The Time Telephone

by Connie Lacy

  “Maybe I’ll go with you.”

  So she told the others where we were headed and the two of us set off. She managed to tap away on her phone, exchange small talk with me and walk without bumping into anyone.

  There were tons of cameras but only one employee in the store so I had to bide my time. Rikki’s phone rang and she gestured that she had to take the call and walked back into the mall. I browsed around but the more I thought about it, the more I liked the idea of a film camera. Maybe I could take a darkroom class like Kieran did. I could buy a used camera online. And to start out with, maybe I could just use an old one we had at home. My mom had gone through several cameras. And how many cameras had Grandma owned? There must be a decent camera at home I could use, just to try it out. Maybe it was my immersion in the past but the more I thought about it, the whole retro thing appealed to me.

  So I wandered back into the mall and looked around for Rikki. Several stores down, I caught a glimpse of Dunk walking into a small shop, but no sign of Rikki anywhere. So I headed back to Macy’s, pulling my phone out to text her. But then it hit me – Rikki had secretly arranged to meet up with Dunk and didn’t want anyone else to know. All the texting, the call while we were in the store, the “coincidence” of him showing up at the same mall after she talked with him after school. She probably gave him our whole itinerary! All the snarky comments about sagging pants was just a cover. She was with him right this minute in that little shop. I just knew it. They had probably ducked in there when they saw me walk out into the mall. So I put my phone away.

  When I reached the fitting rooms, I heard the girls gossiping non-stop. I was about to announce my arrival when I heard Deborah’s voice calling out to her new friends in the other stalls.

  “My uncle works there and he saw the video and he said she was there one second and ripped to pieces the next.”

  “Oh my God,” Amber said.

  “Yeah, he said there was this cloud of smoke or something hanging in the air,” Deborah continued, “and the lens of the camera was splattered with bits of something.”

  Someone gasped. I slipped quietly into an empty dressing room and gently closed the door.

  “And he said the camera wobbled and tilted and landed on the ground. He said you could hear screaming and see people running all over the place.”

  “Shit,” said Courtney.

  “Lord,” said Imani.

  “Yeah, he said it was really sick, like right in front of the camera, you could see one of her shoes lying on the ground with a foot in it – no leg, just a foot.”

  “Eeeeeeyuuuuuu,” one of the girls squealed.

  “Enough,” Courtney said. “Enough, already.”

  “Yeah,” said Imani. “T.M.I.”

  I sat down on the bench in my tiny stall, feeling queasy. No one had ever described my mother’s death to me. Grandma had just given me the barest details.

  “My grandmother read about her in the paper,” Imani said. “She read that she only got home once or twice a year for a week or so.”

  “My uncle says they all get, like, six weeks of vacation a year if they’ve been there for ten years,” Deborah said. “So where was she for the rest of her vacation time?”

  “Yo! You guys still in here?”

  It was Rikki. I pulled my feet up beneath me so no one could see me under the door.

  “Yeah!” the girls called out.

  “Is Megan in here?” Rikki asked.

  Silence. I imagined Deborah and the other girls holding their breath.

  “No, haven’t seen her since you guys left,” Sakia said.

  “We got separated when I stopped by the bathroom and now I can’t find her,” Rikki explained. “I wonder if she might’ve gone home.”

  ‘We’ll find her,” Alicia said, exiting the stall right next to mine.

  “You sure she’s not in here?” Rikki asked, as she began opening doors at the other end.

  I really didn’t want to be found. Didn’t want to have a conversation about what I’d heard. Nope. But Rikki was going to find me hiding like a mouse in this tiny room. More pity. Boy, was that exactly what I didn’t want or what?

  She opened another door and another. She was headed my way. I took a chance and eased off my bench and scooted quietly on my stomach under the dividing wall into the room Alicia had just left. Maybe Rikki wouldn’t open that door since she’d just seen her walk out of it. I sat on the bench opposite the full-length mirror and pulled my legs up to my chest. Alicia had left a bunch of clothes lying everywhere and I covered myself with them, making sure my face was hidden. I hardly breathed as Rikki got closer.

