How to Talk to a Widower

poached salmon, quiche, and gooey Hungarian pastries, all donated by friends of Hailey’s from Temple Israel. Grief can be catered just like anything else.
    And there was my kid sister Debbie, treating the shiva like a SoHo bar, dressed to the nines in short skirts and push-up bras that raised the rounded tops of her medium-sized breasts above the horizon of her V-neck sweaters like a couple of rising suns. At the best of times, no one wants to see their sister’s breasts, but there was something particularly offensive about watching her wield them like cocked weapons in my house of mourning. And that’s how it came to pass that she got busy in the den with my buddy Mike, so you’ll forgive me if I’m not terribly invested in their happiness. If Hailey hadn’t died they never would have met, and now their whole happy future together, their marriage, their kids, will all be the result of Hailey’s death, and while I can rationally accept that this doesn’t make them exactly complicit in her death, they’re still reaping the benefits, and it just seems wrong to build your whole life on the cornerstone of someone else’s cataclysm.
    “It’s not about celebrating,” my mother says. “It’s about spending time with your family.”
    “Yeah,” I say, keeping my eye on Harvey. “I’m not really up for that, either.”
    “That’s a terrible thing to say to your mother.”
    “That’s why I went with the celebration line first.”
    “Ha,” she says. She is one of those people who actually say “Ha” instead of laughing, like she speaks in comic-strip balloons. “If you can be a wiseass, you can come for dinner.”
    This is what passes for logic with my mother. “I don’t think so.”
    She sighs, and the way she does it makes me picture the word “sigh” in faint print, hanging above her in another comic-strip balloon. “Doug,” she says. “You can’t be sad forever.”
    “I think maybe I can.”
    “Oh, Doug. It’s been a year already. Don’t you think it’s time you got back out there?”
    “That’s right, Mom. It’s only been a year.”
    “You never leave your house.”
    “I like it here.”
    There’s no sense explaining the value of self-pity to someone like my mother. You either get it or you don’t. Everyone deals differently. My mother, for instance, takes pills, little yellow ones that she transfers into a small, faded Advil bottle which she keeps in her purse at all times. I don’t know what they are and she’ll never tell, since to her, medication is like incest, a dark family secret that must be kept from the neighbors at any cost. Claire named them Vil Pills, since the “Ad” had long ago been rubbed off the label from my mother’s constant handling. Back in the day, Claire and I would nick a few Vil Pills from her bag and wash them down with wine to get high. If my mother ever noticed she was short a few pills, she never said anything. And with my father writing the prescriptions, which he could still do back then, she had an endless supply.
    “There’s no talking to you when you’re like this,” my mother says.
    “And yet, you keep talking.”
    “So I’m concerned. Sue me.”
    “I’d settle for a restraining order.”
    “Ha ha. There’s no authority on this planet higher than a mother’s love.”
    “How’s Dad?”
    “He’s having one of his better days, thank God.”
    “That’s good.”
    “How’s Russell?”
    “He’s okay. I haven’t seen him in a few days.” Not since the cops brought him to my door, stoned and bleeding and hating my guts.
    “That poor boy. You can bring him if you like.”
    “Bring him where?”
    “To dinner. What are we talking about?”
    “I thought we’d moved on.”
    “It’s
you
who needs to move on.”
    “Yeah. I’m going to move on right now, Mom. Good-bye.”
    “Debbie will be devastated if you don’t come.”
    “Somehow, I think Debbie’s perfect life will go on.”
    She knows better than to touch that one. “Just tell me you’ll consider it.”
    “That would be lying.”
    “Since when do you have a problem lying to your mother?”
    I sigh. “I’ll consider it.”
    “That’s all I ask,” she lies back. She starts to say something else, but I can’t hear her anymore because I’ve just fired my cell phone at Harvey, who has finally wandered out of the shadow of the giant ash tree on my front lawn. I miss the rabbit and hit the tree, and my cell phone explodes on impact, sending plastic