The Phone They Cut Off

Forty-Three Names

I started with Delbert, because it was past nine and he was owed a proper call.

“Hello?” he said, in the voice of a man picking up a number he doesn’t know.

“Good morning, Delbert. It’s Vivian. This is my new number. It’s a very small phone and it was fifteen dollars.”

“Well, I’ll be,” he said. “It’s about time.”

“I’m sorry I’m late.”

“You’re not late. You’re early by about a day.” I heard him settle into his chair. “Is it the kids?”

I didn’t answer right away.

“I’ll tell you everything on Sunday,” I said. “Can you do something for me? Can you not tell anyone it was them?”

There was a pause on the line.

“They’re good kids,” he said.

“They’re good kids who made a bad decision.”

“That’s the best kind to have,” Delbert said, “and the hardest,” and that was the end of that.

I called Pastor Tim Lindqvist next and told him in four sentences. He said “Oh, Vivian” in a way that made me close my eyes. I asked him not to tell anyone the reason, and he said he wouldn’t.

Then I sat in the Fleet Farm parking lot for two hours with a fifteen dollar phone and a book of names, and I rebuilt the chain.

I should tell you how a prayer chain works.

It is a telephone tree. Somebody in the church calls me with the sick, the dying, the baby that came early, and I call three people, and each of those calls three more, and inside twenty minutes forty-three households know that Ione Brandvold’s hip has gone again. What moves through the chain is not gossip. It is casseroles. It is rides to the doctor in Eau Claire. It is somebody mowing a widow’s lawn.

I started it in 1998. I am the top. If I do not call, nobody calls.

And since noon Monday, I had not called.

I made forty-three calls that day, one at a time, and I won’t give you all of them. But here is the shape.

Most people said, “Vivian! Thank goodness.” Then a pause. Then, “We tried you yesterday. And this morning. We thought you’d gone to your sister’s.”

I don’t have a sister.

Ione Brandvold, who is ninety-one and half deaf, said, “I called you nine times. Did you die?”

“No, Ione.”

“That’s good,” Ione said. “I’d hate to be the last to hear.”

That evening I walked to the post office and mailed a postcard to each of my children.

It said, New number below. Sunday at two. Come hungry. Love, Mom.

I did not say one more word.