Hanging Up

by Delia Ephron

  To cope with my father’s first hospitalization for his overdose, we sisters had assigned each other roles: I did this, so you have to do that. Now, with his second, we had a routine. If Georgia and I had committed him, Madeline knew without being told that she would do the follow-up.

  Patients didn’t have phones at Bloomingdale’s. My father couldn’t call me. And with Maddy keeping tabs on how he was faring, I was in paradise. That fall, when my phone rang I grabbed it. I never hesitated before speaking. I said hello enthusiastically. Unfortunately, I’d broken off with Philip and no one new had turned up, which meant that now that I looked forward to answering the phone, there was never anyone exciting on the other end. Mostly, in the evenings, I hung out with Adrienne and her boyfriend, Sandy.

  Adrienne became enamored of Indian food. “It goes with me,” she announced, pulling jars of garam masala and chutney from the kitchen cupboards.

  Adrienne was earthy. A wild frizz of brown hair, solid shoulders, big breasts. She was unconsciously sexy in the way that a very welcoming person can be sexy because she’s so warm. She turned curries into experiments, throwing in tomatoes one day, potatoes and chickpeas the next, the way she enhanced herself every day with clanking silver jewelry in any number of combinations. The result was never a hodgepodge—neither her appearance nor her cooking—but always some inspired exotic combination.

  In October, we celebrated her first sale of a cartoon: “Nouvelles Political Positions.” To The New Yorker, no less. Adrienne, Sandy, and I toasted the absent Philip for being so inspiringly obnoxious. We sat on the floor, as if we were in the Indian desert, surrounded by a host of condiments—peanuts, chutney, coconut—as well as pappadums, these toasty things Adrienne was very excited about. The curry simmered on the stove, and the TV was on, showing Citizen Kane.

  “Here it comes.” Adrienne held up her hands for quiet during her favorite part. “Merry Christmas,” said Charles Foster Kane’s guardian, holding out a brand-new sled. The guardian was a miserly-looking but hale middle-aged man. “Cut to kid,” Adrienne narrated as the camera showed young Charles making a nasty face. “Cut back,” she shouted as the camera cut to the guardian again. “And a Happy New Year,” said the guardian. He was now white-haired and stooped.

  “Isn’t that an amazing way to show time passing? Merry Christmas, he’s your basic average-aged adult. Happy New Year, he’s ancient. Unreal.” Adrienne dug ravenously into her curry. Viewing this had refreshed her appetite.

  “That’s really your favorite part?” Sandy asked doubtfully.

  “This is life,” said Adrienne. She snapped her fingers.

  My phone rang.

  “I’ll take it in the other room so you can watch.” I carried the phone into the bedroom and kicked the door closed. “Hello?”

  “Eve?”

  “Hi, Georgia.”

  “Eve, would you mind if Richard and I go away for Thanksgiving? We’ve been offered this apartment in London. You know, I’m having trouble getting pregnant, and I thought if we were in London …”

  “Why are you asking me?”

  “Because of Dad. Don’t think you have to spend Thanksgiving with him. He doesn’t deserve it. Madeline says he’s perfectly happy in that loony bin. He’s even popular in group.”

  “Don’t worry. There’s no way I’m going.”

  “Good. I’ll call when I get back.”

  “Have fun. Good luck with the baby.”

  At noon on Thanksgiving Day, I was staring into the refrigerator. Leftover lamb curry, eggs, one onion.

  “Are you sure you don’t want to come to Thanksgiving?” asked Adrienne. “Sandy’s parents would love to have you.”

  “Thanks anyway. I’m going to get takeout.”

  Adrienne was putting away her inks on the drafting table that was now in our living room. She’d just finished another cartoon, called “Reasons They Broke Up.” She did it in a white heat right after she’d seen the inside of Sandy’s closet, where he hung his clothes in cleaner’s plastic, then placed them in larger plastic bags, and where his shoes were kept in baggies tied with twists. Reason number one was “Likes plastic too much.”

  “Did you show Sandy the cartoon?” I asked.

  “No, I’ll wait until we break up, after the holidays. You sure you’ll be all right?”

  “I’m fine.”

