Saline Hearts

Ethel couldn’t breathe. 

Well, not quite. If Ethel were in the body of the blond girl sitting with her mother on the neighboring cluster of armchairs, she wouldn’t be able to breathe. The mother-and-daughter pair were talking in hushed whispers just loud enough to be heard over the vinyl fuzz, the air between them so utterly incomprehensible it bordered on suffocating. 

“This place is so cute,” the girl was saying. “I’m grateful you took me here.” 

The mother smiled, soft gaze trained on the girl’s downturned eyes. “I thought you’d like it, honey. I spent a while searching.” 

“You didn’t have to!” 

“I know you’ve been stressed recently,” the mother answered, carefully tucking a stray strand of hair behind her daughter’s ear. “You deserve this.” 

Ethel had given up on the concept of deserving. Rather, she’d accepted the fact that things just happened. That was the only reasonable explanation for why she was surrounded by tacky romance paperbacks, listening to an asinine conversation, and watching torrents of rain patter against the thin windows of a bookstore in the middle of nowhere. 

“Thanks, Mom. I love you.” 

What an odd thing to say. Ethel wondered if the girl meant it—if she really felt a rush of affection course through her heart at the prospect of being taken to a bookstore. She tried to imagine there was a blossoming heat so strong that the girl had to express it as an utterance of the elusive three-word phrase people murmur to each other on TV screens. 

I love you. 

Tried. Ethel couldn’t actually imagine it. To her, the girl seemed terribly stifled. That was the only explanation for her perfect golden ringlets and too-wide smile and meaningless words. Mother and daughter would go home and sit across from each other at the dinner table, where one served the other mashed potatoes with a side of steak and soup. A compliment about the 

cooking would be delivered, then another proclamation of love. Staring at each other across the aromatic spread, they would have one of those dinner conversations that belonged in one of those critically acclaimed films. Either a coming-of-age family show or a satirical movie about a dystopian utopia. 

Ethel stewed in the artificial warmth of the bookstore for a few more minutes before the noxious air, thick as molasses, threatened to choke her alive. There was nowhere to go but out, and there was nothing she had but an old jacket and a dead cell phone. Yet, without hesitation, she stepped into the downpour and let the door shut behind her with a mockingly cheery chime. 

The last rain Ethel recalled had been eight months ago: eight months of grey clouds and pent-up rage that the sky now released in a relentless period of weeping. Through dense sheets

of water, she spotted boxy red letters spelling out TELEPHONE about a hundred feet in the distance. 

Carefully, tentatively, Ethel made her way around ankle-deep puddles towards her beacon of light. Shivering and damp, she pushed open the door to the telephone booth, then locked herself in, breathing a sigh of relief as the roar of water against pavement faded into the background. 

50 ¢ for five minutes. 

Ethel cursed at the sign. With trembling fingers, she reached into her coat pocket for change—a spare dollar, five quarters. Four, now, as one of the wet metal pieces slid from her frozen hands and onto the greyish-brown ground beneath. She slipped two into the slot next to the receiver. 

Beep. “What is the number you wish to dial?” 

Her thumb hovered over the metal button. She knew the press of eleven keys would bring her back to her mother’s blinding living room, mortified and shivering. Was artificial light better than a waterlogged plastic box? 

499. 824. 0765. Call. 

The mechanical instruction was replaced by a voice barely decipherable through the static. “Who’s this?” 

“Ethel.” 

“Ethel? Who’s phone are you using?” 

“Just a payphone, Mom.” 

“Where’s your mobile?” 

“Dead.” 

Silence. Ethel swallowed the sudden raspiness in her throat. 

“Can you pick me up?” 

An airy sigh. “What happened to your plans?” 

“Started raining heavy.” 

The voice on the other side of the line suddenly became clear. It sounded like one she’s heard before—one she couldn’t quite pin down, one from a warm place. “Don’t worry, honey. I’ll come pick you up. Are you cold? You sound a little scratchy.” 

“I’m fine, Mom. I—”

I love you. 

Was that how the script went? The three words felt stifling against the back of her throat. Foreign. 

But her mother didn’t adhere to the script: “God, Ethel. You’re never prepared.” “It wasn’t in the forecast.” 

“Were you even looking at the right location? You never double check.” 

“Mom—” 

“And now I have to pick you up. Can’t say I’m surprised.” 

Ethel felt tears prickle against her lower lashline. “Mom, I’m cold.” 

Bookstore-Mom spoke. “I’m coming soon. I have your location. Hang in there, okay?” Then telephone-mom. “I don’t know what I’m supposed to do about that, Ethel.” 

Ethel could think of a million things. She wished someone would gather her in their arms after lightning storms. She wished someone would kneel next to her as she scraped shards of herself off linoleum bathroom tiles; she wished they’d offer a tender eye, a calloused hand, a cashmere shoulder. She wished someone would turn on the heater in the house for once so that it wouldn’t be so unbearably cold all the time. She wished there was a pavement to her sky, ready to absorb the pouring rain and collect her excess sorrow in its cracks. 

As it was, all Ethel could force out between half-stifled sobs was: “You always expect too much of me.” 

“Too much?” her mother’s voice hissed, crackling. “You can’t ask me to give you my blood and marrow and want nothing back.” 

I never asked. 

I only wanted— 

I never— 

She wanted to scream her throat raw into the telephone line, to make the world understand that frost was derived from neither blood or marrow, that a life where I Love You’s only came from satirical movies about dystopian utopias was hardly a life at all. 

As it was, Ethel fiddled with the rubbery coil and pressed the speaker against her cheek, hoping the burn of ice-cold plastic would dull into a soothing warmth. As it was, Ethel stammered something unintelligible into the telephone as the other side stayed silent.

Her mother spoke after an appropriately long stretch of sniffling and hiccuping on Ethel’s end. “I don’t understand why you’re crying again. It seems like the only civil conversation you’re capable of having is one where you’re being shamelessly revered.” 

This time, the words left her quivering lips as a choked-out whisper. “Mom, I’m cold.” “God, Ethel. Why are you so difficult?” 

So—gasping for air, salt tears streaming down scorching cheeks—Ethel peeled the plastic speaker from its wet spot against her face and slammed it back into the receiver. With nowhere left to go, she stepped out of the telephone booth and into the storm, letting rainwater soak through the numb parts of her body. She imagined it seeping through the cracks in her skin and into her veins, where it diluted crimson blood into a substance more tolerable; a substance lifeless and clear; a substance that pumped neither agonizing embarrassment nor bone-deep chill to her saline heart.