How to Talk to a Widower

I say.
    “Fuck you. I am not.” Her eyes narrow into slits. “Hey,” she says. “You have the look of someone who’s been freshly fucked.”
    “What?”
    “My twin telepathy is telling me that you went ahead and bagged the meatloaf babe.”
    “We don’t have twin telepathy.”
    “Of course we do, it’s just subtle, like … flesh-colored nail polish.”
    I grin. “Like … central air.”
    “Like … a white wine buzz.”
    “Like … Mel Gibson’s Australian accent in
Lethal Weapon
.”
    She laughs and then stoops to lower her face directly in front of mine, staring at me nose to nose until I look away. She’s the lone person I can look in the eye these days, but even so, in twenty-nine years, I’ve never outstared her.
    “Oh shit, you really did!” she shouts gleefully. “No wonder I couldn’t get you on the phone. You were boning the horny hausfrau!”
    “Keep it down, will you?” I say, looking around the street.
    But Claire’s enjoying this too much. “Dougie, you slut!”
    I lean back on the porch swing, shaking my head. “What gave it away?”
    “Elementary, little brother,” she says, sitting down next to me. “There’s lipstick on your ear, your T-shirt is on inside out, and you’ve got a world-class case of bed head.”
    “Come on,” I say skeptically. “I always look like this.”
    “Well, then, I guess you’ll have to reconsider the twin telepathy thing.” She grabs some Cap’n Crunch from my box and starts shoveling it into her mouth. “You and the meatloaf babe,” she says, starting to laugh. “That is just too funny.”
    “Hysterical.”
    Her laugh tapers off and she rests her head on my shoulder, which means she has something to tell me. Whenever she’s stressing, that’s what she does, and over the years, her head has carved out its own little spot there, like water dripping onto a rock for a hundred years. I always imagine that we must have floated that way in the uterus, and in times of stress it’s our version of the fetal position. “Good for you,” she says softly, rubbing the fleshy part of my hand between her thumb and forefinger. “I think it’s a big step.”
    “It’s adultery.”
    “You’re not married.”
    “She is.”
    “With all of your problems, you’re going to start worrying about hers now?” She licks her finger and wipes something, probably some of Laney’s lipstick, off my cheek.
    “It’s my problem too.”
    “Wrong. Your problem is that you stopped living when Hailey died. An emerging sex drive is the first positive sign we’ve seen in a long time. It’s not a problem, it’s cause for celebration, is what it is. I can’t wait to tell Mom.”
    I laugh, but then quickly say, “You’re joking, right?” If there’s one thing you can be sure of with Claire, it’s that you can never be too sure.
    “We’ll see how nice you are to me,” she says with a shrug. “So how was it?”
    “I don’t know. I think I’m still in shock.”
    “Dougie, Dougie, Dougie. When will you learn to keep your brain out of your bone?” She sighs. “Sometimes I think I should have been the boy.”
    “Sometimes I think you are.”
    “Which actually provides a convenient segue to our next topic.”
    “Which is?”
    “I’m pregnant.”
    That puts some lift in my eyelids. “That’s great, Claire. Congratulations.”
    She nods against my shoulder. “Thanks.”
    Then she says nothing, but I can feel her muscles flexing like springs under her skin, her breath short and quick. We just sit there for a few minutes, staring into the yard. There’s a gray rabbit nibbling on the grass in the shadow of the hedges. Out of range. “There’s more,” I say.
    “Yup.”
    I think about it for a minute. “Stephen.”
    She looks up at me, smiling even as a lone tear emerges from the corner of her eye and slides across the bridge of her nose. “And you said we don’t have telepathy.”
    Then she stands up, shaking it off, and heads for the front door. “Do you have anything to eat in here? I’m starving.”
    I get up to follow her in, but then, out of the corner of my eye, I notice that the gray rabbit has wandered within striking distance of the porch. “Hello, Bugs,” I say under my breath, keeping one eye on him as I reach for the rock pile. My throw goes too high, sailing a foot over Bugs’s head, and bouncing soundlessly across the lawn in front of him. The rabbit looks up at me, and something in his dumb, unthreatened expression