THE PHONE RINGS

Phone rings. I never expect it as no one ever calls. The phone is in the bedroom -- somewhere. I do not have a cordless phone because the cord is the only way to find it. The problem is that the cord is twenty feet long. Everyone asks, “Were you asleep?” not because they know where the phone is, but because I take so long to get to the phone. They’re used to people who carry their mobiles in their apron pockets or kangaroo pouches, whatever.

“This is Vanity Fair magazine.” The lovely voice of a handsome young man. My head says, “Oh, they’ve called to ask me to write an article for them.” Then, “Strange, since I haven’t sent them any queries.” Then, “Strange, since they only use their own people.”

“How are you?” Insincere. It turns out he’s trying to make me renew my subscription. I already mailed the card that day.

“Murp,” I say.

“How’s your Ground Hog’s Day going?”

“There are no ground hogs here.” Then I give him my canned lecture about ground squirrels, which come out of the ground during the thaw that generally hits about this time of year, not to celebrate Candlemas (the presentation at Temple and dedication of that good Jewish boy Jesus, conflated with some Celtic or Germanic calendar festival) but to breed. Lots of jolly ground squirrels out there cavorting in the snow, getting it on, because the gestation period for baby ground squirrels is about six more weeks of winter, which will put them out of the burrow about the time the baby new grass is ready to eat and about the time the baby new hawks are ready to eat. It’s all connected. Birth/life/death. Jesus, too.

Stunned silence. City boy. He starts to ask questions. Stops, goes back to his mission. I tell him I’m already in. He thanks me. I wonder who he tells that night. He might be a writer -- maybe he’ll put the ground squirrels in a novel.

A day or two later the phone rings again. Must be getting close to spring. This time it’s a young man with an accent calling from the University of Chicago to try to get me to make a donation so corporations will be impressed by my loyalty and therefore put in some REAL money.

Dodging, I ask, “Where are you from?”

“Malaysia.”

“What’s the temp there today?”

“Oh, it’s always about ninety.”

“What’s the air fare?”

He remembers his mission and returns to checking out my database entry. It’s the same except that I’m retired. I tell him, “Put my blog on there!”

“Oh, but there’s no space for that in this database!”

“Very old-fashioned,” I scold. He apologizes and promises to bring it up with someone. He thinks I might be really offended and since Malaysians don’t like that, he chats more in a soothing voice. He’s a math and economics major. I’m not surprised.

“Have you seen the little green parrots out at the Point?” I ask him. He has trouble understanding “little green parrots” and then is astounded at the idea when I explain that they are colony established when a shipment cage broke open and they escaped. But he promises to go look the next chance he gets. If he’d been a Div School student, we could have discussed the symbolism. But he remembers his mission and thanks me excessively and gets off. I wonder what he tells people that night. The green parrots are already in several novels.

These people electronically parachuting into my world remind me of the door-to-door salesmen of my childhood. The two most prominent were the vacuum cleaner man who demonstrated the pet-vacuuming attachment on Duncan McTavish and got so much filth out of his fur that my mother was embarrassed to ever let that guy into the house again. Anyway, her dust mop was one of her favorite weapons. Once some missionaries rang the doorbell and refused to leave until she shook the dust mop onto their heads from an upstairs window.

The other door-to-door salesman was the Watkins man, our source for genuine imitation vanilla extract which was vital to cooking in those days. Like Jello. Or Bisquick. Crisco. Considered toxic today. The formulation has probably changed anyway.

I put in my time as a visiting salesman. In high school I belonged to Junior Achievement, a company that imported and sold candles and copper polish. The reactions of the people were always interesting. We only went to the better neighborhoods and there was always a lady at home who asked a lot of questions, but not about the products -- about us. After they quizzed us closely, they usually bought something. I still remember the smell of that copper polish. It was a powder and really worked.

Earlier in grade school Campfire Girls I sold doughnuts door-to-door but we were always supposed to go in pairs. We were in our own neighborhood and the strongest memory I have was an old man whose house was sort of built into the ridge the street followed. I now realize the ridge was probably a glacial moraine and today I would say it was a hobbit house, except that it was very poor. The old man may have built it himself before zoning and building permits.

My mother questioned me closely about this old man and how we were not to go inside such houses, but he seemed harmless to me and my sales colleague. He was rumpled, a little stinky, wearing old-fashioned carpet slippers and a knit vest. He didn’t buy any doughnuts and didn’t ask us anything -- just stared at us, then closed the door quietly. Today I identify with him. Time was the glacier that was engulfing him.

That lively young men, full-grown and in graduate school, should be calling me up to ask me to do the equivalent of buying a dozen donuts means that the economy has pressed them out of true employment and made their institutions beg. I never tell them I have no money until the conversation has wound down. Sometimes they just hang up. But more often they say kindly, “I understand.” I think they do.