Landline (12 page)

“Yeah.” Georgie didn’t want to tell Heather that it wasn’t that simple. That Neal made her breakfast even when he was pissed; sometimes he did it
because
he was pissed. As a way to act like he was present in their relationship, even when he was chilled through and barely talking to her.

“When I was a kid,” Heather said, “I always thought Neal was your Prince Charming.”

Georgie’s weirdly happy feelings were rapidly fading. “Why?”

“Because I could remember your wedding. . . . That big white dress you wore and all the flowers, and Neal was so handsome—he totally had Prince Charming hair, he still does, like Snow White’s Prince Charming—and he called you ‘sunshine.’ Does he still call you ‘sunshine’?”

“Sometimes,” Georgie said, glancing over at the phone.

“I thought he was so romantic. . . .”

“Do me a favor.”

Heather looked suspicious. “What?”

“Call the house phone.”

“What?”

“The landline,” Georgie said. “Call the landline.”

Heather frowned, but picked up her cell phone and dialed.

Georgie held her breath and watched the yellow rotary phone. It rang. She exhaled and reached for it. “Hello?” Georgie said, looking at Heather, knowing she must look disturbed.

“Hi,” Heather said, “do you feel like waffles?”

“No,” Georgie said. “Love you, bye.”

Heather smiled. “Love you, bye.”

Georgie took a shower in her mom’s bathroom. Her mom’s shampoo smelled even worse than Heather’s. Like marzipan.

She put her jeans back on, and Neal’s black T-shirt. Her bra had seen better days, but it was still wearable. She decided her underwear had gone too many days to be mentionable; she shoved them to the bottom of the trash and went without.

Maybe you should get a change of underwear when you go home to get your wall charger
, her brain said.

Maybe you should shut up
, Georgie thought back at it.

After she was dressed, she sat on her bed and looked at the rotary phone.

Time to deal with this.

She picked up the receiver and steadily dialed Neal’s parents’ house.

His mom picked up after the third ring.

“Hello?”

“Hi . . . Mrs. Grafton,” Georgie said.

“Yes?”

“It’s Georgie.”

“Oh, hi, Georgie. Neal’s still asleep. He must have been up pretty late. Do you want him to call you back?”

“No. I mean, just tell him I’ll call later. Actually, I already told him I’d call later. But—I was going to ask him something.” She couldn’t ask about the president; that would seem mental. . . . “Do you happen to know who the Speaker of the House is?”

Neal’s mom hummed. “It’s Newt Gingrich, isn’t it? Did it change?”

“No,” Georgie said. “I think that’s right. His name was at the tip of my tongue.” She leaned closer to the base of the phone. “Thanks. Um, bye. Thanks.” She dropped the receiver onto the hook and stood up suddenly, taking a few steps away.

Then she dropped to her knees and crawled under the bed, reaching for the telephone outlet and unclicking the plug. She pulled the cord away, then backed out from the bed and crawled to the opposite wall, staring at the nightstand.

She had to deal with this.

It was still happening.

She had to deal with it.

Possibilities:

1. Persistent hallucination.

2. Really long dream. (Or maybe normal-length dream, perceived as really long from the inside?)

3. Schizophrenic episode.

4. Unprovoked
Somewhere in Time
scenario.

5. Am already dead? Like on
Lost
?

6. Drug use. Unrecalled.

7. Miracle.

8. Interdimensional portal.

9. It’s a Wonderful Life
? (Minus angel. Minus suicide. Minus quasirational explanation.)

10. Magic fucking phone.

She had to deal with this.

She sat in the car and plugged in her iPhone. No missed calls from Neal. From thirty-seven-year-old, real Neal.
(Why wasn’t he calling her? Was he really this pissed? Neal, Neal, Neal!)

She dialed his cell phone and didn’t even flinch when his mom answered.

“Georgie?”

“Margaret.”

“I knew it was you this time,” his mom said, “because I saw your photo on the phone. Who are you supposed to be? A robot?”

“The Tin Man. Hey, Margaret, who’s the Speaker of the House?”

“Oh, I don’t know. Isn’t it that Republican with the piercing eyes?”

