All that came to mind was phoning home. The number loomed large in his mind, spurring him. He hadn’t called in a long time; he hated to call when all he could say was that he was still working on it. He had promised to get it all straightened out, once and for all. They were counting on him. He was going to make it right with all of them.
There was a phone booth in me train station, with a decent chair in it. He had used it so often he had memorized me graffiti. He leaned into the privacy of the booth, telling the operator to make it collect. The ringing sounded very far away.
He couldn’t identify the voice that said so softly, “Hello?”
“Collect call from Mitch. Will you accept charges?”
He heard wind blowing in me receiver, that was all; as if all me miles of wire between him and home were taking a long and steady breath. The operator repeated, “There is a collect call from Mitch. Will you accept charges?”
“I… wait a minute. Yes, I will. Go ahead, operator.”
“Hello?” His own voice was so cautious he hardly recognized it himself.
“Mitch?”
“Yeah. I woulda called sooner, but this is such a fucked up mess, every time I go in Acre—”
“Mitch. Wait a minute. Listen to me, Mitch. Just a sec.”
She took a ragged breath and he suddenly knew she was weeping. Weeping on the other end of the line. Why? “Look, I gotta say these things. You don’t want to hear them and I don’t want to say them, but I gotta say them now, on the phone, while you’re not looking at me. Listen.” She cleared her throat, but her voice still came out husky. “There’s a lot of things.
There’s Benjy, for one. He’s back to sleeping alt night again.
He’s nearly back to how he was. He plays outside and his little friends come over again. And he seems so sunny and fine, it breaks my heart to think, of how he was. He found one of his old plastic army men in the sandbox yesterday. He wouldn’t touch it. He made me come out and get it and wrap it in a paper towel and throw it inside the trash can for him. After we did that, he asked when you were coming back. I told him I didn’t know. He seemed worried by that, so i told him pretty soon. Then he got scared and wanted to sleep in my bed with me last night. Mitch, it’s too much for him. Too many blowups in front of him, too many weird-outs. Too many times of you going away and coming back fine for a month or two, and men a disaster. He’s just a little boy, and it’s too much for him.
Do you know what I’m saying?“
“Yeah.” The huskiness was in his voice now. “I do love him. You know I do. I love him and I love you and—”
“Mitch. Don’t. Listen to me. We’ve had all our good times.
I waited for you. And you came back a stranger, but I stuck with you. I really thought we could make it all better again. I waited through the dope, I waited through the booze, and when I thought we were finally safe and I could have our baby…
Damn. You’ve been gone a while, and I can see things clearer.
It isn’t going to get any better for us. And I can’t pretend anymore.“
“No. Wait, please. I’ll come home tonight. I can get this mess straightened out later. Baby, I’ll come home tonight, we’ll get my folks to babysit, and we’ll go out and be alone together and talk. We can get it all talked out. And whatever you want me to do this time, I’ll do it. I promise you. Whatever you think will make it work, whatever will be best for us all. I promise.” He could hear her crying now, little gulping noises as she strangled for air. He needed so badly to touch her. His eyes stung.
“You promise.”
“Yeah. I swear it. Please.”
“Mitch… then don’t come home. I won’t be here. I can’t be here anymore. You… you take care. I’m gonna drop your stuff off with your folks. They already know about it. I’m taking Benjy with me. Listen. I’m going to keep on loving you. I swear that. I always will. But I can’t live with you, not anymore. I can’t wait anymore for you to come back.”
“I promise,” he said softly to the empty line- The electronic winds blew his words back to him.
“I promise.” said the man in the beige shirt at the huge desk, “that we are doing everything we can to straighten this out. But we need your cooperation. Did you bring your records this time?”
Mitchell set the document box on the desk beside the computer. The man looked at it with obvious relief. “Great. At last. Now we can get somewhere. Got your discharge papers?”
“Hi here.” Mitchell tapped the cold box with his fingernail.
He didn’t like the sound it made, like clods of dirt falling on a coffin. He stopped.
“Let’s have them, then.”
“I lost the damn key. You got something we can jimmy it open with?”
The man at the desk looked disgusted again, and as tired as be had when Mitch had first come in. “No. That’s not my department. Look, take the box to a locksmith and get it open.
We aren’t going to get anywhere without some papers to work from.“
Mitch rubbed his head, hating the man, wishing he could take his bead and shove his face into his fucking little computer screen. He put his fists in his lap, out of the man’s sight. “Look.
Please. Did you check on what I told you last week? Did you run down my name and serial number? I mean, listen, isn’t that what these little gizmos are for?“ He tried to sound reasonable, admiring of the computer technology that had caused this whole fuckup.
“Yes. And it came back the same- Mitchell Ignatius Reilly is listed as MIA- Missing in Action. He never came back from Viet Nam.”
Mitchell’s fist hit the top of the desk in short, hard jolts, punctuating each syllable. “I am sitting right here. Ask my wife. Ask my folks.” The man’s face went red and white. He began to rise. Mitchell hid his fists again. “Look. I’m sorry I did that. I know you’re doing the best you can. Hey, did you check on that other tiling I told you?”
The man settled back in his chair and looked at him in blank weariness. Mitchell wanted to punch his civil service mouth, to make him care. He controlled himself. He mastered it and held it down and strangled the impulse. He was in control of himself.
“You know. There was a guy in my company, shipped over with me, Michael Ignace O’Reilly- Weirdest damn thing. His serial number was within a couple digits of mine, they were always getting us mixed up, trying to give him my mail, that kind of shit. I shipped stateside before he did. Maybe he’s the one MIA.”
“Him.” The man at the desk looked harassed. “I’d almost forgotten why I ran a check on him. It didn’t help. He’s not MIA, he came out in a plastic bag.”
Cold panic squeezed Mitchell. “What? What are you trying to tell me. that I got a choice between MIA and dead? Look at me. I’m here, man. Take my fingerprints if you want. The Army has mine on record, I know. That’ll prove I’m me. Go ahead, take them.”
“Look.” For the first time, an edge of anger crept into the man’s voice. “I know you want help. I’ll even say that I can see you need help. But before we go to extremes like fingerprints, why don’t we do what’s simple? Go get that damn box opened! Get those papers to me and I’ll have a fighting chance of getting this straightened out. Until then, I’m going to tell you to quit coming here. Every week I ask for your papers, and every week you have a different line. I can’t do a damn thing without some papers. Give me a birth certificate, discharge papers, anything. Just go get those damn papers for me, or don’t come back. Look, man, why don’t you go to the state?
There’s a lot of agencies for people like you. They can help you. You need to get some help!“
The man stood up to call the words after him, but he didn’t stop. He beat it out of there, leaving it all behind. MIA or dead. Great choice. Dammit, he was here, he was alive, he hadn’t changed, but no one would accept him, not his wife, not the VA, he had no one. No one cared enough to help.