How to Talk to a Widower

calls like this, didn’t they? They screamed anguished denials and fell to the floor sobbing, or pounded the wall in a blood-red haze until they could no longer tell if the cracking sounds were coming from the dented wall or their broken fists. But all I could do was stand beside the bed, rubbing my neck and wondering what the hell to do. I supposed I was in shock, and that was, at least, a little bit comforting, because Hailey didn’t deserve this pathetic excuse for a reaction.
    My first instinct was to call someone. My first instinct was to call Hailey. I dialed her cell phone, not sure what I was hoping for. Her voice mail picked up instantly.
Hi, this is Hailey. Please leave me a message and I’ll call you back as soon as I can. Thanks, bye.
She’d recorded the outgoing message in the kitchen one night, and in the background, faintly, I could hear Russ and me laughing at the television. I heard the message so many times over the last few years that I had long ago stopped actually hearing it. But now I heard her calm, confident voice, her distracted tone as she hurriedly recorded the message, the faded background noise of her family laughing. She couldn’t be gone. She was right there on the phone, sounding every bit like herself. The dead didn’t have voice mail. The phone beeped and I realized that it was now recording me. “Hey, babe,” I said stupidly, but I couldn’t get any more words out, so I hung up.
    A terrible, selfish thought entered my mind unbidden, and then another and soon they were coming in droves, one after another, like when you hold the door for one old lady, and fifteen more people decide to walk through and you get stuck there on door duty when all you meant to do was accommodate one old lady.
    How I will handle this?
    Where will I live?
    Will anyone ever love me again?
    I pictured Hailey naked, coming through the bathroom doorway, smiling lustily at me as she walked over to the bed. Would there ever be another naked woman smiling at me like that? And even right then, at that terrible moment, I knew there would be other naked women, and I felt ashamed for knowing it. But still, would any of them look at me like she used to?
    Also—and this was the worst one, not for the weak stomachs—I felt an undeniable twinge of relief at the knowledge that she would never have the chance to fall out of love with me, that she would love me forever. I felt like a bigger asshole than I’d ever been, and that was saying something.
    Hailey is dead
. I tried to comprehend it.
She’s not coming back. I will never see her again
. None of it meant anything to me. They were just words, nothing more than unproven hypotheses. What was I supposed to do now?
Hailey is dead. Hailey is dead. Hailey is dead
. It seemed important that I grasp this concept in its entirety, so that I could function, do whatever needed to be done.
    What needed to be done? I had no fucking idea, but I was highly aware of Russ, in his room down the hall. He was sleeping now, but he would wake up to a nightmare and never sleep the same again. He would never breathe, smile, eat, cry, think, cough, walk, blink, piss, or laugh the same way again, and he didn’t even know it, and that seemed particularly cruel and unfair. I already suspected that I would have a harder time facing his grief than my own. I wanted to leave before he stirred, run away and never have to see his eyes fill with the horrible knowledge of his changed life.
    What needed to be done?
    Keep moving. Call someone. Someone would know what to do.
    I picked up the phone again.
    “Hello,” grunted Stephen, Claire’s husband.
    “Can I talk to Claire?”
    “Doug?” he said drowsily. “Christ! Do you know what time it is?”
    “It’s one forty-three. I need to talk to Claire.”
    “She’s sleeping,” he said firmly. Stephen had never liked me all that much. I’d made an impassioned plea to Claire not to marry him, spontaneously articulating a long, detailed list of all the reasons why he was wrong for her, and he’d taken offense, particularly because I had the admittedly bad sense to incorporate this diatribe into my toast at their wedding reception. In my defense, I was young and there was an open bar.
    “It can’t wait.”
    “Is everything okay?”
    Hailey is dead
. “I just need Claire.”
    There was a brief, muffled rustling and then Claire came on the phone, sounding all hoarse and confused. “Doug, what the fuck?” Claire’s potty mouth was