My grandpa was halfway through his troll voice, the one I begged him for every Saturday, when his face quit mid-growl. He caught hold of the tray table and said, “Kinsley, honey, go get the,” and nothing came after it. I was six. I had never once used a phone by myself.
Mom was working a double at the plant in Pueblo, so until supper it was only me and Pop.
Saturday mornings had rules, and Pop made every one.
The truck show on channel nine, loud.
Orange soda in his chipped coffee mug, poured to a black line he’d drawn inside in marker, because I never stopped on my own.
And the troll, who lived under his recliner and wanted my toes.
“Who’s that tromping on MY bridge?” Pop said, chin tucked so it came up from his belly.
“Me,” I said. “Do it again.”
He did it three more times.
On the fourth the growl quit halfway.
His mouth stayed open around a word that never showed up.
His eyes went somewhere past me, like he was trying to remember where he’d parked.
Then his right hand pressed flat on his shirt pocket, hard, like leaning on a door somebody’s pushing.
“Pop?”
He tried to get out of the recliner. His legs wouldn’t do it.
He grabbed for the tray table and the mug went over, soda across the carpet and into my socks.
He got my name out, and three more words.
Then he went down.
He hit the floor so hard the school pictures rattled.
He landed on his side, face toward the cartoon trucks, glasses crooked up his forehead.
I was on my knees screaming into his ear, POP, PLEASE GET UP POP, PLEASE, while the show kept going.
He didn’t blink.
His hand was still flat on that pocket, and his phone was in it.
The shirt pocket
I got the phone out through the side of his pocket.
The corner scraped against his thumbnail. I kept saying sorry because the pocket stretched, and stretching somebody’s shirt seemed like something I could still fix.
The screen lit up. I dragged my finger across it the way Mom did.
There were pictures of people underneath a picture of me.
I pressed my uncle’s face.
“Pop fell,” I said when Marshall answered.
“What?”
“Pop fell down.”
Somewhere behind him, a car door shut.
“Put Pop’s phone back, Kinsley.”
I held it toward the carpet.
“Tell him to get up.”
“Don’t play with that. I’ll be over in a minute.”
Then the phone made a sound, and his picture went away.
I put it against Pop’s ear anyway.
“Uncle Marshall’s coming.”
His shirt moved under my hand. Up, then down. I put my cheek close to his mouth because I wanted him to say something into it, the way he did when he told me a secret.
There was breath. There wasn’t a word.
The trucks on television finished their song.
I hated that song for a while afterward. It had a horn in it that sounded cheerful no matter what was happening in front of the television. Whoever put the horn there had never met my Saturday.
I pushed Pop’s glasses away from his eye. One side stayed hooked over his ear.
“Your glasses are wrong.”
He didn’t fix them.
Pop fixed everything that bothered him. Crooked glasses. A drawer that wouldn’t shut. The way I said pasghetti, although he laughed so hard at it that I kept saying it on purpose.
I took hold of his sleeve.
“Please.”
The phone went dark.
I pressed the side button, too long this time, and words appeared that I couldn’t read. I pressed again. More things happened. None of them was my mother.
I knew three numbers belonged to an emergency. Mom had told me. But the screen had faces, and then words, and then my own face behind the words.
There were no buttons with numbers on them.
I rubbed the screen with my sleeve as if I’d spilled something on it.
Pop made a sound through his nose.
I dropped the phone and leaned over him.
“Are you getting up?”
His eyes moved, but they didn’t find me.
My socks were still wet. I pulled one off and put it over the soda because Pop didn’t like sticky places on the carpet.
Then I pulled it away again.
I wanted the room to look exactly as bad as it was when Marshall came in.
The phone lit up beside Pop’s shoulder.
Marshall’s face filled the screen.
“Don’t touch anything,” he said. “I’m coming.”
Janice’s wall
The Saturday before, Mom had stood beside that recliner with her work bag over one shoulder.
Pop was telling her to leave.
“You keep standing here, they’ll start without you.”
“They manage.”
“Then stay home.”
“Wonderful. You’ll explain it to the electric company.”
