Eye of Flame

by Pamela Sargent

  By the time Cheryl graduated from high school, she could barely bring herself to say anything over the phone even when she was able to answer it. Sometimes words lodged in her throat, forcing her to hang up as she gasped for breath. Sometimes the disembodied voice at the other end of the line seemed alien and unfathomable, and she would find herself hanging up to escape the sound. “We must have been disconnected,” she would tell the caller later. “Lots of trouble on this line lately.”

  When she went away to college, at a university only one hundred miles from her home town, she did not follow the example of other students and plague her parents with collect calls. She never called them at all. Her mother sent her a short letter twice a month; Cheryl mailed a postcard back every six weeks or so. The lives of her mother and father remained uneventful according to her mother’s letters, and she sometimes wondered if they were secretly relieved not to have her living at home for most of the year. Even one shy and docile daughter had occasionally seemed more than the quiet withdrawn couple could handle. Her mother often looked vaguely distressed whenever any of Cheryl’s friends dropped by on their infrequent visits, and her father seemed happiest when he was alone in his den with his books and records.

  Getting through college without having to deal with telephones proved to be simpler than expected. Her roommates usually rushed to answer any calls first, and soon Cheryl had talked them into covering for her. The other girls took messages, called out for pizza, accepted dates, or turned down guys Cheryl wanted to avoid with excuses agreed upon earlier. As time went on, word got around the dormitories that any compulsive phone freak wanting to have a telephone entirely to herself ought to room with Cheryl Manfred. By the middle of her sophomore year, Cheryl was much in demand as a roommate.

  During her senior year, she moved off-campus to an apartment with her friend Beth Terrence. Beth, as had her previous roommates, gloried in the opportunity to monopolize the phone. Because of that, Cheryl was surprised when, only two weeks before they were to graduate, Beth answered the loudly ringing phone, but insisted that Cheryl speak to this particular caller herself.

  “Can’t you tell them I’m not here?” she whispered, terrified as always.

  “It’s important,” Beth replied, and then Cheryl noticed how pale her friend looked and how Beth’s eyes refused to meet hers. “You’d better take this call.”

  Somehow she managed to hold the receiver to her ear and listen as Mrs. Redfern, her mother’s closest friend, told her that both of her parents had died in a car accident. Mrs. Redfern’s choked voice kept breaking as she spoke of rain-slicked roads and of the car going through a guard rail and into a river swollen by late spring flooding. Cheryl knew then that all her terror of telephones, her fear of what might happen to her world if she responded to the ringing, had anticipated this incident, as if the future had been calling to the past through the telephone lines. Even through her grief, she felt a bitter satisfaction. Her fear, as it turned out, had been completely justified. She had been right to fear the phone.

  Nick was pacing in the living room, talking to his mother over the cordless phone. Cheryl knew that her husband was talking to his mother because he was speaking in Greek and also sounded more tense than usual. He spoke to only two people in Greek, his mother and Mr. Vassilikos, the butcher who rented one of the commercial buildings Nick owned. In the three years she and Nick had been married, Cheryl had been unable to learn a single word of Greek, but she could tell to which of the two he was speaking by the tone of his voice. With Mr. Vassilikos, Nick sounded patient and resigned; with his mother, his voice was strained. Both Mr. Vassilikos and Nick’s mother usually called only when they had complaints, one reason to dread their calls.

  Nick’s voice was rising; soon he would be shouting at his mother. They could not discuss even the most innocuous subjects without engaging in histrionics and high drama. Cheryl, out in the kitchen, tried not to listen. She hated it when he was talking on the phone to his mother, and speaking in a language she could not understand only made things worse.

  Mrs. Christopoulos could be complaining about almost anything. She still thought of her mother-in-law as “Mrs. Christopoulos,” since the woman was much too formidable to be addressed by her first name and Cheryl could not bring herself to call her “Mother.” She could endure Mrs. Christopoulos’s annual visits, even if the two or three weeks sometimes seemed like an eternity. Usually her mother-in-law would keep herself occupied by watching soap operas while commenting on the moral degeneracy of the characters, and she liked cooking Greek dishes for her son that Cheryl had failed to master. When Mrs. Christopoulos was here, Cheryl did not mind hearing her conversing in Greek with her son; it saved Cheryl the trouble of having to talk to her. Whatever complaints the older woman might have, she usually kept them to herself in Cheryl’s presence.

  But the telephone, combined with a language foreign to Cheryl, gave Mrs. Christopoulos freedom to vent her feelings and say anything she liked to her son, and Cheryl could never know if her husband was sticking up for her or siding with his mother. She could sense her mother-in-law reaching through the phone lines from a thousand miles away, still clinging to the son who could never give her enough attention.

