Telephone

by Percival Everett

  I watched my daughter from behind as I had before, studied her terrible beauty, attended to my terrible love. That we shared blood held little meaning for me. I didn’t love her for her blood. I had fallen in love with her. I remembered the moment it happened. Sarah was three months old, and though I was happy, however scared to be a parent, my love for my daughter until that day had felt abstract, amorphous, distant. I was wiping her sour spittle from my shirt when I looked at her rather expressionless little face and I fell. Deeply. Completely. Unforgivably. Now here I was on this arid mountain, in these woods, trailing in her wake. If a bear or lion came from the brush, I would kill it with my hands to protect her. My only job in life was to keep this little animal alive, and I could not do it. Behind her there on that path, I did not consider that I wanted to be a good father, wanted to be a loving father, only that I wanted to continue being a father.

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  There was no bear or lion on that day, though there were plenty of them. We sat and enjoyed the view of Pasadena below, Los Angeles in the distance hunkered under its brown haze. There was no distinct division between the haze and the city below, but between the haze and the blue sky above it. I imagined that up this high we were more in the blue than in the haze. We ate cheddar cheese and yellow translucent apples and drank water from our canteens.

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  I could not say that I was surprised by her castling, but the move always took me in some way to another place. That two pieces could move at once seemed like magic to me, enough so that I wished I could make a similar move in real life. What such a thing would look like I had no idea. “Very clever, Madame Nenarokov.”

  “Where is Mom?”

  “Teaching.”

  “Right.”

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  Outside, it looked as if it might actually rain, but we knew it wouldn’t.

  “What happens when you miss class like you did today?” Sarah asked.

  “Sometimes I make it up, but that’s hard. Usually I simply extend my office hours so the students can come see me if they want. It’s only a big deal if a teacher makes a habit of not showing up.”

  “Oh.”

  “You know, sometimes people just get sick.” I was sorry as soon as I said it, but nothing registered in her face.

  “Grace Tilly got a smartphone,” Sarah said.

  “Really? What will Grace Tilly do with a smartphone?”

  “Call people. Look up stuff.”

  “Do your other friends have phones?” I asked.

  “Not yet.”

  “Then who is she going to call?”

  “So, no smartphone.”

  “I’ll talk to your mother.”

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  The most heartsickening part was that I had come to recognize the bare, vacant expression before it had fully settled on Sarah’s face. This time her eyelids fluttered. Her breathing became alarmingly shallow. She convulsed once and then came back to me as quickly as she had slipped away. Seconds. Her focus became what it had been.

  When Sarah was just months old, she would scare me nightly. She performed a sort of stopgap breathing that left one wondering when and if the next breath would come. I would fall out of bed and stand over her until it did, and then she would breathe on as if all was right with the world. No one ever warned us about these sounds. I felt completely unprepared to care for this creature.

  “What are you thinking about?” Sarah asked.

  “Excuse me?”

  “It’s your move.”

  “Oh.” I studied the board. She was moving me around. I could sense the end coming. “I guess I need to move my king.”

  “I love you, Dad.” This came from nowhere.

  I looked at her face, but she was staring at the pieces in front of her. “I love you too, bug.”

  “Do you like baths?”

  “What?”

  “Baths, do you like them?”

  “I suppose. Gotta get clean every now and then. Why?”

  “Theresa says that baths are better than sleep.”

  “Better how?”

  “I don’t know. More restful, I guess. I told her I didn’t like sleeping and she said I should take baths.”

  “Why don’t you like sleeping?”

  “I don’t know.”

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  In those frightful, horrible flashes of seizure, I apperceived what it would be like to finally lose, surrender my daughter. The episodes were small destructions, and I withered alongside her each and every time. Mere seconds. Infinite seconds. I felt bad, guilty even, for feeling a perverse happiness at having witnessed the seizure alone. I wanted all of my daughter that I could get, and I wanted her selfishly. I wanted to cache moments and freeze them for parceling out over the balance of my so-called life.

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  When I was seven, I watched my father get crushed by the weight of a failed tenure bid. I of course didn’t understand what was going on at the time, but I remembered a change in his posture, how he went from saying, I thought proudly, that he was a professor at the University of Chicago to uttering, almost under his breath, that he was an adjunct professor at Roosevelt. I didn’t know until years later how he had struggled to piece together a life for us, that the unfinished book on Ralph Ellison that had been a passion, that lost him tenure, was now an unfinished book that meant nothing good to him. He took other jobs on occasion, among them driving a taxi, and fell hopelessly into himself. When I was just fourteen, I was the one who found him in the basement with only most of his head intact. My mother and I were not close after that, but I never felt a sense of loss, something I always chalked up to a failure in my character. She took a job at a travel agency after my father’s failed tenure bid and never seemed too happy about it. I always imagined that she left for exotic places every morning, sunny places with palm trees that somehow also failed to make her happy. I left her to join the Marines and she hated that. She died of stomach cancer gone undetected when I was in college. I held her hand while she died, and it felt strangely emotionless, I think for both of us. I was, in fact, quite sad, but she seemed so thankful for her end that I had to respect it. I had been an only child, and with her death I was completely without family. I never felt that aloneness, or at least acknowledged it, until I learned I would lose my Sarah.

