The Night Listener : A Novel (30 page)

“I don’t know what that means.”

“He appealed to your vanity. This helpless kid who wanted you to love him. Wanted it so badly that he could ask you for it on the
telephone
. It made a wonderful story you could tell people, and you even got to be the hero of it. What could be nicer than that?”

“Well…” I took a moment to assemble my words. “What if that were true? What would be so awful about that? Most people would feel that way, wouldn’t they?”

“But I didn’t think you were most people. I thought you’d be different somehow. I thought you could look into his soul and see the whole child, with all his complexities and contradictions. I thought you saw him as your own flesh and blood. The way I do.”

“I did, Donna. I do.”

She shook her head. “You couldn’t have. Or you wouldn’t have discarded him so easily.”

“What are you talking about? I’ve wanted nothing more than to keep him in my life. I’ve spent the last two days stumbling around in this fucking cold just so I could say I was—” I cut myself off, knowing that my confession would lose its power if it was offered in anger.

“Just so you could say what?” asked Donna.

Silence.

“That you were sorry, right? For thinking him a fraud.” She was staring at me—the only word that really works—in a way that suggested both disappointment and outrage. I was mortified at first, but that was unexpectedly swept away by a flood of relief.

Then came anger at the realization that someone had cheated me of my chance to be honest. And I was sure I knew who that was.

“It wasn’t Ashe’s place to tell you that,” I said.

She looked down, entangled in thought as she toyed with the cuff of her trousers.

I went on: “He knew how concerned I was about Pete’s feelings.

And
your
feelings as well. He had no right to tell you that.”

“He didn’t.”

“What?”

“He didn’t tell me anything. It’s just something I’ve had a feeling about. I’m glad we’ve cleared it up.”

I was cowed into silence again.

“No wonder you’re so distrustful,” she said. “You’re always holding something back yourself.”

“That’s not true. I came here to tell you everything.” Can he hear me right now? I wondered. Is he pressed against a door somewhere, desperately in need of my reassurance?

“C’mon,” said Donna. “You’ve been creeping after me for half an hour. That’s hardly the mark of a forthcoming man.”

“I was afraid you’d be pissed off. That you’d see me as somebody terrible. That you wouldn’t invite me home.”

“Well, you’re right about the first part. That book was Pete’s life-line, you know.”

“Look, I’m angry about that, too. This has been the worst time of my life. But I really can’t take responsibility for what happened.

That was Ashe’s decision completely. I begged him not to do it.”

“But you planted the doubt, right?”

My blood was beginning to rise again. “I didn’t plant anything. I just raised the question. He already had doubts himself, he told me so.”

“So why didn’t you just come to me first? If we’re as close as you say we are.”

I hesitated. “I don’t know, really.”

“Yes, you do. You must.”

“Well…I’m just not good at confrontations. I never have been.”

“Oh, please. You can do better than that.”

“But it’s the truth…”

“Did you think I might be…unbalanced or something?”

“No,” I lied, infusing my voice with indignation.

“Then why didn’t you just ask?”

I shrugged helplessly. “I didn’t want to hurt Pete. I didn’t want to betray his belief in me.”

Are you listening, son?

“Ah,” said Donna. “So you went to his publisher. That makes sense. You cooked up this crazy storybook theory, and you went straight to the one man who could destroy—”

“Look,” I said, leaning forward and lowering my voice so as not to be heard beyond the room, “I don’t think it was that crazy, okay?

It may have been unwise in retrospect, but a lot of people would have come to the same conclusion. Ashe never met Pete. I never met him, and you wouldn’t
let
me meet him. You wouldn’t let
anybody
meet him, as near as I can tell. Frankly, if you hadn’t been so obstin-ate—”

“
Obstinate?
”

“Well, yes, as a matter of fact. I know why you had your rules, but couldn’t you have bent them a little when the question arose?

This could all have been avoided, if you’d been willing to let one person in here to verify his…” I had started to say “his existence,” but it sounded too brutal. And I’d seen the look of cold fury that was beginning to contort her features.

“How dare you?” she said. “What do you know about anything?

