John could tell this wasn’t a good connection, even before Christina answered the telephone, “Michael?” There was static on the line preceding the first ring and he became aware of the space separating them, all the roads, pit stops, blown tires, traffic, wrong turns, mountains, malls, concrete, telephone poles. Forget the straight line, there were still over three thousand miles between them, fiber optics trying to make it seem like distance was an illusion, that someone’s physical presence wasn’t necessary as long as you could hear their voice in your ear. John leaned into the receiver, trying to force his way to Christina’s lips. But telephone calls, at best, were sweet nothings whispered without the heated breath that made them worthwhile. He heard the weak signal, the ring, her voice, the almost imperceptible splash of a pebble dropped from the top of an abyss. He asked himself, “When did things go wrong?”
“Christina,” he finally said. “Who’s Michael?”
“John?” Christina said.
John considered hanging up, thinking maybe he shouldn’t have paid to connect Grandma’s telephone in the first place. He found little solace in experiencing the same sufferings that had plagued his fellow man for centuries: family, addiction, bad teeth. Hadn’t getting beaten up solidified his union with humanity for the week? He didn’t need to add heartbreak to the list, especially when hair loss was around the corner.
“Yes, this is John,” he said. “The man you shared your bed with? Six feet, 170, brown hair, blue eyes? I think I left my toothbrush on your sink.”
“John? Is that you?” Christina said.
“Yes,” John repeated. “It is I, Ensign Gibson, I just threw your stinking palm tree overboard and what’s this crud about no movie?”
“John? I can barely hear you,” Christina said. “You’re not making any sense. Where are you?”
“Where am I?” John said, feeling the pull of the current, sucking, sucking, out beyond the reef, floating, floating, soon to be lost at sea. “Where do you think I am? Joe’s Stone Crabs? I’m in Boonville.”
“I can’t hear you,” Christina told him. “I’m hanging up.”
“You can’t hear me?” John said. “Maybe you should tell Michael to take his tongue out of your ear.”
Click.
“Fuck!” he screamed, hitting the receiver against its cradle, catching his finger. His knuckle cracked. He slammed the receiver down again, catching another finger. He held the scepter of communication away from his body until the pain subsided, feeling his insides being pulled taut. Someone had to let go.
“You can’t be gone!” he yelled, nobody to hear his cry but Grandma’s squirrels.
The receiver bleated in his hand like an electronic sheep: baa-ugh, baa-ugh, baa-ugh. He looked around the room, which suddenly seemed as foreign as a marketplace in Tangiers, dust playing in the window light, table and dresser elongated with trains of shadow, smell of bleached sheets and pickled citrus. The strength of Grandma’s presence. Her space and his, colliding. His reality mixed with her dreams.
Get a grip, he demanded of himself, staring past the bedroom door into the living room where Grandma’s metaphysics books were shelved alongside her volume of Emily Dickinson’s poetry.
“Instability gives birth to art,” Grandma had told him. “It isn’t something to be afraid of, it’s the human condition. It’s something to embrace.”
John agreed, chaos was order. Liquid order. To deny that was to go against the flow of life. You weren’t supposed to ask for relief, you were supposed to want more, and more, and so much more that you could explode.
All my friends going to therapy and Al-Anon meetings, John thought, letting go, letting God. Seeking safety in the status quo, straightening up so they can find someone to screw missionary position every night, watch videos with on the couch, eat ice cream, plan vacations to Jamaica. Buy a cat and call it Mittens. They’ve all given up.
Heaven may be a place where nothing ever happens, just like the song said, but John saw a flicker reflected in the darkness of their pupils, one eye on the hunt, straitjacketed by fear, begging to bolt to the edge of themselves, to the euphoria of open air. It didn’t ever go away, the continuous craving for one more drink, one more kick in the crotch. One more kiss. Everybody wanted to feel exalted and alive, but to pursue that instead of filling your life with excuses was an exercise in faith. It was dangerous to search for something you’ve never seen, having only caught glimpses of the Grail from films, paintings, French poetry. Baudelaire dreams and Marquis de Sade reality.
“You can’t deny who you are, because eventually you will be revealed,” Grandma had also told him. “You can only try to reroute your impulses and spend energy where it will pay off.”
