“Are you…” She wipes her face with the towel she wore out of the shower; then she
was fresh, now she’s all tears and snot. “Are you scared?”
“Scared?” he asks thoughtfully. “No. A little worried, that’s all. Mostly about which
door to use.”
Find your way home, she almost says. Find the right door and find your way home.
But if he did, would she want to see him? A ghost might be all right, but what if she
opened the door on a smoking cinder with red eyes and the remains of jeans (he
always traveled in jeans) melted into his legs? And what if Mrs. Corey was with him,
his baked deck of cards in one twisted hand?
Beep.
“I don’t need to tell you to be careful about the FedEx man anymore,” he says. “If you
really want him, he’s all yours.”
She shocks herself by laughing.
“But I did want to say I love you—”
“Oh honey I love you t—”
“—and not to let the McCormack kid do the gutters this fall, he works hard but he’s a
risk-taker, last year he almost broke his fucking neck. And don’t go to the bakery
anymore on Sundays. Something’s going to happen there, and I know it’s going to be
on a Sunday, but I don’t know which Sunday. Time really is funny here.”
The McCormack kid he’s talking about must be the son of the guy who used to be
their caretaker in Vermont…only they sold that place ten years ago, and the kid must
be in his mid-twenties by now. And the bakery? She supposes he’s talking about
Zoltan’s, but what on earth—
Beep.
“Some of the people here were on the ground, I guess. That’s very tough, because
they don’t have a clue how they got here. And the pilot keeps screaming. Or maybe
it’s the co-pilot. I think he’s going to be here for quite awhile. He just wanders around.
He’s very confused.”
The beeps are coming closer together now.
“I have to go, Annie. I can’t stay here, and the phone’s going to shit the bed any
second now, anyway.” Once more in that I’m-scolding-myself voice (impossible to
believe she will never hear it again after today; impossible not to believe) he mutters,
“It would have been so simple just to…well, never mind. I love you, sweetheart.”
“Wait! Don’t go!”
“I c—”
“I love you, too! Don’t go!”
But he already has. In her ear there is only black silence.
She sits there with the dead phone to her ear for a minute or more, then breaks the
connection. The non-connection. When she opens the line again and gets a perfectly
normal dial tone, she touches star-sixty-nine after all. According to the robot who
answers her page, the last incoming call was at nine o’clock that morning. She knows
who that one was: her sister Nell, calling from New Mexico. Nell called to tell Annie
that her plane had been delayed and she wouldn’t be in until tonight. Nell told her to
be strong.
All the relatives who live at a distance—James’s, Annie’s—flew in. Apparently they
feel that James used up all the family’s Destruction Points, at least for the time being.
There is no record of an incoming call at—she glances at the bedside clock and sees
it’s now 3:17 P.M.—at about ten past three, on the third afternoon of her widowhood.
Someone raps briefly on the door and her brother calls, “Anne? Annie?”
“Dressing!” she calls back. Her voice sounds like she’s been crying, but unfortunately,
no one in this house would find that strange. “Privacy, please!”
“You okay?” he calls through the door. “We thought we heard you talking. And Ellie
thought she heard you call out.”
“Fine!” she calls, then wipes her face again with the towel. “Down in a few!”
“Okay. Take your time.” Pause. “We’re here for you.” Then he clumps away.
“Beep,” she whispers, then covers her mouth to hold in laughter that is some emotion
even more complicated than grief finding the only way out it has. “Beep, beep. Beep,
beep, beep.” She lies back on the bed, laughing, and above her cupped hands her eyes