How to Talk to a Widower

thing: delegate someone you trust to get the job done.”
    “What are you going to do, start setting me up on blind dates?”
    She leans forward on her knees so she can get in my face. “I’m going to make you do anything that I think the old you would want to do.”
    “But I’m not him anymore.”
    “You’re not anybody anymore.”
    We stare at each other for a long moment. She wins, as usual. “What would I have to do?” I say.
    “Two things,” she says. “And the first one is the hardest.”
    “What’s that?”
    She pulls herself forward to sit on my legs, effectively pinning me to the bed, and places her hands on my shoulders, her face just inches from mine. “You need to tell me that you want this.”
    “That I want what?”
    “That you want to start living again, that you’re willing to start being sad less often, that you’re ready to move on, and you just need some help getting started. That you’re willing to at least allow for the possibility of happiness.”
    “Of course I want that.”
    “So say it.”
    “Why?”
    “Because you need to hear it.”
    “Claire.” I start to look away and she grabs my chin and forces me to look right at her.
    “Just shut up and do it.”
    “Okay,” I say. “I want to start living again. I want to be happy again, at least sometimes. I don’t honestly know if I’m ready to move on, but I know I want to be. And—” My voice catches in my throat, but I force my way through it. “And I don’t know how to do it.”
    She brushes her pinky gently across my face to capture a solo tear I wasn’t even aware of, and then kisses the tip of her dampened finger. “Okay,” she says with a playful grin. “Good enough.”
    “What’s the second thing?”
    “Sorry?”
    “You said there were two things I had to do.”
    “Oh right,” she says. “That. That’s actually pretty easy.”
    “Well?”
    “Just say yes.”
    “To what?”
    “To everything.”
    “To everything.”
    “That’s right,” she says, pulling herself off the bed. “Everything. You’ve spent the last year saying no to everyone and everything that came your way, and what do you have to show for it?”
    “I didn’t say no to Laney Potter.”
    “And it got you laid. Imagine if you said yes more often.”
    “I don’t know if I could handle all the excitement.”
    “Well, we’re going to find out. New rule: Just say yes.”
    “I thought rules didn’t mean anything to you.”
    “They do when they’re my rules. Now stop equivocating and just agree with me.”
    “Should I really trust my life to someone who is in the process of fucking up her own so spectacularly?”
    “Make no mistake!” she says hotly. “I am unfucking my life. And while, to the untrained eye, the processes might look somewhat similar, I assure you the endgame is entirely different.”
    “Somehow, I don’t think Stephen is going to see it that way.”
    She shrugs. “What can I tell you? You want to make an omelet, you have to break a few eggs. Now stop changing the subject, we can talk about me later. Are you in or not?”
    I think about my father at dinner last night, smiling and lucid, so happy to be surrounded by his miserable, fucked-up children. I think of Debbie, weeping on his shoulder, and my mother’s eyes following him as he danced. And then I think of Hailey, kissing me slowly on the Ferris wheel as dusk settled like a warm blanket around us. “I’m in,” I say.
    “Okay,” Claire says with a wicked smile. “It’s on.”
    “So what happens now?”
    “Now you get dressed and get your scrawny ass over to Radford Township High.”
    “What the hell for?”
    “They called about an hour ago. Russ got into a fight. He’s been suspended.”
    “Oh shit. Why didn’t you tell me sooner?”
    “It was on my agenda. I prioritized.”
    “Well, why don’t they just call Jim?”
    “Okay,” Claire says, annoyed. “We’re going to try this again. The school called you because Russ has been suspended. They would like you to come and get him. Are you going?” She fixes me with a stern look.
    “Yes,” I say.
    She leans down and kisses my cheek. “Right answer,” she says, heading for the door. “Now, was that so hard?”

17

    RUSS GINGERLY PULLS OFF THE WET, BLOODSTAINED paper towel wrapped around his right hand to reveal his torn and bleeding knuckles. His left eye is half shut and a penumbra of prune-colored swelling is spreading from the corner of his eye socket down into his