The Time Telephone

by Connie Lacy

  Grandma and I stared at each other in stunned silence, both of us lost in our own thoughts. Why had my mother not told us she found her father? And why didn’t she tell us she had a half sister? I was dumbfounded. It was obvious Grandma was too.

  I examined the picture again, studying my grandfather’s face. He was a good-looking man, in that casual sort of way, like he was the kind of guy who would never be caught dead in a suit. He was tan and slim – no middle-age spread, that’s for sure. His gray hair was tousled and thick.

  On closer inspection, I decided the picture might’ve been taken more like fifteen years ago. Mom was wearing a blue tank top that showed off her toned arms and smooth neck. And she had bangs, which is how I remember her when I was a little girl.

  Leilani appeared to be at least ten years younger. There was no family resemblance, either with Mom or Jack. She had dark eyes and hair and looked like what I imagined a Hawaiian woman might look like. And she looked, well, friendly.

  While I studied the photo, Grandma made us both a cup of tea. She set mine in front of me but carried hers with her as she paced slowly around the kitchen, stopping occasionally to glance at the picture and then stand in front of the window.

  I had so many questions and started to open my mouth several times but realized she wouldn’t have the answers. Why would Mom keep all this secret from us? I mean Jack was my grandfather. Hell, he was Grandma’s husband. Well, ex-husband. She divorced him after he’d been gone ten years. But still. Seems like Mom would’ve told Grandma she found him. And that he had another daughter. And it hit me then that Leilani was my aunt. I wasn’t sure how I felt about that. Then I wondered how my grandmother must feel right now?

  “Grandma?”

  “Hm?” she said, standing in front of the window with her back to me.

  “You okay?”

  “Mm-hm.”

  Using my crutches, I made my way across the room and put my arm around her shoulder. She tried to wipe tears away without seeming too obvious. I’d never seen her cry – she hid it from me after Mom died – and it made my eyes fill up too.

  “I’m sorry,” I said.

  She shook her head as though she couldn’t figure out what to say. Which was kind of a shock to me. I couldn’t decide whether I should give her some space or stay close. So I stayed put, with my arm around her for a moment.

  For me, the box represented another mystery about my mom and maybe a little salt in the wound. It was one more thing she didn’t want to share with me. But for my grandmother, it was so much more. I could only imagine the emotions she must be feeling. The man she loved as a young woman – the man who disappeared, leaving her to raise their daughter alone – turns out to have been living the life of a beach bum in Hawaii. A life that apparently included a whole other family. Maybe another wife. My guess is that Grandma was transported back in time and that the old wound Jack inflicted was suddenly very fresh. Maybe no matter how old we get, there’s still a vulnerable young person somewhere deep inside.

  “I think I need a tissue,” she said, with a little laugh of embarrassment.

  She found a box of Kleenex on the counter and blew her nose and wiped her eyes as I hobbled to the table. I put everything back in the box, except for the letter and the picture, and closed the lid. Then I picked it up and headed for the door to the garage.

  “Are you sure?” she said.

  “Yep.”

  She hurried ahead of me to open the door and I tossed the box onto the pile of stuff from my room.

  “Maybe now would be a good time to read the will,” she said, giving me a weak smile.

  “The will?”

  “I’ve been putting it off but I need to stop dilly-dallying.”

  She opened the top drawer of the hutch and pulled out a thick white business envelope and set it on the table. She sat down and opened it, looking at me when I sighed and giving me an encouraging nod.

  “Okay,” she said, unfolding a stack of papers.

  She began silently reading through the will, explaining that she was executor. She skimmed through the document until she got to the page where my mother divvied up her belongings.

  “Well, if I’d read it sooner, I wouldn’t have been surprised by that letter,” she said, looking up at me over her reading glasses.

  “What does it say?”

  “Well, it says she leaves her house in Hawaii to Jack McConnell, unless he predeceases her, which he did. And since he died before her, then Leilani gets the house. I didn’t know Abby even owned a house,” she said, pausing to take a sip of tea. Then she continued reading. “It says Jack also gets the 2004 Audi that’s registered to her in Hawaii, with Leilani the secondary beneficiary. And Leilani gets all the furniture and household goods in the house.”

