How to Talk to a Widower

by Jonathan Tropper

  “You’re the guidance counselor?” I say.

  “I get that a lot,” she says. Her voice has the laid-back, slightly raspy quality of a rock singer, like she’s just speaking between the measures and is about to break into a ballad of lost love.

  “You look kind of young, that’s all.”

  Her smile spreads like a brushfire across the open meadow of her face. “Well, thanks, I guess. But I’m fully licensed, I assure you. You look kind of young to be Russ’s stepfather too. What are you, thirty?”

  “Twenty-nine.”

  “Twenty-seven,” she says. “I guess they figured the kids would relate to me.”

  “Do they?”

  “Sometimes.” She folds one knee under her, and beckons to the chair in front of me.

  “So,” I say, sitting down. “What’s the deal here?”

  “The deal is that Russ took on half the football team this morning and, as you can see, he got his ass kicked.”

  “They ganged up on him?” I say, feeling a hot band of rage tighten in my belly.

  “According to witnesses, one of the guys made a remark and Russ just went off on him. The other kids were just trying to pull him off.”

  “Wow. What’d the guy say?”

  “No one’s talking.”

  “Was anyone badly hurt?”

  She shakes her head. “Just the usual. But unfortunately for Russ, the high school enforces a zero-tolerance policy on violence. It’s a mandatory three-day suspension.”

  “Ms. Hayes.”

  “Call me Brooke, please. And I’ll call you Doug, okay? I mean, for God’s sake, we’re both under thirty, right?”

  “Right,” I say, somewhat disconcerted by her easy, casual manner. “Brooke. You realize that I’m not Russ’s legal guardian. That he lives with his father.”

  “Yeah,” she says slowly, biting down on her lip thoughtfully as she sizes me up. “I had Jim in here the last time Russ got into a fight.”

  “It’s happened before?”

  She gives me a curious look. “It’s pretty much a regularly scheduled event these days,” she says. “Anyway, Jim gave me a fairly incoherent speech about kids needing to fight their own battles, and how he didn’t raise his son to back down from bullies.”

  “He didn’t raise him, period,” I say.

  She nods, peering intently at me. “Then he asked me when I got off.”

  “Jesus.”

  “Yeah. So this time I figured it might make sense to try another avenue. Russ speaks very highly of you.”

  “He does?”

  She grins and holds up her hands. “Okay, I might be reading between the lines there. I mean, you have to do that with a kid like Russ. He doesn’t say very much. But from what little he has said, I can tell that he likes you. Also, I hope you’ll forgive me for saying it, I read your column in M, and … ” Her voice trails off. “Okay. Never mind that part. It’s not relevant.”

  “What?” I say.

  “I don’t want to overstep my bounds.”

  “You don’t strike me as someone who is very big on boundaries, Brooke.”

  “Sensitive and intuitive,” she says with an approving smile. “Okay. What I was going to say is that, in addition to sounding smart and sad, you strike me as a deeply angry person.”

  “Angry,” I repeat. “Who am I angry at?”

  “Take your pick. Angry at the world for letting what happened to you happen, or at God, if that’s your thing. Or maybe at your wife for having the nerve to die, or at yourself for not stopping her.”

  “You’re psychoanalyzing me based on my column?”

  “The very fact that you’re writing that column is proof enough. You’re lashing out, trying to hold the world accountable. It’s perfectly natural to feel that way.”

  “I’m so relieved. Now, can we actually talk about Russ?”

  “But I am talking about Russ,” she says, ignoring my hostile tone. “When we are in the anger stages of grief, we will often subconsciously push away anything or anyone that we associate with the person we lost. And the tragedy is that the two of you are going through the same thing. He’s as sad and angry and confused and alone as you are, plus he’s a teenager, which means that on his best days his life is a shit storm. He needs someone to talk to, to help him through this, and there’s no one better equipped to understand him than you.”

