How to Talk to a Widower

friend. I’m too stoned to hassle you right now.” He lets out a long, heartfelt sigh, still staring at Debbie. “If I had any kind of balls, I would tell her how I feel.”
    “You understand she’s getting married, right?”
    He looks at Mike, who is tracing patterns in some spilled salt with the point of his steak knife, and shakes his head sadly. “What a waste.”
    So Russ stares at Debbie while I watch my father, who chews quietly on his steak, smiling happily as he surveys his family. It’s haunting to see him like this, so regal and polished, so … there. It’s like seeing a long-dead relative, and I can feel the sadness like lead in my belly. We were never very close, but ever since he had the stroke he likes me a lot more, and that makes me miss him in a way I don’t fully understand, because how can you miss something you never really had?
    I’m so caught up in staring at my father that I don’t hear Mike, who is seated directly across from me, the first two times he calls my name. “Doug!” he finally shouts, and everyone else falls silent.
    “What?” I say, annoyed.
    “I was telling you that I want you to be a groomsman.”
    “What?”
    “I want you to be in my wedding party.”
    I don’t mean to laugh at him. It just happens. “You can’t be serious.”
    “Come on, Doug,” he says, looking nervously around the table. “You can’t stay pissed forever, so why not bury it right here. We were good friends, and now we’re going to be family.” He extends his hand across the table to me and offers a wide grin. “So, what do you say?” Out of the corner of my eye, I can see Debbie watching this unfold out of the corner of hers, and I realize that it’s all been choreographed, a public demonstration of goodwill designed to quell my resistance.
    I leave his hand where it is. “I say no.”
    Mike pulls his hand back, looking hurt, and Debbie throws down her silverware. “What the hell is wrong with you?” she snaps at me.
    “Nothing.”
    “If you were going to be such a bastard, why did you even come?”
    “Claire made me. She didn’t want to come alone.”
    She sighs and changes tack. “Okay. You’re sad. You’re still grieving. I understand that. I can only imagine how you feel. But don’t you think that for just one day you can put it aside, just stop thinking about yourself and be happy for me?”
    “Like you put aside your feelings for Mike to be sad for me when my wife died?”
    “That’s not fair, Doug.”
    “You’re right about that.”
    “Take it easy,” Claire says, looking over at me.
    “I can’t help where I met Mike. It was just … fate. Everything happens for a reason.”
    “You narcissistic little bitch,” I say, and Debbie’s head snaps back like she was slapped.
    “Doug!” Claire says, but it’s too late. If she wanted me to be nice, she shouldn’t have brought me here.
    “You really believe that, don’t you?” I shout at Debbie, who is staring at me, her mouth open in wordless shock. “That Hailey dying was part of this grand, divine scheme so that Mike could bone you upstairs while I was sitting shiva?”
    “Douglas!” my mother hisses across the table at me, and I realize that the entire restaurant has fallen silent.
    “That’s not what I meant,” Debbie says, her voice shaking.
    “You mean it’s not what you meant to say out loud.”
    “Maybe you two should step outside,” Mike says.
    “Maybe you should shut the fuck up.”
    “Language, Douglas!” my mother says, snapping her fingers across the table at me.
    “You are being such an asshole,” Debbie sobs.
    “And you’re a self-absorbed little twat.”
    “Okay! So here’s some news,” Claire announces gaily. “I’m pregnant. And I’ve left Stephen.” Everyone turns to stare at her. She sits in her seat, twiddling her thumbs on the table. “Don’t everyone congratulate me all at once.”
    My mother grabs my father’s forearm and looks at Claire. “Could you say that again, please?” she says, holding her other hand against her chest.
    “Which part?”
    “All of it.”
    “I’m pregnant and I’m getting divorced.”
    “Kaboom,” Russ says loudly, and I guess it’s the marijuana kicking in, but he suddenly starts to laugh, and then the laughing gets louder, and pretty soon he’s hysterical, shaking back and forth, his mouth open wide, tears streaming down his face. “Russ,” I say, nudging him under the table, “cut it out!” But that just makes