Calling Home

[lb_lee]

Calling Home
Prompt: ‘Parents’




Raige was working at his trap set, pencil in one hand, drumsticks in the other, when the phone rang. Without looking up from the piece of sheet music he was annotating, he reached out, fumbled the phone off its hook, and sandwiched it between his shoulder and ear. “Hello?”

A warm voice, rough from cigarettes and too many nights in smoky bars, chuckled down the line. “How’s it going, kiddo?”

Raige dropped his sticks. “Mom?” For a moment, he was floored, then he regained himself and shoved his music away, leaning back against the wall and pushing his fingers through his hair. “Mom! It’s—it’s so good to hear from you! How are you?”

“Can’t complain baby. We were at the Baby Acapulco last night, did some Louie Prima. Same old, same old.”

“Hey, that’s great,” Raige said, unable to stop smiling. He’d missed her so much; he wished she called more often. “You can’t go wrong with Prima. ‘Jump, Jive, and Wail?’”

“But of course.”

“‘Beep, Beep, Beep?’”

“Nah. Sorry, baby, you’re the only person under thirty who knows that song, and everyone over thirty can’t stand it.” She paused, and he heard the faint click of a lighter.

“Mom,” Raige said disapprovingly, spinning his seat, “you’re not still smoking, are you?”

He heard her inhale, cough slightly. “I’m sorry, hon, I swear I’ll quit one of these days.”

“That stuff’ll kill you; you know it will.”

“I know, I know, it’s just impossible when I’m on the road, everyone’s doing it and reminding me what I’m missing.”

“You’ve already been sick once,” Raige said. “Promise me you’ll stop when you get back, okay?”

“I will, baby, I will. Don’t worry, I’m in the peak of health, no more getting sick. But enough about your old mom.” He could hear the change in her voice, as though she were gripping the cigarette in her teeth; he could imagine her pushing her brown hair out of her face, pulling it back with both hands to pull into a Scrunchie. “How’re things with you?”

Raige fished his drumsticks off the floor and twirled one through his fingers. “Oh, um, things are good. Studying jazz and music composition over at VU.”

“Wow, college already? Seems like only yesterday I was teaching you Joplin and you couldn’t even reach the pedals, and now look at you, studying composition.” He heard her draw on the cigarette. “So how’s classes going?”

“I’m learning a lot, but they really neglect the history aspect, Mom, it’s terrible. I’m trying to incorporate more rag into my work, but it’s not too popular.”

“Bah. They don’t know what they’re missing.” She coughed. “You’re not overdoing it on the studying, are you? Make sure you have a life, I know how you are.”

Raige chuckled, drummed idly against his thigh. “Well, no, I’m actually… I’m actually dating now.”

“Really? God, I should’ve called you so much sooner, how did I miss this? Who is she, do I know her?”

“Oh, no, you don’t know them, they—” He cringed and lost his rhythm.

“They?”

“Uh. Shit.” But the idea of backing out and pretending Thomas or M.D. didn’t exist just left a bad taste in his mouth, so he admitted, “I’m kind of dating two people, actually.” He bit his lip and worried the drumsticks through his hands.

“Oh! Huh.” For a moment, she was silent; he imagined she was drumming her fingers on the frame of whatever crappy payphone she was using. Finally, she said, “You’re treating them both right, I hope.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Raige hastened to assure her, going back to drumming. “Everyone’s fine and okay with it, nobody’s… it’s not like that. We just… they both liked me, and I liked both of them, and… well, it was kind of an accident. It’s a little… different, but it’s working out so far.”

He heard her sigh. “Jesus, honey, I need to come home, I can’t believe I’m missing all this; you’re going to be grown up before I even get to see you. Does your father know?”

He’d been hoping she wouldn’t ask. “Uh… well…”

Her voice was wry. “You haven’t told him, have you?”

“…No.” Raige hadn’t dared. Just imagining it was terrifying.

“Has he met them?”

Raige briefly remembered M.D. and Dad’s first meeting. The shouting, the running. The headlong dash out the window in his bathrobe. “…Sort of?”

She sounded like she was suppressing laughter. “He doesn’t like them, does he?”

“He hasn’t gotten to know them yet,” Raige finally evaded. “So really, I can’t say he likes or dislikes them…”

She groaned; he could imagine her slumping against the pay phone. “Oh, I know what that means. I love George, don’t get me wrong, but he has a temper.”

“Yeah, and so does she, so… it was pretty impressive, actually.”

“Do I need to have a talk with him?”

Raige’s lips twisted wryly. “I think she handled herself pretty well. I’ll get around to telling him, just…” He pushed his bangs out of his eyes. “Not yet, okay?”

She laughed. “God, and I’m in Florida, missing all this. So do I get to know their names or is it some big secret?”

Raige exhaled and relaxed his wrists; he hadn’t even realized he’d been holding his breath, or that he’d been squeezing his drumsticks so tightly. “Thomas and M.D. Their names are Thomas and M.D.”

If she noticed at least one of the names were definitely not a girl’s, she tactfully didn’t mention it. “They got good taste in music?”

“Oh, Thomas, he’s all about swing, ranchera, and the crooners.”

“Ranchera, huh? Now there’s something I haven’t heard in a while.”

“Yeah. Big Chavela Vargas fan, and god, Mom, you should hear him sing, it’s amazing, he’s got crazy range. M.D… well, she likes Weird Al and Eminem and that’s about it. And she’s tone-deaf.”

