Michelle Belan founded ROOT writers with Gale McGloin and will miss her terribly. She is currently working on a bunch of short stories for a collection as well as two novels, Lucidity, the story of love and memory, and Dead Things, a murder mystery set in the Morningside neighborhood of Pittsburgh.
The last time she submitted anything for publication she took second place in a contest sponsored by WITF and Dickinson College, and the winning story is below…from the days just before smart phones.
DISCONNECTED
So here I sit, holding the cell phone in my hand. I don’t own a cell phone myself. It isn’t that I can’t afford it, though I don’t make much working here. I guess I’m a throwback to simpler times. I don’t even like talking on the phone because it is so impersonal, but using a cell phone seems even worse. Not even wires to connect you. My friend Nicole laughs at me. She says it’s a convenience to have a cell phone, but I disagree. I crave a society where people pay personal visits to each other and leave technology out of it.
So it is ironic that I’ve been given this task. I know my coworkers think I’m odd, but Malcolm was absolutely stunned when I told him I didn’t know the first thing about using a cell phone. “Margaret, girl, you live in a world all your own, don’t you?” He was in the middle of showing me how to use the address book when they brought in a group of kids from a bus accident. So now I’m on my own, pushing buttons and evaluating the possibilities. I must confess that I’m amazed by how much information this little contraption holds. Alex, Andrew, Aunt Carol. That might be a good one. Bruno, Dad. That’s the best prospect so far. I continue to scroll through the list: Debbie, Dollar Bank, Donna, Frank, Harry, Iggy’s (the dance club on Old Main Street?). Jennifer, Jewel. He must spend a lot of time at Iggy’s picking up women. Mom. Different number from Dad, so maybe his folks are divorced.
I don’t feel like deciding yet. M.Y., (is that a person?) Nancy, Nico’s Pizza, Phyl. Quincy’s (found a tooth in my salad there once. A tooth, for God’s sake.) Rachel. Rico. It’s amazing how much you can tell about a person by his address book. Terry, Tony, Victor, Work, and that’s the end of the list. No more procrastinating. So I narrow my choices to four. Aunt Carol, Dad, Mom and Work, because there’s no way to know the relationship with any of the other names. It’s a Sunday, so if he works 9-5, I probably won’t reach anyone, and I can’t ask for him by name, so eliminate Work. Aunt Carol might have more than one nephew, so that leaves Mom or Dad. But which one? Both are local numbers. I choose Mom, and write down the number. I pick up my own desk phone, sturdy and familiar. It’s ringing. My heart is pounding.
“Hello?”
“Hello, m’am, my name is Margaret. I’m calling from East Oaks Hospital.”
”Again with the surveys – look, I just told someone yesterday to take me off your list – and calling on a Sun-”
“M’am, I’m not conducting a survey. I’m…I’m sorry but — there has been an accident and I believe it involves one of your children. Can you get someone to bring you to the hospital right away?”
“Accident? You believe? Which child?”
“I don’t kn-“
“What do you mean you don’t know? Is this a prank call? Rachel, if that’s you, I’ll brain you!”
“M’am, it’s not a prank. A man was brought in less than thirty minutes ago. He had no identification on him, just his cell phone.”
She is silent on the other end. We listen to each other breathe.
“I have three sons. Tony, Victor and Michael. Is he…is he dead?”
“M’am, I think you’d better get down to the hosp-“
“Just tell me, is my son dead?” Her voice is strident. I dare not disobey.
“Yes m’am.”
“But which one?”
I think back to the address book. There is a Tony and Victor in the list.
“M’am, there was no Michael in the address book. There is a Tony and a Victor, so I assume…but I’d hate to be wrong. M’am, can you get down to the hospital? Can I call someone for you?”
