The Night Listener

by Armistead Maupin

  “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.” Back in the living room, we talked about other things: the bitter weather, that funky little coffee shop, the loyal creature dozing at Donna’s feet. We both seemed to sense that we needed a break, a peaceful coming-down before we parted. And I wanted to show her we still had reason to communicate beyond the son we had lost.

  “How are things with you and Jess?” she asked.

  A sigh escaped from me like a death rattle. “Who knows? He had somebody with him when I called this afternoon.” Her brow creased sympathetically.

  “It was probably just a friend, but…I have no way of knowing anymore. And that’s the problem, I guess. For both of us.”

  “Why?”

  “Well…he doesn’t want to have to explain himself, and…I can’t stand not knowing.”

  “Would it change the way you feel about him if you did know?” I shook my head—which was lost on her, of course.

  “Was that a yes or a no?”

  “Sorry. No, it wouldn’t. I’ll always love him. It’s a chronic condition.”

  “Does he feel that way about you?”

  That one took me a little longer. “I think he does, yes. I’m sure he does.”

  “Then maybe it’s only his needs that have changed. Not his love.

  Couldn’t you look at it that way?”

  “I try to, but I’m just…” I couldn’t finish, so she did it for me.

  “You’re just the kind of guy who needs proof.”

  “Well…yeah.”

  “You need that body in the bed next to you. That child in your arms.”

  I shrugged. “Doesn’t everybody?”

  “Sure,” she said, “until they grow up.” I was offended until I saw the sweetness of her expression.

  “That’s what it is, you know, growing up. When you’ve finally got this programmed”—she pressed her palm to her heart—”to carry everyone who’s ever loved you. When the bliss becomes portable.”

  When I didn’t reply, she continued:

  “Jess has given you a gift, Gabriel: the chance to feel love without boundaries. Everything you’ve ever built with him is still in place.

  All you have to do is believe and let go, and you’ll have all the proof you need. Maybe not in the way you planned, but it’ll be there.” She leaned down to scratch Janus under his chin, then looked up at me with a wry smile. “No charge for that,” she said.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  GIVING UP THE GHOST

  HALF AN HOUR LATER, back at the motel, I phoned home and checked the messages on my machine. There, amid the usual procession of friends and strangers, I found the voice of Ashe Findlay, asking me to call him, please, as soon as possible, even if it meant calling him at home. It was clear from his somber tone that he had just heard about Pete from Donna. My heart went out to him, knowing we were finally in agreement about this child.

  Then came a click on the line. I felt sure it was Jess, cutting in out of sheer curiosity. But the voice that said hello was female.

  “Anna?”

  “Oh, hi, Gabriel.”

  “It’s late. What are you doing there?”

  “Just working on the books. How’s Wisconsin?”

  “Cold.”

  “Did you meet him?”

  I decided it was time to unload. “I met her,” I said. “And we had a good talk. He died last week, Anna.”

  “Who?”

  “Pete.”

  “Oh…really?” Her voice rose markedly on the second word.

  “His lungs finally gave out on him.”

  “Oh.”

  “She cut off the phone because she couldn’t handle telling people.

  And there were plenty to tell, apparently.”

  “Relatives, you mean?”

  “No. Just friends. He had more than I realized.”

  “Like who?”

  “Well, Stephen King, for one. And Tom Clancy. And Magic Johnson.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “No.”

  “Did he call them Dad, too?”

  Her bluntness knocked me back, though I knew she hadn’t meant to be cruel.

  “Sorry,” said Anna. “I just wondered…”

  “I know. It’s okay.”

  “Are you gonna stay for the funeral?”

  “There isn’t one. He was cremated.”

  There was a long pause. I knew what she was thinking, but I had no intention of going down that road. “She’s blind, by the way.”

  “Who?”

  “Donna.”

  “You mean, blind blind?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then…how did she…take care of him and all?”

  “That doesn’t make her helpless, Anna.”

  “But…somebody had to drive him places.”

  “Yes. A friend. Across the street.”

  “Did you meet him?”

  “Her. No, I didn’t.”

  Another pregnant silence, and then: “Are you okay, Gabriel?”

  “Yeah. More or less.”

  “Are you sad?”

  “A little. And a little relieved that there’s been a resolution.” Again, no response.

  “Does that sound insensitive?”

  “No. I just wondered if…I mean, if he was already cremated when you got there, how do you know if he actually…”

  “I know, Anna. All right?”

