Hanging Up. Delia Ephron

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СКАЧАТЬ please slap my sister, she’s hysterical.” I heard a slap. “Thank you. Would you please put her back on?”

      She was crying tamely now, making sad little hiccuping sounds, as if she’d scraped her knee in the playground and the teacher had finally quieted her.

      “Madeline, you have to do this.”

      “Why? It’s not my fault.”

      “It’s not mine either.” Now I was crying too, heading her off at the pass. “Maddy, someone has to take care of this, so just do it, okay?”

      “Okay.”

      “Thanks.” We were sniffling in unison. I hung up.

      “Are you all right?” Zoe asked.

      “Yes.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “I don’t think I can study anymore,” I said as Zoe trailed me to my room. “I think I have to”—I made a face at her, trying to smile—“go to bed.” I closed my door.

      That was my father’s first hospitalization, and my sisters and I were a great team. After I got the crazy call, Maddy checked him in, and Georgia did the follow-up. “Not enough to kill him. Big surprise,” she reported.

      “I didn’t get a wink of sleep. I probably flunked my final,” I told Georgia, knowing I hadn’t. I was too much of a trouper to flunk. I was one of the supercompetent Mozell sisters. I could abort my father’s suicide and pass a final exam the next day. “Look at you. You’re fine,” my mother had pointed out. Was she right, or was I proving her right, living up to her expectations even now, especially now, when I could never get her seal of approval?

       Four

      At six a.m., the phone rings. “He’s dead,” I say to Joe, and grab the receiver. “Hello.”

      “Is this the beautiful, wonderful daughter of Lou Mozell?”

      “Hi, Dad. Are you all right?”

      “Why’d you lock me in the pen? ’Cause of Jesse?”

      “What? What are you talking about?”

      “Go to hell.” He hangs up.

      I feel dizzy from the jolt—first to the body, then to the brain. Joe puts out his arm for me to snuggle into. I shake my head.

      “He’s been in that geriatric/psychiatric ward a week and he’s definitely not better. I wish they would slap some handcuffs on him. At least then he couldn’t phone.”

      “How about a straitjacket?” suggests Joe.

      “Right.” I throw off the covers and get up. I jerk open the closet and look for my robe.

      “He doesn’t know what he’s doing.” Joe pats the bedside table, hunting around for his glasses. He puts them on and watches me from the bed.

      I go into the bathroom. Why am I in here? “What am I looking for?” I yell to Joe.

      “Your bathrobe.”

      “Right.” I take it off the hook and go back into the bedroom. “I hope this memory thing my father has isn’t catching.”

      The phone rings again. Joe reaches for it, but I get there first. “It’s my father,” I say nobly.

      He removes the receiver from my hand. “Hello.” There’s a long pause. I try to read Joe’s eyes, which seem faintly amused. “He’s calling collect now,” he tells me, covering the receiver. “Yes, I’ll accept the charges. Hello, Lou.” Another pause. “No, of course Jesse isn’t mad at you.” He hangs up.

      “Thanks.”

      “No problem. He’s not my father.” Joe turns over to sleep some more. The phone rings again. He groans and picks it up. “Yes. I’ll accept.… You’re not in jail and Jesse isn’t mad at you.” Blunt this time. He hangs up. “Shit. What a way to get up in the morning.”

      This is something Alexander Graham Bell never anticipated. I believe I read somewhere that he grew to hate his own invention, but I don’t think it was because he had a senile parent phoning him ten times a day. I’m sure he didn’t know that people who couldn’t recognize their own pants would remember their children’s phone numbers—could actually recall a seven-digit number plus an area code. I hate Alexander Graham Bell. Of course, right now I hate everyone.

      “I think we should buy telephone stock,” I say later, at breakfast, while I am pacing back and forth, eating granola. “Not now, but when we baby boomers hit eighty.”

      Joe doesn’t look up. He’s reading his newspapers from all over the country—the San Jose Mercury News, the Waco Tribune, the Boulder Daily Camera—to find stories for his radio show.

      “Jesse, when I’m eighty, be sure to buy telephone stock.”

      Jesse doesn’t look up either. He’s reading the back of the milk carton.

      “Do I have to visit him today?” I wonder aloud.

      Joe does not ask who “him” is. “No,” he says.

      “But I haven’t seen him since I checked him in. Jesse, you’ll be happy to know that this morning your grandfather remembered your name. It was a miracle.”

      “That could not be considered a miracle, Mom. That is simply a scientific inevitability.” Jesse’s mouth develops a little sneer. “When the brain deteriorates—and your dad is like wacko—the frontal lobe damage causes a person to remember things they forgot and forget things they know.”

      I don’t respond, and I deem this an extraordinary feat. “That reminds me, I have to phone that man you had the car accident with. I’ve already tried him twice, and he hasn’t called back.”

      “So forget about it.”

      “You should probably do this yourself. You know, I really am busy.”

      “If you think you’re busy, you should try high school.” Jesse continues to eat as he carries his cereal bowl to the sink. “I’ll be back late. Ifer and I are going to a séance. You know, Mom, all doors are entrances. Think about it.” He puts his bowl in the sink. “Bye.”

      I pour another cup of coffee, even though after two cups my whole body rattles from the caffeine. I allow myself to sit. For a moment it’s completely quiet. Not even a breeze; nothing to ruffle anything. Stop, right now. Stop, with this feeling in this room: Joe at the table reading his papers, the smell of coffee, the warm cup in my hands, two sips before the jitters.

      “Joe, when are you leaving?”

      “Tomorrow. I’ll be home in about a week.”

      “I wish you weren’t going.”

      Joe pays no attention to this, which I resent and admire. “Aren’t you late?” СКАЧАТЬ