John understood it wasn’t healthy to be compulsive, but what else did he know? Parents in separate bedrooms, never kissing except for an inch of air near the cheek on holidays – staying together for the good of the child – resigned to a sufferathon sponsored by the Catholic Church, a mutual agreement to wrap each other in barbed wire. Meanness, mistresses, curses, lies. A life they had chosen, other lives they had failed to choose. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio?
He couldn’t help picturing Christina sitting in what used to be their home, waiting for a man named Michael to call. Was there a skip in her step when she went to meet him? If a street light was changing, did she dash through traffic to be with him that much sooner? Was she imagining him in different clothes, haircuts, underwear? Asking herself what it would be like to take him home to meet her parents? Was she thinking of his kisses now? Does he do it better than I can?
John remembered how in the beginning of their relationship they had poured out their love for each other like it was an exotic liqueur. But somewhere between ruffled sheets, their delicate touches became familiar, exquisiteness turned bland, intoxication became anxiety. They sobered, parched bodies thirsting for another sip. Anything wet. They looked at each other, not knowing whether their glasses were half-empty or half-full. It was this uncertainty that had separated them. They began confusing love with habit, a label for the irretrievable hours that had to be deemed special or else they were lost.
Baa-ugh, baa-ugh, baa-ugh.
John wanted to throw the telephone through the wall. To punch or kiss her. To see it hurl, line snapping from the outlet. Hssss. Wham! Don’t cry, I love you. Right through the wall. Can you feel that? Splintered paneling, square thud. Temporarily out of service. “We’re sorry, if you believe this recording to be in error, please check the number and try again.” How could she not recognize my voice? She used to say that since I had been surrounded by retired Jews all my life, I had a distinct inflection, that I was the only raised-Catholic who could recite the Ten Commandments as questions. Now she can’t identify it? Now she was expecting calls from someone named Michael?
John tried to imagine Michael’s voice. It came across as the speech of a soap opera star, one of those schmoozers named after a disciple of Christ and a northwestern state, Luke Montana, all store-bought biceps and haircut, “I know it’s a small ranch and a small mansion, but Miss Christina, we could be happy, especially if Blackie comes out of that coma and the child’s really mine.”
Child, sex, somebody else touching Christina. John’s head was spinning. He’s stealing kisses meant for me. Gasps and swallows. His hands are where mine should be, running fingers through the silkiness of her hair. Tickling the wetness between her legs.
He dialed Christina’s number again, trying to convince himself that Michael was nobody, someone from the office, a friend calling for computer advice. He wasn’t hearing any sound from the receiver, no dial tone or recording or anything. He jiggled the cord at the connection where the receiver met the phone. He heard the hollow rush of wind, saw telephone lines swaying somewhere in Nebraska, a loose end down in a cornfield. He envisioned himself, alone and bitter in a hotel room with the bathroom down the hall, heating coffee and tomato soup on a hot plate, reading Bukowski and smoking Camel straights. He might even start whittling squirrels from driftwood.
“What am I going to do?” he asked the cabin, hearing no sound in the receiver.
He hated technology, paying fees to depend on something that was a mystery. What did he know about telecommunications? You dial a number, you get a voice. Was he supposed to grab a screwdriver and shuttle himself into space to work on the satellite or whatever it was they had cluttered the skies with in the name of convenience? He had given them his trust.
“Work, phone, work!” he screamed, fiddling with the connection, removing the plastic clip from the side of the telephone and reinserting it.
Dial tone. He held the receiver away from his ear to see if the noise wasn’t coming from somewhere else, the refrigerator or a faulty electrical outlet. But it was the go ahead from AT&T to transmit his disembodied soul. He pressed the numbers that used to mean home, sadly confident that after years of shooting the shit, heart-to-hearts, pillow talk, and orgasmic utterances, this would be the last time he would speak to Christina.
“Hello?”
“Hello.”
“John?”
“Christina.”
“Did you just call?”
“Yes, I called, and you answered the phone, ‘Michael?’”
“I thought you were somebody else,” Christina told him.
“I gathered that,” John replied. “The question is, who did you think I was?”
“Nobody,” Christina answered, then realizing he wasn’t going to believe such a bald-faced lie, “He’s the neighbor who moved in before you left.”
