The Night Listener : A Novel (8 page)

“She’s a whole lot better,” he whispered, pulling me aside at the hospital. “These damn doctors are a bunch of nervous nellies.”

A decade later, when Josie found a lump in her breast, the old man had attempted a pathetic variation on the same theme. “You know,” he told me. “Your sister’s always been excitable.” I was sorry I’d provided another escape hatch. “A lot of people can’t use the cocktail,” I told him. “I know a thirteen-year-old who can’t.” This made Darlie frown, then put down her spoon. “Who has AIDS, you mean?”

“Sure.”

“From a transfusion or something?”

“No. The usual way.”

“My God.”

“This town,” muttered my father.

“It wasn’t here,” I said with a trace of righteous satisfaction. “It was out there in Amurrica. His father had been screwing him since he was four.”

“Jesus,” said Darlie.

“Can we talk about something pleasant?” said my father.

But Darlie wanted to hear about it, so I assembled the story for her, sparing nothing as I gave it shape and color. I told her about the pedophile ring and the videotapes that had convicted Pete’s parents and the single mother who had come to his rescue when all hope seemed lost. I told her about a little straight boy who had felt like such an outcast that he had finally found fellowship in a ward full of AIDS fags. It gave me perverse pleasure to mess with the mythology of the nuclear family in my father’s presence. And I couldn’t help feeling proud of my role in Pete’s life, proud that someone so extraordinary had seen me as father material.

“All because he heard you on the radio,” said Darlie.

“It’s much more powerful medium than people think.” Pap’s discomfort was palpable. “I’d be careful if I were you.”

“What do you mean?”

“How many times have you talked to him?”

“I don’t know. Six or seven, maybe. Why?”

“Does his mother know you’re calling him?”

“Of course. She arranged it. What are you getting at?” My father tore off a chunk of bread. “Well…you’re a middle-aged man, and he’s…well, people could get the wrong idea, that’s all.”

“Like what?” I had caught on finally, and I was bristling.

“I think you know.”

“No, Pap. Tell me. What wrong idea will they get?” Darlie had stopped eating entirely and was watching us with a look of slack-mouthed alarm.

“For God’s sake,” said my father, “use your damn head. The boy was abused by gays.”

“He was abused by pedophiles. Have you been listening at all?”

“They were men, weren’t they?”

“Yeah.
Straight
men.”

“How could they be straight, if they were messing with a boy?”

“Because they called him a faggot while they were doing it.” Pap recoiled as if he’d been struck. For all his manly swagger, he was not about to venture into
that
territory. “Jesus,” he murmured.

“You can make anything disgusting, can’t you?”

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I said with the driest sarcasm I could muster. “Is that what I did? Let’s get back to something pleasant. Like killing Japs.”

“C’mon, guys.” Darlie looked at her husband, then at me. “Be nice now.”

“Somebody’s gotta tell him it’s not cute anymore.”

“What the hell are you talking about?” My father’s face was aflame.

“All this nigger and Jap shit. It doesn’t make you a character, you know. It just makes you an asshole.”

“Hey,” said Darlie mildly.

“Do you think your children want
their
children to hear that kind of talk? They don’t, Pap. That got old a long time ago. Billy dreads it every time he brings his kids over, for fear you’ll be pulling that racist shit again. Talk about a lousy influence on children…” My father’s eyes narrowed. “Who said anything about a lousy influence?”

“You implied…”

“I didn’t imply shit. Jesus, you’re the most sensitive fella I ever met. All I said was, people might get the wrong idea. That’s all I said. If you wanna make it into somethin’ else…”

“Why would they get the wrong idea? Because I’m gay?”

“Well…that complicates it, yes.”

Darlie pushed her chair back and stood up. “Time for me to go pee.” Neither of us acknowledged her efficient exit.

“How does that complicate it?” I asked.

“Just drop it.”

“No. I wanna know. Would it be okay if I were straight?” Silence.

“Or if Pete were a girl? Would that make it acceptable?”

“This is ridiculous.”

“What’s so ridiculous? The boy needs love. You don’t have to be straight to do that. Children will take it anywhere they can get it.

And you don’t deny them just because you didn’t get it yourself.

