a real relationship, and I like you too much to let you drag me through your shit with you.”

  Sometimes you walk past a pretty girl on the street and there’s something beyond beauty in her face, something warm and smart and sensual and inviting, and in the three seconds you have to look at her, you actually fall in love, and in those moments, you can actually know the taste of her kiss, the feel of her skin against yours, the sound of her laugh, how she’ll look at you and make you whole. And then she’s gone, and in the five seconds afterwards, you mourn her loss with more sadness than you’ll ever admit to. Brooke has one of those faces, but this time I didn’t pass by and mourn her, this time I stopped and we actually found something, and now I’m going to lose her anyway.

  “Can we at least be friends?”

  “Like you and Laney Potter?”

  “Jesus, Brooke.”

  “I’m sorry, that was bitchy. Just … this is hard for me.”

  “So don’t do it.”

  “I have to.” She stands up. “I just wanted to make sure you were okay.”

  “I was doing fine until you showed up.”

  She grins sadly and leans over to kiss me softly on the temple. “I’m sorry.” She is heartbreakingly close, excruciatingly beautiful, and she was never mine to lose.

  “You know what the tragic thing is?” I say, when she reaches the door.

  “What’s that?”

  “That it was all changing. I was finally on track. Today, with you, was going to be the first day of the new me.”

  Her hand squeezes the doorknob and she briefly rests her forehead against the door. “Timing has never been my strong suit,” she says, and then she smiles one last time, and then she’s gone.

  “Fuck it!” Russ says exasperatedly when he returns and sees my expression. “No more visitors.”

  But there is one more. Late in the afternoon, there’s a knock on the door. “Don’t open it,” I say. “For the love of God!”

  “Who’s even left?” Russ says, looking up from his magazine. “Aren’t all the hot, depressing women already accounted for?”

  There’s another knock, then the door swings open and in walks Stephen Ives, the horseshit heir. “Hey,” he says, pulling a chair up to the bed.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “I heard you got a little shot.”

  “Good news travels fast.”

  “I always knew that dick of yours would get you in trouble someday.”

  Over by the window, Russ suddenly spins and hurls the wastebasket at Stephen, who falls to his knees to duck it. “Hey!” Stephen yells, jumping to his feet.

  “Now I recognize you,” Russ says with an angry smirk. “Claire’s husband.”

  “What the hell is wrong with you?” Stephen says, turning on Russ, eyes blazing.

  “Doug is having a rough day,” Russ says, standing his ground. “He doesn’t need any more shit from anyone.”

  Stephen stares at him for a moment, and then turns back to me, nodding apologetically. “You’re right, I’m sorry,” he says. “That was uncalled-for.”

  “Damned straight,” Russ says, itching for a fight. We’ve been holed up in this room all day, and he’s pulsating with nervous energy.

  “I’m sorry, Doug,” Stephen says, sitting down next to me. “I’m an asshole.”

  “Forget it.”

  “Are you going to get out of here today?”

  “I should have been out of here hours ago. Apparently there’s been a run on CAT scans.”

  “Well, I’m glad to see you’re okay. We’ve had our differences, but we’re still family, right? At least for the time being.”

  “Thanks, Stephen,” I say, touched in spite of myself. “I know I’ve been a schmuck to you in the past, but I’ve always suspected that deep down, you might not be a complete tool.”

  He nods and clears his throat, and we look in opposite directions for a few seconds.

  “I remain unconvinced,” Russ says, and we all share a light, tension-breaking chuckle.

  “So I take it you’re not going to the wedding?” Stephen says, and that’s when it dawns on me that he’s wearing a tux.

  “What, you are?”

  He nods, his face turning red, and runs his fingers through his hair. “I need to see her, Doug. I’ll die if I don’t.”

  In the harsh fluorescent lighting, I can see all the weight he’s lost, the gauntness of his face and the stricken look in his bloodshot, tired eyes. He reminds me of me.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I guess you do.”

  “Where do you put my chances?”

  “It’s Claire,” I say. “There are no odds. It’s all wild card.”

  “Well,” he says, getting to his feet. “I guess I’ve outstayed my welcome. Is there anything I can get you before I go?”

  I look at Russ, standing against the wall in his sleep-rumpled suit. “I’m having a thought,” I say.

  He looks back at me. “Are you thinking what I think you’re thinking?”

  “My little sister is getting married,” I say, rolling out of bed. It hurts, but not as bad as I thought it would.

  “Yeah,” Russ says, coming over to help me. “That’s what I thought you were thinking.” He goes to the closet and pulls out my bloodstained suit pants.

  “You can’t just leave,” Stephen says.

  “Watch me.”

  “What about your CAT scan?”

  “The longer I w
ait for it, the less fun it sounds.”

  Waiting at the elevators, we are spotted by one of the nurses. “Where are you taking him?” she says, walking hurriedly toward us.

  “Out,” Russ says.

  “You haven’t been discharged!” she calls as we step into the elevator. “You can’t just leave.”

  “Watch him,” Stephen says as the doors slide shut.

  Stephen’s Porsche is built for two, with just a narrow leather plank for a backseat, but somehow, Russ manages to contort himself into it, with his long legs spilling into the front on either side of the stick shift, his feet braced against the dash. I sit in the passenger seat, using his leg as an armrest and grunting in pain every time we hit a bump in the road.

  Bump.

  “Oof.”

  “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay.”

  Bump.

  “Ugh.”

  “I’m so sorry.”

  “It’s fine.”

  On the way, Stephen calls for a limo and driver that will meet us at my house. Once home, Russ showers and changes into a dark suit, while I do my best with a sponge bath and a quick shampoo, since I don’t want to deal with changing my bandages. Then Russ helps me into the ridiculous gray tux and tails that Mike chose for his wedding party, and we stand together in my bedroom, studying our reflections in the full-length mirror behind Hailey’s closet door. We look like something out of a magazine. We are young, slim, sad, and beautiful. We are forty minutes late.

  “We look killer,” Russ says.

  “We are not without a certain raffish charm,” I say.

  “So, let’s do this thing.”

  “No drinking.”

  “No bleeding.”

  “No hitting on the bride, under any circumstances.”

  “No gunplay.”

  “Deal.”

  “Deal.”

  The limo is a stretch, of course. What else would Stephen have on speed dial? He is standing on the sidewalk, finishing a fat cigar when we step outside. “Finally,” he says, putting out the cigar on the sole of his shoe. “I was about to send a search party.” We descend into plush leather seats, and the limo pulls away from the curb like a yacht from its berth. We sit in silence, looking out the tinted windows, absorbed in our own nervous thoughts, and then Russ flips through the CD collection in a compartment next to the stereo and selects an old KISS anthology. And soon the bass drums are pounding and the guitars are riffing, and there’s nothing to do but sing along to the crude lyrics, purging our collective nerves in the thunderous, throbbing music. I want to rock and roll all night, and party every day! / I want to rock and roll all night, and party every day! And even Stephen joins in, bouncing his knee and nodding to the beat as he does, and we’re all singing, at full volume, rocking in our seats and banging on upholstery, trying to empty our bellies of every last bit of nerves. The song ends too soon, before anything transcendent can occur, before we can be saved by Rock and Roll. None of us knows the words to the next one, I mean, it’s KISS after all, and who really knows more than one or two KISS songs? So Russ turns it down and we go back to looking out the windows as the limo cruises up the interstate, three lost, confused, well-dressed men, hurtling northward toward uncertain salvation while outside the last clinging tendrils of sunlight slowly disintegrate in the evening sky.