  “Megan?” she called.

  She was right outside my stall. I closed my eyes and repeated over and over in my mind: “don’t touch the door, don’t touch the door, don’t touch the door.” I definitely didn’t want all the kids at school to know that Megan McConnell overheard the grisly details of her mother’s death in the Macy’s dressing room. Like they didn’t watch me and whisper behind my back already. So I concentrated as hard as I could on sending Rikki a message – willing her to walk on by.

  The door jiggled as though she had touched the handle. I held my breath. Then she moved on to the last room that I had just vacated seconds before and opened that door. Then it slammed shut.

  “She’s not here. We told you,” Courtney called.

  “All right, all right,” Rikki snapped.

  I relaxed then and the shoulder strap of my purse slipped off. I tightened my arm just in time to keep it from falling to the floor. Did she hear it?

  Then there was the swish of her walking out into the store and I realized the muscles in my arms and legs were in knots. I relaxed them as I listened to the girls’ voices growing fainter. Then I heard the saleswoman helping them. The girls weren’t laughing now. Rikki asked why everyone was so glum and Imani said something about Deborah and the video of the explosion. But then the voices faded even more like they were talking real low and I couldn’t understand what they were saying. Then they were gone.

  Alone in my cubicle, I uncovered myself, dropping the clothes on the floor. I studied the gray paint on the wall, the straight pins on the soiled tan carpet, the colorful tops left hanging on a hook. I closed my eyes and a vision of my mother flying apart forced its way into my brain. I imagined the shoe with her disembodied foot in it. What shoe would it have been? Her black flats? Her white jogging shoes? She sometimes wore her athletic shoes when she had to do a lot of walking. The camera only focused on her upper body when she did her live shots.

  I had never asked, never wanted to know.

  My mom had been killed because she was having the time of her life reporting from a dangerous place. That was part of the attraction – the danger. My mother never stopped playing Double Dog Dare. But this time, she lost the game.

  Bombs bursting in air

  I double dog dare

  You to stand over there

  And explode everywhere.

  I pulled a pad and pen out and wrote the words down. Then I added more.

  You really don’t care

  If danger is there

  You two are a pair

  Say a prayer, ma mere.

  “Say a prayer, ma mere,” I whispered.

  I put my pen and notepad away and stood up, glancing in the mirror and smoothing my white top. I thought about going home, but that would make me seem like a jerk. I had to play along. So I set out in search of the flamboyant penguins. Halfway down the mall I spied the flock rushing towards me.

  “Where have you been?” Rikki cried.

  “Yeah, we were worried,” Amber said.

  “Where have you been?” I demanded in my best, girls-having-fun-at-the-mall voice. “I thought you guys had found some gorgeous hunks to hang with!”

  They laughed.

  “Let’s go see a movie,” Rikki said.

  As we moved through the crowded mall she explained how she and I had gotten separated and how she lo
oked for me. I joined in and told them how I’d searched for her and then gone back to the dressing rooms to find them empty.

  Everyone was giggling again and flirting and talking a mile a minute. We picked a dopey movie, bought buttered popcorn and Cokes and stuffed ourselves, cracking jokes all the way through the previews and the feature so that a middle-aged woman with short brown hair and glasses shushed us. In other words, everyone had a good time. Except for me. But no one was the wiser.

  ~Eleven~

  Wandering star

  How to describe that scent? When I opened the door to her bedroom, I could smell my mother. Eau de Jody. It must’ve been embedded in the teal patchwork rug she bought in Iraq, the white duvet that covered the bed, maybe even the beads that hung over the windows. Standing in the doorway, it filled my lungs with sadness.

  Maybe it was a mixture of spices in her diet, like saffron and coriander, jumbled up with the telltale odor of cigarettes. She also used some strange creams and shampoos she picked up wherever she was living. It was an exotic scent like we had a foreign guest in the house.

