Telephone

by Percival Everett

  “One needs loose-fitting clothes for close fighting.”

  “Where’d you get that bit of wisdom?”

  “From you.” Sarah made the first move. d4

  I moved my knight. Nf6

  After a couple of moves. “How was school?” I asked.

  “School was school.” Bh4. “How was school?”

  “School was school,” I said. c5

  Meg walked into the room with a stack of papers.

  “I see Mom brought school home with her,” I said.

  “I am afraid that is true,” she said.

  “Should we tell her?” I asked.

  “Tell me what?” Sarah asked.

  “You do it,” I said to Meg.

  “Your father and I have only talked about it briefly, but how would you like to take a trip to Paris?”

  “Paris? Are you joking?”

  “No.”

  Bd3

  Bxc3

  “I think we could all use a vacation,” I said. “A nice big vacation.” I looked at her face. She appeared genuinely excited, but it was muted. “Does that sound good?”

  “Are you two playing while we talk about this?” Meg asked.

  “No,” Sarah said. “We wouldn’t dream of it.”

  “I hate both of you,” Meg said. “I have half a mind to read some of these poems to you. That’ll teach you.”

  “Okay, we give up,” I said.

  “Paris,” Sarah said. “Thank you.” She got up and hugged her mother. She then came to me.

  “You might want to take that hug back after you see my next move.” d6

  “Oh my,” she said, in mock surprise. Then, as if she had it all planned, she castled short. 0-0. She smiled but did not look at me.

  “Your daughter is a demon,” I said to Meg.

  “Oh, I know.”

  “A demon,” I repeated, looking at Sarah’s beautiful face. “She is not kind to her poor old father.”

  “War is hell,” she said. “Do you know why I always beat you, Daddy?”

  “Tell me.”

  “Because you hate to lose pieces.”

  “Is that so?”

  “You can’t protect everybody. You just have to get the better of it or get the position you want.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” Nbd7

  All those bones in that cave. Stories in those bones, in the pack rat middens, in the layers. Were they stories if they happened to creatures that don’t tell stories? I wondered if the memories of birds were stories. Did things happen to birds they knew? I could not forensically determine the cause of death of any of the birds I had found. I knew nothing about them except their ages and that I assumed that they looked like other birds of the same species, all speculation, induction, perhaps desire to believe that I knew something about their world, if not my own.

  Nd2 Qc7

  “Where are you going?” Meg asked.

  “Campus. I thought I’d work in my office for a while,” I said.

  “You never work there.”

  “I’m going to start trying. Campus is nice at night when no one is around. There’s some stuff I need to do in the lab too.”

  “Are we going to be okay?” Meg asked.

  I was at the door, my hand on the knob. “I don’t know,” I said. “I’m just so lost right now.”

  “Me too.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “About what?”

  “That you have to live through this.”

  Meg didn’t respond to that. “Sarah is excited about Paris. That was a good idea. Maybe it will be good for us too.”

  “Maybe.”

  “How long will you be out?”

  “Not long,” I said, though I didn’t know what I was telling her. The truth was, I had no idea how to work in my campus office. There was actually nothing for me to do in the lab, my being uncharacteristically caught up. I was lying to my wife. I was headed out to a bar near campus. I had no idea why, except that I had to be someplace.

  Qc2 g5

  The tavern was called Study Hall. It was a lively place, though hardly studious, in a neighborhood that had once been considered bad but was now acknowledged as up and coming, a gentle way of saying “still bad,” bad being a relative term meaning “white youth at risk.” It had always been my theory that a student was more likely to get ripped off by a fellow student than by a person on the street. Regardless, I was there, parked off a side street a few blocks away. Several screens showed various sporting events involving different balls and uniforms. Students, graduate and undergraduate, were by turns animated and deadpan. Panpsychism, the view that consciousness is everywhere, was fairly debunked by the scene. Despite my snarky take on the whole scene, what I was taken with, why I was there, was that these people were alive. I was not certain that I was.

  I found a booth and sat, half watched a football game on one of the overhead screens. I looked at the kids in the tavern and realized my daughter would never make it to this stage of her life. I once talked to a man who had lost his son as a child. He told me that every year on the boy’s birthday he wondered what he might have been like, what he might be doing. It was very sad. Here I was imagining somewhat the same while my daughter was still alive.

  Sarah was no prodigy, if in fact there is such a thing, when it came to chess. I taught her the game when she was seven, and like any other seven-year-old, or any new player for that matter, she simply had fun with the way the pieces moved. Of course, there was a special fascination with the knight. She played just the way I played then and would years later, even while she grew as a player. She realized that there was much to know and began reading about the game, studying. By the time she was nine, she understood chess far better than I ever had. I did progress, only by proximity and a desire to offer her at least a small challenge. By the time she was eleven, I often had the feeling she was going easy on her old man. It didn’t come easily to her. She worked hard, and that was what impressed me so, her tenacity, obsessiveness being such a packed word, but of course it was just that, a function of a sharp, open, restive mind. She never talked about her study, her knowledge, never claimed or announced that she would be using this opening or employing that defense, but instead played to merely watch them work. And perhaps so that she could laugh just a bit at me. It saddened me that her tenacity could not help her now. People are wont to speak of people as fighters in the face of terminal illness, and maybe they are, but terminal without hope is terminal. Without hope. There is nothing to fight. It is like fighting time. Don Quixote. Would that my daughter could have clawed her way back or that I could have rescued her, but no such thing was possible. This thinking consumed me, was always with me, and it not only threatened to, but did pull me down to a dark place, a place that I secretly began to recognize as a safe harbor.

