“You know,” Claire says to me over coffee and water at Starbucks a few days later, “a therapist would probably tell you that it’s a marked improvement that you’re pining over a living woman now, instead of a dead one.”
“That’s why I don’t go to therapy. Too much useless information.”
“What’s that on your wrist?”
“I got a tattoo.”
“You did not!”
I show her Hailey’s comet, streaking across the inside of my wrist. “That’s amazing,” she says, running her fingers over it. “You’re so counterculture.”
“I’m edgy.”
“You’re dark and dangerous.”
“Tell me about it.”
“Now I’ll have to get one.”
“Why?”
“You can’t be the only one. It upsets the whole balance.”
“I don’t know, Claire. A tattoo is a pretty big commitment.”
“What are you saying?”
“Nothing. How are things with Stephen?”
“Okay, I guess,” she says. “We have a lot of sex now. And then we talk about the sex. We rate it. We designate areas for improvement. But soon I’ll be a fat horse, and then we won’t have very much sex, and we’ll have to come up with something else to talk about.”
“Well, you will have a child,” I say. “There might be something to talk about there.”
“Could be.”
“So, are you going to move back home?”
“I don’t know,” she says, looking sadly out the window. “I kind of like things the way they are now.”
There has never been any helping Claire. For whatever reason, my beautiful, brilliant sister will always struggle against her own deeply ingrained compulsion to repeatedly slash and burn and rise from the ashes. She will always mistrust her own happiness, will feel compelled to subvert it, and realizing this makes me feel sad and old.
“Do you love him?”
“I think so.”
“Well, that’s good.”
“You think I should move back in, right?”
“You’ll know when the time is right.”
“Bullshit.”
“Okay. I’ll tell you when the time is right.”
“Thanks.”
“The time is right.”
“Oh, fuck off.”
And so we go, back and forth, thrust and parry, pro and con, and none of it matters because I have no wisdom to impart and Claire is Claire and I’m me and we’ll both always be defective to some degree. Maybe it’s the price we have to pay for never having had to be whole on our own because we always had each other to fill in the gaps. Whatever it is, I don’t like knowing that she’ll never be truly happy, but all I can do is hope that maybe becoming a mother will wake something up in her, activate some long-dormant contentment gene. Or maybe it will be the thing that pushes her over the edge. I’d like to say I’m hopeful, but I’m still holding off turning the spare room into an office.
Late one chilly night, I drive over to Stop and Shop to stock up on groceries. The lot looks haunted, with only a handful of cars and abandoned shopping carts rattling back and forth across the pavement propelled by the strong autumn wind, like the ghosts of shoppers past. I’m about to step out of my car when I see Laney a few rows over, loading her bags into the back of her minivan. It was inevitable, I guess. I do my shopping at night to avoid people, and I guess she does too now. She’s dressed in jeans, heels, and a clinging white sweater, and seeing her makes me inexplicably nervous. I slouch down in my seat, hoping she won’t see me. Mike told me that she and Dave are in counseling, but they’re sleeping in separate bedrooms and the prognosis is not good. I think of Laney’s little girl, hugging me tightly as I carried her to her bed, and I know I’ll always hate myself for this. I watch Laney wheel her cart over to the cart park, and I know I should just get out and say hello to her, I mean, we’re going to run into each other at some point, but this lot is haunted and I’m paralyzed by a fear that makes no sense, and I don’t stop shaking until I see her taillights light up and the minivan start to move. I’ve got a tattoo on my wrist to remind me of what I’ve lost, and I’ve got Laney Potter in parking lots to remind me of what I’ve done, and I’ll just have to get used to it, but sometimes the absolute permanence of everything is like a tire iron to the skull.
I don’t throw things at the rabbits anymore. After burying the one in my backyard, the least I can do is grant the rest of them full grazing rights, so his death will not have been in vain. They sit quivering on my lawn, sometimes alone, sometimes in groups of two or three, nibbling at grass, or just meditating on whatever it is that rabbits think about. The rabbits pay no attention to me, do not cast accusing glances in my direction as I feared they might, do not seem to connect me at all to the dark fate that befell their brother. The rabbits know that sometimes shit just happens, and there’s nothing anyone can do about it. So they graze, and I watch them, and it would be nice to think that we’re all maybe a little wiser than we were before.
And that’s what I’m doing on Thursday afternoon, sitting by my open bedroom window in front of my laptop, watching a lone rabbit resting in the shadow of the giant ash tree and tinkering with my ever-changing outline, when the phone rings. “Doug? It’s Brooke.”
Her voice is an aria, and the little hairs on my arms perform a standing ovation. “Hey,” I say. I stand up and pace the room nervously.
“I’m calling about Russ,” she says quickly, heading me off at the pass.
“What about him?”
“He stole the driver’s ed car.”
“What?”
“He somehow pinched the keys out of Coach Warren’s jacket and now he’s gone.”
“That’s unbelievable.”
“I don’t want to involve the police yet, but it’s been twenty minutes, and he’s not a licensed driver. He could get hurt. Or hurt someone.”
“I know,” I say, my mind racing. “Where the hell is he going?”
“I was hoping you could tell me.”
Outside, a car beeps loudly to the beat of “Shave and a Haircut.” “Hold on a minute,” I say. “Is it a white Corolla?”