Marshall sat on the arm of the couch with Pop’s phone in his hand. He was clearing things off it that Pop had opened by mistake.
There were quite a few. Pop could repair a cupboard hinge with a butter knife, but a weather advertisement could take him prisoner for forty minutes.
“Stop touching every box that says continue,” Marshall said.
“It ought to say stop, then.”
I was on the carpet with my mug between my knees.
Mom pointed at it.
“That better not be full.”
Pop turned the mug so she could see the line inside.
“Engineered.”
“That’s marker.”
“Precision marker.”
Marshall gave the phone back, then took it again.
“I’ll put mine at the top. You keep calling people you don’t mean to call.”
His picture moved to the first little square.
Mom’s picture was beside it. Janice’s was farther down.
Janice lived on the other side of our wall. Pop said she could hear a potato hit the kitchen floor.
She could certainly hear the television.
Two knocks came through the wall.
Pop reached for the remote and lowered the sound one click.
Two more knocks.
“She doesn’t need ears,” he said. “She’s got equipment.”
Mom held out her hand for the remote.
He gave her the look he used when a screw rolled under something.
She held out her hand a little farther.
The sound went down enough for the people on the truck show to stop speaking to the entire block.
A minute later, Janice appeared at the open front door.
“I can still tell you the plot, Willard.”
“Then you don’t need your own television.”
Janice leaned around him.
“Morning, Kinsley.”
“Morning.”
“Your grandpa behaving?”
“He gave me soda.”
“Of course he did.”
Pop pointed at the mug.
“There’s a line.”
Janice came in and bent to turn the chipped side away from my mouth. She did it every time. Pop did, too. That mug had more supervision than I did.
Mom moved her bag to the other shoulder.
“I want her to know how to call somebody.”
“She knows how to get us,” Marshall said.
“On a phone.”
“She’s six.”
“That’s why I want to show her.”
Mom crouched beside me. She held her phone out, but Pop reached over to rescue my mug from my knees, and I reached for it, and the soda slopped over the line.
Everyone had something to say about that.
By the time the carpet was blotted, Mom was looking at the clock.
Marshall held up Pop’s phone.
“She presses my picture. I’m five minutes away.”
“Unless you’re working.”
“I’m not working Saturdays.”
“Unless you’re somewhere else.”
“Tori. Go to work.”
He said it with a smile. He usually did when Mom was asking for something he considered unnecessary.
She kissed my head.
“If you need me, you call. I might have to call back, but you call.”
I nodded, although nobody had shown me how to make the pictures come back once they disappeared.
Janice walked Mom to the door.
Pop raised the television volume.
Janice turned around.
“Keep that up and I’m coming over to pull the plug myself.”
He raised it one more click.
She pointed at him, and he grinned into his mug.
Marshall laughed. Mom laughed, too, before she left.
That was the room I expected to have again.
The same mug. The same television. Pop pretending he didn’t like people who knew exactly how he liked his coffee.
Now I had one sock off, his glasses in my hand, and Marshall saying through the phone that I wasn’t to touch anything.
From the other side of the wall came two knocks.
Marshall’s picture
I hit the wall with my hand.
Only once. Then I went back to Pop because leaving him felt like letting him go somewhere without me.
“Janice,” I said.
The television answered with a song about a dump truck.
I put the phone against my ear.
“Janice knocked.”
“Then turn the TV down,” Marshall said.
“Pop’s on the floor.”
“I heard you.”
“He won’t get up.”
“I’m almost there.”
His voice came through the phone so plainly that I expected him to be able to see us.
I turned the screen toward Pop.
“Like that.”
“Kinsley, hold the phone properly.”
I turned it back.
“Like what?” he said.
“He’s lying like that.”
A car made a ticking sound behind him. I know now it was his turn signal. At six, I thought something in the phone was counting.
“Did he fall asleep?”
“He fell down.”
“Was he playing with you?”
“Yes.”
“What were you doing?”
“The troll.”
“There you go.”
He sounded pleased with me for supplying the missing piece.
I wanted to throw the phone at the television.
Instead, I said, “He’s not doing it now.”
“Sometimes your grandpa takes a joke too far.”
