How to Talk to a Widower

judging me, and I’m just trying to breathe. I’m just trying to breathe.

    Angie and Claire handle the cops. Their combined beauty is blinding and the young crew-cut cops don’t know who to impress first. Apologies and explanations are made, flirtatious giggles are issued, smiles and nods are exchanged, breasts are stared at. The complex relationships that comprise our unblended family are laid out for the confused officers like blueprints. The father, the stepmother, the stepfather, the visiting sister, it takes a few go-rounds before it all makes sense. But ultimately, no charges will be pressed, no reports made. Hands touch shoulders, eyes are batted, wrists squeezed in gratitude. A family scuffle that got out of hand but now is most assuredly back in hand. The cops look over at Jim, Russ, and me, still sitting in the spots we landed in at the end of the melee, and we all nod, doing our best to look docile and penitent, but we are not beautiful so the cops don’t talk to us. There was talk of an ambulance when I passed out, but I came to almost immediately, and Claire insisted there was no need. And then, casting last, longing glances at the united front of Claire and Angie, the cops reluctantly climb back into their patrol car and drive off. Then Angie packs Jim into the passenger seat of his BMW, and as soon as the door closes, he covers his face and starts to sob violently. Russ and I look away, the way men do instinctively when other men cry.
    Then it’s just the three of us, sitting on the porch, buzzed on the surplus endorphins and adrenaline still coursing through our veins, talking the way people do in the aftermath of a dramatic occurrence, weaving our three separate vantage points into a single, cohesive narrative that will become the official version, the source material for all future discussions of the event.
    Claire goes inside and brings out ice in two ziplocked plastic bags for my face and Russ’s fist.
    “That’s some shiner you’ve got there,” Russ says to me.
    “Try not to sound so proud of yourself.”
    “It was an accident. You walked into my swing.”
    “You were supposed to stay inside.”
    “I couldn’t leave you out there to get your ass kicked. That’s not how I roll, man.”
    “I was handling it.”
    “You’re welcome. Jesus!”
    “Okay. Thank you for pissing off Jim and then bringing your mess to my doorstep. And thank you for punching me in the face, and for giving me a shiner two days before my sister’s wedding.”
    “And for saving your ass. We’d still be picking your teeth out of the grass.”
    I sigh through my bag of ice. “And for saving my ass.”
    “You’re welcome.”
    And all around us, the quotidian sound track of suburban morning as the neighborhood comes to life, the rhythmic whisper of sprinklers, the whine of leaf blowers and mowers, the buzz of garage doors, the hydraulic hiss of braking school buses. And the people, these freshly shaved and shampooed people leaving their houses to start their days, these people who are moderately successful, who are upwardly mobile, who have things to do, places to go, and people to see. We watch these people going about the business of being alive like a choreographed dance number from our orchestra seats, we three entrenched on our asses, wondering where the hell they get the energy.

34

    RUSS AND I SHOP FOR GROCERIES AT THE SUPER STOP and Shop. We buy bottles of soda, bags of chips, boxes of pasta, jars of tomato sauce, large quantities of white bread, sandwich spreads, and frozen food. Everything we buy has the maximum amount of chemicals and requires the minimum amount of preparation to eat. We do not compare brands, do not look for circulars and coupons, because we are slated to be millionaires and price is no object. We do not consider nutritional factors, because we are young and slim and sad and beautiful, we shine in our grief, and we will eat what we want, when we want, with utter impunity. We tear through the market like young royalty, like elite fighter pilots, grabbing anything that catches our fancy, intoxicated by the infinite possibilities of this new, alternative family we’ve become. We have been hammered by bad fortune, cut off at the knees, and yet, here we are, rising above it all, floating brilliantly among these suburban housewives who can’t help but flash us admiring glances as they fill their carts with fresh vegetables and raw chickens. We are a sitcom family, a Disney movie,