Someone To Talk To by L.M. Brown

Bernadette’s husband came home late again last night. She’d been awake for a long time because of the rain lashing against the windows and her worry that the river might overflow. The February rains had brought the level dangerously high, and she’d imagined the water breaking its banks to cover the field and inch towards her house. She felt the same keen nervousness reaching for her husband’s address book as she did with the thought of the flooding. 

It wasn’t the first time she saw his book, which was usually in his nightstand, but it was the first time she considered looking through the pages. The rain had stopped hours ago, and she listened for the drum of the shower. Her husband might have been humming, though she had an idea that he had stopped that habit years ago. In any case, all she heard was the beat of the water and the buzzing in her ears. 

The book had a worn leather cover and fit easily into her palm. Keegan was the name she’d heard often. It was Keegan’s idea to play snooker on Tuesday and Thursday, Keegan who wanted to meet every weekend. She’d never met Keegan. Their nights out were boys’ nights and besides Bernadette felt uncomfortable in any pub from the fear of her mother appearing.  Whenever she suggested having Keegan over for dinner there was always some kind of excuse. She’d begun to hate the sound of the name and had started to imagine a faceless woman whenever Marcus mentioned him.

There was a chance that her husband had written the woman’s real name in his address book, but she didn’t think he would do that. He was careful. Bar some loose change, she hadn’t found anything in his pockets and even with his shirts pressed to her face she never detected perfume. 

There was only one entry under K and no address, just a local number. She left the house while Marcus was getting dressed. The sidewalk was narrow, and the pavement cracked in place. Above her, the sky was clear of clouds, but the cold forced her to put her hands in her coat pockets. 

The statue of Our Lady was just ahead. The grotto was set in an alcove with a low semi-circular wall. Once, Bernadette saw her mother inebriated and holding onto Our Lady’s white arms while she’d whispered to the cracked stone face. Since then, Bernadette had never been able to get close to the grotto without feeling an icy sensation.

She crossed to the bridge. Below her, the river pushed against a lone fisherman standing to his knees in water. His silver line glinted in the sun. On the opposite side of the road was the Dun Maeve hotel. The rooms were rarely rented. The proprietor made his money with the bar patrons and the lunches popular with the men from the quarry. The front doors were closed but Bernadette knew some people had already knocked on the back door and gained entry. Ten a.m., and her mother was probably there.  She’d deserted her family when Bernadette was nine. There were nights when Bernadette remembered her father waiting at the kitchen table for his wife, but he never spoke of that time and refused to mention his wife’s name.

Bernadette would sometimes see her mother walking the village. She was a small, weary looking woman who hadn’t spoken to her daughter in years.  The sight of her made Bernadette nervous, and she avoided her mother by building her house on the opposite side of the village. But she looked out for her too. If weeks had gone by without a sighting, she’d get worried, only to be let down when she saw her figure darting through the streets. 

The phone box was at the far end of Main Street outside the local supermarket. Numbers for taxis were stuck on the body of the phone.  ‘Josie is a slut’ was written in black ink. ‘I luv Tommy’ was etched in pen.  

Bernadette’s throat had gone dry by the time the phone on the other side started to ring. For a moment, she thought no one was at home and the relief surprised her.  At the last second, just before she was about to give up, the ringing stopped, and she heard a groggy hello. The voice was deep and without doubt male. She exhaled with relief. “Hello?” He repeated.

She hung up.  Her heart was pounding when she fed more coins into the phone and dialed again. 

“Hello?” He sounded awake now and annoyed.

She said, ‘Is this Keegan?” 

And he countered with, “Who is this?”

“Marcus’ wife.” 

After a few moments, he said, “Oh,” Then, “Yes, is everything okay?” 

She said, “Not really.”

She could hear his steady breathing while her free hand played with the cord of the phone. He cleared his throat, and she was afraid he’d hang up, so she said the first thing that came to mind. “Do you ever watch that show where couples guess the right answers about each other? You know the presenter gives certain scenarios and asks what they think their partner would do, or they ask about the things they like. It’s on Saturday nights.” 

He said yes. She said, “Every time I watch it, I think we’d be terrible at it. I think of all the things I don’t know, like his favorite movie. I can’t remember what that is now.”

There was a moment of silence before he said, “Blade runner or Platoon, it depends.” “Oh,” she said. She wanted to say thanks, but the surprise was too great. Her shoulders

sagged and memory of her mother made her stand straighter. She said, “Are you married?” 

He said no.

She asked if he lived alone. 

 “Why are you phoning me?” he asked.

“I feel like there’s something I should know.” 

“And you’re asking me?”

She said, “It’s easier. I don’t see your face.” 

After a heartbeat, he said, “I always thought that was the worst things about phone calls, to have nothing but the voice. It’s like being blind.” 

