Whenever You Call

by Anna King

  I said, “I’m at a loss.”

  “Not a no, which is encouraging.”

  I drained my campari and soda, then said, “How about I let you know at the end of my shift?”

  She slammed the top of the bar with surprising verve. “You got it.”

  I turned away and loaded our dirty glasses into the dish rack, then started checking the white and red wines. There was little to do, and I finally resorted to polishing glasses and checking my cell phone over and over, halfway expecting to hear from one of the kids. I tried not to think about Trevor, but he kept creeping into my mind like a healthy green tendril of ivy, as if he couldn’t be dead and wouldn’t be dead and shouldn’t be dead. Suddenly I thought of the person, other than Jen, I wanted to call.

  I punched in his number, and my father answered on the fourth ring.

  “Dad, it’s Rose calling from work.”

  “Is something the matter?”

  I heard the fear in his voice. This call didn’t fit our pattern, and it scared him.

  “I had some shocking news this afternoon and thought I should let you know.”

  “One of the kids?”

  “No,” I said, “Trevor.”

  Silence.

  “Is he sick?”

  “He was killed in a car accident today.”

  “Oh my God.”

  My father had never understood why Trevor and I split up. One of the worst parts of that divorce had been telling my parents because I couldn’t really explain anything. Obviously, I wouldn’t want to share the details of our sex lives, for example, but when I left out valuable information, it seemed like I was being selfish or misguided. My father liked Trevor, an unexpected connection because there was such a void between Trevor’s commercialism and my father’s academic interests. It wasn’t that they’d discovered some mutual passion, like football, or music, or even movies. Perhaps, from my Dad’s point of view, it was that Trevor didn’t show him any pity, often, instead, expressing a rather irreverent attitude about crutches, cripples, or the like.

  Their first meeting was a Sunday dinner at the small house in Northampton where I’d grown up. I tried to suggest to my mother that she might tidy the place a bit, or a lot, only she clearly hadn’t taken me seriously. I had to admit that she was a good cook, so even if the kitchen was a mess, and the dining room table piled with papers and books, the house smelled of fish chowder and buttermilk biscuits. My father had struggled to stand upright from his chair in the living room by placing one hand flat against the wall while the other reached to shake Trevor’s hand. After a quick up-and-down motion, Dad dropped back into the chair, smooth but not without a sense of danger to those of us watching the drop.

  I left Trevor alone with both Mom and Dad, and went to make drinks, which meant mostly whiskey with a squirt of bubbly water and packed with ice. When I came back into the living room, I noticed the saggy couch, stained upholstery, and more heaps of papers and books. A fire sputtered in the fireplace, and after handing out the drinks, I went out to get more wood to throw onto the flames.

  “Thanks, sweetie,” Dad said.

  Trevor smiled at me, obviously comfortable in the chair matching Dad’s on the other side of the fireplace. Half his whiskey had already disappeared. I grabbed mine from the coffee table and sank to the floor by Trevor’s legs, wanting to be close to him. Plus, the only other place to sit was with my mother on the couch. No, thanks.

  Mom said, “You make advertising sound interesting.”

  “It is creative,” Trevor said.

  “I believe that human beings simply must be creative,” she said. “It’s an essential quality, which, when absent, results in depression. I’m convinced that it’s the lack of creative expression in so many people that’s given rise to our current epidemic of clinical depression.” She slurped at her whiskey and smacked her lips with satisfaction.

  Embarrassed, I peered up at Trevor, but his face was rapt. “You know, I think you may have a valuable point there,” he said. “You should write something for the Times about that.”

  “The New York Times?” I asked in disbelief.

  “I should!” my mother said triumphantly.

  Dad said to Mom, “Do you have proof of correlation between depression and creative expression?”

  “Not yet—this is just my hypothesis.”

  When we finally went into dinner, Dad used one crutch for his left arm, but grabbed Trevor with his right arm. “Don’t let me go down,” he said to Trevor. “I’ve had a bit too much to drink.”

