I hate phones.
Well, maybe not phones, per se, but phones that ring in the middle of the night.
Those, I hate.
This was brought home to me a few days ago.
At 3:13 AM.
I had just achieved defcon1. (Definitive nocturnal hyper-sleep level 1. The very best that sleepy time has to offer.) The shrilling of Mom’s phone jerked me into harsh reality.
I also hate reality.
But what really got my motor going was Mom’s gasp and shriek.
I hate . . . Okay, you already know where I’m going with this.
I’ve only ever heard that reaction once before. When Sally was kidnapped. You probably remember the story. I know I’ll never forget it…
I reached Mom’s bedroom doorway just as she dropped the phone. She was already standing and a shaft of moonlight pierced the curtains of her room and snared her in a noose of light. In her white nightie. She looked like the Ghost of Christmas Past.
“What is it, Mom?”
I already knew what she was going to say. Sally was away in some undiscovered country shooting another ‘Covid-acceptable’ movie.
She had been away for just over two weeks.
“Sally!” Mom managed to gasp out.
I hurried forward and lowered her back to a seated position on her bed. Then I knelt in front of her and took her freezing-cold hands. “What about Sally?”
“There was a hurricane. Well…at least it was a hurricane, but when it made landfall, it was downgraded…”
“Mom. You’re rambling. Get to the point!”
“Sally’s disappeared!”
“Good Lord Harry.”
“She and a bunch were separated from their group when they were trying to get to the hotel. The rest have been found, but Sally…wasn’t.”
She sniffed and reached out to snap on a light, then stood up and started rummaging for clothes. “I have to…”
I put a hand on her arm. “Mom. We can’t go anywhere.”
She sat down abruptly. “But…Sally.”
I know what you’re thinking. No one tangles up our lives quite like my brave, fool-hardy, kind, scatter-brained, clever and sometimes dumb sister. But life without her? That doesn’t bear thinking about.
“Mom. We can’t go to her. They are still mopping up from the hurricane. And with the Covid restrictions, well, it would be impossible!”
“The movie company flew us out last…time!” Her voice petered out somewhere around that last word.
“It’s just not possible this time.”
She looked at me. “I have to do something!”
“How about we wait to hear from the movie company. Maybe they will want us there and can make it happen.” More probably want us to stay far, far away, especially after the way we had handled the last crisis. I made a face, wondering if the officials we had roughed up had recovered their goodwill toward the good ol’ USA.
“What’s the matter?!” A sleepy Mort in shrunken, wrinkled flannel jammies had just appeared in the doorway.
I guess middle-of-the-night, shrilling phones can awaken the dead. And Mort, our resident freeloader who lives two stories down in the guest suite.
“Sally’s disappeared in a hurricane,” Mom said in a whisper.
“WHAT?!” Mort disappeared. Now, with a normal person, one would guess he was off to get dressed. But knowing Mort, he could have headed for the front door—jammies and all.
A few moments later, however, while I was still trying to coach Mom into a thick, terry bathrobe, Mort proved that, sometimes, he’s capable of rational behaviour. He re-appeared, having discarded said jammies in favour of shredded jeans and a far too-big T-shirt.
I think I preferred the jammies.
“What do we do? I’m packed!”
Of course he was.
“We wait.”
“WHAT?”
I sighed and spoke to both of them, slowly and carefully. “Sally is in South America. There has been a bad hurricane. We were watching it on the news last night. Somehow, Sally and several of her movie mates were separated from the rest as they tried to get back to their hotel. Everyone else has been accounted for. But not Sally. They have Covid there. We have Covid here. That, coupled with a hurricane makes it impossible for us to go there right now.” I paused. “We can worry just as easily from here.”
Mom seemed to shrink into herself.
“AND I WILL!” Mort declared.
It was the longest day of our lives. Followed by the longest night.
Followed by…well, let’s just say that three very long, slow days and nights went by.
I also hate long days and nights. Just thought I’d get that out there.
The movie company kept us in the loop, so to speak. There were numerous phone calls and a representative of the company even came and worried with us for one of the days.
Finally, somewhere around breakfast time on the third day, Mom and I were at the kitchen table. I was trying to coax her into eating something. Light spilled generously into the room from an unsympathetic sun and lit up her pale, wan face and dark-ringed eyes.
The phone rang.
Both of us stared at it. It had been three days. We had almost given up hope.
This call, I knew, would make or break my mom.
She reached for it, but Mort appeared out of nowhere and dove under her hand, snagging the receiver. “What?” he shouted.
His face lit up. “Where?!”
My heart started beating again.
With tears streaming down his face, he wordlessly handed Mom the phone.
You have to know that, in normal times, Mom is remarkably quiet and well-spoken. “What?” she barked into the receiver. Then she dropped the phone and, putting her face into her hands, released the tears she had been holding in for three days.
I sighed audibly and grabbed the phone. “Please tell me what has happened!” I said, as calmly as I could.
“Sally has been found!” a voice said. “She apparently was washed downstream and found by a tribe of natives. They have nursed her back to health and two of their members canoed her back to civilization this morning!”
It was my turn to drop the phone.
We were asked to await Sally’s return in our home.
We did.
It wasn’t easy.
Finally, a whole day after receiving that fateful phone call, the door swung open and there she was.
Big as life.
“Wow! Am I hungry!”
And just as annoying.
We hovered around her for most of that day. Mort couldn’t be pried off with a crowbar—even a bent one, which is all we have.
We managed to get some of her story out of her. A jumble of “A great confluence in what (she was glad) wasn’t a glacial river. Following a tree-top trail to the native’s home camp. Something about ‘squirrel’ being the local specialty.”
Mostly she talked about how kind the natives were and how they marvelled over her pale skin and blonde hair.
She was sporting a sizeable wound down one cheek and had some remarkable bruising on both arms. But still she was whole.
And alive.
P.S. It would’t be for a year after this story that a couple of explorers would again come upon Sally’s tribe of ‘kind’ natives. The ones who had been SO interested in her.
When the two men stumbled into the camp, those same natives immediately escorted the explorers to their most sacred place. A temple with a figure of a goddess on a glistening gold stand at its centre.
A figure that bore an uncanny resemblance to a world-famous actress who had been temporarily lost in that area a year before.
Sally? A goddess?
Oh, dear.
The catch is, none of us knows who will get our words and what will be done with them.
Totally fun!
My words this month: Tree-top trail ~ confluence ~ freeloader ~ squirrel ~ glacial river ~ local specialty were donated by my good friend Tamara at Part-Time Working Hockey Mom.
Thanks so much, Tamara!
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