How to Talk to a Widower

starts. But at some point I always felt obligated to tell them about the rape, and then they either got weird about touching me, or else they got all macho and stupid. So I tried not telling a few, but then I felt distant, like I was hiding something.”
    “Damned if you do, and damned if you don’t.”
    “I just need to be able to tell someone who will understand without it changing the way they look at me.”
    “You told me.”
    “But we’re not dating.”
    “Couldn’t this be a date?”
    “A zombie matinee and popcorn?”
    “I didn’t say it was a good date.”
    She turns sideways in her seat and looks at me for a long moment. The explosions on the screen reflect like shooting stars across her dark eyes, and her knowing smile is warm enough to melt things in my chest. Something I didn’t notice before: just at the edge of Brooke’s upper lip, a bit to the left, is a small crater in her skin, an old acne scar that eats slightly into the meat of her upper lip, disrupting its curve, forming a small swirl of off-color scar tissue there. But that works just fine for me. Perfection is plastic, cold, and unyielding. Real beauty is a current that has to be grounded, and it’s these little defects that do it. You need context, a reference point. Her scarred upper lip is the hook, the default nucleus from which everything else radiates. “No,” she says. “I’m pretty sure this isn’t a date, because if it was, we’d be holding hands.”
    She watches me as I slowly reach over, and then spreads her fingers to weave them through mine, running her thumb softly up and down the back of my hand as she leans her head on my shoulder. “Let’s pick a different movie,” she says.
    “Which one?”
    “Whichever one’s the longest.”
    She never lets go of my hand, even in the harsh lighting of the multiplex hallway as we’re switching theaters, and I take that to be a good sign.

31

    I COME DOWNSTAIRS THE NEXT MORNING TO FIND Claire already dressed in a blazer, skirt, and heels, hurriedly checking her makeup in the hall mirror.
    “Why are you all dressed up?” I say, sitting down on the bottom stair.
    “This isn’t dressed up,” she says, still looking at her reflection. “It’s just well dressed. Not all of us can pull off your slept-in-my-jeans-and-T-shirt look.” She makes an imperceptible adjustment to her hair, and then does that reverse pout that women do after putting on lipstick, folding her lips in on each other so that they disappear for a second. Sitting on the stairs in my boxers, I feel like a kid again, watching my mother prepare to go out on an audition. She would stay at the mirror long after she’d finished her makeup, and I’d run lines with her, reading from scripts I didn’t understand, and she’d study her reflection and tweak her expressions and head movements as she spoke. Then she’d say, “Wish me luck,” and I’d say, “Break a leg,” and she’d kiss the air near my cheek and head out the door, and I’d offer up a little prayer that this would be the one she landed, and it would make her a star, and we’d move to Hollywood, and I’d be one of those cool Hollywood kids, dressing funky, going to premieres, and hanging out with beautiful troubled girls at night clubs. And now, watching Claire, I’m shocked to realize how much she looks like our mother, and I almost tell her, but although our mother’s beauty is a matter of public record, I’m still not entirely sure she’d take it as a compliment.
    “Where are you going?”
    “I’ve got an appointment to see my obstetrician.”
    “Everything okay?”
    “It’s just a routine prenatal checkup and ultrasound.”
    “Why do you have to look so good for your doctor?”
    “I get waxed for my doctor. I look good for me.”
    “You want me to come with?”
    “Nah. I’m late already.”
    “I can be ready in five minutes.”
    She turns and runs her fingers through my grimy, sleep-sculpted hair. “You’ll need ten minutes just to get your bed head under control.”
    “Seriously.”
    “I am serious,” she says, flashing me a smile from the door. “Have you seen your hair?”
    But after she’s gone I replay the conversation and something in her tone bothers me, so I dial Debbie’s cell phone number. “I’m walking into a meeting,” she says in a low voice.
    “Walk back out, I need to ask you something.”
    “Call me later.”
    “Should I have gone with Claire to her obstetrician