(Image generated by DALL-E)
The tape hiss comes first. That gritty, empty noise that kicked in immediately after the automated voice announced, “Received at twelve-forty-two PM.”
Next, there's a two-second pause. Nothing happening but the sound of her breathing. It's not a ‘shaky breath.’ There's nothing special about it. That was Mom. She had a little wheeze from her deviated septum. She was always going to have it corrected, but then she was afraid of the surgery.
I am sitting on the edge of the tub. I can feel the coldness of the tiles on my thighs, but I don’t move. I press the back button.
Twelve forty
"Hey, El. It’s me. Look, I’m at the shops and I don’t remember if you wanted the blue milk or the green one. The one you use in your coffee. Oh well, give me a shout if you see this in the next ten minutes or something. Otherwise, I’m just going to grab the normal stuff. Byeee."
The beep sound at the finish is too loud. It always startles me.
I play it again.
I’m looking for something coming from the background. If I concentrate hard, I think I could hear the sound of the car that crashed into her. But no, she was actually inside the supermarket then. I hear the muffled thump-thump sounds of some pop music playing through the speakers of the supermarket. I hear a cart wheel scraping.
She sounds so bored. That’s the problem that’s killing me. She sounds like she has fifty years of life ahead of her, and she’s spending five minutes of it being somewhat irritated with the labeling of her milk.
I wished that she'd have lingered in that aisle for just one more minute. If she'd have simply stood there, looking at the dairy case, trying to make a decision—perhaps she might not have been in the crosswalk when the kid in the delivery van came speeding through the yellow light.
“Blue milk, Mum,” I say aloud. My voice is dull in the bathroom. “I wanted the blue one.”
I punch three for save. I punch one for listen.
I was at my desk at work when I noticed the missed call. I was working on a spreadsheet when I saw "Mum" appear and I just thought, I'll call her back in an hour. I was busy. Or at least, I was supposed to be.
Then the police arrived at the door of our office. They didn't call first; they simply arrived.
“Hey, El. It’s me
The way she says “El”. Only she calls me that. They all call me Elena. I was only a syllable for her. A short and swift one.
I think back to all of the times I didn’t answer. And the times when I would pick up and say, "Mum, can I call you back? I’m right in the middle of something." And she’d always say, "Oh, of course, love. Don’t let me keep you."
I let her not keep me.
This is all that is left of me now. This is my digital ghost.
I wonder what happens to the silence in the message if I continue playing it. Does it wear out? Like that old tape that was on VHS? Will the silence growing wider?
I begin rewriting the message in my mind. I visualize her uttering something like, “I’m proud of you, El,” or “I’m sorry we fought about the Christmas dinner.” However, she does neither. She just talks about the milk.
The silence at the very end, after she says "Love you, bye" and just before the beep, that's where I keep replaying it in my mind. It takes about half a second. In that split second, she's still alive. She hasn't put the phone away in her purse yet. She hasn't crossed the automatic doors yet. She's just. there, standing next to the yogurt sections.
I close my eyes and imagine that I am there with her.
"Is the caller there?" I whisper, parroting some inane remark I read in a book one time.
The house is so quiet that it has a heaviness to it. You don't know how much noise one makes until they're no longer around to make that noise.
I look at my thumb hovering over the screen. One wrong touch of the delete key, and she’ll be erased. Wiped from existence. I have no videos of her. Mother didn't like the camera. She was always holding up her hand, saying, "Don't you dare, I look a fright."
“So this is it. This 12-second clip of her being indecisive about groceries.
I press one.
"Hey, El. It's me
The tears start flowing then. My nose starts dripping, and I'm making these awful, jagged sounds. I begin thinking about the carton of milk in my refrigerator at home. It’s almost bare. When it’s all used up, I’ll have to go down to the market and buy another carton. I know exactly which aisle I’ll be standing in.
Do you think she felt anything? Well, the doctor said the heart attack was quick. He said she probably didn’t even realize what was happening. I hate that. As if that’s supposed to make me feel better. To know that her final moment was just a complete shock.
What I wanted was for her to know. What I wanted was for her to have had a moment to think of me. But then, that’s the height of selfishness, isn’t it?
“I’m sorry,” I murmur
I'm sorry I didn't reply. I'm sorry I was snappish when you called me twice on Tuesday. I'm sorry I didn't point out that the blue milk is the one that tastes like chalk, but I drink it anyway, since it's also good for my skin.
I play it again.
“This time I don’t listen to the words. I listen to the space between the words.”
There is a small pause before she says “Anyway.”
It’s almost as if she was going to say something else before she changed her mind.
What was it?
Was she going to invite me to her place for dinner? Was she going to say that she had liked the coat she had seen in the window of that store that we like?
The silence is the hardest thing. It’s the “untold” things people speak about.
I spend quite some time on this floor.
“Bye, Mum,” I say
I don't erase it. I can't. But I lock the phone and place it on the bath mat. I’m sitting in the dark. Alone with the silence. And I that the silence isn’t empty but full of everything she never got to say. It’s thick with it.
I get up with creaking knees—I have inherited my bad joints from her as well—and head out of the bathroom. I have to go to the store. We are out of milk.