I put my hand on Pop’s cheek.
“Tell him to stop.”
“Put him on.”
I held the phone against his ear.
The little voice said, “Dad?”
Pop’s mouth moved.
I leaned so close my forehead touched his.
“Say it again.”
Nothing came.
Marshall said something else. I couldn’t hear it with the phone pressed against Pop, and I didn’t want to take it away in case that was what made him stop talking.
“Pop, it’s Uncle Marshall.”
His eyelids lowered and lifted.
“He blinked,” I said.
“There. He’s fine.”
“No.”
The word came out before I’d decided to say it.
Marshall stopped talking.
“No, he’s not.”
“Don’t start carrying on. I’m coming through the light.”
I tried to give him the other facts.
The tray was down. The mug was down. Pop had said my name but hadn’t finished. His glasses had gone crooked. I had them in my hand.
I told him about the glasses twice.
Those were the things I had. There was no grown-up word in my head for what Pop was doing.
Marshall wanted a word he could sort into a box. Sleepy. Playing. Clumsy. I had a man on the floor who couldn’t answer me.
“You’re going to upset him,” Marshall said.
I took the phone away from my mouth.
For a few seconds, I tried being quiet.
Pop didn’t get better.
The television got louder when the show went to a commercial. A man wanted us to buy a mattress. He was quite excited about it. I could have used one person in that room who wasn’t excited.
“Can you call Mom?” I said.
“She’s working.”
“Please.”
“Let me get there first.”
He ended the call.
I pressed his picture again. It went somewhere else. I pressed a little arrow and got a list with his name on it.
I knew the first letter because Mom had written everybody’s names on Christmas envelopes, and I had been allowed to lick them. That had been my office job.
I pressed the letter.
The phone rang.
This time Marshall didn’t answer.
I crawled back to Pop and put the phone beside his hand.
“I did call,” I said.
His fingers moved against the carpet.
I caught one.
It didn’t close around mine.
The front latch
Marshall told me to open the front door when he called again.
I carried the phone with both hands.
“Don’t leave him,” I said.
“I’m outside.”
“But I’m leaving him.”
“Just open the door.”
There was a catch above the handle. Pop could flick it with one thumb. I had to stand on my toes and push with both hands.
The phone slid down between my wrist and the door.
“Put that down,” Marshall said from the other side.
I put it on the floor.
“Now turn it.”
I turned the handle.
“The top one.”
I pushed the catch.
“The other way.”
The door rattled against my hands.
I started crying harder.
“Move back.”
Marshall used his key.
He came through with his own phone in one hand, looking past me.
“What on earth—”
I pointed.
He crossed the room and crouched beside Pop.
“Dad?”
I picked up Pop’s phone and followed him.
“Dad. Can you hear me?”
Pop made the sound again.
Marshall touched his shoulder.
“All right. All right.”
I went to the doorway because I thought the next person was coming. A grown-up who arrived at a thing like that must have more grown-ups behind him.
Nobody else came.
Marshall looked up at me.
“What happened?”
I told him.
He stopped me at the troll.
“Did he stand up fast?”
“He tried.”
“Before that.”
“He was sitting.”
“Did you climb on him?”
“No.”
“Did you pull his arm?”
“No.”
I wanted Mom.
I wanted her so badly that I said her name instead of answering his next question.
Marshall held out his hand.
“Give me that phone.”
I gave it to him.
That was the moment I believed the frightening part was over. He knew how to make the number buttons appear. He could read every word on the screen. He could reach the catch without standing on his toes.
He put the phone in his pocket.
Then he called Pop’s name again.
“He’s coming around,” he said.
Pop’s eyes were open. His mouth worked, but the sound was small.
Marshall leaned toward it.
“What?”
I leaned, too.
“Don’t crowd him, Kinsley.”
I backed into the recliner.
Marshall reached for Pop’s hand.
“Can you squeeze?”
Pop’s fingers moved.
“Good. That’s good.”
I held out the glasses.
Marshall took them and put them on the seat.
“Go get a towel.”
“For Pop?”
“For the spill.”