I hear her breathing, bigger chunks of air this time. I know that feeling – sob, heave heave, sob, the rhythm of despair and grief and unbearable sadness. I started working here less than three weeks after my mom died, and I repeated that rhythm at least once every day, more if somebody died on my shift. I would run to a rarely-used bathroom, into a stall. Surrounded by cold metal surfaces, my forehead cooled by the door, I could sob uninterrupted. But once, Angela’s gravelly voice crackled from the other side of the stall door. “Marg, honey, you okay?” I guess she recognized my shoes, or maybe people knew more about me than I thought. I cringed at that thought. I didn’t answer, and she left me in peace. Not long after that, the nursing supervisor told me if I couldn’t handle it here, she’d have me moved out of the ER.
“What did you say your name was?” The voice on the phone ends my reverie.
“Margaret. My name is Margaret. And yours?”
“Carol. Carol Benton. My son’s name is – Michael. Michael Young. His father and I are divorced.”
“Carol, would you like me to call someone for you? You should get someone to come down here with you. Would you like me to call his father? There is a Dad listed in the phone. And there is an Aunt Carol.” I stop.
We listen to each other breathe again. It is too much to hope for, but she finally says what we both are thinking.
“Margaret, what is the phone number for Aunt Carol?”
I scroll through the list, and read it out loud – the same number I had just dialed. If she is Aunt Carol, then-
“Oh my God. Oh, thank God. Oh…” her voice trails off. “Oh no. My sister Vivian is staying with me for now, has been for about a month. She had an apartment when she first left Nick, her husband, but she wasn’t making it on her own, so… Well, she’s here until she gets on her feet. Oh, God, Simon. You must have Simon.”
I cringe. I didn’t have anybody, but I know what she means.
“The screen of his cell phone says ‘Party Dawg’,” I offer.
“Well, that fits. Simon is…” Her voice is choked up, but she finishes “Simon’s young, you know, spends most of his time clubbing. That must be Simon’s phone. Oh, God, Margaret-”
She doesn’t have to say anything else. I understand the language of sobs – the higher pitch of joy, the plummeting tone of guilt, each sob and heave conveying their own message as distinctly as morse code. I can translate the relief, the guilt, the sadness. Her Michael is okay and someone else is the dead man.
Carol sobs. “I feel so wretched, you know, but I am so – God, I am so relieved! It’s the call every parent dreads. Poor Viv. My sister has lost so much, and now this. Simon is her only son. Her daughter Rachel is in high school and is staying with us too – that’s who I thought you were, because she was laughing at me yesterday for going off on the telemarketer. Viv is at work now. Oh, God, I’d better go there. Margaret – Margaret, thank you. Thank you for…”
Her voice trails off and we both know what she means. Thank you for doing your job. Thank you for my son not being dead. Thank you for not judging me. It is all there, all in those few words, and I feel closer to her than I have to anyone since my mom’s death. I wonder what she looks like. No, I’m glad I don’t know.
“Thank you, Carol.” It sounds ridiculous, my thanking her, but I mean it. I’m glad she can’t see my tears. “I mean, I’m sorry for Simon. And for your family. When you come to the hospital, come to the ER, but, well, we have had a lot of patients this morning so they may direct you to–to the morgue. It’s down on the ground level. I’m sorry.”
Carol is silent. Sob, sob, heave. Heavy sigh. “Goodbye, Margar-“ Her voice breaks off and we are disconnected.
My phone clicks into its cradle, and I sit back in my chair. I feel dazed, bludgeoned, weepy. The whole call took less than twenty minutes. I am desperate for the privacy of the bathroom stall, but I don’t dare pass the nurses’ station crying again. I cry for my mom, dead a mere two months, but I feel guilty too, because I envy Carol’s joy. I would have given anything to have someone tell me my mother wasn’t dead – somebody else’s mother was. I don’t envy Carol the terrible task facing her. The click of the phone lightened my load, and burdened her. She can’t just disconnect from that. Maybe she’ll think that’s why I thanked her, for saving me from that, bearing it for me. If I hurry, I can be gone before she gets here.