Lost Signals (45 page)

As weeks pass, the silent phone call becomes the sun I revolve around. I find myself constantly checking my wristwatch at work, waiting for my shift to end. It must look like I have a nervous tic, the way my eyes keep jerking to my wrist. The number is everywhere. It’s in the margins of the papers containing patients’ orders, it’s scrawled across the back of the “Get Better Soon
 
!” cards I deliver. The numbers are sharp and jagged, the ink pressed deep. It’s only when I catch myself engraving the numbers into the wooden door of a bathroom stall that I realize the one writing them is me. By the end of the day, my shirt is soaked in sweat and I jump at the slightest sound.

“Calm down
 
!” A patient scolds me as I measure out his medicine with trembling, sweaty hands. “You’re making me nervous
 
!” I wince at the abrasiveness of his gravelly voice. Everything sounds much louder now. The squeak of my shoes on the linoleum floor makes me want to tear my ears off. The clattering of the plates on the trays I serve the patients sounds like armored knights wrestling. The constant hum of the fluorescent lights is as torturous as having my fingernails peeled back one by one.

When I finally make it back home, I retreat to my bedroom, where my phone awaits on the bedside table. Sitting on the edge of my bed, facing my window looking out upon the city lights, I call the number. There is usually two or three sweet rings of anticipation, a click, then silence.

And, just like that first night, we stay like that for hours, phones pressed to our ears without saying a word. And the silence is so, so much sweeter than it would be if I, say, locked myself in my closet with a pair of earplugs. Because this silence is communal. I stare at the darkening navy blue sky, barely breathing, and somewhere else they are also staring at their own view, sharing the same silence. And while I know nothing about the other—not their age, their sex, their race, their religion, their past, their dreams—I feel like I know everything about them. Everything that matters, for we are familiar souls.

One day, they don’t answer. The phone rings and rings. Each ring seems more shrill, more panicked. Then a calm, automated voice asks me to leave a message. I hang up.

They don’t answer the next day either. Or the next.

I am a mess. I am a bundle of frayed nerves. I don’t sleep at night, and I see fear in the eyes of the patients at the home. I return to calling other numbers, but their voices have lost their magic. Their “hello”s sound crude, desecrating the silence.

I call the number carved into my table, pulling out my hair by the fistful. The rings sound like screams, making my ears bleed. I need to find the silence. I need to find the silence. So I call the number again and again and again and . . .

“Hello
 
?”

My breath is stuck in my chest.

“Hello
 
?” repeats the voice. It sounds like it belongs to a woman, between her twenties and forties.

I know it is not their voice. I have shared their silence for months, and I know what their voice is not.

“W-who is this
 
?” I ask, my words cutting my throat.

“Were you looking for Rosalyn
 
?” she says.

Rosalyn.

“Yes,” I say. “I’m t-trying to find Rosalyn.”

“This is her daughter,” she says. She takes in a gulp of air. “Rosalyn passed away last week.”

I don’t say anything.

“Were you one of her friends
 
?”

I nod my head. “Yes, w-we were f-f-friends.”

“That makes me really happy to hear. I thought Mom always seemed so lonely. I kept telling her to get out more, maybe join some church activities to meet more people, but she never wanted to.” She sighs. “Mom always hated small talk. Why break the silence with meaningless prattle, she would say.”

I’m surprised at the warm, salty water running down my cheeks in rivulets. “Th-th-thank you for t-telling me.” I place the handset back on the phone base and curl up on my sheets in the fetal position. I press my pillow over my ears and muffle the world. In the quiet darkness, I return to the womb. I am safe, and Rosalyn’s silence washes over me. Our souls are entwined, like twins formed from the same embryo. I don’t want to leave this warm cocoon
 
; can’t bear the thought of facing the world with its incessant ticks and clacks and murmurs and yells. I want to stay a part of the silence. I want to be with Rosalyn.

I wake up hours later to the waxen moon peering through my window, filling the room with its soft light. The phone rests on the bedside table, but I still hear a ringing. It stays with me through the night and into the morning. It follows me even when I leave my apartment, drive to work, talk to patients. As constant as my heartbeat. Like a lover’s voice, it is the last thing I hear at night and the first thing I hear each morning. The ringing is coming from between my ears, from inside my being. It calls for Rosalyn. It sings of a lost connection.

It calls for Rosalyn, and will not hush until she answers.

“This is KDK 12
calling KDK 1.”

Brian took his thumb off the talk button and waited for a response. He rubbed the grill of the hand mic against the peach fuzz on his upper lip. The sound it made inside his head echoed the leaves rustling outside the tree house, like the static of dead air.

“This is KDK 12 calling KDK 1. Come in.”

“What the hell are you even saying
 
?” Dylan reclined on a military-style folding cot, playing with his iPhone. The lower half of his body disappeared into the soft mouth of an orange sleeping bag.

“Just something my dad taught me. He says anyone who knows the right response is okay to talk to.”

“So it’s like some secret code for screening perverts.”

“Don’t be a jerk.” Brian zipped up his jacket and fiddled with the tuning dial. Snippets of different conversations faded in and out as he searched for an open channel.

. . . Peace. Shalom. Bonjour tout le monde. Witajcie, istoty z zaświatów. Ni strebas vivi en paco kun . . . up 2.3 percent from last quarter, an increase deemed unacceptable to shareholders . . . that was Vivaldi’s Concerto No. 4 in F minor performed by the English Chamber Orchestra . . . results which the community greeted with considerable skepticism. Despite winning the Nobel Prize for his work linking HIV and AIDS, Montagnier’s observations
. . .
女子中学生が太るのは自然です . . .

Dylan held his phone at arm’s length and swung it in a slow arc above his head.

“Cell reception sucks out here.”

