THE PHONE RANG at seven on the dot.
I was sitting at the kitchen table trying to grind out a history essay for Mr. Ohlendorf while Caleb busied himself with sweeping the kitchen floor for the third time. I handed Caleb the phone and listened as he skipped the customary greeting. “WHO IS IT?”
Besides sharing a bedroom with my brother, I also shared a cell phone. It was part of the deal when my parents finally caved and got one for me, and it wasn’t a problem because Caleb only had one friend who called him. And he called each night at the same time.
James and Caleb had gone to school together since age ten, and James was more socially adept. He bagged groceries at the Shnucks store a couple of afternoons a week, and from what I could gather, James was one of the few kids in the class who Caleb seemed to get along with.
The two of them basically had the same phone conversation each night. It was the opposite of a typical phone call, the kind where one person calls the other in order to tell them something or ask for something. When James phoned Caleb, my brother answered the phone and immediately directed their conversation with a series of questions, typically the same ones every time.
Their conversations were brief, lasting three to five minutes tops, and then Caleb just hung up the phone abruptly without a good-bye.
“What favorite breakfast cereal?”
A momentary pause followed.
“What car father drive?”
“What car mother drive?”
“What have dinner tonight?”
“Who make Mr. Baims the principal very angry today?”
That question was typically followed by a slightly longer pause.
“Do you like Cap’n Crunch cereal?”
“What year born?”
“Do you have kitty-cat?
“Have bunny rabbit?”
“Who put butter on Monica’s nose in the girls’ bathroom?”
“Where buy groceries?”
Caleb’s phone conversation was going on longer than usual. The questions he asked were all familiar to me, ones I’d heard him ask James countless times, not necessarily to fact-check but to maintain his compulsive habit and ritual.
But there were more questions going on during this phone call, and longer pauses after each question.
“Like Dr Pepper?”
“Ride Greyhound bus?”
“What hospital born at?”
Caleb suddenly put the phone receiver in my hand, grabbed his broom, and began sweeping the floor again. I held the phone a moment, then heard a girl’s voice.
“Hello? Hello?”
I recognized her voice. “Mary?”
“Leo, is that you?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s me.” It took me a moment to figure she’d gotten my number from Curtis.
“Who was I just speaking to?” she asked. “Was that your brother?”
“Yes. That was Caleb. Didn’t I mention he was a little…on the spectrum?”
She laughed. “He might be, but weren’t you the one wearing a girl’s swimsuit the last time I saw you?”
“Maybe we can change the topic? Uh, maybe talk about breakfast cereals?”
“Well, that was one of the more interesting conversations I’ve had on the phone, or anywhere, for that matter.” She laughed again. “Why does he ask all those questions?”
“God knows.” I sighed. “He’ll ask a person all these questions about themself, then he catalogs it, and he never forgets it. And then when he talks to them again, he repeats it all back to them, or repeats the questions. It’s kind of like a detective doing fact-checking. Then he’ll ask some more arbitrary questions, and that info goes into the memory bank too. He never forgets anything. Trust me.”
“That’s fascinating,” she said.
“It’s a challenge at times,” I told her.
“Why?”
“Um…” I had to think a moment because I’d never really had to put it in words. “Maybe because he always asks the same questions. Maybe because his questions are bizarre and unpredictable. Maybe because he asks random strangers inappropriate questions, and I’m the one who has to deal with the situation. Does that make sense?”
“Yeah, I guess that makes sense.” She laughed softly, then was silent for a moment. “So that’s why your family moved here?” she finally asked.
“Partly, I guess,” I told her. “He put up with a lot of crap from the kids in the neighborhood.”
“What did they do to him?”
“Made fun of him. Sometimes made him do stupid stuff for laughs. There were some real dipshits in that neighborhood,” I told her. “We don’t have to talk about this anymore.”
“Okay,” she said, and it was silent again. “Leo, did you get my note that I put on your bike?”
“I…I kind of thought it was a joke.”
“A joke?”
“Well, it wasn’t exactly one of my finer moments. In fact, I kind of wish I could wipe it from my memory bank,” I said. “And, if I could, I’d wipe it from yours as well.”
“So why, exactly, were you wearing a girl’s swimsuit?” she asked.
I was grateful at that moment that she was on the other end of the phone line and couldn’t see that my face was flushed red, but I told her the whole story, every detail, including running into my father. It wasn’t a proud moment, and I was actually kind of ashamed, but she laughed the entire time. By the end I was laughing, too. Then we hit the dreaded silence again. It wasn’t like I’d run out of things to say. It was more like I just didn’t know what I was supposed to say. This was new territory for me. Thank God she was the one who finally spoke.
“You’re funny, Leo,” she said.
“I guess it’s funny now, but it wasn’t funny then. Trust me.”
“I’d like to meet your brother sometime,” she told me.
Suddenly I no longer wanted to talk. “Now is not the greatest time,” I finally told her. “He’s been a little off lately.”
“How?”
“I’d rather not get into it,” I said.
“Okay,” she said. “But can I ask you a question?”
“Sure.”
“How will I know if your brother really memorized all that information about me if I never get a chance to meet him?”
The girl was certainly making it easy for me. All I had to do was pull the trigger and ask her out, but that involved letting her into my world. I didn’t like my world.
Keeping Curtis out of my world was simple. All we did was focus on running. Mary was curious and asking me lots of questions. She wanted to know me.
“Sorry, Mary, but I’ve got to get going. My mom needs help with something,” I finally lied. “I’ll see you tomorrow,” I said, and the line got quiet.
“All right,” she said. “I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said, and hung up.
“Damn it,” I mumbled to myself.
Caleb stopped sweeping for a moment, leaned the broom against the counter, and crossed his arms. “WHO MARY!”
“Mary is my friend,” I told him. “I met her at school.”
“Mary like granola,” he told me. “Right!”
“I wasn’t aware of that, Caleb.”
“Mary like Dr Pepper!” he yelled.
“Mary like Dr Pepper,” I repeated. “I think Mary also might like me, but I was too chickenshit to ask her out.”
Caleb laughed. “CHICKENSHIT! RIGHT!”
I trudged down the steps to our bedroom and felt like thwacking myself in the head a couple of times, just like Caleb did when he was pissed. Mary had clearly put the ball right over the plate, but I hadn’t had the nerve to swing.