Just because somebody betrayed you. Sooner or later, you have to break the cycle, or the damage is just passed on from one generation to—”

“Oh, blah, blah, blah. Where’d you get all that New Age crap?” How absurd it was to hear the term
New Age
tumble from my father’s lips. I was certain he’d never used it—or even heard it, for that matter—until the frothing fundamentalists in his party had identified it as the Antichrist. He was just a social Episcopalian, and a lapsed one at that; he didn’t give a damn about Christ
or
his Anti; he was simply baiting me.

“It’s just common sense,” I replied.

“You think I betrayed you?”

“No,” I said quietly. “I think somebody betrayed
you
. And I’m the one who paid for it.”

I was stunned by my own audacity. How had I summoned the nerve, or the sheer stupidity, to confront the unconfrontable? Without a moment’s thought I had led us to the edge of a precipice, and a single misstep could send us both tumbling into oblivion. Pap’s eyes were the true measure of our peril; them and his voice, which was so abnormally subdued that it scared me.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said.

“I guess not,” I replied. “How could I?” Then we just stopped talking. We were both so embarrassed we might have been children caught white-handed in a flour-strewn kitchen. And we realized, too, that we were no longer alone; a presence hovered over us like some pale messiah who’d been sent to save us from ourselves.

“Can I tempt you with dessert?” he asked.

Somehow we found our way to safer footing. By the time Darlie returned from the john we were deep in a discussion about the charms of the Place des Vosges. Geography had often sheltered us. As a boy, I would sit in the garden while the old man mulched azaleas with pine straw, just to hear him rhapsodize about the Skyline Drive, or the wild ponies on Ocracoke Island, or the boxwood maze at Middleton Plantation. I loved him most then, I think, when he was musing about other places. The earth was a source of wonder and sustenance to him; it was people who let him down.

Darlie settled into her chair with a chipper smile. “I just love a clean bathroom. Makes my whole day.”

What a trouper she was, I thought, to have navigated the minefield of this family for so long.

“We ordered you a crème brûlée,” Pap told her, then gave me a matey wink. “If it’s on the menu, it’s what she wants.”

“You make me sound so boring,” said Darlie.

“I’m that way about bread pudding,” I told her.

“Foxtrot,” said my father.

“What?”

“The one on the left.”

I peered out at the flags on the Embarcadero. “I think you’re right.”

“I know I’m right. How ‘bout the one next to it?”

“Alfa.”

“Well…you got the letter right, but it’s Able.”

“Maybe in
your
navy. They changed it.”

“Nah. When did they do that?”

“I dunno. After the French and Indian War?”

“Oh, go to hell,” said my father, chuckling.

And so it went for the rest of the evening. Semaphore was just right for us, I thought, the perfect metaphor for how we’d managed to coexist all these years. Histrionic but mute, we had signalled our deepest feelings through broad strokes of pantomime, and always from a distance.

I dropped them off at the Huntington around eleven. We exchanged brisk, ritual hugs, and they promised to phone on their way back from Tahiti. Driving home in the fog, I had to ask myself why I’d chosen that night of all nights to tangle with the old man.

After all, he’d mellowed a great deal in recent years, and I had long before stopped needing his approval, thanks largely to Jess. There was finally someone else to be proud of me, someone whose opinion mattered even more than Pap’s. Was
that
the reason for my outburst, then? Was I just angry at Jess for making the ground shaky again?

And there was something else: Pap’s curiosity about Pete had made it clear how much the boy already mattered to me. He was no longer just an interesting story; he was a habit. Our visits on the phone had become almost nightly now, which spoke far less to my charity than to my need. He was the perfect listener, the only confid-ant with whom I felt utterly secure. That I had chosen someone so young and far away, someone I might never meet who could well be near death, only made it easier to tell him the truth.

SIX

WAYNE

“WHO’S THAT?” I asked. “Anybody you know?” There was a dog barking in the background. A large one, from the sound of it.

“That’s Janus,” Pete said. Then I heard him call out into the room,

“Leave it, Janus! Leave it!”

“What’s he got? A cat?”

“No, the vacuum hose. Janus, leave it!” I laughed. “Ours used to do that. It’s something to do with the sound. It makes them crazy.”