John remembered him: barrel chest, Le Coq Sportif tennis shirt, Suntan U. Law School, internship at Merrill Lynch. Four-star consumer. He drove a Mustang and smiled at Christina when he washed it in front of their building. He suggested that they all be friends, invited them to play a round of “goff” at the Doral Country Club, boasting about his handicap, and adding that his grandfather had been an original charter member. John declined for both of them, explaining that his grandparents had been killed by putters.
“Not too far to go for a cup of sugar,” he said, hurt by the mediocrity of his replacement and the thought that Christina might have started with Michael before he had bought his plane ticket.
“In case you didn’t notice, you left!” Christina told him.
“Two days ago!” John matched her indignation. “Thanks for your period of grieving, but you should find some way to go on with your life. It isn’t right holding this torch. I don’t even have an IRA account.”
“Two days is right,” Christina retaliated. “You didn’t even bother to call. How do I know what you’re doing out there?”
“They didn’t turn on my telephone until today,” John said, Sarah entering his mind for the first time since he had been sober. “And I got sick.”
“Too sick to find a pay phone?” Christina demanded. “They don’t have pay phones in California, only ashrams?”
“I did call from a pay phone, but the line was busy,” John said. “Then I got sick.”
He didn’t add that he had also been hung over, attacked, and Maced. Essentially he had told the truth, the chronology was just wrong.
“Anyway, what difference would it make?” he said. “You would have been talking to Good Neighbor Michael, discussing jurisprudence and tanning lotion. Tell me, when you graduate from law school at U.M., do they give you the police radio with your diploma or do you have to go buy it yourself?”
“If I want to see someone else,” Christina said, “you can be certain I will. You left.”
“You didn’t follow,” John said.
“I was supposed to follow?” Christina asked. “Is that your patriarchal take on things? I’m expected to waste away or follow my man because I don’t have my own identity?”
“Did I say that?” John replied. “If anyone’s called the shots in this relationship, it’s been you. And if anyone’s been in danger of losing their identity, it’s me.”
“When did you join this men’s group, John?” Christina said. “Before you left? Or did they recruit you on the plane?”
“I wanted to leave Miami a long time ago,” John said. “I followed you by staying right there. I didn’t mind either, until I realized we were both unhappy and standing still. That’s when I made this move, for both of us.”
“If I’ve been so awful,” Christina said, “then you should be happy with your decision. Bon voyage.”
“I didn’t leave,” John insisted. “You didn’t come!”
“You left!” Christina screamed. “You left! You left! You left! I’m here in what used to be our apartment, surrounded by everything that used to be ours. Everybody keeps asking, ‘What happened?’ My parents, your parents, our friends, the fucking dry cleaner. I tell them John’s an asshole, that’s what happened!”
John rubbed the back of his neck. He had to admit that it must be awful to be in the apartment alone, looking at extra hangers in the closet, empty drawers in the dresser, doing the dishes without bumping elbows. No sounds coming from any room but the one you were in. As improbable as it may have seemed, it was probably easier to be out here where everything was unfamiliar.
John turned to the picture of Christina resting on the nightstand, glassless now after Blindman’s visit. He recalled how they had met, second semester, sophomore year, English 250. Stumbling in late, the professor signed John’s transfer, telling him, “Ask a student who arrived on time what you’ve missed.” Filling a desk in the back row, John asked the girl to his left if he had missed anything worth writing down. It was Christina, before hardship or happiness, expectation or fulmination. Completely intact. Before the static electric longing that precedes a couple’s first kiss. Her pink tongue had appeared from behind pearl-white teeth to tap seductively a single word, “Lo-lee-ta.” That became their first private joke. Later, as they ate lunch in the cafeteria, John told her, “She was plain Chris in the morning, studious Christine in the afternoon, but in English 250 she became Chris-tee-na.”
This wasn’t the time to dredge up fond memories, John warned himself. Nostalgia can navigate the most jilted of hearts.
“I killed your fish,” Christina said, breaking the silence. “Instead of giving them away, I flushed them down the toilet.”
“Well,” John said, searching for something to say he wouldn’t regret, “I love and miss you too.”