  “You’re saying that I’m pushing Russ away?” I say, pissed. “You don’t know a goddamn thing about me.”

  “You’re right,” she says, leaning forward in her chair. “I just know that he’s not going to get the help he needs from his father, and he won’t open up to me. He’s a good kid, you know that. A little introverted, but very bright and compassionate. And when a kid like that starts acting out and getting into fights, generally speaking, he’s trying to get someone’s attention, and you can be damn well sure it’s not Jim’s.”

  Through the window behind her I can see a group of kids hanging out on cars in the parking lot, laughing, flirting, chasing, grabbing, kissing, and groping, and I would give anything to be any one of them, even if just for a few minutes, to feel the unspoiled future splayed out in front of me again as far as the eye can see.

  “Doug,” she says after a bit, and I realize that I zoned out for a little while there.

  “What?”

  “You’re angry.”

  “So you’ve been telling me.”

  “No, I mean right now. At me.”

  “No,” I say softly. “You’re probably right. I screwed up. I haven’t been there for him. I wanted to be, I just wasn’t.”

  “It’s not your fault,” she says. “You were grieving. And it’s not like it’s too late. Just reach out to him. Let him know you’re there for him.”

  “They’re moving to Florida.”

  Her eyes grow wide and her jaw drops, her lips forming a perfect little O of surprise. “What?”

  “It’s the Sunshine State,” I say dumbly.

  “I meet with Russ every week. He never said anything.”

  “He just found out.”

  “Well, that explains today’s fight, I guess,” Brooke says, leaning back in her chair, deflated. “Jesus Christ, Doug! No one under eighty moves to Florida. Isn’t that like a federal statute or something?”

  “Well, they are,” I say.

  “If you asked me how to go about irreversibly screwing up that boy, you know what I would tell you to do?”

  “What?”

  “Take him away from his friends and his hometown and the memories of his mother, and send him to a new state with that father of his.”

  “Somehow, I knew you were going to say that.”

  “What are you going to do about it?”

  “I don’t think there’s anything I can do about it.”

  “And somehow, I knew you were going to say that.”

  “Yeah,” I say sadly, standing up to leave. “I’m predictable like that.”

  “Well,” she says, standing up. “Maybe you’ll surprise yourself one of these days.”

  “Maybe.”

  “Doug,” she says hesitantly as she comes around the desk. “You didn’t invent grief. My shrink once told me that.”

  “Really? Your shrink told you about me?”

  Her laugh comes from her belly, loud, musical, and completely unrestrained. “The point is, people become possessive of their grief, almost proud of it. They want to believe it’s like no one else’s. But it is. It’s exactly like everybody else’s. Grief is like a shark. It’s been around forever, and in that time there’s been just about no evolution. You know why?”

  “Why?”

  “Because it’s perfect just the way it is.” She smiles compassionately, and I can see there’s a faint dusting of glitter in her eye shadow, which strikes me as sweet, a glimpse of the little girl who still lives there, the one who believes in fairies and princesses.

  “Why did he say that to you?”

  “Excuse me?”


  “Why were you grieving?”

  She grins. “Now what kind of professional would I be if I discussed my personal life with you?”

  “I guess you have some boundaries after all.”

  “When they suit me,” she says, meeting my gaze. “Maybe I’ll tell you under different circumstances. When I wouldn’t be compromising myself professionally.”

  There are only a handful of ways to interpret or misinterpret that last remark, but I’ve been out of the game for way too long to try, no matter how loudly the Claire in my head is calling me chickenshit. “Okay,” I say, extending my hand. “Thanks for the talk, or session, or whatever this was.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  The doorknob sticks when I turn it. “You have to pull it up,” she says, and as she squeezes past me to open it, I catch a whiff of her, a pleasant blend of blow-dried citrus shampoo, spearmint gum, and cigarettes that makes me suddenly homesick for something I can’t quite pinpoint. Not that I’m trying to smell her or anything.

