The Listeners

by Leni Zumas

  “I’ll be gone on Monday,” I said. “Five days before the deadline, incidentally.”

  “So where’s the new place?”

  “Told you. Secret. But I have a favor to ask.”

  “I can’t lend you—”

  “No!” I said. “Not that. I am only asking for a few hours of your time. A day’s worth. Next weekend.”

  “For what?”

  “A little road trip to bring Geck to a halfway house.”

  “Why do you need me to come?”

  “Because you have a valid driver’s license, and I do not, and I want to borrow Mert’s car because Mink’s truck is in the shop, and Mert is highly more likely to—”

  “I have to think about it,” Riley said.

  “Cinnamon or ginger?” called Pine from the kitchen.

  “Ginger,” he answered before I had a chance to say cinnamon.

  “IF THE MAN in the ice had taken the rope, would the lady’s ghost stay mad at him?”

  “No,” answered the youngest, “because the lady would understand—”

  “But what if she didn’t,” said the middle. “What if she was too angry that he got to live and she had to die?”

  “Then she would haunt him,” said the youngest.

  “Haunt how?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What particular freakeries would she do?”

  “I don’t know!”

  The middle said, “How about wake him in the night with the feel of being poured with freezing water? Turn his lips blue like if he drowned? Whisper in his ear until he went lunatic?”

  “But he didn’t take the rope,” said the youngest.

  The middle nodded, sighed, and stood. She hadn’t even bothered to open the notebook. That was their last game of Curious. Stopping was not decided or discussed; in the remaining months of the middle’s life, they simply never played it again.

  OCTY NESTLED IN my lap while I played Wake Up the Sister. In the dark room, only the scrinkling television was alive; and on the screen was a screened porch; and on the porch you were sleeping. The fold-out couch was lumpy but you were fifteen, healthy and strong—you slumbered easily. Morning came. A coyote pup wobbled in on stuggy legs to tell you it was time to get up. Together you had to rouse the sister.

  Most times, the sister was dead; but every once in a while she was not. One of the buttons allowed you to earn Anti-guilt points by not asking her to change sides the night before, and thereby dying in her place. The points clicked up in a red dial on the screen.

  If she was dead, you couldn’t earn Anti-guilts or Virtues.

  If she was dead, you could watch her in the afterworld trying to get strangers to play Cadmus and Europa.

  WITH THIS VOYAGE, my brother and I were flouting family law. Never in the same car for any trip longer than half an hour. But Mert and Fod did not mention the flout; instead they encouraged Riley to honor the speed limit, especially once we reached Pennsylvania, whose state police were notorious.

  “Thanks again for the car,” I said.

  “Just bring it back in one piece,” said Fod. “And your brother does all the driving. Not you or—or the junkie.”

  “You know his name.”

  Riley put a hand on my arm and said, “Don’t worry, Fod” with the authority of an elder sibling.

  He double-parked in front of the diner. “Get us a couple of coffees?”

  Sex—if he had, in fact, been having it—was making him kind of bossy.

  In line, I glanced at the corner booth.

  “All right, Riley Coyote.” I secured the to-go cups on the dashboard. “Are you prepared to hit the countryside?”

  He nodded. “What’s a halfway house, again?”

  “Where drunks and drug addicts learn to be satisfied with low-paying retail jobs.”

  “And how’s your new house?”

  “Basement room,” I reminded him.

  He smiled into the steering wheel. “How’s your basement room?”

  “Dank,” I said.

  “Is Ajax letting you stay for free?”

  “For a month. After that, he said, he’s charging rent. But I’ll figure something out by then. I have a whole month.”

  “You’ll figure something out,” Riley echoed, ever staunch.

  We got Mink at the sitter’s where Meli was throwing a tantrum because she wanted to come with us. She’d accused her mother of insufficient travel chances. “She actually used those words,” Mink said, clicking her seat belt.

  At the end of his parents’ driveway, Geck waited on a duffel bag from whose mouth poked the handle of the beloved cane. He stowed the duffel in the trunk and heaved himself into the backseat with a huge foil-wrapped platter.

  “My mom made us some stuff for the road,” he said. “Two kinds of cookie and one of brownie.”

  “That was nice of her,” Riley said.