  Trevor flushed, clearly pleased that Dad was relying on him, and that had been that. Despite my mother’s conversation with Trevor, he’d reacted more powerfully to my father grasping his elbow and holding on for dear life.

  I understood all too well.

  Now, over the phone, I said to my father, “The kids are devastated.”

  “I can imagine.” He coughed. “I’d like to go to the funeral.”

  “Oh Dad, you don’t have to—,”

  He interrupted, “I intend to go, and that’s that.”

  “Do you think I can, too?”

  “Of course.”

  “Genevieve might not appreciate my presence—I don’t really know.”

  “It seems right that the mother of Trevor’s children should be there with them.”

  An elderly couple walked into the dining room and looked around, then headed to the bar.

  “Dad, I’ve got to go—we can talk again tomorrow.”

  “Thank you for calling, Rose.” His voice shifted low and I knew he was close to tears.

  “Will you be okay?”

  He cleared his throat and spoke firmly. “Of course.”

  I hung up and went over to the couple, who were still working to get themselves perched comfortably on the bar stools.

  “You’re more than welcome to have a drink at one of the tables, if you’d prefer,” I said.

  “Oh no, we like the bar,” said the man. His white silky hair curled long around his collar and I caught sight of shining blue eyes.

  I smiled as they continued to get situated. I’d learned by now, as if by instinct, which customers were annoyed when you waited on them too soon, and those who were perfectly content to have you stick close by. I’d also figured out, generally, that I preferred the people who liked me near, not to mention the fact that they were better tippers, though it was still hard to believe that I cared about good tips. I found the whole thing uncomfortably reminiscent of assessing my popularity with the opposite sex by counting how many dates I was able to get with relative strangers, a stranger being the real test of one’s appeal.

  Two months into the job, Ravi had asked what my average night’s tips amounted to because she wanted to make sure that I was getting a fair deal. Floored by the total I’d reported, she told me I was running twenty-five percent above average. It wasn’t the money (it wasn’t the man himself). It was the proof of popularity. My personal bete noir: to be popular.

  “Two Beefeater martinis,” the old man said. He grinned and raised his eyebrows suggestively.

  Smiling first at one and then the other, I said, “You devils.”

  Naturally, since they looked downright angelic, they were pleased to be called devilish. The woman’s white hair was swept into an elegant french twist and her face, deeply wrinkled, glowed with joy. I wanted to lean forward, stare into her eyes, and ask why. So I did.

  Though, first, I made the best damn Beefeater martinis ever. After I’d delivered the drinks, and left them alone to take their first sips, I sauntered back.

  “May I ask you something?” I said to the woman.

  Her eyes opened wide. The joy was still apparent, perhaps more so now that her right hand circled the icy martini glass. “Of course!”

  “Why are you so damn happy?”

  The man burst out laughing, and she followed with her own loud laugh seconds later. She grabbed his hand and held it aloft. “We’re in love!”

&nb
sp; “How long have you been married?” I asked.

  “We’re not!” he exclaimed.

  She said, “This is our third date.”

  “I’m hoping that if I get her drunk enough, I’ll get lucky,” he said.

  “This is adorable,” I said. “How did you meet?”

  Now obviously embarrassed, she lowered her voice. “Match.com.”

  “You’ve got to be kidding,” I said.

  She giggled. “There were only five men in Boston in my age parameter, and I went out with every one.”

  He interrupted, “I was the last of the bunch.”

  “I was so depressed.” She took a profound sip of her martini. “He’d been my last choice, to be honest.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know why.”

  “I told you why.”

  I said, “You didn’t tell me.”

  “Because he was widowed just two months ago.” Her small chin puckered. “Too soon, too soon.”

  “Apparently not,” he said.