  Two small white chests stood side by side on one end of the room, with intricate designs painted on them by a local artisan somewhere. The pale aqua walls were covered with framed pictures of my mother and foreign leaders. There was a photo of her with President Hamid Karzai, a picture of her wearing a dark head scarf with a mullah she interviewed in Iraq, and a shot of her taking notes during an interview with Israeli Prime Minster Ariel Sharon. And a dozen others like that.

  The pictures reminded me why I was here. Where would she have kept her old cameras? I slid the closet doors open and swallowed hard when I saw her clothes still hanging there – the ones she wore when she was home. Lots of blue, red and coral. Several pairs of jeans and slacks, some jackets, knit tops and dressy blouses. Her scent was even stronger standing in front of the closet, even though it had been months since she was home. Shoe boxes were stacked neatly on the floor and more were on the shelf above the clothes.

  I closed the door and moved to one of the chests and pulled the top drawer open. Thankfully, that’s as far as I had to look. Two cameras were tucked in the drawer along with a couple of pairs of sunglasses, a collection of scarves, three watches in a wooden bowl, tubes of chap stick and lipstick, and other odds and ends.

  One of the cameras was the old black Pentax Mom used before she switched to the Canon Sure Shot lying next to it. The Pentax felt like a real camera – heavy and solid in my hands – a lot like the Nikon Kieran had. But I wasn’t sure I was ready to learn all the ins and outs of focusing and changing lenses. One step at a time might be better. So I put it back and picked up the Canon instead. It was the last camera my mother used before she switched to digital. It was a point and shoot with automatic settings. Turning it over, I noticed it still had film in it.

  Two hours later I had an envelope of pictures, a new camera battery and a roll of black and white film as I returned to my car in front of Showcase Camera. I don’t know why they were so nice to me – processing my film as a rush job. I locked my car doors, turned on the overhead light and opened the envelope, itching to see the pictures.

  The first one took me by surprise. And then I remembered.

  Fall of sixth grade. Class field trip to the network. Grandma had let me take Mom’s old camera, knowing she was giving me my own digital camera that Christmas. Although I’d been to the network several times with my mother, I was excited to be going with my class. Proud, you know. We were taking a field trip to where my mom worked.

  I stared at the picture. It was a shot of my best buds, Zoe, Becca and Caitlyn bunched up together, their arms slung over each other’s shoulders with a window behind them that overlooked the network newsroom. They were giggling and mugging for the camera. The next one was a shot I’d taken through those windows at the sea of desks and computers below where the producers and writers worked. And then there was a shot of me and Becca standing in front of the green screen. She was wearing a green jacket and I was wearing a green top that both looked invisible on the video monitor, which we all thought was hilarious. In the photo we were craning our necks to see ourselves on TV.

  Funny – the pictures were backwards. The green screen was the first picture we’d taken, the shot through the window of the newsroom was the second and the one of my friends was the third picture. And I remembered now why I hadn’t taken any more.

  Our group was walking along a balcony above the food court when Caitlyn cried out.

  “Look, look, it’s your mom!”

  Our eyes followed where she was pointing, to a huge screen hanging high above us and there was my mother, reporting live from Baghdad. I could barely hear her voice coming from a distant speaker. As we stared at the monitor, I overheard a conversation close beside us where three people were eating at a small table – two women and a man. It was obvious they worked there and were on their lunch break.

  “I’m Jody McDiva, reporting very loudly from the center of the universe,” said the plump white woman holding a hamburger in front of her.

  The others laughed.

  “You know she refuses to file for radio?” said the thin black woman beside her.

  “Doesn’t surprise me,” said a gray-haired man sitting across from them. “She pitches a fit if she’s not the lead story.”

  “I don’t know how they fit her head on that big screen,” said the first woman.