That child couldn’t eat off a plate when he came to me. He barely knew what a fork was for, or what it was like to sleep on anything but a pile of dirty rags. He wouldn’t talk for a month, and he had scars in places you can’t even imagine. Do you know what that’s like? To live in terror for years—and to believe that it could happen again at any time?”

“Of course not.”

“Well, I do, mister. I know that one very well. So don’t be telling me what I should have done! Especially now!”

“I’m not laying blame,” I said, softening my tone in the face of her rage, “but if being published meant so much to him, couldn’t you have—”

“It wasn’t being published that meant so much to him! It was being believed! And he lost that the minute you doubted him. Is that so hard to understand? How would you like it if somebody came to verify
you
? That book was his therapy, nothing more. It was the only way I had to bring him out of his blackness…” She stopped to swipe at her cheeks, and I realized with a stab of despair that there was still one function her eyes could readily perform. “What did you think?” she asked. “That
I
had written it?”

“Honestly, Donna, I didn’t know. I just…”

“You should see how I write. I’m pathetic for someone with a doctorate. I can barely string two sentences together. Pete wasn’t like that at all. It just flowed out of him like honey. He had a goddamned
gift
.”

“I know that,” I said gently. “And he still does.”

“What?”

“I want him to keep writing, Donna. I’ll find him another publisher, and I’ll vouch for him myself. We could even do something together…a series of letters, maybe. Or I could write an introduction for him. I’ll do whatever it takes to make this right again.”

She absorbed this proposal with her mouth agape and her brow furrowed, as if I’d just said something inhuman. What had I done now? Did she think I was trying to exploit the boy? Or—worse—ride on his coattails?

“Jesus,” she murmured. “You don’t know, do you?”

“What?”

“You haven’t talked to Ashe lately? In the last few days?”

“No. Not for a week, at least.”

She looked away from me, then murmured “Fuck” so softly it might have been a prayer.

“What is it?”

“I just assumed that he’d called you, and that’s why you came here…oh, shit, Gabriel, I’m so sorry…I thought…oh, Jesus…” I could feel the blood draining from my head to make room for the shadowy enormity that had finally arrived.

“Pete died last Monday,” she said.

There was enough irony for a lifetime in the curious reversal that followed. This woman who had lost her only child days before came and sat next to me on the sofa, the better to pour out her sympathy.

By anyone’s call I should have been consoling
her
, but there she sat with her hand on my knee, attending to my pain and confusion. No wonder Pete had treasured her.

“I’m sorry I snapped at you, Gabriel. I just thought…”

“I know.”

“I probably shouldn’t have turned off the phone, but…there were too many people to tell. I needed to feel it on my own and not spend my time…you know…explaining things.”

I nodded.

“I called Ashe when I came out of it, and I figured he’d call you, but…I guess you’ve been on the road, huh?” I pictured this woman’s solitary anguish while I was out getting laid in a truck stop. This story had never been about me, I realized; it had always been happening somewhere else. “Was it his lungs?” I asked.

“Yeah. They just finally gave up. It wasn’t unexpected.” I considered that for a moment, shuddering a little. “Was it…difficult for him?”

She shrugged. “He was on morphine at the end, so he was peaceful enough. He just drifted off in my arms.” I envied her the certainty of that moment, though I could already feel the weight of him in my own arms, the warmth ebbing from his body.

“I’m sorry you had to hear about it this way, but I’m glad you came.” She squeezed my knee in gentle punctuation. “Really.” I wanted to cry, but I found myself unable. Part of me was still watching it all from a distance. There was safety in that, I suppose.

But it also seemed indulgent, in the face of Donna’s profound loss, to grieve for someone I’d never seen, however much he had meant to me.

“Do you want to see his room?” she asked.

I did, very badly. I needed something to make the past real for me. Not proof exactly—I was already beyond that—but a way to
feel
what had happened. And words were no longer sufficient.

“Would you mind terribly?” I asked.

“Of course not.”

So she rose and led me down the hallway to his bedroom. It was the second door on the right, painted bright blue and emblazoned with a raft of impertinent bumper stickers. The one I remember said: PERHAPS YOU’VE MISTAKEN ME FOR SOMEBODY WHO ACTUALLY GIVES A SHIT.