  I bundled up and went out on Sixth Avenue. It was freezing, the kind of cold that bites your flesh. I tucked my chin down, trying to bury as much of my face as possible under my thick wool scarf. Everyone was walking fast, with hunched shoulders.

  New York City is a hospitable place if you’re alone on a holiday. Everything is open—food stores, flower shops, the newspaper stand. I patted my mittened hands against my cold ears as I scooted into Hugo’s, a twenty-four-hour deli.

  I wandered up and down the aisles, thawing. What did I want? An ice cream sandwich maybe, cole slaw, rice pudding. Nothing needed to go together, and everything could be dessert. There was a cooked turkey in the deli tray with one leg and half a breast sliced off. The skin was wrinkling. Georgia would undoubtedly be able to give it some advice.

  But nothing appealed to me. I braced myself and went back outside. A man came toward me gesticulating, having an elaborate argument with no one. His dirty jeans drooped. The hood of his grungy sweatshirt was stretched over his head, and inside, barely visible, were bloodshot eyes so sunken they might have been in retreat. He stopped at a pay phone, picked up the receiver, and started talking—that is, his lips formed words, but no sound came out.

  “I’m not going to be moved by this person under any circumstances,” I told myself. “This is not a message or a sign or anything.” I suddenly realized what I wanted to eat—blintzes. I went back into the deli.

  “Blintzes, please. Two, no, four cheese blintzes.”

  I could see the man through the store window. He slammed the phone down. His conversation with himself had not gone well, and he walked off, continuing to gesticulate.

  “Anything else?”

  “That turkey. Will you sell me the whole thing?”

  I got in a cab with everything except the blintzes, which I gave back. I had turkey, potato salad, cranberry relish made specially by Hugo’s for Thanksgiving, an Entenmann’s pumpkin pie, paper plates, and plastic knives and forks. “I want to go to the New York Hospital on Bloomingdale Road in White Plains. It takes about forty minutes to get there, I’ll show you the way. Would you take a check?”

  “Not a chance,” said the driver.

  “Then please take me to an Avis place. Do you know where an Avis place is?”

  Half an hour later, I was driving up the parkway feeling excited, as if I had somewhere to go and it wasn’t an insane asylum. It was very beautiful at Bloomingdale’s. Towering oaks, elegantly bare; the ivy had turned gold and burnt orange.

  No one was in the reception area. There was a note saying to pick up the phone and dial 321. “Hello, this is Eve Mozell. I want to see my father, Lou Mozell.”

  “Sure, honey. Someone’ll be right down.”

  I sat with my shopping bags. There were decorations on the wall, children’s cutouts of Pilgrims and turkeys with a sign above that said “Mrs. Weber’s Third Grade Class, White Plains Elementary.” I wondered if the parents came here to see the exhibit.

  The elevator opened and a man in a janitor’s outfit waved me in. He turned the key in the elevator locks, and pushed eight.

  When the doors opened, I stepped into a room the size of a phone booth, with another door straight ahead of me. The man unlocked that one too, a large metal door, and swung it open to reveal my father standing with his arms open. I went right into them.

  “Evie, baby.”

  “Hi, Daddy.” I started crying.

  “What’s wrong?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t know. Maybe it was the lock. Maybe it was seeing the janitor turn that key and seeing my father, his arms open, waiting, behind a locked door.

 
“Hey, I’m the one who cries.” He handed me his handkerchief.

  “You always have a handkerchief. Even in here, you have a handkerchief.” I sniffed and started laughing, but then I started crying all over again. “You look great,” I said finally He did. His shirt, for instance, was pressed and buttoned correctly. For the first time in years, he didn’t look as if he’d dressed in the dark.

  The janitor had taken my bags out of the elevator and set them down next to us. “I brought you Thanksgiving,” I explained.

  “Ha. What a winner. When I had you, I had a winner.”

  He picked up the bags. He actually picked them up. Had he ever before carried anything for me? We walked down the brown hall past small identical rooms. It was like a dorm. A man came toward us reading Time magazine. He looked up. Big smile. “Hi, Lou.” The second he passed, my father whispered. “Used to be head of Xerox.”