“I don’t know,” Georgie said, realizing that she really didn’t.
Who came after Nancy Pelosi?
“It’s not Newt Gingrich, though, right?”

“Oh, no,” Margaret said. “Didn’t he just run for president? Are you doing a crossword?”

That would have been an excellent cover; she should have told the other Margaret she was doing a crossword. “Yes,” Georgie said, “hey, can I talk to Neal?”

“He just stepped out.”

Of course he did.

“Didn’t he call you yesterday?” Margaret asked. “I told him you called.”

“I must have missed him,” Georgie said.

“Here’s Alice, do you want to talk to Alice? Alice, come say hi to your mom. . . .”

“Hello?” Alice sounded far away.

“Alice?”

“Talk louder, Mommy, I can’t hear you.” She sounded like she was sitting across the room from the phone.

“Alice!” Georgie tipped her own phone away from her ear and shouted. “Pick up the phone!”

“I am!” Alice shouted. “But Dawn says you shouldn’t put cell phones on your head, or you’ll get cancer!”

“That’s not true.”

“What?”

“That’s not true!” Georgie yelled.

“Dawn said! Dawn’s a nurse!”

“Meow!”

“Is that Noomi? Let me talk to Noomi!”

“I don’t want Noomi to get cancer.”

“Put me on speaker phone, Alice.”

“I don’t know how.”

“It’s the button that says ‘speaker’!”

“Oh . . . like this?”

Georgie put the phone back to her ear. “Can you hear me?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Alice, you’re not going to get cancer from the cell phone. Especially not from a few minutes on the cell phone.”

“Meow.”

Alice sighed. “It’s not that I don’t trust you, Mommy, but you’re not a nurse. Or a doctor. Or a scientist.”

“A scientist!” Noomi said, giggling. “Scientists make potions.”

“How are you guys?” Georgie asked.

“Fine,” they both said. Why did Georgie even ask that question? It always made them clam right up. She’d be better off arguing with them about brain cancer.

“Where’s Daddy?”

“He’s at the grocery store,” Alice said. “We’re gonna make all Grandma’s famous Christmas cookies. Even the ones with Hershey’s Kisses that look like mice.”

“They have cherries for bottoms,” Noomi said.

Alice was still talking: “And we’re gonna make peanut butter balls and green Christmas trees, and Grandma already said I could use the mixer. Noomi’s gonna help, but she has to stand on the chair, and Dawn says that sounds dangerous, but it won’t be, because Daddy will hold her.”

Nurse Dawn.
“That sounds wonderful,” Georgie said. “Will you save me some cookies?”

“Meow!”

“Sure,” Alice said. “I’ll have to get a box.”

“Meow, Mommy!”

“Meow, Noomi.”

“We have to go now because we’re getting the kitchen ready.”

“Alice, wait—will you give Daddy a message?”

“Uh-huh.”

“Will you tell him that I called to say I love you?”

“I love you, too,” Alice said.

“I love you, honey. But tell Daddy that I love
him
. Tell him that’s why I called.”

“Okay.”

“I love you, Alice. I love you, Noomi.”

“Noomi’s in the kitchen with Grandma now.”

“Okay.”

“Bye, Mommy.”

Georgie started to say good-bye, but Alice had already hung up.

Someone was knocking on her windshield.

Georgie lifted her head off the steering wheel. It was Kendrick. She couldn’t really hear what he was saying. She rolled down the window.

“Are you okay?” he asked.

“I’m fine.”

“Okay.” Kendrick nodded. “’Cause, the thing is, you look kind of like you’re sitting in your car crying.”

“I’m done crying,” she said. “Now I’m just sitting in the car.”

“Oh, well. Okay.”

Georgie rolled the window back up and hid her face in the steering wheel.

There was more knocking. She looked up.

“You’re blocking me!” Kendrick shouted—so that she could hear him, not because he was angry—and motioned at the open garage where his truck was already running.

“Sorry,” Georgie said. “I’ll just . . .”

She put the car in reverse and backed out of the driveway.

She’d just go to work.

Options:

1. Call doctor. (End up on drugs? Possibly institutionalized . . . Would at least earn Neal’s pity.)

2. Consult psychic. (Pros: Very romantic-comedy. Cons: Sounds time intensive; have always disliked strangers’ living rooms.)