“Ouch. Well, nobody’s perfect.”

“It’s okay. She’s a big old bibliophile like me, so it’s not like we can’t talk about things. They’re good people, Mom.”

“They treating you good, then?”

Raige smiled to himself. “Yeah. Really good.”

“Good.” She paused, presumably to draw on her cigarette again.

“I’ve really missed you,” Raige told her, moving the phone to his other ear. “When are you coming home?”

She sighed. “Soon, baby. Soon. I promise, okay?”

“Please, I just… I feel like it’s been forever, and I really miss you. Ever since you got sick…”

“You worry too much, I’m fine. I’ll be home Thursday. We’ll have a big ol’ Joplinathon, watch the Sting and order pizza, okay? Invite your friends; I’ll meet them.”

Something was flickering in the corner of his vision, but Raige ignored it; he was too happy. “You mean it? Thursday? You’re really going to be back by then?”

“I promise. Cross my heart and hope to die.”

Raige beamed so hard his face hurt. “Oh, thank god. It’s been crazy without you, Mom, you have no…”

He didn’t finish his sentence; the flickering in his vision had gotten his attention. It was his bedroom window. Outside, the sunlight kept flickering, changing from morning to evening. But that was odd… he could’ve sworn it was late, dark already…

The paint on his windowsill began to disappear. Not peel or flake, just… vanish into the ether, like reality’s filmstrip was starting to run off the reel.

Oh. Oh no.

The tinny, static-filled voice in his ear still sounded exactly the same. “Baby? What is it?”

The world continued quietly unraveling itself.

Raige swallowed. “Hey, Mom? I, uh. I have some bad news.”

“What do you mean?”

“I…” His window was gone now. “I think I’m dreaming. And I’m going to wake up, and this will have never happened, because you… you never went on the road and…” He swallowed. “None of this is real, is it?”

“No, baby, it’s not.” Her voice was sad, and he heard her smoky sigh. “I was hoping you wouldn’t notice. I’m really sorry, sweetie.”

His room was gone now.

“Yeah,” Raige said. “Me too.”

And the dream world collapsed entirely.

Raige woke up and lurched upright. His mind was muzzy with fog, and he nearly elbowed Thomas in the face lurching over him for the night table.

“No. No, no, no…”

M.D., of course, was up so fast that he wouldn’t have known she was ever asleep. “Raige, what’s wrong?”

Raige ignored her, fumbling for his phone. He was still half-asleep and knocked it off the night table, and he cursed and finally crawled over Thomas and fell out of bed to find it.

Thomas rolled over, rubbing his eyes. “God, what’s going on? Am I the only normal sleeper here?”

Raige finally managed to fish his cell phone off the floor, and the display lit up, showing no missed calls. He mashed buttons until he somehow got managed to call his voice mail. It wouldn’t dial.

“Raige,” M.D. explained, “it’s Treehouse. There’s no service here.”

Raige ignored her. When his phone gave him the disconnected beep, he only tried again, making a sound of aggravation.

“What the hell, man,” Thomas continued, “it must be four in the morning…”

“My mom called me,” Raige mumbled groggily. “Okay? She called me. I missed it.”

That woke Thomas up. He sat up straight, exchanged glances with M.D., then flopped back against the headboard, cursing quietly in Spanish.

“Raige,” M.D. said, in an unusually gentle voice, “she didn’t call you. There isn’t service here. And your mom’s—”

“She did,” Raige insisted, shaking his phone. It only gave him the beep again. “She’s coming home on Thursday. We were going to watch the Sting and have pizza. She promised, okay?” His throat was closing up.

M.D. and Thomas exchanged looks again, and M.D. got up off her side of the bed and came around to where Raige sat, still trying to get his phone to work. She gently took it out of his hands; her face was sympathetic.

“Here,” she told him, “this will be faster than caffeine.”

And she touched him.

Unlike him, M.D. always woke up instantly alert and fully awake; if she forgot what reality was, it was only for a few seconds until a nightmare passed. In Raige’s state, her mind was like cold water in the face, jolting him back into his right mind, and he remembered that his mom was gone, there was no ‘after you were sick,’ just doctor after doctor and then hospital rooms and wearing black and the second line. So there was no way in hell she could be calling him, definitely no way she’d be coming to visit him on Thursday—

But she’d promised.

He burst into tears, and M.D. hugged him. “It’s okay,” she told him, wrapping her mind around him like a blanket. Raige was still too tired to feel ashamed; he just clutched her shirt and sobbed. “It’s okay, it’ll pass in a bit, just wait it out…”

And Raige knew she was right, because M.D. had nightmares all the time, she knew more about them than anyone else he knew, but at the moment, he just hurt everywhere. “She was going to meet you guys and damn it, she would’ve liked you…”

Thomas sat up on the bed, rested his elbows on his knees, and patted Raige’s hair. “Hey. At least you got to tell her about us, then, right?”

Raige swallowed and sniffed. “Yeah. Yeah, I told her.”

“So it’s okay. She knows. At least come back to bed, y’all’s butts are too bony to handle the floor for long…”

Raige hiccuped, but he let himself be pulled back into bed, where he was wrapped in blankets and hugged, and eventually exhaustion stopped the crying and he slipped back to sleep.

As he was drifting into the twilight haze, he heard Thomas murmur to M.D., “Jesus, I hope he never has one of those again.”

“Yeah,” she agreed, rubbing his back. “The good ones must be the worst…”