FICTION
A Five Minute Conversation
by Sandra Novack
"It's the same old thing," my father said.
This, on the phone. I usually called him on Mondays, after five when the rates were good. He usually let the answering machine pick up first, in case I was a bill-collector.
"Same old," I said.
In his later years, my father had become a philosopher, though, growing up, he was something of an institution. On Mondays, when I called, he spoke not of loneliness but war. In about a minute or two, he'd summarize the following: The state of the nation (Terrible), the government (Liars, thieves, and murderers), and the world in general (Too much sorrow).
"What-do-you-know, Daddio?"
He told me, "I'm not afraid to die. Try living for seventy years. That's the hard part."
Before my father became a philosopher, he'd worked at a steel company in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. He worked there since he was seventeen, which is, when all is said and done, a long time. After he retired the steel went bankrupt, and my father lost his pension and health care and other things he didn't talk about.
He said: "I'm sick of people telling me I owe them. Maybe you could send me a cool million, huh, Kiddo?"
"I'll bring it right over," I told him. "Be there in ten."
My father laugheda raspy, deep laugh, a laugh full of awkward rhythmsbecause he knew that I lived five hundred miles away, on purpose. I only made it home once a year, if that. "Money," I said. "No time, too." But, in other ways, I was my father's perfect daughter, a philosopher-student, a want-to-be-maker-of-meaning. And my life, like his, never did seem to work. Washers and dryers gave out at inopportune moments. The lawn mower fell to pieces. My car engine rattled furiously. A love affair ended. The laws of the universe dictated that everything, eventually, broke apart.
My father attributed all this to bad luck, the multi-generational kind.
He said, "You know, for all your education, Honey, you've never amounted to much, and you sure don't have any money to brag about. You're already thirty-one and still renting. By your age I had two houses. You've got to build and fix things. You can't even change a tire. Maybe you should go into politics."
Sometimes, in the middle of saying something, my father gasped for air. A breath he couldn't complete, a failed action. "Damn asbestos," he said, and I thought, then, vaguely, that my father's gasping, like his laments, was full of sorrow. "Thank the Steel Company for that, too. That stuff stays around forever, unlike institutions. And when you do amount to something," he said, not waiting for my answer, "look where it gets you. I'm probably going to lose my house, and I'm sure as hell going to die."
"What-do-you-know, Daddio?" I interrupted. "What did you dream about last night?"
He said, "I'm sick of everything, really, and I want to be left alone. If you can swing it, I'd also like a decent coffin. I don't think it's too much to ask for."
I interrupted, in desperation. "Can I ask you a philosophical question?"
This pleased him. "Sure," he said. "Shoot."
"Do we ever connect?" I wanted to know.
"Does anyone?" He answered.
I could have said, Yes. Or, Maybe. Or, Can't we at least try? But I worried then, suddenly, about the cost of the call.
"Did you ever notice," my father mused, "that the worst things in life are said quickly?"
"Meaning?"
"Times up," he said. "That's all."
"I have to go," I agreed, shuffling him off the phone. I planned on stepping outside and taking a brisk walk. It was a cool, gray day, the air so crisp it hurt it hurt to breathe.
"Well then," my father said.
"Well then," I echoed.
"Goodbye," we said, in unison. Then, as if surprised, we waited an extra moment before hanging up.
Sandra Novack's fiction has appeared or is forthcoming in Descant, Mississippi Review, Northwest Review, Gulf Coast, Yemassee, Paterson Literary Review, North Dakota Quarterly, and many other venues. Her collection Love and Other Disasters was a finalist in the 2004 Spokane Prize for Short Fiction and the 2005 Tartt First Fiction Contest. The collection is currently under review with Graywolf and Southern Methodist University Press. Novack continues to write short stories and is also at work on a novel titled Gypsy.