Crank Call
By Thomas J. Hubschman
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Bob Morrissey came to see me for a checkup every six months regular as clockwork. The usual X rays, a routine cleaning. Six months later the same deal. In five years never a cancellation I can recall (some patients specialize in last-minute excuses, everything from a sick pet to a boss who’s holding them hostage at the office). He was a cheerful, joking sort—everyone has their own way of coping with what they dread—slim, early-middle-aged, just going to gray. What I like to think I’ll look like myself in ten years, if I still have my hair. We talked about changes in the city, our kids, baseball.
Imagine my surprise when Sonia tells me someone’s called to cancel Mr. Morrissey’s one o’clock appointment because the man has died.
“Last night,” she said, gathering up instruments from my ten-thirty to put in the autoclave. “Heart attack.”
I washed my hands and stood drying them at the window facing the traffic circle outside the office. Patients die, of course. I lose one or two every year—old folks who arrive for their appointments accompanied by a relative or hired companion. Cancer victims. You can usually see it coming. But Bob Morrissey had no chronic ailment I was aware of (I double-checked his folder when Sonia went on her lunch break). No special medications. The unexpected happens, of course. Even so, I had a hard time putting him out of my mind as I sat munching the cold turkey-loaf my wife had made into a sandwich from last night’s dinner.
Sonia didn’t mention Morrissey again except to let me know she had moved his folder to the “dead” file, obviously not intending any irony. Sonia’s like that. All business. That’s why I hired her despite the way she says “ax” for “ask” and has an ass most men would have trouble keeping their hands off.
I continued to think about Morrissey that first week, even dreamed about him a couple times. But gradually his memory faded and I only recalled him when some new patient or the taste of Myrna’s cold turkey-loaf reminded me of that warm August morning.
About a month later, I was checking the lineup of patients for the week when I saw penciled in for the Wednesday two o’clock a Robert Morrissey.
“What’s this?” I asked Sonia.
“It turns out he didn’t die after all. He had a heart attack all right, but now he’s better.”
I got the same queer feeling—astonishment mixed with glee—that I still feel when I dream my border collie wasn’t killed after all by that hit-and-run when I was twelve.
My wife said I looked like I had just won the lottery. She asked if I was fooling around with another woman.“Honey, how often does a man come back from the dead?”
“He wasn’t dead. Your nurse just got the message wrong. If you hired an American you wouldn’t have had this kind of mix-up in the first place.”
I didn’t bother to point out yet again that, being Puerto Rican, Sonia was as American as we were. A good thing Myrna doesn’t know what the girl looks like in a tight uniform.
I dreamed about Morrissey again that night, although I didn’t realize it until I had come downstairs the next morning and immediately began dialing my office number.
“What are you doing?” my wife asked, the coffee she had put out for me still untouched.
“Checking my answering machine.”
There were no messages.
“You had another nightmare. I couldn’t get back to sleep for an hour.”
It was only then that I remembered the dream and understood why I had gone straight to the telephone instead of sitting down to breakfast as usual.“You dreamed he died again?”
“The opposite,” I said.
“That he didn’t die? For that you have a nightmare?”
I broke a tooth that morning. Cracked it right down the middle like a first-year intern. I told the patient there must have been a hairline fracture, but I felt like a jerk. Before each new appointment I checked with Sonia to see if there were any cancellations.
“Are you all right?” she asked as she cleared up after the one-thirty.
“I’m fine,” I said.
Come two o’clock, there was no Bob Morrissey. Two-fifteen, two-thirty.
“Your two-forty-five is here.”
I told her to show him in.
* * *
“So,” my wife said when I got home, “how did he look?”
“Who?” I replied, carrying my son’s tricycle into the house. If I told Myrna once I told her a thousand times not to leave the kids toys in the driveway.
“Your dead man. Morrison.”
I dropped the trike on the living room rug—she doesn’t even like anyone to walk on it, much less leave a muddy trike there. “His name is Morrissey,” I said. “He was a no-show.”
