Hanging Up. Delia Ephron

and it’s not that I don’t know it, but I say it for only one reason: So I feel entitled to say the next thing, which I feel guilty about. “But it’s your fault.”

      Jesse slams the bottle down. “The guy came around a blind curve. I can’t see behind a blind curve, can I? I am really having a hard day. I don’t need this. It’s not my fault I can’t see a guy coming around a blind curve going eighty.”

      “Did he take the door off the car?” I ask. The phone rings. I pick it up. “Hello?”

      “Georgie Porgie won a Pulitzer.”

      “That’s great.”

      “Your sister’s something, isn’t she?”

      “Yeah, she’s great, Dad.”

      He hangs up. I hang up.

      “Georgia won the Pulitzer again. How can he call? I don’t think he has a phone in his room. The only phone I saw was a pay phone.”

      “Did you give him quarters?” asks Joe.

      “Are you kidding? Why would I do that? To torture myself?” I turn to Jesse. “I had a hard day too. I had to put your grandfather into the geriatric/psychiatric facility at UCLA.”

      “Oh yeah, how come?” Jesse collapses in a chair. His long legs stick straight out into the room; he’s waiting to trip someone so he can insist it’s not his fault.

      “He’s having memory problems.”

      “He’s always had memory problems. He doesn’t even know my name.”

      Joe laughs.

      “It’s not funny, Joe.” Now I’m angry with them both. “He’s having other problems too. He hit someone, he’s been screaming just out of the blue whenever he feels like it. He can’t walk—his balance is off. They think his medication’s out of whack. You could both be a little compassionate.”

      “I have no compassion for your father, and you know why,” says Joe.

      “Why?” Jesse asks.

      “None of your business,” I say. “So Jesse, did he take the door off the car?”

      “No.”

      “Well, if he didn’t take the door off the car, he couldn’t have been going eighty.”

      “Just ’cause your door stays on the car has nothing to do with speed. It has to do with the weight of the car that hits you.”

      Is this true? I have no idea. Even though, as far as I can tell, schools these days don’t even teach you what a pronoun is, Jesse claims to know everything. He knows whether dogs can be said to commit suicide, under what conditions planes can take off at LAX, whether astigmatism will one day be curable by laser. I give up trying to prove my point. “Did you get the guy’s insurance information? I hope you got his phone number too.”

      Jesse holds out his hand. A name and a number are written on his palm in black ink.

      “Jesse, that’s so careless. Suppose you got water on that? We’d never be able to reach him.”

      “He’d find us.”

      “That’s not the point.”

      “He would find us. Unfortunately,” says Joe. “Do Kasmians have a place of worship?”

      “They light candles in their rooms,” Jesse tells him.

      “Can we talk about this accident, please?”

      Joe and Jesse both look at me—their heads swivel exactly the same way and stop at exactly the same tilt to the right. They look as if they have paused mid-beat in a song they perform in unison, like the Temptations. They are both vertical in the extreme, and whenever they walk or eat or just move around, their arms and legs go from straight lines to angles. Only, Joe wears glasses—round horn-rimmed glasses. With those comical circles on either side of his narrow nose and the rest of him hanger thin, he has the appearance of a very friendly figure painting reduced to its geometric essence. They both wait for me to talk, Joe tolerantly, Jesse with his familiar scowl.

      “It’s important to contact this guy before he contacts you so—”

      “So what, Mom?”

      “So you have a plan, so it doesn’t get out of hand.”

      “Do your mom a favor,” says Joe. “Copy that information off your palm onto a piece of paper and leave it on her desk.”

      Jesse gets up slowly, stretching, so we notice him ascend to his six-foot height. He saunters out.

      I wait until I hear Jesse on the stairs. I don’t want him to hear me. “What?” Joe says, knowing something’s coming.

      “You shouldn’t make fun of my father, especially now.”

      “Don’t expect me to have feelings you don’t have.” He shrugs. “Besides, this is just another round.”

      “It is not. For God’s sake, Joe, why don’t you clean up in here? Look at these tapes. And there are newspapers and telephone books all over the place.”

      “I like it messy. Then I know where everything is. Eve, stop worrying. Your father just phoned, so obviously he’s fine.”

      “Then why can’t he walk? And he kept calling Angie Claire. He knows Angie.”

      “You just couldn’t remember Kool-Aid.”

      “That’s hardly the same thing.” I start picking newspapers up off the floor, grabbing them two-fisted, each one a big deal. “Look, this place is a complete mess. Suppose we have a fire or something? This room would go off like a rocket. And then the house.”

      Joe takes the stack of papers from me and puts them back on the floor, carefully, even ceremoniously, as if they were not old newspapers but an elaborate silver service for tea.

      “Joe, he’s dying.”

      “You wish.”

      “Yes, I do. Is there anything wrong with that?”

       Three

      When I went home for Christmas after my parents had separated and Maddy had moved out, Maddy picked me up at the airport with her boyfriend, Isaac.

      Her hair, long and parted in the middle, left just a sliver of her face showing, and looked as if it should come with a cord so it could be drawn open like a curtain. When we hugged, her hair got in my mouth. “Where’s Dad?”

      “Probably playing tennis. Stay with Isaac and me. Only ten of us are living there.”

      “No, I’ll go home.”

      “Well, don’t expect me to go in. I’m not going in.”

      Maddy and Isaac were dressed identically, in jeans with silver studs running down them and jean jackets with American flags sewn on the back. She had a tank top underneath and he had his bare chest. Below each of their jacket collars was an embroidered red heart with embroidered tears falling from it. “We’re still in mourning,” she explained, reaching over and fluffing my hair.

      “Don’t.” I knocked her hand away.

      “It’s wilder than ever,” she said.

      “I know.” I squished my curls against my head.

      “Your hair’s the same color as Mom’s,” she said wistfully.

      “Don’t remind me.”

      “Why don’t you let it grow? Live a little, Eve.”

      I changed the subject. “Why are you in mourning? Who died?”

      “Jimi