  We passed a woman. “Hi, Gloria.”

  “Hi, Lou.”

  “Her husband should be here, not her.”

  We passed several others. Everyone greeted my father happily. One person was in pajamas. “Don’t ask,” my father said, squeezing my shoulder.

  The furniture in his room was the equivalent of government issue: iron bed, plain gray blanket, one pillow, metal cabinet for clothes, two wooden chairs, one with arms. A couple of the latest issues of Variety lay on the floor. He pointed to the armchair. “You sit here,” he said grandly. He picked up his pillow, socked it twice, put it on the long side of the bed, against the wall, and sat back against it. My father actually plumped a pillow. That was so competent. “How are you?” he said.

  He was really asking. He wanted to know.

  “Oh, I’m okay. I broke up with Philip.”

  My father nodded. “I don’t remember him too well. What was he like?”

  I reminded him that Philip was an architect. I told him about the projects he worked on, and how he was fanatical about the appearance of everything he purchased, even his shaving brush. That he knew the history of every old building in New York City. My father paid close attention, laughing at the bit about the shaving brush, raising his eyebrows approvingly at Philip’s love for Manhattan.

  “Did you like him?”

  “I thought I was going to marry him. I thought I loved him.”

  “Love.” My father shrugged. “In marriage, you can exist without love, but never without like.”

  “I didn’t like him, you’re right. How did you know? Why was I with someone I didn’t like?”

  “Company.” My father grinned. “I’m an expert on that.”

  “Did you like Mom?”

  “Your mom was everything. The sun, the moon, the whole enchilada. But she didn’t like me.” He wasn’t mopey, just matter-of-fact.

  “Well, I don’t like her.” I got up and started unwrapping the bird. “Let’s celebrate.”

  I gave Dad some containers to open, expecting the tops to flip off and the food to fly out, but he carefully peeled the tops back and stacked them. “This was a terrific idea,” he said.

  “Have I ever done anything you didn’t think was terrific?”

  “Nope.”

  “Maddy likes Mom,” I said.

  “Well, you and Maddy had different mothers.”

  No wisdom at all, nothing for years, then a deluge. Or maybe it just seemed that way compared with the emptiness before.

  I’d had Hugo’s slice the turkey. I didn’t think there’d be carving knives available. My father forked some slices onto a plate, then, in neat little piles, put potato salad, cranberry relish, cole slaw. He presented the plate to me and pointed to the armchair so I would sit down again.

  “You know, Evie, you were always—”

  “What?”

  “The most sympathetic.”

  That was the only shadow on the whole day, that compliment for something I vaguely understood was my undoing. But I brushed it off and out of my head. We were having a sort of picnic and I liked it. Our first family picnic: Thanksgiving 1974 in a loony bin in Westchester. “Aren’t you going to eat?”

  He was staring out the window at an oak tree with three beautiful leaves hanging on for dear life. “It looks nice out there when you’re in here. Of course, when I’m out there, I never notice.”

  That was true, of course. He never noticed anything. The sun rose and set without so much as a nod of acknowledgment from my father. Had he figured that out in group?

  “I’m being ‘paroled’ soon. I was hoping you’d come to the wedding.”

  “Dad, you’re not getting married. Every time I see you, you say you’re getting married. You’re a manic depressive. That’s why they put you on lithium. That’s why you bought three houses, that’s why you always decide to get married after saying hello.”

  “No, I’m getting married next summer. To a real nice nurse.”

  “Are you sure?”

  My dad laughed. Even his laugh sounded healthy. “She’s got a daughter too. What the hell’s her name?” He thought.

  Aha, the old dad is there. Can’t be bothered to remember the name of his future stepchild.

  “Lola. She’s twenty. Wants to be a model. I told her Georgia would shake the trees for her.” He went to the door and called, “Hey, baby, come here.”

  I sat there with a paper plate on my knees as a woman walked by the door, stopped as if someone might be watching, then whisked in. Her skin was brown, her hair orange, her lipstick red. She was very colorful. That was mainly my first impression. I couldn’t stand it that I couldn’t race home and call Georgia or Madeline. Georgia had neglected to give me her London phone number, and Maddy’s phone was disconnected again.

