Phone Home
by Jim Burrows
“Your girlfriend called again.”
It was Leila’s running gag. Whenever the phone rang and there was no one there, she’d tell me that my girlfriend called. Then she’d laugh—not a full on laugh, just a little… I don’t know, let’s just say she sparkled. Tinkerbell got her name because her voice sounded like the tinkling of little silver bells. That’s what Leila’s smallest laugh was like, the tinkling of faerie bells. You’d see it on her lips more than hear it. It sparkled like the little kiss she hid there, for special occasions. That was Leila: Wendy, Tink and Mrs. Darling all wrapped up in one.
Every now and then, when I got the phone and no one was there, I’d try her line myself, “Your boyfriend called”. She’d smile and close her eyes—just flutter them a bit—indulgently, as if to say, “Silly boy, that’s not how you deliver the line.” I was always the fool you’d give a thimble to, and… well, not always, but she did give me a little silver thimble once, in a box with a tag that read “sealed with a kiss”. OK. There was a lot of Peter Pan in our lives.
I’d forgotten about saying it that day, just before she went out for milk. I mean, it was a small thing, like the little faerie bell laugh it elicited. You’d think I’d have remembered it. It was the first time I got the laugh from the line. The only time I delivered it just right. She blew me a kiss and sparkled out the door, into the morning fog, just to get some milk. That day. The day she died. The day the faerie bells, and hidden kisses, went away. The fog swallowed her up as she walked out the door. The same fog that hid the speeding car.
I was a wreck. For years. Eventually I got my head together, but it took a long time. It took drinking and giving up drinking. It took ODing on Clapton—Layla and Thorn Tree in the Garden—and Leonard Cohen. It took losing my job and building a whole new career. It took long walks in the mountains, solitary hikes for miles and miles and scores of miles. It took New Orleans, and Quebec, and London. It took listening to John Williams’ Echoes of London while walking through Kensington Gardens—all the places that we’d loved, the places where she’d left little shattered pieces of her laughter, like silver on the leaves of the occasional tree or window pane. It took rain and moonlight. But, somehow, I found myself again.
And then I stumbled on it, the Phantom Phone Booth—not the Toll Booth—the phone booth. It was a classic red British phone booth—not one of the blue police boxes that time travelers usually hide in—a red phone booth, in Glastonbury, just around the corner from the Abbey, the Abbey with its thorn tree in the garden, the Abbey across from the little shop that sold the cream tea, the cream tea she’d loved so much. I’d hiked up the Tor, stopped at the Chalice Well, and listened for the fragments of her laugh in the little stream. I’d had cream tea, and stirred my tea with a silver spoon, the tinkling of the spoon on the good china cup, giving up the tiniest hint of her laugh.
And then I remembered it was my birthday and I hadn’t called my mother—I always call her on my birthday. I’d seen the phone booth not that far away—this was a while ago before we all carried phones in our pockets. Okay, I guess it was a good while back. I paid for the tea, and made sure to get plenty of change, for the phone, and walked back to where I’d seen the phone booth. As I approached, a fog rolled in. I didn’t think much about it. I’d been to London a few days before, and the fog had been like pea soup. So far, though, in Glastonbury, it had been a sunny day. Still, fog, England, whatever.
I placed the call, but before it rang, an operator came on the line.
“Date, please?”
“What?”
“Dial the date, if you please.”
I dialed the date. Well not the current date. I mean I started to, but it was my birthday, you know, so I dialed the date of my birth. Just wasn’t thinking. I was about to say something about that, when she came back on the line.
“Time, please.”
In for a penny, in for a pound. I dialed 1200, the time I was born.
“Thank you.”
The phone started to ring, that funny sound the Brits use to indicate the phone at the other end is ringing.
“Hello, Joe’s Bar and Grill. It’s your dime!”
I staggered back against the wall of the phone booth. That was my Dad’s voice, and his corny line—my dead Dad’s voice, and the line he hadn’t spoken in a decade.
“Hello? Is there someone there?”
I closed my eyes and shook my head. I tried to answer. “Umm. Uh. Hello?”
“Oh, my!” a voice said in the background at the other end, “It’s time!”
“Sorry, son. My wife’s about to have a baby. Gotta go!” and Dad hung up.
I stared at the phone, my mouth hanging open. How?
“Well, you did specify the time and date,” something said in the back of my mind. “Mom still lives in the same house. The same number. You just called it at the time you were born. Presto!”
Yuh, but… But.
“Hey you got another explanation? Other than you’re nuts? Don’t think about talking to yourself.”
But, but… I was grasping at straws. Well, if that was so, she would have been actually giving birth, not…
“Come on, dummy, you know it was five hours from the time her water broke, till you were born! It was a big deal how easy it was to bring you into the world!”
But…
“But me no buts. Five hours? Get it?”
But…
“Five hours? Time zones? Britain to Boston? Five hours?”
But…
“You already said that. If you’re gonna talk to yourself, you gotta pick up the conversation. No good being both crazy and inarticulate.”
A phone booth that can make a call to the past?
“Either that, or you’re crazy.”
Think of what you could do with that!
“You think. Stop and think, boyo!”
I could tell her not to go out for milk!
“Bingo!”
I counted my change. There was more than enough for another call. My hands were shaking as I dialed.
“Date, please?”
I shook out my fingers, and dialed the date.
“Time, please.”
Five hours. Remember five hours.
I dialed the time.
That same British ring.
“Hello,” a voice answered. My voice.
It’s me. Not her! What do I say? How do I explain? How do I make me understand?
“Who is it?” her voice in the background.
“It’s your boyfriend!”
“Say ‘Hi!’ for me.” I don’t remember that! “Love you both!” Her voice tinkled like faerie bells, and he… I… hung up. I stared at the phone.
I tried again, but the line was engaged.
She loved me both!
“At least there’s that.”
Credit: Photo “Portobello's old red phone booth in the fog” by Andrew Girdwood (CC BY 2.0)
Inspiration: My sister, Katey, posted the following quote from Rainbow Rowell (explaining the origin of her novel, “Landline”):
“I like science fiction, I like fantasy, I like time travel, so I had this idea: What if you had a phone that could call into the past?”
And I just had to write this. Now, I guess I’ll have to look into Rowell’s book.