Collect Call
By Matthew Dexter
The phone rings but the boy doesn’t pick it up because he’s too busy swallowing funneled sugar from a folded piece of printer paper. The sugar bowl is half-empty. The boy edges himself down from the countertop as sugar falls on the kitchen floor and sticks to the bottom of his feet. Grains dig deep into his sweaty heels and between his toes. He scampers across the wood floor toward the phone; now going on eight or nine rings. High on sucrose he answers:
“Hello?”
The operator says something about a collect call and then the line clicks over to a frantic recorded message addressed to the boy’s father. The message lasts only a few seconds but the man tries to spit out a hundred words at once and then gets cut off as the operator returns to the line to ask if the boy will accept the charges. The boy is puzzled, tempted to hang up. Again, the operator asks if he will accept the charges.
“Yes,” the boy says.
“Oh thank God you answered,” says the man on the other end of the line.
“Hello?” he says again, afraid he might have been disconnected.
The boy is too wired to speak. He was hoping it was a friend. He regrets that he even answered. It was a wasted effort. Now he’ll need to clean the floor or his mother will discover about the wild binge and learn that he relapsed; the boy had promised never to eat sugar like an animal again.
The man is begging from the other end of the line, pleading, terrified: “Hello?”
The boy knows it’s too late to hang up now. He must say something.
“Yes,” the boy says.
“Oh, thank you for accepting the charges. Is your father home? Is Carl there?”
The boy’s parents are out to dinner with some friends. They won’t be home for a couple hours at least. This gives the boy more than enough time to clean up the mess. Maybe even finish off the sugar bowl. It’s Saturday night in December and everybody is drinking and having a hell of a time. It is the middle of the holiday season when all the neighbors are throwing elaborate cocktail parties almost every night to impress their acquaintances with twinkling bulbs, well-decorated wreaths decked out with pinecones and ribbons, fluorescent exhibitions, effervescent champagne, and top shelf liquor.
“Is Carl home?” the man asks again.
The boy doesn’t have much of a voice. Sweet sucrose dripping down his throat like cocaine, he licks his lips and sticks them against the receiver.
“He’s out for dinner now, can I take a message please?” the boy says.
The boy places his tongue against the holes in the mouthpiece, trying to stick it inside. He has always been the epitome of politeness over the phone.
“Oh no,” says the man. “Jesus Christ no.”
The man says a bunch of other stuff too, and talks for half a minute or more in a desperate slur of words and phrases and information, but the boy stopped listening once he heard Bergen County Jail.
“Do you have a pen and paper?” the man asks. “Are you writing all this down?”
“Hold on,” the boy says, “while I grab a pencil and something to write on.”
The boy spreads his trail of sugar across the other room and returns.
“Okay go ahead,” the boy says.
The man mentions a bunch of things: driving while intoxicated, bail money, arrested, second offense in a year, third in as many, but the boy doesn’t write down a single word. He waits patiently until the man finishes, cradling the receiver against his jaw and shoulder, brushing his hand against the bottom of his feet.
“What’s your name again Sir?” the boy asks.
“Donny McClure,” the man says. “Did you get all my information?”
“Yes,” the boy says.
“Thank you so much,” says the man.
“You’re welcome,” says the boy.
He hangs up and writes the man’s name on the piece of paper under the names of two of his mother’s friends. Then he races into the other room, places the note on the island in the kitchen and attempts to make his decision. He reaches a stalemate in his mind. He’s never talked to a man in jail before, and hopes it won’t happen again. He opens the broom closet and looks at the dustpan and the plastic beach shovel hanging over the edge of the top shelf, then at the sugar bowl, before picking up the funnel and getting back to work.
