THE TELEPHONE IS RINGING AS MATT ENTERS THE OUTSIDE door. It keeps ringing as he goes up the stairs and as he enters. No one is home, he realizes. His mother isn’t here—Eric isn’t here—as he steps into the kitchen and lifts the receiver from the hook, places it to his ear, and says, “Hullo?”
There is static on the line, and the hollowness of distance, into which a voice says, “Matt?”
He doesn’t say anything. He knows who it is and his heart is racing. His thoughts are jumbled at once with confusion.
“Is that you, Matt?” the voice says. “It sounds like you.”
“Yes,” he says. “Yes. Who’s this?” His eyes are filling; he is trying yet again not to cry.
“It’s your father, Matt.”
Matt has the phone to his ear. He doesn’t say anything to this. He looks over the kitchen to the window, sees where they live. Even as he has waited all these years for such a call, a nervous wish is in him to have it over.
“Matt, I heard what happened to little Eric,” the voice says.
Matt still doesn’t know what to say.
“Matt, are you there?”
“Where are you?” Matt says.
“Well, I’m down here in New Orleans,” the man says. “Someone called me.”
“Who?” Matt says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.
“Just someone I know. An old friend. How are you holding up?”
“You’re where?” Matt says then. It is his father on the phone; still, he wishes the call would end.
“New Orleans,” the man says. “Matt, I’m so sorry about little Eric. I just can’t believe it.”
Matt holds the phone, having no response to this, as if it is beside the point.
“It just breaks my heart,” the man says.
Matt doesn’t respond.
“Matt, is your mother there?”
“She’s not here,” Matt says.
“She’s not there?”
“No, she’s not here. I guess she’s at Betty and John’s. I just came in.”
“Where were you, Matt?”
“Oh, nowhere. I was just out. They told me in school.”
“What’s that?”
“Oh, nothing.”
“Matt, I remember your voice. It’s good—hearing your voice.”
“Oh,” Matt says.
“Can you—I want you to do something for me, Matt, if you can. I’m in pretty bad shape, Matt. Do you hear me?”
“Yes.”
“Do you know what I mean, Matt? I’m not in the best of shape. I’m trying to get things together so I can come up there. Do you know what I’m saying?”
“Yes,” Matt says, even as his answer seems more a question.
“Matt, do this. Ask your mother, will you, if she’ll have me charged if I come back up there. Arrested. I need to come back up there, Matt. Do you know what I mean? I want to go to the funeral. But I won’t be able to if I get arrested. Would you tell your mother that—ask her that for me, Matt?”
“Okay.”
“I don’t know what else to say, Matt. I feel so bad. What kind of world do we live in?”
Matt holds the phone; he has no reply to this.
“Tell her, Matt, that I’ll call again in a while. Will you do that?”
“Yes,” Matt says.
“Okay. That’s what I’ll do. Then you can tell me.”
“Okay,” Matt says.
“Matt, I’d really like to see you,” his father says.
A moment later, the telephone hung up, Matt catches himself standing in the silent mid-afternoon kitchen as if uncertain again of what has happened, of why he is so filled with nervousness.
Should he go over to Betty’s or call her? he wonders. All at once, now that the call is over, he wishes they were talking again. He doesn’t know what he’d say, but he wishes it were so. His mother will go ape, he thinks, on another rush to his eyes. She will go absolutely ape, and all at once he can’t wait to tell her. New Orleans, he thinks. New Orleans, Louisiana.