“But it’s not even on. He thinks it’s an anaconda or something.

Janus, you fuckhead!”

The dog barked once, for symbolism’s sake, then stopped.

“He only listens to Mom,” Pete said. “He totally behaves around her. She’s had him for like a hundred years.” Unruly or not, the dog reassured me. I hadn’t forgotten my last talk with Donna, and the people who might still hold a grudge against Pete.

“What is he?” I asked.

“A Lab.”

“What color?”

“Yellow.”

“Oh, they’re the best. So loyal. We have an old mutt named Hugo.

Part Australian shepherd and part jackal.” The dog was curled up next to me, in fact, and his ear flicked in recognition of his name. I had detected a brand-new odor about him, sickly and disturbing, and wondered how much life he had left. Would he even last until Jess got home? I could remember a time, not that long ago, when I’d endured the certainty that Hugo would survive Jess. I’d written a poignant little essay about it, in fact.

“Hugo,” Pete repeated. “As in
Les Misérables
.”

“Close. He was named after Victor Hugo, but another one. A fashion designer in New York.”

Pete grunted. “You like that fashion shit?”

“Not even slightly. That’s one queer gene I missed completely.”

“Then why did you…?”

“A friend of mine named him.” And where are you now, Wayne?

Why aren’t you here to get me through this? Almost nobody’s dying these days. If you’d hung around a little longer you would have made the cut.

“He liked fashion, huh?”

“Not really. Just the designer. He thought he was sexy.” Said sexy designer, if memory served, hadn’t survived nearly as long as Wayne had.

“Man, is that all you guys think about?”

“Don’t you think about girls all day?”

“Well…yeah.”

“Well, there you go.”

“That’s
all
I can do, man.
Think
about ‘em.” I pictured Pete on his endless loop between Henzke Street and the hospital, frail and barely able to breathe, stealing glimpses of pretty girls along the way, girls who would find him pitiable, or never even notice him at all. He had reached the age of crushes and budding lust, but he’d been robbed of all that. Having been denied it myself—or at least the license to act upon it—I felt my heart rush out to him.

“What about magazines?” I asked.

“What do you mean?”

“You must have a
Playboy
under your mattress.”

“Are you nuts, man?”

“You do, don’t you?” I chuckled knowingly.

“My mom would skin my ass.”

No way, I thought. Donna Lomax was a thoroughly modern woman, unflappable as she was kind, and anything but a prude. If she disapproved of skin magazines—which I doubted—she would still greet such a discovery with worldly amusement, not alarm or disgust.

“Well,” I said mischievously, “it’s not the sort of thing moms have to be told, is it?”

“Right. I’ll remember that the next time a magazine salesman comes by my oxygen tent.”

I bowed to his grim humor. “Don’t get out much, huh?” Pete growled.

“Tell me about your room, then.”

“My
room
?”

“What does it look like? I wanna picture it.”

“Well, there’s a cocktail lounge…and a mud-wrestling pit…and a trapeze over the Jacuzzi, which is where the strippers usually—”

“A straight answer, please.”

“Then gimme a straight question.”

“I’m serious. You’re a writer. Describe it.”

“Well…” He paused, seemingly to survey the room. “There’s a bookshelf on the wall next to the window…”

“What sort of bookshelf?”

“I dunno. Chrome or some shit.”

“What’s on it?”

“My
X-Files
tapes, the
Encyclopedia Americana
, some old
National
Geographics
, your books, Tom Clancy…”

“He’s a big right-winger, you know.”

“That’s what Mom said, but I like him. So tough shit.”

“Your mother is an exceedingly wise woman. Tell me what you see from the window.”

“Not much. Just a bunch of trees. The house across the street. And an old water tank above the trees. It’s completely rusted and dangerous as all fuck, but they leave it up so they can hang a star on it at Christmas. It’s like a tradition or something.”

“Sounds nice, actually.”

“Except the star faces the wrong way. All we get is some of the light on the side of the tank…you know, like spillover. It just makes the graffiti easier to read.”

I chuckled. “Festive.”

“Yeah. The rest of the town gets Bethlehem. We get ‘Roberta Blows.’”

“C’mon.”

“I swear. They painted it out last year, but it came right back.”