Jenny's Wrong Number

By Patrick Best

I fell asleep at about 10:45 last night. I had a big dinner, a few drinks and I was out. That’s all folks! Happy New Year! Around 3 a.m. I was awakened by the sound of our house phone ringing. It rang only once, but it was enough to shake me from my dreams of collard greens and black-eyed peas. I struggled to sit up, my body feeling heavy like I was wearing one of those lead vests they make you put on when you get an x-ray. Susie got to the phone first, but when she picked it up she stared at it like it was some strange object that had just fallen out of the sky.

“Who was it?” I said with a thick tongue, my eyes opening and shutting over and over like a ventriloquist dummy.

“I don’t know. Hold on a second.” Anyone else who heard her tone would have thought she was angry at me. After nearly a quarter century of waking up next to her, I knew she was still trying to shake out the cobwebs. She’s kinda like a momma grizzly bear when she gets disturbed unexpectedly: she bites first, asks questions later.

“Check the Caller ID,” I said urgently. I had that same weird, nervous energy I get in a bad storm when I know it’s time to head for cover.

“I am!” she said, now very much awake and a bit perturbed with me for stating the obvious. “It says the last call came from the Publix Pharmacy… yesterday morning.”

I grabbed the phone to see for myself, but, of course, the display screen told me the same thing. Concern and questions wrestled in my head like a Georgia Championship Wrestling bout between Wildfire Tommy Rich and “The American Dream” Dusty Rhodes. ‘Who called? Why did they call? Are the kids okay? No one calls our house phone anymore except telemarketers… and the Publix Pharmacy. No one calls at this hour unless there’s trouble. This can’t be good.'

We both grabbed our cell phones to check to see if we’d missed any calls. We hadn’t. Zach and Morgan were not at home, so our minds went to them first. We knew Zach was out ringing in the New Year with his childhood friends, and Morgan was in Moultrie visiting with her boyfriend and his family. My mind went to Zach first. Last year’s New Year’s Day morning found me at Rockdale Hospital emergency room with him while he got stitches in the area between his upper lip and his nose. It wasn’t a great way to start 2012.

Susie checked Facebook to see if there might be any indicators of trouble there. Zach had made a couple of posts after midnight, so we were pretty sure he was probably still out celebrating. Morgan had made no posts.

“You call Morgan and I’ll call Zach, Susie.” I said totally engaged and in Dad mode now.

“No. It’s after 3.”

“Fine!” I said. I’m the Nervous Nellie in our relationship, so I knew I had to call them both if I was going to be able to go back to sleep.

Morgan finally answered after about six rings. “Hey… Dad?” she said sleepily.

“Hey sweetie. Did you call the house phone?” I asked stupidly.

"No," she replied. Of course she had not called the house phone. She was asleep. We talked for no more than 45 seconds and said our goodbyes.

When I called Zach he answered after one ring. That’s unusual – it usually takes at least four rings for him to decide whether he wants to pick up or not. I’m sure he was just as concerned to see my name pop up on his phone that late as I was when I pressed Send on his number.

“Hey! What’s up?” he said in a voice that sounded surprised, worried and very much awake.

“You okay?” I said.

“Yeah, why? You okay?”

“Yes. Sorry. Someone called the house phone and hung up, so we were worried about you…” My tone immediately changed from concerned to chipper. Well... probably a little more goofy, awkward school girl than chipper. I asked him what he was doing, who he was with, said ‘Happy New Year’, and got off the phone feeling embarrassed, but relieved.

I couldn’t go back to sleep for hours after that call. I racked my brain to come up with who else would have called so late. Family? Nah. They wouldn't have just let it ring once if something was wrong. I have a friend who sometimes drinks too much beer and calls in the wee hours of the morning, but he’s not the kind of fellow who lets it ring once and hangs up because he notices the time. When he calls late at night it’s because all the clocks in his world have stopped and he wants – no, needs - to talk about rock-n-roll and the crazy things we did together in the 1980s.

Maybe they called the wrong number, I thought. Maybe it was someone who was calling a friend to come pick them up because they were too drunk to drive, but they were off by one number. Maybe they noticed that errant digit as they stared blurry-eyed at the display on their iPhone and pressed End just as the first ring on our house phone occurred. I’m sure that girl – for some reason I imagine it’s a girl named Jenny – felt terrible about possibly waking the person she accidentally called. I pictured her clenching her teeth, squinting her eyes and waiting for her own phone to ring. She expected to answer and hear an angry man’s voice say “I just received a call from this number. Do you know what time it is?!”

I’m sure Jenny will wake up sometime this afternoon and look at her phone. She’ll notice our number and remember when her clumsy, drunk fingers dialed it at dark thirty this morning. She’s a nice girl with lots of friends and parents that she loves dearly, so she’ll feel a pang of guilt in her stomach. She’ll want to call our number to apologize and explain to us that she’d had a few too many martinis and ‘just wanted to get home safe’. Instead, she’ll take two Advils, drink a glass of orange juice and lie on the couch and decide that it’s best just to let it go. She’s pretty sure she pressed End before the call went through anyway.