“Again?”
“That’s right. Is dinner ready? I’m starving.”
After she had put the boys to bed for the night, she said, “You’re in a pretty foul mood. Did Sonia screw up again?”
“No, Sonia did not screw up. Sonia rarely screws up. Why don’t you ease up on the girl? You never even met her.”
“Then, what’s eating you?”
“Nothing’s eating me,” I said. “I’m tired, that’s all. In fact, I think I’ll turn in early.”
In the morning I put on a cheerful face and gave her a big kiss to make up for the way I had behaved. Then she reminded me we had a dinner date that night at a friend’s house.
“Shit,” I said.
“I thought you liked Liz.”
“I do. I’m sorry. I’m just having a bad week.”
I had two difficult extractions that day. I can go months without having to pull a tooth, and never do so except by my own choosing. But neither of those jobs should have been a problem—a single root that had been supporting a crown for less than a year; a back molar that was loose as a baby tooth, thanks to long-term gum disease. But the root refused to budge for half an hour, and the molar, though it came out with just a mild tug, bled so badly I was afraid I’d have to cauterize it.
I had already decided that Morrissey was in fact dead. The second call was just a prank. A sadistic prank, but a prank nonetheless. It wasn’t the first time someone had called pretending to be someone else. One morning I found a message on my machine from the queen of England: She couldn’t make her ten-thirty appointment because she had to review the palace guard, but could I please squeeze her in at three-forty-five? Abraham Lincoln has also called, as have Marilyn Monroe and Elvis. Not to mention the messages from anti-Semites who had rather unoriginal plans for what they would do with me after they took control of the country.
But this business around Morrissey’s death, and the cruel pleasure someone was taking from resurrecting him, was getting to me. I even began snapping at Sonia.
“Would you like for me to go?” she asked after the last patient had left for the day.
“As soon as we’ve cleaned up.”
“I mean...quit,” she said.
“Why would I want you to quit?”
She shrugged and gathered up the dirty instruments from my tray. “I only ax because I seem to be getting on your nerves.”
We were standing in the cramped quarters of the examining room. It was a proximity we were used to, a mere condition of our employment. But I was suddenly very conscious of the woman beneath the uniform and the heat that I felt or imagined I felt coming from her body. I wanted to hold that warmth and press the comfort of that flesh against my own. But all I did was mumble, “This Morrissey thing. I can’t explain it.”
She put her hand on my arm.
“I understand,” she assured me in a tone I realized she must use with her eight-year-old.
A few days later I received another call, this time directly from the late Mr. Morrissey. Actually it was Sonia who took it. I had gone out to put a couple quarters in the parking meter.
“Did you recognize the voice?”
“Not really. I mean, it could have been him. Or someone that sounds just like him.”
I began to put two and two together. Whoever it was that made the call must have seen me leave the building to feed that parking meter. But who would be watching me—watching both of us—that closely? The idea that I was being spied on was more disconcerting than the thought of someone using a dead man to harass me.
I called the telephone company and arranged to have caller-ID added to my service. The next time “Morrissey” called I would be able to return the favor. In the meantime, I would keep the office blinds closed.Halloween came. The local witches and goblins marched through the streets carrying baskets of candy and whatever else the neighborhood merchants were handing out. Sonia added to their loot, refusing to take any reimbursement from me. Then the weather turned cold, the holidays just a few weeks away. We hadn’t heard from faux-Morrissey since mid-October. I had been looking forward to calling him back and informing him that the joke was over and that I was referring the matter to the police. But when, two weeks shy of Christmas, there was still no call I began to half-hope that the unpleasantness was over for good.
My wife had been pestering me to take her shopping for the boys’ presents, and I had been putting her off. She bought them toys for Hanukah—little things, stocking stuffers—but they knew the real loot arrived on Christmas morning. It didn’t do any good reminding them that when I was their age I only received one modest gift, a baseball mitt or electronic game. Television had convinced them they deserved the world, and the fact that they were Jewish didn’t make any difference at all.
