My mother butt-dialed me again today. It happens to people with aging Boomer parents. My mother and I haven’t talked in five years after I said only an idiot would vote for that rapist fraud. But a year ago, my phone rang with her number, and I answered, thinking she might be wanting to reconcile. I heard her humming and clearing her throat with what I assume was Fox News on in the background. “Mom? Mom?” I tried calling her back, but she didn’t answer, proving she was still angry and hadn’t meant to dial me.
The calls started coming at strange intervals—three on the same day, nothing for a month, one in the middle of the night, then two a day for a week. But she’s never there. I’ve imagined what she might say if I ever got through to her. “Are you still buying that Woke crap?” How would her voice sound? Angry? Hurt? Would she guilt-trip me about not taking care of her? Was she losing her grip on reality?
Today, when she called, I picked up and filled her in on my life—my break-up with Carl, my new apartment with a green space out back where I installed a garden gnome, how I pulled out her old copper pots and polished them. And I kept talking just in case she was there, listening.
Jan English Leary is the author of three books: Town and Gown, Skating on the Vertical, and Thicker Than Blood (Fomite Press). Her short fiction has appeared in Flash Fiction Magazine, Inkwell Magazine, and Carve. She received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts.
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