She said, “What do you look like?” And he laughed, though she’d been serious. He told her he had to go and said, “Goodbye, Mrs. Blake.”

“Bernadette,” she said, and he said, “okay, Bernadette.”

“Don’t tell Marcus I called.”

After a pause, he said okay.

“Can I call again?” she asked and was answered by the dial tone.

The next Saturday she was up early, waiting for the morning to reveal a dry blustery day. On her walk to the phone box her face tingled with the cold. She crossed to the bridge without a glance at the grotto where her mother sought redemption one afternoon. When Keegan answered the phone, he didn’t sound as groggy as he had the previous week. The silence after his ‘hello’ made her nervous. If she hadn’t spent hours thinking of what she wanted to tell him, she would have clammed up. 

“I took my husband bird watching once.”  

She paused, unsure and shaky. She wasn’t used to volunteering information like this, but she’d wanted to tell Keegan about that last time she could remember them being happy. When she’d uttered the last word, she thought she felt something drift down the line. Maybe, he’d just sat up in bed, but all those things she wanted to say during the week were forgotten. She’d wanted to tell him about Marcus mistaking a reed for a bird.  

 “Why bird watching?” 

The relief made her lean against the glass. She told him that she’d gone to the bay when she was a kid and she’d seen a bird standing by the shore. It was beautiful, but it was the stillness that got her. For hours it didn’t move and for hours she didn’t think of anything else but that bird. 

“What kind of bird?” 

“A grey heron,” she said, and imagined he nodded.

She asked what he liked to do and thought he would say snooker. Instead, she felt that tension again and he said, “I have to go.” 

She didn’t tell him not to tell Marcus. When Marcus went out the following Tuesday, she imagined him coming back angry and demanding to know what she’d been doing behind his back. There was no way she could explain finding Keegan’s number or why she’d phoned him.  

It was deathly quiet while Marcus was out. For the last three days it hadn’t rained, and she missed the hammering on her window. With the lights off in the bedroom she could see the dark strip of river on the other side of the field that looked like a rip in the world. 

She was still awake and pretending to read when Marcus came in. “How was it?” she asked. She thought her voice shook, but he didn’t seem to notice. The moment he smiled; she knew Keegan hadn’t told him anything.  Happiness let her slide down the bed. She closed her eyes, while her husband undressed.

The following Saturday, she was excited to talk to Keegan. In his omission, she’d felt an element of subterfuge. She’d imagined that she might speak with more ease. She would tell him that she and Marcus were only 21 when they got married. She’d describe the night that they’d sat in the gloomy house she’d shared with her father. Marcus had turned to her suddenly and said why not? And she said why not what? And he’d said get married and she said, “Because I might end up like my mother.”  

He’d laughed and told her, “Not with me, you wouldn’t. We could protect each other.” She couldn’t remember saying yes. She remembered hugging him and the relief from getting out of the house that she’d been cleaning since she was nine years old. 

Saturday morning, Marcus was still asleep when she closed the front door gently behind her. The morning was full of low-lying clouds. The river was empty of fishermen. A bus was parked outside the supermarket. At one stage Bernadette would have loved to jump on any bus and get away but she’d married young and got a job in her father’s company, and that longing had deadened.

Her pocket was full of coins. During the week she’d kept her 20’s and 50’s and each time she put a coin away she thought of something to say. The phone rang out and she heard.  “Sorry I’m not in right now, please leave a message.” 

She hung up and tried again. The previous two Saturdays, when she’d heard Keegan’s voice she’d forgotten where she was. Now she felt conspicuous and too aware of everything. The butcher across the road was hanging meat in the window. She never liked the look of him in the bloodstained apron.  

Behind her, Faith Wheeler was probably unlocking the door of her bakery. Bernadette folded up slightly. She moved closer to the phone as if this could hide her.  Despite the grey day she wore no hat over her long red hair. Faith was probably staring at her now, wondering why Bernadette was in the phone box when she had a phone at home, though Faith had always been kind.  After Bernadette’s mother left, she’d often knocked on Bernadette’s door to ask how she was. They’d gone for walks because Bernadette had never wanted to let anyone enter their house where remnants of her mother existed in the small things that Bernadette hadn’t the heart to throw out.

When Bernadette got married, she left a bowl of her mother’s belongings in the bathroom cabinet-clips, lost earrings, forgotten make-up, and an old tissue with the faint shape of a mouth in lipstick. She didn’t know if the bowl was still there. She hadn’t checked in years. 

Her pockets were empty of change when she stopped by the grotto on her way home. Our Lady’s stone hands were raised towards the sky. Bernadette couldn’t remember standing so close to her before.  During the warmer months, an array of flowers grew close to the circular low wall but now the only color was the blue of Our Lady’s robe and sorrowful eyes. 