I agreed to drive Myrna to the mall when I got home on Christmas Eve.
Cancellations come in fast and furious during the holidays, so I knew, barring an emergency, I could probably be out of the office by four o’clock. I sent Sonia home at three-thirty with an extra hundred dollars to buy something for her little boy. Then I began attending to some housekeeping chores I didn’t want to be bothered with later in the week.
By four-fifteen I was ready to call it a day. I set the security alarm and was pulling on the new parka my wife had bought me at a close-out sale when the telephone rang. I expected it would be Myrna calling to see if I had left yet.
“I’d like to make an appointment for my husband Bob Morrissey,” a woman’s voice said.
“Who is this?”
There was silence for a moment, then, “Is this Doctor Alper’s office?”
“Who is calling?”
“I’m sorry, I must have the wrong number.”
“You’ve got the right number. This is Doctor Alper speaking. I know the number you’re calling from and I’m going to give it to the police to investigate.”
“I beg your pardon?”
“Look, it’s getting tired. I don’t know why you want to continue playing this sick game, but what you’re doing is against the law.”
“Excuse me?”
I hung up. I took off my parka and dialed the seventy-second precinct. The person who answered said I’d have to make my complaint in person but added that the lieutenant assigned to harassment cases was gone for the day and wouldn’t be back until after Christmas.
I asked to speak to the captain and eventually was connected to a Sergeant Ortiz. I explained my problem and gave him the number of the caller I had just spoken with. He said he would have someone look into the matter first thing in the morning.
“They could have the number changed by then,” I said.
“We can still find out where the call was made from. Did this individual,” he asked, “make any kind of threat against you?”
“Isn’t harassment enough?”
“They didn’t threaten you or anyone else with bodily harm?”
“No.”
“All right, Doctor Alper. I’ll have someone look into it.”
* * *
There’s a large wooded area near my house, a good place to take the dog for a walk. Snow doesn’t stop me. Winter is my favorite season. I was walking in those woods on Christmas Day just as the sun was going down. It had been a predictable holiday, the usual opening of presents in the morning, with far too much money spent on video games and other stuff that would be forgotten in a couple weeks. Later we drove over to Myrna’s sister’s for dinner, where I had to pretend an interest in her husband’s new car and computer. Even after we got back home, testy from too much rich food and alcohol, there were still the inane television specials to endure, with nothing for adults but Christmas carols and old holiday movies.
I hadn’t said anything to my wife about the latest crank call. I knew she wouldn’t want something like that to intrude on her festivities. Nor was I dwelling on it myself. My home life has always seemed a distinct world from the one I inhabit at work.
The short day’s light was rapidly fading. I could barely see where I was going. But I generally follow the same route, and the dog’s presence was reassuring. She was no puppy anymore. We had gotten her when Andrew was just entering pre-school. She moved cautiously now, picking her way through the fallen leaves like an old woman afraid of taking a fall. Soon, I thought, if not this year then the next, she would have to be put down. I wondered if Andrew, who rarely walked her himself anymore, though he still expected her to sleep with him every night, would miss her as much as I would. His thoughts had already turned to girls, and he preferred the company of his soccer chums to this aging animal who was once his constant companion.Suddenly I came to a dead halt. That wasn’t the voice of a prankster who had called the day before. There had been no trace of sarcasm. Not even a professional actor could have aped her shock when I accused her of committing a criminal act. A true mischief-maker would have expected that kind of response and mocked me, or at least betrayed amusement. Why else bother to make the call?
“Where are you going?” Myrna asked when she saw me take the car keys from the hook attached to the kitchen cabinets.
“Some business at the office.”
“On Christmas Day?”
“I’ll be back in a couple hours.”
