When the phone rang, I was doing any one of the things described above. Mom answered and after a hushed exchange she curled around from the kitchen into the TV room, or if I was lost between the stereo speakers, she glided through the dining room and kicked my splayed feet.

“What?”

Mom was tall, a scant twenty-one years older than me, and had dark short hair (not Annie Lennox “Sweet Dreams Are Made of This” short, but close). The stretched-out phone cord trailed behind her with plenty of slack. One hand cupped the receiver. Her eyes were windows thrown open on the first warm spring day and her smile was a porch door.

“Art, it’s for you”—a pause because it was never for me—“and it’s a girl.”

I tried to play it off like I expected the call.

Mom repeatedly asked “Who is she?,” and perhaps in her head she sounded like a supportive friend or peer, not a mother yearning for her son to have friends, never mind a girlfriend. Instead of nonchalant cool my shrugs communicated I have no clue, what do I say, what do I do? judging by Mom’s avalanching smile and her “You want me to ask her name?”

I grabbed the phone. Mom receded into the kitchen as though a wave swept her out with the tide. She buoyed in the periphery.

“Hi. Hello?” I groaned, as yes, I said both “hi” and “hello.”

“Hey there. Is this Art Barbara?”

Whomever she was, she was not a classmate; it was less I didn’t recognize her voice in five words than what it was she said. Would a teen who didn’t know me and wasn’t making fun of me use my first and last name like that?

I said, “Yeah. This is him, or, um, me. Can I ask who’s calling?”

“Sure.”

Silence.

She added, “I said you can ask.”

“Oh, okay. Um, who’s calling?”

“Jesus. My name is Mercy and I saw the flyer about your club at the library.”

Mercy. Seriously?

My flyer had ensnared a potential member and would surely accrue more to the service of the dead! Prior to the call, the club had one (me) or maybe two members. Cayla had been noncommittal about attending a second service this coming weekend. Eddie had been demonstrably committal about his never going again. Whenever he saw me in school, he called me the Undertaker and pretended to faint under the weight of his book bag. I understood that he caricatured my coffin carry, but at least, if the non-reaction reaction of bystanders could be interpreted, no one else knew what the hell he was prattling on about. Regardless, with the betterment of the club in mind, I gestaltedly removed him from our masthead.