“Don’t give me that shit,” Christina said. “For the record, it was you who stood still, I was moving. I brought home a bigger check. I paid for the health club, the dining room set, birth control, anything we wanted that was nice. If I left things up to you, we would have spent every weekend at the beach.”
“You’re right,” John admitted. “I would have given us both melanomas.”
“Never serious when you should be,” Christina said. “I hope you’re happy with your decision.”
“I hope you are too,” John said, realizing they had come to a point beyond apology or reconciliation; even if she were to ask him back, or suggest that she move to Boonville, or if he requested permission to return, it wouldn’t work.
“Christina?” he said. “Do you remember that night we went to Bean Bean’s and left with a bottle of champagne? We walked on the beach, acting like I was on shore leave and going off to fight in the war. We pretended we might never see each other again. You filled my glass and then poured the rest of the bottle on yourself, saying, ‘Drink up soldier.’ We made love and you said, ‘I hope I’m pregnant, because you’re the only man I’d want to father my child.’”
“I remember,” Christina answered, conceding nothing.
“For the first time in my life, I felt a part of me was squared away and I could begin fixing the rest.” John told her. “I couldn’t imagine a future without you.”
John could hear Christina moving around the apartment, padding across the carpet and then the unmistakable sound of a refrigerator door opening, followed by the crack of a soda can. Diet Coke, no doubt. She would cut a wedge of lemon and pour it into a glass with no ice. He heard the slide of a drawer, then her fishing around the cupboard. She was walking again, settling back to wherever she had been sitting.
“Do you remember the next day?” John said.
“When you puked all over everything?” Christina asked. “I washed our comforter about a dozen times before I got out that smell.”
“No, I meant the morning,” John said, wondering how he had forgotten that part. “It was my first month at Leggiere and Philips, and I felt horrible. You said, ‘Come back to bed.’ You held the sheets open for me. I crawled back in, and you smiled the most satisfied smile I’ve ever seen.”
“Then you threw up,” Christina said.
“No,” John said, upset she wouldn’t lend herself to his sentimentality. “I threw up after I ate that shitty takeout from the Chinese place I hate but you always order from anyway, Rat Scabie Szechuan.”
“Poo Ping,” she corrected.
“Fuck it,” John said.
“That’s the Thai restaurant,” Christina replied.
This was why it didn’t work, John thought. We can’t even have a basic conversation without breaking into a hostile Abbott and Costello routine.
“What’s your point?” Christina asked. “Or did you call to reminisce?”
“No point,” John said. “For some reason, I wanted you to remember that for me. Regardless of what happens, wherever we go, I will be grateful for having been at peace with myself in your arms. But apparently we don’t share the same memory. That’s our problem though, isn’t it? We don’t exactly complement each other.”
“I guess we don’t,” Christina agreed. “I’m just glad I didn’t get pregnant, because if I did, I have the feeling I’d be taking care of a baby by myself right now. Someday, maybe I’ll be able to forgive you for being an asshole, but if we had a child, I don’t think I ever could have. At least you did something right.”
John didn’t know how to respond. He almost said, “Thank you.”
“Take care of yourself, John,” Christina said, abruptly, “I gotta go.”
“All right,” he replied, wondering where she had to go, suddenly aware that this was goodbye. “Take care of yourself too.”
“I already am,” Christina said.
“I love you,” John said, but the connection had been terminated.
He sat on the edge of Grandma’s bed, holding the receiver, running everything through his mind, the conversation, his old apartment, the cabin, champagne kisses, 60-40 memories, Christina, Good Neighbor Michael, bad Chinese food, Miami Beach, Boonville. The possibility of children. He searched the room expecting a response from somewhere between the planks or above the light fixtures. He put the receiver back in its cradle and reached for Christina’s picture. He laid it face down on the nightstand in exchange for the telephone, which he rocked in his hand, feeling its weight and significance. Then he fired it across the room, scattering squirrels like bowling pins.
“Fuck you!” he yelled.
There was no answer except for the echo of the telephone’s broken ringer, which John imagined emanating from his cabin, drifting down off the hill through the weeds, past the fence, sifting through tree branches, over graveled roads, vibrating by busted bottles, beer cans, torn truck tires, road kill, and into the town of Boonville like rings of pond water set in motion by the stone of a mischievous child.