Wall Phone

Alex Ori

James was two seconds too late. He knew this as he picked up the phone hanging on his kitchen wall. (The phone’s color was a dull white that, when he thought about it, just made him sad––he thought colors like that shouldn’t be allowed to exist, that sort of color had nothing to say and was purely based on utility, a color which brought nothing into the world, and yet found itself as the focal point of his family’s kitchen.) He decided to pick up the phone anyway, in part because he had run all the way down from the second floor, and in part to hear the dial tone’s stubborn sound, and for a millisecond pretend that it was her. But the person who had just called––unanswered––was probably not her. And he had many reasons to believe this. It was Tuesday, a quarter after four (time that sits between when James walks home from school and his parents arrive from work). This meant that she was probably at swim practice, an activity in which all girls worth noticing participated in. Yes, she was in some pool somewhere. Also something to consider: she had never called on a Tuesday during the hour of four, or any hour of any day for that matter. She had never once called his house at all and probably didn’t know his number.

James stood there in a Pink Floyd t-shirt––an accidental homegoing gift from his older brother, who had mistakenly left it behind after leaving for college––and plaid Bermuda shorts. While his brother was careless enough to leave three shirts behind, he had not left any shorts, which now posed an extreme burden on his younger brother. Their mother suffered from several mental illnesses, one of which was Loving Plaid, especially on pants and in autumnal burnt oranges and reds. Earlier that day the girls in his grade looked at him and giggled, an act of allegiance to their girlhood. They huddled in their clusters of white ankle socks and patent leather loafers––most of them were named Sarah and Karen and Shannon; most of them liked being named Sarah and Karen and Shannon. Their giggling wasn’t malicious, they weren’t making fun of him. They found James, and his disregard for them, and his apparent disregard for wearing something that wasn’t plaid and hideous, to be endearing. In later years, this would be what they meant when they described their type as confident.

The phone knew what James thought of its color. But really, it knew that its color was eggshell, not lifeless at all, but the opposite, the precursor of life, the promise. The fact that James couldn’t come to this conclusion––they were in a kitchen after all, with a carton of them practically screaming at him from the pale yellow refrigerator––was concerning. It wondered how James was doing in school. The phone felt how it imagined prostitutes did. It didn’t know exactly what its service was anymore; touch no longer meant connection, but the onset of disappointment. It wondered with James: who was on the other line, who had called at this hour? The late afternoon hours, three to five, were quiet for a house phone. The last time someone had called at this time was two weeks ago, but James wasn’t there to answer it. Instead it was his mother, who had taken off the afternoon from her secretarial job (it didn’t know the reason why, it was only just a wall phone). Her older son had called from college. His voice came softly through the receiver, he was “homesick.” The phone had not heard of that condition before, and worried for his health. To be honest, the phone missed the older one––it had become acquainted with him over the last year when he started dating a girl who would call after the family had gone to bed. It felt honored to share their secret conversations, bear witness to the “I love you”s that came out as whispers. He was deferential and listened as she talked about bombings and Richard Nixon and what they were going to do about college. It had learned so much from them.

James started to play with the phone’s cord. He thought it looked like a shrunken intestinal tract. Did he remember when his older brother, before he took up buying Eagles tee-shirts and being a boyfriend, split his side open while climbing the tree in their backyard? In a flare of divine ingenuity (or so they thought) the boys hammered nails up the trunk, each about two feet apart. The nails supported James’ weight just fine (he couldn’t have been more than five years old at the time, possessing a sort of kinetic energy that practically made him float), but his brother, six years older, heavier on all accounts, only made it to the fourth nail (about ten feet off the patched, brown dirt). He had slid. His skin ripped open like it had been unzipped. He had fainted––from shock, the fall, seeing his body open out, the way August heat felt on his raw muscle, slathered over like ointment. What the opening really looked like was a vagina, but James had not seen one yet. James thought that his brother had died––right in front of him, in front of their house, in the suburbs. He thought he saw his brother’s soul slip out from the gash. James didn’t know how big souls were, but he thought his brother’s would have been small, not fully grown, able to escape from the deep laceration and go somewhere far––the nearest city, China, to the Church they went to on Christmas Eve. Go get your mother, the gash seemed to say to him. But his mother was in the kitchen, pulling the chicken they would no longer eat for dinner. She was thinking about her sons, wishing they were girls.

James looked down at the phone. Maybe it was time for him to call his brother. James had not called him since he left for school, at least not alone. They hadn’t had a phone call that didn’t begin with his mother heralding James to the kitchen, over to the wall phone, because Brady was on the line. How were his History classes, James would ask. How’s long distance love? Guess what I’m wearing! No, think about it––think about what you are missing, what you left behind. His brother would laugh, and the scar tissue on his side would inflate and deflate. He would know––the Pink Floyd tee-shirt.

James started to dial. What was his number?

Alex Ori is a student at Yale University majoring in English.

ABOUT THE ART | Regina by Lexa Pulido Rodriguez, 2024. Lexa Pulido Rodriguez is a student at Yale University.