The Phone Call

kids?”

Nothing was ever wrong with Catherine in Marie’s memory. She was the one they all came to when they needed to talk about their wretched children or bills or, well, anything that made life rough. The children they had raised with sacrifices who were so inconsiderate now. Every woman in the self-care-seniors-only apartment building had made sacrifices for her children, or so they remembered, but getting visits or even a call now and then from those children was nearly impossible.

           “He--he said they can’t come for more than a couple of days,” Catherine sobbed.

“Who?” Marie asked.

“Ran--Randolph. Come for just a couple of days. It takes them more than half a day just to drive here. He said the cost of travel, meals out and then a motel room. It’s just too much he says. They won’t ever stay with me. I think it’s Roberta. For some reason his wife doesn’t want to stay here. In my apartment.” She wiped her eyes then blew her nose. “I could put in a request for the guest apartment, but Randolph won’t hear of it. He says it costs more than a room at a Dew Drop Inn.”

Marie looked at her. “Where?”

             “Oh, it’s a family joke.” Catherine sucked in a deep breath and let it out slowly just like she’d learned to do in meditation class. Marie waited.

             “It just means a cheap motel. When Wilson and I were first married and traveled by car, we stayed at cheap places. To save money. It was different then, I suppose. They never seemed all that bad. Anyway, it’s only the best for Roberta.” Catherine blew her nose again to emphasize her point. There was no smile on her face.         

It was still before noon so Catherine fixed them a pot of coffee. They sat at the small dining table in front of the window. It was one of Catherine’s favorite places to sit and look out. She could watch people come in and go out of the building and there was a nearby tree that the birds seemed to love. She was on the 4^th floor. She imagined who visitors were coming to see. It made her wish her children lived closer and could visit more often. 

Marie sat across from her and looked out the window, too. “I like your view, Catherine,” she said. “All I see is the top of the awning and by the time people get out from under it I can’t tell much about them.”

“Do you know who any of them are?” Catherine had poured them each a cup of coffee and brought out the French Twist coffee creamer. Marie waved her filled coffee cup at the window. Catherine had some of her famous blueberry coffee cake left sitting on the table and she cut them each a piece before she answered.

“Some I do, yes. Others, no, but I try to guess who they’re coming to see. It passes time.” Catherine felt vulnerable. Marie had seen her cry. The only other time she’d cried was when she’d said goodbye to her younger son Tremont and his family.

It was at the front door to the whole building that he’d said they wouldn’t be back for awhile, something about needing to go to the kids’ activities. She couldn’t very well start a conversation right there in front of everyone about it, could she? She knew it was that Willa’s fault. Willa had never liked her from the beginning. She took a deep breath, ate a chunk of blueberry cake and swallowed a gulp of coffee. Marie wasn’t a talker. Neither was she and Catherine thought this unspoken camaraderie made the women good friends though neither had brought it up.

           Catherine took a deep breath. “Your kids,” she started, “how often do they call? I mean, do they call often enough that you get to talk, know what’s going on in their lives?”

           Marie looked at her. She pleated the place mat with her gnarled fingers. “Well, you know my two daughters live close by. Girls are different than boys,” she said, making oblique excuses for Randolph and Tremont. Catherine listened.

           “They come by—they call. They don’t think I know how they alternate their calls and visits. The boys, well, they live far enough away they aren’t very regular. I try to talk to them on the phone now and then, but I don’t call them too often.”

           Catherine took a breath. Marie always seemed to have had a conversation with someone. Who was she talking to? “You have more phone conversations than anyone I know, Marie, who are you talking to?” There. It was out in the air.

           Marie took another drink of her coffee and looked at Catherine.

           “My kids … grandkids don’t call me nearly as much as yours do, Marie.”

           Catherine looked out the window. She hadn’t really asked Marie about the phone calls, not directly, but she hoped to learn about them. Maybe Marie did phone volunteering … or something so she had a chance to talk to people. Catherine just knew she needed to find some outlet. Someone to talk to or even just listen to to remind her she was still alive.

           She looked over at Marie who had set her cup down and was looking down. If her eyes were lasers she’d have bored a hole through the cloth and the table itself.

           “It’s … it’s not my family I talk to.”

