How to Talk to a Widower

hits the roof as the car speeds off, tires screeching as it rounds the corner. I listen for the crash, but none comes. Russ has fallen in with a bad crowd these days: self-mutilators with veiled eyes under pierced eyebrows, long, messy hair and fake IDs, kids who drive around aimlessly at night, seeking out opportunities for random vandalism, hanging out in empty parking lots, getting drunk on cheap beer, blasting obscure punk rock, and talking about all the assholes in their high school. I know I should try to do something about it, especially in light of the incident with the police a few days ago, but grief and self-pity are a draining occupation, and multitasking has never been my thing.
    “Hey,” Russ says, walking up the lawn, pulling his headphones off his ears to rest around his neck. His long messy hair, the same honey color as Hailey’s, falls like a veil over his big dark eyes. It’s been almost a week since his fight in the parking lot, and the cuts on his face and neck have faded to faint pink lines.
    “Hey,” I say.
    “Sorry about the other night,” he says. “I was a little fucked up.”
    “I thought you’d stick around the next morning.”
    “You were still sleeping at nine,” he says with a shrug. “Is that your cell phone?”
    “It was.”
    “Good shot. If you were aiming for the tree, I mean.”
    “I was aiming for a rabbit and hit the tree instead.”
    He nods sagely. “It happens.”
    I get up and head back to the porch, stuffing the guts of my demolished phone into my pocket. “Shouldn’t you be in school?”
    “So what, you’re like my father now?”
    “I’m just making conversation.”
    He looks at me and shakes his head. “And I’d love to answer you, I really would, but you gave up the right to ask those kinds of questions when you banished me to go live with Jim and Angie.”
    “I’m sorry about that, Russ, but Jim is your father. There wasn’t very much I could do about it.”
    “So you say,” he says. “He hates me. He’d be thrilled if you took me.”
    “You know that’s not true.”
    “You know it is.”
    From the start, I knew Russ preferred me to his father. I also knew that this was primarily a function of the fact that I had the good sense to not get caught on tape with my pants around my ankles screwing an old girlfriend, and then all but abandon Hailey and him in favor of a shiny new family the way Jim did. So while Russ was hardly thrilled when I moved in three years ago, if nothing else, I had the advantage of being the lesser of two assholes. And my parents thought I’d never amount to anything.
    It’s a tricky enough business forming a friendship with a pissed-off teenager under the best of circumstances. Now try it when you’re sleeping with his mother, when you are, quite literally, a motherfucker. Let me tell you, that requires a whole other skill set. When I first moved in, I knew I’d have to make an effort to bond with Russ so that Hailey could feel good about the whole arrangement. If she didn’t, it wasn’t like she was going to give her kid the boot. Last one hired, first one fired. And so I applied myself like a laid-back uncle, giving him lifts to school or the mall to meet his friends, taking him to the occasional weeknight movie, editing his term papers, and, more recently, taking him out for driving practice in my secondhand Saab. I was a lazy boy and I am a lazy man, and the beauty of the situation was that I wasn’t really expected to be a parent to Russ, which, based on the limited wisdom I have to offer, was a win-win situation for all involved. Once we both figured out that neither wanted anything more from the other than easy cohabitation with no strings attached, we got along just fine.
    But when Hailey died, what did he expect me to do, petition for custody? I know Jim is bad news, but I am too. I’m twenty-nine years old, for God’s sake, and I’m sad and pissed and lazy, I’m drinking too much and at some point I’m going to work up the nerve to sell the house and blow this town, and I can’t really do that if I’ve got Russ to worry about. He’s better off this way, believe me. The kid will have a few million dollars in trust from the airline settlement, so he just needs to stick it out with Jim until he turns eighteen and he’ll be home free.
    “You should hear what goes on over there at Casa Jimbo,” Russ says. “I knew he was a horny bastard, but, dude, it’s like living on a porn set. The