The Night Listener : A Novel

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