The Night Listener

  “Care what your father thought?”

  His eyes turned as flinty as arrowheads. Gathering my courage, I free-fell into the abyss. “Why don’t you ever talk about him, Pap?” He stayed surprisingly calm. “So that’s where you’re heading.”

  “Yeah. I guess so. Do you mind?”

  “No. But it’s not gonna happen.”

  “What?”

  “Whatever it is you’re expecting. There’ll be no epiphanies on this deathbed.”

  I smiled at him. “This isn’t your deathbed.”

  “How the hell do you know?”

  “You’re right. We better talk fast.”

  He just grunted at my effort at levity. After a moment of awkward silence he said: “Go ahead then. Shoot.” Shoot.

  “Well,” I began, “do you know why he did it?”

  “No sir, I don’t.”

  “He didn’t leave a note or anything?”

  “No.”

  “That must have been terrible. Not knowing for all this time. I can’t imagine.”

  There was no response for a while, and then he shrugged. “You can’t spend your life fretting about something like that.”

  Can’t you? I thought.

  “Did he do it in your room?” I asked.

  “My room? Hell, no. Where’d you hear that?”

  “Just…around.”

  “It happened in the garden shed.”

  “Where was that?”

  “Back where we put the lych-gate. Christ, do you want a map?”

  “And you were…how old…seventeen?”

  “Something like that.”

  Something like that? Who wouldn’t remember exactly?

  “It was during the Depression, right?”

  “Yep.”

  “So it could have been about money.”

  “I doubt it seriously. He was just depressed, that’s all. There was nothing crazy about him.”

  “Is that what people said?”

  “No. Hell, no.”

  “Then why did you say that?”

  “Well, some folks just automatically assume…” He couldn’t finish, so I did it for him:

  “That anyone who commits suicide is crazy. Or gay or something.” His face was afire in a matter of seconds. “How dare you say such a thing?”

  “Oh…maybe because I don’t see anything wrong with it.”

  “Well, he wasn’t. Ask anybody.”

  “And I wasn’t suggesting that he was.”

  “The whole damn world’s not that way, you know.”

  “Oh, I know.”

  “He was a decent family man.”

  “Fine. Thanks for sharing. I’m glad we’ve cleared him of that shameful possibility.”

  “That’s not what I meant, goddammit. Don’t twist my words. We weren’t even talking about you.”

  “No.” I mustered all my calm. “You’re right. Tell me what he was like.”

  He sulked for a while. “He was a good man, like I said. A gentle-man. You would have liked him, if you’d met him.” It was an odd moment, this hypothetical introduction to someone who’d been gone for sixty-five years. Still I fleshed out my grandfather, giving him colors and textures and smells the way I’d done with Pete, building someone out of nothing, because a ravenous mind demanded it.

  “Did he look like us?”

  My father thought about that for a moment. “He was a good-sized man.”

  I gave him a crooked smile.

  “So that’s one thing you can’t keep blaming me for.” I studied him soberly for a moment. “I don’t blame you for anything.”

  He grunted. “Sure as hell feels like it sometimes.”

  “I got a lot of good things from you, Pap. Your sense of humor, your love of an audience. Your political indignation.” His eyes narrowed dubiously at the last point.

  “It’s the same instinct,” I added, “just aimed in a different direction. I wouldn’t be who I am if it weren’t for you, Pap.” This was too much for him. “Now I know I’m dying.”

  “I wish you hadn’t been angry all the time. I do wish that. And I wish it for Mummie, too. She walked on eggshells for you, Pap.”

  “What the hell are you talking about?”

  “That,” I said quietly. “That’s what I’m talking about. It’s not easy to deal with, you know. The way you’re always ready to explode.”

  “You don’t know the slightest goddamn thing about—”

  “I do, Pap. I was there. And I know what it’s like to accommodate someone else’s anger, because I ended up marrying you.”

  “What?”

  I grew almost feverish with mortification. Where had that come from, and why had I decided to put it into words?

  “Forget it, Pap.”

  “No, you said something.”

  “It’s just that…you and Jess are both wound so tight. And I dealt with it the same way Mummie did.”

  “Which was?”

  “Always smoothing things over. Eating my own anger, because two pissed-off people is more than one marriage can bear.”

  “Your mama and I loved each other deeply.”

  “I know that, Pap.”

  “So if you’re comparing us to you and that fella…”

  “Jess, Pap. His name is Jess. And I am comparing you, because you two were the only model I had. You should be flattered, because Jess was just a younger version of you. He was just as stubborn and protective and just as mushy on the inside, but he didn’t keep me at arm’s length. And that felt so damn good, I have to tell you.” There were tears in my eyes, and the old man saw them.

  “Christ, son. Did he die?”

  “No.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  I swiped at my eyes, composing myself. “He moved out a few months ago. I haven’t been dealing with it very well.”

  “Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “I didn’t want you to tell me I was better off.” My father studied me for a long time, then slapped the bed with the flat of his hand. I could tell this wasn’t an angry gesture, but its meaning eluded me at first. Funny, considering how often I used that semaphore myself to let my dog know it was all right to join me on the sofa.

  I stood my ground, pretending I hadn’t read him. His hand came down again, slamming the sheets even harder.

  “Goddammit, I haven’t got all day.”

  I went to the bed and crawled onto it without a word. One of his hands jostled me to his side as if we were shipmates meeting in a bar. The other, the one that had lost its feeling, stroked my head with clumsy tenderness.

  I know that this happened, because I was there, gazing down on those two old men as they braved the terrors of love.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  MY OLD ROOM

  THAT NIGHT JOSIE put me up in my old room. It was gussied up for guests these days, but a phantom of its former self remained, like an image lingering on the retina behind closed eyes. With very little effort I could erase that walnut “entertainment center” and sketch in my old bunk bed and the cubbyhole near the ceiling that my father had built for my radio. (To show him what an unrepentant rebel I was, I had used my wood-burning kit to brand the words FORGET, HELL! into the bottom shelf.) And still there for real: that early indicator of the man to come, the stained-glass window I’d commissioned at fourteen.

  I opened the door and went outside to the piazza, just to catch the effect of those dark green shutters against the pink stucco walls.

  There was a lemon wafer of a moon in the sky, and the wrought-iron gates next to the streetlight cast a familiar filigree on the garden path. I was awash with memories that seemed to belong to someone else entirely. The person I had been in this place was more of a stranger to me now than my father.

  “Sweetie?”

  I turned to find my sister standing in the room with a cordless phone in her hand. “There’s a call for you,” she said.

  I came in from the piazza with a sense of growing dread. “The hospital??
??

  She shook her head with a thin reassuring smile. “I don’t recognize the voice. She sounds young.”

  Anna, I thought. Being motherly again.

  Josie handed me the phone and left the room, pausing briefly at the door. “Come down for some eggnog if you’d like.” I watched as she eased the door shut, then sank to the edge of the bed with the phone. “This is Gabriel.”

  “Thank God,” said the voice on the other end, a voice so distinctive it could only be one of two people.

  “Donna?”

  “No…it’s Pete.”

  I couldn’t summon a response.

  “Don’t freak out, okay? I know what Mom told you, but she was just trying to get people off our backs. She told Ashe I was dead, so we could get our lives back again. Mom hated all this attention to begin with. She just went along with the book because of me. And after the book fell through I figured you didn’t trust me anymore, so I just…I dunno…but then Mom told me you came to see me, and I realized how bad you felt, and I couldn’t stand the thought of you thinking I was dead. You’re the only reason I even feel alive.” He paused, waiting for a reaction. “You there, Gabriel?”

  “I’m here.”

  “Are you mad at me?”

  I said my feelings were more complicated than that.

  “Jess told me about your dad,” he said. “Is he okay?”

  “No. I don’t think he has much time left.” It was hard to put that into words, but Pete was still my confessor, for better or worse.

  “I’m really sorry, Dad.”

  I sighed for so many different reasons. “This is weird, Pete. I have to tell you.”

  “I know, but I miss you so much, Dad. I just want another chance.” He was weeping now—extravagantly—so I waited for him to stop.

  “Look,” I said at last, “I’m not going anywhere. I just don’t understand. Were you hiding when I came to your house?”

  “No,” he said emphatically. “I didn’t even know you were there.

  I was in Milwaukee with Marsha.”

  “At the hospital?”

  “Yeah. Getting my fucking tests done. It was just a coincidence that I wasn’t at home, but Mom sort of…went with it. She’d already told Ashe I was dead, so she didn’t have any choice but to say it again.”

  “Where’s Donna now?”

  You’re talking to her, you sentimental fool.

  “Down at the post office,” said Pete. “Closing out our account.”

  “Why?”

  “We’re leaving day after tomorrow.”

  “For good, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “I don’t know yet. Mom won’t say. Marsha’s driving us to the airport. Mom just wants out of here.”

  “And what do you want?”

  “It’s okay with me, I guess. One place is pretty much like another for me. As long as there’s a telephone I’m fine.”

  “Will you give me your number when you get there?” He didn’t answer.

  “What’s the matter, Pete?”

  “I think it’s better if I just call you. Mom would be really upset if she knew we were still in touch.”

  “Why?”

  “She doesn’t trust you anymore. She got really weirded out when you followed her home.”

  I told him I was ashamed about that.

  “I kind of understand it,” said Pete, “but it really bothered her.

  She thinks you’re obsessed with me or something.” That took me aback. “What do you think?” He didn’t hesitate. “I think you just love me.” I knew I was supposed to confirm this, but I just couldn’t find the words.

  Pete kept on: “I didn’t know that for sure, you know, until you came to see me. When I heard that, man…” His voice cracked piti-fully.

  “Are you all right, kiddo?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “I want to ask you something, okay?”

  “Okay,” he said warily.

  “Did something happen to your mom when she was little?” Silence.

  “Do you understand me?”

  “Yeah, but…I just don’t know. She never talks about her childhood.”

  “Have you ever asked her?”

  “No. It’s hard, man, when you know she doesn’t want to talk.” I hear you, I thought. I’ve been there myself.

