Marian Coble prayed the same prayer every night at the kitchen table, after the supper dishes were dried and before the ten o’clock news.
“Lord, let the phone ring.”
She never said whose voice she hoped to hear. God knew. It had been eight years since Beverly hung up on her, eight years since the two of them stood in their mother’s empty house on Locust Street and said hard things about the cedar chest and the good china and who had done more at the end.
Bev went home to Tucson. Marian stayed in Pruett, Ohio, with a yellow wall phone her husband had put up in 1979. The cord was long enough to reach the stove, and she had stirred a great many pots of chili with that receiver tucked against her shoulder. These days it mostly hung there, quiet as a coat on a hook.
On the first Tuesday in October, at a quarter past seven, it rang.
Marian dropped the dish towel. She had her hand on the receiver before the second ring.
“Carol? Carol, honey, it’s Mama.”
The voice was old and bright, like a teakettle just starting to sing.
“I’m sorry,” Marian said. “I think you have the wrong number.”
“Oh, my stars. I’ve done it again. You have a blessed night, dear.”
Marian hung up and sat back down. She looked at the ceiling for a while.
“That’s not what I meant,” she told the Lord.
The next Tuesday, at a quarter past seven, the phone rang again.
“Carol?”
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid it’s me again. Marian.”
There was a pause, and then a laugh that went on longer than the mistake deserved. “Well, Marian, I’m Opal. Opal Henley. Since we keep running into each other, we might as well be introduced.”
They talked for eleven minutes. Opal lived at Maple Terrace, across town by the feed store, in a one-bedroom with a canary named Dewey who sang only when the vacuum was running. Her daughter Carol lived in Charlotte with three grandchildren and a husband who traveled for work.
“She’s run ragged,” Opal said. “So I call her on Tuesdays. Or I try to. And here’s a funny thing. Her number down there starts with three-six-two, same as every phone in Pruett. I told her that was the Lord keeping her close to home.”
Marian’s own number started with three-six-two. So did the church’s, and the feed store’s, and the doctor’s. She didn’t think much of it.
The third Tuesday, Marian noticed she had made a fresh pot of coffee at ten till seven. She noticed she had taken out two of the lemon bars she’d been saving. She sat by the phone like a girl waiting to be asked to a dance, and when it rang she was embarrassed by how glad she was.
Opal wanted to know how Marian kept her pie crust from shrinking. Marian wanted to know how Opal kept a canary alive for nine years. They traded secrets. Ice water and a light hand. A little apple slice wedged in the cage bars.
That Sunday at Cedar Grove Community Church, Pastor Hollis read from Isaiah, and Marian, who had been studying the water stain on the ceiling above the choir loft, sat up straight in the pew.
“And it shall come to pass, that before they call, I will answer; and while they are yet speaking, I will hear.” (Isaiah 65:24)
She turned it over all through the closing hymn. Before they call. She thought of the yellow phone, and of Opal, and of eight years of evenings.
At home she stood in front of the phone with her coat still buttoned. She lifted the receiver and listened to the dial tone hum for a long moment. Then she set it gently back on the hook and went to start the roast.
On the fifth Tuesday, Opal was determined to get to the bottom of things.
“I’m going to tell you exactly what I punch in every week,” she said, “just the way my finger does it. You stop me where I go wrong.”
Marian heard her draw a breath.
“Three-six-two,” Opal said slowly. “Four-four-seven-one.”
Marian laughed out loud. “Opal, that’s me. That’s my number you just said.”
“It can’t be. I’ve got Carol’s written right here on the back of the light bill.”
“Look at it one more time for me. Just the last two.”
There was a rustle of paper and a long silence.
“One-seven,” Opal said. “It says one-seven. Oh, for pity’s sake.”
“And you’re leaving off the area code,” Marian said. “Without it, you come straight to my kitchen.”
“Well, I’ll be. My glasses, or my age, or the Lord. Take your pick.”
The sixth Tuesday, the phone did not ring.
Marian sat with two lemon bars and a cup of coffee going cold. Seven-fifteen. Seven-thirty. Eight. She told herself this was good news, that Opal had reached her daughter at last. She told herself it twice. Then she rinsed the cup and went to bed early and lay there listening to the furnace kick on.
Wednesday afternoon, it rang.
“I got her!” Opal said. “Talked to Carol forty minutes. Heard the baby say Grandma. Then this morning I woke up and thought, I’d better call my other girl.”
Marian had to sit down on the step stool.
They talked about the baby, and about Dewey, who had sung straight through the whole call with no vacuum at all. Then Marian asked the thing she had been wanting to ask for weeks.
“Opal, doesn’t it bother you? Always being the one who calls?”
“Oh, honey.” Opal’s voice went soft. “Somebody has to be the one. I’d rather it be me than nobody.”
That night Marian did not pray her usual prayer.
She took the address book out of the drawer under the phone and turned to the B page. There, in her own handwriting, was a Tucson number she had copied from their cousin Doris three Christmases ago and never used. The ink had gone a little brown.
She dialed it slowly, the one and the area code first. She checked the last two digits.
It rang four times. She almost hung up on the fourth.
“Hello?”
“Bev,” she said. “It’s Marian.”
The silence went on so long she could hear a television in Arizona being turned down.
“I know who it is,” Bev said finally. Her voice was rougher than Marian remembered. “I’ve picked this phone up a hundred times.”
“So have I.”
“Well.”
“Well.”
Then Bev said, “You were right about the cedar chest.”
“Bev, I don’t even remember what I was right about.”
And her sister laughed, the same snorting laugh from the back seat of their father’s Buick, the one that used to get them both sent to bed without dessert.
Marian stretched the yellow cord all the way to the window over the sink. Outside, the porch light made a small gold circle on the steps. She stood there and listened to Bev tell her about the lemon tree in her yard, and the neighbor’s dog, and the knee that bothered her when it rained, which in Tucson was hardly ever.
The ten o’clock news came and went. Neither of them noticed.
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