Authors: Jonathan Tropper

How to Talk to a Widower (7 page)

“And now you do?”

“Now I do.”

“Listen, Claire, I know that losing your wife in a plane crash and drinking yourself to sleep every night may seem somewhat glamorous, but just between you and me, it's really not all it's cracked up to be.”

She gives me a shove. “You know what I mean.”

“I'm not sure I do yet. Get to the part where you get knocked up.”

She laughs softly and leans the back of her head against the fridge. “The irony of the whole thing is that we barely even have sex anymore. It's nothing less than a miracle that I haven't cheated on that man, a horny chick like me. It was just this one night, this anomaly, where he had no late meetings, and no calls to make, and there was nothing on TV, and I guess we were both bored, so we had sex. It was that or cleaning out my closet. And it was nothing special, believe me. I mean, I forgot about it as soon as it was over. But then, a few weeks later I was late, so I took a test and imagine my surprise â¦ ”

“You're sure the test was right?”

“I took five tests.”

“Okay.”

“So I'm sitting there in the bathroom, washing the pee off my hands, and it just hits me that I'm going to be a mother and now this is all I'll ever be. Mrs. Stephen Ives, just another rich, bored housewife, a sad clichÃ©. And I don't want to be Laney Potter, screwing other men just to feel alive again for a few hours.”

“Thanks for that.”

“No offense.”

“None taken.”

“I thought maybe I could stay here for a while.”

“Sure. The guest room's yours.”

The fridge vibrates gently against our spines as we sit on my kitchen floor, talking quietly while twilight falls like a curtain over the windows. I can hear the sounds of kids in front yards, urgently attending to childhood affairs, shouting and laughing, young and untouched and thinking they'll always be that way. When we were kids, whenever I was sad, Claire would put on this white chef's hat and concoct ridiculous ice cream sundaes that we would then force ourselves to finish. Banana splits with chocolate syrup, Jell-O and gummy bears, hot fudge sundaes floating in root beer, quadruple-scoop ice cream cones with marshmallow fluff between each scoop. Half the fun was watching her dart madly around the kitchen, randomly selecting ingredients as she narrated the process in her best Julia Child voice.

“Remember the funny sundaes?” I say.

Claire rests her head on my shoulder, turning her face into my neck, and quietly starts to cry.

How to Talk to a Widower
By Doug Parker

B
ecause of this newfound tendency I've developed of unleashing rapid-fire bursts of raw, unadulterated painâmy emotional Tourette'sâand because I can't stand to be the object of anyone's pity other than my own, I pretty much stay home these days.

The only downside to this system is that the house is a minefield and I never know when I'm going to step on a latent memory of Hailey and get my legs blown off. Even after all this time, she's still everywhere. On her night table still rests the last book she was reading, some chick lit thing with a lipstick pink cover about overweight, smart-assed women and the men who cheat on them, and when I pick it up, I see that she doodled on the last page she read, a bug-eyed cartoon man with a handlebar mustache and evil eyebrows, and it makes me smile, but even as I do, I can feel the tears start to come.

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

Or in the bathroom, her red bra still hangs on the doorknob. She'd no doubt meant to toss it in the hamper but never got around to it. That's something I taught her, to let simple household tasks percolate for a little bit, to do no chore before its time.

I move through our bedroom like a ghost, careful not to disturb the haphazard evidence of her existence; the book, the bra, the hairbrush still filled with knots of her blond hair, her perfume and cosmetics scattered across the sink top, the water ring from a sweating glass of water she'd put down on her dresser, the silk blouse laid out across the chair next to her bed that she'd decided at the last minute not to pack for her trip, the frayed stuffed elephant named Bazooka that she kept wedged between her pillow and the headboard ever since she was a little girl. For a while after she died, I didn't even change the sheets because they still smelled of her. Then they stopped smelling of her and, after a few more weeks, they just smelled like ass. And that's as good a metaphor for grief as any of the thousands of others that occur to me on a daily basis. You cling desperately to every single memory, and in doing so the memories themselves grow stale and turn, like the sheets on my bed.

Still, it hurt when I changed the linens, was just one more way of moving Hailey into the past tense, one more step across the inevitable divide, and I can't bring myself to straighten up, because every little thing I remove or clean up is one more trace of her that I will immutably erase. I want to put up stanchions and red velvet ropes, like they do in historical mansions to keep the tourists from screwing with the past, because, given the chance, that's what we'd all do.

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.

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.

âK

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.

âD

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!

âK

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.

âD

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.

âK

P.S. No charge for the free therapy.

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Date:
Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Subject:
Maybe So, But â¦

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 â¦

âD

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Date:
Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Subject:
Funny You Should Say That â¦

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 â¦ 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!

âK

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.

âD

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?

âK

From:
[email protected]

To:
[email protected]

Date:
Wednesday, September 13, 2006

Subject:
Krause Is an Idiot

He is.

âD

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.