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| This picture is from the website, "A Fresh Chapter," by Terri Wingham. It chronicles her travels around the world after being diagnosed with cancer. It's a great site worth checking out. |
Today, that call came at 5:30 in the morning. When the phone rang, it took me a couple of seconds to get myself together, then a couple of seconds to actually find the receiver. When I finally picked up the phone, the caller had hung up. I looked on the caller ID and saw it was my neighbor, Fana.*
I checked to see if she'd left a message on my voice mail. She had not.
I got up, grabbed my keys and went to the front door to see if my car or my sister's car was missing or had been vandalized. They had not.
I looked out my window down the street to see if there was any sort of commotion going on. There was not.
I called my sister, who's usually up early getting ready for work, to see if Fana had called her. My mom was up and answered. No, she had not called.
I tried to go back to sleep.
That poem I wrote has a line that says, "The call, when it comes, is as scary as the stillness."
I tossed and turned, but somehow managed to drift back into a fitful, surreal dreamed semi-sleep.
Until 6:30, when the phone rang again. and the scene from an hour earlier repeated itself. Cats scattered, startled by the ring. I was startled and fumbled in the darkness to find the phone. Again, when I managed to get myself together and answer the phone, the caller was gone. Again, it was my neighbor, Fana. Again, she did not leave a message. This time, I didn't get up or call my family. Instead, I called Fana...and got her voice mail. I left her a message asking her to call me back if it was an emergency, then I fell back into another fitful, surreal dreamed semi-sleep.
It kind of felt like this:
At about 7:42, I woke up and found myself running late. I hurried to get ready for work, feed the cats, and get out the door. At about 8:25, just as I was about to head out the door, the phone rang. It was Fana.
"Hi, I'm sorry I called so early, but I thought you'd be up," she said. "I wanted to ask you something."
"Hi, Fana," I said, sitting down on the side of the bed. "Is everything okay?"
"Oh yeah," she replied. "I was just thinking. You and your family are friends with Mr. Jones* down the street, right?"
"Yes," I said, hesitantly. Mr. Jones is an elderly man who lives on our block. Neighbors keep an eye on him, but he has family who comes by regularly to check on him, and he gets around on his own quite well. At this point, I was worried something had happened to him.
"Well," Fana continued, "I understand he's the only single senior on the block, and he seems to be struggling, so I thought it would be a good idea if we, you know the block club, got together and went to his house to sing Christmas carols."
Our block club has been on a temporary hiatus for about six months. It had only been in existence for about three months prior to the hiatus.
That poem I wrote has a line that says, "The call, when it comes, can barely be comprehended...."
"What?" I asked, working hard to suppress my irritation, thinking to myself, "You called me at all hours of the morning to talk about going caroling?"
"Yes, I think it would be nice. Then we could take up a collection and give it to him as a gift. You know, to help him out. Now your family knows him. Will he be home on Christmas?"
My family and I know him in the sense that my mom was friends with his kids growing up, and we see him periodically when he leaves his house to run errands. I told her we knew him, but weren't close, and that if she had questions for my mom, she should ask her...oh, and she usually wakes up around 9:00.
"Okay, I'll give her a call. Now, I did have one more question for you, because you're a web guru and all."
"What?" I said again. My knowledge of the web and computers could be summed up like this:
"Do you know where I could find a website that gives you Christmas song lyrics? You know, ones I could print out?"
At this point, I didn't know if she was joking, drunk, or just really unstable.
"Well," I said, trying to keep from losing it, "Just go to Google and type 'Christmas Carol Lyrics' in the search box. You'll find all sorts of sites there once you do."
I should note, at this point in the story, that Fana is maybe 15 years older than me, is gainfully employed (she says), has a child in college, a well kept home (will tell anyone who listens it's "the best looking one on the block), and a reputation as being a bit of an aggressive know-it-all.
"That's all?" she said, and it sounded like she sincerely didn't know how to use Google. "Humph! I'll have to look that up. Now I have one more thing to ask."
"Okay," I said, and braced myself for anything.
"You know how, when you see people on the news and they're having candlelight vigils?"
"Yes...." This call, which seemed like it would never end, was making me dizzy.
"Those cup things they have around the candles. What are those?"
In my head, I was screaming things you can't say out loud. Things like, "Is this bitch for real?"
"Fana," I said slowly, like the voice you use when explaining a difficult concept to a kindergartener, "they're paper cups. They just cut holes in the bottoms and slide them over the candles. Sometimes, people just get sheets of cardboard and cut circles to fit around the candles."
"But what kind of candles are those?"
"Just basic dollar store taper candles."
"Wow," she said, "That's pretty easy, but that's a lot of work, cutting those holes."
"Umm, yeah," I sighed. At that point, it was the only response I could manage.
"Well, I'm going to let you go, and I'll call your mother later on to ask her about Mr. Jones. Thanks for your help, and I'll call you back about the plans."
"You do that," I said, told her to have a happy holiday and hung up.
I didn't bother asking her why she'd called me at 5:30 in the morning to talk about this. Why she didn't leave a message - either after that first call or the follow up an hour later. I didn't bother mentioning the block club is, for all intents and purposes, disbanded. I didn't even tell her to go take a leap, even though I fantasized about how I'd say it if I had. It would've sounded like this:
Instead, I called my mom to tell her why Fana had called ("She called at 5:30 for that? Is she on drugs?"), let her know she'd probably be getting a call, and to suggest that when she gets the call, to mention as frequently as possible that Mr. Jones's son is a cop.
I then fed the cats, drove to work, and promptly used my "web guru" skills to access my phone account online and ensure that calls from Fana going forward are blocked.
More later, including the originally scheduled Christmas story.
(I changed the names of my neighbors for privacy's sake. In case you're wondering, Fana is a French term for crazy.)
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