  “I didn’t know his first wife had been a total bitch, you see. He didn’t mention that on his Match.com profile. He didn’t say, “Please understand that my former wife, now dead, was a bitch.”

  We all laughed together this time.

  I said to him, “I can see why you like her.”

  “Love her!”

  I noticed Annie at the end of the bar. “Excuse me,” I said.

  When I got down there, Annie asked for a diet coke. She could’ve ducked under and gotten it herself since there were no diners yet, but I silently took a glass, scooped ice into it, and squirted the right hose. I wasn’t all that annoyed since I got a kick out of the drink hoses; they were satisfying to manipulate, probably because of their phallic quality, and I never got tired of the noise they made: a satisfying phlat sound, plus the bubbles. They did make me think about Ravi. No hose there. Even so, I wasn’t ready to decide one way or another. Maybe hoses were overrated.

  I returned to the older couple and asked whether they planned to eat dinner with us.

  “What do you want to do?” he asked her.

  “Could we have dinner here at the bar?”

  Ravi had warned me that they weren’t thrilled by bar-eating at the Harvest, but they couldn’t risk bucking the trend, either. So I was encouraged to discourage it, while simultaneously letting it happen, if need be.

  “Sure,” I said. “Let me know when you want to see the menu.”

  My cell phone, hooked to my waistband, gave a little cha-cha-cha. I tilted it to see who was calling, then walked quickly to the furthest end of the bar when I saw that it was Elliot.

  He said, “Are you at work?”

  Although I was worried that he’d somehow be offended by my presence at a bar, I wasn’t going to lie. “Yes, honey.”

  “I just wondered whether you called Grandpa.”

  “Yeah, I did. He wants to come to the funeral.”

  Elliot’s voice wobbled. “That would be nice.”

  “Elliot?”

  “Yeah?”

  “Will it be all right for me to come, do you think?”

  He sighed and then swallowed. “I asked Genevieve because I figured you’d want to.”

  “I would, yes.” I glanced around the dining room and bar, checking that I wasn’t needed somewhere, but at 5:15 p.m., it was still pretty quiet.

  “She asked that you not come, Mom.”

  “Oh dear.”

  “Obviously, Alex, Noah and I are upset, but we don’t really see what we can do about it.”

  “Maybe if I called her tomorrow, when the shock isn’t quite so strong—,”

  He interrupted, “Better not.”

  “It makes me feel like she believes something terrible about me.”

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “But it does—,” I stopped talking, suddenly remembering the words of Brother Ralph at the monastery. Ask yourself as if the answer doesn’t matter. “You’re right, it doesn’t matter, not in the grand scheme of things. Selfishly, I’d like to have been there, but if it’s not to be, it’s not to be.”

  “Thanks.”

  “If you have the time, why don’t you call Grandpa? He sounded pretty shaken, and you can let him know about the funeral arrangements and that I won’t be there.”

  “Okay. Talk to you later.”

  Just as I closed the phone and slipped it back into its harness, a loud noise erupted near the front entrance into the restaurant. The door opened and a vast crowd of people surged through, clearly an extended family celebrating a birthday, anniversary, or engagement. I took a deep breath and rushed back to the other end of the bar to plunge several martini glasses deep into the ice. It was going to get very busy in a matter of minutes.

  As they milled around, waiting to be seated at the three tables that had been pushed together to form one large table, the group gave off a strong heat and smell. Their faces gleamed with sweat and I could even see that the damp hair around their napes and foreheads. They’d brought the brutal summer inside. I heard the air-conditioning click on, working to bring down the temperature.

  I felt my own heat rising, caught by theirs, and as I waited for the orders to flood in, I watched Ravi bustling about in an effort to get everyone happily seated. She had a quality I’d describe as mesmerizing, something often to be found in women from a middle-eastern or eastern background. Effortlessly, or at least, unconsciously, they moved and spoke in a way that cast a spell. I’d frequently noticed this sort of woman, and acknowledged her seductiveness, but I’d never felt it for myself, as if I were the intended target. She caught me looking and threw me a funny little smile just as she picked up a chair and swung it over her head. Quite the feat since she was tiny and small-boned.

