This is Tony.”
There was an audible click at the other end of the line and then silence.
Shahla, who had pushed the speaker button, smiled. “You’ve just had your first hang up.” She walked over to a sheet of paper pinned to one of the bulletin boards and put a mark beside August 16.
“Do you think it was one of the obscene callers?”
Shahla shrugged. “Who knows? We all get hang ups.”
For some reason Tony felt marginally better about taking the calls. There were some people who didn’t want to talk to him even more than he didn’t want to talk to them.
Five minutes later the phone rang again. He answered it with slightly more confidence.
“Tony?” a female voice said in response to his greeting. “Have I talked to you before?”
“I don’t know,” Tony said. “Who’s this?”
“This is Julie.”
“Hi, Julie.”
Shahla placed the call on the speaker. There was no echo so callers didn’t know they were on a speaker. She reached for the Green Book and riffled through its pages. She set the book in front of Tony so he could read about Julie. Meanwhile, Julie, who had apparently figured out that Tony didn’t know her story, had taken off like a windup toy, talking about her ex-husband who had run away with his secretary, and a number of other men with whom she had apparently had affairs, but who had screwed her in one way or another. This wasn’t just a bad joke; she was crying on the line.
Tony barely had an opportunity to get in an occasional verbal nod, consisting of “Uh huh,” and no opportunity to practice other skills he had learned in the class. He belatedly wrote the time down on a call-report form and scanned the written information about Julie. She had been calling for several years. She complained about men and almost everything else, and her nickname was Motormouth. About all the listener could do was to give an occasional verbal nod and hang on for fifteen minutes.
After a while, Tony realized that some of the incidents Julie was talking about had happened years earlier. He felt like telling her to get over it and get a life. Perhaps it was a good thing he couldn’t get a word in edgewise.
At the end of fifteen minutes, Shahla swept her hand across her throat in the classic “cut” gesture. However, that was easier said than done. Tony tried to interrupt Julie several times; she talked right over him. Finally, she stopped for a moment to take a breath, the first time Tony remembered her doing so, and he told her he had to answer other calls.
“Oh,” Julie said, and then, “If you hang up just like that, I’ll be depressed for the rest of the day. Can I just tell you one more thing?”
“Okay,” Tony said, feeling helpless. He avoided Shahla’s eyes.
She told him about a time a man had sent her flowers.
“That must have made you feel special,” Tony said, congratulating himself on introducing feelings into the conversation.
“Very special. But what I wanted to say was I got some of that same feeling just now because you listened to me, and you didn’t judge me.”
When he was at last able to end the call, he figured he had been on the line for twenty minutes. “Can you get fired for giving a repeat caller more than fifteen minutes?” he asked.
Shahla smiled and said, “Julie is one of the hardest ones to get rid of. Don’t feel bad. I have trouble with her too. And you ended the call on an upbeat note, which is a miracle for her.”
The phone rang again. Tony, who was still thinking about the previous call, tried to mentally brace himself. He answered the phone. Nobody spoke, but he was quite sure the line was open. He said, “Hello,” as he pressed the button to place the call on the speaker.
A male voice said, “I don’t want to go on.”
Startled, Tony looked at Shahla. She mouthed the word, “Suicide.” He thought, my God, this is a real call. I’m not playing a role in a class, anymore.
CHAPTER 2
“You don’t want to go on,” Tony repeated, using a subdued tone of voice to match the caller’s. He realized he had just used reflection, another listening skill.
The silence that followed was as deafening as a rock band. He wanted to say something more, but he didn’t know what to say. Shahla was listening intently to the speaker, but she didn’t give any helpful hints.
“I’m going to end it,” the sad voice finally said.
“What’s your name?” Tony asked. He needed to establish rapport with the caller.
After a pause the caller said, “Frank.”
“Hi, Frank. Do you think you’re going to hurt yourself?” He couldn’t bring himself to use the word “kill.”
“Yes.”
“How are you going to do it?”
“I have a gun.”
The guy was serious. “Where is it?”
“In my hand.”
“Is it loaded?”
“Yes. It’s pointed at my head.”
Tony looked at Shahla in panic. She pressed the mute button and said, “Try to get him to put the gun in another room.”
“Frank,” Tony said, “I’ll make a deal with you. I’ll talk to you, but I can’t do it when you have a gun in your hand. I’m afraid there might be an accident. Will you do something for me? Unload the gun and place it in another room.”
Silence. Then Frank said, “I won’t unload it.”
“All right, but please put it in another room, out of sight.”
They went back and forth for several minutes. Finally, Frank agreed to take the gun to another room. While he was off the line, Tony said to Shahla, “I’m sweating.”
“Stay with him,” Shahla said, “You’re doing fine.”
Frank came back on the line and, without being asked, assured Tony that the gun was gone. That was a good sign. Tony said, “There are people who care about what happens to you.”
“Nobody cares.”
“I care. I care very much.” And Tony found that he did care.
Slowly, Frank’s story came out. He had a degenerative disease that was making his muscles useless. He was disabled and his physical condition was deteriorating. At some point he would be completely helpless. Tony wracked his brain, but he couldn’t think of a way to put a positive spin on that. He tried to keep Frank talking. There were long periods of silence, during which Shahla’s support helped Tony remain calm. The phone rang a number of times, but she ignored it.
An hour into the call, Frank said, “This isn’t going anywhere. I’m going to hang up now.”
“Don’t hang up,” Tony blurted. “I have something more to say.”
Silence.
Tony talked desperately, repeating things he had said, previously, while expecting to hear the click of a hang up at any moment. He had to get some agreement from Frank. Frank had said several times that he didn’t have any relatives or close friends, but he had mentioned that he did have a cat. Tony decided to focus on the cat.
“What kind of a cat do you have?” Tony asked.
“Alley cat. He kept hanging around the neighborhood. The neighbors fed him. I never did. But he came in the house one day when I left the screen door open. I couldn’t boot him out.”
“How long have you had him?”
“Five years.”
“What would he do without you?”
