The Night Listener : A Novel

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