The Dogs of Babel

TWENTY

When I was a little boy, my mother, who was given to hyperbole, used to tell me that if the world were to come to an end, her last thought would be of me, and she would fling my name out to the heavens as the mortar of the earth burst apart and the ground fell from beneath her feet. It is only now, when I am surprised to find that I am growing older every day, it’s only now that I am beginning to believe that my mother was not just speaking extravagantly. I think every one of us carries with us a name like this, a name whose importance may not be clear to us until we find it on our lips in those final moments. I don’t think it is ever, perhaps not even for my mother, who we expect it to be.

All this to say: I am forty-three years old. I may yet live another forty. What do I do with those years? How do I fill them without Lexy? When I come to tell the story of my life, there will be a line, creased and blurred and soft with age, where she stops. If I win the lottery, if I father a child, if I lose the use of my legs, it will be after she has finished knowing me. “When I get to Heaven,” my grandmother used to say, widowed at thirty-nine, “your grandfather won’t even recognize me.”

Lately, I’ve been having trouble sleeping. It’s the getting to sleep that causes me problems. During the day, I go from one task to the next, not thinking much about the shadow areas of my life, Lexy’s death, my grief and the strange way I have chosen to respond to it, the laughingstock I have become in my field. I can go the whole day without thinking of any of it. And then I get into bed. All those hours spread before me, and nothing to do but think. I would get up and work on my research, but Lorelei has made it clear she will not work between the hours of eight P.M. and six A.M. Dogs sleep a lot—one lesson I’ve learned in my two months of research is that dogs sleep a hell of a lot more than they do anything else.

And so it is that on this night, my wife four months dead, I find myself sitting in the dark watching an infomercial for a telephone psychic.

I’ve never been much of a believer in the mystical arts, although as a child I indulged all the natural curiosities for ghost stories, Ouija boards, and the like. In fact, the powers of the Ouija board have become legendary in my family: once when my sister and I were children, a Ouija board told her that she would marry a man with the initials PJM, and as it turned out, she did. My sister’s first husband, to whom she was married for a scant eight months right after college, was named Peter James Marsh. Now, happily married for almost fifteen years to a man with the initials LRS, the only thing she will say about her first marriage is that she should have known better than to marry a man based on his initials.

But in my adult years I’ve always been something of a skeptic. I don’t believe in ESP or UFOs, past lives or parallel worlds or spirits of the dead that haunt the living. I don’t believe in anything I can’t put my hands on. Still, something about this woman on the screen intrigues me, and I find myself not wanting to change the channel. I suppose everyone is a skeptic until they have a reason to believe.

Lady Arabelle is her name. She could not be more of a cliché—colorful scarves knotted about her head, a jangle of gold necklaces at her throat—but there’s something so sincere about her you forget all that. Something about her manner, the warmth she displays, draws you in right away. I can see why you’d want to believe what she has to say. The people who phone in with their problems, she calls them honey and baby, and she makes it sound like she means it. There’s something distinctly motherly about her. If she called me baby, I think I’d want to cry.

“Check him out, honey,” she’s telling the woman on the phone. “Make sure his divorce is final, because I don’t think he’s being honest with you. He’s hiding something. Did he ask you not to call him at home?”

“Well, he told me he has this roommate he doesn’t like, so he’s not home much. He told me I should call his pager.”

“That’s no roommate, honey. That’s his wife.”

They flash a phone number. “Lady Arabelle knows all your secrets,” the voice-over tells me. “She answers your questions about the future, your questions about the past.” Well, that’s something. Your questions about the past. Idly, I imagine the conversation that would follow if I called the number on the screen. “I see a large dog. The dog has something to tell you.”

Another caller, a man this time. “I’m sorry, hon,” Lady Arabelle tells him. “But that’s not your baby.”

“It’s not?”

“No, honey, it’s not. Tell me this, did she go out of town a few months ago, maybe for her job? Did she go to an Eastern city?”

“Yeah,” he says, his voice gone flat. “She went to Boston in June.”

“Well, that’s when it happened. Ask her about it. Ask her if she ran into an old boyfriend in Boston, and see what she has to say for herself.”

I give some thought to this man whose marriage may now be over as the result of a phone call to a stranger. I wonder if it’s true, this scenario she’s put in his mind. I picture the confrontations that will follow this phone call.

Another voice-over, some fine print about rates per minute. I find myself tempted to write the phone number down. Then Lady Arabelle is back, talking to another woman.

“There’s something you’re not telling me about,” she says. “You’re all excited about something. Something you found in his coat?”

“Yes,” the woman says. “I found a ring. I think he’s going to propose!”

“Well, I’m gonna tell you something, baby. That ring’s for someone else. That ring is not for you.”

It’s the specificity that seals the deal. The Eastern city, the hidden ring. She’s very convincing. But something about the desperation of these callers, the faith they put in this woman who, sincere though she seems, knows nothing about their lives, bothers me. I stand up, ready to turn off the TV—I have the remote in my hand—but what I hear next makes my heart stop.

Because the next voice I hear is Lexy’s.