           Catherine sat very still afraid that if she even moved Marie wouldn’t go on. A cardinal flew by the window and landed on a tree branch. The women both looked out at the bird. Whenever Catherine saw cardinals she thought of Wilson, but she couldn’t get distracted. I’ll talk to you later, she mentally communicated to the cardinal.

           “You have friends left on the outside?”

           Catherine had slipped into their vernacular. Friends who weren’t in other senior apartments, assisted living or nursing homes or, well, dead. Though she was considering those who were dead. At least they’d always be in one place. And available.

           “No, not exactly. They, uh, these callers, don’t always call me.” She took a drink of her coffee.  “I call them. But sometimes they do call me,” she hurried on.

           “You know when you buy something there’s a customer service number to register the product and then if you have questions you can call them?” Marie asked.

           “Yes. I don’t always bother with that,” Catherine said.

           “Well, that’s who I talk to.”

           Catherine looked at her.

           “Like the new toaster I got a couple of weeks ago.”

           Catherine took a sip of coffee and nodded.

“Well, I got the toaster and called to register it. Then I talked to the person who answered the phone. I tell them my name and I just chatter on. They’re too polite to hang up on me, though sometimes they tell me they have to go because there is a line of callers. Sometimes the lines are so busy that I use that feature to leave my number and then someone calls me back. That’s kind of fun. I like it when my phone rings.”

           “But what do you talk about?”

           “I talk about whatever the thing is, first. How it works, though everyone knows how a toaster works. But, do you know there’s a certain slot if you have only one piece of bread to toast? Then things in general.”

           Catherine nodded her head.

           “Well, sometimes I pretend not to know about features. I called about why my one piece of toast wasn’t toasting well. So, then someone can tell me about the slot for a single piece of bread. They feel sorry for me, see? Then they’ll stay on a little longer and sometimes talk about their grandma or grandpa, what they mean to them. I encourage them to give their family a call. Even with things that go back. Remember when my daughter bought that toaster oven for my birthday?”

           Catherine nodded again. She was beginning to feel like an automatic gag gift she was nodding so much.

           “Well, I’d made a note of the customer service number and called it, then she took it back because she said it might be too dangerous for me. But I kept the phone number, so I call about it.  How to use features. They ask for serial numbers and all, but I just say they are too small, I can’t read them. They’ll still talk to me.”

           Marie continued talking, Catherine taking notes. Marie’s one big caution was not to call too often. She’d made a spreadsheet with the numbers, the dates she called, the names of the representative and whatever she’d said about the product. She’d started doing that when one of them had mentioned a prior call and she’d called about the same thing. She’d hung up quickly and had crossed that number off her regular list.

           The next morning after breakfast, Catherine pulled her files out. She had a stack of product information sheets with customer service numbers. She went through and came up with several numbers.

           She went to the bedroom and put on her pearls and fixed her hair. She smiled in the mirror then reached for a tube of lipstick. Crazy Berry.  She’d bought it for its name. She applied it, smiled again and decided she was ready to make her first call.

           At the kitchen table she pulled her phone from her pocket, her list of numbers and a blank sheet of paper. She drew lines and identified columns. She wrote the date and then the phone number. Marie had said to always ask for the person’s name. she said calling them by name made them friendlier.

           Catherine dialed and listened to the litany of Press 1 if you are calling about a new issue, Press 2 if you are calling about an unresolved issue, Press 3 if you know your party’s extension, Press 4 if.. Catherine hung up.

           She had not expected all of those choices. She thought. This was a new issue. That was the first choice. She walked into the kitchen and poured herself a cup of coffee. Taking it back to the table she sat and pressed redial. She was proud of herself for remembering about the redial key.

She would make the best choices. No matter who called, sometimes someone must press the wrong button.

           The automatic system answered, Press 1 if you are calling about a new issue, Press… She pressed 1. Press 1 if you are calling about a stand mixer, Press 2 if you are calling about a handheld mixer.  She pressed 2. An automatic voice chimed in around a series of bells. Greetings, we are so glad you called. We are looking forward to talking to you about your multi-slice toaster, please hold the line for the next available customer-service representative.

           Now here was a reason for the speaker she’d never used. She pressed the button and a scratchy rendition of some unidentifiable song wafted into her apartment. We are experiencing an unusually high volume of calls, a customer service representative will respond as soon as possible. There are 37 callers ahead of you.

