Landline

“Everything is going to change,” Neal said before she was ready for it. “Whether we want it to or not. Are you—Georgie, are you saying you don’t want to be better to me?” He didn’t give her a chance to answer. “Because I want to be better to you. I promise to be better to you.”

“I can’t promise you that I’ll change,” she said. Georgie couldn’t make promises that her twenty-two-year-old self wouldn’t keep.

“You mean you don’t want to.”

“No,” she said, “I—”

“You can’t even promise me that you’ll try? From this moment onward? Just try to think about my feelings more?”

Georgie coiled the yellow cord around her fingers until her fingertips went white. “From this moment onward?”

“Yeah.”

She couldn’t make promises for her twenty-two-year-old self. But what about for this version of herself? The one that was on the phone with him. The one that was still refusing to let him go.

“I . . . I think I can promise that.”

“I’m not asking you to promise me that everything will be perfect,” Neal said. “Just promise me that you’ll try. That you’ll think about how it feels for me when Seth is in your bedroom. That you’ll think about how long you’re leaving me waiting when you’re at work. Or how I might be feeling when I’m stuck at a stranger’s party all night. I know I’ve been a jerk, Georgie—I’m going to try not to be. Will you try with me?”

“From this moment onward?”

“Yeah.”

From this moment onward, from this moment onward. She grabbed on to the idea and held tight. “Okay,” she said. “I promise.”

“Okay. Me, too.”

“I’ll be better to you, Neal.” She steadied herself against the bed. “I won’t take you for granted.”

“You don’t take me for granted.”

“Yes,” she said, “I do.”

“You just get caught up—”

“I take for granted that you’ll be there when I’m done doing whatever it is I’m doing. I take for granted that you’ll love me no matter what.”

“You do?”

“Yes. Neal, I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t be sorry,” he said. “I want you to take that for granted. I will love you no matter what.”

Georgie felt herself sliding out of control again. “Don’t say that. Take it back.”

“No.”

“Take it back.”

“You’re crazy,” he said. “No.”

“If you say that, it’s like you’re telling me that all the insensitive things I do are okay. It’s like you’re just handing me ‘no matter what.’ You’re pre-pardoning me.”

“That’s what love is, Georgie. Accidental damage protection.”

“No, Neal. I don’t deserve that. And it isn’t even true. Because if I had that, already, you wouldn’t have left.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. The s in “sorry” slurred, like his mouth was pressed against the phone. “I won’t leave again.”

“You will,” she said. “And it’ll be my fault.”

“Jesus, Georgie. You’re all over the place. I can’t talk to you if you’re going to be like this.”

“Well, I’m going to be like this. I’m going to be worse than this.”

“I’m getting off the phone,” he said.

She shook her head. “No.”

“Then we’re starting over.”

“No!”

“Yes. We’re starting this whole conversation over.” He still wasn’t shouting, but his voice was building like something that was about to blow.

“I don’t want to,” she panted. “It doesn’t work. Everything bad and everything good has already happened.”

“I’m going to hang up now, Georgie. And we’re both going to take some deep breaths. And when I call back, we’re starting over.”

“No.”

He did it then.

Neal hung up.

Georgie tried to take a deep breath—it caught in her throat like a millstone.

She dropped the receiver on the hook and wandered out into the hall, to Heather’s bathroom. Georgie hardly recognized her own face in the mirror. She looked pale and witless, a ghost who’d just seen a ghost. She rinsed her face with cold water and sobbed tearlessly into her hands.

So this was how Georgie talked her husband into proposing to her. By practically begging him not to. By finally freaking the fuck out.

Neal would be freaking out, too, if he was the one with a magic phone. . . .

Neal did have a magic phone, and he didn’t even realize it.

God, why had she said all those horrible things? Georgie looked in the mirror again. At the woman Neal had ended up with.

She’d said them because they were true.

Georgie went back to the bedroom and looked down at the yellow phone.

She picked up the receiver and listened for the dial tone, then dropped it on the floor and climbed into bed.

That noise the phone makes when you leave it off the hook? It stops after a while.

TUESDAY

CHRISTMAS EVE, 2013

CHAPTER 27

When Georgie woke up, she couldn’t believe she’d fallen asleep. (How could she have fallen asleep? She’d probably fall asleep during an air raid.) She sat up and looked at the clock, 9 A.M., then at the phone splayed out on the carpet.

What had she done?

She crawled out of bed, hands first, hanging the phone up before she even landed on the floor. It took a few tries and a few minutes before she got a dial tone again. Then she dialed Neal’s house impatiently, catching her finger in the next number before the dial had completely unwound. . . .

Busy signal.

What had she done?

Neal’s mom must be on the phone. Or his dad. (Jesus. His dad.)

Georgie thought about how you used to be able to break into someone’s call, if you had an emergency. You could call the operator and she’d interrupt. That had happened to Georgie once in high school, before they got call waiting; one of her mom’s friends needed to get in touch with her mom, and Georgie had been on the phone for two hours with Ludy. When the operator cut in, Georgie felt like it was the voice of God. It took a while before she could talk on the phone again without imagining that the operator was there listening.

She hung up the phone and tried again. Still busy.

She hung up—and it rang.

Georgie jerked the receiver back to her ear. “Hello?”

“It’s just me,” Heather said. “I’m calling from inside the house.”

“I’m fine,” Georgie said.

“I can tell. Fine people are always telling everybody how fine they are.”

“What do you want?”

“I’m leaving in a little bit, and Mom wants you to come out for breakfast and say good-bye. She’s making French toast.”

“I’m not hungry.”

“She says depressed people need to be reminded to eat and bathe. So you should also probably take a shower.”

“Okay,” Georgie said.

“Okay, bye,” Heather said. “Love you.”

“Love you, bye.”

“But you’re actually coming out to say good-bye, too, right?”

“Yes,” Georgie said, “bye.”

“Love you, bye.”

Georgie hung up and tried Neal’s number again. Busy.

She looked over at the clock—five after nine. What time would Neal have to leave Omaha if he was going to drive to California by tomorrow morning? What time had he gotten here that Christmas Day?

She couldn’t remember. The week they were broken up was a weepy blur. A weepy blur fifteen years in her rearview mirror.

Georgie picked up the phone again. One, four, oh, two . . .

Four, five, three . . .

Four, three, three, one . . .

Busy.

“Take a shower!” her mom shouted down the hall. “I’m making French toast!”

“Coming!” Georgie yelled at the door.

She crawled over to her closet and started pulling things out.

Rollerblades. Wrapping paper. Stacks of old Spoons.

At the back of the closet was a red and green box meant for Christmas ornaments. Georgie had written SAVE in big letters on every side with a black Sharpie. She pulled it out and opened the lid, kneeling on the floor next to it.