Cynthia hunches over her desk, her telephone tight to her ear. Never mind that it’s her radiation-emitting cell phone and that the call didn’t come through on the office land line. She has told her daughter time and again. Emma, please, please, if you are going to call me at work, please use my work number. Emma listens, or says she does, but she forgets, forgets to think about whether a phone call puts her mother at risk of brain cancer.
Her mind has wandered but Cynthia gets the gist of what Emma is saying. “Mom, it’s totally okay with Hannah and her parents. They’ve got room in the car and they’ll bring me right home after the movie. So, is it okay with you?”
“That depends. Do you have any homework?” It’s Cynthia’s turn to ask and Emma’s to answer.
No, Emma says she doesn’t have any homework, or, okay, not much homework. (Craig would have caught his daughter in the contradiction. “Which is it?” he would say. “No homework or not much?”) It’s not much homework it turns out, and Emma can get it done before school tomorrow, she says. No, she hasn’t asked her father for permission first, she tried but couldn’t reach him. Yes, she has enough money to pay for the movie, and for popcorn, not to owe anything to her friend or her friend’s parents.
Cynthia relents, gives her permission, feels something like envy for Emma with her after-school plans, for anyone, really, who doesn’t have to take a bus straight home from work, squashed in with all those stale bodies, to make dinner and do dishes and go to bed and get up and do the same thing all over again.
Now she has to call Craig. She’ll tell him about Emma’s plans, listen to his objections, agree with him, cajole him. She’s already given permission. At least Emma won’t have to deal with all that.
But she needs privacy to call Craig, some place where her co-workers can’t hear every word she says or read meaning into every silence. Cynthia will take the elevator down to the lobby, that’s what she’ll do, find a quiet corner, use that cancer-causing phone again, hold it close to her ear, wait for someone on the other end to find Craig.
