The Night Listener : A Novel

the amazing part: the room was very close to what I’d imagined. (Or was I merely remembering Pete’s description?) The shiny chrome bed was predictable enough, but even the other furnishings seemed properly placed: the bookshelf to the left of the bed, the dresser to the right, the cluttered desk where he kept his computer. And there was something I hadn’t factored in: the faintest scent of boy, an innuendo of adolescence. I flashed on my father forty years earlier, bursting into my room on a Saturday morning when my sheets were still sticky with discovery. “Jesus,” he had boomed, “smells like a goddamn cathouse in here.” He may have thought he was celebrating my manhood, but I’d felt exposed and humiliated, and I hated him for joking about something we had never once discussed. Five years later, when Josie was thirteen, the old man pulled a similar stunt with her. Having found a box of Kotex in her bathroom cabinet, he grilled her over breakfast about what it was for. And oh, the look my mother had given him.
    “Check out the bulletin board,” said Donna.
    For the moment, I was lost in Charleston, circa 1962.
    “Over there,” she added, gesturing.
    I finally saw what she meant. There was a small but ardent shrine to me in the form of photographs and yellowed press clippings.
    Elsewhere I saw printouts of E-mail from other writers and public figures, some of them very well known. For the first time ever I regretted my cyber-illiteracy.
    “He loved you,” said Donna. “Even before he met you.”
    I went to the window and gazed out into the snowy yard. There were two moons in the sky now: the real one, which had crept from behind the clouds, and the spectral blue globe of the water tank. I didn’t bother to search for Roberta, because that game was finally over. If I needed proof of anything now, it was proof of my own humanity. I felt so utterly two-dimensional, as if I had been the impostor all along. Much as my father had done, when faced with the love of a child, I’d lost my nerve and retreated in panic and distrust.
    “Did he know?” I asked, still staring out the window.
    “What?”
    “That I had…questions about him.”
    “No,” she said. “He wasn’t that kind of a person.” I wanted to know so much more—what his last thoughts had been, for instance—but I didn’t feel I’d earned the right to ask. When all was said and done, I was just a peripheral character in this trag-edy.
    “Let me show you something,” said Donna, crossing to the bookshelf. “This was under his sheets the night he died.” Her fingers found the sturdy chrome uprights and climbed until they reached a stack of magazines just above her head. Then she smiled as she handed me the Playboy .
    “Uh-oh,” I said. “Busted.”
    She shrugged. “He kept it because it was from you.” I handed the magazine back to her.
    “He was wearing the T-shirt you sent, too. The Noone at Night one.
    He asked for it specially that morning.” I nodded as the tears began to build behind my eyes.
    “We sent him off in it when he was cremated. That was Marsha’s idea, actually. She thought Pete would have wanted it.” I was glad to be reminded of Marsha. It helped to know that Donna wasn’t alone, that she still had the friendship of someone sighted who had loved the boy as much as she had. “Thanks for that,” I said.
    Donna didn’t reply; she just returned the magazine to its place on the shelf. As her slender arm extended, the sleeve of her blouse slipped to her elbow and I caught a glimpse of something I hadn’t seen before: a long, pale scar down the underside of her arm. The skin there was smeared and poreless, like a very old burn mark, but the serpentine shape of the thing seemed less than accidental. I angled for a better look, but her arm fell back to her side and she shoved down the sleeve with a single efficient gesture.
    Flustered, I scrambled for something to say. “Is…Marsha looking out for you?”
    She didn’t bother to turn around. “I don’t need looking out for.”
    “I know. I’m sure. I just meant…”
    “I’ve functioned on my own for a long time.”
    “I was thinking more in terms of…company.” She went to the door and turned off the light, leaving me in darkness. The snow outside the window was the only source of light, faintly reflecting the blue of the water-tank star. “I’m not at all lonely,” she said, “if that’s what you mean. He’s everywhere I turn.”