The Night Listener : A Novel

the first time, feeling the tender assurance of her touch, a sense that for her had surely been heightened by the absence of another. And one she’d been saving just for him.
    “And this,” she said, pulling out of the hug, “is Janus.”
    “I know.” I stroked the dog’s thick butterscotch neck. “We were introduced on the phone. He was attacking a vacuum cleaner at the time.”
    She touched my cheek appraisingly. “You’re freezing your ass off, aren’t you?”
    “Well…yeah. Pretty much.”
    “C’mon.” She jerked her head toward the house. “I’ll put the kettle on.”
    Her living room was sparsely furnished and unadorned except for a portrait of Pete over the oatmeal sectional sofa. It was a blowup of the photo Donna had already sent me, the one with the startling beach-glass eyes. It took all my self-restraint not to ask where he was tonight, but I thought it wiser to let her call the shots. Still, my eyes wandered uncontrollably to the darkened hallway beyond the kitchen, where I knew the bedrooms must lie, where I could imagine Pete sleeping even as we spoke, a wheezing form in an oxygen tent.
    Unless he was back in the hospital again.
    “Is this enough light?” she asked.
    “Fine.” There was just the glow from the Christmas tree, but I liked the kaleidoscopic play of its colors against her angular face.
    She was really quite lovely, I realized, in a rangy, rawboned kind of way.
    She handed me a mug of peppermint tea, then sat on the sectional across from me, curling her corduroyed legs beneath her. I was sure she arranged herself just that way when she listened to her patients; it somehow conveyed the very essence of informal concern.
    “Did this surprise you?” she asked, sweeping her hand past her eyes.
    Honesty seemed in order at this point. “Yes, actually…it did.”
    “Because it wasn’t in Pete’s book?”
    “And because Ashe never mentioned it. It just wasn’t…in the equation at all.”
    “You understand why, though.” This was plainly more of a statement than a question.
    “I think so, yes. For protective purposes.” She nodded.
    “Have you been blind all your life?”
    Another slow nod. “Almost.”
    “You mean since…”
    “I remember what sky looks like. And a dollhouse I used to have.
    Things like that. But just barely.”
    “Well…it makes it even more impressive, you know…what you did.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “You know…Pete…rescuing him.”
    “Is that what I did?” There was a note in her voice that was both wistful and ironic, a note I’d never heard before.
    “It’s obvious what you did, Donna. It’s there on every page of Pete’s book. Even without the mention of…your blindness.” She just nodded darkly.
    “It’s a shame he couldn’t have used that detail. It would have made an even better story.”
    She heaved a sigh, then aimed those eyes at me like a sightless gun. “We weren’t trying to make a story. We were trying to make a life.”
    “I know.”
    “No. I don’t think you do.”
    “Look, if there’s something I…”
    “Has this always been just a story to you?”
    “No,” I replied in horror, wondering if Pete could hear us. “Not at all. It’s been much more than that.”
    “I don’t think so, Gabriel. Your mind has been engaged…but never your heart. Not really.”
    I was appalled at the hostility beneath this observation.
    “Donna…for heaven’s sake…I love him.”
    She shook her head. “You loved the idea of him. There’s a difference.”
    “I don’t know what that means.”
    “He appealed to your vanity. This helpless kid who wanted you to love him. Wanted it so badly that he could ask you for it on the telephone . It made a wonderful story you could tell people, and you even got to be the hero of it. What could be nicer than that?”
    “Well…” I took a moment to assemble my words. “What if that were true? What would be so awful about that? Most people would feel that way, wouldn’t they?”
    “But I didn’t think you were most people. I thought you’d be different somehow. I thought you could look into his soul and see the whole child, with all his complexities and contradictions. I thought you saw him as your own flesh and blood. The way I do.”
    “I did, Donna. I do.”
    She shook her head. “You couldn’t have. Or you wouldn’t have discarded him so easily.”
    “What are you talking about? I’ve wanted nothing more than to keep him in my life. I’ve spent the