  “But how?” Her voice was more timid, but she wasn’t giving up.

  “I saw his room and his stuff. I saw her, for God’s sake. I saw the look on her face. She was plainly grieving.”

  “Maybe she was grieving the loss of th
at personality.”

  “Anna, would you stop it, please?”

  “But don’t you see what—”

  “You weren’t here. You didn’t feel what I felt. I could practically smell him in the room.”

  I realized how peculiar this sounded. “I had the same thoughts,” I added in a quieter tone, “but they didn’t last. Sometimes you have to stop doubting and trust your heart.”

  “My parents did that,” Anna replied after a moment. “That’s why we spent the first year of our lives in Jonestown.” I wasn’t following her at all. “What? Who did?”

  “Edgar and me. And Mom and D’or.”

  “Jonestown, Guyana? With Jim Jones, you mean?”

  “We escaped to Cuba just before the big Kool-Aid thing. Then we lived in Cuba for three years because my moms trusted their hearts about Castro. Right up to the day he deported them as dykes.” The light dawned. I remembered headlines from the early eighties, when a couple of lesbians, long presumed dead in the massacre, showed up in San Francisco with their toddler twins. It had caused a minor uproar at the time. “Jesus,” I murmured. “That was you?”

  “That was us.”

  “Do you remember that?”

  “No. Not the Jonestown part. But that doesn’t mean I didn’t learn from it.”

  “You’ve never even mentioned it before.”

  “It’s embarrassing,” she said. “Nobody should be that gullible.” I had a feeling she was talking about me again, but I didn’t pick up the gauntlet. What I’d just experienced had been akin to a miracle or a flying saucer sighting. Not the sort of thing you could share with the uninitiated.

  “I was just checking the messages,” I said, by way of signing off.

  “Is there anything you need me to do?”

  “Not really,” she replied. “Just some checks to sign when you get back. Jess is coming over in a minute to help me prioritize them.”

  “Thanks for holding down the fort, Anna.”

  “No problem.”

  “Do me a favor, would you? When you talk to Jess, don’t tell him what I just told you.”

  “About the kid being dead, you mean?”

  “Any of it. I’d rather handle this when I get home.”

  “You got it,” said Anna.

  “Is Hugo okay?”

  “Oh, he’s fine. Sitting right here with me. He peed on the carpet this morning, but Jess cleaned it up.”

  Hugo hadn’t done that since he was a puppy, so I could imagine the old dog’s humiliation. Is that what it means to get old? I wondered. To revert to the helplessness of infancy without any of the fun?

  “Give him a hug for me,” I said.

  “Who?” asked Anna.

  “Both of them,” I replied.

  I took my second shower of the evening, just to make it easier to sleep. For the same reason I ordered a movie, but it was relentlessly stupid, so I scrounged a roach from the ashtray and managed to extract a few hits. In minutes I was buried in gray dreamless sleep, and I might have stayed that way until morning had I not been jarred awake by the phone at 2 A.M.

  “I know it’s late,” said Jess.

  “More like early.” I was sure he’d somehow wheedled the news from Anna, but I had no intention of rehashing it at that hour.

  “I just got a call from Josie,” Jess said. “I thought you should know, babe. Your father’s had a stroke.”

  Such a suitable word, stroke. I’d heard it since childhood without fully understanding its meaning, but it sounded, even through a haze of sleep and dope, just like itself: abrupt and brutal and irreversible.

  A stroke of lightning, the stroke of midnight, the stroke of a pen.

  TWENTY-SIX

  THE BOO DADDY

  WHEN JOSIE AND I were children at midcentury, I would terrorize her with tales of the Boo Daddy, a variation on the boogeyman I’d lifted from Gullah folklore. The Boo Daddy, it was said, would creep into your house late at night if your shutters weren’t painted a certain prophylactic shade of blue. So I would watch for that color on trips to the country and point it out with perverse pleasure to my skittish little sister.

  This memory came hurtling back to me some forty years later as Josie drove us into Charleston from the airport. These sprawling suburbs looked so numbingly alike now, but down there beyond the freeway, along the marshes of the Ashley, I thought I’d seen that color again—the eerie blue of a low gas flame—and I’d uttered the words “Boo Daddy” almost without thinking.

  Josie corrected me. “That’s a Blockbuster Video, sweetie.”

  “C’mon.”

  “Yep. Think so.”

  “Well, fuck. You’re no fun at all.”

  She laughed. “You were awful to me back then.”

  “Was I?”

