Phoning in Favorite Memories

I love talking on the phone to my girlfriends and sister. Always have. In our house, the heavy, clunky, very serious black rotary phone was on a green hassock at the foot of the steps that led up to our bedrooms. We didn't have a chair there; you just sat on the step. And sat, and sat, if nobody kicked you off.

Dial-a-Memory
1. My mom also sat on that step a lot to talk to her girlfriends--the ones she'd grown up and gone to school with in New York City. Elaine, Dot, the other Dot, and others. They'd plan lunch dates, get-togethers. Plus her Dumont friends: Vera, Rita, the others she played bridge with. She liked to talk as much as I do.

2. Crank calls. You dialed "O" and the operator came on. "I'm going to call your mother if you do that again," the lady said to me. I must have said something, because she knew I was a child. It was just really hard to resist dialing the mysterious "O." My brother Will, four years older than me, was a font of wise information. He knew how to make the phone ring at our house. He never did show me the secret.

3. Endless chats with Fritch, Irene, Moey and Lorraine all through school in Dumont. Laughing, talking about homework, haircuts, clubs, thigh size, boys [depending on which of those four friends was on the other end of the line].

4. Crush calls. Once calling Robert D's house just to hear his voice--I think in sixth grade? I don't know if I asked for him, or just kept quiet. Just remember that very awkward silence when you think the person will know it's you. And then at school the next day, you worry he'll say something. He didn't.

5. First calls from boys. First experience with lines like, "You're harder to reach than the President."

6. Boyfriend calls. Talking to J. during college breaks, usually with my Dad, red-faced, interrupting to say "You're running up the phone bill."

And Some Sad Ones, Too
1. My Uncle Malachy called when my cousin Stevie was killed on his bike on Long Island. I think he [and I] were in sixth grade. I can clearly remember my uncle's voice that afternoon. My friends and I were upstairs rehearsing a skit for school, in which I was wearing a hand-me-down black velvet skirt, and the toilet wouldn't flush.

2. Vividly recall some Saturday mornings--my mom in her white terrycloth bathrobe with "Hers" embroidered in black on the pocket, her hair up in a towel, Pond's cold cream on her face. [Pond's smelled so good, and I only remember it from Saturday mornings.] Remember her crying--once when one of her kids was in trouble for drinking, once when her father was hit by a car crossing a street in Dumont [he didn't die, but was injured].

3. Saddest call of all. May 20, 1981, about 5 A.M. Sis and I were sleeping upstairs. We knew right away when the phone rang. It was the doctor telling our Dad that our Mom died in the hospital. "What time?" my Dad asked. "Thank you," he said. The heavy receiver went back in the cradle; loud and final in the early morning quiet. My Dad was in his white undershirt and boxer shorts. I went downstairs after he hung up. He was crying. But as soon as he saw me, he stopped. He always tried to be strong for us. In a way, I wish for both of us that he had kept crying.

Can't Crack the Code
I still know these Dumont girlhood phone numbers, all 384 exchanges and one 385, by heart:
Irene
Lorraine
Maureen [family number and her own Princess phone in her room]
Fritch
Granny + Grandpa

Hope I remember those till the day I die!


Note: The photo above is a publicity still for Pillow Talk, the 1959 movie starring Doris Day and Rock Hudson.