I went to the kitchen. There was a towel hanging from the oven handle, and I pulled so hard that the oven door opened a little.
I shut it with my knee.
When I came back, Marshall was talking about getting Pop up.
I dropped the towel.
“He can’t.”
“We’ll see.”
“He can’t.”
“Kinsley.”
He said my name the way people say it when the next thing will be a punishment.
I put the towel over the soda.
It turned orange.
Pop’s hand came up a little from the carpet and went back toward his shirt.
Marshall caught it.
“Leave that alone.”
“His phone,” I said.
“I’ve got his phone.”
Pop tried to speak.
Marshall bent closer.
I waited for the words to be something Marshall could use.
They weren’t.
Marshall sat back on his heels.
“He probably stood too quickly. He’s done that before.”
I looked at the recliner. The dent where Pop had been sitting was still there.
“He was sitting down,” I said.
Marshall pulled his own phone from his pocket.
At last, I thought.
He called my mother instead.
Mom on speaker
Mom didn’t answer the first call.
Marshall stared at the screen, then called again.
The third time, she picked up.
“What is it?”
“Dad’s had a little turn.”
I stood so close to his shoulder that he put his arm out.
“What kind of turn?” Mom said.
“He got lightheaded. Kinsley got frightened.”
“Where is he?”
“I’m with him.”
“Where is Dad?”
“On the floor at the minute.”
Something scraped on Mom’s end.
“Have you called an ambulance?”
“He’s awake.”
“Marshall, have you called?”
“Let me finish.”
I could hear machines behind her. When Mom called from work, there was usually a door shutting before she could hear us properly.
This time the machines kept going.
“Put Kinsley on.”
“She’s upset.”
“Put her on.”
Marshall lowered the phone toward me without letting go.
“Mom?”
“Baby, I’m here. What happened?”
I began with the troll voice.
I got as far as his hand on his pocket before Marshall moved the phone.
“He was playing with her. Then he got up.”
“He didn’t,” I said.
“Don’t interrupt.”
Mom said, “I’m talking to my daughter.”
Marshall pressed something on the screen.
Mom’s voice stopped filling the room.
He stood and held the phone against his ear.
I followed him.
“Tell her about his glasses.”
He stepped around me.
“Tell her he couldn’t say it.”
He put a finger to his lips.
I tried to reach his hand.
“Let me say it.”
“In a minute.”
He went as far as the kitchen doorway. I could still hear him, but I couldn’t hear Mom.
“No, you don’t need to leave yet.”
I ran after him.
“Yes, she does.”
He turned his back.
“We don’t even know what’s happened. You’re going to lose the whole shift.”
Mom worked doubles because the bills didn’t accept single shifts as an explanation. I knew that much. I also knew she came home with little dents in her face where her safety glasses sat.
Marshall said, “I’ll take him if he needs taking.”
I stood under his elbow and shouted, “He needs taking.”
He ended the call before Mom spoke to me again.
At six, an adult ending a call was a door closing. I had no way to reach the person on the other side.
“She’s coming,” he said.
I put both hands over my face.
“She’s coming?”
“Yes. Now stop all that.”
I wiped my nose on my sleeve.
Marshall looked at the towel on the carpet.
“Get another one. That’s soaked.”
I didn’t move.
“Kinsley.”
“Call the ambulance.”
He stared at me.
“Your mother’s put that in your head.”
I hadn’t known how to ask for one before she said the word. Now I had the word, and I wanted to keep saying it until somebody did it.
“Call the ambulance.”
“Those things cost money.”
I looked at Pop.
Marshall followed my eyes.
“He’s awake. He’s breathing. I’m right here.”
Pop made a noise that pulled us both back to him.
Marshall crouched.
“Dad? You want to sit up?”
Pop’s face changed. His mouth opened, and he shut his eyes.
Marshall let go of his shoulder.
“All right. Stay there.”
He said it as if staying on the floor had been Pop’s suggestion.
I knelt by the recliner. My knees were cold where the soda had soaked through my pajamas.
“Please call.”
“I said I’ve got it.”
He hadn’t got anything I could see except both phones.
