The Young Widower's Handbook by Tom McAllister

Author:Tom McAllister
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Algonquin Books
Published: 2017-01-18T05:00:00+00:00

ELEVEN

Everyone has secrets,” she told you again and again. “It adds to the fun,” she said. You were talking too much and she was not talking enough, and you couldn’t tell whether she was being cagey or if she was trying to politely tell you to shut up. You yourself are often mentally saying shut up, Hunter, sometimes in mid-monologue you’re rebuking yourself for blathering on even though you can tell other people aren’t listening anymore, but you have so many remarkable facts to share and funny jokes to make, and it’s so hard to sit quietly listening, and the more you like certain people, the more you talk to them, because you’re afraid the silence will encourage them to reassess their association with you, and once they start reassessing they’ll find there is no particular reason to be near you besides convenience or a lack of options. Which is why you did about 80 percent of the talking in your relationship, and you would get annoyed when she didn’t remember everything you told her, because you remember every word she ever said to you, at least you think you do.

COUPLES ARE SUPPOSED TO have Cute Stories to Tell at Parties, and they’re supposed to have access to each other’s internal lives in ways that no one else does, and you had that, but you also didn’t have it, which made double dates frustrating, because one of the functions of a double date is to measure yourself against the other couple, to compare their cute stories to your cute stories, and to evaluate their shared experiences versus your shared experiences, so that later when you’re alone in your home, you can assess the quality of their relationship and rank them as less in love than you, saying things like They’re kind of weird, right? or I don’t understand why she stays with him or Did you see the way he couldn’t stop playing with his ring? They’ll be divorced within a year. Or sometimes on good nights, I really like those two, why don’t we hang out with them more often? You’re sure other couples met you and then left thinking you talked too much and she too little, and they said things like one day she’s going to get sick of him, and they started applying expiration dates to your marriage, not that they could have known it would have ended this way. The problem was they didn’t see what you were like in private, the way she laughed at your jokes and trusted you and was happiest with simple things like spending an entire day at home with you, eating leftover Chinese and laughing at bad Lifetime movies.

A PARTIAL LIST OF things you will never know about your deceased wife:

• What she did—besides “taking a break”—during the year between high school and college

• How she could have gotten into the habit of opening a can of soda, taking three sips, then putting the can in the freezer and

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