Chapter 6
Jill Bryant sat on the edge of the cushion of the couch in the living room of her parents house in Maine, waiting for the baby blue princess phone to ring. Since she was a little girl growing up in Dayton, Ohio, her mother tells how Jill always had "ants in her pants," an expression Jill hated then and still hates, but an accurate enough expression of her constant nervous state. If nothing was wrong, she'd find something to be wrong.
The ashtray on the side table, next to the phone was filled with half-smoked cigarettes that had been lit, puffed two or three times and rubbed out. In the last hour since she washed each of the girl, put their pj's on, had them kiss grandma and grandpa and tuck them into bed, Jill had sucked away on a pack of Kools.
Why hadn't Paul called? She thought maybe something had happened. He had said he'd call every night, and had, all except tonight. Every other night he had called before seven. It was already nine and no call. Her father, a full Professor of Sociology at Dartmouth College for the past 15 years, sat across from Jill and tried to occupy his daughter's mind with small talk about the grandchildren. But Jill's thoughts weren't on the happenings of the day-the morning walking in the woods, the afternoon sailing and fishing.
Her eyes blinked incessantly; a distracting habit that drove everyone including her parents and husband crazy. She sat hunched over with her hands clasped together on her knees and her feet tightly together. As her father talked, she unconsciously swung her head back and forth between him and the phone that didn't want to ring.
For a woman of 33, Jill was about thirty-five pounds overweight and was consistently on a diet of some sort or other. Diets that never seemed to take inches or pounds off. She did at one time, right before her wedding, have a sexy body and beautiful face, with the most beautiful long; straight blond hair and soft, clear skin. But now she was the perfect case of a woman who did not seem to benefit from marriage or children.
The Maine night was exceptionally cold, and her father, a well-built, tall man standing a fraction over six feet tall, sat smoking his thinking pipe in his favorite rocking chair, wearing a light, but warm pullover sweater to keep out the chill. At sixty-five, he was one of the most respected men not only in his field, but at the college. His daughter never demonstrated any exceptional intelligence, despite the surroundings. Both he and his wife, now upstairs sleeping, had wanted more children, but complications during Jill's birth pre-vented that, so they had decided not to adopt and devote all their love to their only daughter, with moderate success.
This had been a mistake, but like all mistakes made by parents, they discovered it too late to really do anything about it. Jill was the result and end product of an overly protective, nervous hypocondriac mother who was for the past sixty two years a virgin. Everything her mother was, her father wasn't. There wasn't a day since, as far back as she could remember, that he wasn't al-ways calm, cool and collected and so much fun to be with. Unfortunately, when the dice were tossed the night her mother and father screwed, the cards were stacked against her. She was to posess every single characteristic of her mother, except one; her father's navy blue eyes. It had been evident at birth, and it had also been evident that there was nothing that could be done about it.
Realizing that his conversation was falling on deaf freshman ears, her father feigned a yawn, took a quick glance at the antique grandfather's clock in the corn', commented on how late it was and what he had planned the first thing the next morning, kissed his daughter on her cheek, and walked up the stairs to bed.
As soon as she heard his bedroom door shut, she grabbed the phone and dialed "O" for Operator. "This is Jill Bryant, would you please try to call to New York City again," she said anxiously, her eyes blinking a mile a minute. "It's very urgent Yes, thank you, I'll wait!"
She smiled and lit up another cigarette when she heard the operator say that there was finally a free long distance line available to New York. First came the sequence of clicks and then the ringing of the number. After the sixth ring, she heard her husband's excited voice on the other end, very distant and accompanied by a low continuous level of static.
Instead of saying hello first, she blasted him with a barrage of "Do you know what time it is? Why didn't you call me? You knew I'd be worried?"
Before she let him get a word in edge wise, she noticed how winded he sounded and asked for an explanation. "You just ran in the apartment after hearing the phone down the steps? Oh! Wouldn't it have been just as easy to call me from the office. Well, next time, if you're going to have to work late ... Please call me from the office. You know how I worry." While she stopped for air, Paul said how he missed her and the kids and couldn't wait for them to get back.
If you had called earlier like you said you were going to, you could have talked to Mom and Dad, (Whoopy, Paul thought), but they already went to bed. And that's where Pm going now," she announced in her "I'm done with you" voice. "Co to bed, you must be tired. Call me tomorrow." Smacking her lips, throwing him a kiss over the phone, she hung up, turned out the light and pulled out the sofa bed and went to sleep, making sure to put on an extra blanket just in case.