  18

  RUSS LOOKS UP WHEN I STEP BACK OUT INTO THE hallway. “So?” he says.

  “So,” I say, sitting down next to him.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Not really what I expected.”

  “I know. It’s almost worth being a fuckup, getting sent to her office every week.”

  “You’re not a fuckup. You’re the brightest kid I know.”

  “I’m the only kid you know.”

  “So you’re it by default. You still hold the title.”

  “Whatever,” he says with a shrug. “Am I suspended?”

  “Yes.”

  “Excellent,” he says. “Paid vacation.”

  “But who’s paying?”

  He pulls his hair off his face and runs his fingers over his swollen eye. “Look at my face, dude. It’s already paid for.” He stands up and lifts his hands over his head to stretch his back. “Let’s get out of here.”

  “Where to, exactly?”

  “I don’t know, but I’m driving.”

  Outside the sky has filled with thick ash-colored thunderheads, and as Russ adjusts the driver’s seat and mirrors, the first droplets of rain start to fall onto the windshield.

  “Check your mirrors before you pull out.”

  “I did.”

  “You didn’t signal.”

  “Nobody signals.”

  “You’ll fail your road test if you don’t signal. Two hands on the wheel, please.”

  “I drive better with one.”

  “Well, I ride better with two. Look out!”

  A van swerves around our protruding hood, honking angrily. Russ casually flips the bird out the window. “I saw him,” Russ says.

  “Of course you did.”

  “Should I get on the highway?”

  “Sure, but stop at this red light first.”

  He stomps on the brakes and we skid to a stop, bouncing hard against our seat belts.

  “She’s pretty cute, isn’t she?” Russ says.

  “Who?”

  “Ms. Hayes.”

  “If you like that look.”

  “Everybody likes that look.”

  “I guess I was too busy hearing about how you got your ass kicked to pay attention. What was that fight about anyway?”

  “He made a crack about my tattoo.”

  “What did he say?”

  “I didn’t actually hear the whole thing.”

  “But you hit him anyway.”

  “He had it coming.”

  The light turns green and Russ accelerates a bit too hard, jerking me back lightly against my seat. “Easy.” The rain is starting to come down harder, beating noisily against the windshield. Russ flips on the wipers and turns onto the entrance ramp of the Sprain Brook Parkway. “Have you driven in the rain before?” I say.

  “Don’t worry about it,” Russ says, merging onto the highway and gunning the engine.

  “Watch your speed.”

  “You watch it. I’m watching the road.” He moves into the left lane and levels off at sixty.

  “Where are we headed?”

  “You’ll see.”

  Ahead of us in the center lane is a tractor trailer, its wheels churning out a furious spray of water. Russ speeds up, trying to pass, but the truck keeps inching over into our lane. “Move it!” Russ says, beating down on his horn.

  “Just slow down,” I say. “You can’t pass him here.”

  “The hell I can’t.”

  Up ahead the highway turns, and as we enter the curve, Russ accelerates into it, inching up alongside the trailer, which shimmies noisily much too close to my window, obscuring our windshield with the thick blanket of mist coming off its immense wheels. “Russ!” I shout at him.

  “Shut up!” he yells.

  I can feel our tires sliding on the rain-slicked blacktop as the force of our turn pushes us within inches of the trailer, its mud flaps cracking like bullwhips, and our screams are drowned out by the bellowing horn of the truck as we slide toward the trailer’s undercarriage. And then, a second before impact, Russ floors it and we zip out ahead of the truck, who yanks on his horn and machine-guns us with his high beams.

  “Jesus Christ, Russ!” I say, still braced for the collision.

  “That was pretty bad,” he admits, eyes wide. “But at least we know for sure that you don’t want to die anymore.”

  “Very funny.”

  He signals right and moves across the lanes toward an exit.

  “Where are we going?” I say, but I already know.

  Russ looks at me and smiles. “To tell Mom the good news.”