  Cheryl, tearing at lettuce leaves, wondered what Mrs. Christopoulos was bitching about now. Nick should call more often, even though he called her at least once a week. He should talk some sense into his sister, who was almost thirty and still hadn’t settled down. He could visit her once in a while, or even move back home instead of leaving her to rattle around alone in their old house, and it was about time he visited his father’s grave, which he had not been to since the funeral. He could give up being Nicholas Christopher, as if Christopoulos wasn’t a good enough name for him, and change his name back to what it had been. He could tell Cheryl that it would be nice to have her get on the phone once in a while and say a few kind words to her old and neglected mother-in-law.

  Mrs. Christopoulos could be complaining about any and all of those things, but Cheryl suspected that the lack of telephone conversations with her daughter-in-law was one of the complaints being batted around now. Nick had explained to his mother that Cheryl was shy, which had not done much good. Shyness was a concept that apparently did not exist in Mrs. Christopoulos’s mental universe, where people were classified as either warm-hearted or cold-blooded and neurosis was considered self-indulgence. Cheryl tore up the last of the lettuce and began to peel a carrot, hating the sound of the Greek words she did not know, the words being drawn from her husband out along the telephone lines by his mother’s voice.

  Nick fell silent. She had put the salad into the spinner when he wandered into the kitchen. “Mom tried to call today, twice,” he said.

  “Must have been when I was out getting groceries.”

  “She tried at ten o’clock her time, and again at around two.”

  “Oh. Well, I had to go over to the mall to see if that screwdriver you ordered came in.” She had decided to save her excuse about having an appointment with the personnel manager at Trahel Engineering for another time.

  “You could have phoned the store about that.”

  “I was going there anyway. Benetton was having a sale. I don’t know why she was calling anyway, when she knew you’d be at the office.”

  “Maybe she wanted to talk to you. Ever think of that? You are her daughter-in-law. It wouldn’t hurt if you’d try to be a little friendlier to her.”

  “I do try. All she ever talks about is the soaps, cooking tips, what a fine little boy you were, and all those crazy people who lived in her village in Greece.”

  “They weren’t crazy. It was just a different way of life. Look, I know she’s a little difficult. She can drive me nuts sometimes, but she’s not a bad person.” Nick leaned against the counter and folded his arms. “You’re not answering the phone again. I’ll bet that’s what it is. I never get an answer when I call home, either.”

  She stared at the salad, unable t
o reply.

  “I got rid of the old phone. I thought that’d help. I know that old ringer brought back some bad memories.”

  He knew about the call that had told her of the death of her parents. That call, she had let him believe during the years he had known her, was the source of her inability to handle telephones; he did not know that she had suffered from her fear of phones since childhood. He had been patient, making excuses to his mother and their friends and taking care of all their phone calls himself. Her anxiety still persisted, making her queasy whenever the telephone rang, even when he was there to answer it. Sometimes, unable to control herself, she would find herself begging him to let it go on ringing and not to answer it at all.

  “An answering machine,” she said. “We can get an answering machine. It’s about time we had one. Everybody else in the world does.”

  “You know I can’t stand those damned things. It’s bad enough having to have one at the office—I don’t want one in my home.”

  Cheryl had never been enthusiastic about getting an answering machine herself, not wanting to dwell on anything having to do with telephones. Now she was wondering why she had not seriously considered such a device before. The machine could answer the phone for her. She could surely calm herself enough to listen to messages left hours before. The machine could screen calls, meaning that she might actually be able to overcome her phobia enough to pick up the receiver once in a while. An answering machine might even cure her.

  “I used to feel the same way,” she said, “but you know how it is. Once everybody else has something, you almost have to get it yourself in self-defense. I mean, people sort of expect you to have them, so they can leave messages if you’re not around and not feel they have to keep calling back.”

  “I still don’t see—”

  “Look, if I get a job, we may need an answering machine. There wouldn’t be anyone here during the day to take calls then.” Not, Cheryl admitted to herself, that there was much chance of her getting any kind of a job soon, although it eased things with Nick to pretend that she was looking for one. Too many jobs—almost all of them, in fact—seemed to require encounters with telephones sooner or later.

  “You’re not taking calls now,” Nick said. “You’ve got to get over this, Cheryl.”

  “You’re right.” She turned toward him, trying to smile and look determined. “That’s why we should get a machine. I’ll be able to know who called, and if I can screen calls, so I know what to expect, maybe I can get into the habit of answering.”

  “I suppose it’s worth a try.”

  “It is. I’m sure. I know it’ll help,” she said, wanting to believe that.

  Cheryl had gone back home after graduating from college. The attorney handling the estate of her parents had told her that she was the sole heir, which was hardly a surprise. Each of her parents had been an only child, too.

  The details of the estate were as tidy as her mother’s house had been. The mortgage was paid off, the house now belonged to Cheryl, and there was enough money from cautious investments and an insurance policy to give her a modest annual income. It had been surprisingly easy to move back home, and to tell herself that she might as well stay there until she decided what to do.

  The house was still as quiet, as peaceful, as it had been when she was a child. Days would pass in which she got up late in the morning, ate her usual breakfast of cereal and fruit, took her early afternoon walk, and spent most of the rest of the day reading one of the books in her father’s den or a volume borrowed from the town library. Occasionally people who had known her parents or one of the few old school friends who still lived there would invite her to dinner. When she was feeling especially adventurous, she would drive to Wellford, the nearest city and only a hour away, to shop in its new mall and see a movie.