I don’t remember every sentence from that morning. Some pieces came later from Mom, who repeated her end of that call so often that Pop eventually told her she could put the whole thing on a billboard if it would let her sleep.
But I remember both phones.
One in Marshall’s hand. One in his pocket.
I had given him the thing I’d pulled from under Pop’s hand because he was the grown-up.
Now he wouldn’t give it back.
Channel nine
There were two more knocks through the wall.
Marshall looked toward them.
“For heaven’s sake.”
He picked up the remote.
The television went quiet.
I could hear Pop breathing from where I knelt.
That sound should have helped. Instead, every little pause made me move closer.
“Pop.”
His eyes came toward me.
“It’s me.”
Marshall rubbed his forehead.
“Give him some room.”
I moved back the width of one hand.
Pop’s eyes followed me, or seemed to. I didn’t want to move farther and find out they hadn’t.
Marshall was looking at his phone again.
“Mom?” I said.
“She’s on her way.”
“Is the ambulance?”
He lowered the phone.
“Kinsley, enough.”
I sat on my heels.
He had come. Mom was coming. Pop was breathing.
Those were the facts the grown-ups wanted me to hold.
But Pop still couldn’t tell me to turn the chipped side of the mug away from my mouth. He couldn’t complain about my wet socks. He couldn’t tell Marshall that I had asked for help.
I reached up for the remote.
Marshall took it from my hand.
“You don’t need cartoons right now.”
I hadn’t wanted cartoons.
Janice was on the other side of the wall. Janice knocked when the television got loud. Janice came to the door when Pop didn’t turn it down.
I didn’t have a name for a plan. I had her pointing at the plug the Saturday before.
I stood up.
“Where are you going?” Marshall said.
“Janice.”
“Stay in here.”
“She’ll come.”
“We don’t need the whole street.”
I took another step.
Marshall moved toward the door and pushed it shut.
He didn’t lock it. He didn’t have to. He was standing between me and the catch.
“Sit down, sweetheart. Your mother’s coming.”
He could put a soft word on the end of anything. It worked on grown-ups often enough that he tried it on me.
I went back to Pop.
I bent close to his ear.
“I’m going to get Janice.”
Marshall heard.
“You’re going to sit right there.”
Pop’s fingers shifted.
I put my hand beside them, but I didn’t wait for him to hold it this time.
The television had buttons along the side.
Pop used them whenever he lost the remote, which was usually under the same thigh he insisted it couldn’t possibly be under.
I went to the screen and pressed the biggest one.
The picture disappeared.
Marshall said, “Good. Leave it off.”
I pressed it again.
The trucks came back without sound.
There were two little buttons below the first. I pressed one and kept pressing.
A bar crawled across the bottom of the screen.
Then the television began to roar.
Marshall stood.
“Kinsley.”
I pressed harder.
The man selling mattresses returned at a volume suitable for selling them from an airplane.
Marshall reached over me and pulled the plug.
The screen went black.
For one second, I thought I’d used up the only thing I had.
Then came the knocks.
Two, hard.
I hit the wall with both palms.
“Janice.”
Marshall caught my name before I could say hers again.
“Kinsley, stop.”
I hit the wall.
“JANICE.”
He reached for the front door.
“Now look what you’ve done.”
I wanted to tell him that I was trying to do it. That every loud thing in that room was mine on purpose.
But Janice was already at the door, and I needed her to stay.
Marshall opened it just enough to put his head through.
“We’re all right,” he said.
I shouted past his knees.
“WE’RE NOT.”
Janice’s phone
Janice pushed the door farther open.
Marshall stepped back because he had to or get hit by it.
“What’s going on?”
“Dad got dizzy. We’re handling it.”
I pointed at the carpet.
Janice came into the room.
She didn’t stop to ask why my sock was lying in orange soda. She didn’t tell me to use an inside voice.
She went to Pop.
“Willard?”
His eyes moved toward her.
She crouched, then looked up at Marshall.
“Who’s coming?”
“Tori.”
“Besides Tori.”
“I’m deciding whether—”
“An ambulance,” I said.
Janice took her phone from her pocket.
Marshall put a hand out.
