The Night Listener : A Novel

want to keep on talking to him, fine; enjoy it for what it is. But leave some room for disillusionment. And stop expecting to meet him, because it’s not gonna happen. Not in this lifetime. I don’t know what’s going on…if it’s a hoax or some sort of pathological thing, or just an overprotective mother. But whatever it is…”
    “Why are you so determined to destroy this?”
    “Because I see where you’re heading and it worries the fuck out of me. He’s not your son, sweetie. No matter how much you want him to be.”
    I felt so exposed, so mortified, that all I could do was feign ignorance. “My son ? Where the hell did you get that?”
    “It doesn’t matter.”
    Had Pete told him? Or Donna? I couldn’t imagine either of them doing that. “Now you’re just making things up,” I said feebly.
    “Why would I do that?”
    “You tell me. Because someone else has my attention for once?
    Because I have a relationship that you didn’t actually approve?” Jess stared at me as if I’d just announced my Martian origins.
    “Okay…it’s not exactly an ordinary relationship. But it’s the first thing that’s made me feel human in months. I don’t know what’s happening any more than you do, but whoever that is on the phone has made a difference in my life, and I would think you’d be happy for me. Would that be so hard? Just to be happy for me?” Jess regarded me soberly. “I asked myself the same thing last month.”
    “When?”
    “When I told you I had a chance to live.”
    My heart caved in. I’d hoped that Jess hadn’t clocked my shameful turmoil that day, the conflict I’d felt between his improving health and the fact that he was leaving me. As usual, he had read me like a large-type book. And, as usual, I couldn’t come clean. “I was happy for you,” I insisted. “I was happy for both of us. I am happy.” Jess shook his head with a thin smile. “You couldn’t even fake it.”
    “You don’t know what it’s like,” I told him. “Loving someone for ten years, loving them more and more all the time, but expecting to lose them at any minute. Talk about room for disillusionment! I’m an expert at that! All I ever did was that. I couldn’t allow myself the luxury of thinking we would be forever. You had that luxury every single day. You knew you would have me until the end of your life, no matter what. How do you think it felt when you just…got better and changed your mind?”
    “We never agreed to monogamy…”
    “I’m not talking about monogamy! I’m talking about two people together, taking on the world together. We had that, Jess, more completely than anybody I’ve ever known. A lot of people never find it at all. I waited half of my life to find it, and I was so sure of it that I just…relaxed.” Angry tears flooded my face. “I had never allowed myself to give in to that dream, but I did with you. I put total faith in something for the first time in my life. And you just threw it away, so you could stomp around in jackboots and have your fucking New Life Crisis or whatever it is. We had something much stronger than sex, and it takes years to build that, and a lot of work. I’m fifty-four years old, Jess. This was it for me. For better or worse. I was ready for you to die in my arms.” Jess’s face had turned to stone. “Well, I’m sorry to spoil your plans.” That was a low blow, but it stung because there was truth to it. I had been planning his death, romanticizing it even, in a frenzied effort to contain the horror of losing him. It was impossible not to embrace his death before the fact, when there were so many living corpses walking the streets.
    “That isn’t fair,” I said. “Nobody ever dreamed—”
    “ I dreamed. I dreamed all the time. I wanted to live and I worked like hell to do it. And sometimes I felt so alone, Gabriel. Because you just left it all up to me. You just made speeches about loving a dying man and forgot about the details. I was the one who took care of you.”
    “Now wait a fucking minute—”
    “No, I wanna say this. Last week Frank came over and we were lying there after some really great sex, and he turned and said to me: ‘I would take care of you if you’d let me,’ and I thought to myself how nice that would be for once. I’ve spent my whole life taking care of people. That’s what you and I were about from the beginning.
    You cried in my arms the day after we met. You sensed that you could do that with me.