Connections

The phone company used to give phone books away free. I have one for every city in the state of Michigan. People think I'm kidding when I tell them that one day they delivered thirty big boxes full of phone books to my apartment door. All four hundred or so of them are stacked in milk crates against my living room wall. I stole the milk crates from work.

I sit on the floor, flip through the white pages, and call. At first it didn't matter who it was. I would just point out a name in the shadowy light of the aquarium and push buttons on the phone.

There is always a moment of anxiety while it's ringing. I sit there with the phone crooked, twisting the cord around my finger, watching my fish swim back and forth in their tank, my breath shallow and turning to glass in my throat when I hear a voice: "Hello?"

I think I have heard every possible way a human being can say that word.

It was just a game at first. Any name connected with a voice: male, female, old, young. Just a voice. I don't need to talk. People will say, "hello" a few times and then hang up. Sometimes they say hello and then wait a while, as if expecting a response. But I never talk. And I never, ever hang up first.

Some of them take it on as a contest of wills, I think, but I just like the idea of being connected with someone out there in the world. Eventually, they all grow tired of waiting and hang up, but I cling to that silence until they do.

As my calls grew more frequent, I became more selective. Once I figured out how to make my name show up as "Private" on Caller-ID, I'd call the same numbers sometimes. Men are the most interesting. I like the deep, secret sound of their voices.

Most of my calls are local, but sometimes I'll take out phone books from small places in the state I've never heard of. Once in a while, for variety, I'll discard the phone books and just dial. Once I called California and tried to imagine the warmth.

I don't tell people about it. People don't understand me. I know I would just get those strange and steady looks, like the one the UPS guy gave me when he delivered my phone books. I think he thought I was insane. That's okay. Sometimes I think so too.

~*~

I used to go to college, but that feels like a long time ago now. And I don't talk to my mother anymore. Its sounds like a non-sequitur, but those two things are related. My mother couldn't live with my decision to leave the University of Michigan—her alma mater, that prestigious institution. My father would have understood my reasons for leaving, I think. But he died when I was fourteen and left me with my mother.

My mother... she used to shop at Kroger's until she discovered I work there as a cashier. She shops down the street at Farmer Jack's now. I see Clyde's car there on Sundays. You can't miss it, a huge turquoise Cadillac with red interior.

Clyde is mother's second husband. She remarried three years ago. I stood up in the wedding in a pale pink dress that was also my formal for senior prom. Clyde wore plaid pants and smoked cigars through the whole reception. I hate him. I almost retched when I had to watch him take the garter off my mother's leg. I swear, he was leering and drooling, and my mother, feigning innocence, was blushing like some sixteen-year-old.

My mother—I think she's the one person in the state I haven't called in the past two-and-a-half years.

I live in a one-bedroom apartment with fish I named after the seven dwarves and four more I named after the Monkees. I was going to name them after the Beatles, but I didn't want to name one after John or George because they're dead. I named my first fish Martin, after Martin Luther King Jr., and he died. I held a mini-funeral for him, and cried when I had to swish him down the toilet into the unknown world of the sewers.