  Annie arrived at the bar, her face flushed. “You’re not going to believe it, but they’re all having the same thing,” she said.

  Let it be wine, I thought.

  “Twenty cosmopolitans.” She pulled a face. “Sorry.”

  Suddenly Ravi was hopping under the bar’s divider. “I’ll help,” she said.

  I teased, “Do you know how to make a cosmopolitan?”

  “You bet.”

  We packed shakers with ice, then leapt to see who could be the first to grab the citron vodka, triple sec, cranberry and lime juices. We measured, poured, and found ourselves, at exactly the same moment, shaking the shakers. I gave her the eyeball, raised the shaker high above my head, and did a little dance. Immediately, she matched me, and soon we were shaking and pouring in unison. The large table caught on and began to clap in time. I glanced down the bar to where the older couple had been, expecting that they’d be thrilled by all the excitement, but they were gone. Later, after the cosmopolitans had been served, and I’d cleaned up the considerable mess, I went to collect their glasses, fully expecting that there would be, at minimum, two twenties left for me. There was nothing. I’d been stiffed, for the first time ever, and by a sweet old couple who’d met on Match.com.

  I began to harbor ill thoughts about Match.com. The organization, through no fault of my own, was out to get me. Indeed, it began to seem to me that my entire life—all those marriages and myriad bed partners—could be seen as a part of Match.com’s campaign to inform me that I had no match, would never have a match, and, indeed, it had gotten to the point of non-matchhood that I was now considering a lesbian lover even though, frankly, I really wasn’t a lesbian (I might be able to be sexually aroused by same-sex action, but I’d never fall in love with a woman … one of those things I knew without a doubt).

  They’d drained every last free drop of Beefeater gin from their glasses, I noted. As I wiped the countertop clean, I started to laugh. Then, to cry. I thought of Trevor and how, together, we’d made three kids and now he was dead. I thought of me, being alone. Al didn’t count, obviously, especially since I knew he was going to fall in love with his new agent, Christine. I bet they were out drinking together at that moment, in fact. I tried to tel
l myself that nothing mattered, but it sure seemed like many things mattered. I swiveled to face the back of the bar and quickly dabbed at my eyes with a paper cocktail napkin.

  Still, I asked myself as if it didn’t matter. I asked myself, Why am I alone?

  Then I forced myself to smile, to shrug in a devil-may-care way, even to trip lightly down the bar on my toes, doing a little dance. By the time I’d reached the end, where Annie waited with new orders from a table of four just seated, the answer had come.

  You are not alone.

  Yes, I am, I argued in my head. Al doesn’t count and my husbands are gone, and I’m not talking about my kids, ’cause they’re launched anyway, and all I have is this angel I’ve probably imagined, and a bad guy named Rabbitfish who’s got plans to murder me. Furthermore, this wasn’t about my father or siblings. This was about Love.

  Annie said, “Two gin and tonics, a chardonnay, and a vodka tonic.”

  “Seasonally appropriate ordering, at last.”

  “You okay?”

  I waved a nonchalant hand. “That sweet old couple left without paying.”

  “You gotta tell Ravi right away.”

  “Yeah, I will.”

  You are not alone.

  This was not an actual voice I heard. It was my thought, stated clearly, which was why it was rapidly pissing me off. I had no one to whom to address my anger, except myself. I made the drinks in an unseeing flurry. When Annie came to get them, she towed Ravi along.

  She said, “What happened?”

  “The old couple who came in early left when we were doing our thang, without settling up.”

  Ravi shrugged. “It happens. I just wished I’d gotten a better look at ’em.”

  “Listen, Ravi, I don’t think it’s a good idea for us to go out.” I thought about explaining more, but I didn’t really understand what the more was.