  As they cackled at their cleverness, I hurried by them, catching up with the rest of my class and our tour guide.

  What was I supposed to say after that? Becca, Caitlyn and Zoe had heard every word, just like me. Along with a bunch of other kids. I almost reached for the camera to tuck it inside my purse but didn’t want to draw attention to my mortification. So I left it hanging from the cord around my neck. It dangled there for the rest of the tour as our perky guide continued her spiel.

  No one said a word about it but I heard some of the kids whispering later on the bus. And I was positive my best friends were waiting until I wasn’t around to do their own whispering. As I sat in my car outside the camera store I could feel the heat of humiliation all over again.

  The next picture was taken by my mother of a young Iraqi woman wearing a black abaya and hijab that, together, covered her entire body and head. Only her face was visible. There was a picture of three children playing in the street beside a bombed-out building. There were pictures of American soldiers and tanks. A shot of two soldiers in their desert fatigues and boots, so covered by helmets, goggles, guns and ammunition that you couldn’t tell what they looked like. There was a photo of several civilians – probably other reporters – sitting around a table with drinks in their hands.

  And then there was a picture of a handsome young man with olive skin and black hair, holding a cigarette and looking directly into the camera. He was shirtless, leaning against a headboard on an unmade bed, a pillow behind him, with a glass of something on a table beside him. His bedroom eyes stopped me cold. I wondered what his name was. Wondered if he was her translator, her guide. Wondered if he was still alive.

  I also wondered if she managed to find one of these handsome young men wherever she was assigned – if that was part of the reason she loved being a foreign correspondent.

  After she recovered from her facelift and talked her boss into sending her to Afghanistan, she was raring to go. As she packed for her flight she was back to her normal, enthusiastic, energetic self. She had her hair professionally colored and highlighted to cover the gray. She’d gone shopping and gotten some new clothes, updating her wardrobe, she explained. She had bought me a few things too, acting like we were BFF’s on a fun shopping spree. She got some new jackets, tops, slacks, new shoes and a dozen new scarves. They were small scarves, not the kind you wore on your head in the Middle East.

  And once she was in Kabul, I realized this was part of her new look. She tied the little scarves around her neck with every outfit. It was camouflage. While the faceli
ft did make her look younger – smoothing out the crow’s feet around her eyes and the wrinkles around her mouth and on her forehead – the neck lift wasn’t quite as successful. So she hid the crepey skin with scarves.

  But I guess you could say she succeeded in making herself more competitive with the younger women reporters on camera and off.

  The street lights had come on, casting yellow pools of light on the pavement. At the edge of the lot was a dumpster. I cranked my car and zig-zagged across the parking spaces until I was beside it. I hopped out and tossed the package of pictures into the dumpster with the rest of the trash and headed home.

  *

  It was after eleven when I heard a tap on my door.

  “Time to call it a night?” Grandma asked, peeking in.

  I pointed the camera at her. I had put the new battery in and loaded it with the black and white film, preparing for our return trip to the farmhouse. But she held her hand up like a traffic cop.

  “I don’t have my lipstick on,” she protested.

  So I set it down on the dresser and flopped on my bed. Grandma sat in the rocker. I had a feeling she was about to ask me about my time at the mall and I decided to head her off.

  “Did you ever think of what you would do differently if you could change something in your past?”

  She pushed her jaw forward in a thoughtful way and sighed, rocking back and forth several times. Finally, she stopped rocking and clasped her hands in front of her.

  “That’s a tough question, you know. It’s so difficult to choose just one thing. It’s like trying to decide which mistake was the biggest.”

  I pulled my pillow up behind me and leaned against the headboard.

  “And it’s really not a fair question,” she said. “Because some of my worst mistakes led to other things in my life that I wouldn’t want to erase, you know?”

  I nodded, though I wasn’t totally sure what she was talking about.

  “But I guess if I were being truly honest, I’d have to say marrying Jack McConnell was the biggest mistake of my life.”