3. Pretend this never happened. Just have to avoid yellow phone, apparently . . .

4. Destroy yellow phone? (Conduit to the past too dangerous to allow. Nightmare scenarios possible, i.e., what if Marty McFly’s dad doesn’t take his mom to the prom?)

5. CHRIST ALMIGHTY. I DO NOT HAVE A CONDUIT TO THE PAST.

6. Call doctor?

7.

7.

7. Keep playing along?

“Ma’am?”

“I’m sorry, yes?”

“That was a Venti vanilla latte, right?”

“Right,” Georgie said.

“You can go ahead and drive through.”

Someone honked, and Georgie checked the rearview mirror. There were at least five cars behind her.

“Right,” she said. “Sorry.”

If this were a movie . . .

If there were an angel . . .

Or a machine that told fortunes . . .

Or a magic fountain . . .

If this were a movie, it wouldn’t be random. A random call to a random point in the past. It would
mean
something. So what did this mean?

Christmas 1998:

Georgie and Neal went to a party. They fought. Neal dumped her—at least, she thought he was dumping her. And then, a week later, he proposed.

And now she was talking to him during that week, that lost week. . . .
Why?

Was she supposed to change something? If this were
Quantum Leap
, there’d be something specific she was supposed to change.
(This is not
Quantum Leap,
Georgie—this is your life. You are not Scott Bakula.)

But
what if
. . .

Christmas 1998. They fought. Neal went home. He came back. He proposed. They lived not-exactly-happily ever after. Wait, was
that
what she was supposed to fix? The not-exactly-happy part?

How was she supposed to fix something like that,
over the phone
, when she wasn’t even sure it was fixable?

Christmas 1998. A week without Neal. The worst week of her life. The week he decided to marry her . . .

Was Georgie supposed to make sure that he didn’t?

“I
don’t know what to say,” Seth said. He was leaning on the white-board, frowning at her Metallica T-shirt. “On the one hand, your hair is wet, so you’ve obviously showered and changed. I applaud that. On the other, I miss the velvet jogging pants. . . . Georgie? Hello?
Hey
.”

Georgie stopped trying to plug her phone into her computer and looked up at him. He’d kicked away from the wall and set his hand on her shoulder.

“I know I’ve been asking you this all week,” he said, “but I’ll try one more time—are you okay?”

She wound the USB cord around her fingers. “If you could travel into the past and fix a mistake, would you?”

“Yes,” he said, without even thinking about it. “Are you okay?”

“Yes, you would? You’d mess with the past?”

“Absolutely. You said there was a mistake—I’d fix it.”

“But what if you messed everything up?” Georgie asked. “Like, what if that one action changed everything?”

“Like in
Back to the Future
?”

“Yes.”

Seth shrugged. “Meh. I don’t believe it. I’d go back and fix my mistake—everything else would work itself out. World War Three isn’t going to happen just because I got a higher SAT score.”

“But if you’d gotten a higher SAT score, you might not have gone to ULA, and then you’d never have met me, and we wouldn’t be standing here right now.”

“Pfft,” he said, lowering an eyebrow. “Do you really think that’s all that brought us together? Circumstance? Location?” He shook his head. “I find your perspective on space and time to be very limiting.”

Georgie went back to fumbling with her laptop. Seth took the cord out of her hand and plugged it in. “I printed out what we worked on yesterday,” he said. “Why don’t you take a look?”

Neal had noticed Georgie was different—on the phone last night. He’d mentioned it. Maybe he’d figure out what was happening. . . .

There was no way he’d figure out what was happening.

Why would Neal ever jump to the completely implausible and
correct
conclusion that he was talking to her in the future?

Georgie hadn’t said anything to date herself. She hadn’t mentioned the Internet. Or the war. Or their kids. She hadn’t tried to warn him about the stock market or 9/11.

“You don’t sound like yourself tonight,” he’d said. It was after they’d been on the phone about half an hour.

“Why not?” Georgie’d asked. God, it was like talking to a ghost. Something weirder than a ghost—a sending.