           Wow. Maybe she should hang up and call later. No, she decided. She wasn’t doing anything that would interfere with waiting. She set the phone on the counter and continued her daily routine. With 37 callers ahead of her she reasoned she had time to write a few notes (a quaint practice her daughters advised her, just send an email – or text).

There are 29 callers ahead of you. Then she mixed ingredients for her blueberry coffee cake and put it in the oven. There are 18 callers ahead of you. She could talk about how much she liked the mixer, how light it was, how good her blueberry coffee cake was because of the mixer. Over an hour had elapsed. Did people really wait this long to talk to someone? What did busy people do? Just park their phones, too?

           She sat at the table and looked out the window. The cardinal was back in the branches. She watched it flit from branch to branch.

           “Hello, this is Carol, how may I help you?”

           Catherine looked at her phone. She’d almost forgotten about it.

           “Good morning, Carol, at least it’s morning where I am.”

           “Good morning, may I have your first name, please?”

           “Catherine, and my-”

           “Catherine, how may I help you today? You’re calling about your multi-slice toaster. What model do you have, please?”

           “Well, Carol, no, I’m calling about my handheld mixer. I pressed 2.”

           “I’m sorry, Catherine, 2 is for the multi-slice toaster. Do you have a multi-slice toaster?”

           “Why, no, -- I --”

           “Do you want me to transfer you?”

           “No, Carol, I can talk about the toaster—”

           “Okay, how can I help you with your multi-slice toaster?”

           “It was such a great toaster when my children were growing up. They marked their own compartment for their toast. It kept arguments down.”

           “Well, that’s an interesting solution. How can I help you with the toaster today?”

           “Oh, I gave the toaster away after Wilson – after my husband died –”

           “Excuse me, -- Catherine, do you have a multi-slice toaster now?”

           “No. No, ah – no, I don’t. I have a handheld mixer that I wanted to tell you about, how it mixes the ingredients for my blueberry coffee cake so well that I -- I get rave reviews from anyone who eats a piece.”

           “Do you now. Well, if you don’t have a multi-slice toaster and there is nothing wrong with your handheld mixer, I need to move on to the next call.”

           “Oh, really. It has been so nice talking to you. Thank you, Carol.”

           “Er, ah, sure. Have I answered all of your questions today, Catherine?”    

           “Oh, yes, thank you.”

           Catherine ended the call. She sat for a few minutes and realized she felt just a little bit cheerier. She wrote her notes about the call, the coffee cake smelled delicious and would come out of the oven shortly. She’d call Marie and maybe that new woman who had moved into the vacant apartment by the elevator. She finished her call notes, looked up the new woman’s name and called them both to come for coffee.

           She pulled out the file of paperwork on her appliances and wrote down two more customer service numbers on her list. The women came over and spent a chatty hour.

           The next morning Catherine pulled out her pages and called the next number. She did the same thing over the next eight days. She’d called nine different numbers and talked to twelve different representatives since she’d been transferred a couple of times. She’d talked about her family, about her life, all in small bits, but the conversations had been enough to give her a lift each day.

           On the morning of the tenth day she was reviewing her list, wondering how soon she could consider calling a number again when her phone rang. She pulled it out expecting to see a name she recognized. Her phone had been programmed with everyone’s name and number and Randolph had insisted that she not answer calls that weren’t from a recognizable number. It continued ringing. She frowned. She was not a child. She could manage phone calls. Hadn’t she proven that to her satisfaction over the past several days?

           She answered the phone.

           “Calling for Catherine. Is Catherine available?”

           “This is Catherine, how can I help you?”

           “Your grandson, Richard, has been in an accident.” The caller paused. “Richard is fine, but he doesn’t want his parents to know about it. He thought you might be able to help him out. Send him some money. I just need you to give me your credit card information and we can repair his car and send him on his way.”

           Richard in a car accident? Richard was at the university and rode his bike everywhere. He’d only be in his car if he was going home for a holiday. Richard was such a fine student and a careful driver. He’d driven her around when she’d visited Randolph and the family last summer. It must have been the other driver’s fault. She understood that Richard wouldn’t want his father to know. She was pleased that he felt he could call her.

“You’re sure Richard isn’t hurt?”

“No ma’am, he’s fine. Just fine.”

“Okay, let me get my purse. It’s where I keep my credit cards.”

She walked into the living room to get her purse then returned and sat at the table.

The End