Hanging Up. Delia Ephron
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to college. They had parents hanging around them, handing them gum and Life Savers, asking them if they’d packed everything. I was anonymous. Not one person there was related to me, and my heart soared.
At school, I threw myself into final exams. My last was in a course called Great American Plays. We’d had to read a play a night. My friend Zoe had obtained a copy of the previous year’s final, and it had questions like “Pork chops?” You had to know what play pork chops figured in.
Zoe and I, fueled by No-Doz, stayed up all night shouting clues at each other. “Water?” “The Miracle Worker.” “Dog?” “Come Back, Little Sheba.”
When the hall phone rang, it was four in the morning.
“It’s my dad, who else?” I picked up the receiver. “Hi, Dad.” I didn’t even wait to hear his voice, and was punch-drunk enough to be nice. There was no response. “A prank,” I told Zoe.
“Sorry, Wrong Number,” said Zoe.
I was hanging up when I heard, “Pills.” Thickly. Like he had mud in his mouth.
“Pills?” I put the phone back to my ear.
“Long Day’s Journey into Night. No, After the Fall,” shrieked Zoe.
I waved her to stop. “Dad, what is it?”
“I took No-Doz.” Really thickly now. Tongue-too-fat-for-mouth thick.
“Well, that’s no big deal. Believe me, I know.”
He hung up. I hung up. “What happened?” asked Zoe.
“Nothing. We’re taking No-Doz here and he’s taking it there. That’s weird.”
We returned to my room. I sat on the bed and pulled my textbook, 100 American Plays, onto my lap. It was the heaviest book in all my classes—ten pounds. I knew this because Zoe and I had weighed it. In protest we only dragged or slid it. “He doesn’t have finals. Why would anyone take No-Doz who didn’t have—Oh my God. He didn’t say, ‘No-Doz,’ he said, ‘Overdose.’”
I shoved the book off my lap and started hunting under clothes, papers, books. “What are you looking for?” asked Zoe. There it was, my address book, under a bag of potato chips. I raced to the phone.
I couldn’t get the booth open. I yanked and yanked at the door. “Help.” Zoe had followed me. She reached over and pushed. The door folded in.
“I need change,” I shouted as I thumbed through the book for Maddy’s number.
“Shut up,” I heard someone yell groggily.
“Eve’s father took an overdose,” said Zoe, running to her room.
“You’re kidding?”
“Eve’s father took an overdose.” I heard it repeated over and over, punctuated by yawns, as Zoe tore back, holding out a jar filled with nickels, dimes, and quarters.
I fumbled with the coins as I stuffed them in, misdialed, and tried too quickly to start over. I banged on the receiver to get a dial tone.
“Let me dial.” Zoe pressed down on the receiver, held it awhile, then released it and inserted several quarters. “What’s the number?”
The entire floor was out of bed and gathered around the booth. I noticed that Joanne, the engaged person, was now sleeping with toilet paper around her head. While Zoe dialed for me, I wondered whether Joanne would sleep that way after she got married.
Zoe handed me the receiver. I heard ringing. An angry male voice answered: “What is it?”
“I’m sorry to wake you—” I stopped. I could barely speak. “This is Maddy’s sister, Madeline Mozell’s sister Eve. Get her, hurry up, please, it’s an emergency.”
While I waited what seemed like five minutes, but was probably only two, several girls got bored and went back to bed.
Finally Maddy picked up. “What’s wrong?”
“Dad took an overdose of something, I don’t know what. You’ll have to call the police and get over to the house.”
“Me?”
“You’re the only one out there, for God’s sake.”
“But suppose he’s dead. Suppose I find him plopped on the carpet. Or like, he could be in the bathtub.” She started gasping, hyperventilating.
“Maddy, you have to.”
“I won’t go.” She screamed this really loud, and kept on screaming. Probably everyone in the hall could hear.
“What’s going on? Is that her father?” asked Joanne.
I yelled into the receiver, “Isaac, Isaac, are you there?”
“’Lo.”
“Isaac?”
“This isn’t Isaac, it’s Presto. If Maddy wanted to be with Isaac, she could, but she doesn’t want to. She wants to be with me.”
“Presto, please slap my sister, she’s hysterical.” I heard a slap. “Thank you. Would you please put her back on?”
She was crying tamely now, making sad little hiccuping sounds, as if she’d scraped her knee in the playground and the teacher had finally quieted her.
“Madeline, you have to do this.”
“Why? It’s not my fault.”
“It’s not mine either.” Now I was crying too, heading her off at the pass. “Maddy, someone has to take care of this, so just do it, okay?”
“Okay.”
“Thanks.” We were sniffling in unison. I hung up.
“Are you all right?” Zoe asked.
“Yes.” I wiped my nose on my sleeve. “I don’t think I can study anymore,” I said as Zoe trailed me to my room. “I think I have to”—I made a face at her, trying to smile—“go to bed.” I closed my door.
That was my father’s first hospitalization, and my sisters and I were a great team. After I got the crazy call, Maddy checked him in, and Georgia did the follow-up. “Not enough to kill him. Big surprise,” she reported.
“I didn’t get a wink of sleep. I probably flunked my final,” I told Georgia, knowing I hadn’t. I was too much of a trouper to flunk. I was one of the supercompetent Mozell sisters. I could abort my father’s suicide and pass a final exam the next day. “Look at you. You’re fine,” my mother had pointed out. Was she right, or was I proving her right, living up to her expectations even now, especially now, when I could never get her seal of approval?
At six a.m., the phone rings. “He’s dead,” I say to Joe, and grab the receiver. “Hello.”
“Is this the beautiful, wonderful daughter of Lou Mozell?”
“Hi, Dad. Are you all right?”
“Why’d you lock me in the pen? ’Cause of Jesse?”
“What? What are you talking about?”
“Go to hell.” He hangs up.
I feel dizzy from the jolt—first to the body, then to the brain. Joe puts out his arm for me to snuggle into. I shake my head.
“He’s been in that geriatric/psychiatric ward a week and he’s definitely not better. I wish they would slap some handcuffs on him. At least then he couldn’t phone.”
“How about a straitjacket?” suggests Joe.
“Right.”