The Night Listener : A Novel

imagination.”
    “So where did you run?”
    “Nowhere. Except straight into a wall.”
    “Oh, well.”
    “This is a great parlor game, Anna, but it makes no sense at all, if you look at it logically.”
    “Why not?”
    “Because no one on earth would go to all that trouble.” Anna shrugged. “Maybe it’s no trouble. Maybe it comes to her naturally. Maybe she doesn’t even know she’s doing it.” This had not occurred to me, I must admit.
    “That’s it,” she said, warming to her theme. “Maybe she’s like a multiple or something!”
    “Anna…”
    “No, listen. This is totally logical. She had a kid once like Pete, who was abused and everything, and she was the one who saved him. So all of that is true. Only he didn’t live, he died of AIDS or whatever. And she loved him so much she just couldn’t accept his death. So she brought him back to life the only way she could… by becoming him .”
    “Stop it.”
    “Well, tell me that’s not logical.”
    “This woman is a psychologist , Anna.”
    “So? They can be wacko, too.”
    “Okay, but I seriously…”
    “She could even have him embalmed or something. Like a doll she keeps around for company. Or a puppet that she can operate by—”
    “Would you stop it, please?” I winced at her in horror and annoyance.
    “Sorry.”
    “These are real people, Anna. With real problems. It’s not an episode of The X-Files .”
    “Sorry,” she repeated. “You just got me so…interested.” She was right about that; I had no one to blame but myself. I already knew the curious power of this riddle. All Anna had done, in her youthful morbidity, was provide one far-too-vivid answer.
    “Are you gonna talk to him again?” she asked.
    “I don’t see why not.”
    “It’s so weird.”
    “No it isn’t,” I said firmly. “Not if you don’t let it be. Not if you refuse to play this destructive game.”
    And who was I talking to now?
    I had a feeling he would call that night.
    You might assume that all this recurring doubt would disconnect us telepathically, or at least loosen our bond. But it didn’t work that way. Pete had become more three-dimensional than ever. The longer I thought about him the more I grew convinced that he could sense not only my distress but the reason behind it as well.
    The machine came on as I was rinsing Hugo in the bathtub. I paused and cocked an ear to identify the caller, giving the dog a fine opportunity for a good drenching shake. I muttered at him, then sprinted to the office. Pete was already gabbing away.
    “…so if you’re not there, you’d better be out buying me another Playboy , because I’ve already dumped Miss November and I—”
    “Pete!”
    “Well, holy fuck, you are there.” I sat down breathlessly. “I was washing the dog.”
    “Is that like spanking the monkey?”
    “Speak for yourself, Mr. Playboy.”
    He chortled. “You are one evil influence.”
    “We aim to please.”
    “The T-shirt is really cool, too. I’m wearing it right now. All the gay orderlies are jealous.”
    I laughed. “You’re still at the hospital, then?”
    “Yeah, but just for the morning. We go home this afternoon.”
    “Great.”
    “I’ll say.”
    “You sound so much better,” I told him. “You sound like yourself again.”
    Jesus, I thought. Of all the ways I could have put it…
     
    TWELVE

    LAURA

    WHEN I WAS PETE’S AGE people often mistook me for my mother on the phone. Ladies from the Colonial Dames or St. Michael’s Church would call the house on Meeting Street and chirp “Good morning, Laura” as soon as they heard my boyish soprano. But I was only mildly offended, since my mother was a celebrity of sorts, the moderator of a weekly panel discussion on WUTF Radio, whose call letters stood for We Uphold The Family.
    Mummie’s show was called Time for Teens and her four panelists were all of high school age: big, worldly kids with big, worldly problems to discuss, like the treatment of acne and whether necking would inevitably lead to more serious things, like petting. While it was just a public-affairs project for the Junior League, the show was so well received that older kids sometimes asked me if I had a sister named Laura. And once Mummie even posed for a picture that appeared on the front page of the News and Courier . She and her panelists were caught sipping soda in a booth at Hoffman’s Pharmacy, their straws thrust rakishly into the same glass.
    My mother’s parents were British