How to Talk to a Widower

Jim, after all this time, suddenly shaving his pubic hair? The options played out before her like a standardized test.

    A. He had too much and it irritated him.
    B. He had somehow contracted crabs or lice.
    C. He wanted his penis to seem bigger.
    D. None of the above.

    She felt a knot forming in her stomach. Since she was fairly certain that A was not the correct answer—Jim was not a terribly hirsute person—and since B, C, and D all seemed to point to the same highly troubling scenario, she stepped out of the bathroom to grab her cordless and call her friend Sally.
    “Oh God!” Sally said, panting on her StairMaster.
    “What do you mean, oh God?”
    “He’s having an affair.”
    “I don’t think so,” Hailey said.
    “Is Jim small down there?”
    “Excuse me?”
    “I’ll apologize later,” Sally said. “You didn’t call me for polite conversation.”
    “No,” Hailey said, after a moment. “He’s pretty normal sized.”
    “So why does a happily married man suddenly feel the need to look bigger?”
    “I don’t know.”
    “Well, either he’s doing porno, and I think we can rule that out, or he’s looking to impress someone, and, honey, he doesn’t need to impress you anymore. Oprah did this whole thing on cheating spouses, and a conspicuous change in grooming habits is definitely a red flag.”
    Hailey frowned into the phone. There was no reasoning with Sally once Oprah had been invoked. “There could be a million other reasons.”
    “That’s true,” Sally said, her voice clenched from her exertions. “But, Hailey?”
    “What?”
    Sally paused. “Nothing.”
    “What?” Hailey demanded. Over the phone she could hear the stair machine stop as Sally stepped off, breathing heavily.
    “I don’t know,” Sally said. “It’s just that he’s done it before.”
    “Oh, for Christ’s sake, that was before we were even married.”
    “I’m just saying.”
    “Well, don’t,” Hailey said hotly, her eyes filling with tears. “That was an isolated incident, an old girlfriend he hadn’t quite gotten over, and we worked through it. We’ve been married for almost ten years, and I think he deserves the benefit of the doubt.”
    “He’s probably counting on it.”
    “You are being such a bitch!” Hailey shouted at her.
    Sally sighed. “Listen, honey, if you were looking for someone to just reassure you that everything was fine, you should have called Laney, and she would have talked you down. But you called me, and you know that’s not my thing. But I’m not the person you should be calling, either. So why don’t you ask yourself why you didn’t just call Jim to ask him?”
    So Hailey had called Jim and Jim told her that he’d been suffering from some bad jock itch, and that was that. Except that he’d never mentioned it before. And Jim always complained about the slightest ailment, a hangnail, a pulled muscle, allergies. And there were no fungus creams or powders lying around their cluttered bathroom. She sat down on the toilet seat cover, the cordless clutched in her fist like a weapon, and that’s where she remained all morning, naked and shivering, staring at the brown hairs in the wastebasket for a very long time.

    All this Hailey reported to me after the first time we had sex, an event which came off much better than advertised, what with her self-consciousness about her thirty-six-year-old body and my not inconsiderable performance anxiety. I was supposed to be the young stallion, after all, fit and virile and ready to fuck her sideways into tomorrow. That was exactly the kind of pressure that could play with your head if you let it, that could lead to the “it-happens-to-everyone-sometimes/not-to-me-it-doesn’t” conversation.
    We’d been dating intensely for over a month by then, and it had already taken on a life of its own: long, confessional phone calls fading into whispers as the hour grew late, roses and flowers and cute e-mails at work, making out for hours at a time in her car before she drove home. On days that we’d be going out, Hailey drove to work instead of taking the Metro-North, ostensibly because she didn’t want to take the train so late, but the car, parked at the fire hydrant in front of my building, became the perfect venue for our extended good nights, so much more comfortable than groping at each other in my stairwell, which was poorly insulated and smelled of feet and spoiled milk. I couldn’t recall the last time I’d spent so much