  I never told my daughter stories about my parents, my childhood. She was surrounded with stories, very good ones, of Meg’s parents, Meg’s siblings, Meg’s childhood. But I never shared much, my belief being that I didn’t have much to share, that I didn’t remember much, which was true enough. In my mind, in my heart, I had not come into full existence until the birth of my daughter.

  I had taken to working in my office late, or at least starting out there before finding myself at a near-campus tavern. I was in my office at ten one evening when Hilary Gill stopped at my open door.

  “I want to thank you,” she said. “Again.”

  “Why? You did the work.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  I nodded.

  “Why are you so prickly with me?” she asked.

  I was impressed with her directness. I liked it. “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  I didn’t say anything but closed the folder on my desk.

  “You don’t think you are?”

  “I know I am.” I had a notion that she expected or wanted an apology from me. Since I had been thinking about my father, I mentioned him. “My father was an English professor. When I was a kid, I found him after he killed himself. I used to think he committed suicide because he didn’t get tenure.”

  Hilary didn’t know what to say.

  “Now I know it was because he didn’t satisfy himself. I found his so-called dissertation among his things after my mother died. There was no work there. He didn’t receive tenure because he didn’t care about the work. If he didn’t care, then why would that
cause him to kill himself?”

  “Are you all right?” Hilary asked.

  “You kill yourself because you don’t live in this world.” I stopped long enough to see the concern on her face. “I’m sorry, Hilary.”

  “What’s going on?”

  I stood and put things into my bag.

  “Zach?” Hilary came close and put her hand on my arm. “What is it?” She put herself in front of me.

  “My daughter is dying.”

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  It was an innocent enough hug, one meant to comfort a friend upon the discovery of shockingly sad news. I accepted the gesture, received the hug, put my arms around Hilary in response. As we pulled away; however, our faces were mere inches apart. I don’t think I knew who leaned in, who initiated it, but Hilary Gill and I kissed, not much of a kiss, but a kiss nonetheless.

  We stared at each other for a few seconds.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  “It’s okay. You’re upset. I understand.”

  “No, really, I’m so sorry.” I collected my bag and made to leave.

  “Do you need to talk?” she asked. “I’m here to listen. Forget the kiss. You’re upset. Let me be a friend.”

  I rankled at the sound of the word kiss. “I’m quite all right.” I backed her out into the corridor. “I’ve got to get home.”

  “I’m here to talk whenever you want.”

  She was kind or perhaps understanding enough to not ask for any details about my daughter’s condition. I appreciated that, though I was none too happy to have her present at that moment. Without saying anything else, I walked away.

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  It is true that I can find many small flames in one fire. It being a cool night, I made a fire in the place of my house. I was poking at it when Meg came into the room and sat behind me on the ottoman.

  “This was a good idea,” she said. “It’s been a long time since we had a fire? It’s such a nice fireplace.”

  I nodded. “Have you looked in on Sarah?”

  “She’s peaceful.”

  “She would love this,” I said. “Remember how she used to get hypnotized by fire? I’ll make another for her tomorrow night.”

  “She’ll like that.”

  I sat back away from the popping wood. “When did life become such bone ache?” I asked.

  “Remember your idea for a furniture store?” Meg asked.

  “What’s that?”

  “You said you wanted to open a store that sold only footstools and call it the Ottoman Empire. That was on our first date.”

  “And here we are,” I said.

  “Here we are.” Meg cleared her throat, a nervous tic. “I keep waiting to wake up. This has to be a bad dream.”

  I pushed a log and got the fire to flame up.

  “What are we going to do?”

  “We have to be strong for Sarah. What else can we do? We can’t let her be terrified. I couldn’t take that.”

  “Yes.”

  “You know, we’re going to lose her before we lose her.” I hated the way that sounded, almost flippant, but I didn’t mean it to be, of course.

  Meg cried. I did too. But I didn’t pull myself up to sit next to her and hold her. We stared at the fire and wept.

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  I didn’t follow Meg to bed that night. Instead I grabbed a flashlight and took a short hike up the trail. The scariest part of walking at night was before I was on the trail, fearing that I might be spotted by a cop. Still, I practiced no stealth whatsoever but instead shined my light wildly and let my boots fall heavily. Lions are nocturnal, and I wanted my presence known. I felt some relief when I found the path. I didn’t want to go far up the mountain, just far enough that I felt I was in the wild, alone.

  I sat on a big rock and switched off my light. It was not a wise move, but I felt compelled to do it. I was in the deep dark. The sky was clear. I stared up at the sea of stars and listened to the arroyo in front of me. I imagined that I might hear the padded steps of a cougar, but that was unlikely. It was feasible that I would hear a bear popping brush. As a stinky human, I had little chance of experiencing either.

  A familiar sweet smell found me. It was marijuana. Someone was in these woods getting high. I didn’t mind that they were high. I did mind that they were there. I made my way back down the trail, my light off this time.

  Sarah and I sat down to complete our game. I felt little hope for myself. I loved the bloodthirsty look in her eyes.

