The Night Listener : A Novel

know everything he doesn’t know? He’s arranged it that way.”
    I frowned at her. “I’m surprised you’re still humoring him. Why do you bother?”
    “Because he’s here , Gabriel.” She didn’t elaborate, but her larger message was clear enough: I had put a continent between Pap and me twenty-five years earlier; I was not to give lectures on handling him.
    Josie swung past Darlie on her way to a parking space. “Caught ya!” she yelled.
    “Oh, hey!” Darlie called back, twiddling her fingers. That strawberry-blond hair seemed more of a beacon than ever here in the low milky light of the Low Country. But even from a distance the worry and weariness were evident on her face. She tossed her cigarette onto the pavement, stubbed it out with her heel, and hurried toward us as we climbed from the car.
    “I swear,” she said, hugging me. “It’s downright spooky.”
    “What?”
    “You look more like him every time I see you. Just like he did when I fell in love with him.”
    I must have winced.
    “Oh, c’mon now. He was a knockout when he was sixty-five.”
    “I’m fifty-four,” I said.
    “Oh, honey, same difference when you’re our age.” She took my arm and spun me around to face Josie. “Doesn’t he look just like him?”
    “Pretty much,” said my sister.
    I was deeply uncomfortable. Darlie and I were a year apart in age and had lived on different coasts since I’d known her, so she’d wisely never attempted an impersonation of motherhood. Still, it felt a little incestuous to be told, even jokingly, that she was turned on by my resemblance to Pap. I decided to change the subject: “How’s he doing?”
    “Oh, fine, right now. It was just a mini-stroke, and he’s tough as an old boot.”
    Josie’s brow furrowed. “What do you mean, right now?”
    “Nothing. He’s fine. C’mon, let’s get up there before he starts goosing the lunch nurse.”
    His room was on the third floor and suitably large. There were flowers on every surface, suggesting that this crisis had already been something of a local event. The old man was lying on his side with his back to the door, an anonymous white mound tethered to an IV
    pole. Darlie approached him like a lion tamer testing the mood of her grumpiest cat.
    “Honeypie?”
    My father stirred but didn’t turn around.
    “Look who’s here, sweetness.”
    He rolled over and grunted, then rubbed his eyes until he saw what she meant. “Well, I’ll be goddamned…”
    “Wouldn’t doubt it at all,” I said.
    He hooted in appreciation, and right away I saw the distortion of his features. “You son-of-a-bitch. What the hell you doing here, boy?”
    “Well, I heard there was this big sale on hoppin’ John at the Piggly Wiggly…”
    “Goddamn, it’s good to see you.” He sat up in bed and thrust out his hand, grabbing my shoulder with the other in the come-here-but-stay-away gesture I knew so well. “Seriously, son, you pushin’ a book or something?”
    I said I hadn’t done that for a good long while.
    “These crazy women didn’t tell you something was wrong with me, did they?”
    Darlie rolled her eyes at Josie. “Now why would we go and do a damn fool thing like that?”
    “Hell, I don’t know. Women get hysterical. That’s just the way they are.” The old man winked at me. “Right, sport?”
    “Don’t ask me,” I said. “I’m still working on men.” The old man flinched in a broad Three Stooges sort of way, as if to make it clear that he was not really to be taken seriously. “Christ, don’t be talkin’ like that in front of your pore ol’ sick father.”
    “Oh, now he’s sick,” laughed Josie.
    “Help me up,” said Pap, reaching for Josie. “I gotta piss before that little nigger gal gets here with my baloney sandwich.”
    “Lovely,” said Darlie, glancing my way.
    Pulling the IV stand, Josie steered the old man to the bathroom door, then let him navigate the rest on his own. When the door was closed, Darlie said: “That’s just a blood thinner, by the way. It’s standard for a stroke. Even a little one. He’ll be off it tomorrow or the next day.” Josie glanced at the clock. “We’re gonna leave you with him for a while. Is that okay?”
    This proposal felt so prearranged that it made me nervous. “What’s up?” I asked.
    “Nothing. We just have to go pay our respects to the Edwardses.
    Libby Edwards died.”
    My father, now peeing noisily in the bathroom, boomed a footnote through the door: