by Delia Ephron
“Hey, you bought one of those answering machines.” She leaned over to study the picture on the box.
“I figure I can screen my father’s calls. He phones nonstop.”
“So does my mother-in-law.” She called down to the man, “Hey, maybe you should interview her. She screens her dad’s calls.”
“Please, it’s all right.” I stuffed the menu back in the wire rack, and started going through my purse, even though there was nothing to find there.
“Being interviewed is fun, honey.” She popped a tea bag in a cup and poured in hot water. “If he’s interested in my mother-in-law, there must be something he can interview you about.”
“No, there isn’t,” said the guy.
For some reason this smarted.
“But I’m glad you bought an answering machine,” he added.
“Why?” I shot back hostilely. For this, I turned and looked him square in the face.
“So when I call you for a date, if you’re not home, you’ll get the message.”
“I can’t believe Georgia forced you to buy that answering machine,” said Adrienne. I got home shortly after she did. “Do you want some tea?” she asked. “Although I’m surprised I have the nerve to run water after seeing that movie.”
“No, thanks. I just had four cups. Maybe I’ll like the machine. Maybe someone will call.”
“That’s not the point. The point is, you didn’t have any choice. Is that my phone ringing or yours?”
“It’s mine.” He couldn’t be calling this soon, not this soon. “Hello?”
“This was one of the greatest days of my life.”
“Listen, Dad, I’m really busy. I can’t talk now.”
“Sure.” His voice was pensive, lonely.
“I’m glad you’re happy, Dad, but I just got home and I have a lot to do.”
“I’m scared, Evie.”
“You are?”
“Yeah.”
I sat down. A conversation may actually take place. He’s married. Maybe he’s different now.
“Suppose it doesn’t work out?”
“I think it will, if you remember to be considerate, you know, interested in her, and not always talk about yourself.…”
No response.
“Dad? Dad, are you there?”
“Your sister could upstage the president, couldn’t she?”
“That is so true. Do you believe she did that?” Now we were really having a conversation.
“You’re the nice one, don’t ever forget it.”
I was led into a trap. Was I supposed to thank him for praising me at her expense? And furthermore, my compliment was an insult. I didn’t want to be the family nice one.
“I’ll talk to you soon.” I slammed the phone down.
“Our father isn’t worried that his marriage won’t work. He’s worried that it will work,” said Georgia late that night when we conducted our postmortem on the wedding.
“Huh?”
“It’s called the ‘opposite syndrome,’ and it’s practically the first article I assigned as articles editor. You say the opposite of what you mean because what you mean is too threatening. He’s scared it will work out and he’ll be happy. That terrifies him because he was so hurt by Mom. Also, he’s very attached to being miserable.”
“And to making us miserable.”
“Mainly, obviously. Tell me something. Do you honestly believe that Louis Armstrong took his own clothes to the cleaner’s? Also, didn’t he live in Queens?”
“Did he?”
“I have a feeling I know that for some reason. And I believe Raymond worked in the Bronx. So what was Louis Armstrong doing taking his dirty clothes from Queens to the Bronx?”
“So she made it up?”
“Or something.”
I dropped the bomb. “Claire could be a speed freak.”
“What?”
“Lola hinted that she lives on diet pills.”
“Really.” I could hear Georgia chewing on this.
“I think Lola asked me if Adrienne and I, well, she used the word ‘friends’ in this strange way—”
“She’s gay,” said Georgia. “I met her a long time ago on a fashion shoot. One of the other models was her lover.”
“God, she’s gorgeous.”
“Well, so, why not? Is there anything else?”
Anything else. I didn’t tell her about the coffee shop. About meeting Joe. All I said was, “I’m glad you made me get that machine.”
“You’re welcome,” said Georgia.
I was in the apartment when Joe called the first time, which was one day later. But the next time, after our first date, I wasn’t, and he left a message on the machine. “I’m crazy about you,” he said. There was a beep, then his voice, then a click as he hung up. I played it a hundred times.
Finally, in December, I took him to meet my father and Claire. Joe had been offered his own radio show in Los Angeles. He was leaving in January and I was going to join him a month later. This was both a get-acquainted and a good-bye dinner.
“My father’s sixty-one and he has absolutely no interests,” I told Joe in the taxi on the way to the restaurant. “Once a week, he plays poker with some retired writers. Occasionally he says something about politics or tells show business stories. Mostly he’s a nightmare.”
“You told me that.”
“Claire talks a lot, I think because she lives on diet pills, but she’s kind of fun.”
“You told me that too. I’m sure I’ll love them.” Joe put his arm around me.
“No, you won’t.” I sighed and leaned back against him. Joe was the most peaceful place I’d ever been. His arms were home, but nothing like the home I grew up in. We’d just gotten back from skiing near his parents’ house in New Hampshire. That was when, as part of my increasing attempts to take the chance out of life, I fell on purpose the second I started down the mountain so I wouldn’t fall by accident. Joe thought this was irresistible. As I rested against him in bumper-to-bumper holiday traffic, lulled by him and by the flickering Christmas lights reflected in the window, I wished that I did not have a father. No father, no mother. “I’m dreading this.”
“It will be fine.” Joe had no life experience to indicate it could ever be otherwise.
I saw them the minute we walked in, because my father stood up and yelled, “Over here.” He was wearing his red jacket, and he had a bright green holiday handkerchief peeking out of his lapel pocket. Another gift from Claire, no doubt.
“Lou, Claire,” said Joe, “it’s a pleasure to meet you.” I was still at the stage where I marveled even at how Joe shook hands. Very casual but firm. And that he used the word “pleasure.” That really knocked me out.
Claire was drinking her usual, a white wine spritzer. My father was working on a Virgin Mary. Joe and I both ordered beers.
“I say we have lobsters,” my dad said. “So it costs a little, so what? Joe’s paying.”
Everyone laughed. It was one of those nights when everyone was going to laugh no matter what was said, or practically.
“Four lobsters,” my father told the waiter.
“And I’ll have another one of these.” Claire raised her glass, then gulped the last of her drink down. “Raymond hated lobsters. He hated them because his dry cleaner’s was right near City Island and people were always bringing in shirts with butter stains on them.”
“I thought everyone wore bibs when they ate lobsters,” I said.
Claire shrugged. “He said butter stains were worse than tomato sauce, nobody knew it but it was true. Butter was worse than almost anything except—”
“What?” asked Joe.
“You’ll never guess.”
“Coffee?”
“Nope.”
Joe squeezed my hand under the table. This was the sort of conversation he loved. “Ink?”
“Chicken broth.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Joe. “I would never have guessed.”
“Who cares?” said my father.
“I’d like another drink. Joe, would you get the waiter?” Claire fluttered her eyes. She was virtually a blinking yellow.
When the lobsters came, she broke open a claw and that was about it. The lobster lay like a dead body on the plate, bright red, as if it had expired on the beach with a terrible sunburn. My father ate like a pig. Big drops of melted butter dribbled down his chin.
Since nobody asked, I volunteered. “Joe does wonderful radio interviews, like with this man who saved string and has a ball in his living room the size of a piano. When we met, he was talking with all sorts of people about how they felt about their mothers-in-law. It was hysterical.”
“I’m sorry Raymond isn’t alive, you could interview him,” said Claire.
“Did I ever tell you about John Wayne?” my father interjected.
I kicked Joe under the table, just to say, I warned you this would happen.
My father told the story again. And then there was silence. “I’ve got to give John a call,” he said.
“Lou’s some telephone talker.” Claire pushed her plate into the center of the table. “When he was in Bloomingdale’s, he was on the phone day and night.”
My father smiled sheepishly. “I live half my life in the real world and half on the telephone.”
The interviewer in Joe clicked in. He looked completely relaxed, his thin frame in a friendly slump against the back of the booth; only, his eyes got sharper. “Who do you like to phone?”
“My lampman,” said my dad.
“What’s a lampman?”
“The man who fixes my lamps.”
“One of ’em was on the fritz,” said Claire.
“He’s good for a few minutes every day. Then there’s Mary.”
“Who’s that?”
“Georgia’s secretary. Never can reach Georgia. She’s one of the ten busiest women in New York. I’m surprised they don’t put her in People magazine.”
Claire offered, “He called Japan yesterday.”
“By accident,” said my father. “I must have hit too many numbers.”
“I’d like to do a story about you.”
“Joe.” I put my hand on his arm.
He ignored me. “About you and the telephone.”
“Joe’s show is going to be in Los Angeles, on KCRW.”
“Never heard of it. When do you want to do it? Tomorrow?”
“That would be fine.”
“Too bad you can’t do Raymond,” said Claire.
“Yes,” said Joe very sincerely. “I think Raymond would have been great.”
“I liked it better when there were prefixes. ‘Plaza,’ ‘Gramercy.’ Those were the days. Then, when you were dialing, you were really doing something. Is this all right? Am I doing all right?”
“You’re doing fine, Lou.”
“When I lived in Westwood, I was writing a show called Ghosttown. Ever heard of it?”
“I always watched that show.”
“A lot of tricks from Topper, but it worked.”
“I remember.”
“We had a black phone. Phones were black then. Blacks were Negro.” He laughed.
“He made a black joke? One, that’s disgusting. Two, he’s married to a black.”
“Shush,” Joe told me.
“I guess the phone kind of kept me alive. You know, my wife left me and I was rattling around the house, eating deli. And I would call my daughters. I have three great daughters, but one didn’t have a telephone, she was living at the beach with some losers. Maybe you better cut that part out. No, use it, it’s fine.”
I turned off the tape machine. “Joe, this is embarrassing.”
“No, it isn’t.”
“Yes, it is.”
“I’ll cut that part out.”
“What part?”
“About the losers.” He pressed Play again.
“Sometimes when I’m lonely now, I call information.”
“Last week, he dialed Japan,” Claire piped up. Her voice sounded far away.
“This interview’s about me,” said my dad.
“Well, that’s about you,” she said.
“When you call information, what do you say?”
“Oh, you know, I ask for a number and then I sneak in some chat. ‘Bet you’ve been working hard,’ that sort of thing. They go for it.” He laughed again.
I pressed Stop. “He has a horrible laugh. It sounds like a snake. Do snakes laugh? Edit it out, okay?”
“Eve, relax.” Joe turned it on again.
“Do you have an answering machine?”
“Georgia gave me one for a wedding present. That’s Georgia Mozell, my daughter. She’s the articles editor of Harper’s Bazaar. Knows everything, all the latest. But you know, I can’t get the hang of it. Too many buttons. Mostly I’m home, anyway, and can answer myself. Otherwise, I’m out. What I don’t know can’t hurt me, right?”
I clicked the machine off. “I’ve heard enough.”
“Did you know he proposed to your mother on the telephone?” said Joe.
“He did?”
“He called her from a pay phone on the corner of Broadway and Forty-ninth, and when he hung up, he took the subway to Aqueduct and won the exacta.”
“I don’t think that’s true. I don’t think my dad went to the races before he moved to Los Angeles.”
“Oh, well, it doesn’t matter. He said it, I can use it. It’s going to be a terrific piece.”
It was, and Joe almost didn’t marry me as a result. Or maybe it was the opposite. I almost didn’t marry him. As soon as the interview aired, my father started phoning.
“I’m a star.”
Another call. “I’m a big star.”
Another call. “Ten people called me from L.A.”
“Twenty-five people called me.”