  Bg3 h5

  I could feel myself slipping, from what to where I had no idea. To say that I felt lost is inaccurate only because it is stated with real ignorance of my feelings. Every time I felt that self-indulgent self-pity, I reminded myself for whom death had come, would be coming. My sadness didn’t mean a thing, my pain was meaningless, and so I had no idea what to feel or what to do. Not an unusual condition for me, but instead of customary awkwardness, all I felt was needy or something like need, a burning of sorts.

  “Professor Wells?” It was Rachel Charles. She held a blue drink with a red umbrella. “I’m shocked to see you in here.”

  “Me too, frankly,” I said. We looked around awkwardly. “Colorful drink.”

  “Yeah, isn’t it? It’s called a Tornado.”

  “Is it?”

  “Is it what?”

  “A tornado.”

  “I guess. It’s not really that strong. I don’t think anything here is that strong.” She glanced up at a screen, then back at me. “May I join you?”

  I took a deep breath, but I didn’t survey my surroundings. I nodded. Rachel sat across from me in the booth. “I can’t believe you’re in here.”


  “I like the occasional beer just like anyone else. And it’s Friday.”

  “To Fridays.” She raised her glass.

  I touched the neck of my bottle to it. “Are you in here often?”

  “Not that often. My friends are over there.”

  I didn’t look.

  “What are you doing here?” she asked. She made a show of letting down her hair.

  “Well, I’m not looking for rocks,” I said.

  She laughed.

  “So, what did I say to get you so interested in geology?”

  “I don’t know. Just the way you talk about it.”

  This was amazing to me since I knew I taught that class asleep on my feet. “Really? That pleases me.”

  After another long silence during which we both stared up at the screen, Rachel asked, “Do you dream in color?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Do you dream in color?”

  “I think everybody dreams in color,” I told her.

  “Why do you say that?”

  “I say that because before the mid-nineteenth century and the invention of photography, no one ever thought about anything being in black and white. There was no concept of the world being anything but color.”

  “That makes sense,” she said. The way she said this made me think she at least believed she dreamed in black and white.

  “Of course, that’s just my theory.”

  “It makes sense.”

  My phone rang. I excused myself and answered. It was my wife. “I’m on campus,” I told her. “Wait, what’s wrong?” She told me that something was wrong with Sarah. “What is it?”

  “I think she’s having a seizure.”

  “Dial 911. I’m on my way.”

  I looked at Rachel. “Emergency.”

  “I hope everything is okay,” she said after me.

  The very strange thing that happened to me during my drive home was that the world turned to black and white. There were no flashing lights in front of my house and that confused me. I rushed inside to find Meg standing in the kitchen.

  “Where’s Sarah?” I asked.

  “The seizure stopped. She came out of it. I never called the paramedics.”

  “Was it a bad one?”

  “It was like the one in the doctor’s office, except it lasted longer and she looked more out of it. She wasn’t convulsing or anything like that.” It was clear that Meg was shaken. I put my arm around her but couldn’t find any words.

  We sat at the table.

  “Tea?” she asked.

  “I’ll get it,” I said. I got up and took the kettle to the faucet. “I’m glad you didn’t call the paramedics. That would have just scared her unnecessarily, I think.”

  “Yes. Where were you?”

  “I was in my office, but I was on my way to my car when you called.” I put the kettle on the stove and set the flame.

  “Sounded like you were in a bar.”

  “I was outside of one. I was parked near Study Hall.” I walked into the kitchen and poured myself a glass of water from the tap. “Did she say anything? Was she aware of what happened?”

  “I don’t really know. I don’t think so.”

  “How could this happen?” I asked. “She’s always been so healthy.”

  There was of course nothing more to say, and so Meg said nothing. And I said nothing more. She retired to the shower to nurse her fear. I moved to the study and found myself staring numbly at the notes I had received through my eBay purchases. The notes had slipped my mind, but now they were again in front of me, bothering me. I wondered how long before my shirt would be sent again, what the hidden note would say, if there would be a note.

  Be4 h4

  I walked into Sarah’s room and looked at her. Her sleep breathing appeared so normal. I wondered whether her dreams were her own, the kinds, the ones she was used to, or if they were tortured and confused. Her face looked peaceful enough; I couldn’t believe how beautiful she was. It occurred to me that I was actually in a dream. How I knew that, why I thought that, was unclear, as none of the usual dream markers were present. But it was a dream, and in it I became terrified, because why would I dream such a mundane, ordinary, normal thing unless in the real, waking world I would find the dream contradicted? When I awoke, would I find my daughter without breath, without light? And then I calmed myself, thinking that perhaps she was not asleep at all but pretending, so as to please me. I awoke and found the diffused light of daybreak at the window and my daughter standing at my bedside.