  “Sugar is another white devil,” Geck muttered. “Perhaps the most insidious of all.”

  I asked if he had the directions.

  “Drive toward the cows and the people who use buttons instead of zippers.”

  “Pardon me?”

  “Yes, I wrote them down, do you think I have wet brain already?”

  He tore off the foil and we sampled his mother’s efforts. In our van we’d had red chips, gummy bears, iced-up bread. Everything, then, had been icy. Now it was humid as hell and the air-conditioning in my mother’s car was not what you’d call working well. Mink’s face in the rearview looked slathered with petroleum jelly.

  “Quinntanamo,” said Geck, “if I hate this place, will you guys come rescue me?”

  “You have to give it at least two weeks,” I told him.

  “Two weeks is long.”

  “But shorter than death,” Mink said.

  “We aren’t lost.”

  “But we are,” said Riley.

  “We’re not.”

  “I think we should ask someone,” said Mink.

  “Who,” said Geck, “that tree?”

  “We’re fine, people—we’re just on an alternate highway.”

  “This isn’t a highway,” my brother pointed out, “it’s a dirt road.”

  “Shut up, Coyote, I know what I’m doing.”

  He added, in a whine: “You shouldn’t even be driving.”

  “No one’s going to find out.”

  “You lost your license.”

  I snapped, “You see any policemen around?”

  “I need to release urine,” Geck announced.

  At a truck stop, he ordered his final beer. Mink reminded him it would be all the harder, with the taste in his mouth, to endure sobriety in West Butt Hollow; he said, “You don’t say.” The TV above the counter flickered with footage of tanks. Geck raised his bottle and Riley clinked it with a can of lemon-lime.

  Mink read aloud from the place mat, where horoscopes were printed: “Sagittarius:” (Riley) “You are embarking on a journey into new and exciting territory, whether geographical, spiritual, or sensual. Protect yourself from the dangers that attend this path but do not be afraid of the path itself. Aquarius:” (me) “Fences ask the nails to mend them. Bridges ask the water to run beneath them. Leo:” (Geck) “You should nourish your sense of humor today and learn some new jokes. There is a fair chance that you will win something by entering a contest. This could be a contest where you submit your own work of art, a funny jingle or poem or perhaps an insightful drawing.”

  Our sister had been a Leo too. I said to Riley, “She’d be turning thirty-three. What would she be doing, you think?”

  “Mmm”—he slurped soda—“starting to have some kids?”

  Those nieces and nephews, begging me for guitar lessons.

  “Aren’t you going to eat your…?”

  “It’s not cooked enough,” I mumbled.

  “Have some of my eggs, then,” my brother said.

  “I don’t—”

  “Quinn, come on.” He hoisted half his omelet onto my p
late. “At least a few bites, okay?”

  I nodded.

  A mouthful of pennies was a bullet.

  It wasn’t that the worm had gone. The worm had not gone. But it was quieter. I knew it could, at a moment’s notice, tunnel in and raise up its blood-thick head; but it had not been huffing me quite as often. Its olfactory glands, with old age, were feebling.

  The two in back slept, mouths open, Geck’s forehead on Mink’s shoulder. Riley steered with his hands at ten and two. The sky was a mess. Storm coming? I wouldn’t have minded a storm. Earth soaked. Trees bent. Leaden circles breaking on the air.

  My sister had smelled like trees and said she would pluck her eyebrows (the furriest in the room) but never did. She’d thought she might be a genius—confidence hadn’t yet been sucked out of her—but also believed feelings were more important than facts. What does the brain matter, she had asked me and Riley, compared with the heart? The men who looped yellow tape around Edinburgh Lane had shoveled her spilled brain into a bag.

  Between my hips, where the eggs lived: a little heave.

  I’m sorry.

  I know.

  “Who are you talking to?” my brother asked.

  “The forgiveness department,” I said.

  Giant hills ridden by giant trees; long spaces of water that I couldn’t tell if were lake or river; and bruisy clouds. All the colors were dark: blues, greens, grays, browns, each hue muted and low to the ground.

  “It’s grummy out here,” Geck complained.

  “It’s beautiful,” Riley objected. “I think it’s like a painting.”

  “Well, happy day for you.” Geck sniffled. “Where am I going to be living, a Christmas tree farm?”

