How to Talk to a Widower

never become your parents. You listen to edgy music, you dress young and hip, you have sex standing up and on kitchen tables, you say “fuck” and “shit” a lot, and then one day, without warning, their words emerge from your mouth like long-dormant sleeper agents suddenly activated. You’re still young enough to hear these words through the ears of the teenager sitting beside you, and you realize how pitiful and ultimately futile your efforts will be, a few measly sandbags against the tidal wave of genetic destiny.
    Back at the house, Claire supervises the unloading of packages, the reorganization of fridge and pantry. Then Russ heads upstairs to finish moving back into his old room. Angie called this morning when the coast was clear, and Russ and I moved his stuff out while Jim was at work. My cell phone flashes with multiple messages from Brooke, from Laney, and from the irrepressible Kyle Evans, but I return no calls. I am becoming a stepfather now, and it requires all of my concentration.
    “Let him get the car,” Claire says. “You can’t get laid in high school without a car.”
    “Do I want him to get laid?”
    She points a rebuking finger at my chest. “Cock blocker.”
    “I’m trying to be responsible.”
    “You’re still cock-blocking. Honestly, just because you didn’t have any sex in high school … ”
    “I had sex in high school.”
    “My point exactly,” Claire says. “Let him have a car, end of story. You can load the glove compartment with condoms and drunk-driving pamphlets if it will make you feel any better.”
    “Thanks. You’ve been a big help.”
    “It’s what I do.”

    Russ, Claire, and I eat dinner together at the dining room table. It’s the first time I’ve eaten there since Hailey died, the first time I’ve used place mats and real dishes, the first time I didn’t just take something out of tinfoil, nuke it, and eat it on the couch in front of the television, washing it down with too much wine or bourbon. We talk between chews, teasing each other and cracking wise, acutely aware that this is more than just a meal, that it’s an inauguration of sorts, the start of something new, and while not that much has changed, there is the unspoken sense that where there was once something and then nothing, there is now something again, something smaller and sadder than before, but warm and real and brimming with potential. If we don’t fuck it up.
    Please don’t let us fuck it up.

35

    IN THE SMALL WAITING AREA OUTSIDE BROOKE’S office at the high school, there is a girl sitting across from me, beautiful despite her painstaking efforts to not be. She wears black lipstick and dark, angry eyeliner, there is a metal hoop through her nostril and a ball stud nestled like a pearl in a shell in the cleavage of her plump bottom lip. But her eyes are wide and green, her cheekbones high, her complexion flawless. She is fooling no one, her beauty shines through like a fog light, and I wonder what compels her to try so hard. Two seats over is a boy with long, messy hair, a weak goatee, tattered jeans, and glazed stoner eyes. He slouches back in the chair, hands crossed across his chest, staring into the fluorescent lights, carefully, ostentatiously laid-back, cosmically unfazed. They take great pains not to acknowledge each other, these two kids, even though they are both troubled, both freaks, both resolutely hugging the outer walls of this hallway society. Their different slots on the food chain leave them no common ground in which to meet. And that’s the genius of the system, really, pigeonholing the kids on the margins so that they can’t even connect with each other, which would grow their numbers and threaten the ruling class.
    We sit there, these two angry kids and me, three freaks, and it’s amazing how powerful their silence is, how easily I am sucked into their rules. Every so often, their nervously roaming eyes cross paths with my own, quickly darting away before any intelligence can be exchanged, and I think it’s a wonder anyone ever speaks to anyone else in high school.
    “Doug,” Brooke says from her office doorway. “What are you doing here?”
    She has on gray slacks and a black silk blouse and she looks crisp and professional and not as thrilled to see me as I’d hoped. “I just needed to see you for a moment.”
    “Oh my God, what happened to your face?”
    I rub my raised shiner possessively. “That’s part of it.”
    “I’ll be with you guys