“Just wait a second.”
She moved it away from him.
“No.”
It was such a small word.
I had been using whole sentences, then shouting them, then shouting people’s names. Janice got somewhere with one word and a phone she kept hold of.
Marshall said, “He doesn’t need half a dozen people in here frightening him.”
She was already speaking to someone.
She gave the address, then said which half of the duplex.
I pressed against her shoulder.
“Tell them he couldn’t finish.”
She repeated it.
“Tell them his hand.”
She repeated that, too.
Marshall started explaining that Pop had opened his eyes.
Janice held the phone away from her ear.
“You can tell them when they get here.”
Then she put it back.
The person on the other end asked questions. Janice answered the ones she could and asked me the others.
What had Pop been doing?
Sitting.
What happened before he fell?
His hand went on his pocket.
Did he speak?
Some.
What did he say?
I said the unfinished words again.
This time nobody supplied the ending.
Janice followed the instructions she was given. I stayed where she told me to stay. Marshall stood beside the recliner with his arms folded, as if somebody had invited an electrician to inspect his work.
Then Pop said something.
It was too low for me.
Janice bent toward him.
“What, Willard?”
His lips moved again.
She looked at me.
“He said your name.”
I dropped beside him so fast my knee landed on the towel.
“I’m here.”
His eyes held on mine.
“I’m here, Pop.”
He tried to lift his hand.
Janice said something to the person on the phone. I didn’t hear it. I had my fingers under Pop’s, and this time they closed.
Not much.
Enough.
I began to cry so hard that I couldn’t get another word out.
Marshall crouched beside us.
“There. See?”
Janice looked straight at him.
“Move back.”
The door was open when the help arrived.
Janice had opened it and left it that way. Nobody had to reach the catch. Nobody had to convince Marshall.
I stood against the couch while people knelt around Pop.
They asked questions. Marshall began answering.
Janice pointed to me.
“She was here.”
A man bent down so I didn’t have to look up.
I told him about the troll.
Nobody laughed.
I told him about the mug, and the hand, and the words that stopped.
He let me finish.
When they moved Pop, I tried to follow.
Janice held out her hand.
“Your mom’s coming here.”
“He’s going.”
“I know.”
Pop turned his head before they took him through the door.
His voice barely reached me.
“Good girl.”
The phone I’d pulled from his pocket was still in Marshall’s.
The recliner without him
Mom came through the open door before Janice could take me next door.
I ran into her so hard she stepped backward.
She held me under the arms, lifted me, and sat on the couch with me across her lap even though my legs were getting too long for that.
“What happened, baby?”
Marshall started talking.
Mom put her hand up without looking at him.
I told her.
I got stuck on the phone. I kept saying that I’d got it out, and then I’d given it away, and then I couldn’t have it.
She held my face.
“You got help.”
“I couldn’t make the numbers.”
“You got help.”
“I made the TV too loud.”
Janice stood behind her.
“Yes, you certainly did.”
Mom pulled me against her shirt.
Marshall said, “Nobody’s blaming her.”
Janice looked at him.
Mom stood with me still attached.
“Where’s Dad’s phone?”
Marshall took it from his pocket.
She held out her hand.
He gave it to her.
Then she took me with her, and Janice locked the door behind us.
Pop stayed away for several days. There were doctors and tests and words Mom said to other adults before she said them to me.
He had a heart attack. He was treated. He was coming home.
Mom told me the last part every time she told me anything else.
By the day he returned, I had asked it enough times to wear the sentence smooth.
The room looked wrong without him in the recliner. Mom cleaned the carpet, but I wouldn’t let her throw out the mug.
She put it high in the cupboard.
When Pop came home, I stood beside the chair and waited for him to sit.
He lowered himself slowly.
“There’s my girl.”
I wanted to climb on him. I wanted to push my whole face into his shirt and stay there until I was old.
Mom had told me to be careful.
So I stood with my hands behind my back.
Pop held out his arm.
“You can come here.”
I leaned against him.
He kissed my hair.
Marshall arrived that afternoon while Janice was still there.
Mom had asked him to come. He brought Pop’s coat from his car and a bag he set beside the couch.