  “Daddy, I’m scared,” she said.

  I lifted the covers and let her get into the bed beside me, her body against mine as it hadn’t been in so long, since she’d gotten older and such contact was inappropriate or creepy. I held her close and she was four years old again, and at four she was not dying.

  Holding her like that, close like that, we fell asleep and I did not dream.

  Still, we awoke early enough to not feel rushed in our preparation for the day. I made pancakes while Meg squeezed oranges and Sarah tried to get us interested in local news stories in the paper.

  “There was a bear in La Cañada,” she said. “It came down and got into somebody’s pool.”

  “That’s why we don’t have a pool,” I said.

  “We’re close to the mountains. Why don’t we get a bear?” Sarah sipped from the glass of juice Meg put in front of her.

  “Be careful what you wish for,” Meg said.

  We fell into an awkward silence.

  “Maybe a mountain lion on your birthday,” I said.

  “That would be nice,” Sarah said.

  I put a plate of pancakes on the table. “Screw school,” I said.

  “What?” Meg said.

  “We’re going for a hike up the mountain this morning,” I said.

  Meg handed me a glass of juice. “Zach.”

  “What?”

  “You teach today.”

  “I have a sudden cold.” I faked a cough. “I wouldn’t want to get the kiddies sick.” I looked at Sarah. “You look a little feverish.”

  “Skip school?”

  “You don’t want to pass it on, do you?”

  “Mom, will you go?” Sarah asked.

  “You two have a good time.”

  Meg gave me a look I could not read.

  Our established trail was less than half a mile from our back door. It was not much used, partly because it was hidden and not well known, but also because it was not maintained and could be steep and rough in patches. The trail was a trial, my poet wife said just before swearing off the path for good. Had we not grown up with the trail, had we not come to know it so intimately, I doubt we would have used it. As it was, we viewed it as more or less ours, something the two of us shared. The route became indistinct enough in several spots that if unfamiliar, a bit of orienteering was required. For us, it was just a walk in the park. We were on a track that saw little enough human traffic that we occasionally came upon bear or cougar scat or other signs, though we had never seen either. Still, we were sure to make plenty of noise as we traveled.

  I walked uphill behind my daughter. I studied her gait, her big feet landing deliberately, one foot firmly planted before the second moved. Patches of fog hung in the trees above us. As when she was much younger, Sarah wondered aloud whether we could climb into the fog and clear it away like cobwebs.

  About a mile into the hike we came upon a pile of scat. We knelt beside it and gave it a look. There was plenty of hair in it.

  “Too big for a coyote,” Sarah said.

  I nodded. “Whatever it was tried to cover it.”

  “A cat?” she asked.

  “I think so.”

  Sarah looked around.

  I touched the shit with my finger. It was still warm.

  “Yuck,” Sarah said.

  “It’s only shit,” I said.

  Sarah laughed.

  “It’s just a word. A very versatile word. Even though we kn
ow this is shit, and we’ve just found this shit, we can still say, ‘What is this shit?’ By the way, this shit is very warm.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “It means it’s not that old,” I said in a loud voice.

  I could sense Sarah’s alarm.

  “Don’t worry,” I told her. “We just want to be sure that we’re heard. They’re more afraid of us than we are of them.”

  “I don’t think that’s true,” Sarah said.

  “Well, don’t worry anyway. Want to head back?”

  “No way.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  We continued on. “Let’s sing.”

  “Sing what?”

  “What about ‘Lydia’? From the Marx Brothers movie. Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclopedia, queen of the tattooed ladies.”

  We sang.

  Lydia, oh Lydia, say have you met Lydia?

  Oh, Lydia, the tattooed lady.

  She has eyes that folks adore so

  And a torso even more so.

  Lydia, oh Lydia, that encyclopedia.

  Oh Lydia, the queen of tattoo.

  On her back is the battle of Waterloo

  Beside it the Wreck of the Hesperus too

  And proudly above waves the red, white, and blue.

  You can learn a lot from Lydia.

  “Why do you know that song?” Sarah asked.

  “At the Circus was my favorite movie when I was a kid.”

  “I like it too.”

  “Watch the ridge over there. Maybe we can get a distant peek. Maybe see the white tip of its tail.”

  “Why didn’t you name me Lydia?”

  “Good question. We liked the name Sarah better.”

  “And it was Grandma’s name.”

  “There was that.”

  We walked on another quarter mile. I asked Sarah how she was holding up, and she said she was fine. “A lot of people say that we have no seasons. That’s because they don’t look. Look around. These are our autumn colors. Look at the ochre of the redshank on that slope. And the buckwheat is that rusty color, not as dark as the brown of the laurel sumac.”

  Sarah studied the landscape.

  “The world is around us. It’s always changing. Sometimes it takes millions of years to see it. Sometimes seconds.”

  “Us too?” Sarah asked.

  “Us too.”

  Bxb7 Qxb7

  Bxd6 Qxc6