Phone Call Away

How often do we say: “I am a phone call away” without considering what those phone calls can or will be?

2000: The 3,000 miles between my family and I never seemed far. They have always been a phone call away. Five-year-old me nods to the wireless landline against my ear. “You have to use your words. Nana cannot hear you nodding your head.” Mom instructs me during our weekly transatlantic phone call before returning to cooking dinner. Funny to look back now when I facetime my grandparents every other day.

August 2006: We would spend two weeks of our summer on Cape Cod growing up. My aunt Patty had a Cape walking distance from the beach and enough beds in the main house for our eight cousin gang and then some. The house had a detached garage converted into a studio where Mom stayed with little Lindsey. One night Lindsey insisted on staying in the main house with the big kids. I decided to stay with Mom because I did not want her to be alone in the cottage, and I happened to be exhausted from trying to stay up late with the teenagers.

I sleep better than a rock. Out cold, regardless of bright lights or noise (middle child probs). My friends can attest to parties, thunderstorms, and drunk yelling that have not caused me to so much as turned over. On this particular summer night, I remained half-awake, aware of Mom besides me reading her book.

Mom’s flip phone rang. “I think I am going to pass out.” I bolt upright, legs moving to the kitchen for water before I realize I am out of bed. Mom is behind me, making her way to the couch, bent over, pressing the phone to her ear as if it could put her closer to the caller. Her 23-year-old cousin Alan had died. He was sent home from work earlier that day because he suddenly became sick. Hours later, he was gone.

We make our way to the main house. The back door for once is locked. My Mom is calling my aunt. It never occurred to me that parents are kids too until I hear Mom on the phone. “Patty, can you let me in,” she sounded like me- like a child when she said, “I need to call my Mom.” Eleven-year-old me held her hand the way she held mine when I was scared. Mom dialed Ireland from the landline because cell phones were incapable of calling overseas.

April 2017: On the corner of 5th and 42nd, outside Bryant Park, meeting two college friends on one of those April days that could be June. Graduation is looming, and we are beginning to see what life outside of college can look like – meeting friends for lunch in Midtown to escape over-airconditioned offices, navigating grates in heels even though sneakers are in my black hole of a tote. The blackhole I find myself digging through as my phone rings – we all stop dead. The crowd darting across 42nd crash into and curse us. The ability to walk and talk is lost as I answer the phone. “This is Ashling,” my poor attempt to sound professional. I already know Fox News is on the other end. “We would like to offer you the position…” I try to play it cool as my friends and I jump up and down.

A week later, another call, “Ashling, we would be delighted to have you on the MJ team after you graduate.” A fork appeared on the map of my life: Two days after graduation, I would take the train from Ridgewood to New York City. I would get off in Penn Station and get on the BDFM to 49th Street: Rockefeller Center. When I came up from the subway, I had a choice. Standing on Sixth Avenue, I could walk into the building on the Westside or walk into the building on the Eastside. The choice I made meant walking away from a life I would not know. People I would never meet, experiences I would never have. Which was the correct life to live? Each life was a phone call away. The trouble being, I could only make one phone call.

November 2011: Rain and fog cover the Studio windows. We stare silently at Mom – she is lecturing us, her voice a gavel: “You are not to have your phone out in my dance class.” My phone rings on cue. “I realize I am going to be a hypocrite now by saying Ash can answer that – but seriously, no one ever calls her. It must be important.” I answer as the line goes dead. “It must have been about homework.” I return to my position when the phone rings again. The caller hangs – up before I reach my phone. The third time my phone rings, the caller is different. I answer, “What is going on?” Why would two friends call me on a weeknight? The caller says: “You know Kelly Creegan, right?” Something compels me to step into the rain as I say: “She was here two hours ago.” Mom steps outside with me as the caller continues, “She’s dead.” “What?” I look up at Mom, “Kelly Creegan is dead?” I repeat, did I hear correctly? Mom sits on the bench in shock. The phone says again, “Yes, she is dead. She was on her way home from dance class.”

The realization in that moment of how final death was, how one phone call can finalize something- or everything, was overwhelming to my sixteen-year-old self. The concept that a happy six-year-old could be holding my hand one minute and gone two hours later haunted me for the next few years. One day feeling like I had my head wrapped around it, then suddenly it would unravel at the overwhelming weight of what death meant and how one phone call had the power to make death, to make life, real.

April 2013: I am making a pivotal decision in my life. I did not mean to have to make a decision. The college I had visited was supposed to be the school until I got this feeling the week before at a school in New Hampshire. I returned for a fifth and final visit to what should have been a done deal. 

After the visit, Mom and I have lunch in the Tennis Hall of Fame. I tell her my thoughts on the classes I attended, on the students. I know what she is starting to think – but I cannot say it. My phone rings. The admissions office would like to invite me to the honors college and increase my scholarship. I impressed one of the professors during the day. I say thank you and hang up the phone. Two lives are before me. I could go where I leaped through hoops and played the game to the same place as a school that understood me from the basics of my common app. It takes me less than 10 seconds to process between hanging up the phone and looking up at Mom. “I want to go to St. A’s.” She looks how I feel. “I was hoping you would say that!” A last-ditch phone call sealed my future. If they did not call one last time, would I still have walked away? Was I that close to never meeting principal people in my life?

April 2021: I refuse to open my eyes, I know it is a gray and rainy Sunday morning. “Perfect.” I think to myself. I spent Saturday enjoying the long-awaited sunshine (another April/June day), walking around repeating, “The city is alive again. It is great to see the world alive.” I went to bed hoping for a rainy day where I could stay in bed with my book and my coffee, my favorite kind of Sunday.

My eyes still closed, I reach for my phone, my body can sense my alarm about to go off. I want to spare my sleepy ears the noise blast. It is another day where the world is on the edge of the newness Spring brings. My eyes open because my phone is buzzing the way it does for a phone call. I almost declined my Dad. 90% of his calls are butt dials; I answer “Ashy.” Suddenly I am too awake. “Mommy has been in an accident.” A car accident would have been the logical first thought. Illogically I think: Mom wet the bed? Weird, but not a huge deal. Dad says accident, again; I think about the time we stayed with friends. She found Depends in their guest room previously occupied by an elderly relative. Mom proceeded to model them over her pajamas and dance around the room, sending us into late-night hysterics. My twelve-year-old self could not stifle my laugh to pretend to be embarrassed by her silliness. 

Finally, what Dad is saying registers – Mom, did not wet the bed. I never knew the end to life as I knew it was like many things, a phone call away.