  She skimmed further into the document.

  “You get the 1999 Audi registered here. And then she divvies up three investment funds she owned: one for you, one for Jack – or Leilani – and one for… me.”

  Grandma looked surprised when she read that part and took a moment to drink a little more tea.

  “And, finally, she leaves her photo collection to a man named Omar Khalil who, it says here, already has the password to her cloud storage account.”

  She set the will on the table and stared into space for a moment.

  “Who is…” I said.

  “I have no idea.”

  I remembered the pictures I tossed in the dumpster that night at the camera store.

  ~Seventeen~

  The darkroom

  That evening I was propped up in bed, reading Jane Eyre when a loud voice – definitely not Grandma – called my name from the hallway. Before I had time to place my marker and set the book aside, the door swung open.

  “It must be nice to sit back, relax and let your grandmama peel your grapes for you!”

  It was Rikki.

  “Hey, sister!” she said, leaning down and giving me a hug. “I brought you some flowers.” She set a basket of yellow lilies on the dresser. “And – ta da! – your homework!” She laughed as she set two books with papers stuck in them on the desk.

  “Now, you’ll have something to do,” she said. “I know you’re getting bored.”

  I felt myself smiling.

  “And…”

  She held up a bag of Trail Mix and then handed it to me.

  I laughed.

  “And I’ve got an idea,” she continued. “Your grandma told me you’ve got some black and white film in your camera. How about I take it home with me and develop it? Then, you can come over Saturday and we’ll go downstairs to Daddy’s darkroom and I’ll show you how to make prints?”

  I glanced around the room, searching for my camera. It was sitting on the bookshelf.

  “Two o’clock good for you?” she asked, grabbing the camera.

  “Well…”

  “Good! Now, I’ll take this with me.”

  “I...”

  Her eyes took in the bare walls with all the nails poking out.

  “Looks like you could use something on your walls. Maybe you can frame some of these,” she said, holding the camera in front of her.

  Then she draped the strap around her neck and put her hands on her hips.

  “I’ve got to get on home and hit the books.”

  She waved as she closed the door behind her.

  I forced myself out of bed. I was sitting at the kitchen table eating a bowl of Cheerios when Grandma came in wearing her blue robe.

  “Nice of Rikki to come over,” she said. “Sweet girl.”

  “Yeah.”

  “She brought you some homework?”

  “Mm-hmm. And she took my camera so she can develop my film. I’m going over to her house Saturday. Her dad’s got a darkroom.”

  “How interesting.”

  I continued eating as Grandma picked her favorite blue mug from the cabinet.

  “Cup of tea, dear?” she asked.

  “Sure.”

  She put tw
o mugs of water in the microwave. Then she brought tea bags and the mugs to the table, steam rising in soft swirls. I picked my favorite peach tea. Grandma steeped herself a cup of cinnamon apple. The fruity smells intertwined.

  I took a sip and thought again about Inky. I could imagine him lying in the middle of the road.

  “Grandma, didn’t you think Inky was dumb for sleeping in the road like that?”

  “Yes and no. You see, we all knew why he did it.”

  “Why?”

  “Inky was my dad’s dog. He followed Daddy everywhere when he was a puppy. And all through the years, he would lie down near Daddy’s chair by the fireplace in the evening. But when my father got real sick, we took him to the hospital. And he died there. That’s when Inky started lying out in the road. He was – oh – about ten years old at the time. He was waiting for my dad to come home. He’d stand up and wag his tail just a little when he felt a car coming and wander over to the ditch. He’d watch the car go by, stop wagging his tail and go back out in the road. If someone turned into our driveway, he’d get all excited and chase the car to the pecan tree. Of course, it was never my father. Inky just sort of lost interest after Daddy died. Poor old thing. So, we knew why he was lying out there and we didn’t hold it against him. That’s where he wanted to be, you know. He spent half his life waiting for Pap to come home.”

