Could Be Anybody, Nobody
“Inertia” by Max Nemesi
On nights it stormed, or on clear or cloudy nights, starless or bright, on nights when war was declared overseas or ceasefires were agreed upon, people called. They wanted to know how to get over a breakup or initiate one, if it was time to put the cat down, why their brother had stopped responding to their messages when mom stopped eating on her own. Really, what they wanted was someone to listen without interrupting, and that was my job.
I had no certifications, no college degree, but I could listen, or, rather, I could stay silent just long enough to give the illusion that I was listening. It didn’t matter whether or not I was. What mattered was that I stayed on the line until the caller, whom I was never to refer to by name, even if they told me, even though the phones had caller ID, was done talking, until they felt like they’d been heard, understood.
I think it was raining the night I answered her first call. I had just clocked in. No one else was in the office in the windowless basement of the old depot station with five cubicles, fluorescent lighting, and nothing on each of the desks but a phone. That night, I was working the eleven-to-seven alone. It might have been Christmas Eve.
She wasn’t crying when I answered, but she had the mucusy tinge that meant she’d just finished. Crying was not uncommon. It was something I’d been told would happen the day I got the job. It was something you got used to. Before he broke up with me, Chris told me the job was making me apathetic, hollow. I don’t disagree; I’ve just yet to decide if it’s a bad thing.
She took a deep breath and told me she didn’t want to sound dramatic. I told her I wouldn’t judge her. That was part of the script I had to say. She said she wasn’t in any crisis, wasn’t considering anything impulsive, she just wanted, for a moment, to feel like she had a friend. Behind me, the clock on the wall ticked at uneven intervals, never exactly a second. I told her a lot of people felt that way. I told her I could listen like a friend. That was my job. That was what happened when someone answered one of the crisis lines. Sometimes, when I wasn’t working, I thought about buying a burner phone to call, but I worried they might recognize my voice.
The caller ID listed a man’s name. Her voice sounded of the age that the name could be either her father’s or her husband’s. She didn’t tell me hers, so I spent the empty months of the winter trying to decide what it could be. The closest I got on my own was Pam, but that wasn’t quite right. She was a little softer than a Pam would be.
She talked about this friend she had, one who was getting married in May, right around the time of the Kentucky Derby. I don’t remember how she felt about it. The TV in the corner of the office was on, and some adult cartoon was playing. I wasn’t listening to that either; sometimes it was just nice to feel like I wasn’t alone all night. When she stopped talking, I made some interjections, an occasional uh huh or sorry to hear that. I don’t think she was listening to me either. She thanked me and asked, if she needed more advice, could she call back? I read from the notecard taped to my desk that said we were a twenty-four-hour line, and someone would always answer. I told her I worked the night shifts most of the time. She hung up, and nobody called for an hour and a half, which was surprising. Usually, no one was happy during the happiest time of the year.
It was probably about a week later, right around New Year’s, that she called for the second time, actually in tears. She wanted to know how she had gone through another whole year alone. So she was calling from her father’s number; that pit of pity weighed on my lungs. Or maybe it wasn’t pity. Maybe it was the feeling of knowing our roles could be perfectly reversed. In the corner, animated teenagers bullied other animated teenagers.
She had had some falling out with the friend who was going to marry. It had something to do with seat assignments and silverware. I remember now it was New Year’s Eve because I could hear the live stream of the ball dropping in whatever room she was in, probably a dark bedroom in the far corner of a kempt house. Together, we counted down in whispers, and neither of us said anything for the first two minutes of the new year. I wasn’t allowed to hang up first.
She didn’t call for about two weeks, and then she did so every night or every other night. She never cried again. I didn’t know if that was a good sign. She never brought up the friend either. She talked mostly about celebrity news and scandals at her work. She was a science teacher at the middle school the next town over. She said she never knew all the details, so to pass the time I made up gossip about the people I worked with, who I only ever really saw at the time clock. I told her Sally at the next desk was getting a divorce. I told her there was a rumor Sally was actually in love with Keith, who sat next to the window and had Dachshunds as his screensaver. She asked questions that indicated she was actually listening. I started choosing my words more carefully. I started asking her questions too.