  “Claire, meet Eve. I just told her we’re getting married.”

  “It’s the God’s honest truth. We hope you’ll come to the wedding.”

  “Well, sure. Would you like some Thanksgiving dinner?”

  “No, thanks, honey, I’m not much for food.”

  “She’s not much for food,” I told Georgia a week later, the second she got back. “What does that mean?”

  “Is she thin?”

  “Yes, very thin and very tall. Taller than he is.”

  “How old is she?”

  “Georgia, she’s black.”

  “What do you mean, black? A black person?”

  It was thrilling. Probably my most thrilling moment on the phone. It was a direction no one expected him to take. It meant absolutely nothing and it was thrilling. Having it happen and getting to tell them.

  “That’s cool. That’s the coolest thing he’s ever done,” said Madeline.

  “I don’t think he’s marrying Claire because she’s black. I don’t think he’s making a statement about race relations.”

  “Maybe not, but we’re an interracial family now,” said Maddy. “I already march, and you should too now.”

  “March where?” Georgia asked when I told her Maddy’s response. “There aren’t too many civil rights marches these days.”

  “I think she means for peace. Maddy’s really into peace. Peace and whales.”

  “Fine, darling, she’s into peace. But hasn’t she noticed, the war is over? Someone should break the news. By the way, how old is our new stepmother?”

  “She’s forty-three. Dad’s sixty, that’s not so bad. I think this will really be good for him, get him out of himself, more involved. She has a twenty-year-old daughter who wants to be a model. Her name is Lola. He wants you to help her get work.”

  “Blacks age better than whites.”

  “They do?”

  “There’s no comparison. Have you ever seen pictures of Marian Anderson? I wanted to run something about this, but the editor wouldn’t go near it with a ten-foot pole.”

  “I can’t believe he’s marrying a nurse. How did we get so lucky?”

  Six

  After shutting the front door, I do what I always do: go into Joe’s study to check the answering machine. Five calls. Probably all from my f
ather. Probably all screaming, Where are you?

  He’s been locked up in UCLA Geriatric/Psychiatric for two weeks, but I haven’t heard from him in five days. I should go this evening.

  I dump my briefcase on the floor in the front hall, next to Ifer’s backpack, and approach the machine warily, preparing to hear my father’s threats, complaints, whines, weeping. I press Playback.

  “Hi, Eve, I’m back from Montana. Something wonderful has happened. Call me.”

  “Hello, dear, it’s Madge. I thought the meeting went splendidly. Wasn’t his birthplace adorable? Just think—those four Nixon boys lived in one little attic in two little beds. I guess they had to get along, and they darn well did. Should we have name tags?”

  “Hi, Eve, it’s Adrienne. I’m working late and Paul’s out covering the Mets, so when you get in, no matter how late, call me.”

  “Is this ABC Window Dressing, yes? I am Ogmed Kunundar. I have here the measures. Thank you. Two-one-three—”

  This must be the doctor’s mother, possibly as demented as he is. I copy her number while I hear Joe’s voice, stiff, hating the machine: “Finished with the cake lady. Off to Chicago tonight to interview Max, the bagel man. I’ll call from there.”

  I sit down at his desk, a soothing place to be. Sometimes I wear his sweaters when he’s away, and often I read in his study. His disorder, which upsets me when he’s home, provides a comfort zone. I dial Adrienne.

  “Good news, my father hasn’t phoned from UCLA in five days. I actually have peace and quiet. What’s up?”

  “I was watching Rebecca, with Joan Fontaine—” Although she has never smoked, Adrienne has a cigarette voice, deep and throaty. She can make the most innocuous statements reek of drama.

  “Yes?” I say, hoping some thrill is coming.

  “Was that the actress you were trying to think of?”

  Her voice also leads to frequent letdown. “No. Joan Fontaine is thin. This one I’m thinking of is sort of wide.”

  “Wide? Joan Crawford?”

  “No, not big like Joan Crawford. Oh God, I can see her, what is her name? She’s sweet, short, and boring. I think her name starts with an l. Is that why you called?”