  The last three Cheerios floated in the milk.

  “So you buried him by the road,” I said, shaking my head. “I guess Inky couldn’t help it, but what a waste.”

  Grandma raised her eyebrows.

  “I don’t want to be like Inky. Know what I mean?”

  “I think I do.”

  *

  When I stepped into Mr. Washington’s darkroom I was mesmerized. There was a chemical odor I’d never smelled before. The cinder block walls were painted black. Faded blue area rugs were spread here and there on the concrete floor. There were two large stainless steel sinks. A black timer the size of a big clock hung on one wall, a safelight next to it.

  There was a large contraption on a table that I didn’t know the name for. It looked kind of like bellows aimed toward the floor, installed on a black metal frame. The room had a closed-in feeling because there was no window. I liked it.

  Rikki turned the light off and a feeling of claustrophobia seized me for a few seconds. It was as though I was inside a little black box. Then she turned on the safelight. It was a dim, orange light but as my eyes adjusted, I could see everything in the room.

  “Neat, huh?” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “When you’re making prints on the enlarger, you spend a lot of time like this,” she explained, pointing to the bellows thing.

  I still had no clue how it worked.

  She flipped the overhead light back on and started setting large shallow tubs on the table. She got several brown jugs down and opened one of them. A pungent smell immediately filled the small room. It suited me just fine. She poured liquid into the orange tub.

  “Developer,” she said.

  Then she opened a second bottle and poured it into the tan tub. A different chemical smell mixed with the first one. She turned on an exhaust fan which hummed quietly above us.

  “Stop bath,” she said.

  Then she opened a third brown bottle and poured another chemical into the red tub. This one was really strong.

  “Fixer.”

  She opened another bottle and poured the contents in a fourth tub.

  “Hypo-neutralizer.”

  Then she set the bottles aside and pulled out a box of 8X10 photographic paper.

  “I developed your film,” she said, setting a plastic sleeve that held my negatives on a table. “I went ahead and made contact prints so you could choose which ones you want to make pictures of.”

  She took the sheet of contact prints from a clothesline above our heads and handed me a magnifying glass. I examined each tiny photograph, saving the picture of Kieran for last because I knew she was watching me.

  “I know your boyfriend,” she said.

  “Friend.”

  “Right.”

  I could feel myself blushing.

  “Let’s print the one of your friend first,” she said.

  She turned off the overhead light. When our eyes adjusted to the dim safelight she placed the negative strip with Kieran’s picture in the enlarger. Then she opened the box of paper and unwrapped the inner wrapping, pulling one sheet from the stack. She placed it on the surface of the enlarger, in a tray directly below the negative.

  She set the hand of the timer for 10 seconds.

  “Now we’re ready,” she said. “Here, you flip the switch.”

  When I did, a light came on in the enlarger. A beam of light passed through the negative, making an image on the photographic paper below. I could see Kieran’s face clearly. When the time was up, the timer automatically turned the enlarger off and we returned to the quiet, orange darkness.

  “Now we put the paper in the developer.”

  She lifted the blank sheet of paper from the enlarger and laid it in the first tub.

  “Watch closely,” she said, as she used wooden tongs to gently swish the paper from side to side in the developer.

  The white paper slowly turned light gray and then an image gradually emerged. It was like a ghost appearing out of the mist. I could see a face, hair, eyes, until finally, it was a crisp black and white picture.

  “Kieran’s a nice guy,” she said.

  “Yeah.”

  “A little pushy, though.”

  “Pushy?”

  Using the tongs, she lifted the picture from the first tub and put it in the second tub.

  “Now, the stop bath makes the developer stop working, if you know what I mean.”

  “You think he’s pushy?”

  “Well, I met him in my dad’s photography class at Callanwolde over Christmas break.”

  “Yeah, he told me.”

  She moved the print to the fixer.

  “And then when school started again he wasn’t exactly in my circle of friends, you know, since he’s just a tenth grader.”