  “And she’s done so much for me, you know.”

  “But maybe that’s why, Pete. Maybe her life was as bad as yours, and she wanted to make things easier for somebody else. Did she ever tell you what caused her blindness?”

  “Some disease, I think, when she was little.”

  “What about that scar on her arm?”

  “She fell down the stairs.”

  “It doesn’t look like that. It looks like it was—”

  “Oh, shit!”

  “What’s the matter?”

  “She’s coming back. The post office must have been closed.”

  “Well, can’t you just—”

  “I gotta go, Dad.” His voice had lowered to a frantic whisper. “I’ll call you as soon as I can, okay?”

  I didn’t have a chance to answer before he hung up. Or to reflect on the possibility that I might never hear from him again.

  I awoke the next morning at nine, when Josie arrived at my room with a lavishly laid-out breakfast tray. I was on the verge of praising her when I noticed the ruined state of her eyes.

  “You heard something,” I said, leaving off the question mark.

  She nodded. “Several hours ago. I didn’t want to wake you. You looked so peaceful.”

  Her lip began to tremble, so I pushed the tray aside, and held her in my arms while she cried.

  TWENTY-NINE

  FATHER, SON, AND HOLY

  GHOST

  THE FUNERAL WAS HELD at St. Michael’s and drew a standing-room-only crowd, a fact that would have pleased Pap no end. There were two former governors in attendance and ol’ Strom himself, thrilled to be working such an aristocratic crowd. The reception at the house began on an appropriately stately note and deteriorated sharply from there. By late afternoon it was just another shrill Charleston cocktail party, and it was hard to believe that Pap could no longer be found at the center of that cacophony. I stayed long enough to catch up with my brother and help Darlie evict the last mourners, then retreated to my room to check the airline schedules. As I’d expected, there were no available flights to San Francisco until Christmas Day.

  I actually didn’t mind travelling then. Had I stayed on either coast that day someone would have tried to make it merry for me, and the effort would have been more painful than no Christmas at all. I did wonder what sort of reception awaited me, what I’d be asked about Pete. After all, I’d told Anna emphatically that Pete was dead, while Jess had apparently talked to him the following day, when Pete called the house looking for me.

  I found signs of Jess’s brief reoccupation when I arrived home: a bag of potato chips in the cupboard, a new box of treats for Hugo, a general tidying-up of the items on the bulletin board. It felt sweetly reassuring to see his imprint on the house again, though that feeling was promptly trampled by errant thoughts of the men who might have been there with him.

  Hugo didn’t greet me at the door, so I assumed he was out walking with Jess. But when I climbed to my writing room under the eaves, I found the dog curled in a ball on the sofa. Finally sensing my presence, he rose on wobbly legs and tried to wag his tailless rump, but this only sent him toppling to the floor with a whimper. I scooped him up in my arms and restored him to his spot on the sofa, where I stroked him carefully and nuzzled his graying face. “I know what you mean,” I said.

  I heard the front door open and close. Jess, upon spotting my luggage, hollered up the stairwell at me.

  “Where are you?”

  “All the way up.”

  He appeared in my aerie sporting a new accessory: a gleaming gold nose ring. And not one of those prissy
little wires either; this was a meanest-bull-in-the-pasture number that pierced the middle of his nose and dangled like a door knocker out of both nostrils.

  “Wow,” I said with less enthusiasm than the word usually demands.

  “That’s new.”

  Jess, of course, could tell what I was thinking, so he shrugged off the matter as unworthy of discussion. “Yeah. Fairly.” Then he stepped forward and embraced me, kissing me lightly on the lips.

  “You okay?”

  “Yeah. I’m fine.”

  “I’m sorry about Pap.”

  I’d never heard him call the old man that, and I was moved by the sound of it, the suggestion that he’d just lost an in-law.

  “I guess it was time,” I said.

  “I spoke to Josie this morning. She said you got to talk to him.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Well, that’s good.”

  He gazed out the window toward the tree line of Sutro Forest, where a pair of turkey vultures was making drunken figure eights above the valley. “She also said you were depressed about some kid who died.”

  I nodded.

  “She couldn’t have meant Pete,” he added.

  I sighed in concession and headed for the stairs. “Let’s make coffee first.”

  He let me tell the story without interruption, nodding me along while I shaped its themes and refined its details. The star in the east.

  The sightless Madonna. The empty manager. That miraculous resur-rection.

  “Father, son, and holy ghost,” said Jess.

  I didn’t get it.

  “Pap and you and Pete.”

  “That’s good,” I said absently. “Clever.”

  “Use it, then. You’re the writer.”

  “Is that what you think?”

  “That you’re a writer?”

  “No. That he’s a ghost. That’s he’s imaginary.”

  He shrugged. “That’s the fun of it, isn’t it?” I said it wasn’t fun anymore.

  “Oh, I think it must be, or you would’ve tried to meet Marsha. Or gone to that hospital and asked if he was ever a patient there.”

  “I had to go see my father, for God’s sake. And I don’t even know which hospital Pete was in.”

  “And you never once asked him, did you? Or her.” I shook my head.