the wires of the telephone are tangled around me

The phone seems to loom over him.

It's almost like it's taunting him, just begging him to put in her number, see what'll happen.

Freddie picked out the blandest most neutral-color phone he could find and it still sucks in all his attention.

Damn his wandering mind, sometimes he almost considers it. He's chess champion of the world, his name's in all the headlines, surely she's not dense enough to fail to draw a connection between the Freddie Trumper she didn't bother to raise and the one winning game after game for the country. All his childhood memories are fuzzy at best and entirely blocked out at worst, but surely he had the same curly blonde hair and the same sparkling eyes as a kid that he does when he appears on the front page, in that way that any mother is supposed to recognize. Any mother. Right?

Maybe she sees his photos, sees the pain hiding behind his smiles, and just maybe she realizes what role she played in causing that pain. Is that the same forced smile he showed the new stepdad the day he barged into their house? Maybe she reads CHESS CHAMPION FREDERICK TRUMPER HAS CHILDISH OUTBURST AT PRESS CONFERENCE IN ANTICIPATION OF '79 CHAMPIONSHIP and just maybe she realizes it's her fault that he acts that way. Are those the same tantrums he threw when he mirrored his mother's behavior to get her attention?

Maybe that's why he acts the way he does even when he knows he's in the public eye. Maybe he wants her to see.

The phone seems to loom over him.

Florence talks about her father sometimes. Freddie listens, he tries to at least, but he can't swallow down the bitterness — he may be gone, he wants to snap, but at least he never hurt you. At least his telephone number doesn't bounce around in your brain and you calculate your every move as a middle finger to him on the off-chance he sees it. At least everything is said and done.

Freddie doesn't say this, he just nods along and dispenses soulless "I'm sorry, honey"s just like how he learned from his mom. Half the time he doesn't even look up from the chessboard he's practicing on.

Unlike his mom, he's not a particularly good actor, and this leads to lots of fights with Florence. She knows he doesn't care and he can't let his walls down enough to tell her why.

And he hates fights with Florence. The sound of a woman yelling makes his blood pressure rise like nothing else.