  I pictured him red-nosed in December, tying evergreens to people’s cars. “Maybe you’ll finally morph,” I said, “into the earthling you’re fated to be. The lavender harem pants and Kokopelli-embossed belt have patiently waited, now to have their day in the sun while you tend bok choy outside your geodesic dome.”

  “Thank you,” he said, “for making this worse.”

  ON JUNE 2, 1865, the American Civil War ended with General Edmund Kirby Smith surrendering his troops at Galveston, Texas. On June 2, 1953, England’s Queen Elizabeth II was crowned in the first coronation ever to be televised. On June 2, 2004, it was twenty years to the day since she’d died. We were having family dinner and there had been no mention of why, although everyone knew why; and the last thing I wanted was to go; but Riley, with surprising firmness, insisted. He even met me at the subway mouth so we could ride the bus together. He told me on the bus that there was something we needed to do.

  I assessed the table: only one set of glasses, brimming with water. So they were still a bit concerned.

  Riley sent me a look: Don’t forget.

  We ate for a while, chomping and murmuring, and I started to think dinner might end before it happened. My brother’s face was turning gray and red. His sweet lips jumped in their wet casings. He wanted to do it—I watched him want to—but he could not. The lips just kept jumping.

  I was oldest. So I would.

  “More asparagus, pettle?” said Mert.

  “No thank you,” said Riley.

  “I miss Ant,” I said, loud as I could.

  The parents, hit, stared down; and the brother smiled.

  Antonia. Ant. Oh. Ant-o. Afraid of pimples and in love with her notebook and could smell in a forest if a wolfberry grew.

  I took a large bite of mashed potato, curious what would happen next.

  Just quiet.

  Then Fod whispered, “I miss her too.”

  “Antonia,” insisted Riley.

  “Antonia,” said Fod.

  “Antonia,” said Mert, clearing her throat. “I miss her every single day.”

  “If nuclear war, would you rather be at home and die immediately, or at the beach where we would boil in the radiated waves but have a few last minutes to say our goodbyes?”

  “Goodbye to who?” asked the youngest.

  “Each other,” said the middle, “and Mert and Fod. Like last words. I might plan mine out beforehand.”

  “I know mine already,” said the oldest. “See you in hell!”

  “I’m not going there,” said the middle, “I’m going to purgastory.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because I just do,” she said. “I am more of a purgas-torial person than a hellish.”

  “I am too,” said the youngest. He would ask their mother later where it was.

  Acknowledgments

  A portion of this novel first appeared as “Pick the Method” in Keyhole. I’m grateful for generous support from the Djerassi Resident Artists Program, the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council, the MacDowell Colony, the Millay Colony, the New York Foundation for the Arts, and Yaddo. For their encouragement, insight, and help, I thank Heather Abel, Zelda Alpern, Kate Blackwell, Liz Brown, Michael Caines, Lila Cecil, Jennifer Firestone, Jocelyn Heaney, Noy Holland, Felix Jakob, Allison Lichter, Eugene Lim, Kisha X. Palmer, Shauna Seliy, Emilie Stewart, Natasha Wimmer, and the excellent people at Tin House Books: Lee Montgomery, Tony Perez, Meg Storey, and especially Nanci McCloskey. Special thanks to my dad, Nick Zumas, for telling me his story. And to Luca Dipierro, the love of my life—ti amo come un faro ama il mare.

  Copyright © 2012 Leni Zumas

  All rights reserved. No part of this book maybe used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews. For information, contact Tin House Books, 2617 NW Thurman St., Portland, OR 97210.

  Published by Tin House Books, Portland, Oregon, and New York, New York

  Distributed to the trade by Publishers Group West, 1700 Fourth St., Berkeley, CA 94710, www.pgw.com

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Zumas, Leni, 1972-

  The listeners : a novel / by Leni Zumas.—1st U.S. ed.

  p. cm.

  eISBN : 978-1-935-63930-5

  1. Young women—Family relationships—Fiction. 2. Sisters—Death--Fiction. 3. Neurasthenia—Fiction. 4. Families—Psychological aspects—Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. 6. Psychological fiction. I. Title.

  PS3626.U43L57 2012

  813’.6—dc22

  2012002068

  First U.S. edition 2012

  www.tinhouse.com