  “You are a mean person.”

  “I know.”

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  “Ah,” she said and made her move. Rxh2

  I saw my predicament. I knew what I had to do. I resigned.

  “It’s okay, Daddy.”

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  Paris.

  The best part of any flight, long or short, is being able to say that it was uneventful. Sarah slept most of the eleven hours. I was surprised by this but certain of it as I had watched her through the entire flight.

  We made the long hike to passport control and found that things moved rather quickly. Sarah flirted with a little girl ahead of us in line, the zigzagging queue allowing them repeated meetings. I held our three passports. I opened Sarah’s and looked at her eight-year-old face, her eyes big and dark, her hair even wilder than it was now. At the checkpoint the officer smiled and studied me, then smiled at Sarah, glanced at her passport, and asked her name.

  Sarah stared at him and said nothing. The pause was excruciatingly long and awkward. She was not having a seizure, that was clear to me. She had heard the question. She could not find her name.

  Meg nudged her with “Sarah?”

  “Sarah,” she said.

  “Long flight,” I said. That apparently satisfied the man.

  “Are you okay?” Meg asked Sarah.

  “Fine.”

  The officer smiled at Sarah. “Bienvenue en France.”

  “Merci beaucoup,” Sarah said.

  Out of customs and in the taxi, I felt myself fading. It was late morning, and I knew that the best thing to do would be to stay up until the evening, but I was fighting a losing battle. The freeway slowed and I closed my eyes. The rumble of the engine, the wind through the cracked open window beside me, the barely audible French voices on the radio, the fear of having watched my daughter forget her name put me to sleep.

  I was awake long before we arrived at our hotel and none too happy about it. We inched through city traffic on what I was convinced was a meter-serving scenic route. That was fine as Sarah was so thoroughly enjoying the ride.

  “The Louvre, Mom,” she said. “Can we go there today?”

  “We’ll try,” Meg said.

  “Nous sommes mardi,” the driver said. “The Louvre is closed on Tuesday.”

  “Are you tired, Daddy?”

  “I’m fine, sweetheart.”

  We checked into our little hotel off the rue Saint-Placide. As I was told the rooms were quite small, I had reserved two. The rooms turned out to be next to each other with no adjoining door. With both doors closed, I felt so terribly far away from my family. I wanted to crawl onto the bed, not only because I wanted to sleep, but also because I wanted to pull the covers over my head to escape. I stepped into the corridor and gave them a knock.

  Meg let me in. Sarah was lying on the twin bed nearer the window.

  “Is she asleep?” I asked.

  “She lay down and that was it.”

  I took a step and stood over her, studied her face. “She slept the whole way. You think it’s just the excitement?”

  “She forgot her name,” Meg said.

  “We don’t know that,” I said. “Maybe she just spaced out, wasn’t paying attention.” Even I didn’t believe what I was saying. “I guess this is what it’s going to look like.”

  I thought of how we take for granted that the space of the world and the time in which that space exists and in which our immediate experienc
e is located are really the only space and time that matter. Yet somehow I believed, like all others, that moments are causally connected, tied together and moving influence in only one direction.

  “Does your room smell of cigarette smoke?” Meg asked.

  “A little,” I said. “I can’t smell it in here.”

  “I can.” She opened the window a crack, folded her arms across her chest against the cold.

  “France,” I said.

  Meg sat on the sill with her back to the window. “Should we wake her? I don’t want her to be up all night.”

  I nodded. “That sounds right.” I nudged Sarah. “Hey, slug, let’s go out and see something.”

  “What time is it?” Sarah asked.

  “Time to find some grub,” I said. “In French that would be grubsine.”

  “I want a real French croissant.”

  “I’ll bet we can find you one. Croissant or pain au chocolat?”

  “Chocolate.”

  “I say we get cleaned up before we go out,” Meg said.

  “She’s right,” I said.

  “Yeah,” Sarah said. “You stink.”

  “I do, do I?”

  “Yep.”

  “Okay, I’ll be back in ten minutes.”

  “Ten minutes?” Meg said.

  “Fifteen?”

  “Twenty.”

  When traveling, I am always taken by the thought that it was just too easy to get there. I never felt that way merely crossing the continent, but there was something about crossing an ocean. The sidewalk felt just like a sidewalk at home, but it was not. It was a French sidewalk covered with French grime under French feet in French air. We walked down the block and past a few shops, around the corner, and into a patisserie we couldn’t resist. The pastries were colorful and arranged as they would never be arranged back home. Sarah loved the art of it, but still all she wanted was a pain au chocolat. I watched her bite into it, eyes closed. She giggled at the explosion of crumbs and flakes, said, “Parfait.” Meg smiled the way she smiled the first time we put Sarah in a swing at the playground. The child’s smile and laughter were irresistible, and Meg smiled until her face hurt. She was in pain but could not stop laughing and couldn’t bring herself to end Sarah’s pleasure. I ached similarly. I remembered our daughter’s chubby cheeks, so fat that one could see them from behind. She had grown through the air into a tall, thin girl with long feet. As she enjoyed her treat, I hoped that she could not see the sadness in me.