Operator

Lia Merkelson || Fall 2020

Job woke up one morning to find his wife and children all dead. Again. 

When he’d fallen asleep, they’d all been happy and healthy, but now the kids’ eyes were rolled back in their heads as they lay in their beds. He found them when he went to wake them up. Then he staggered numbly out to the kitchen, where he found his wife sprawled facedown on the floor. Apparently she’d hit the coffee maker on her way down, because it was sideways next to her. Her skin was already beginning to cool. 

There wasn’t really anywhere to stagger numbly, after that. 

Job didn’t say anything. He didn’t weep uncontrollably. (Though it’d be untruthful to say something didn’t roll down his cheeks.) He didn’t scream and smash everything in sight. (Though it’d be untruthful to say he didn’t feel it rising in his throat.) He didn’t tear his clothes in mourning and put on sackcloths. (Though honestly, they were all at the back of the closet, and it would’ve been a pain to go get them out, so.) He didn’t attempt to flee the apartment. (Though he already knew that, one way or another, that never works.) He spoke no curses. (Against anyone.) He neither retracted nor repented, though it felt like--he could’ve sworn--there were dust and ashes in his eyes. 

He didn’t know how long he sat on the kitchen floor. There was a clock on the opposite wall, but nothing could’ve looked more incomprehensible. None of the bodies had had marks on them, and this is what set the most dread churning like bile within him. His wife’s limp hand had slipped out of his grasp. The conviction seized him that if he could just clasp her hand again, she would rise up and the children would come rushing out and he would offer all the praise, all the exaltations anyone could ask for. 

And then panic, as he couldn’t seem to move his arm. 

When his phone rang, he scrambled to answer it—or rather, he tried, but it felt like the quicksand of the floor swallowed his every step. There was no breath in his lungs. To so much as tap him would have been to send him keeling over. Maybe shattering forever into six hundred-odd pieces. 

He reached the phone and just tried to exist in the present next to it for a while. “Hello? Job, are you there?” the voice on the other end said. 

“Speaking,” Job answered. He recognized the voice. His mouth was very dry. “I am--well, you know who I am,” the voice chuckled. “Anyway, by now you’ve seen your family, yes?” 

“Um. Yes.” 

Silence. “You sound really hoarse. Drink some water, okay? It’s healthy.” Of course Job went to the cupboard and got a glass and poured some cold water from the pitcher into the glass and gulped down every last drop and made a loud “Ah” noise afterwards, what the hell else are you supposed to do with a request like that?! The voice had remained silent until he made the noise of refreshment. “Look, I just want to say—I’m sorry about what’s happened. Truly. This wasn’t supposed to go this way.” “What?” Job wasn’t even sure if the word had come out, it was so high-pitched and strangled. Not that the voice wouldn’t know what he was trying to say either way. “Yeah,” the voice sighed, “there was someone else—don’t bother wondering, you’ve never met him—who was supposed to get this treatment, and I guess you’re still marked down as the recipient from—sheesh, ages ago?—and it never got followed up with and fixed. You know. Marked as completed. These kinds of things happen, but, uh, you’re probably still upset, right? Really sorry.” 

Job had literally no idea how to respond. It was like someone had repeatedly struck him in the head with his dead wife’s arm, his wife was dead, his children were dead, and here he was, listening to-- 

“Do you want flowers? I can send flowers.” 

“I--I don’t.” 

“Like, are you just not a flower person, or is that not an appropriate—oh, hmm, it’s the latter. Look, just relax. Keep your breathing even. Scream into a pillow if you want? And in the meantime, I’ll send over some new ones, all right? Like last time. Within, oh, three to four hours. Don’t worry. You’ll love them. It’ll all be okay.” 

Job didn’t exactly hang up on the call, but his hand spasm caused the phone to slip out of his grasp and the result was the same. It didn’t matter. The voice kept talking. “And, you know what? I’ll throw in the flowers. Really, they’re a gift. This was my bad—I’m sorry I made you sad, and I’m doing my best to fix it. You should get the flowers by tomorrow. Bye. Love you.” 

Job stood still for a period of time less than three to four hours. 

Then he pulled on a jacket, left the apartment, and stepped into the elevator. He wanted to go buy a new coffee maker, because the old one was probably broken after it fell to the floor. He wasn’t crying anymore. 

If he wasn’t there when they showed up, maybe he could pretend that nothing happened, that the life of his family was one unbroken chain.