I knew that part. I knew it because she used to say their names in her sleep. I used to hear her through the wall on Saturday afternoons. Gary. Lyle. Pete. Answer me, Pete.
I had my door open by then. I don’t remember opening it. I was standing on the gravel with a pan of ruined lemon bars in both hands, and nobody told me to sit down.
Hiss.
“Kessler Nine.”
This voice was young. Thirty, maybe. Then he stopped, and I could hear him breathing with the button still held down. Breathing like it hurt.
“Shirley, it’s Mike. You sat on the phone with my wife.”
Then the click, and he was gone. That was all he could manage.
My mother closed her eyes for one second.
“I remember,” she said.
Seven voices. Each one waited for the one before it to finish. Nobody stepped on anybody. Nobody talked over anyone. It was the most orderly thing I have ever heard in my life, and I realized, standing there sweating on the gravel, that they were doing it exactly the way she had taught them.