That night when Marcus said he was meeting Keegan, she wanted to grab his hand and plead with him not to go. But she couldn’t because she was afraid that she would break down and tell him that she had spoken to his friend. And she was terrified to admit that there was something troubling her. It could have been the embarrassment every time she considered the evidence of her phone calls. Five times she tried to call. Five times Keegan would have heard her breathing and frustrations. Yet she thought it was more than this, something bigger than the phone box and their conversations. It had started with the quickness Keegan had said “Platoon or Blade runner,” and had spread because Keegan had made her want to talk. 

When she was at work, Bernadette imagined Keegan in his house. She wondered if he would answer the phone should she call and if he would hang up when he heard her voice. She might have dialed if her father’s office wasn’t next door. She couldn’t phone from home, not with the chance that Keegan would answer thinking it was Marcus and feel tricked by her.

 She pictured Keegan bald for some reason, maybe a little older than Marcus. There was gentleness to his voice that she associated with age. She imagined he had small hands holding the phone. Maybe he was a small man, unassuming, not like the broad-shouldered figure of her husband whose presence was so powerful it often left her tongue tied. Marcus had changed from the teenage boy she’d first met, and the young man she had married. Or maybe she had not noticed the fierceness of his black eyes and the quietness that permeated from him until a distance had been set. 

She wanted to tell Keegan that for the first years of their marriage Marcus had hardly stepped outside the house. He’d gotten into a fight she wanted to say, though she didn’t know much because Marcus refused to talk about it. All she knew was he had a badly bruised face when he first approached Bernadette. For a long time, Marcus didn’t talk to anyone other than her. Then he’d joined the gym, and everything changed but she didn’t mind at first because he was happier than he’d been in years. 

The following Saturday morning, it was raining heavily. The river looked as thick and black as syrup. Our Lady faced the dark sky. Water dripped from her hands, like an offering. The silver railings on the bridge sparkled. Bernadette felt invisible as she slid into the phone box. She’d always loved the rain for the feeling of being obscure. Keegan answered the phone at the first ring. His voice was soft when he said, “What do you want Bernadette?”

She didn’t know what she wanted.  His breathing was hardly detectable, as if he was keeping the phone a little from his face.

 “Did Marcus ever tell you about my mother?” she asked finally.

“Bernadette?” he said and the pity in his voice scared her and made her speak quickly. “She wore black on our wedding day. Her house was on the way to the church, and she stood at the gate with a long black dress. I told Marcus it was just coincidence, but I never really believed that.

 “What do you believe?”

When she said she didn’t know, he said she must think something, otherwise why bring it up. She said, “Sometimes I think that she cursed us, like the bad fairy Godmother.”

 She thought he might laugh and when he didn’t, she felt like crying.

Her voice shook when she said, “Does Marcus think that too?”

Keegan said, “He thinks she’s cruel.”  

Marcus had said that to her years ago when they’d first gotten together. They’d talked about the cruelty of people like her mother.

She said, “Did he tell you about the beating? Did he talk about that cruelty?” The streets were empty from the deluge. 

“Keegan,” she urged.

And he said, “Yes, he told me about that.”  

The knowledge sat like a lump in her stomach. It made Bernadette want to slide down against the glass and curl up.

 “You shouldn’t phone me anymore. You need to talk to Marcus.” 

She wanted to tell him that was impossible. She could wait for hours to talk to Marcus and forget everything she wanted to say because of the way he looked at her, but a sudden exhaustion ran through her and made it impossible talk. 

Keegan’s voice was low and gentle when he said, “He’s expecting you to call.” 

She kept the phone to ear for a long time after he hung up. The rain streamed down the glass, and she thought of Marcus in their house waiting for the phone to ring. She imagined they’d listen to each other’s breathing for a long time, but she didn’t know what he’d say, maybe something about safety not being enough. When the phone in her living room rang, she remembered the tissue with traces of her mother’s lips, how she used to lift the bowl to her face, trying to find her mother’s scent, afraid to touch the tissue in case it might disintegrate in her hands.

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L.M. Brown has two short story collections and two novels published.  Her latest novel Hinterland (Fomite 2020) was an honorable mention finalist in the Eric Hoffer Award (2021). Her stories have won the Able Muse Write Prize for Fiction and have been shortlisted for the SmokeLong Quaterly Flash Fiction Award, Bath Short Story Award, Fractured Lit Flash Fiction Award, and London Independent Short Story Award.  She’s been published in various magazines such as The Chiron Review, Pangyrus, Eclectica, Litro, Toasted Cheese, Fiction Southeast, and more. She is an assistant fiction editor with Able Muse.

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9 September 2022