Where I'm Calling From

getting on. The thing is, we need something more than we have at the present. Do you know what I’m saying? This is hard for me.” she said and shook her head. Carlyle nodded slowly. He knew that she was going to tell him she had to leave. He wiped his face on his sleeve.
    “Jim’s son by a former marriage, Bob—the man is forty years old—called yesterday to invite us to go out to Oregon and help him with his mink ranch. Jim would be doing whatever they do with minks, and I’d cook, buy the groceries, clean house, and do anything else that needed doing. It’s a chance for both of us.
    And it’s board and room and then some. Jim and I won’t have to worry anymore about what’s going to happen to us. You know what I m saying. Right now, Jim doesn’t have anything,” she said. “He was sixty-two last week. He hasn’t had anything for some time. He came in this morning to tell you about it himself, because I was going to have to give notice, you see. We thought—I thought—it would help if Jim was here when I told you.” She waited for Carlyle to say something. When he didn’t, she went on. “I’ll finish out the week, and I could stay on a couple of days next week, if need be. But then, you know, for sure, we really have to leave, and you’ll have to wish us luck. I mean, can you imagine—all the way out there to Oregon in that old rattletrap of ours? But I’m going to miss these little kids. They’re so precious.”
    After a time, when he still hadn’t moved to answer her, she got up from her chair and went to sit on the cushion next to his. She touched the sleeve of his robe. “Mr. Carlyle?”
    “I understand,” he said. “I want you to know your being here has made a big difference to me and the children.” His head ached so much that he had to squint his eyes. “This headache,” he said. “This headache is killing me.”
    Mrs. Webster reached over and laid the back of her hand against his forehead. “You still have some fever,” she told him. “I’ll get more aspirin. That’ll help bring it down. I’m still on the case here,” she said.
    “I’m still the doctor.”
    “My wife thinks I should write down what this feels like,” Carlyle said. “She thinks it might be a good idea to describe what the fever is like. So I can look back later and get the message.” He laughed. Some tears came to his eyes. He wiped them away with the heel of his hand.
    “I think I’ll get your aspirin and juice and then go out there with the kids,” Mrs. Webster said. “Looks to me like they’ve about worn out their interest with that clay.”
    Carlyle was afraid she’d move into the other room and leave him alone. He wanted to talk to her. He cleared his throat. “Mrs.Webster, there’s something I want you to know. For a long time, my wife and I loved each other more than anything or anybody in the world. And that includes those children. We thought, well, we knew that we’d grow old together. And we knew we’d do all the things in the world that we wanted to do, and do them together.” He shook his head. That seemed the saddest thing of all to him now—that whatever they did from now on, each would do it without the other.
    “There, it’s all right,” Mrs. Webster said. She patted his hand. He sat forward and began to talk again.
    After a time, the children came out to the living room. Mrs. Webster caught their attention and held a finger to her lips. Carlyle looked at them and went on talking. Let them listen, he thought. It concerns them, too. The children seemed to understand they had to remain quiet, even pretend some interest, so they sat down next to Mrs. Webster’s legs. Then they got down on their stomachs on the carpet and started to giggle. But Mrs. Webster looked sternly in their direction, and that stopped it.
    Carlyle went on talking. At first, his head still ached, and he felt awkward to be in his pajamas on the sofa with this old woman beside him, waiting patiently for him to go on to the next thing. But then his headache went away. And soon he stopped feeling awkward and forgot how he was supposed to feel. He had begun his story somewhere in the middle, after the children were born. But then he backed up and started at the beginning, back when Eileen was eighteen and he was nineteen, a boy and girl in love, burning with it.
    He stopped to wipe his forehead. He moistened his lips.
    “Go on,” Mrs. Webster said. “I know what you’re saying. You just keep