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Fall/Winter 2009-10
tom oristaglio
scott summers
cindy childress
tom rechtin
james b. nicola
debra rymer
doug draime
corey mesler
rebecca schumejda
chris crittenden
arlene ang
joey nicoletti
brad johnson
lorie allred
elizabeth kay
alexander russo
nissa lee
kenneth gurney
jessi lee gaylord
keith brighouse
ajay vishwanathan
ethel rohan
william "cully" bryant
julie steiner
Steiner Interview
by Alex Nodopaka
Jennifer VanBuren
Jai Britton
Alex Nodopaka
Patrick Carrington
Mannequin Envy in memory of poet and artist Douglas Gamrath
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Ethyl Rohan
Hanging on the Telephone
I watched Little House On The Prairie, the episode where Mary goes blind. By its end, I was doing terrible things to tissues and filled with a biting need for a little house, prairie, Ma, Pa, and a family all of my own. I phoned my brother, the only blood relative I had left.
We had an echo on the line.
“It’s Ally,” I repeated, stopping short of adding “remember me?”
“Ally? Yeah? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing’s wrong.”
“Oh,” he said, like he’d just suffered a mild electrocution. “So everything’s okay?”
“Yes, fine. You?”
“Me?” He asked.
“How are you?”
“You still there?” he asked.
My thoughts raced, grasping for a plausible excuse for my phoning. “I was trying to remember, knew that you’d know.” I added that last part to flatter him. He always did like to know things—everything actually.
“Yeah?” he asked, “remember what?”
“Something just made me think about Little House On The Prairie—”
“Something?”
I swallowed. “Just now on the street, this woman got out of her car—”
He interrupted again. “Your street?”
“Yeah my street.” He had never seen my street.
“Oh, okay.”
I pressed my lips together, and made rude gestures at the receiver with my free fingers. “So anyway, this woman’s dog jumped out of the back seat and raced off down the road and she screamed after it 'Charles! Charles!' and it reminded me of Little House On The Prairie.”
“It did?” He sounded further and further away.
My voice climbed. “Yeah it did.”
“So did she catch the dog?”
I pulled the receiver away from my ear, beads of my breath on the mouthpiece, like it was effervescing. I could still hear him—“hello?”
I returned the receiver to my too hot ear and told more lies. “Yeah she got the dog.”
“So what’s that got to do with Little House On The Prairie?”
“Well you know, the whole ‘Charles’ thing, and how the show would be so sad and then so happy—”
He chuckled nastily. “Christ you’d cry a storm.”
My jaw locked. “That’s the point—”
“I wouldn’t know, never watched it.”
I snorted. “Oh yes you did.”
“Oh no I didn’t.”
“You so did.”
We were six and seven again.
“You know what?” I said. “Forget I called.”
“You never asked?”
My heart felt smacked. “What?”
“What was it you thought I’d remember?”
His words echoed down the line. My throat filled.
I drew a deep breath. “What was Melissa Gilbert’s character’s name?”
He pushed a wearied sigh down the phone, invading my middle ear canal. “Laura Ingalls.”
I resisted the urge to cut the call right there, and continued playing dumb. “I know that. I meant her nickname?”
“Half-pint.” His superior tone made my toenails want to curl.
“Half-pint,” I repeated, pretending to marvel at the knowledge he’d imparted.
“That it?” he asked.
“Yeah that’s it,” I said, rushing the receiver down before he could hear the catch in my voice.
fall-winter 09-10
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Raised in Ireland, Ethel Rohan now lives in San Francisco. Despite the much sunnier climate, she remains as pale as the day she was born. She writes and writes, mostly indoors, and blogs at straightfromtheheartinmyhip |
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