It was so late in the day I assumed most holiday-makers had, like ourselves, already returned home. But there was considerable traffic on the Jersey Turnpike. It thickened as I approached the Verrazano Bridge, then slowed to a crawl on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. Soon I was sitting in a clot of vehicles high above Bay Ridge, alongside a station wagon full of young Hispanics. In the lane on the other side of me a white couple were arguing while their newborn slept in a car seat behind them.I felt as if I were looking at myself, like one of those fictional characters made invisible in order to better appreciate their blessings. Only, I was glad I had the car all to myself, glad I didn’t have a worrying wife beside me or a couple kids rough-housing in the back seat. I wondered if I would feel any different if I really were single, with no place but a bachelor apartment to return to at the end of my trip.
It seemed strange, walking into a darkened office. I usually arrive before Sonia in the mornings, but even in the dead of winter the sky is light by the time I get there. The waiting room furniture looked a bit shabby, reminding me how long it had been since I took over the practice from Doctor Friedman.
I doubted whoever was making those calls expected to see me there on Christmas, but I checked to see the blinds were closed before flipping on the lights. Then I sat down in the small office where I keep my molds and a second phone. I looked up Bob Morrissey’s home number in Sonia’s schedule book to verify it was the same as the one I had gotten off caller-ID. In my upset the day before, I hadn’t even thought to compare the two.
“Hello,” I said when a woman’s voice answered. “This is Doctor Alper. May I speak with Mrs. Morrissey please.”
“This is Mrs. Morrissey.”
I apologized for disturbing her Christmas, then told her I was calling to explain why I had spoken to her so rudely. “I only realized afterward, just today really, that it couldn’t have been you who made those calls—I mean, pretended to make them in your name. You can appreciate how disturbing such calls can be. I don’t mean the usual crank call—every professional gets those now and then. This was different, using a patient’s real name—your husband’s. That’s why I reported the matter to the police. But I wanted to explain and hopefully to apologize before they had a chance to get in contact with you.”
There was a long silence when I finished. For a moment I thought she had hung up, having concluded I was some kind of nut myself. But then she said, “Dr. Alper, or whoever you are, I don’t know what you’re talking about. The only time I called your office was when my husband died, four months ago.”
After I hung up—after Mrs. Morrissey hung up, actually—I sat for several minutes staring at the empty wall behind my desk. Then I got up and opened all the blinds and turned on every light. I stood in front of each window in turn so there should be no doubt who I was. Outside on the sidewalks people were exiting the subway with shopping bags full of new presents, bent forward into the wind that whips around that traffic circle like a restless ghost every day of the year.
The phone rang.
“Which is it this time?” I barked. “Another resurrection or did he die yet again?”
“Is that you, Mitch? Who are you talking to? Eric wants to know how much longer you’ll be. He wants you to read him a bedtime story.”
* * *
I didn’t get any more calls from or about Bob Morrissey. Maybe the police scared off whoever was responsible. Maybe the caller felt they had achieved whatever sick goal they had set for themselves. But it was a good six months before I stopped tensing up every time the office phone rang, and perhaps a year until I stopped dreaming about my former patient.
This past Christmas I received a greeting card with a return address from an “S. Morrissey.” Sonia passed it on to me with a bunch of other cards that had come in that day. It was a simple, nonsectarian greeting, a snow scene with red trim, tastefully done. At the end of the printed message was written in a graceful feminine hand, “With best wishes. Sincerely, Susan Morrissey (your former patient’s wife).”
I took it home and hung it on my Christmas tree. I still have it in the top drawer of my dresser next to an old Scout knife, an envelope containing a bit of hair from my border collie and two French coins.
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Thomas J. Hubschman is the author of the novel Billy Boy (Savvy Press www.savvypress.com) and publisher of Gowanus (www.gowanusbooks.com), an ezine for authors in and from the so-called Third World. He is also editor of The Best of Gowanus: New Writing from Africa, Asia and the Caribbean (Gowanus Books). His short stories, articles and reviews have appeared in The Blue Moon Review, Eclectica, Morpo Review, New York Press, on the BBC World Service and in numerous other print and online publications.
© 2004 Me Three