“Yes.”
“Don’t call the police. I’ll have it back to you in fifteen minutes.”
When I get downstairs, Russ is leaning against the car, grinning from ear to ear. “My first solo flight,” he says. “Am I good, or what?”
“Why the hell would you steal the driver’s ed car?”
“It’s a manifestation of my lingering grief?”
“You could have been arrested.”
“It was an acceptable risk.”
“You don’t get it. You’re in deep shit now.”
“It was this, or get into another fight. And I’ve renounced violence, for the time being.”
“But what were you trying to accomplish?” I say, exasperated.
“I don’t know. I’m just a stupid kid.”
“That you are. And we’re going back there right now.”
“I’ll drive,” he says, and I flash him my dirtiest look. He shrugs and tosses me the keys, which I snatch angrily out of the air. “Fine,” he says, and then looks at me appraisingly. “You’re not going to wear that, are you?”
“What?”
“That T-shirt has a big hole in the armpit. Go put a sweater on. And brush your hair, for fuck’s sake, it looks like you slept in it.” He leans in and sniffs me. “You know what, just take a quick shower. I’ll wait.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
And then he smiles at me, my crazy, beautiful, fucked-up stepson, and understanding dawns. “She’s looking very good today, Doug. I saw her in her office.”
“You’re insane.”
“The course of true love is never straight.”
“I can’t believe you did this.”
“Why not?” he says. “It’s exactly like something I would do.”
I stand there scratchin
g my head like an idiot for a minute, and then I shake my head at him and smile. “Give me five minutes.”
“Make it ten. And wear the blue cable crewneck. It matches your eyes.”
“Okay, now you’re just being weird.”
“Sorry.”
On the drive over to the school we sing along to The Clash at the top of our lungs with the windows open. We sing the guitar solos note for note, we bang out the drumbeats on the dashboard in perfect time, we harmonize on-key when it’s called for. No one can do it like we do. Our instincts are impeccable, our chemistry sublime. Drivers at stoplights stare at us, awestruck, as we play and sing our hearts out.
I’m not expecting anything too dramatic. There will be no impassioned speeches, no falling into arms, no holding up of boom boxes in the rain outside her window, no long, seminal kisses in the hallway while the gathered students cheer. But maybe seeing me will remind her that there was something nice about what we were just starting to have, something easy and real, and seeing her will fill me with the fortitude to try to see her again. Maybe we’ll exchange a look, or a laugh, something that will cause the ground beneath us to shift just enough to make me feel okay about leaving her a message the next time I go to the movies alone. And maybe something in my eyes, or in my voice, will let her know that it would be okay for her to come, that I’m a better bet now than I was then. At this point in my life, I’m not looking for any happy endings. I’m just looking to get things started.
The song ends, the DJ jabbers like a windup toy, and Russ flips off the radio. In the sudden quiet, I catch myself thinking that I’ll tell Hailey about how funny it is when Russ and I sing in the car. It still happens like that sometimes, even now, like a conditioned reflex that can’t be unlearned, and a wave of acute melancholy washes over me. Russ starts to say something but then stops, sensing my change in mood, and we ride in companionable silence the rest of the way. I guess that’s how it’s going to be now, long stretches of noise punctuated by occasional moments of silence, like the gap between songs. And there’s something comforting in knowing that Hailey will be there, waiting for me in the silence, while I’m out here with Russ, living in the noise.
I turn into the school lot and throw the car into park. Then we just sit for a minute.
“You think I’ll get suspended?”
“I know you will.”
He shrugs. “It was for a good cause.”
He needs a haircut, but I’m not going to be the one to tell him. Outside, the sky has gone completely gray and a strong wind whips around the car, sending crisp, brittle leaves and crushed cigarette boxes skittering animatedly across the asphalt. It’s going to be getting cold soon.
“You know,” I say, sitting back in my seat. “You’re allowed to be happy.”
Russ nods thoughtfully, looking straight ahead. “So are you.”
“I know.”
We look at each other for a long moment, and then back outside at the changing weather. The air between us suddenly feels charged, like the last instant of silence before the overture begins. We are young, slim, sad, and beautiful, and anything can happen.
“Okay,” I say. “Let’s do this.”
We open our doors simultaneously and step out into the wind.
Also by Jonathan Tropper
THE BOOK OF JOE
EVERYTHING CHANGES
PLAN B
HOW TO TALK TO A WIDOWER
A Delacorte Press Book / July 2007
Published by Bantam Dell
A Division of Random House, Inc.
New York, New York
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved
Copyright © 2007 by Jonathan Tropper
Delacorte Press is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc., and the colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data
Tropper, Jonathan.
How to talk to a widower / Jonathan Tropper.
p. cm.
“A Delacorte Press book”—T.p. verso.
1. Widowers—Fiction. 2. Bereavement—Psychological aspects—Fiction. 3. Stepchildren—Fiction. 4. Family—Fiction. 5. Suburbs—Fiction. 6. Dating (Social customs)—Fiction. 7. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3570.R5885H69 2007
813'.54—dc22 2006028678
www.bantamdell.com
eISBN: 978-0-440-33687-7
v3.0_r1
How to Talk to a Widower Page 27
