Getting the Message

The message had been flagged. Maureen didn’t recognize the sender, but she was tired and her back hurt, and she wasn’t thinking straight. She clicked the mouse and a single message, all in capitals, hit her in the face:

                                                YOU’RE STUPID

The phone rang, jarring her nerves.

‘Mom?’

Maureen sucked her breath in. ‘Delia?’

‘Yeah. Sorry about getting mad earlier.’

‘That’s okay,’ Maureen said woodenly, even though it wasn’t.

‘So you’re not upset?’

‘No,’ she lied.

‘Good.’  Delia’s relief sounded phoney and hollow. Maureen waited.

‘Um, so it’s okay, then?’

‘What’s okay?’

‘Mom! The car!’ 

Well, no, I need it myself. You’re 32 and ought to have your own car by now!  ‘Can’t you borrow George’s?’

‘I told you! His car’s in the shop!’

‘So you did,’ said Maureen, rubbing her forehead.

‘Please Mom! I’ll drop you off at work and come and take you home at 5:00, I promise. But I’ve got to have a car tomorrow! Please!’

In the end she agreed. She almost always did.

Delia was running late in the morning. Last night’s effusive gratitude had given way to her usual prickly mood. By the time Delia had left her at work, Maureen was 30 minutes late and her boss was fuming. When 5:00 finally came, she had a pounding headache, and there was no sign of Delia. After forty-five minutes, Maureen gave up and took the bus home.

As she stood shivering at her front door, fumbling for her key, she heard the phone start ringing. Damn. She caught it on the eighth ring. There was a clicking noise, then a whirring, long-distance sound, followed by a high-pitched beeping. Maureen had a moment of panic: here she’d been so angry at Delia – what if something had happened to her? But suddenly a mechanical voice was in her ear. You are a fool, the voice said pleasantly and distinctly, with beautiful diction. Maureen held the receiver away from her ear in shock. No number appeared in the display panel, and the voice was obviously a recording.  Just before she hung up she could hear the message playing again, faint and tinny.

Delia brought the car back the next morning.

‘I’d have picked you up at work, but the traffic was just ridiculous,’ she claimed. ‘You didn’t wait too long, did you?’

‘Forty-five mintues,’ sighed Maureen. 

‘Forty-five minutes! You shouldn’t have waited that long! If you had a mobile, I could have phoned to let you know.’

I don’t need a mobile as much as you need a little consideration, thought Maureen, but she said nothing.  

‘So – did you get a taxi home?’

Maureen swallowed another sigh. ‘I took a bus home.’

‘Mom! You should have taken a taxi!’

Well, sure. But I couldn’t afford it; I’m still paying off the car. ‘The bus is cheaper.’

Delia shook her head and smiled. ‘That’s just so you, Mom. Always scrimping and saving.’

That evening, when she went to get herself a drink, Maureen noticed the fridge letter magnets her grandchildren liked to play with had been rearranged to form a message: sTUpiD cOW.

The next day was Sunday. Maureen had planned a bit of a sleep in – she so rarely got one – but at 7:30 the phone rang.

‘Mom, it’s Derrick. Listen, I know it’s short notice, but Penny could use a break and I’ve got a game I really want to see. It’d really help us out if you could babysit.

Maureen’s heart sank. She loved all her grandchildren dearly, but Derrick and Penny let their kids run wild. The last time she’d had them, the oldest had put bleach in her fish tank.  

I’m going to be busy she wanted to say, but in the end she said yes. ‘Just come and collect them before dinner,’ she told Derrick.

As it turned out, though, it was almost 11 at night by the time Derrick came to get the kids. Penny had taken the car, he said, and then the traffic had been awful. Jason and Emma had already fallen asleep, which was a mercy. But it had been a hellish day. Emma had ‘helped’ Maureen garden by cutting the heads off all her tulips. Jason had dropped three rolls of toilet paper into the toilet and demanded chips for lunch.

That night, scrawled on the misted-over mirror of the medicine cabinet were the words  Don’t you get it?

Three days later, Maureen got a call at work from Delia’s boyfriend, George.

‘Hi, Maureen. Listen, I hate to ask you, but Delia’s stranded out near Brentwood and she needs a lift here. She’s just texted me to come and pick her up, but it’d be a little quicker for you, and I was wondering if you’d mind. . .’

Maureen looked down at the memo pad in front of her. She found that she was tracing over a single word that had been written on the pad:  F O O L.

‘It is closer for me, George,’ she said firmly, ‘but you tell Delia that the 38 bus goes right past Brentwood. It’ll take her within a couple of blocks of home.’ She put the receiver down before he could reply.

That evening when she went to put the cat out, Maureen saw a chalked sentence on her front porch. She couldn’t read it, though: the words were blurred and faded and really, it was hardly even there.