“Nearest tower isn’t for miles,” Brian said. “We barely get a signal at the house.”

“Must be boring as shit. How do you live
 
?”

Brian sighed. Sometimes he wondered why he bothered hanging out with Dylan. For an 8th grader, he could be pretty immature.

“This is KDK 12 calling KDK 1.”

“Can’t we just go back in the house and go online
 
?” Dylan said.

“The computer’s in my dad’s room.”

“That’s lame. Even my little sister has her own laptop.”

Dylan scanned the tree house. It contained two cots, a table and chair, and a HAM radio, all illuminated by a single bare bulb hanging from the ceiling.

“You ever bring any girls up here
 
?” Dylan said.

“No.”

“You could touch a lot of boobs in a place like this. You’d probably pass Ronnie Shapiro as the top boob-toucher in class.”

Brian didn’t respond.

“I touched Jessica Fletcher’s boob once,” Dylan said.

“When
 
?”

“In line during lunch. She bumped into me.”

“Sounds more like her boob touched you.”

“Whatever, man. It’s more action than you ever get.”

“This is KDK 12 calling KDK 1.” Brian released the button and listened, hoping Dylan would take the hint. He basked in ten seconds of precious silence, and then the radio crackled to life.

This is KDK 1. We’re receiving you. Over.

It was a man’s voice, garbled and faint.

Brian’s face lit up. He turned to see if Dylan shared in the excitement, but he’d already turned his attention back to his phone.

“Sounds like your dad,” Dylan said. He emphasized the word
dad
with derision.

KDK 1 to KDK 12, how are you getting on over there
 
? Over.

Brian thumbed the talk button. “Doing just fine—”

“But our cell reception’s for shit
 
!” Dylan yelled across the tree house.

Brian shot Dylan a death stare. He continued to eyeball his friend as he brought the mic back to his mouth, rubbing it against his upper lip. When he felt confident Dylan wouldn’t try to embarrass him further, he pressed the talk button.

An enormous squawk of feedback tore through the tree house. Brian recoiled, falling backward in his chair. Dylan’s sleeping bag writhed like a salted slug. As the concentrated burst of sound reached its shrill peak, the overhead light bulb popped.

“Jesus
 
!” Dylan dropped his phone in his lap, the touchscreen now their sole source of light. Brian opened and closed his mouth, finger pressed against his ear. The afterimage of the light bulb’s glowing filament danced across his vision.

“You all right, man
 
?” Brian got up and brushed himself off. He looked out the window towards the house. Despite the distance he could still see the porch light through the trees. At least he hadn’t blown a fuse.

He turned to see his friend transfixed by the pale glow of the phone.

“Sorry about that,” Brian said. “I don’t know what happened.”

Dylan continued to stare. A hairline fracture appeared in the corner of the screen. It snaked its way across the phone as they watched, the glass popping like ice in a warm drink. As it reached the other end, an energy-saving feature kicked in and the screen began to dim. Darkness filled the tree house.

Brian held his breath while he waited for his eyes to adjust. He felt unstuck in time. The familiar rustle of the wind through the trees sounded like the white noise of empty airwaves. Even though no power fed the unit, Brian flipped the OFF switch on the radio, just in case. It snapped like a broken bone. Dylan jumped, involuntarily. Brian walked over to his friend, tiny glass shards crunching underneath his feet.

“Dylan
 
?”

Dylan didn’t take his eyes off the inert phone. “I think we should go inside.”

“Since when are you afraid of the dark
 
?” Brian tried to sound casual.

“Please.”

Something about the way Dylan said the word gave Brian the chills. Meekness did not suit his friend.

“Sure, man. C’mon, let’s get out of here.”

Brian opened the tree house door in a daze. He stepped out onto the surrounding platform and climbed down the ladder. He’d gotten halfway to the house before he realized Dylan hadn’t followed. He looked back towards the tree house. He had never been afraid of the woods, but part of him was reluctant to retrace his steps. Another part worried that if he didn’t go back for his friend, there’d be no friend to go back to.

He suppressed the thought and jogged back through the trees. He climbed the ladder and paused as he reached the door, which hung slightly ajar. Exhaling slowly, he put his hand against the wood and pushed. It creaked as it swung open.

Dylan hunched over his phone, eyes fixated on the dark screen.

“You coming or what
 
?” Brian couldn’t bring himself to cross the threshold.

“I think we should go inside,” Dylan said in an almost whisper.

“Yeah, you said that already.” Brian’s fear manifested as impatience. “Let’s go.”

But Dylan wouldn’t budge. Brian willed his own legs into motion and stepped inside the tree house. He snatched the cell phone from his friend’s lap and broke the spell.

Even after Dylan came back to reality, Brian had to lead him by the hand through the trees. Dylan would have made fun of him for holding a guy’s hand—no matter what the reason—so Brian dropped it as soon as they cleared the woods. His father stood in the kitchen making coffee when they entered the house.

“How’s it going, Hamsters
 
? Make any contact
 
?”

“We had a problem with feedback,” Brian said. “Dylan’s phone cracked.”

Brian Sr. frowned. “That’s odd. Let me take a look.”

Brian handed him the phone. Brian Sr. shook his head.

“Bet you wish you’d gotten yourself a DynaTAC, huh
 
?” He handed the phone back to Brian, who handed it over to Dylan. “I can’t imagine how that happened, but the repairs are on me.”

“Thanks.” Dylan slipped the phone into his pocket, stared at his feet.

“You all right there, son
 
?” Brian Sr. said.

“I guess.”

“You’re awful docile. That must have been some feedback.”

Dylan looked up at the man. “I feel like it’s still inside me.”

Brian Sr. cocked his head. He put a hand on Dylan’s forehead and peered into the boy’s dilated pupils.