  Only the telephone disturbed her tranquility. She had grown so used to other people answering it for her that she could not pick it up herself or even bear listening to it after two or three rings. There was no reason for anyone here in town to call her. She always made the rounds during her walks, passing the houses and shops where she was likely to run into anyone wanting to see her later; the people in town knew her routine. She wrote letters to her college friends, although their responses were becoming less frequent. Soon she had turned off the telephone; the damned thing could ring all it wanted to as long as she couldn’t hear it. There was, she realized, no reason why she had to have a phone at all as long as she lived here, yet she could not bring herself to have it disconnected.

  Somehow, she needed the phone there, much as she feared it. She would gaze at the telephone and think: If it weren’t for you, everything would be fine. I wouldn’t have anything to worry about then; I’d be content. It’s your fault that I’m afraid. Such thoughts soothed her, reminding her that only an intrusive technology over which she had no control was responsible for most of her fears.

  Eventually, Cheryl sometimes told herself, she would come to grips with her fear, maybe by forcing herself to make the occasional call to the local doctor or dentist for an appointment instead of dropping by to schedule one in person. She could work up to the occasional personal call and eventually to picking up the phone when it rang. But whenever she had such thoughts, her mouth grew dry and her body stiffened with fear. She would be hearing nothing but a voice, one created from electronic signals. There would be no visual cues to tell her what the unseen person might be thinking. She would be nothing except an insignificant, halting, hesitant voice herself, an invisible being that the one at the other end of the line could easily crush with only a few words. One call could destroy the peace she had managed to find.

  The lines snaked down telephone poles, along streets, and through windows, then slipped into telephones. The world was encased in a web of shining wires and fiber optic cables over which voices babbled, shrieked, moaned, muttered, and screamed. No matter how many hallways she ran through and how many doors she closed behind her, she could not escape the tentacles through which all the world could demand her attention. Once she picked up the receiver, her thoughts would be drawn out of her, her soul trapped inside the wires.

  Cheryl woke, afraid to move. The dream was a warning. The telephone was just waiting to ensnare her in its net along with everyone else.

  The telephone on the night stand chirped, making her tense. She gritted her teeth, knowing that the answering machine would take the message after four more rings. She counted them, then let out her breath when the phone fell silent.

  At last she forced herself out of bed and went downstairs. Nick had bought an answering machine with a cordless receiver; the device sat on an end table in the corner of the living room, its light blinking at her. Two calls had come in already that morning; she had heard the phone ring earlier, before falling asleep again.

  Cheryl lifted her hand, steeling herself to retrieve the messages. Her finger moved toward the “message” button, then froze. She could not know what was on the tape, what she would hear. The machine had not eased her fear, but had only compounded it. Nick had installed the machine three weeks ago, and she had not retrieved a single message. Even if she listened to the messages, she would never be able to return the calls.

  Nick could listen to the messages later, not that this would solve anything. In fact, it would only make matters worse. He now had something else to hold against her; not only did she refuse to take phone calls, she left all the messages for him to handle.

  The phone suddenly rang. Cheryl stiffened, knowing that if she did not pick it up, she would still hear the caller when the machine began to take the message. There was no escape. She longed to grab the machine and dash it against the wall.

  Somehow she seized the receiver and pressed it to her ear. “Hello?” she squeaked.

  “Hello,” an unfamiliar male voice responded, “am I speaking to Mrs. Christopher?”

  “Wrong number!” Cheryl screamed, then hung up and fled from the room.

  Altho
ugh Cheryl had welcomed a calm, serene life far removed from the turmoil of most of the world, she began to grow restless after nearly two years of living alone in her parents’ house. She had taken on a part-time job at the local library two days a week, work that required her only to shelve volumes and arrange displays near the desk, but felt the need for more activity to fill her time. She did not see the people she knew here as often, and their conversations with her were more brief; their invitations to dinner came less frequently. Sometimes she could even feel that they were avoiding her.

  While in Wellford one day, she picked up a flyer from the local branch of the state university listing evening non-credit courses for adults seeking self-improvement. During her next trip, she went to the small campus on the outskirts of Wellford to sign up for a course, knowing it would be impossible to register over the phone. Over the next two years, she took courses in calligraphy, conversational Spanish, Chinese cooking, and drawing. There was no need to call up any of the students in her courses, since they could easily get together after class for the occasional bull session, and she never grew close enough to anyone to worry that someone might try to call her. By now, she supposed, her phone would almost never ring even if she turned the ringer back on. She was safe.

  She met Nick Christopher after signing up for a course in macramé and going to the wrong classroom, where Nick was teaching a course on rental property management. He was a lawyer by profession and a stocky, energetic man with curly black hair and a wide grin. “Why don’t you check out my first lecture?” he told her. “Maybe you’ll want to switch to my course,” and she had been powerless to leave his class after that.