  “Mm-hm.”

  “Then one day he comes up to me as I’m dumping my trash in the lunchroom, trying to get to Spanish class, and accuses me of being a racist.”

  “You’re kidding.”

  “That’s what I thought, you know? And I told him he was crazy. And he was like ‘well, I never see you with any white kids.’ And I was like ‘you only see me at lunch.’ And he was like ‘you live a segregated life.’ And I was like ‘who are you to be passing judgment on me?’ And he was like ‘I’m not passing judgment, just making an observation.’ And I was like ‘right.’”

  “No way,” I said, stunned that Kieran would talk to her like that.

  “I thought he was being an asshole, you know. But then I saw you that day you came back to school after your mother died and you were sitting there at the table by yourself. I was thinking some white kids would come and sit down with you. But nobody did. So I thought to myself, if she was black, I’d go sit with her, you know. And that’s when I realized Mister Smart-ass was partly right.”

  She removed the photo and turned on the overhead light. It looked so professional.

  “You can tell he’s not just a friend,” she said, studying the picture.

  She was right. There was something in his eyes.

  “But,” she continued, “I realized it’s a comfort zone thing. Not racism exactly.”

  I was hanging on her every word, stunned that Kieran would’ve said such a thing to her.

  “You see,” she explained, “I didn’t realize my grandmother’s death had affected me so much. She died way before I was born. But her death traumatized my mother and Mom’s feelings seeped into me. My grandmother died when her church was bombed.”

  Pictures of the civil rights movement flashed through my mind. White cops spraying black people with fire hoses, dogs, beatings, lynchings.
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  “My mother didn’t mean to,” she continued, “but she just kind of shied away from white people. And I picked it up by osmosis, I guess.”

  We bathed the picture in the hypo-neutralizer for several minutes and put it in the sink with running water flowing over it, where we left it to wash for about twenty minutes.

  “God, I’m so sorry,” I said. “About your grandmother.”

  “Yeah, there’s misery enough to go around,” she said. “So when Kieran had the audacity to say that to me, I finally had to admit that he was right, sort of.”

  And here I’d been thinking Rikki led a charmed life. That she was beautiful and popular and smart, with a perfect, nuclear family. I guess I’d been so caught up in my own troubles I kind of forgot other people had problems too.

  We spent the afternoon in the darkroom and when we emerged I had eight really nice pictures. I couldn’t wait for Kieran to see them.

  “You should choose one and submit it to the school paper for the arts section,” Rikki suggested as she took them off the clothesline.

  “Thank you, Rikki.”

  “Oh, I love working in the darkroom.”

  “No, really, I mean thank you for everything.”

  “You would’ve done the same thing.”

  “No, I wouldn’t have. Not before, anyway. You know – the comfort zone thing?”

  She smiled just as someone tapped on the door. She opened it and introduced me to her dad, explaining I was interested in photography. So he invited me to sign up for his summer class. And then, he looked at his daughter again.

  “Dunk is at the door.”

  He cocked his head jauntily and for a split second, Rikki looked like a deer in the headlights.

  Thanks, Dad,” she said, looking super uncomfortable. “Could you tell him I’ll be there in a minute?”

  He nodded, smiled at me and then trotted up the basement stairs.

  “Okay,” she said. “I know what you’re thinking.”

  “I’m not…”

  “But it’s like this: yeah, I was trying to hide that I’m dating Dunk. But I was wrong. I was being a wuss, trying to go along with the crowd, looking down my nose at some people because of what they wear or because they’re athletes. I started thinking about my motives when Kieran called me out. It’s true: I was being a snob, you know, an elitist. My dad always tells me: don’t judge a book by its cover. He’s been saying that since I was a little girl. And I finally decided that’s what I was doing with Dunk – judging a book by its cover. Of course, there’s also the fact that I like him a lot, that he’s a great kisser, and he’s actually a nice guy. So I’m gonna come clean with the sisters even though I know they’ll give me hell. Dunk asked me to go to the prom and I said yes.”