How to Talk to a Widower

Room for a private dance?”

28

    THERE ARE FOUR VOICE MAILS ON MY CELL PHONE, all from Laney. I call her back as I’m driving home from the strip club, where I made good my escape soon after my aborted lap dance. She picks up on the first ring.
    “Are you still with Mike and the other guys?” she says.
    “I just left.”
    “Well, Dave just called and he says he’s going to be out pretty late.”
    I’ll bet. “Probably,” I say.
    “So.”
    “So.”
    “I want you in my bed.”
    Laney opens the door in a red satin teddy, her long auburn hair cascading wildly around her, and I know I should end this, but she’s just so goddamn beautiful and after the strippers this feels positively wholesome, and it suddenly feels like I’ve been through a war today so I practically fall into her arms. Her bedroom flickers in the light of scented candles, and she sits me down at the edge of the high four-poster bed and undresses me slowly, kissing my chest and stomach, and then my thighs as she pulls off my pants. Once I’m naked she climbs onto my lap, wrapping her legs around me as she opens my mouth with hers, and I try hard not to think about the lap dance I had just an hour ago. Then, without taking her eyes off of me, she shimmies out of the spaghetti straps of her negligee and pulls it down so that her breasts are sudden, twin explosions of flesh in my face as she pulls my head into them. And as my hands reach around to find her ass, I can’t help but think of Dave’s hands on the stripper’s ass, his face hungrily planted between her breasts, and this should feel like justice, but instead it just feels sad, because we’re all the same. Dave, the stripper, Laney, and me; all trapped in the same pose, all wanting something other than what we’re getting.
    When we’re done, Laney nods off and I quietly retrieve my clothing from the floor to get dressed. I’m making my way down the carpeted hallway when I hear a toilet flush and I freeze as Laney’s daughter, Rebecca, four years old with her mother’s red hair, steps out of the bathroom, small and cherubic in her pink pajamas. She looks at me through sleep-fogged eyes and then steps over to me and, inexplicably, lifts her arms to be picked up. “Tuck me back in,” she says sleepily.
    When I pick her up, she wraps her arms tightly around me and buries her face in the crook of my neck, her chubby cheek smooth against my jaw. In the dim glow of her Tinkerbell nightlight I can see the pink walls, the plush white comforter with a pattern of pink hearts, the assembly of stuffed animals protectively crowding the perimeter of her bed. I lie her back in the bed and wrap the comforter snugly around her. Then, just before I straighten up, she raises her head, eyes still closed, and kisses the bottom of my chin. “I love you,” she says, before rolling back against the wall, and the hot tremor in my chest rises to my throat. I tiptoe out of the room and down the hall, and hit the first floor running.

    I get home around midnight to find my mother’s car parked in the driveway, and I’m sixteen again, busted coming home after curfew, having been up to no good and wondering how much they know. She’s on the living room couch, dozing in front of Leno, cradling a sleeping Claire’s head in her lap. Her hair is splayed and flattened against the back of the couch, her makeup smudged in a way that makes her look out of focus. Her left hand is buried in Claire’s hair, and in her right is a half-filled wineglass, held miraculously upright against her chest, like she had fallen asleep with the glass on its way to her mouth. There’s an empty bottle of Merlot on the table, and no other glasses in evidence, which is good, because it means Claire is being responsible about her pregnancy, but a little sad because it means my mother has polished off the entire bottle herself.
    I’m quietly wrapping my fingers around the stem of the wineglass to take it from her when she pulls it away from me. “Get your own,” she murmurs, barely stirring.
    “Hey, Ma.”
    She opens her eyes. “You smell like sex.”
    “What are you doing here?”
    She finishes off the wine in her glass and then hands it to me. “But if you were having sex,” she says through a long yawn, “why wouldn’t you stay the night?”
    “Mom.”
    “A few theories come to mind, and none of them bode terribly well for you.”
    “I’m fine,” I say, collapsing into an armchair.
    “You look fine,” she