“Looking better,” he said.
Pop nodded.
Marshall pointed at the television.
“Quiet in here for once.”
Nobody helped him with the joke.
Mom sat on the couch. Janice stayed near the door. I was on the carpet beside Pop’s chair, with my knees pulled up inside my nightshirt.
Marshall sat where he had sat the Saturday he put his picture at the top of the phone.
Mom said, “Tell Dad what happened when Kinsley called you.”
Marshall looked at me.
“We don’t need to do this in front of her.”
“She was in front of it,” Mom said.
“I mean upsetting her again.”
Pop put his hand on the arm of the recliner.
“Tell me.”
Marshall shifted.
“She called. She was shouting. You were playing that game, and I thought you’d frightened her.”
Mom said, “What did she say?”
“That you’d fallen.”
“What else?”
“She was six different places at once, Tori. The television was blaring. I was trying to get there.”
I looked at Pop’s pocket.
His phone was in it again.
“Can I have it?”
He took it out and gave it to me.
Marshall stopped talking.
I held the phone against my ear.
“He won’t get up,” I said.
Mom’s face changed.
I said it again.
“Pop fell down. He won’t get up.”
Marshall rubbed his mouth.
“Yes, sweetheart, but I came.”
I lowered the phone.
“You told me to put it back.”
“I didn’t know.”
Janice said, “You knew when I got there.”
He turned toward her.
“By then he was awake.”
“On the floor.”
“He’d opened his eyes. He was responding. I was making a judgment.”
Mom leaned forward.
“You told me not to leave work.”
“I didn’t want you losing money for nothing.”
Pop said, “For nothing?”
“That’s not what I meant.”
“You just said it.”
Marshall put both hands on his knees.
“Everybody’s doing very well at this now. We all know now. At the time, I had a frightened child giving me bits and pieces, and Dad was coming around, and I was trying not to make things worse.”
I stood.
The phone was heavy in my hand.
Marshall looked up.
“I didn’t say you did anything wrong, Kinsley.”
“You shut the door.”
“I was keeping you inside.”
“I wanted Janice.”
“I was there.”
I put the phone on Pop’s lap.
“You wouldn’t call.”
Marshall stood, too.
Mom stood between us.
That was the first time he stopped moving.
“I am not going to sit here and be made into some kind of monster because I didn’t panic,” he said.
Pop’s hand covered the phone.
“Sit down.”
“Dad.”
“Sit.”
Marshall sat.
Pop took a while before he spoke again. Mom started to say something, but he lifted one finger.
“She called you because I told her she could.”
Marshall looked at the carpet.
“You took the phone from her?”
“I was looking after you.”
“Did you take it?”
“Yes.”
“And told her not to get Janice?”
“I didn’t want a production.”
Janice picked up her bag.
Pop looked toward her.
“Stay.”
She put it down again.
Marshall spread his hands.
“What do you want me to say?”
Mom didn’t answer.
Janice didn’t answer.
I had plenty of things I wanted him to say, but none of them would put Pop back in the chair that morning, before his voice stopped.
Pop pointed toward me.
“Start there.”
Marshall looked at me.
“I’m sorry you were frightened.”
Pop’s finger stayed up.
Marshall’s face went red.
“I’m sorry I didn’t listen when you called.”
Mom said, “And when you got here.”
He looked at her, then back at me.
“And when I got here.”
I held on to Mom’s shirt.
Marshall reached toward my shoulder.
I stepped behind her.
He let his hand fall.
Pop took the phone from his lap and held it out to Mom.
“Take his picture off the top.”
The first square
Marshall’s picture came off the first square while he sat there.
Mom didn’t erase his number. Pop hadn’t asked her to erase his son.
She put her own picture first, then Janice’s.
Marshall said, “Your mother’s at work half the time.”
Janice held out her hand for the phone.
“Then she can call me.”
“I live five minutes away.”
Mom looked at him.
“We know.”
That was about as much room as he got for the rest of the afternoon.
Pop asked for his spare key.
Marshall stared at him.
“You think I shouldn’t have a key now?”