Toward the end of January, right around the time I turned twenty-four, she called around 11:30 like she usually did, but she sounded happy, ecstatic, even. This was something I’d been told to watch out for. It meant they might have decided on a solution. I was supposed to find out what that solution was and, if necessary, call the cops. I had no idea how to ask her or how the cops, trained to handle crime, not desperation, would help her. She told me she had met someone, a guy, an electrician. That sounded to me a valid reason to be happy.
She stopped calling so frequently. It became every other day and then every third day and then once every week or two. I guess, in a way, I was happy for her. If someone was doing well, they’d have no reason to talk to me. My shifts began to feel like they were getting longer. We were coming out of winter, though it was still only mid-April, which meant fewer people were miserable enough to call. Sometimes, whoever was clocking in for the morning shift told me I looked exhausted, asked if I was sick. How would I know? I started looking for new jobs, but the only ones I was qualified for would require me to look customers in the eye as I talked to them. At least over the phone, I could be anybody. I could be nobody.
The middle school she worked at had a staff directory on its website. It took a minute or two to find her name and a single search to find an address. She had a phone number listed under her own name, one that was different from the number she’d called me from all those nights. I found out she lived just a few streets away from the house where I rented a room. We might have seen each other a thousand times, might have stood in line together at the supermarket, one ahead of the other, backs turned. We might have waited in the same waiting room, sat in the same traffic.
I was out for a walk one evening the first weekend in May. I’d read somewhere that fresh air was good for a person, that it might make you happier. I was trying, at least I could say that. I was drinking a lot of water, even if it meant I had to get up two or three times whenever I tried to sleep. I was reading a little, mostly brochures and owner’s manuals, things that were already in the house, collecting dust. It made me feel like I had a secret. I’m sure none of the people I lived with, strangers who mostly stayed in their rooms with their doors closed if they were home, didn’t know how to descale the coffee machine. I was useful.
I decided to walk a different route than I usually did, one a little longer. It was still decently warm, a little sunny, so I only had to wear a thin sweater and jeans. A soft breeze carried the sounds of televisions out of cracked living room windows and through the neighborhood. Utopian Dream was about to pass General Hero along the rail with only the straightaway to go!
I turned onto Honeysuckle Drive and wondered why it sounded familiar, like it was supposed to mean something to me. I was about halfway down the street when I realized it was because she lived on Honeysuckle, number 14. I looked at the mailbox beside me. It said 15. I turned so I was facing the house across the street. It was a split with green vinyl siding and granite steps. The grass was shockingly healthy-looking so early in the year, and there were no leaves or bald spots.
The front door opened, and a woman in a purple satin dress stepped out. She was laughing at something someone inside had said. She was taller than I thought she’d be, healthier looking. Maybe she had been paler, more sunken, her eyes hollower over the winter. At least that was how I had imagined her.
She glanced at me briefly before focusing her attention on the stairs, trying to descend without falling in her heels. Of course, there was no reason for her to think anything of me. I could have been anybody. I could have been nobody.
About the author
E.C. Gannon's work has appeared or is forthcoming in Assignment Magazine, Connecticut River Review, The Meadow, Olit, and elsewhere. A New England native, she holds a degree in creative writing and political science from Florida State University.
About the artist
Max Nemesi is an illustrator based in Minnesota and is currently studying at the Minneapolis Academy of Art and Design. Nemesi has experience working both digitally in programs like Photoshop and traditionally utilizing materials such as charcoal, acrylic, and watercolor. Throughout his works, Nemesi mainly explores portraiture with a heavy emphasis on color, and the different emotions they can evoke. An avid cinephile, Nemesi often takes inspiration from film as well as different figures throughout art history. Nemesi’s style has fluctuated from realism to a more stylized form, and is currently situated somewhere in the middle, taking elements from both sides while still maintaining the core themes present in most of his works.