How to Talk to a Widower

he’s been skipping school, and his grades are in the toilet.”
    “He can fall in with a bad crowd in any high school.”
    “Exactly,” Jim says, turning to watch another gaggle of girls as they pass. “So what’s the difference?”
    “He’s hurting, Jim. He’s still grieving and he needs to come to terms. You move him to Florida, he’ll just have that much more to be angry about. Can’t you and Angie just wait a little while? He’ll be off to college in a few years and then you can go.”
    “We’ve already put it off for Russ. We were all set to go last year. Everything was in place. But then Hailey died … ”
    “What a terrible inconvenience for you.” I grip my mug tightly, wishing I was the kind of guy who would just smash it into Jim’s face. He’d probably beat me to death and then sue my corpse. Goddamn lawyers.
    Jim raises his massive hands apologetically. “Okay, that came out wrong. My point is just that with Hailey dying and my taking custody of Russ … this has all been a pretty big change for Angie and me to absorb.”
    “What about losing your mother in a plane crash? Where does that fall out on the scale of changes to absorb?”
    Jim lowers his head to take a long swallow of beer, and when he raises it again there’s a dab of beer foam on the point of his nose. “Don’t get all high and mighty on me, Doug. Hailey’s been poisoning that kid against me for years and you know it. You think it’s easy, taking a kid who’s been raised to hate you, and bringing him into a home with your wife and son? I already fucked up one marriage, and let me tell you, I’m not going to fuck up another one.”
    “So Russ doesn’t matter.”
    “Of course he matters. But Angie and our little boy matter too.” He takes another long sip. “I’m not the bad guy here.”
    “No. You’re a fucking hero.”
    Jim’s beer mug comes crashing down on the table, his hand closed into a white-knuckled fist on the handle, his face turning a deep, angry crimson hot enough to melt away the veneer of civility he’d worn up to this point. “Listen to me, you little shit,” he says, his voice low and menacing. “I’m cutting you some slack because of your loss, but you’re starting to try my patience. I took a lot of crap from Hailey, but I’m not going to take it from a punk like you. I love Russ, but like it or not, I’ve got a wife and another son to think about, and Russ comes with a lot of trouble that they don’t need. You don’t know shit about my life, you just got here, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to let you sit there in judgment of me. You’re not a member of this family, you’re just part of the debris, a loose end who’s still hanging around because he hasn’t figured out where the hell else to go yet.”
    We stare across the table at each other, and I can see the naked hatred like a caged animal pacing frantically behind his eyes. I lived for two years with the woman he loved and the child he fathered, in the house he paid for. He traded his family for sex, and then traded that sex in for another family that I sometimes suspect he doesn’t like very much, and while Hailey was still alive Jim was arrogant enough to believe that the only thing that kept him from taking back his first, better life was the man that had somehow supplanted him there. This isn’t a guess on my part; I know it from the long, drunken messages he would occasionally leave on our answering machine in the middle of the night, crying to Hailey, begging her to call him.
    “I’m not judging you, Jim.”
    “The hell you’re not.”
    “This isn’t about you and me,” I say. “I’m just thinking about what’s best for Russ.”
    Jim looks at me for a long moment. “You think it’s so easy, why don’t you keep him?”
    “What?”
    Jim shrugs. “He can live with you. Problem solved.”
    “He’s not my kid.”
    “He may as well be.” He sits back and finishes off his beer, instantly refilling it from the pitcher. “What do you think Hailey would want?”
    “That’s not the point.”
    “Isn’t it?”
    “I’m not in the equation. Like you said, I’m just part of the debris.”
    “And like you said, we’re talking about what’s best for Russ here,” Jim says with a smug grin. “I guess we’re both just babbling brooks of bullshit, aren’t we?”
    “He’s your son, for Christ’s sake! You can’t just give him away.”
    Jim leans back in his chair, folding his hands behind