“I’ll have it.”
“What if you need something?”
“I’ll call.”
Marshall took the ring from his pocket.
The key caught between two others. He worked it around the metal circle while everybody waited. There was no good way to make that quick.
He put it on the recliner’s arm.
Pop gave it to Mom.
Marshall’s visits stopped being the kind where he could let himself in, tell Mom she worried too much, and take charge of whatever was in his reach.
He came when somebody invited him.
He sat where the rest of us sat.
When Pop needed a ride, Mom or Janice arranged it. Marshall offered, and sometimes Pop accepted, but accepting a ride never again meant handing him the whole afternoon.
The ambulance bill arrived later.
I was in the room when Pop opened it.
He read it, then held it away from his face and read it again. Mom offered to take it.
He kept it.
At Marshall’s next visit, Pop handed it to him.
The amount left for Pop to pay was $684.22.
Marshall said, “You want me to pay this?”
“You were the one who wanted to decide what an ambulance was worth.”
“I was worried about your money.”
“Now you can worry about yours.”
Marshall turned the paper over, although there was no cheaper number on the back.
Mom started to speak.
Pop looked at her.
“Let him answer.”
Marshall put the bill beside him.
“Fine.”
He brought a check the next week.
Pop made him write it for the exact amount. Marshall had rounded it down to $684.
“Twenty-two cents,” Pop said.
“Seriously?”
Pop held out the pen.
Marshall added the cents.
There was no cheering. Janice was putting Pop’s phone back on its charger, and Mom was helping him with an appointment time.
I was beside the television.
Marshall came over before he left.
“I paid it,” he said.
I didn’t know what answer he expected. Thank you seemed like something Pop could say if he wanted.
Marshall looked toward the recliner.
“Your grandpa and I are all right.”
I kept my hand on the television stand.
Then he said, “Next time, you know I’ll come.”
I looked at him.
“I needed you to call.”
He left without touching my shoulder.
Under the bridge
For a while, Saturdays stayed quiet.
I sat close enough to Pop to hear him breathe. If he closed his eyes during the truck show, I said his name.
He answered every time.
Once, he answered before I said it.
“Still here, kid.”
Mom taught me the phone with Pop sitting beside us.
She didn’t hold it and explain while I nodded. She put it in my hands.
I practiced finding the number buttons. I practiced calling her while she stood by the front door.
When she answered, I said our address.
Pop tried to make a joke.
Mom pointed at him.
“After.”
He waited.
Then I practiced calling Janice.
She answered from the other side of the wall.
“Who’s this?”
“Kinsley.”
“Kinsley who?”
“The one next door.”
“Well, that narrows it down.”
Mom had me give the address again.
Janice made me say which half.
When I finished, two knocks came through the wall.
I knocked back.
Pop stayed in his chair, smiling with his mouth closed.
The mug came down from the cupboard a few Saturdays later.
Mom inspected the chip before she let him hand it to me. Janice had offered to buy another mug, but Pop said this one still knew its job.
He poured the soda himself.
He stopped below the line.
“You’re short,” I said.
“Quality control.”
I looked at his shirt pocket.
His phone was there.
He patted it, then set it on the chair arm where I could reach it.
The television was low enough that Janice didn’t have to knock.
I sat on the carpet with both socks dry.
For a while, the trucks did all the talking.
Then Pop bent his head a little.
“Who’s that tromping on my bridge?”
I didn’t answer.
He waited.
His hand stayed open on the arm of the chair. His glasses were where they belonged.
“It’s me,” I said.
He nodded.
“Thought so.”
I moved closer.
“Does the troll still want my toes?”
“Depends. You wash them?”
I laughed so hard some soda went up my nose.
Pop reached for the towel Mom now kept beside the chair.
He handed it to me and waited while I wiped my face.
Then he held out his arm.
“Come on over, kid.”
I left the mug on the tray and climbed in beside him.
If this one brought someone to mind, send it to the person who always answered when you needed them.
That frozen moment with Pop turns into a family secret, and these stories also start with a loved one’s unexpected move: Brennan pointing his phone at a hospital gown and a mother handing the guard her coat.