Then Joe phoned to say my father had rung him six times in the last hour alone. “Why did you give him your number?” I asked.
This continued for a week. Then my father went out and bought twenty-five radios, tried to buy a radio station, and had to be hospitalized again to have his lithium levels adjusted. Claire called us at four in the morning. “Get over here and put him away. I do this all day at work, no way I’m doing it at home too.” She greeted us at the door drinking a white wine spritzer. It was January 1976. Georgia nicknamed this, his third hospitalization, “his Bicentennial breakdown.”
I blew up at Joe because it was all his fault. He should have believed me when I told him my father was nuts. “I can’t marry someone who doesn’t understand crazy people.”
“But you’re not crazy. In fact, you’re dangerously level-headed.”
“Don’t insult me. I come from crazy. You have to be careful around crazy.”
It was a terrible, stupid fight. We had it on the telephone when he was in Los Angeles and I was still in New York, and we swore never to discuss anything important on the phone again.
In the end we made up and eloped. My wedding was one more family milestone that had to be celebrated on the sly.
Eight
At seven-thirty a.m., the phone rings. “He’s dead,” I say to Joe, who stops in the middle of pouring coffee. Ifer looks up from her cereal, which she always eats like a little animal, her mouth right next to the bowl as she shovels the Cheerios in.
“Aren’t you going to answer that?” asks Jesse, who’s stuffing his lunch into his backpack.
“You answer it,” I say.
“Eve, for God’s sake.” Joe takes the phone in exasperation. “Hello?”
We all watch his face, which stays calmly neutral, just to irritate, I think. “Yes, she’s here. Are you calling from the hospital?” He nods yes and we all nod along in unison. He holds out the phone.
Ifer puts her hand in front of her mouth to be prepared to stifle
a yelp. “Hello,” I say bravely.
“Hello, this is Dr. Omar Kunundar speaking.”
“Oh, Dr. Kunundar, hello.” It’s not the hospital, I mouth to everyone.
“He said he was calling from the hospital,” says Joe.
I turn away, walking toward the kitchen door to reduce interference. “Did you get the estimate?”
“I do not follow.”
“The estimate to repair your car.”
“We almost did this,” he says, “but that is not why I call. I hope it is not too early, but already I have surgeries.”
“It’s fine.”
“I was waking up last night and thinking about you. I told you to see your father. When was that? I work so much I lose the days.”
“About a week ago.”
“Yes, and I was worrying, how did it go? Are you all right? How is your father?”
“He’s … I want to take this in my study. Would you hold on?” I look over at Joe, Jesse, and Ifer, who are all watching. Suddenly I don’t know which one I trust to hang up for me. “Ifer, I’m going to talk on the upstairs phone.” I hand her the receiver.
“Who is that?” asks Joe.
Jesse answers. “The dude who hit me.”
I run upstairs. “Okay, Ifer,” I shout. There’s a click.
“Hi, I’m back.” I hear myself laugh and it sounds dumb. “I did go to see my father right after I spoke to you, and he was ‘home,’ just as you promised. I can’t thank you enough for making me go.”
“And since?”
“Well, no, I haven’t been. Too scared. It’s silly, isn’t it?”
“Not silly.” His voice is soothing, resonant. His mother may sound like the tinkling keys of the piano, but he—do I call him Dr. Kunundar? Omar?—evokes the poignant strings of the cello. He understands pain. It informs his words.
“Are you sleeping?” he asks.
“Excuse me?”
“Are you getting a good night’s sleep?”
Oh, it was a doctor question. “Not really.” I don’t tell him about the boy with the fist in his eye who visits me nightly. When you’re dead, you don’t know it. It seems babyish to have a demon from childhood that I can’t shake. I was frightened of black birds too. Starlings are what they were, but I didn’t know that. I thought they would eat me. And I was scared of the dark. I’m a scaredy-cat. I don’t say that either. “This is so nice of you to call. I can’t believe how considerate you are.”