“That’s just like him,” she said, tapping the stickers. “He wouldn’t let us get too sentimental.” Then, with a sigh, she swung open the door and switched on the light, and my heart seemed to stop altogether.

And here’s the amazing part: the room was very close to what I’d imagined. (Or was I merely remembering Pete’s description?) The shiny chrome bed was predictable enough, but even the other furnishings seemed properly placed: the bookshelf to the left of the bed, the dresser to the right, the cluttered desk where he kept his computer. And there was something I hadn’t factored in: the faintest scent of boy, an innuendo of adolescence. I flashed on my father forty years earlier, bursting into my room on a Saturday morning when my sheets were still sticky with discovery. “Jesus,” he had boomed, “smells like a goddamn cathouse in here.” He may have thought he was celebrating my manhood, but I’d felt exposed and humiliated, and I hated him for joking about something we had never once discussed. Five years later, when Josie was thirteen, the old man pulled a similar stunt with her. Having found a box of Kotex in her bathroom cabinet, he grilled her over breakfast about what it was for. And oh, the look my mother had given him.

“Check out the bulletin board,” said Donna.

For the moment, I was lost in Charleston, circa 1962.

“Over there,” she added, gesturing.

I finally saw what she meant. There was a small but ardent shrine to me in the form of photographs and yellowed press clippings.

Elsewhere I saw printouts of E-mail from other writers and public figures, some of them very well known. For the first time ever I regretted my cyber-illiteracy.

“He loved you,” said Donna. “Even before he met you.”

I went to the window and gazed out into the snowy yard. There were two moons in the sky now: the real one, which had crept from behind the clouds, and the spectral blue globe of the water tank. I didn’t bother to search for Roberta, because that game was finally over. If I needed proof of anything now, it was proof of my own humanity. I felt so utterly two-dimensional, as if I had been the impostor all along. Much as my father had done, when faced with the love of a child, I’d lost my nerve and retreated in panic and distrust.

“Did he know?” I asked, still staring out the window.

“What?”

“That I had…questions about him.”

“No,” she said. “He wasn’t that kind of a person.” I wanted to know so much more—what his last thoughts had been, for instance—but I didn’t feel I’d earned the right to ask. When all was said and done, I was just a peripheral character in this trag-edy.

“Let me show you something,” said Donna, crossing to the bookshelf. “This was under his sheets the night he died.” Her fingers found the sturdy chrome uprights and climbed until they reached a stack of magazines just above her head. Then she smiled as she handed me the
Playboy
.

“Uh-oh,” I said. “Busted.”

She shrugged. “He kept it because it was from you.” I handed the magazine back to her.

“He was wearing the T-shirt you sent, too. The
Noone at Night
one.

He asked for it specially that morning.” I nodded as the tears began to build behind my eyes.

“We sent him off in it when he was cremated. That was Marsha’s idea, actually. She thought Pete would have wanted it.” I was glad to be reminded of Marsha. It helped to know that Donna wasn’t alone, that she still had the friendship of someone sighted who had loved the boy as much as she had. “Thanks for that,” I said.

Donna didn’t reply; she just returned the magazine to its place on the shelf. As her slender arm extended, the sleeve of her blouse slipped to her elbow and I caught a glimpse of something I hadn’t seen before: a long, pale scar down the underside of her arm. The skin there was smeared and poreless, like a very old burn mark, but the serpentine shape of the thing seemed less than accidental. I angled for a better look, but her arm fell back to her side and she shoved down the sleeve with a single efficient gesture.

Flustered, I scrambled for something to say. “Is…Marsha looking out for you?”

She didn’t bother to turn around. “I don’t need looking out for.”

“I know. I’m sure. I just meant…”

“I’ve functioned on my own for a long time.”

“I was thinking more in terms of…company.” She went to the door and turned off the light, leaving me in darkness. The snow outside the window was the only source of light, faintly reflecting the blue of the water-tank star. “I’m not at all lonely,” she said, “if that’s what you mean. He’s everywhere I turn.” Back in the living room, we talked about other things: the bitter weather, that funky little coffee shop, the loyal creature dozing at Donna’s feet. We both seemed to sense that we needed a break, a peaceful coming-down before we parted. And I wanted to show her we still had reason to communicate beyond the son we had lost.