How to Talk to a Widower

seat and mirrors, the first droplets of rain start to fall onto the windshield.
    “Check your mirrors before you pull out.”
    “I did.”
    “You didn’t signal.”
    “Nobody signals.”
    “You’ll fail your road test if you don’t signal. Two hands on the wheel, please.”
    “I drive better with one.”
    “Well, I ride better with two. Look out!”
    A van swerves around our protruding hood, honking angrily. Russ casually flips the bird out the window. “I saw him,” Russ says.
    “Of course you did.”
    “Should I get on the highway?”
    “Sure, but stop at this red light first.”
    He stomps on the brakes and we skid to a stop, bouncing hard against our seat belts.
    “She’s pretty cute, isn’t she?” Russ says.
    “Who?”
    “Ms. Hayes.”
    “If you like that look.”
    “Everybody likes that look.”
    “I guess I was too busy hearing about how you got your ass kicked to pay attention. What was that fight about anyway?”
    “He made a crack about my tattoo.”
    “What did he say?”
    “I didn’t actually hear the whole thing.”
    “But you hit him anyway.”
    “He had it coming.”
    The light turns green and Russ accelerates a bit too hard, jerking me back lightly against my seat. “Easy.” The rain is starting to come down harder, beating noisily against the windshield. Russ flips on the wipers and turns onto the entrance ramp of the Sprain Brook Parkway. “Have you driven in the rain before?” I say.
    “Don’t worry about it,” Russ says, merging onto the highway and gunning the engine.
    “Watch your speed.”
    “You watch it. I’m watching the road.” He moves into the left lane and levels off at sixty.
    “Where are we headed?”
    “You’ll see.”
    Ahead of us in the center lane is a tractor trailer, its wheels churning out a furious spray of water. Russ speeds up, trying to pass, but the truck keeps inching over into our lane. “Move it!” Russ says, beating down on his horn.
    “Just slow down,” I say. “You can’t pass him here.”
    “The hell I can’t.”
    Up ahead the highway turns, and as we enter the curve, Russ accelerates into it, inching up alongside the trailer, which shimmies noisily much too close to my window, obscuring our windshield with the thick blanket of mist coming off its immense wheels. “Russ!” I shout at him.
    “Shut up!” he yells.
    I can feel our tires sliding on the rain-slicked blacktop as the force of our turn pushes us within inches of the trailer, its mud flaps cracking like bullwhips, and our screams are drowned out by the bellowing horn of the truck as we slide toward the trailer’s undercarriage. And then, a second before impact, Russ floors it and we zip out ahead of the truck, who yanks on his horn and machine-guns us with his high beams.
    “Jesus Christ, Russ!” I say, still braced for the collision.
    “That was pretty bad,” he admits, eyes wide. “But at least we know for sure that you don’t want to die anymore.”
    “Very funny.”
    He signals right and moves across the lanes toward an exit.
    “Where are we going?” I say, but I already know.
    Russ looks at me and smiles. “To tell Mom the good news.”

    I’ve learned that visiting the cemetery just doesn’t work for me. I’m simply too caught up in the morbid physicality of it all. In the weeks after Hailey’s death I tried to get used to it. I would come and sit on the lawn beside her grave and make halting attempts at one-sided conversation, but I just couldn’t make myself believe there was anyone listening, and even if I could, talking to the grave never made any sense to me. If there’s an afterlife, and they can hear you, shouldn’t they be able to hear you from anywhere? What’s the theory here, that talking to the dead requires range, like a cell phone, and if you go too far the call gets dropped? I know that if I were a spirit, the last place you’d find me haunting would be my grave, watching my body rot. I don’t like looking in the mirror on my best days.
    And so, without fail I would end up looking into the grass, picturing her coffin six feet below, its lacquered surface, once buffed to shine like a Cadillac, now caked with dirt and grime. And that would lead to trying to visualize the contents of the coffin, so instead of communing with Hailey’s memory, I’d find myself picturing the gruesome remains of what was once my wife. I don’t know what we buried, but between the impact of the plane and the subsequent immolation, it