  I’ve learned that visiting the cemetery just doesn’t work for me. I’m simply too caught up in the morbid physicality of it all. In the weeks after Hailey’s death I tried to get used to it. I would come and sit on the lawn beside her grave and make halting attempts at one-sided conversation, but I just couldn’t make myself believe there was anyone listening, and even if I could, talking to the grave never made any sense to me. If there’s an afterlife, and they can hear you, shouldn’t they be able to hear you from anywhere? What’s the theory here, that talking to the dead requires range, like a cell phone, and if you go too far the call gets dropped? I know that if I were a spirit, the last place you’d find me haunting would be my grave, watching my body rot. I don’t like looking in the mirror on my best days.

  And so, without fail I would end up looking into the grass, picturing her coffin six feet below, its lacquered surface, once buffed to shine like a Cadillac, now caked with dirt and grime. And that would lead to trying to visualize the contents of the coffin, so instead of communing with Hailey’s memory, I’d find myself picturing the gruesome remains of what was once my wife. I don’t know what we buried, but between the impact of the plane and the subsequent immolation, it couldn’t have been more than a few pieces of her, splinters of bone and charred flesh and hair, all fused together in some grisly collage, some horror movie prop resembling nothing remotely human. If there’s one thing I’ve learned from this whole experience, it’s that cremation is the way to go. It’s clean, efficient, and, most important, leaves nothing to the imagination. We could turn all the cemeteries into forests and playgrounds.

  Russ and I stand solemnly in the rain, surrounded by white and gray tombstones that rise out of the earth like jagged teeth as far as the eye can see. We peer doggedly at the etchings on Hailey’s as if looking for edits or amendments that might have been made since we last were here.

  “I can’t believe it’s been over a year already,” Russ says.

  “I know.”

  “Sometimes it feels like a week, and other times it seems like so long ago, like I can’t even remember what life was like when she was here.”

  “Do you come out here a lot?” I say.

  “When I can get a lift.”

  “You’ve never asked me.”

  Russ nods, his hair slick and matted with rain. “I didn’t want to bring you d
own.”

  “That would be a neat trick, considering where I am these days.”

  “Do you ever talk to her?”

  “I hear her in my head all day.”

  He turns to me. “But do you talk to her?”

  I brush the rain-soaked hair out of my eyes. “Not really,” I say. “No.”

  “Well, I hope you won’t mind if I do.”

  “Of course not.”

  Russ steps forward, brushes some leafy debris off the small, square-trimmed hedges at the foot of the grave, and then kneels, leaning his head against the stone, eyes closed. He does this without a trace of his usual self-consciousness, and I know that hearing him speak to her will be more than I can bear, so I step back a few paces and turn around. A funeral procession has just arrived on the other side of the cemetery, and I watch the small parade of red and black umbrellas bouncing almost jauntily among the graves, following the pallbearers as they make their way across the geometric landscape of glistening tombstones.

  I had a wife. Her name was Hailey. Now she’s gone. And so am I.

  I watch the funeral for a little while longer, until I hear a rasping sound behind me, and turn to find Russ weeping violently against Hailey’s tombstone, his face twisted into a mask of anguish, rocking back and forth like he’s in the grip of unseen gale-force winds. “Russ,” I say, stepping over to him. “It’s okay.” But of course it isn’t, and he knows it, and he presses his fingertips desperately against the stone, desperate to feel something more than just the cold, wet granite. I bend down, unsure of how to approach him, but as soon as I touch his shoulder he collapses into me, pulling me down to my knees in the soaked grass, burrowing his face into the crook of my elbow, clutching my arm as he lets out a long, shuddering cry. And as my body shakes along with his, I look down to where his wet hair is falling away from his neck, and I can see the tattoo of Hailey’s comet glistening on his drenched skin, staring right up at me like an accusation, and I decide that, afterlife or not, it’s high time I had a talk with Jim.