  “You and your Boo Daddy.”

  What a telling name, I thought, as if hearing it for the first time.

  Down here the devil was just another difficult patriarch.

  I hadn’t been home—or rather to Charleston—for almost four years, when I came here, minus Jess, for Pap’s eightieth birthday. Josie and Darlie had planned the event down to the last detail, renting a cottage on Sullivan’s Island and hiring a troupe of decrepit bagpipers to serenade the old man. It was better than most of our reunions, but I’d eaten a bad oyster that night and ended up puking my guts out during a stirring rendition of “Loch Lomond.” Since then, for reasons far beyond bad oysters, I’d resolved to stay on my own turf and let the family come to me.

  “Is this weird for you?” my sister asked.

  I shrugged. “Not in the scheme of things, no.”

  “I’ve told a few people you’re coming. I hope you don’t mind.” I smiled gamely.

  “And Billy and Susan are flying in tomorrow.”

  “That’s good.”

  “Would you like to freshen up first? We’ve done some new things with the house. I’m dying for you to see it.” Josie and her husband, Walker, had moved into our childhood home on Meeting Street in the early nineties when Pap and Darlie bought a two-bedroom condo in what had once been the Fort Sumter Hotel. Josie had given the house a thorough but sensitive remodeling, fussing over it in a way that seemed almost parental now that her kids were grown and gone.

  “I think I should see him first,” I said, “then freshen up. Smoke some crack, maybe. Shoot some heroin.”

  She turned to me and giggled. She was still so pretty. She had our mother’s English coloring and kind hazel eyes, our mother’s instinct to be strong when the menfolk might not be up to it. “He’s handling it fine,” she said. “And he looks okay, except for a droopy place on his face.”

  “Can he talk?”

  “Oh, yeah. Now, listening is another matter.” I smiled.

  “His personality hasn’t changed. When he heard his nurse was named Clinton, he asked her if she was kin to that horny prick in Washington.”

  “Oh, God.”

  “And yesterday he told me his doctor is one helluva fine Jew.”

  “Right.”

  “He does it to get attention, as much as anything. What were you doing in Milwaukee, anyway?”

  It was unsettling to be thrust back into that icy hallucination when it was almost seventy outside and a warm, spongy-soft breeze was rolling off the river. “I was visiting a sick boy,” I said.

  “Oh…how is he?”

  “He died before I got there.”

  “Did you know him well?”

  “Fairly.”

  “From where?”

  “He was sort of a fan.”

  “A listener, you mean?”

  “Yeah.”

  “God,” she said. “You’re catching some shit right now.” I wondered how much Jess had told her about the breakup, but I was too afraid to ask. He and Josie had always spoken freely, and he may well have told her what it was about me that had sent him packing.

  “It’s amazing,” I said, peering out the window, “how many malls there are now.”

&nbs
p; “The whole damn place is a mall. It’s just a theme park for Yankees. She-Crab Soup World.”

  Josie might be mostly our mother, but every now and then I could hear the old man loud and clear.

  As we pulled into Roper Hospital I took another queasy somersault into the past. This was the very building where my mother had died twenty years earlier. I knew every detail of the place, even that ragged palmetto in the parking lot where my stepmother was standing, seemingly in an effort to intercept us. Josie took this as an ominous sign.

  “Oh, fuck,” she said. “Something’s happened.” But when we got closer, it was clear that Darlie was just on a cigarette break.

  “I didn’t know she smoked,” I said.

  “Neither does Pap. So don’t blab.”

  I snorted. “How could he not know something like that?”

  “How could he not know everything he doesn’t know? He’s arranged it that way.”

  I frowned at her. “I’m surprised you’re still humoring him. Why do you bother?”

  “Because he’s here, Gabriel.” She didn’t elaborate, but her larger message was clear enough: I had put a continent between Pap and me twenty-five years earlier; I was not to give lectures on handling him.

  Josie swung past Darlie on her way to a parking space. “Caught ya!” she yelled.

  “Oh, hey!” Darlie called back, twiddling her fingers. That strawberry-blond hair seemed more of a beacon than ever here in the low milky light of the Low Country. But even from a distance the worry and weariness were evident on her face. She tossed her cigarette onto the pavement, stubbed it out with her heel, and hurried toward us as we climbed from the car.

  “I swear,” she said, hugging me. “It’s downright spooky.”

  “What?”

  “You look more like him every time I see you. Just like he did when I fell in love with him.”

  I must have winced.